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05.09.2003

The "Christian" Socialism

In nowadays Romania there is a tendency: to work as little as one can. Some of the first measurements that were made after the Revolution were to reduce the working week and the age of retirement. The constant economical decline of the transition determined, in itself, the diminishing of work places; to maintain alive in an artificial manner the life of the state-owned industry had only a false effect of preserving the number of work places. Not only it had consumed huge amounts of the state money, but it also paralyzed other important economical resources that would contribute to the development of a healthy, private economic section. By blocking out the economy, the populist politics of the transition governments blocked the formation of new working places, compensating for those that are inevitable lost.

Obvious or mot, not only diminishing the employees' number and the individual working time represent a problem in Romania. A much bigger problem would be the conical inefficiency of work. The coward ness of the governments that have always postponed the economical reforms is costing us more and more now: the lack of an economical true conncurential environment is determining a low productivity of work even in the more performant sections of the economy. The situation is becoming truly delirious within the administration, where the corruption problem is successfully eclipsing the one of the crass inefficiency of work, and in the state-owned economical section, within enterprises that keep their men in an unusual form of unemployment for years, called technique unemployment, or in the energetically section where the personnel is grotesquely over measured and the wages are made respecting a much more simpler then efficiency criteria: how many do they feel like taking from the public money.

Thus, the leit motif often played by some of our diverse moralists, more or less entitled to utter it that says "the Romanian do not like work" should be looked cautiously. The Romanian peasants are working hard, though inefficiently; in such many private societies the work is serious, because there one has to gain certain results. It is perfectly true that a new work culture should be developed, one that would be able to erase the malefic mentalities naturalized by communism, still the problem is not only the capability of the Romanian to work, but the environment that is offered to him, too. In a Romania where the economy is still mostly state-owned and where a good part of the private economy is doing business with the state, there is no motivation for working hard.

Not only that until now the formation of an economical and social environment that would simulate the honest and efficient work was not successfully created, but the present government is obviously discouraging these values. The New Code of work is strictly limiting the week hour to 48 hours so the employees of the private societies can't work more even if they want to and even if they have to do; for those that work in state-owned societies it is quite obvious that this kind of problems do not exist, than maybe to those of the health department who will not be able to do their night shifts because the law will not allow it anymore. Many of other populist foresights of the Working Code are forcing the wage earners to see their wage as a sort of social assistance that is truthfully theirs, not as a reward of his work, reward that must be earned by credit. The employers are being imposed all possible and impossible obligations; yet, the text of the Code is not saying anything regarding the obligation of the employee to accomplish a quality work. The employee's loyalty is not seen as an absolute natural morale duty; in order to benefit from it, the employer has to pay a consistent salary increase.

Still, the Nastase government can always exceed with no real problem their own records when speaking of absurd and immorality, thus they are advancing constantly towards forms more and more direct of discouraging work. After it has done the same with the Christmas holiday, the government mixed for Easter a laic holiday with a Christian one, in order to give the potential electorate a consistent holiday. Of course, it would not be the first time when socialism and Christianism are being merged by PSD in order to get image effects. The result: even a true atheist as Ion Iliescu and the leaders of the party that are most lacking God are attending enthusiastically religious posts and consecrations so the people can see where the real faith is.

The "Christian" boom of the government stroked into the private sector first by interdicting working for 9 (nine) days, with the exception of the cases in which the employers were paying their employees double. This measurement is clearly an aberrant one, because only a small number of clean business are that profitable to can allow such a salary raise. This measurement is obviously an arbitrary and immoral one, because there is no real rational reason for which 3 working days to be declared by the government free only because they are between holidays. Between the Monday after the Easter an the 1st of May there were 2 more working days, this even with the risk of some Romanians too full of mioritical feelings of fainting of nausea because of it; likewise on the Friday after the 2nd of May.

The socialist "Christian" government of Adrian Nastase is not understanding at all that in a civilized society there are rules and obligations that are foreseen by laws, and they can not be changed daily by the government, after its own will. By giving the Romanians an unjustified holiday the Nastase government is not doing anything but making electoral propaganda on the commercial societies money, that are left with the same wage costs but are benefiting of less work, so smaller incomes. More, even the societies that wanted to work between the Easter and the 1st of May could hardly do it because all administration and financial - banking sector were paralyzed.

Nothing is characterizing better the PSD governing than the contempt for the law and in general for rules, as well as the arbitrary and abusive decision that is letting the impression that a problem is being solved or is creating a momentary benefit, so that in long term to produce the gravest consequences. Nothing is more typical to the PSD politics and to its electorate than the indefinite postponing of every action, which is nothing more than accept with nothing to say the miserable negligence of the one that is content to survive anyway, with no one bothering him. What does it mean for PSD and for its electorate that the difference between the Romanian and the Hungarian or the Czech one is bigger than of these economies and the occidental ones? Adrian Nastase and its ministers are making gargle with macro economical gauges which are resembling pretty brutally the productions of one hectare that were reported on Ceausescu's time and everybody is ok.

Another typical element of the PSD governing style, one that had manifested even in the decision of awarding Romanians a supplementary Easter holiday is the impossibility of understanding the long lasting effort Romania needs (actually, it more likely a supplementary vacation because only the children have holidays; this frequent confusion is yet extremely significant for the lack of responsibility of infantile manner of those that are thinking that these "vacations" are natural). A party of immobility, such as PSD can not understand that the time when primitive men used to crop nature's fruits and they used to look for louses on each others bodies and used to paint caves, well, this time is long gone. Now it's a different rhythm of life and men's activity are others. Maybe some good things were lost, even if many other good things were gained; it's inevitable, because we are not living in a perfect world (and even if it's necessary not to try to change it into a perfect one). Still, everything that was good can be reinterpreted and regained in other forms, so our possible nostalgia after the long gone patriarchal world should not be an argument against the connection to the contemporary world. To turn back now to a patriarchal world or to delay into a type of culture that has as practice ideal surviving and as moral ideal "bohemia" this would actually mean to renounce to our belonging European culture, a dynamic culture of development.

It is essential to understand work both as an economic necessity and as a morale value. No matter the way we are each one of us working and acting it is imperious that we do something, both as each one for the personal benefit and the others. Especially in the critic situation of Romania where people have worked and paid a lifetime and they cannot have the possibility of taken care of their health, a Romania where children, our seamen are living an abject life in all kinds of canals and where the majority of Romanians are barely living from one day to another and to enjoy the inactivity only because a government is sufficiently irresponsible for proposing, that's at least indecent.