Solidarity and the Welfare State in Greece

During the years preceding the financial andfiscal crisis, Greece’s welfare state had been mainlyextending provisions in order to serve the politicalpatronage system built after regime change in 1974. Thissystem reached its limits as the number of active insurancecontributions given by the working population wasgradually reducing while the number of inactive members(pensioners) was increasing at an exponential rate.Because of this situation, after the outbreak of thefinancial crisis, the "obvious" concepts of social securityand solidarity were in dispute and are currently in aprocess of redefinition. Undoubtedly, insurance is a way ofproducing solidarity and nowadays redistribution methodsare put into question. At this point we note that theproposals of the Left proved unable to address the viabilityproblem of the social security system and as a result couldnot prevent the appearance of “social exclusion”. This isevidenced by the fact that in Greece during the economicdownturn, not only are the vulnerable affected but also themiddle classes. These results stem from the requirementsof the Medium Term Fiscal Strategy Programme 2013-2016, signed by the Greek government, the IMF and theEU, that proposed a selective welfare state which reduceswastage by the extreme reduction in the Health andEducation services. One main aspect of the welfare state isthe existence of solidarity with social content but how canthis be implemented when solidarity becomes a form ofcharity? Does the introduction of a revolutionary tax planwhich aims at increasing the development rates provide asustainable solution to this problem? The purpose of thisarticle is to investigate the transformation of the concept ofsolidarity and the formulation of policies that will makethe welfare state in Greece viable while not restrictingsocial goods