Czechoslovak national insurance : a contribution to the pattern of social security the Czechoslovak National insurance act.

  • Czechoslovakia.
Date:
[1948]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Czechoslovak national insurance : a contribution to the pattern of social security the Czechoslovak National insurance act. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    workers did not come into being until the social insurance scheme enacted by the Czechoslovak Republic in 1924. This general social insurance Act of 1924 placed Czecho- slovakia in the forefront of socially progressive capitalist States, but in spite of this, the development of insurance under the Act again showed the difficulty, if not impossibility, of creating a system of complete social security under a capitalist economic régime. The Social Insurance Act of 1924, progressive for its time, was amended twice, once in 1928 at the time of prosperity, and again during the slump in 1934. The amendment of 1928 provided an opportunity for the coalition of bourgeois parties, to reduce workers’ benefits and thereby the burdens imposed by insurance on the owners of the means of pro- duction. In 1934 the consequences of the economic crisis, 1.e., the unexpected reduction of contributions and the growth of cases insured against, both in sickness and in long-term in- surance, were not without effect on the social insurance scheme. ‘The crisis was solved, again, on class lines, as the rates of benefit of “white-collar workers’ were increased while workers’ insurance benefit was curtailed. Although, even with the foregoing reservations, this in- surance scheme was progressive for its time, it was never- theless a scheme in which the principle of the so-called actuar- ial balance was decisive, being consistent with the social order of that day. Even then progressive forces were taking up the fight against that social order, and were to achieve their end later, in drawing-up the national insurance scheme of 1948. Progressive experts (chiefly from the trade union movement) in the field of Czechoslovak social insurance recognised, from their intimate knowledge of its working in practice, that social insurance would in a better social order become one of the most important factors in the just and equitable distribution of the national product. During the se- cond world war and under the occupation the idea of national liberation was closely related in the minds of these experts to the idea of complete social liberation and a great deal of i