Act in the Court: Dipti in the dock (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Standing there, just able to see above the top rail of the dock, Dipti did not look like a threat to the very fabric of civilised society. For one thing people who threaten civilisation are supposed to be reckless, defiant, composed. But Dipti was trembling and had desperate tears in her voice. And while she stood there civilisation, unthreatened, carried on outside the court. The list of cases for that day noted that she was charged with False Representation – between this date and that date, against the Benefits Agency, resulting in her being “overpaid” well over ten thousand pounds. In plain words – Daily Mail-speak – she was a Social Security fraudster, a benefits scrounger, a leech sucking the blood of the welfare state – a threat to civilised society.

Cases like this are prosecuted separately from the run-of-the-mill criminal charges, which are handled by the Crown Prosecution Service. Instead the Benefits Agency have their own lawyer to put to the court the details of the offences. The facts were, said the lawyer, that Dipti had applied for Income Support, stating that she had no other income. She had been sent a book of vouchers to cash each fortnight and on each of them she had signified that there had been no changes in her circumstances such as to affect her entitlement to benefit. But for some months she had been working as well. Nobody in court pointed out that the word “working” was hardly the right way to describe her experiences: “low paid, stressful drudgery” would have been more appropriate.

It was just another episode (although this was something the lawyer did not say) in a miserable life. Her parents were too poor to care for her properly and sent her to live with an aunt in England, in the hope that she would do better in another country. And so it turned out for a while, until both the parents died and her aunt, who she regarded as her mother, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Alone and vulnerable, she was married when she was 18 and had three children. It was not the happiest of unions as her husband was an alcoholic who never had any silly ideas about supporting his children financially, which left Dipti to struggle on as best she could, doing whatever odd job was available, scraping a living for her family. It came as a relief when the husband left the home for good and when he had been gone long enough Dipti was able to get a divorce.

It would have been surprising if the children had come through this emotionally intact. And they didn’t: they behaved as might be expected of children whose short lives had been distorted by insecurity, violence and the stresses to be found in the deeper levels of poverty. They were, all three of them, incapable of coping with what is called – by courts, government agencies, the media – “normal” life. A psychiatrist, trained to brace people’s expectations of society to accept and tolerate the unacceptable and intolerable, would have interviewed each of them and written learned notes to the effect that they were “disturbed”. It is not their job, or within the scope of their training, to assess how “disturbed” is capitalist society; that might bring them to the conclusion that the people who react against the inhuman pressures of that society are sometimes healthier emotionally than those who are at ease with it.

In any case Dipti was too busy to bother about psychiatrists and their theories. She had found a job which suited her, allowing her to work irregular hours which could be fitted around the needs of her children – who were in their teens by then. It did not need any qualifications – she had problems with reading and writing – and provided periodical training. There were however two main snags. One was that it was demanding work and the other was that the wages were very low. It was agency work, as a care assistant, which meant Dipti had to visit people to do basic things which they could not do for themselves. From day to day she did not know where or when she would be asked to work; the agency would telephone her with the jobs on hand for that day. In fact she did get a lot of offers of work from the agency, because she had some huge debts and so was always eager to earn the extra money and she was always reliable and helpful.

There was a third snag. She did not tell the Benefits Agency about her job but carried on claiming Income Support, signing those vouchers to say nothing had changed for her. If she was ever bothered about this she told herself that after all each wage slip showed a reduction for Income Tax and in any case her husband had never paid anything towards the children’s’ upkeep. Did this not entitle her to some money from the state? But agency work is a field well-patrolled by the fraud seekers of the Benefits Agency and eventually they uncovered what Dipti had been up to. When they approached her she did not try to hide anything, although she was shocked when they told her how much she had been illegally paid. Her shock was not lessened when they also told her – a bit late in the day, some may think – that her wages had been low enough to qualify her for Family Credit, which over the period would have been worth some thousands of pounds – about a quarter of the amount she had overclaimed.

The lawyers briefed by the Benefits Agency do not as a rule prosecute with the same zeal as the Crown Prosecution Service. In cases of benefits fraud the facts are usually put to the court in the round, including some details which may make things easier for the person in the dock. So in that sense Dipti was not treated as harshly as she might have been – certainly not as she had feared. But of course the chairman of the bench had heard it all before, many times and he had come to the conclusion that the country was being overrun – and overturned – by people who were getting something for nothing – claiming state benefit which they were not legally entitled to. There is, he informed Dipti, too much of this going on. He had probably familiarised himself with the official estimate that social security fraud costs between £2bn and £4bn a year – and was too shocked to notice that the evidence to support those figures was so weak. It had got to stop. He stopped short of saying that he could do this all by himself. Instead he told Dipti she could well go to prison for this – all options were open. She would have to come back in a few weeks, after further enquiries had been made, when sentence would be passed. Meanwhile she could leave the court and civilisation, with its minority class getting a great deal for nothing through their exploitation of people like Dipti, could go on. Outside the court she grabbed her mobile phone and got on to the agency, asking what work they had for her for what was left of that day.

Ivan

Slings and Arrows: Empty Boasting (1952)

The Slings and Arrows column from the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Empty Boasting

The remarks of a London Magistrate on the case of a man charged with obtaining Public Assistance by false pretences have focussed some attention on the question of granting aid to workers who have started new jobs and whose wages are withheld until they have worked for two weeks or longer. The Magistrate expressed the opinion that it was a “scandalous state of affairs" and he hoped the authorities would “look into it.” The Manchester Guardian (27-8-52), in a fairly lengthy article on the subject quotes from a 1949 report issued by the National Assistance Board to show that this is not a new problem. The report reveals that the Board is troubled by the growing practice of employers in withholding the first week's wages. It admits that the complexities of modern book-keeping make this practice necessary, but suggests that Public Money should not be spent to support workers who could support themselves if they received in time what they earned. That this is not a small problem is shown by the figures adduced by the Board. In a sample week chosen at random 6,892 payments were made to meet the “urgent needs” of workers not in receipt of their first week's wages. We are not concerned with the fact that the National Assistance Board is, in effect, subsidising some businesses. What, however, does concern us is that it throws a light on the hollow claims of Labour leaders and “left-wing intellectuals" of the “New Statesman" breed that poverty in England has been abolished since 1945. Not all the social services, nor the increases in money wages have removed poverty from the experience of the working-class. One week's wages short and they must apply for National Assistance.

The Manchester Guardian and the Assistance Board suggest a solution. Firms should loan their workers money and take it back out of subsequent earnings. We do not doubt that this might solve the problems of the National Assistance Board, although they themselves are not quite sure that the repayment of the loans would not set up further problems. But these are troubles which leave us unmoved. The worker is still at the mercy of a lost week's wages, and whether he gets an advance from his boss or from the Assistance Board makes no difference to him. The Manchester Guardian does not point out the obvious answer—abolition of the wages system, but then it is not concerned with solving workers’ problems.

“When Mercy seasons Justice"

There are a number of views on the treatment of criminals which vary between the extremes of the iron fist and the kind-hearted sentimental approach. In between these views is the one which holds firmly that the criminal should not only be punished but helped to rehabilitate himself in Society. While Capitalism continues, crime will flourish and criminals will need to be dealt with in some way or another, and so it seems sensible that the criminal should be aided to re-establish himself. It is gratifying therefore, to learn that the Western Powers are taking this view. News is forthcoming of a criminal who was sentenced in 1945 to twelve years penal servitude and released after six years to find his property had been confiscated and that he had no place in Society. After a further six years struggle he has won back his position and has been granted £30,000,000 compensation by a dilatory but repentant Conqueror. Let it not be thought that the Allies are being quixotic or foolhardy. Not a bit of it. Although he is getting this cash he will not be allowed to control the undertakings which bear his name. This will keep him out of bad company and prevent him repeating his former crimes or getting into bad habits.

There are many disgruntled people who will complain at this magnanimity on the part of the allies. We feel sure that there will be many, knowing that the Discharged Prisoners Aid Society give ex-prisoners 5s. and a Railway Voucher, only too ready to draw odious comparisons. But a mere glance at the facts will suffice to show that such comparisons are invidious. Here is a man, Herr Alfred Krupp, owner of huge armament and steel industries who is charged, tried and found guilty of crimes of looting, conscription of slave labour, ill-treatment resulting in the deaths of hundreds of his slaves, and all sorts of plots and conspiracies, released from gaol after six years. In the first place it is obvious that he is not used to prison life. Is it not logical, is it not proper, is it not justice that he should be given enough to keep him on the straight and narrow path ? Should not also, a bonus be added to compensate him for his years in gaol £30,000,000 is hardly enough. It only gives him the greatest bank account in Europe, if not the world. As against this let us examine the common or garden burglar who has served his eighteen months, who was born in poverty and lived in poverty all his life. Of what use would £30,000,000, £30,000, or even £30 be to him ? 5s. and a Railway Voucher are quite enough to restore him to the place to which be is accustomed. That being the case we hope that no one will remind us that many millions of people were led to the slaughter in the belief that they were fighting to break the power of the over-privileged and introduce the “Century of the Common Man,” the Atlantic Charter, and the constitution of the United Nations. To mention this now would be unkind and leave a nasty taste in the mouth of Alfred Krupp.

Pot and Kettle

Mr. W. H. Chamberlin. American journalist and writer of several books on Russia has written to the Manchester Guardian (12-9-52) taking to task their reviewer of the book by Alan Moorehead “The Traitors.” The reviewer's sin lies, according to Mr. Chamberlin in the fact that he reproved the author for not having mentioned as traitors those Russians who had sold secrets to the Western Powers. According to Mr. Chamberlin those who sell Western secrets to the Russians are vile traitors, while those who sell Russian secrets to “us” are heroes and only doing what’s right. He says that this must be so because the West .stands for a “free and civilized society,” while Russia represents “Totalitarian Barbarism." He further states, that every crime and atrocity associated with nazism can be matched with examples from the record of “Soviet Communism.” This may well be true. But we go further. We assert that the atrocities inflicted by the Germans or Russians on those who stood in their way can equally be matched by the past and present conduct of the Western powers. One has only to read history to realise that ail nations who have to maintain their position in the capitalist world have from time to time been guilty of the vilest crimes. Therefore Mr. Chamberlin's thesis breaks down. We are sure that there must be a Russian Chamberlin who is proving that those who hand secrets to the allies are traitors, but those like Fuchs, Nunn May and Pontecorvo are heroic martyrs. It has always been the habit of the ruling class of each country to applaud the subversive elements existing in the enemy ranks. During World War 1, German Social Democrats who opposed the war were applauded in this country by the very people who were putting anti-war agitators at home, in gaol. Why should we be interested in who sells what secrets to which power ? Whoever does the spying does so in the interests of the ruling class of his respective country.

S. A.

Capitalism is mental (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Blair emerged from his coffin recently to declare ‘We’ve got to get the younger generation back to work’ and ominously warned against ‘medicalising the ups and downs of life. You’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life’.

Anyone who’s been through a challenging period knows that of course it can impact your mental health. Yet Blair insists that too many young people are ‘choosing not to work,’ and calls for benefits reform. Now, Labour wants to cut Personal Independence Payments and has signalled it’ll tighten eligibility rules, with shadow ministers suggesting PIP ‘is not working as it should.’

Starmer’s proposed reforms to cut disability benefits provoked a rebellion by well over 100 Labour MPs who argued the plan would strip support from up to 800,000 people, deepen poverty for 300,000–700,000 more (including 50,000 children), and create a two-tier welfare system that abandons the most vulnerable. Critics, including grassroots movements like Disabled People Against Cuts and disabled constituents, warn this is a continuation of austerity, with MPs likening it to ‘the biggest attack on the welfare state since George Osborne’. Charities insisted cuts wouldn’t boost employment and demanded a pause, transparency, and genuine consultation with disabled people. Labour MPs were pledging to vote against and calling for alternative reforms like taxing the super rich instead of penalising those in need.

Since then, following public backlash and intervention by the UN, Parliament voted on 1 July to remove the clauses tightening PIP (formerly Disability Living Allowance) eligibility. These measures are now to be deferred pending a review led by ‘Sir’ Stephen Timms, expected in autumn 2026. Existing PIP claimants are said not to be affected by the current legislation. However, changes to Universal Credit remain in place: from April 2026, new claimants of the Limited Capability for Work Related Activity element will receive reduced support. Existing recipients will continue receiving full payments, adjusted for inflation through 2029.

The Rosenhan experiment

The Rosenhan experiment (1973) exposed flaws in psychiatric diagnosis. Psychologist David Rosenhan and seven others feigned auditory hallucinations to gain admission to psychiatric hospitals. Once admitted, they acted normally, but doctors still diagnosed them with serious mental illnesses and kept them institutionalised for weeks.

The study highlighted the subjectivity and unreliability of psychiatric labels, showing that once someone was labelled as mentally ill, even ‘normal’ behaviour was interpreted as pathological. In a follow-up challenge, a hospital claimed it could spot fake patients and identified several, only for Rosenhan to reveal he had sent none.

Colonisation of the mind

This is not just about a few misguided doctors. The Western medical model has long been, in part, a tool of oppression. Colonisers have always arrived with missionaries, medics, mercenaries, and merchants. Psychiatry was part of that arsenal, often pathologising indigenous cultures, crushing resistance, and justifying forced assimilation. Traditional beliefs and ways of life were conveniently labelled as madness.

Psychiatry helped run residential schools, enforced sterilisation, and packed institutions, all aimed at breaking indigenous communities. On occasion, psychiatric diagnosis was used to pathologise cultural difference, frame indigenous resistance as insanity and justify colonial policies of confinement and re-education. The same logic still operates today. Psychiatric labels are often used to control people rather than help them.

‘Mad bints’

Women have always been prime targets for psychiatry’s controlling hand. Those who refused to fit into patriarchal roles were labelled hysterical or locked away in asylums. Psychiatry became a handy tool to silence women who challenged capitalism, patriarchy, or both.

Colonisation made this worse for indigenous women who were branded insane for practising traditional healing or resisting colonial authority. Today, women—especially those who are neurodivergent or marginalised—are still dismissed, misdiagnosed, and overmedicated. Psychiatry continues to treat women’s distress as personal pathology rather than a response to social and economic oppression.

A true alternative would focus on community care, autonomy, and dismantling the structures that create suffering in the first place. But when the profit motive comes into play it stops being about helping and about making people useful.

Adaptive response to capitalism?

Humans are nothing if not adaptive; that’s how we’ve survived this long. Under capitalism’s relentless pressure, people, especially those who are marginalised, develop ways of thinking and acting that do not fit into narrow boxes labelled normal.

Neurodivergence is not purely created by capitalism; it has always existed and would exist under other systems. But the way it manifests today is shaped by the demands and pressures of this system.

Traits like hyperfocus, pattern recognition, and creative thinking can help people resist the nonsense of capitalism. Yet capitalism only values these traits when they increase productivity. Difficulties with executive function or sensory processing become disabling because of rigid, noisy, and punishing environments.

If we lived in a society structured differently—one that prioritised people instead of profit—neurodivergence might look very different, both in how common it is and how it is understood.

Class war in our minds

Capitalism is not just a class war; it is a war of the mind. It demands conformity, punishes difference, and uses trauma as a tool of control. Still, resistance keeps bubbling up. Neurodivergent people often develop ways of thinking that refuse to follow capitalist logic, question authority, and imagine new ways of living.

The pushback against capitalism is in many ways also a neurodivergent pushback—one that questions authority, re-imagines community, and refuses the dehumanisation that capitalism enforces.

Capitalism will always find new ways to divide us, control us and blame us for the suffering it creates. The only real cure is to get rid of the system making us sick in the first place.

The fight against capitalism must also be a fight for neurodivergent liberation. We need to see the links between capitalism, trauma, and neurodivergence if we want a world where all minds are valued, not just those that keep the profit machine running.

A.T.

News: Scrounging on the state (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scrounging on the state

Newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph delight in reporting on “state scroungers”. This usually turns out to be some unemployed worker claiming unemployment money while doing a bit of part-time work on the side. Or horror of horrors, an unmarried mother claiming benefit while her boyfriend stays overnight some weekend. Such unprincipled behaviour is guaranteed to get Fleet Street into a frenzy of indignation. “State-aided fornication” or “benefit scroungers” are denounced by the righteous indignation of hacks who never report that the capitalist class live off the unpaid labour of the working class. Any fiddles that the working class might get up to fade into insignificance beside the quite legal state handouts to the owning class, as reported in the Observer, 20 May:

“The Duke of Westminster – Britain’s richest man, with estimated wealth of £4 billion has received £3m in taxpayers money to help boost his farms profits. The Duke, who owns a 6,200-acre arable farm neat Chester, has been enjoying around £300,000 a year in state handouts over the past decade through European subsidies… It was once disclosed that Princess Anne received about £400,000 in subsidies for farming at Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucester. Her former husband, Captain Mark Phillips, once admitted that these subsidies amounted to 90 percent of the farm’s profits, but Buckingham Palace would not provide up-to-date figures.”

Mad as all this seems, the complete craziness of capitalism is summed up by the news that the Duke of Westminster was getting hand-outs of “£150,000 a year for growing 1,400 acres of wheat, and almost £150,000 for growing 1,400 acres of oil seed and barley. He is also receiving, more than £30,000 from taxpayers for not growing anything on 390 acres of ‘set aside’ hand.”

So They Say: They Pretend Malnutrition, too (1974)

The So They Say Column from the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

They Pretend Malnutrition, too

A new addition to saloon-bar political mythology has arrived. It joins the Man Who Gets Twice as Much on Social Security as he does Working, the Black Man Who Buys Kit-E-Kat for his Sandwiches (yes, my grocer told me), the Eight Workmen Who Came and Lolled About Smoking When All I Wanted was a Screw Tightened on my Cooker, and so on.

This happy arrival is the Family Only Pretending to be Homeless. Its career was launched in the London Evening News on 18th January:

A housing chief has announced a clampdown on the “phoney homeless”. Some families are suspected of faking evictions to gain council homes. Only couples with children, facing complete family breakdown, are now likely to get official help in Hertfordshire.

Presumably you must spend a minimum of three nights on the pavement and get down to six stones per adult member of family; otherwise you’re only pretending. A family with a room to itself that wants a whole council house are sheer Epicureans, and we don’t stand for them in Hertfordshire. Take it from me, councillor, my nephew’s milkman knows this lot

No, it's Different Now

One trouble with the working class is its memory. How can you expect to get on and please the government if you forget the right things, like standing up for the Queen, and remember the wrong ones, like unemployment and politicians’ promises?

Thus, the masses have watching TV films about the war in which the Germans are shown as the hateful enemy. In the last week of January Die Welt published an article by its London correspondent Christian Ferber protesting about this. Sure enough, he was supported. A Reverend, among others, wrote to The Guardian suggesting “restoring the balance” with some programmes about good Germans in the war, specially POWS who “were permitted to visit churches and other organizations”,

People must really arrange their memories better. Saying they had to hate the Germans for six years is no excuse. If villains are shown today they should be Russians. But in the war weren’t they glorious allies or something? There you go again.

Please Spare a Copper . . .

Readers of the financial pages cannot fail to notice that profits and dividends show little sign of wilting because of the crisis. Some companies are doing well out of it. A typical example was shown in The Guardian's business section on 6th February. Under the heading blessing in disguise the buoyant position of Central Wagon, the steel stockholding and hydraulic equipment group, was described:

The company’s sales in January this year are 50 per cent up on the monthly average for the previous year . . . When the 1973 results are announced, the profit is more likely to be around the £900,000 mark—well beyond the company forecast of about £670,000 . . . Central Wagon is confident that it will produce still higher profit in 1974 —even after allowing for the miners’ strike.

But when times are bad, are they not bad for the owning class too? Were there not tales in the nineteen-thirties’ depression of ruined rich men queueing to throw themselves from high buildings? Untrue. Britain in the Nineteen Thirties by N. Branson and M. Heinemann (1972) says:

True, profits fell in the slump years (by 30 per cent at the lowest point, in 1932), but since a higher proportion of profits was paid out in dividends, shareholders’ incomes fell much less than this, while income from rent and fixed interest stocks remained more stable in spite of the fall in prices.

. . . Figures in the British Association’s Britain in Recovery, based on Colin Clark’s estimates, suggest a fall of 9-11 per cent in consumption expenditure of those with incomes over £250, from 1929 to 1933—which was almost certainly less than the fall in prices.

. . . for the Clerical Hat

Reach for your handkerchiefs. The Guardian of 8th February told the harrowing story of Britain’s underpaid vicars.

The [Church] commissioners, in a report to the General Synod, the parliament of the Church of England, say the average pay of the 9,000 vicars last November was about £35 a week. In addition, they are provided with a house free of rent and rates, but many have to meet the expenses of doing their job, which can be as high as £4 to £5 a week.

How sad for the clergy to have to put up with the austerity they urge on others. The world is too materialistic.

Labour and ‘the lower-working-class’ (2024)

From the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The upper class desire to remain so, the middle class wish to overthrow the upper class, and the lower class want a classless system.’ (George Orwell)

In his 1937 book, The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, describes what it was like to be born into a family that saw itself as of a superior class to that of the working class ‘I was born into what you might describe as the lower-upper-middle class… In the kind of shabby-genteel family that I am talking about there is far more consciousness of poverty than in any working-class family above the level of the dole.’

Back in 1966 class differences were much more obvious to everyone. In a television programme of that year, The Frost Report, John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett acted out a class sketch. Utilising the differences in their heights, Cleese was upper class, Barker middle and Corbett lower. Lines include ‘middle class’ saying, I look up to him because he is upper class, but I look down on him because he is lower class.” Ronnie Corbett: “I know my place.” After describing the advantages of their two ‘superior’ classes, Corbett, looking upwards at both ends the sketch with, ‘I get a pain in the back of my neck.’

Speaking of pain, Labour are at pains to persuade UK capitalism that it need have no qualms about a Labour government. Labour will indeed do its utmost to carry on from the Tories the position of government as the executive committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

At Davos in January, the Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves let it be known that, ‘With Labour, Britain will be open to business. We will restore stability and security into our economy. We will restore Britain’s reputation as a place to do business. And we will be a trusted partner with business in delivering the change our country and our economy needs’ (Guardian, 16 January).

A few months on, they are letting it be known that they are going to be sorting out those pesky proles who can’t or won’t be active wage slaves. Social welfare costs the capitalist class as a whole money that they would much rather benefit from themselves rather than subsidise the – in their eyes – undeserving poor, scroungers and economically useless.

Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has laid out their intentions:

‘Under a Labour government there would be “no option of a life on benefits”, the Party has said, as it set out plans to reduce the number of young people not in work, education or training.’

‘Under our changed Labour party, if you can work there will be no option of a life on benefits,’ she said in a speech to the centre-left Demos think-tank in London, where she sought to outline Labour’s commitment on “investing” in young people’ (Guardian, 4 March).

Ten years ago Channel Four aired a series of five programmes which looked at the lives of people living in Winson Green, Birmingham. The programmes were titled Benefits Street. The programmes have been called ‘poverty porn’ as they portrayed those featured in the worst possible light. Allegedly ninety percent of the street’s inhabitants were on benefits.

The Socialist Standard, February 2014, carried a TV review of Benefits Street.

‘Benefits Street (Channel 4): yet another tawdry docusoap which reveals how some people just leech off others. The real parasites here are, of course, the programme-makers – feeding off the lives of the people they film… The producers of Benefits Street have maintained that the programme is ‘fair and balanced’, but in reality it’s as fair and balanced as a broken see-saw. The editing, title and format of the show aim to exploit, rather than express the participants’ struggles. The producers have been taken in by the prevailing mood among the elite to demonise those victimised most by capitalism’.

The Labour Party appear now to have the same detestation and contempt for those in society on benefits as did the Channel Four producers of Benefits Street. You won’t hear it from them but the only solution to capitalism’s ills is its replacement by socialism.

Dave Coggan

More gruel, anyone? (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

As if life is not hard enough already for them, the people who depend on Social Security benefits for their living are now being targetted. And what, you might ask (unless you are on benefit yourself, in which case you know the answer) does that mean? To begin with we might consider the fact that "targetted’’ is a non-word, a verb created out of a noun. Such creations are not uncommon and often taken to be evidence of fresh, innovative thinking. If the new word catches on, in quarters where there is a real fear of not being thought of as fresh and innovative, it may become set into jargon, without which no speech or article commands proper attention and which is useful to evade an inconvenient reality or to confuse a simple issue.

Targetting, according to the rich Tory ministers who run the Department of Social Security, means rearranging the system of state benefits so that they are paid only to those who can prove to be in the greatest need. It is. they say, a reform long overdue. A recent TV programme about the difficulties experienced by claimants who try to get money from the meticulously targetted Social Fund included the contrasting case of a mother in a large, mock-Tudor house on the greener fringes of Croydon. She declared that she drew her recklessly non-targetted Child Benefit once every few months, when she remembered, and then only to pay it straight into her bank account.

The policy of paying flat-rate benefits to everyone in certain categories, regardless of need, was laid down as long ago as the Beveridge Report. When the policy was written into legislation there was a great shudder of relief among those who, whether through personal experience or not, understood what the Means Test had meant — a harrowing, degrading probing by officialdom for reasons to disqualify desperately poor people from benefit. The Means Test, we were told, had been abolished for ever. But targetted benefits are Means tested benefits, albeit under a zappy. freshly-created — distorting — name.

Dependency culture

It is true that means-tested benefits are recommended to us by Tory ministers as an essential antidote to the widespread scourge of the dependency culture, than which nothing is more dangerous to our morale. Dependency encourages us to live off others instead of using our abilities to contribute to the social good. Those who wondered whether these verbal assaults were targetted at the ruling class, whose income from the labours of the rest of us enables them to jet around the world's playgrounds. may have been reassured by the recent stream of bracing advice from ministers on how we can avoid falling into dependency. The common theme of this advice was that anyone who is poor, cold, hungry or homeless has only themselves to blame. Edwina Currie, before she made the bad mistake of upsetting the farming lobby, came unscathed through the anger provoked by her patronising dissertation to pensioners and any other potential sufferers from hypothermia about the advantages of warm underwear. Peter Lloyd, an Under Secretary at the DSS, recommends clothing ourselves from jumble sales (which many workers do in any case):

I am a great attender of second-hand sales for charities in my constituency. You can get very good bargains. (Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1989)

Lloyd is a member of Lloyds (no relation, presumably), which means that he has. apart from anything else, at least £100,000 which he can afford to lose in an adverse insurance deal. Someone with that kind of money may buy second-hand stuff at jumble sales — it’s all good clean fun, helps out some local charity which targetted claimants are applying to in unprecedented numbers and maybe wins a few votes by showing what a cheery, caring fellow he is. But living in need is not good, clean fun. Getting by on cast-off bargains is a way of life reserved for the class who, directly or indirectly, contribute through their exploitation to Lloyd s fortune and add also to his political comfort by voting him into parliament.

Young people — in whose hands, as politicians so often tell us, The Future Of The Country Rests — are finding their benefit so efficiently targetted that it is shot out of existence. This is happening because the government prefer to have them working. A recent leaflet from the DSS informs them, in terms which suggest that it is the best news they have had for a long time:

From September 1988 if you are under 18 you will normally not be able to get Income Support.

It then puts, and answers, a number of suspiciously docile questions:

Why can't I get Income Support?

Because there is a guaranteed Youth Training Scheme (YTS) place for everyone under 18 who does not go into a job. 

Must I go on YTS?

No. The choice is yours. But if you don't go on YTS any money your parents get for you will stop at the end of your extended Child Benefit period.

Removing workers from the scope of benefit by presenting them with this kind of “choice" does wonders for the unemployment statistics and it is right in the historic tradition of punishing people for being poor. Under the Tudors this was a matter of brutal persecution which, as more and more peasants were driven off the land, had to be modified into the subtler repressions of the Poor Law. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries relief was based on, and administrated by, the parishes, which caused paupers who were unsettled to be carted backwards and forwards across parish boundaries as each tried to cast off responsibility for them. There was, of course, always the workhouse, which in the eighteenth century developed, through a process of reasoning which was a stranger to logic let alone humane concerns, as a deterrent to the condition it was supposed to relieve:

The great object of the poor law board is to ensure a constant unvarying and efficient discipline during the entire residence of the pauper within the workhouse. He rises to the minute: he works to the minute: he eats to the minute. He must be clean, respectful, industrious and obedient. In short the habits inculcated in the house are precisely those the possession of which would have prevented his becoming an inmate. (Chairman of the Sheffield Guardians. November 1855)

Undeserving poor

Another tradition — or perhaps a better word would be tactic — is to divide the people on the lower rungs of poverty into the deserving and underserving poor. The penury of the deserving poor is recognised as largely beyond their control: they are old. or unpredictably redundant (provided they have not neglected the approved ways of guarding against its consequences) or the victims of a sudden disaster. They may also be sick — except that a failure to join BUPA at the proper time may mean they don't deserve to be among the deserving. On the other hand there are the undeserving poor, tainted by a stigma so profound that only a brash rogue like Shaw's Alfred Doolittle would willingly confess to it: “I'm one of the undeserving poor, that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man." The undeserving poor are cunningly work-shy, preferring to live on state benefits to submitting themselves to a good day's exploitation. If they do work they dissipate their wages on booze or gambling. Before the days of smokeless zones, they kept coal in the bath. Nowadays they loll about all day watching the latest videos on an outsize TV set in the corner.

Nobody has yet been able to explain why the undeserving poor have a habit of increasing and decreasing all together and why they tend to concentrate in certain areas. For years — decades even — the undeserving poor lie dormant in their various employments and then suddenly sprout into indolence, their growth being especially luxuriant in places like South Wales. Scotland or Northern Ireland. For example a recent (16 December 1988) article in New Statesman and Society reported that in the region of Strathclyde 28 per cent of the population now live at or below the official poverty line. This includes about one third of the region's children, who are not yet able to choose whether to be deserving or undeserving, and 42 per cent of its old people, who are probably past caring how they are classified and only wish they were a bit better off. This mass descent from the normal poverty of employment into the lower reaches of destitution is largely due to unemployment (what Edwina Currie would call being workshy) which, according to the Strathclyde Council, now amounts to almost a quarter of a million people. A lot of these are trying to bridge the gap between their income and their needs by living on credit. For a while this method may work, in the same way as alcohol or any other drug, by blotting out reality. But the reckoning is unavoidable: the misery of Strathclyde's never-never hangover can be assessed by the fact that its Citizens' Advice Bureau is now dealing with almost 70,000 enquiries from people in credit-crisis — almost twice as many as they were in 1982

So what happened to the targetting of benefits? The National Association of Citizen's Advice Bureaux states that the changes in Social Security last April, which were supposed to bring a great rationalising of poverty into security, have left 82 per cent of the poorer claimants worse off. Some of this is due to the abolition of special needs grants and their replacement with, very often, loans from the Social Fund. There is a Catch 22 here which would impress Joseph Heller, because a loan will be agreed only when the applicant can repay it from their benefit but by definition anyone on Social Security who needs a loan is unlikely to be able to do this. As a result many claimants don't apply for a loan or if they do apply they are refused — which drives them to experiment with the tender mercies of the local loan sharks while about half the money allocated to the Social Fund lies unused.

The predictable response to this mess from the poverty lobby is to suggest that more money be allocated to the needy. This always has a certain appeal for it can't be denied that poverty in all its degrees is symptomised by a lack of money and rich people don't involuntarily live in slums or suffer from hypothermia or malnutrition. Neither are they to be seen queuing at their local DSS to have their domestic innards probed by the Biro of some harassed, sometimes callous, clerk on the other side of the shatter-proof screen. But the calculations of the poverty lobby tend to overlook the fact that the present situation, with its levels of destitution, was supposed to have been legislated out of existence by the so-called Welfare State modelled on the Beveridge Report. Since then there have been numerous re-arranging of benefits; the available money has been shuffled about, allocated first to this type of claimant and then to another. How successful this has been can be gauged from the suffering workers of Strathclyde and the despairing staff of any inner-city DSS office.

Redistributing poverty

All the plans to reform poverty out of existence ignore the vital fact that what counts is the source of our income — how we get our living — for that determines which class we are in and whether we live secure lives or are constantly under the burden of want. People who depend on being employed for a living are members of the working class, the group who experience poverty which can soon slide into destitution if they fall sick, or have more children than they can afford, or are made redundant, or become addicted to alcohol or some other drug. In this class are the people in places like Glasgow, the people whose budgets can be disastrously thrown out by an increase in their mortgage repayments, who can be quickly changed from a proud "owner-occupier'' into a wretched unit of homelessness In this class are the people whose abilities lie unused in a slump and who come to rely on state benefits to live, making themselves targets in the sights of any government looking for economies in its expenditure.

The other class are not to be found in inner-city slums and nor do they worry about temporary changes in capitalism's economy. They can afford to have as many children as they like and the best medical treatment in the most exclusive clinics when they are ill. Although they are socially redundant, as a class they do not suffer from being out of a job because they need never be employed in the first place. They live — in their several houses, their easy security, their luxury — off the exploitation of the working class. They are the people who really exist in a dependency culture for they rely on the workers labour. They are the class whose taxes finance schemes like Social Security and it is their representatives in government who are now concerned to reduce what is being paid out in state benefits". The "Welfare State" was not an act of generosity, a gift of historic proportions from the capitalist class to the workers. Destitution does not come cheaply for such is its cost in terms of crime, loss of production and social dislocation that to alleviate it through a system of state benefits is an investment rather than a gift. National schemes for sickness, unemployment and old age were designed to spread the load of that investment over the ruling class as a whole, even if clever politicians represented them as specifically intended to relieve distress among workers. That deception is now being eroded by the Tories equally specious claim that security for workers is to be found in less cohesive private schemes which will, through the wages they pay to their employees, adjust the burden among the employers.

What does it matter, if in the process a few thousand more people — children, their parents, retired workers, the sick and the elderly — suffer the stress of poverty that bites that much deeper? The indignant campaigners of the poverty lobby are strong on indictment, but like the boys in Dickens' orphanage their worry is that the gruel is too thin. Poverty need not mean an impoverished idea about how society works and how we can make it better.

Ivan

The workfare state: enforcing the wages system (2005)

From the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The changes which have taken place in what passes for welfare provision in Britain over the course of the last two decades were analysed in a book by Chris Grover and John Stewart, The Work Connection: The Role of Social  Security in British Economic Regulation, that came out in 2002. Largely inspired by Marxist economics, it represented a lucid  account of a domain where the harsh economic realities of capitalist exploitation contradict the illusions of reformist politics.

In many ways these illusions were fed by the extraordinary ideological success of the post-war Beveridge reforms, frequently presented as the triumph of half a century of reformist action led by Liberal, Labour and – to a lesser extent – Tory administrations. Any remaining illusions are now being dissipated. What welfare coverage and rights existed in the immediate post-war period are now being whittled away or simply done away with in order to more closely serve the form of capital accumulation which is now on the agenda. This new ‘inevitability of gradualism’ – to use the term adopted by the Webbs – means more exploitation and fewer rights of access to the means of subsistence for anyone unfortunate enough to have to try to find work for a living.

There never was a golden age of the welfare state. The history of income maintenance in Britain has been the history of coercion, discipline and surveillance. As the first functioning capitalist country, England experienced the workhouse test, ‘less eligibility’ and the doctrine of ‘deterrent’. It’s still one of the most miserly and punitive ‘welfare systems’ in Western Europe, although the other European countries are now catching up. (New rules in France mean that workers on the dole have fewer rights to refuse poorly paid jobs, the same is happening in Germany and Spanish workers are forced to be more mobile in the search for work. Whether the government is right or left changes nothing.)

However, now a new layer of social control has been added since the advent of British ‘workfare’, a policy loosely based on American precedents. In the past, maintaining labour discipline was a fairly simple task. Unemployment insurance benefits tended to be low compared to average wage rates. In a buoyant job market, the only workers who wanted to stay on the dole for a long period were the genial layabouts of the claimants’ unions, people who were using benefits to finance studies on the sly, actors ‘resting’ between roles and artists etc. In this situation, it was relatively easy to identify workers who were dodging work although, in practice, control procedures against the so-called ‘scroungers’ were not applied systematically. Nobody really had an interest in staying on the dole for too long but some did, much to the horror of Daily Mail readers.

The situation has now changed considerably. Successive governments have been trying to lower the wage levels of unskilled and semi-skilled workers (so-called ‘entry-level’ jobs) putatively in order to combat inflation. American ideas about the so-called ‘underclass’ popularised in the highly toxic pseudo-sociology of Charles Murray have replaced the episodic scrounger-bashing campaigns orchestrated by the Tories in the 1970s and 80s. Thus, whereas in the past the unemployed (now known as ‘jobseekers’) could refuse offers of work which didn’t correspond to their levels of skill or even standard trade union rates, now they are hassled into poorly paid jobs as quickly as their legs can carry them. This, in itself, has a particularly depressing effect on wage levels especially in the more lowly-paid occupations.

To make this process go even faster both Conservative and Labour administrations have introduced benefits to workers in low-paid jobs (in-work benefits) modelled on the Family Income Supplement set up in 1971 by the appalling Keith (later Sir Keith) Joseph, a Thatcherite bovver-boy and closet eugenicist. Officially, in-work benefits provide incentives to unemployed people – pardon, ‘jobseekers’ – to take on poorly paid jobs and to leave the supposedly luxurious world of inactive welfare dependency. In actual fact, subsidies to low paid jobs tend to have a depressive effect on wages. Employers know that they can get the labour power they need for less cash, the state stepping in to make up the difference. And of course, the increase in the number of workers coming onto the labour market increases supply and lowers price.

All this continues unabated under New Labour, indeed, with many subtle and often cruel refinements. These include the fine combing of the population of the partially disabled and their gradual inclusion in the reserve army of labour and the particularly brutal treatment meted out to lone mothers. Of course, New Labour has introduced the national minimum wage albeit on an extremely low level. But this only means that over the long-term the depressive forces working on wage levels will result in the legal minimum becoming the maximum paid out for unskilled work, the trade unions having been weakened by two decades of legal meddling.

In the final analysis, welfare administration is really only the problem of policing the frontier between the reserve army of labour – people who are on hold for later exploitation – and the surplus population – people who are simply maintained at low cost outside of the labour market. ‘Labour market activation’ – the trendy term for these new policies – is really about making some formerly excluded workers available for a spot of exploitation. Social welfare policies don’t solve the underlying problem of capitalist exploitation. But then again who would ever look to the Labour Party or New Labour to solve that problem?

MM

Doubtful Benefits (2005)

From the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s another day with a ‘Y’ in its name, so the government must be attacking benefits scroungers again. The routine pieties of the modern political age are to talk about ‘helping people’ out of ‘the benefits trap’ and ‘back into work’ – joining the perennial political duties like cutting red tape and reducing government spending. The reason why these problems never go away is because they are problems caused by the very system which puts the politicians in power, and which they cannot resolve without destroying themselves and their own elevated statuses.

David Blunkett – now returned to the cabinet after resigning last year for abusing his office for personal gain in helping his lover’s nanny get a visa quicker – has been making loud noises about the ‘crackers’ Incapacity Benefit system. It is Blunkett’s role to sound like a bruiser, to talk tough and act tough, seen by many as appealing to Labour’s core constituency – former Tory voters on council estates. He bemoaned the continuing rise of people on incapacity benefits (many driven there by previous efforts to try and cut benefits claimants, helped by staff driven by targets to reduce certain types of benefits).

There are currently 2.7 million people on incapacity benefit in the UK, with something like 29 million people in employment (possibly the highest UK figure ever). According to the BBC, that is four times the number of IB recipients compared to 30 years ago. Of course, many things have changed since then, not least the structure of the benefits system as a whole.

Blunkett, however, still wants to drastically reduce the numbers on incapacity. Revealing his new status as a medical doctor, Blunkett pronounced that getting out to work is a better cure for depression than staying at home watching daytime telly.  This startling revelation must have shocked his fellow healthcare professionals who had been labouring under the impression that depression is a medical ailment of the brain as much as a break is a medical condition of the leg. Perhaps

Blunkett will now advise a brisk walk as a cure for that. Behind the tough rhetoric, though, as ever with the modern Machiavellian Labour Party, is some old-fashioned Old Labour style reforms: plans to make the benefits system ‘a ladder to self-reliance’ and to give assistance with training and finding jobs to people who are on IB. Simplification of the system may actually help people who are supposed to be too ill to work but have to be well enough to run from pillar to post to fill in their 2,000 page benefits claim form signed in triplicate in blood. Or something like that.

This is cut from the same cloth as the New Deal and all their previous schemes to ‘help’ the unemployed back to work by badgering them and managing them into being full-time professional job seekers. Of course, this runs counter to any notion that they can quickly cut costs. This month also saw the National Audit Office reveal that only 5% of people on IB were able to access back to work schemes. To assist more people through such structures will actually increase the cost of managing the benefits, not decrease it, as massive expansion would be required.

This is the central conundrum for governments: caught between a real problem beyond their control, trapped by their own eternal propaganda of cost cutting, they cannot pursue their eternal propaganda of getting people off benefits. Instead, all we have is a Groundhog Day of pronouncements and denouncements as the Ministers try to be seen doing something, usually by trying to portray the people who are dependent on benefits as somehow culpable and at fault for the whole of the costs of the benefits system.

Politicians are struggling to define the typical benefits recipient, to legitimise the idea of welfare so they can attack it and reduce costs and also increase downwards pressures on wages and the labour market. Most people in the UK are probably only two pay cheques away from needing to call on benefits, but rather than portray it as a system to help people and prevent catastrophe it is universally presented as a location of cheats, frauds and scroungers, riddled with layabouts and other undeserving poor types. Benefits and being on benefits is to be despised and feared.

Despite this, though, people are compelled to claim them because of the wages system, because they are too ill to work or because work is not available. The benefits system actually benefits employers who otherwise would face the costs and disruption of having to keep on people whose illness makes them turn up to work irregularly, who would lie in desperation to gets jobs about their illnesses, and push much of the cost currently borne generally through taxes directly onto capitalists who employ many workers.

Herein is the rub of the £3 billion lost from the system by fraud and ‘error’ – much of it will have been small sums given to people which will have made their lives easier. Some of it will have contributed to the real living needs of claimants. The real tragedy is not the fraud or the overspend, but that much of the £109 billion budget is wasted assessing people, categorising people and cheeseparing their entitlements.

There is enough food, clothing and housing to go round. The world today is not short of wealth. In order, though, to maintain labour discipline, to keep the labour market in existence, a massive welfare budget must be expended to deny access to the things people need.

The simple fact is that we live in a society overripe for socialism. The material possibility has been around the corner for years. When we remove the barriers to the access of wealth, we also remove the barriers that make some people unemployable, that make socialising and community a cost that has to be scraped out of local authority and social services budgets. We would remove the binds, the need to support a restrictive welfare system but simultaneously to attack it and try to reduce its budget, by the principle of producing freely together.

Socialists, unlike leftists, do not support the welfare state, do not see it as a way to socialism, but as an inevitable part of capitalism, of administering poverty. The abolition of poverty – not in far-flung imagined foreign fields where poverty is vividly drawn by the masters of propaganda, but on the very streets where we walk and it is painted out by those same illusionists – will mean an end to the welfare ideology. With luck, it will also mean seeing less of David Blunkett’s face revelling in his own ‘stern compassion’.

Pik Smeet

The labour army wants YOU! (2023)

From the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

An 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, Tommy, (from the slang for a soldier, Tommy Atkins), tells of the contempt held toward the working class member of the Army by the civilian population. Until that is, they were required to go off and fight some war on behalf of British capitalism. It’s reasonable to assume that economic circumstances drove a lot of Tommies into the armed forces.

Herbert Kitchener was the Secretary of State for War during the 1914-1918 one (he drowned in 1916). Initially, the armed forces were able to swell their numbers with volunteers, but as time passed and large numbers of young working-class men were being led like lambs to the slaughter on the battlefields of France and beyond it was necessary to introduce conscription in 1916. Probably Kitchener is most well known for the recruiting poster in which he stares out whilst pointing at the viewer: Kitchener Wants You!

The present Conservative Member of Parliament for Chingford and Woodford Green appears to fancy himself as another Kitchener. Iain Duncan Smith’s not exhorting the working class via a poster. He’s aiming at the industrial reserve army of labour, more specifically, those who through disabilities and sickness of various kinds are physically unable to be waged/salaried wage slaves. Smith used an Op-ed in The Sun headlined, ‘We must get thousands of people on long term sickness back into work for the sake of the economy – here’s how’.

Data from the Department of Work and Pensions analysed by the Centre for Social Justice suggests there are some 1.6 million more claimants since 2020, costing the state around £13 billion more in welfare benefits. Reducing this number by getting more people back into work will help the government find the room it needs to invest in public services and reduce the tax burden (tinyurl.com/3etumu43). What Smith wants is to lessen the tax burden for capitalists.

Smith’s predecessor in that constituency, also a Conservative, was a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Norman Tebbit was, in a similar vein, fond of bashing the unemployed. Tebbit said the unemployed should get on their bikes and go look for work and get a job as his father had in the thirties.

Writing in Liverpool’s favourite tabloid, and in a very similar vein, Piers Morgan targeted ‘work-shy wastrels’: ‘Official UK unemployment numbers are at a near-record low of just under 4%. Yet staggeringly, a quarter of the people of working age – that’s over 10 million – don’t currently have a paid job. That includes students and carers, but it also includes vast numbers of people claiming to be sick and disabled and living off government handouts, or who’ve just taken early retirement. Add the enormous number of people on some form of benefits – estimated at over 5 million, many of whom are clearly gaming the easy life system – and Britain’s become a nation of shamefully unhealthy, entitled, couch potatoes. No wonder a recent poll had the UK being No1 in the world for having citizens who would most want to quit their jobs and do nothing if money was no issue.’

Note the ‘gaming’ and its inference that they are perpetuating a fraud of some kind. Has Morgan ever tried living off unemployment pay, or a basic state pension?

‘How the hell has it come to this? We’ve always been a country of ambitious and industrious grafters who’ve taken pride in putting a shift in’ (tinyurl.com/bdwdxsfu). Ha, the delusions of the well-heeled!

And there’s more! In a Bloomberg podcast, on 19 May, with Guy Hands, the billionaire chairman of a large private equity company, said, ‘I look at the UK and see that, in 2030, Poland will be wealthier than we are. In 2040, we will be the poor man in Europe’.

He opines, ‘the UK should not have left the EU, as the country needs rule of law and consistency, but not a single politician is talking about going back.’ He lamented that ‘Brexit has essentially thrown the country back 50 years, to the 1970s, a decade that is widely remembered as a time of crisis, with skyrocketing inflation, high unemployment, strikes and power cuts.’

‘Since the UK left the European Union, it has been competing on the world stage, but the country’s current laws are not suitable for the new environment.’

Now that the UK is out of the EU, the British government could take a radical approach and change some of its laws, Hands said, citing the country’s ‘extraordinarily complex’ labour laws that are a ‘nightmare’ compared to other European countries.

Nightmare labour laws! Perhaps capitalists would prefer a throwback to nineteenth century industrial relations?

We, the majority, would prefer socialism.

Dave Coggan

Who’s on welfare? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Everybody seems to be upset these days about Welfare. The percentage of Americans who live — somehow — on Welfare monies seems to be steadily mounting and a rising outcry is heard against the imagined throng of lazy rascals among them who simply do not want to work but who would rather live off the backs of the taxpayers.

Now there are a couple of interesting oddities about this and about other conclusions, by many, on the issue of Welfare. Take, for example. the case of the so-called lazy bums who do not work simply because they do not want to work. Nobody would argue that 100% of the unemployed are simply too lazy to work. There are always a few, it is acknowledged, who are honest and industrious, but who cannot find jobs. The worst diehard enemy of Welfare would admit to this.

But the strange thing about this assessment is the fact that immediately one wonders why those few honest and industrious among the Welfare recipients cannot find jobs. If 90% of the unemployed don’t work only because they do not want to work it should follow, logically, that there must be a great number of jobs that are available. Why, then, would the 10% find any difficulty in locating the anxious, would-be employers of their labor? Something funny about that argument, isn’t there?

What upsets socialists about Welfare, is something altogether different than the usual complaint. We do think it a shame, of course, that so many Americans must get by on the skimpy income allotted by Welfare while it is continually drilled into their heads that they live in the richest country in the world And yet this is not nearly so upsetting to us as is the knowledge that the real recipients of Welfare are not at all those who make up the official roles. The one in seven or one in six, or whatever the figure may be, who wait from month to month for the Welfare checks are working class people, even though they may be unemployed for reasons of physical disabilities or for any other reasons The real recipients of Welfare, and WHAT welfare they receive! are the members of the capitalist class. And here is no 1 in 7, or 1 in 6 figure, either. In this case the percentage is 1 in 1 or 100%. Let's look into this proposition.

There is only one way to create wealth. That is by applying physical and mental energy to raw materials. Now this sort of activity is the function of the working class, not the capitalists. The function of the capitalist class is to own the Industries and to employ those who don't own the means of wealth production to work in them. True, there are capitalists who work and who draw salaries. But they do not work for a living. They could, and, in fact, do, employ substitutes for themselves for less than their own salaries — substitutes who have degrees In Business from the finest schools In the world. The $50,000, or whatever, per year they draw from their business as the salary of management would hardly pay their liquor bills. Any capitalist worth talking about can — and frequently does — spend far more on one social gathering than a Welfare recipient could gross In an entire lifetime on Welfare.

So what, you may ask, is the point? The point is that if people do not work — and most of the able-bodied adult members of the capitalist class either do not work at all or occupy some managerial function as a hobby — then somebody must be supporting them. They don’t eat their money or their certificates of wealth-ownership. They are supported, and in style, by those who do all the work many of whom, from time to time, must hold out their hands for crumbs of tax money during periods of unemployment. Let’s straighten out our perspective. Let’s organize to abolish Welfare for unemployed workers and for the permanently unemployed capitalist class. Let’s unite for world socialism.

Voice From The Back: Recruiting Sergeant (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recruiting Sergeant

“Bored with life on his family’s South Carolina horse farm, Willard McCormick decided that military service was the right plan for his future. And when the Army dangled its new, $20,000 recruiting bonus in front of him, the decision got a lot easier. ‘I wasn’t going to go right away, but I heard about the bonus and decided to jump on it,’ McCormick, 19, said a couple of days after signing up. … Since the bonus was unveiled in July, more than 6,200 recruits have signed up to begin basic training before Oct. 1, a move that boosts end-of-fiscal year recruiting numbers, Army officials said. ‘People are calling here saying $20,000 is more than they’ve made in the past two years,’ said Staff Sgt. Brent Feltner, 27, commander of a strip-mall recruiting station in this central South Carolina town . . .The Army’s offer stands out to many in a state where the unemployment level is fourth highest in the country, at 5.9 percent in July, up from 5.5 percent in June. It was 6.2 percent in July a year ago.” (Yahoo News, 1 September) Poverty is still capitalism’s most successful recruiting agent.

Ain’t Science Wonderful? 

“Benefit claimants and job seekers could be forced to take lie detector tests as early as next year after an early review of a pilot scheme exposed 126 benefit cheats in just three months, saving one local authority £110,000 . . . The technology is being tested on people claiming housing or council tax benefit but will be extended at Harrow Job centre for other benefits this year . . . Experts in America, where the most comprehensive scrutiny of the technology has taken place, warn that the technology is far from failsafe. David Ashe, chief deputy of the Virginia Board for Professional and Occupational Regulation, said, ‘The experience of being tested, or of claiming a benefit and being told that your voice is being checked for lies, is inherently stressful. Lie detector tests have a tendency to pass people for whom deception is a way of life and fail those who are scrupulously honest.’” (Observer, 2 September) We wonder if it would be possible to ask members of the capitalist class if they think they deserve their immense wealth while others starve, but what would be the point as the expert said there is a tendency to pass those “for whom deception is a way of life”.

Bitter Medicine

A recent review of the business world and ethics was somewhat critical of the pharmaceutical industry. “There has been a number of scandals including the disastrous ‘Elephant Men’ trial for new drug TGN 1412, which caused massive immune reactions in six healthy volunteers. TeGenero, the firm that developed the drug, went bust after the catastrophe. GlaxoSmithKline has been embroiled in a scandal over anti-depressant Seroxat: it has been accused of hiding critical data showing the drug is linked to suicide in teenagers. GSK has also seen millions of sales wiped out after its Avandia diabetes treatment was linked to increased risk of heart attack and strokes.” (Observer, 2 September) The truth is of course that capitalist business practice has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with profits.

Class Divided Britain

Anyone with any doubts about the class division in Britain today should look at the following. “Britain may appear to be a richer country than a decade ago but the gap between the rich and poor has reached levels not seen for more than 40 years. The highest earners are being dubbed ‘the new Victorians’ as they take an ever-greater slice of the wealth pie, leaving mere employees and white-collar workers sharing the crumbs. Government statistics show that the richest 10 per cent of the population control more than half the wealth (53 per cent) of the country, with the 1 per cent jet-set elite controlling no less than 21 per cent.” (Independent, 2 September)

Expert Wants Revolution

“A revolution of society on a scale never witnessed in peacetime is needed if climate change is to be tackled successfully, the head of a major business grouping has warned. Bjorn Stigson, the head of the Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), predicted governments would be unable to reach agreement on a framework for reducing carbon emissions at either a US-sponsored meeting in Washington later this month or at a United Nations climate summit in Indonesia in December.” (Financial Times, 7 September) Mr Stigson may be on to something important here. Because capitalism pollutes and destroys the planet maybe we need a revolution – a complete transformation of society.

Debt-Laden Workers

Behind all the advertiser’s glib spiels about the consumer satisfaction of buy, buy, buy lurks the nasty reality that many workers find themselves in a nightmare of debt. “Record numbers are visiting the Citizens Advice Bureau because their finances have spiralled out of control. Debt is the most common reason for attending a CAB, overtaking benefit problems. The charity said it had seen a 20 per cent rise in those struggling with borrowing, handling 1.7 million cases last year. Debt accounts for one in three of inquiries at the CAB, with advisers in England and Wales dealing with more than 6,6000 such problems every working day.” (Daily Telegraph, 12 September)

Loads Of Money

Millions of workers survive on less than $5 a day. What a contrast with these parasites: “What price exclusivity? If you ask Lamborghini, one million euros ($1.4 million) should do it — before tax, of course. In a bid to add more prestige to what it already has, the Italian maker of super luxury sports car unveiled the Reventon at Frankfurt’s international auto-show, a very limited edition car that looks more like an arrow than anything on four wheels. With the six-figure price tag, it is the most expensive car that it has ever built. Needless to say, Lamborghini has already sold the 20 cars that it plans to build. ‘As soon as the word got out, we sold out in four days,’ Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann told Reuters, adding that they could have easily sold another 20.” (Yahoo News, 12 September)

The Ire Of The Irate Itinerant (2008)

From the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Goodbye to the Welfare State . . . as we know it (1998)

From the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

As members of the working class living on state benefits are well aware, it is quite impossible to put a little by for a rainy day, for every day is forecast as a downpour, and trying to keep your head out of the deluge is a constant problem. And for those who are wholly dependent on benefits as their only source of income, their whole lifestyle is dictated by their resourcefulness in eking out their pittance from one day to the next. Yet the Labour government is planning to make things worse.

One of the major problems for the Labour government is the ongoing increase in the benefits bill—which this year is approaching £100 billion—accounting for the largest slice of government expenditure. The changes in the NHS and education system, brought about by the Tory administration, were plainly underfunded and have resulted in Labour putting Tory Plan B into effect by instigating a deliberate purge in social security payments to enable them to fund the NHS and education changes set in motion by the previous government. In order to meet these financial targets Blair needs to make savings of around £8 billion on the social security budget.

Scraping the barrel

Alongside this Labour are also faced with the problem of attracting skilled workers back into the workforce should the economy show signs of improving. Why put workers through costly training programmes when there are ample skilled workers already available, albeit suffering ill-health or disability to varying degrees? Far better to meet the demands for a low paid, short-term casual and part-time workforce by scraping the barrel and getting the skilled disabled—specifically those who are suffering less than 65 percent disability—back into the labour market. With 2.8 million people of working age claiming benefits due to ill-health or disability, Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, intends to ensure their amount of benefits does not act a disincentive to them returning to employment.

This explains the emphasis Tony Blair places on “offering the opportunity” to those who are sick and disabled to provide for themselves with “appropriate support”. But such explanations also provide the means for the Blair government to distance itself from the present obligation of “provision of universal benefits for life” to a scenario of capping universal entitlement to incapacity and disability benefits to one, or two years, so that after that period means tested benefits come into operation.

The present Social Security Review is the third since the Beveridge proposals for a two-tier National insurance/national assistance social security system were implemented in 1948, with each review making major changes in “the application of universal entitlement” by a mixture of increased bureaucracy and deterrence through lack of appropriate information, or any help from qualified staff at point of access to enable benefit claimants to actually receive their full entitlement. This is a major reason why one million pensioners fail to apply for the full range of various benefits that are available.

The whole purpose of the two previous reviews was to make substantial cuts in the social security budget. So we should not expect this one to be any different. But another lesson of history, which Labour have failed to learn (and as the present cost of social security amply illustrates), is that the previous reviews proved to be damp squibs when confronted by workers more resolute in keeping their heads above water than meddling politicians or inept bureaucrats.

Blair is bowing to the need to impose austerity measures in response to the global crisis of capitalism and the Maastricht criteria in order to ensure British capitalists are well-placed if and when the upturn in the global economy occurs and for possible entry into the single European currency. Such measures also offer the opportunity of projecting the image of a “reforming government” when plainly they are no such thing, but merely a reorganising (and cutting-back) on past reforms.

It is also hoped to curtail fraud and abuse by developing an integrated computer system for the Employment Service, the DSS, local authorities and the Inland Revenue. Initially this reorganisation will put increased pressure on DSS staff and hinder them in achieving their cost and efficiency targets set at 25 percent savings, and also undoubtedly lead to inevitable delays in claimants’ payments whilst claims are being processed. As for claimants, with delayed payment notorious for the creation of a “crisis period” any further adverse moves will only exacerbate the problems of those caught up in the poverty trap.

Various leaks have suggested which benefits could come under the hammer. For instance, Child Benefit is likely to be limited to under 16-year-olds and also capped for those who earn over £20,000-£30,000 a year. Likewise Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay face the possibility of being capped at the level of £20,000 yearly earnings—resulting in 8.8 percent of claimants of SMP who are currently over that bracket having their disposable income accordingly reduced. Incapacity Benefit could be limited to one or two years, after which those claimants found to be only 65 percent disabled will be encouraged back into the work force by linking them to the means-tested Disability Working Allowance, or something similar. Should this “opportunity” to return to wage slavery found to be wanting no doubt more compelling measures will be used in conjunction with the Job Seekers Allowance. For those in receipt of Severe Disablement Allowance and Industrial Injuries Benefit there is the possibility of both these benefits being amalgamated under a new disability heading and either taxed accordingly, or made an overlapping benefit against other disability benefits.

Since the introduction of policies such as Care in the Community, and with the creation of unitary authorities, many Social Services departments are being hard pressed to meet many of their statutory obligations within their present budgets. This state of affairs has resulted in them considering charging for some of the services they dispense to the mentally and physically disabled. This raises the possibility of claimants currently receiving either the care component for Disability Living Allowance, or if aged over 65, Attendance Allowance, finding they will have to forfeit these particular benefits for receiving local authority care or support. It is also highly likely that both these benefits will, be capped for those earning over £20,000 a year, or taxed as income—and therefore in a roundabout way means-tested—or even for that matter directly means-tested.

The introduction of disablement benefits undoubtedly enabled many recipients to partake in activities which previously had been denied them, especially those who experienced difficulties with mobility. The prospect of this continuing looks bleak for those claiming the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance for it is highly possible that on reaching the age of 65 they can look forward to a life sentence of being housebound with the mobility component being cut from that age.

If such measures are actually put into practice the limited autonomy the disabled presently enjoy will face even further erosion, leading no doubt to an explosion of discontent from the numerous charities and agencies involved with disablement issues, and also from those who were instrumental in obtaining reforms of this nature—in recognition that the needs of the disabled outweigh those of the able-bodied. But with Blair clearly stating that “the welfare state had been left behind by social and economic change”, it is pretty obvious their pleas are going to be met with cynical platitudes from the politicians.

Deterring take-up

Whatever austerity measures are actually imposed on those benefits which presently come under the criteria of “universal entitlement”, the general trend will be towards linking them with some form of means-testing in order to deter the recent high growth in the take-up rate for benefits—especially from the sick and disabled. The high take-up rate for disability benefits in particular proved to be a stumbling block for the Tories, who sought to curb it by installing a stricter medical criteria, and by introducing the Benefit Integrity project which randomly selects 12 percent of claimants for review (this alone is expected to cover 500,000 disability claims) and resulted in 10 percent of those reviewed having their payments cut. Yet despite these and other measures workers have managed to counter them by adopting the realistic attitude of “getting what they can from the system”, and responding in kind with 345,859 new claims for DLA and a further 55,605 new claims for Industrial Injuries Benefit since April.

With a full-blown means test unlikely to become the norm for claiming benefits—for the extra cost of administration would be self-defeating—and with Blair making a point of emphasising that the means-tested safety nets of Income Support, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit also face scrutiny, it can be expected that cuts will be implemented on these already meagre handouts. For instance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit could be made applicable to only one person per household—irrespective of whether other members of the household claim Income Support. Alternatively, claimants could be made to pay 20 percent of their rent before Housing Benefit comes into operation. If such measures are adopted it will inevitably mean that means-tested claimants will feel the pinch by being expected to pay a portion of their benefit towards rent.

Socialists argue that all reformist activity is subject to the changing nature of capitalism. To fight the same old welfare reform battles over several decades is demoralising enough, but when previous reforms are put into reverse the case against the system which puts profits before needs is stronger than ever.

Even before Labour won the May election, the Child Poverty Action Group in their Rights Guide to non-means-tested benefits, made a point of forecasting that “Is it naïve of us to hope that our successors(s) as authors of this Guide will have a comprehensive range of non-means-tested benefits to describe here in six years time?” (March 1997.) Frankly with Blair and his ilk locked into the profit system, the Socialist Party can confidently assure the CPAG that their guide for 2003 will be a decidedly slimmer version.

G. Digger