Harder times for the unemployed (1996)

From the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing governments can do to solve the capitalist problem of unemployment. Indeed, there is little talk these days about 'solving' it, the emphasis is simply on what to do with the 'culprits'

From October Unemployment Benefit—the Dole—will be known as the “Job Seekers Allowance”. Along with this will come targeting agreements, directives, responsibilities, job plans, prescribed programmes, reviews and flexibility. Buried under the tarnished gloss of this jargon lie compulsion, regimentation, sanctions and hardship for those who challenge the myth of exploitation by an employer as a “choice”. It means that the Tory government have finally recognised that the exercise of continually massaging the jobless figures is a worn-out facade and that the use of coercion is the only alternative in an effort to reduce the cost of maintaining the jobless white at the same time this will provide an opportunity for employers to take full advantage of short-term orders and low stocks for which cheap casual labour is ideally suited.

Austerity measures

The JSA should be viewed in the context of a long list of austerity measures affecting Social Security payments over many years. With the cost of Social Security a burden on the capitalist class all changes have been implemented with a view to reducing this financial bill. But paradoxically government intentions have not been matched by the reality. For despite the efforts to deter claimants by increasing the complexity and size of the benefit forms, along with tougher criteria on claimants' entitlement, the working class under the pressure of circumstances have in increasing numbers applied resourcefulness to find loopholes in the DSS minefield. Hence, the total bill for running the DSS has escalated to £93 billion. Whilst actual payments have decreased in relative value the total number of claimants has actually increased—along with fraud and the take-up rate for different benefits. Yet fortunately for the capitalists the take-up rate still falls far short of that estimated, resulting in a surplus of £3.2 billion returned to the Treasury in 1995/96, the difference between expected claimants and actual payments.

The government hope that the full enforcement of the sanctions contained within the JSA will make substantial savings and reductions in the unemployment register. Firstly by deterring registration, and secondly by placing the onus of finding a job on the individual claimant irrespective of the state of the labour market. By ignoring the fact that labour market demand is virtually stagnant and that the unemployed reserve are on hold until more production becomes profitable, it is a short step to asserting that the non-existent jobs are really there and that it only needs the unemployed to become “Jobseekers” to winkle them out or even to create them.

Workers who disagree with their Job Agreement (which is in fact a contractual obligation backed up by penalty reductions in benefit if not carried out) and its clauses of Job Plan, Jobseekers Directives, Review Procedure, regular attendance at Job Centres for “active signing” and are unable to prove they are “actively seeking work”, can expect a withdrawal of benefit for 1 to 26 weeks, or at least be faced with the misery of applying for hardship payments for their dependants only.

When these measures are combined with the changes that have already taken place in limiting Unemployment Benefit, Housing Benefit and Mortgage Interest payments and the action taken to align accommodation with the circumstances of unemployment through a notional “Relevant Rent” —take your choice, bedsit or doorway—they amount to increasing oppression and frustration for the unemployed.

Job Centre chaos

It is not only the claimants who are going to suffer the consequences of implementing the sanctions contained in the JSA. On the other side of the counters are another group of workers who have to deal with the short fuses generated by capitalism in a panic. On them falls the burden of being the paid enforcers when it comes to applying the sanctions. To help them in their endeavours they will be computer-linked with other Job Centres nation-wide and with the local labour Market System so they can ensure claimants are targeted and doing the rounds and that the Job Centres are also expected to reach the target demanded by Peter Lilley of 25 percent efficiency savings over the next three years. On top of this they will have received training in counselling skills to persuade claimants that the various options (which they have no choice on), contained within their Job Plan—retraining, employment placement; voluntary-work; signing up with employment agencies etc. are all in the claimants’ short-term interests, provided that is that they are happy to ignore the low wages, part-time and casual one-hour contracts and adverse working conditions which are not even acceptable to the low standards of the Health and Safety Executive. In order to protect Job Centre staff from the expected fallout from the outraged claimants who have sussed they have been classified as forced labour, the staff will be enclosed in booths protected by hardened shatterproof Perspex with security guards patrolling the floor.

Such a volatile situation with workers blaming each other instead of the system of wage slavery can only be expected from capitalism. Indeed as long as capitalism lasts the workers’ relative misery', destitution and deprivation will continue to fluctuate with the sway of boom and crisis.

This continuing uncertainty will find no relief by supporting the Labour Party. They have made it quite clear they agree with Peter Lilley that some form of sanctions are necessary for the unemployed. Their total agreement with letting the market set its own level of compulsion is sufficient testimony to the fact that they will end up doing much the same as the Tory ratbags are now applying. In any event it is not which party is in government but the compulsion built-in to the wages system that is detrimental to human relationships and the obstacle to our social well-being.

Gravedigger

What Could Socialism be Like? (2016)

From the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism will be a global society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources. But how might this work? How will production, decision-making and culture be affected?

Production

There will be a complete transformation in the calculation of resources, and their production and distribution. In capitalism articles of wealth (commodities) are produced to be bought and sold on markets, at a profit. This trade in commodities generates: waste; pollution and externalities; overproduction and under -production; built-in obsolescence; quantity over quality; crisis and booms; poverty amidst plenty; employment for some and a waste in human potential for most; and obscene wealth for the few.

With no commodity production and trade there will be no exchange value and prices, just the inputs and outputs of resources and human needs. The decision-making process will aim to ensure there’s sufficient stock control to meet projected needs through calculation in kind.

This decision-making process will also configure: environmental impact assessments; a high standard of quality control and durability; positive recycling – where products will be deliberately designed so to ensure that they last longer and when they are passed their usefulness all their component parts are easily recycled into other useful products; and transportation miles for distribution of human needs so the shortest journey possible is covered. This efficiency of calculation will ensure the energy required for producing needs will be kept to a minimum and promote the production of renewable energy sources.

Decision-making

Here the system will be participatory delegate democracy. In capitalism political parties represent the sectional interests within the capitalist class with all of them competing for political control of the state and its machinery of government. With no sectional interests to  be represented when there is common ownership, there won’t be political parties or a state machinery. Nonetheless, major issues will be thrashed out with decisions being made on what’s the best course of action for gaining a successful outcome.

A bottom up decision-making process involving voluntary participation cannot be imposed by a hierarchy or a vanguard or the concept becomes meaningless. The basic building block is the community or neighbourhood assembly, face-to-face meetings where citizens meet to discuss and vote on the issues of the day, not that there will need to be a vote on every issue as most of day-to-day work carried out will be routine. These assemblies elect mandated and recallable delegates who then link with other assemblies forming a confederated council, a ‘community of communities’. The difference between this form of delegate democracy and our current form of representative democracy is that in a representative democracy power is given wholesale to the representative who then is free to act on their own initiative. In a delegate democracy the initiative is set by the electing body and the delegate can be recalled at any time should the electing body feel that their mandate is not being met, thus power remains at the base.

Culture

Due to the impact of common ownership on the global community there’ll be even more of an increase in cultural choices and options than there is under capitalism. Unrestricted to the social conformity of private property relationships, individuals and communities will be able to focus on an ongoing celebration of freedom of expression – leading to an increase in cultural diversity.

Leisure activities are likely to increase in scope and decrease in size. Presently, with package holidays the most affordable way of taking a break from the drudgery and monotony of the production line or the office, they are the most popular form of holiday.

In socialism, where the principle of free access underpins the common ownership of the means of living, our options and choices on travel and holidays would be extended and influenced by what positive contribution we can make to the country we are visiting. And with package holidays and mass tourism a thing of the past, it is likely holidays in socialism would not be restricted within a timescale of 10 to 14 days of hectic hedonism, but transformed into an unique opportunity to stay in a particular location for as long as it takes to understand the history and culture of that region. In effect the transformation in the social relationships from private property ownership to common ownership will radically alter our perception of culture, leisure and travel.

Human nature

But wouldn’t all this be against human nature? No. Socialists make a distinction between human nature and human behaviour. That people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development (human nature), but how they think and act is the result of historically specific social conditions (human behaviour). Human nature changes, if at all, over vast periods of time; human behaviour changes according to changed social conditions. Capitalism being essentially competitive and predatory, produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to change our society and adapt our behaviour, and there is no reason why our rational desire for human wellbeing and happiness should not allow us to establish and run a society based on co-operation.

Needs have a physiological and a historical dimension. Basic physiological needs derive from our human nature (e.g. food, clothing and shelter), but historically conditioned needs derive from developments in the forces of production. In capitalism, needs are manipulated by the imperative to sell commodities and accumulate capital; basic physiological needs then take the historically conditioned form of ‘needs’ for whatever the capitalists can sell us.

Social evolution suggests that no mode of production is cast in stone and the dynamics of change also affects capitalism as a social system. Studies of social systems with distinct social relationships related and corresponding to their specific mode of production have identified, for instance, primitive communism, chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. All of these societies changed from one into another due to the contradictions inherent in that society and also due to technological advancement which each society found itself incapable of adapting to. Capitalism reached this point over a century ago. It’s time to move on to socialism.

Gravedigger

Selling an image (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sheer scale of advertising is intended to create the impression of an abundance and is aimed at convincing workers—as consumers—that organised, orderly buying and selling is the only method available for distributing products on a fair and equal basis. Advertising, as an industry, is not just in the business of purely selling commodities for it also specialises in reinforcing the values and dominant ideas of class society. But although the myth makers are ultimately involved in conditioning us to accept and conform to the market and exchange relationships of the wages system they must first establish a common identity of interests between buyer and seller. The advertising moguls persist in aiming for the unattainable, for they only survive by portraying an idealised world in which everybody can obtain an extra large slice of the wealth which the workers alone produce —but somehow always mysteriously evades them.

But no matter what form the images may take, the reality of everyday life unequivocally states that capitalism only operates under the economic restrictions of artificial scarcity, and consequently an abundance for all is an illusion. Accordingly the advertising world are deceiving themselves and us, for their portrayal of working class life styles rarely correspond to the reality of poverty. Obviously such a false projection can only be maintained on condition that it contains some element of truth. And undoubtedly a few of the members of the working class do, from time to time, manage to gain entrance to the capitalist class — the reverse is also true for sometimes a few of their members are chucked out to join the rest of us. By its very nature capitalism can only accommodate a certain number of parasites, and it is just not possible for everyone to become blood-suckers, or the blood bank of exploited labour would soon run dry.

Marketing and advertising agencies have become more sophisticated in the use of persuasion techniques, employing psychologists, statisticians, market researchers and con-merchants. The psychologists concentrate on colour and perception, manipulating us with their images. The statisticians must ensure a particular product is aligned with the varied consumer demands of the market. The market researchers, on the other hand, are concerned with packaging and polishing by separating workers into convenient compartments where our likes and dislikes, plus our ability to pay for the necessities of life, are duly listed. The con-merchant's job is the hardest of the lot for they are the ones who think going to work on an egg, or eating a "Mars a day" will not only make you work harder but make you happier in the bargain as well. This sophistication and the grading of workers into different economic categories, with each distinct entity holding its own supposedly unique set of values, explains why Tesco doesn't advertise in The Sunday Times colour supplement and Country Life.

Depending on whether or not you receive the messages of class society via the Ideal Home Exhibition or the local street market so you will find the working class is being fed a different image of its class position. Put simply: the advertising world wish the working class confined to stereotype groupings where the differences in sex. roles and occupations all conform to whatever profit maximisation demands. Sales will fall if the commercials say to their stereotype house wives they are irresponsible, unhealthy and disorganised by not using Fairy Liquid. But this is exactly what such adverts suggest by directly implying that "every Fairy Liquid housewife" is responsible, healthy and organised.

To envisage capitalism simply as a system purely concerned with the buying and selling of commodities without taking into account the effects it has on our lifestyle and how we conduct our day to day living is dangerous and damaging to us mentally and physically, for by necessity the system itself needs the workers as a class to remain docile and passive and subsequently a subject class ever ready to internalise and create false impressions of themselves and how the profit system exploits their ignorance. Because the majority of workers are disinclined to enquire into the nature of their subjection they see no conflict of interest between the exploiters and exploited and consequently fail to detect they are being conditioned into believing that there is no alternative to capitalism. There is a way out of the mindless treadmill — even capitalism can't put a price tag on socialism — for socialists don't sell their ideas. We give them away free of charge at every propaganda meeting. Besides which socialists have found by long experience it is sufficient to advertise the realities of capitalism rather than indulge in crude propaganda methods of deception, manipulation and distortion. Indeed the conscious political action needed to obtain socialism is not for sale precisely because its emergence will depend on the majority realising that only a fundamental change in how society produces and distributes wealth will put an end to buying and selling, prices, profits, wages, markets and poverty.

Gravedigger