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Tuesday, April 7, 2020

An Implement For Digging (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you noticed the way today’s politicians are afraid to call a spade a spade and instead resort to every kind of euphemism to disguise the reality of whatever they happen to be talking about? So we have “social security”—the Poor Law or National Assistance by any other name—a cynical term indeed. Ask anyone who’s ever had to claim and they'll tell you there’s little that’s social and nothing that’s secure about it. Perhaps you’ve experienced yourself the interminable form-filling and prying by clerks for a pittance that won’t feed a dog, let alone keep it warm.

We have the “Department of Employment”. I wonder what the one and a half million on the dole would say about that, the Industrial Reserve Army as Marx put it?

What other contenders are there? How about “an expanding economy”? An expression that looks a little sick in these days. How about “the underprivileged”: politicianese for the poor and the deprived—members of the working class in other words. But let us not forget “the affluent society” (it’s been a good year for grinding the faces of the workers); “we have got to pay our way in the world” (we’re going to turn the rack a few more notches); “nobody owes us a living” (your tomorrow, the promised land is just over the next hill); and, to end a short selection, “welfare state” (80,000 will die this year from hypothermia).

Politicians are the mouthpieces and the lackeys of the capitalist system which needs to dupe the mass of the people in order to maintain itself in power. The contrast between the humbug of political pronouncements and the struggle for survival of the working class worldwide cries out for a solution. That solution can be achieved—Socialism, which will finally make politicians redundant when it replaces capitalism across the globe.

Workers of the world unite—you have nothing to lose but your leaders.
A. L.

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