There are thousands of organizations concerned with picking up the pieces of the multitude of wrecks that capitalism creates. The Charity Commissioners who keep the register of official charities have an ever-increasing list of organizations. And you can be sure that each charity has a cause which is the most pressing and the most heartrending.
Now you would imagine that those who form and run charitable organizations think they are doing something useful. You would also assume that their aim was to deal with one particular dark corner of the social scene chosen as their speciality (at the expense of everything else of course), eradicate the problem and then quietly close. But not a bit. Charities that were formed years ago are still going and see no prospect of being able to cease operations.
Take the Salvation Army as an example. There you can see boundless energy and effort being lost in the quagmire of working-class misery. Capitalism gives the workers their daily deprivation. And along comes the Sally and says it is really all for the best and there is pie in the sky when you die. You can’t deny they do a lot of work. Last year they provided 8,001,323 meals and 1,646,578 beds for the homeless. Plenty of other things too, like visiting prisoners, tracing “missing persons” etc. There’s energy for you. (When you consider that there are hundreds of organizations doing basically similar work to the Sally, though not necessarily with the same insidious brand of propaganda, you realize the size of the problem).
You would think with that effort flying around something would be happening. An end to the Sally in sight perhaps? I am afraid not. In their latest appeal for funds they quote the following extract from the Daily Mirror (19th February 1974).
In 1890 General Booth estimated that a tenth of Britain’s population was imprisoned by squalid want. Today the army puts the figure at TWO-TENTHS . . . But if the poor are always with us then so too, fortunately are organizations like the “Sally Army" . . . (their emphasis).
So not only are they still here, they always will be whilst capitalism continues. The Daily Mirror points out that things are getting worse. So Capitalism creates more Silly Armies (with modern sounding titles like “Shelter” and “Oxfam”) to tackle problems that grow more intractable every day.
But why rely on the Sally to be told that things are getting worse and that by implication prop-up boys like the Sally are useless? Read The Times editorials:
it would be wrong to suppose that we could build ourselves out of our difficulties even if society allocated far greater resources to building than there is any prospect of. Homelessness also increased in the years when the construction figures were comparatively good . . . The number of families applying to local authorities for temporary accommodation has steadily increased from 18.000 in 1968 to 32,000 in 1973.(19th February 1975)
Having said that capitalism can’t produce homes for the homeless The Times goes on to knock private landlords (apologists for capitalism love to find scapegoats, and the goats that write for The Times are no exception). The article then says that “the private sector”
did satisfy a demand for cheap housing of indifferent quality and for short term rapidly available accommodation of a kind that will always be needed by mobile workers and young families who do not yet qualify for a council house or a mortgage. (Our emphasis).
In other words, not only homelessness but shoddy housing (with all its attendant problems) and the need for operations like the Sally will continue. Not homelessness for all, mind you. The same issue of The Times has a letter from the Duke of Rutland whose problem is the upkeep of two castles in which he lives (not at the same time, one presumes). No charities have to provide him with a free meal or a hammock. But for the majority, the working class, the need for charities continues. And the more charities there are to mop up the squalor flowing out of capitalism, the more the flood of poverty spreads over the ground.
Like all charities, the Salvation Army only concerns itself with the result and not the cause of social problems. Capitalism will never provide adequate housing for the workers as The Times admits. If people wish to solve these problems, they must look beyond the present system of society. To all you working people who support and run charities, we have this question: why not learn to run Socialism instead?
Ronnie Warrington
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