At the social
One place not to spend your holiday is your local office of the Department of Health and Social Security (for such is its full, resplendent name). That is where, every day, hordes of people wait, in states of varying panic or patience, to try to get a hand-out from the state which, if they are lucky or frugal — or preferably both — will keep them alive at the official poverty line.
Waiting at the DHSS office is usually one of the most depressing and undermining experiences of a worker's life. Very often a person who is in desperate straits will hang about there all day. having queued to get in in the morning, to be told at closing time that is has all been a waste of time - they don't qualify for benefit, or there hasn't been time to process their claim, or their file has been mislaid in the system . . .
A predictable reaction to this sort of frustration is violence — against the furniture, the fabric of the building, the staff themselves. In the cheerless waiting areas the well-nigh indestructible chairs are bolted to the floor, the staff protected by screens, the police make regular visits to throw out or arrest claimants whose protests have been too forceful.
The misery and frustration of the "clients" is mirrored in that of the people on the other side of the counter. Morale among the staff is depressingly low and absences for stress-related sickness alarmingly high. Turnover (a nice word to use about human beings) among DHSS employees is so swift that anyone who survives the job for a year may find that they are the most experienced officer in their section.
The DHSS machinery has been overloaded by conditions which the experts, the planners and the politicians said would never happen. The post-war Welfare State was supposed to take care of everyone's needs, from our birth to our death and then to see us comfortably into the grave. Of course there would be the few who would be embroiled in some unpredictable crisis and for them there would be the safety net of National Assistance - now renamed Supplementary Benefit, as if that made any difference. But the growth of unemployment and the tightening of the screw on working class conditions has changed the Supplementary Benefit claim from the exception to the rule. For millions of people and their families it is now not a safety net but their only life-line.
But the DHSS is no exception to the capitalist rule that everything must operate as cheaply as possible; the staff unions estimate that in London alone some 3000 more staff are needed to catch up with the backlog of claims.
Poverty and repression can be witnessed every day at the DHSS. on both sides of the counter. The claimants are often too bitter, the staff too harassed, to recognise it but they have a united interest in getting rid of a social system which must produce such miserable indignities.
Half way there
An article in the July 1987 issue of GDR Review — a glossy journal issued by the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) — surprises but disappoints. It is by Professor Adolf Kossakowski, Chairman of the GDR Society for Psychology and deals with an offshoot of the GDR Peace Council called "Psychologists for Peace".
Dr. Kossakowski claims that from the work done they can prove that children are not naturally aggressive and war-minded; indeed, they have a deep desire for peace and a fear of war. They conclude that this is true of all age groups and that it is their duty to "activate the masses".
However, in activating people it is extremely important to make clear to them the real causes of war. the true targets against which they should address their fight. In the past and also today those circles with an interest in the arms build-up have exploited and continue to gladly exploit some theories advanced by certain psychologists, ethnologists and biologists in order to mask the true causes of war and to paralyse the forces for peace . . .The myth that war is instinctive and that mankind is evil by nature makes it easier for states to pursue a militaristic policy, because it can be suggested to their peoples that militarism is a natural phenomenon . . .However, I also consider it equally important . . . to point to the real, the economic and political causes of the arms build-up and the war preparations by the forces of aggression. Many scientists . . . are still of the opinion that both sides are to blame for the arms race . . .. . . as scientists we have a duty to discuss with our colleagues the economic and political background behind the policy of aggression pursued . . .
But that, unfortunately, is where he ends and his omissions are at least as important as what he says.
Wars are not fought for principles but, as Kossakowski does mention, economic advantage. Wars are fought either to increase or protect spheres of influence and markets — American action in the Middle East and the Gulf and Russian action in the latter just now make that abundantly clear. The dictatorship of South Korea, Chile, El Salvador and, until quite recently, the Philippines, are acceptable to the Western Allies. In western political circles the invasion of Grenada by the United States was "OK", that of Afghanistan by the Russians was not.
So the Psychologists of the Council for Peace are right in saying that wars are fought for profits. However the profits made by the armaments manufacturers are not the cause of war but are due to the need for maintaining and increasing the profits of the capitalist class as a whole.
Eva Goodman
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