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

Working hard (2020)

Book Review from the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s Wrong With Work? by Lynne Pettinger (Policy Press ￡12.99.)

As the author says on the first page, a book with a title like this is an invitation to grumble or to comment that it’s going to be a long book. In fact it is of interest more for some of the points that are made than for any overall argument.

One important theme is the centrality of informal work, which is difficult to define but essentially applies to employment not covered by national legislation or entitlement to benefits such as paid annual leave or sick leave. According to the International Labour Organization, two billion people (just over sixty percent of global work activity) are in informal work, and this figure rises to ninety percent in developing countries, where a substantially greater percentage of women than men are informally employed. What might be called standard contracts of work are becoming rarer, with seasonal work, on-call work and zero-hours contracts being more common, even if they do not count as informal work.

The book pre-dates the move to working from home as a result of coronavirus, but still has quite a bit to say on homeworking, the ‘hidden workforce’ mainly consisting of women. Further, work can be not just hidden but invisible, as with cleaners who work when offices are otherwise closed. Cheap clothes are made by invisible workers, as nobody would supposedly buy goods made in such dire conditions if the workers were really visible.

Care work is also often hidden, taking place in people’s homes. It is usually seen as low-status and low-skilled, partly because it has generally been associated with women. Yet its importance is undeniable in terms of the health and wellbeing of those cared for. Working on and with human bodies emphasises the crucial role of connections and relations between people.

Green jobs can allegedly be supported by all sides, from government policy-makers and employers to unions and community groups. But in practice many ‘green jobs’ are dirty and dangerous, such as recycling. The manufacture of solar panels relies on processed metal ores and can be damaging to both the environment and the workers who make them.

Researchers often discuss the recent increase in informal work and the rise of the gig economy and of precarity. But Pettinger notes that ‘Informal work is globally and historically the most common form of work’. So-called full employment is really an exception, an ideal applying in western Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s, connected to the notion of a male breadwinner. Not that even then it meant there was no unemployment.

Paul Bennett

The Right to be A Wage Slave (2021)

From the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the years we have seen a growth in the number of temporary and part-time workers, many of whom are identified as self-employed. The gig economy forms a significant part of this trend, which covers a wide range of occupations from IT consultants to Uber and Deliveroo drivers. One definition offered is ‘it is a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work, as opposed to permanent jobs’ (‘What is the ‘gig’ economy?’ BBC News, 10 February 2017). What distinguishes the gig economy is that the workers are paid for a particular piece of work, as opposed to those on zero hours contracts who are paid by the hour. The term ‘gig’ was coined by jazz musicians in 1915 who were paid for each live performance. It is a term still used by today’s rock and pop musicians. According to a TUC report, the gig economy has doubled in size since 2016 and with just under 5 million workers (‘Gig economy in Britain doubles, accounting for 4.7 million workers’, Guardian, 28 June 2019).

Insecure, casual working has always been a feature of capitalism. At one time, it was common for building workers to be hired on a day-to-day basis. In the US in the 1930s many farmers had to sell their land because of drought and falling prices and ended up as itinerant workers. After the Great Depression, temp agencies sprang up, which supplied workers to employers on a temporary basis (The History and Future of the Gig Economy, Small Business Trends, 12 November 2019).

Some claim that the gig economy is a product of the new digital technology. It is the case that firms like Uber use smartphone apps to organise jobs for their workers, but there are employers, such as Hermes, who also employ gig workers, but use more traditional methods to run their businesses (‘What is the gig economy and why is it so controversial?’ Wired, 14 September 2018). This explanation of the rise of the gig economy doesn’t give us the full picture. In the last fifty years, Western capitalist countries have experienced a decline in their manufacturing and traditional industries with the concomitant erosion of trade union power and accompanying loss of relatively well-paid jobs. Insecure, casual jobs have, to a large extent, taken their place. In the less developed capitalist countries there is a pool of underemployed workers who are prey to these gig employers. It is probably no coincidence that Uber was founded in San Francisco in 2010 in the aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crash when unemployment was high. Under capitalism, competitive pressures compel businesses to grab a greater share of the market by undercutting their rivals by offering a product or service at a lower cost.

Supporters of the gig economy insist that its workers enjoy the flexibility and independence that come with being one’s own boss. No doubt for some gig workers, such as video producers, working this way can be a relatively lucrative venture. However, for many it is just ruthless capitalist exploitation by another name. Firms like Uber and Deliveroo designate their workers as self-employed so they don’t have to fork out holiday pay and sickness benefits, contribute to their pensions, pay the minimum wage or any redundancy payments, but receive the fruits of their labour like any traditional capitalist. The benefits of flexibility have been illusory as it is their employers that ultimately control the hours they work. Despite the capitalist spin, more and more gig workers are seeing through the con. They know that they are workers, not independent contractors.

They are fighting back. In 2016 two Uber drivers launched legal action to be recognised as workers. The London employment tribunal ruled in their favour, that they should be classed as workers and be entitled to holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the minimum wage. Uber appealed this ruling to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and when they lost in November 2017, they went to the Court of Appeal which also upheld the ruling in December 2018. Uber made their last stand with the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, which, on 19 February, dismissed their appeal and upheld the ruling that Uber drivers are workers and are entitled to employment benefits. Uber responded by claiming that the verdict only applies to the small number of drivers who brought this case. However, thousands of Uber drivers are filing claims for compensation.

On 7 April, Deliveroo drivers went on strike for higher pay and better work conditions. This followed similar strike action in August and September 2019. Some gig workers are even organised in trade unions, one is the App Drivers and Couriers Union and another is the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain.

Despite all the guff written and spoken about living in a postmodern society where the class struggle is a thing of the past and we are now all aspiring individuals, it is evident that workers, even the more precarious ones, are still collectively organising to defend and, if they can, improve their working conditions. We think it is great that some workers are winning their battles. However, we must go on and win the class war.

Oliver Bond

UBI: Redistributing Poverty (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Lockdown to Basic Income?

The acolytes of the fashionable radical idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) must have been overjoyed by two recent news items. Apparently, the Pope has endorsed the idea. According to the Irish Times (13 April), ‘In a letter addressed to popular movements around the world, he expressed solidarity with their aim of bringing change to global systems and structures that exclude the majority’.

They report him as saying in the letter:

  ‘Street vendors, recyclers, carnival workers, small farmers, construction  workers, seamstresses, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time… and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable. This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out’.

This news was coupled with reports that the Spanish left-wing government has announced that it intends to become the first European country to implement UBI:

  ‘Minister for Economic Affairs Nadia Calvino said that UBI would be introduced “as soon as possible” and could be something that “stays forever, becomes a structural instrument, a permanent instrument”’.

Although, as advocates of UBI noted, ‘the payments will be targeted to families and will differentiate based on their “circumstances.” In practice, differentiating based on circumstances will result in means tests that fall on the poor’.

If it is targeted at families, not individuals, and is based on assessment, it would more closely resemble a Beveridge-style welfare state, than the full-fat version of UBI, something referred to as a Contingent Basic Income.

Redistributing poverty

The idea behind UBI is that every individual in a country is guaranteed a certain amount of income. In its most basic form, the state would simply send a payment to each person (much as the United States has done as part of its response to Covid-19 related unemployment). This sum is irrespective of employment or personal status. Fundamentally, it breaks the link between the sale of labour power and the ability to access necessary resources. It is simultaneously egalitarian and libertarian, since it avoids the need for state bureaucracy to carry out cheeseparing assessments and domination over individuals lives.

It also has the benefit of being easy to imagine, since it has the simple form of keeping commodity relations intact: it keeps the market in place. That is its chief problem: it tries to address the problems caused by a system that defines people by their property through giving them all property. Although it will give people money, those who own other types of property, such as houses, would be able to benefit from rents and market demand for goods they hold.

Hearne and de Ruyter estimate it would cost £540 billion to give everyone in the UK over 16 £10,000 a year (LINK). In 2017-18 the UK government tax take was £589 billion. It would be possible, but the government wouldn’t be able to do much else (which is why right-wing supporters like it).

Employers would be able eventually to lower wages, relying on the UBI subsidy to count towards their employee’s cost of living. In those terms, it would be a substantial transfer of wealth from firms that don’t need much labour to labour intensive industries (in particular, as many people focus on, the so-called gig economy of the likes of Uber).

We described this as the ‘redistribution of poverty’ in our classic pamphlet on the Beveridge Plan . That criticism stands true for UBI.

Flawed Acquisitive Notions

By concentrating on the surface phenomena of money and commodities, UBI ignores the social relationship behind in the form of value production. This comes to the fore when people start whining about ‘the incentive to work’ and the need to keep UBI so low that the lash of poverty can still be applied (surely if we were talking about incentive, doubling your income should be enough? That people might be assumed to prefer to not work and live on a basic income demonstrates the flaw in acquisitive notions of human behaviour).

People will need to work to make the taxes to pay for the UBI. Society and the employers would then be locked in a struggle over the share of wealth going to labour and the share going to profits. The only difference would be that the state would become a key battle ground instead of the labour market directly.

Likewise, the ideology of people getting something for nothing can cause resentment. We can see this sort of thing when Tories call for unruly families to be thrown out of council housing, as if it were a grace and favour home, rather than a right to housing. If UBI is seen as a gift, with obligation (as per the Contingent Basic Income idea), then it would not be supported by many of the population. Hence, also, why Donald Trump wanted to have his name on all the cheques sent out to Americans to cover loss of income due to Covid-19, he wants them to see the money as a gift from him.

Since some will be net contributors to the UBI, they will not perceive this as a benefit to all but a cross-subsidy, a gift they make to others, with corresponding obligation.

Although the reality is that the burden of taxation comes from profits, the structure of income tax nominally coming from employees creates an ideological value that deceives them into thinking they are paying for the government and therefore have a stake in it. In this case people would believe they were paying the income for those who earn less than them.

Universal Basis Services

Some, such as David Harvey, propose Universal Basic Services instead of UBI. This would be things like the NHS, free at the point of use. This has the benefit of removing the commodity character of the service, and would represent an improvement (though likely, in a capitalist world, to still be wrapped up in the struggles between classes over spending levels and coated in bureaucracy to control those costs). But if we had the political strength to impose substantial gains through UBS, we’d have the strength to abolish capitalism outright.

The post-Covid situation will be that millions will be out of work, and capital may not be readily available to provide new employment, as many firms go bust. Governments will have to find ways to keep social peace. They will take radical steps, throwing much market ideology to the wind, but they will be doing that to maintain the advantage of the owning class and rejuvenate market society, as they did after the 2008 crash.

Pik Smeet

Cooking the Books: Capitalism catches a cold (2020)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pandemic, or global epidemic, of the new coronavirus strain could not have come at a worse time for the world capitalist economy which has only been growing weakly, with some predicting another downturn. It might well precipitate this through the effect on production of workers being told or compelled to stay at home as well as of those too sick to work.

Production fell considerably in China where the outbreak started:

  ‘Factory activity in China fell at a record rate in February as manufacturers closed their operations to contain the spread of coronavirus. The country’s official measure of manufacturing activity – the Purchasing Manufacturer’s Index (PMI) – dropped to 35.7 from 50 in January’ (LINK).

Output has also fallen, or will, in other countries though less in countries like Britain with a larger service sector, some of whose workers can work from home. The pandemic won’t last for ever and will eventually die down but, before it does, most capitalist enterprises will see their profits reduced.

Less production usually means less profit. This has spooked the stock market where past profits are redistributed and future profits gambled on. It also brings out that it is not entrepreneurs and their money-making schemes who are the ‘wealth producers’, but those workers who actually play some part in changing the form of materials that originally came from nature.

In his budget speech on 11 March, the new Chancellor Rishi Sunak said, when announcing measures to help small businesses pay sick pay, ‘if we expect 20 per cent of the workforce to be unable to work at any one time . . . ’ As the UK workforce amounts to 34.5 million, that’s some 6.5 million the government is apparently anticipating might be off work during the peak of the epidemic. This would only be temporary but would still translate into a significant drop in production and so in the flow of profits.

Capitalist businesses (except for those employing fewer than 250 workers) will also suffer a hit to their profits in that they will have to pay sick pay from day one rather than day three to those off with the virus or who have been advised to self-isolate. In view of the restrictions on large gatherings and travel, businesses with capital invested in these activities will be hit particularly hard. The headline in the Times Business section on 13 March read ‘Pandemic threatens to push UK-listed companies over the edge.’ Only two, one of which was Cineworld, were listed as at risk of not being able to continue as a going concern. Others weren’t in danger of going under, only of not making so much profit:

  ‘A string of other UK-listed companies yesterday warned about the financial hit they were facing from the virus. Go-Ahead, the train and bus operator, Traveline, the one ticket seller, and WH Smith, the retailer, all said their businesses were being hurt by a slowdown in travel.’

What about the workers? They, too, will see their income reduced, though the government’s announcement that sick pay would be payable from day one for those affected will mitigate this. Not that this is being done out of concern for the workers; they will in effect be being paid to stay off work so as to avoid the virus spreading further and causing further damage to profits and the capitalist economy. Those in the gig economy, some 4.7 million, mostly the lowest paid, will suffer the most.

The whole episode is a reminder that downturns can be caused by outside factors as well as by the internal workings of the capitalist economy.

Under Pressure (2019)

Book Review from the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain’. by James Bloodworth (Atlantic £8.99)

This is a report on time spent living in various towns and working in insecure badly-paid jobs. It gives a vivid and depressing picture of what life is like for so many people who are near, if not quite at, the bottom of the social pyramid.

Bloodworth began in Rugeley, Staffordshire, working in an Amazon warehouse. Most workers there were recruited through one of two agencies, often on a zero-hours contract. The work was ‘physically exhausting’ and ‘mentally deadening’, as it involved walking around ten miles a day in the enormous warehouse, and it was particularly hard on those who were overweight or elderly. Simply walking to the canteen or queuing to have your pockets checked could take ten minutes or so, and that time was not paid for. Workers’ every move was tracked by management, and they could be told to speed up. Six disciplinary points would lead to you being sacked (‘released’ was the euphemism used), and points could be awarded for being ill or being late because Amazon’s bus had broken down. Few local workers would put up with the conditions for long, hence the high staff turnover and the many Eastern Europeans employed there. And the agencies would often pay workers late or underpay them.

Then he travelled to Blackpool, where he worked in the adult home care sector. Again there was a high staff turnover here, partly caused by the low wages but also by the fact that workers often had to rush around to complete their calls, making their working day very long and giving them barely enough time to deal with each person they visited. Many isolated elderly people just wanted a bit of a chat but there was rarely time to do more than the bare minimum of caring. The private companies to which home caring has been outsourced just saw the people being looked after as ‘first and foremost pound symbols on a balance sheet’.

In South Wales Bloodworth worked at a call centre in Swansea for the Admiral insurance company. He found working there relatively positive and tolerable, though there were still league tables for performance, and staff turnover was above the national average.

His final destination was London, where he worked as a cab driver for Uber, though strictly he was an ‘independent contractor’ in the gig economy. Industries like this are full of nice-sounding terms that mask the underlying reality: so the money earned at Deliveroo is called a fee rather than a wage. Uber benefits from having lots of drivers on call, with all the risk of going some time without a fare passed on to the drivers. The pay earned is unpredictable, and there are limits on how many trip requests can be rejected. He reckoned that his annual take-home pay would have been £15,600, about £7.50 an hour.

Besides describing the work he did, Bloodworth also says quite a bit about the towns he stayed in. Rugeley is one of several former mining areas that are now home to Amazon warehouses, but have seen little ‘economic regeneration’. Of Ebbw Vale, he says it ‘remains trapped in limbo between an industrial past and a future that has yet to arrive’. Blackpool, where the tourist trade has drastically shrunk, has some of the most deprived areas in England, a big homelessness problem and a suicide rate almost twice the national average.

He says that consumers have become used to products that are cheap because of places like the Amazon warehouse. But the blame lies in the system, not in those who are themselves victims of it.

Paul Bennett

Gigs and Umbrellas (2016)

From the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

We look at some changes that have led to new forms of work, and ask whether these are truly new and better than traditional kinds of employment.

Being your own boss, as a self-employed sole trader, may sound like a good idea. You can to some extent decide on your own hours, and are not subject to a boss or manager who lays down the law about how you do your work. But, like so much under capitalism, the reality does not match the image.

Officially, a self-employed person runs their own business and sells goods or services for a profit. You can hire other workers, you provide your own equipment, and (according to gov.uk) you ‘can decide how, where and when you do your work’. You have to register as self-employed, keep proper records and complete a self-assessment tax return each year. You will have to cope with insurance and business rates and provide for your pension. You have to worry about business plans and cash flow. Moreover, you will not get sick pay or holiday pay, and income can vary and be unpredictable. Self-employment is clearly not all plain sailing, with lots of administrative matters to take care of as well as being sure you actually make enough money from your work.

There are nearly five million self-employed in the UK, an increase of 45 percent since 2002; part-time self-employment has grown much faster than full-time. The self-employed work in many areas, from plumbers and electricians to accountants. As another example, many hairdressers rent the use of a chair in a salon, rather than being employed by the salon. But, while the number of self-employed is going up, their earnings have been going down. One claim is that average wages for such workers are less than they were twenty years ago, at £240 a week. BBC Online (20 October) looked at some examples. One man who has his own cleaning business was earning far less than previously but said he had a much better work–life balance. A session singer said payments had changed very little over the last couple of decades but, with changes in music-buying habits, his income from sales was now virtually non-existent. The rise in numbers is partly the result of workers who have lost their jobs trying to set up in business on their own. But it is also due to people being classified as self-employed when that description is not really applicable to them.

At the end of October, minicab drivers for the firm Uber won a case at an employment tribunal, which ruled that they should be classed as workers employed by the company, rather than as self-employed, and so should receive holiday pay and the ‘national living wage’. Uber put passengers in touch with drivers via a Smartphone app, and claimed to work for the drivers, enabling them to increase their ‘business’. But in fact Uber recruited and controlled the drivers, set their fares and ran a disciplinary procedure. The tribunal judges described the company as using ‘twisted language’ to describe their relationship with its workers. Uber took 20 percent commission from its forty thousand British drivers, and is a massive international company operating in over sixty countries, with income last year of $1.5bn. This was clearly not self-employment at all but a bogus set-up which made the company big profits, intensified the exploitation of the drivers and worsened their working conditions.

It has been estimated that well over 400,000 of the five million mentioned earlier are wrongly classed as self-employed. It is impossible to know the correct figure, but it is clear that Uber are not the only company that gets away with calling employees self-employed. The courier company Hermes has been alleged to be another example, as has Deliveroo. Even the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has stated that ‘Employment status in the UK is determined by the reality of the working relationship and not simply by the terms of any contract’ (theregister.co.uk, 27 October). In fact this is part of a wider phenomenon, sometimes known as the gig economy (based on the idea of musicians performing and getting paid for individual performances, rather than working regular hours). A gig economy is ‘an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements’ (WhatIs.com). Freelance work has been common for years, especially in areas such as journalism and translating, and the majority of freelance workers are women. The Internet has increasingly made it possible for people to work from almost anywhere, so that the worker’s location and that of the company employing them can be miles or even continents apart. Many more people now work from home or from coffee houses, which can be very atomising in terms of having no face-to-face contact with fellow workers.

Another new development in this area is so-called umbrella companies, which operate as intermediaries between temporary workers (often called contractors) and the agencies that provide work. About a third of supply teachers, for instance, have had to join such a company. Supposedly this makes it easier for teachers who work in different schools, and even for different agencies, in the course of a week, as they have only one organisation to deal with from an administrative and payroll point of view. But many workers in such a situation have found themselves worse off financially, since the umbrella company takes a cut from their earnings, and it can take some time to get paid. This is not technically self-employment, and is in reality little different (if at all) from working directly for an agency or school.

The Communist Manifesto noted how fairly prestigious occupations such as doctor, lawyer and scientist had under capitalism been converted into wage labourers. Maybe the nature of employment is currently changing further. Rather than the masses of workers employed for years or decades in mine, mill, factory, shop and office, there is now much more short-term and temporary work with a sequence of employers, where someone can work for one company for a week or a month but then for a quite different company, undertaking different projects for which continued employment with one employer would simply not be appropriate. Many computer programmers and other IT specialists work this way, for instance. It all shows how zero-hours contracts are by no means the only way in which capitalism is making workers even more insecure.

One defence of self-employed status is that it involves workers owning the means of production. But owning a laptop or a van and a few tools does not make anyone independent of the market system or the overarching control of the capitalist class. The gig economy, umbrella companies, ostensible self-employment: none of these alters the subordinate status of the workers they apply to or represent anything other than a merely formal break with wage labour.

Paul Bennett

Letters: His Excellency (2017)

Letters to the Editors from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

His Excellency

Dear Comrades

I was shocked a few weeks ago when I read the utterances by a Mr. Steve Franke (said to work for a global group) in a local daily. He attributes President Mugabe’s socio-economic catastrophe to his Marxism. I wonder if anyone on Earth could be farther from Marxism than Mr. Mugabe: Mr. Trump is much better because he acquired his wealth outside of government office. Our own Mr. Excellency abused Marxism (equality/fairness) to win public support.

If you have access to the likes of Mr. Franke kindly put the following questions: Did not Marx say (if socialism is implemented) the state will wither away? While 99 percent of us (Zimbabweans) are literally starving is not His Excellency building a too large army and police force? Marxism? Add state-of-the-art military academies (and we are not under threat from anyone), new parliament, new capital city etc.

While we starve Mr. Mugabe was among the poor before going into public office, but his cabinet are Christian, did not Marx criticize religion? In fact, what I can say is that Marx overrated influential people’s morals and compassion. And while Christ and other religionists were dreamers, mysticists (selfish and arrogant) Marx was the best in terms of ethics, they (gullibly) believe they will join their god in the (imaginary) paradise. Although they now disown each other, law, politics, religion originate together, in a bid to make order to society; tragically the cunning and powerful abused power selfishly. Hence proponents of just, fair and ethical ideals like Marx were condemned while proponents of bigotry/dictatorship like Christ (read, e.g. Matthew 10:34-42 and Luke 9:59-60) are eulogised. An Almighty Dad (if he has the power; love and mercy he is said to have) would never subjected his son to barbaric torture.

Instead of facing reality (like Marx), mysticists waste time and resources wrestling an imaginary monster. Thus the very real monsters abusing power (the bully bigots exploiting and torturing 99 percent of the population) are ignored. Really, some churches are very well organised, help their members in need but, pathetically, if you are going in the wrong direction, you will never get to your destination, however graceful your pace may be.

Bigots wishfully think they can lock reality out of the front door. I am one of the many made destitute when our cruel and selfish leaders forfeited our savings (now I am unemployable due to age). Ironically, His Excellency wants to work beyond 2020, even if he is 25 years older than me, old enough to be my father. But ever since robbing us in 2008/9 they are bombarding us with propaganda ‘Empowerment! Zim asset’ instead of doing some good to us. They defrauded/robbed in 2008/9, once more they are squandering millions of US dollars telling us how good His Excellency is and how much good is in store for us come 2018.

A week ago: people were tortured and chased by armed police from demonstrating against the bond notes, but the Herald newspaper came out with ‘people ignore the planned demo…’ Yes, locking reality out of the front door, but they forget we live in the situation, although we have no access to the internet and we cannot afford phones, which can access Facebook, Google etc. Yes, religious propagandists are safer with their acumen to articulate and encourage the suspension of logic, hallucinate and infatuate congregants.

Godwin Hatitye

Harare, Zimbabwe

Gig economy

Dear Editors

I read the article ‘Gigs and Umbrellas’ in the December Socialist Standard. It was a very good article and made some excellent points about changing workplace conditions for us working folks, but it left out one relevant point that shouldn’t be missed.

The last 15 years of my own career as an RN was spent as an independent practitioner for a nursing agency. In this situation, I met only my client(s), not my fellow-independent practitioners working for the same agency. Although independent practitioners generally get less pay and are taxed at a higher rate than other workers, there is little opportunity for them to share complaints about the work, the pay, the treatment received from management, etc.

In addition to all the problems cited by in the article, think of the effect this has on potential union activity: there is neither incentive nor opportunity for independent practitioners to form a union. Each one is an isolated individual. ‘Solidarity forever’ is becoming passé in this new world order.

Karla Rab, 

WSP(US)

Reply: 

Actually there have been attempts in Britain to organise workers who are the ‘self-employed’ such as motorbike couriers and Uber drivers. See: https://iwgb.org.uk/

Bigger Shares (2018)

Book Review from the July 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy. Tom Slee Scribe. £9.99.

The Sharing Economy (with capitals) is Slee’s term for what some people call, among other terms, peer-to-peer platforms. Customers and suppliers are able to get in touch with each other by means of the internet and smartphone apps, with the platform company taking a cut of the price paid.

Airbnb, which is probably the best-known example, probably sounds like a reasonable idea, allowing people to rent out spare rooms to short-stay visitors. But in fact it has evolved into something quite different: most lets are of whole houses or flats and are made by landlords who own several properties. They do not need to worry about health and safety regulations or providing fire extinguishers. Those who lose business to them are not big hotel chains like Hilton but small independent hotels and B&Bs. There are even cases of tenants being kicked out because the owner can make more money from short-term lets via Airbnb. (For some other examples of bad experiences as visitors or landlords, see airbnbhell.com.)

Besides property letting, the other main area of the Sharing Economy is transport, primarily Uber. Earlier ride-sharing apps have fallen by the wayside, being unable to compete. Grandiose claims about the amounts Uber drivers can earn have been discredited, and they in fact earn little more than most taxi-drivers. They do not have to worry about providing access for blind passengers or those who use wheelchairs. As part of the gig economy, drivers are not paid when off sick and have to provide their own insurance; moreover, they do not undergo proper screening by Uber.

Slee says he wrote this book because ‘the Sharing Economy agenda appeals to ideals with which I and many others identify; ideals such as equality, sustainability and community.’ But capitalism undermines these ideals: even the Linux operating system, for instance, is now a commercial undertaking and is ‘no longer subversive’. Ideas of openness have led to powerful institutions backed by venture capital and dominated by Silicon Valley. Digital markets often result in a ‘winner-takes-all’ situation, with one massively powerful company in each area (Amazon, for example).

This book gives a clear and well-argued account of various aspects of the Sharing Economy, how the profit motive pervades most areas of life and how attempts to get round it can just lead to yet more profit-based industries.

Paul Bennett

Depths of alienation (2003)

Book Review from the April 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Culture of Make-Believe. Derrick Jensen, New York, Context Books, 2002

The Future of Success. Robert B. Reich, New York, Knopf, 2001

The stream of books coming out of America on the Holy Global Empire of capitalism continues unabated. The tale is of two classes: arrogant winners and collateral losers, private wealth and public poverty, triumphalist insecurity for the elite and traumatic insecurity for the mass. The system is enthusiastically praised, superficially criticised, but never seriously opposed. There Is No Alternative - or, if you prefer the sporting metaphor, capitalism is the only game in town.

With Derrick Jensen's 700-page blockbuster you get more or less what it says in the blurb: “the atrocities that characterise so much of our culture - from . . .  modern slavery and corporate misdeeds to manufacturing disasters, death squads in developing nations and the destruction of the natural world”. The text is discursive, even gabby. There is no index, which suggests that the author wants you to read it as a novel for entertainment, not a polemic for study.

To give Jensen his due, he's good on slavery:

“. . . the power relationship between slaveholders and slaves can be broken into three components. The first is social, and involves the use or threat of violence by the slaveholder to control the slave. The second is psychological, and has to do with convincing the slaves to perceive their slavery as actually being in their own best interests. The third is cultural, and has to do with transforming force into a right of the powerful and obedience into a duty of the powerless. . .”

He can't bring himself to explicitly oppose wage slavery and the capitalist system of which it is an integral part. Instead he seeks to shock us with the revelation that his solution is to get rid of civilisation. On the last page we get a sanitised biblical story: the appropriately-named Ham, rather than being condemned to perpetual enslavement, feels a happy, fecund sense of freedom.

As an economist, Robert Reich is more upfront about capitalism, which he takes for better and for worse. The good news is for consumers, who can "shift allegiance with the click of a mouse" because they live in "the age of the terrific deal". But the bad news is about quality of non-consuming life: more frenzy, less security, loss of time and energy for friendship, community and self.

Reading through Reich's prose, with its chapter heads like “Of geeks and shrinks” and “The sale of the self”, gives the impression that the author is writing about and for people very much like himself. Of the 6 billion people in the world only perhaps a billion or so have regular employment, and by no means all of those worry about their CV and how they present themselves at interview. Yet Reich asserts that:

“In the new economy, you get ahead not by being well liked but being well marketed… Talented people are even selling shares in themselves… Once, the worst thing that could be said of someone was that he had sold out. Now the worst thing that can be said is that he's not selling”.

By this reckoning, capitalism has plunged depths of alienation that Marx could only have had nightmares about.

Stan Parker