Editorial: Hopes For 1960 (1960)

Editorial from the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whether it is reasonable to hope for small blessings in 1960, or wiser to fear the worst, depends in some measure on the view taken of 1959. Well, what did happen in 1959? First, the too-obvious happening, which no newspaper or radio commentator ever mentions, that nine workers out of ten just went on working. They were glad to have had the chance, glad that they didn't lose their jobs and glad if nothing happened that forced them to strike. They did it for a living and they are glad to go on doing so: they hope their luck will hold out for another 12 months.

Among their troubles in 1959 was being preached at and moralised about by the rich, the learned and the famous; who told them they ought to work harder, stay away from work less, be more thrifty, spend less on drink, tobacco and gambling, and generally to behave themselves in a way that will do credit to their British masters when the latter are showing them off to V.l.P.’s from Russia and other foreign countries. There is not a chance that this will end in the year now beginning and anyway most workers do not even think of the possibility that it could end; their hopes are more modest. They are told they have never had it so good and that it is going to get better in the next twenty years or so. but in the next twelve months most of them would settle for a lot less. Mr. Peter Townsend, research fellow at London University, got together a few facts in the Sunday Dispatch (29/11/59). He pointed out that there are 4,000,000 retired people and old age pensioners who cannot count on an income of much over £4 a week; and that pensioners living alone have been shown in an official survey to be spending less than 22s. a week on food; and that there are 2½ million homes without piped water and

6½ million without a bath. Perhaps by January 1, 1961, the position will be a little better—unless, as may happen, it is a little worse.

Let us say that most of the workers would deem themselves fortunate if in a year’s time they are earning a little more, or working a slightly shorter week, and that prices and fares and rents have not gone up.

Of course the pleasant picture may be marred by workers having to spend still longer time waiting at bus queues or in traffic jams, but you can't have everything.

In politics the British workers decided to give the Tories another term of office because, among other things, there looked like being early high level talks between Russia, America, British and French heads of government. There is no reason at all why the workers should not hope that those high level talks will take place in I960. They can't very well make things worse and it will mean that the countries are not at war: Though why not low level talks between the workers?

It is one of the good things about 1959 that apart from the Tibetans having been “saved” by Chinese invaders and Cuba having been “saved” by revolution, and Nehru having been caught by surprise and therefore too late to save some almost uninhabitable territory from being occupied by other Chinese soldiers, most parts of the world have been lucky enough not to have been specially saved by anyone.

We can all hope that no "national saviour" has an opportunity of shedding other people's blood in 1960. Our hopes in that direction should be shared by the 20 million refugees, homeless and unwanted, who linger on after past wars.

According to United Nations agencies nearly half the world's people were undernourished in 1959 and may hope to do no worse in 1960. Meanwhile, the American government, having been unable to sell enormous stocks of unwanted wheat, butter, etc., may hope to be able to give it away to the needy, provided other would-be sellers of surplus foods can be persuaded to give up their objections.

Turning from the likely hopes and fears of non-Socialist workers, to the hopes of Socialists, we can say that we start this year with something gained. The year 1959 saw a real improvement of the prospect for Socialist principles to make headway against those two hindrances to progress, the Labour Party, and the myth of Socialism in Russia. Both suffered crippling blows in the year just past. Here's to more of the same in 1960. And here's to the workers learning to be a lot less humble, and deciding to have Socialism.

By the Way (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In effect, a Labour Government has decided not to do much about the poverty in our midst. (Professor Peter Townsend in a letter to The Times 28.7.67).

#    #    #    #

As far as the United States is concerned the search for peace in South East Asia never ends. (R. McCloskey, State Dept., spokesman, Washington 2.8.67).

#    #    #    #

Soviet economists have in recent years worked out a theory of price formation for the present stage of our country’s development, and while much more has still to be done, already triumphant in the new prices is the scientific principle of the so-called socialist price of production. It embodies, besides cost price, labour inputs, depreciation of assets and capital investments. (Anatoli Klinsky, Learned Secretary, Economic Research Institute of the USSR State Planning Committee, The Times 2.8.67).

Poverty Excludes (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We look at different concepts of poverty, at the idea of social exclusion and at how governments have tried and failed to eradicate these.

Poverty need not imply destitution, the situation where a person simply cannot provide for themselves. Many asylum-seekers are forced to survive on £5 a day and so can genuinely be described as destitute, or as in absolute or extreme poverty. An alternative notion is that of relative poverty, living below a poverty line usually defined as a household receiving less than 60 percent of the median household income. Thus in 2011-12, the median household income in the UK was £23,200 (down from £24,100 in 2007-8): 60 percent of this would be £14,460. Naturally, such figures need to be adjusted to take account of differences in terms of family size and the cost of living in different parts of the country. That same year, more than one child in four lived in a household with income below the 60 percent poverty line after housing costs were taken into account. The extent of poverty is also revealed by increases in the numbers resorting to food banks and to petty shoplifting, even from pound stores, and by rises in cases of malnutrition treated in hospitals (over five thousand in 2012).

An alternative approach defines poverty in relation to typical living standards:

  ‘Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged and approved, in the societies in which they belong’ (Peter Townsend, quoted from www.cpag.org.uk/content/what-is-poverty).

This is often described as social exclusion: ‘being unable to access the things in life that most people take for granted’ (definition from Age Concern). At the very least this would mean: decent housing which was not overcrowded and which people could afford to heat; eating healthy and nutritious food, without worrying about skimping towards the end of the week and resorting to food banks; buying warm and functional clothes, without relying on hand-me-downs and charity shops; access to good-quality health care; having the chance to perform useful and rewarding work; being able to afford bus and train fares; enjoying some basic leisure activities, such as a trip to the cinema or a day in the country; having an annual holiday that is more than just staying with relatives. Not too much to ask, you might think, given the capabilities of modern society, but in fact beyond the reach of millions.

In his 2010 book Injustice, Daniel Dorling claimed that one-sixth of households in Britain count as poor, with debt as the main problem that prevents them from affording necessities, arguing that ‘People spend and get into debt to maintain their social position not out of envy of the rich, but out of the necessity to maintain self-respect.’ You cannot keep up your self-respect if you truly are excluded from the normal standards of present-day living.

It is sometimes said, not just that the 60 percent figure is arbitrary, but that relative poverty, and the concept of social exclusion too, can give a very false impression, as under them people can still be regarded as poor even if their standard of living is well above that of poor people a generation or two before. And even those who are not destitute may have the use of gadgets and technology that did not even exist a couple of decades ago. If you have a big colour television, the argument goes, how can you be poor? One response is that you can still be socially excluded in the way sketched above; another would be that the comparison should be with the very richest people in society, who have prospered very nicely in spite of the recession; and finally, that the true comparison should be with the possibilities for life in a socialist world.

Reformist governments have of course addressed the problem of poverty. In 1999 Tony Blair proclaimed a commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, but this has not been going well, with the interim target of halving child poverty by 2010-11 being missed. It was only cut by about a third, and even this reduction was partly due to a drop in the median income and hence the poverty line being lower. And as in other areas, government terminology did not quite mean what it appeared to. Just as ‘full employment’ does not imply that everyone who wants a job has one, so ‘eradicating’ child poverty does not mean getting rid of it altogether. Rather, it was intended that fewer than 10 percent of children should live in families below the poverty line.

This specific target, along with others, was enshrined in Labour’s Child Poverty Act of March 2010. The other big parties supported it, though the Tories complained that it tackled the symptoms of poverty rather than the causes. Shortly after the 2010 election, when poverty statistics for 2008-9 were published, Iain Duncan Smith stated:

  Millions of children, adults and pensioners are daily experiencing the crushing disadvantage that poverty brings. They are living at the margins of society, unable to achieve their aspirations and trapped in dependency. … Vast sums of money have been poured into the benefits system over the last decade in an attempt to address poverty, but today’s statistics clearly show that this approach has failed.

The point about dealing with symptoms rather than causes was correct, but that after all is essentially what every government does. The Tory idea of the causes of poverty is also rather different from that of socialists: Duncan Smith later argued that the Labour government ‘did not do enough to make work pay’, though he is of course not suggesting that the Coalition should act to increase wages.

The cause of poverty, however defined, is not that the benefits system encourages  dependency and undermines any ambitions that people have. Nor is it that the tax system penalises those who earn relatively little when they start earning a bit more. The fundamental cause is the way that society is organised, with a small minority owning the means of production and the overwhelming majority forced to sell their labour power for a wage in order to survive. The degree of inequality this gives rise to is scarcely credible: the five richest families in Britain own more wealth then the poorest fifth of the population.

To be more accurate, workers are forced to attempt to sell their labour power, since there will not always be a capitalist in a position to exploit a worker and therefore willing to employ them. Workers may sometimes be able to maintain a reasonable standard of living, while at other times they may be excluded from what is by any criterion a basically acceptable way of life. But we are always excluded from true empowerment over our lives and those of our families – and that is not something that can be achieved under the present social system.

Paul Bennett

Sickness and Wealth (1988)

Book Review from the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Inequalities of Health: The Black Report edited by Peter Townsend and Nick Davidson; The Health Divide by Margaret Whitehead. Penguin Books. £4.95

This book brings together the 1980 Report of the Working Group on Inequalities in Health (the Black Report) and the 1987 Health Education Council's report. "The Health Divide". The controversy caused by the Government's heavy-handed attempts to restrict the distribution and influence of both will probably guarantee that Inequalities in Health will be much more widely read than publications of this type usually are, the Black Report having been available in only 260 duplicated copies when submitted to the Secretary of State. "The Health Divide" was published in March 1987 just after the government had announced the Council's dissolution.

The Black Report examines inequalities in health up to the late 1970s. with international comparisons; regional differences in mortality; housing tenure and mortality; race and health; the influence of gender on health; and occupational differences in health A wealth of statistical data demonstrates conclusively that “At any age people in occupational class five have a higher rate of death than their better off counterparts" and "At birth and during the first month of life the risk of death in families of unskilled workers is double that of professional families" (p43). From the first month to the first year of life the gap widens still further, with deaths of male infants of unskilled manual workers three times higher than those of professional workers, and the ratio for female infants is higher still. The part played by bad housing, poor environments and poverty can be seen by the fact that accidents and respiratory diseases are responsible for the excess of deaths in infancy.

A fundamental principle of the National Health Service purports to be the provision of equal access to health care regardless of personal means, but the Black Report found clear evidence that people in higher income groups make better use of available facilities. Data Collected from other countries confirm the link between poverty and ill health: although greater resources allocated to maternity services and infant welfare have succeeded in reducing infant mortality rates in Denmark and Finland, a class bias remains.

A comparison between health inequalities today and in Victorian Britain prompts the Report to state:

 Poverty is also a relative concept, and those who are unable to share the amenities or facilities provided within a rich society, or who are unable to fulfil the social and occupational obligations placed upon them by virtue of their limited resources, can properly be regarded as poor. They may also be relatively disadvantaged in relation to the risks of illness or accident or the factors positively promoting ill health (p107).

And even in old age:

 To have secure employment and an above-average income when one is at work is to be better able to provide for one's retirement. It is in this way that continuity in the distribution of material welfare is sustained. and inequalities in health perpetuated, from the cradle to the grave (p 125).

In setting out plans for improving health the Black Report is at its weakest because it fails to appreciate that capitalism functions by exploiting workers' labour power and cannot be made to work in our interests.

"The Health Divide" is a shorter report that confirms and updates the evidence collected in the Black Report. It looks at the much publicised "North-South divide" and finds that, while there are higher rates of chronic disease in the North of England. Scotland and Wales, there are also marked regional variations: "In Sheffield, for instance, there was a difference in men's life expectancy of over eight years between the most affluent and the most deprived wards' (p247). It examines "life-styles" more closely than the Black Report and concludes that behaviour is less important than poverty in accounting for health inequalities. Smoking, for example, may help some working class women cope with their stressful workload.

In the years between the appearance of the Black Report and "The Health Divide" the problems of poverty and bad housing persisted, and grew even more severe for large numbers of workers. Research in the future will be more difficult because the Registrar General's Office stopped analysing mortality rates for different occupational groups in 1986. to avoid the embarrassing conclusion that the health gap between rich and poor is widening The solutions put forward to eliminate health differences are similar in both studies and have no prospect of success whatsoever. The reforms of the past have eased some of the misery at the margins of poverty while allowing the system of exploitation to function intact; this book provides proof that capitalism is bad for our health without even considering its replacement.

Carl Pinel

Another Programme For Poverty (1972)

Book Review from the June 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Family Poverty. Programme for the Seventies. Ed. David Bull. (Gerald Duckworth paperback. £1.25.)

Stand up, anyone who is not fed to the back teeth with politicians telling us that poverty is either abolished or is about to be.

Of course, this is a continuous process but sometimes there are notable watersheds, which mark schemes which are more than usually comprehensive— perhaps a tidying up of a mass of old legislation or a really massive reform— which give the politicians another chance to tell us that they are about to end the problem once and for all (yes, they have actually used those words.)

Such a watershed was the last war. After all the promises about the fruits of victory which would erase the bitter taste of the thirties, schemes like Beveridge and the National Health Act of 1948 came as surely as night following day.

The new laws passed by the Attlee government in the fields of pensions, insurance, health treatment and so on made it possible for them to claim, as they fought desperately to hold on to power in the 1950 election, that they had abolished poverty. Abolished it; it wouldn’t come back.

Many people believed them, although not enough to keep them in power for long. Then came the dawn, and a sickly one it was. First it was discovered that the old were still in desperate straits, their poverty outgrowing the meagre provisions made for them. Then the chronically sick and disabled were surprisingly found to be suffering economic hardship.

As the light on the problem grew stronger the men in power clung to the illusion of “full" employment, implying that if a man was in work his family were well provided for, that poverty was an accident of those who for one reason or another could not be fully employed. That held good until more evidence forced them to admit that working families can also be destitute and since then we have had schemes like the Family Income Supplement which are supposed to have cured that problem.

In fact as it becomes more and more evident that poverty is not dead, that it lives as hideously as ever, the investigation of it has become something of a growth industry. As all over the country the newly organised Social Services departments spring up, there is every reason to think that the growth will continue.

These essays, by men like Tony Lynes and Peter Townsend, do something to examine and illuminate the chronic problem of poverty under capitalism and to expose the complete failure of all the post war legislation to cure it. Unfortunately (or would a better word be predictably) they do not recognise poverty for what it is—an unavoidable product of capitalism—and so they must always conclude by arguing in favour of replacing one piece of ineffective legislation with another.

The essays are readable and informative and they leave this reviewer in sadness at the waste of ability and knowledge, which would be better used working to end the system responsible for family poverty.

Ivan.

Grand Old Dukes of York (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before:

"For the first time, racism is to be written into British law. British citizens are to be excluded because their skins are dark, or their grandfathers foreign . . .  In the past we have voted and worked for the Labour Party. This is the turning point. We cannot see ourselves voting for a party that goes through with this policy". 

— letter to The Times 27 February signed, among others, by Richard Titmuss and Peter Townsend.

After:

"Some of your readers might like to know that we have no intention of quitting either the Labour Party or the Labour movement. In reacting to the Government's Bill on the Kenya Asians, we wanted to say that this was a turning point in our attitudes to some of the policies of the present Government. Without changes in policy our allegiance will be in question. But as always we would do what we can to influence discussion about social policy within the Labour movement”.

—letter to Tribune 8 March signed by Richard Titmuss and Peter Townsend.

The Extent of Poverty (1967)

From the February 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let us get one or two ideas straight first of all. Poverty is a conditions from which all workers suffer to some extent or another. It is a basic factor of working class existence, whether you are comparatively high or low-paid. Take the word at its full meaning “want of means” and you will see that our claim is justified, for any person who has to depend on a wage or salary for a living must have a restricted access to the means of life, and can never broaden the access sufficiently to enable him to live without the need to work if he wishes. “If poverty is relative” said Professor Townsend recently, “standards are largely determined by the income, wealth, living standards and expectations of the rich.”

How right he was. Yet because of a mixture of ignorance, confusion and petty snobbery, this important fact has been overlooked. And matters have not been helped by the arrival of ‘social security’ schemes since the end of the second world war; to the popular mind, poverty has become synonymous with destitution. The Labour Party must take no small share of the blame for fostering such an attitude. Their policy statement Labour and the New Society, published in 1950, carried the claim, for example, that “Destitution has been abolished.”

Well let us see how such a statement stands up to examination in the capitalism of the sixties. The Board of Inland Revenue report for 1963-4 showed between six and seven million people with a yearly income, before tax, of less than £275. Another 4½ million received between £300 and £500, and ten million were in the £500-£l,000 range. At the other end of the scale, about ten thousand people enjoyed (there is no other word for it) a yearly income of £15,000 or more. In fact an appraisal of the Board’s figures made by The Economist (26.2.65), suggested that two thirds of Britain’s population had no wealth worth reckoning at all.

So much for the cold hard statistics after centuries of reform and a post-war national insurance scheme, the like of which we have never seen before in this country. Now what does it all mean in terms of human suffering and degradation? You can take your pick from a mass of material appearing in the national press over the past year or two, which seems to have touched on most aspects of the misery of being poor. Running like a thread through all these articles, incidentally, is an implied astonishment that such problems still exist. Only the Socialist does not share the astonishment. The Guardian (18.7.64) for example, spoke of ‘a surprising number' of schoolchildren in some areas needing free meals at school; it mentioned also an increasing demand for local authority handouts of free clothing and shoes. Taking the Don Valley area of Yorkshire as only one instance:

In 1958-59, 200 applications for clothing and shoes were granted; in 1963-64 the figure was 500. In 1961, 2,325 children were receiving free meals; in 1962 this figure rose to 2,500.

It has been found that many truancies from school have been because the children had no shoes to wear. Having grown out of their old ones, their parents were often too poor to buy them a new pair. This point was made in The Poor and The Poorest, a report published at the end of 1965 by Professors Townsend and Abel-Smith. They defined poverty as ‘less than 140 per cent of the basic National Assistance scale, plus housing and other costs' and on this basis, estimated the number of poor people at nearly seven millions —a rise of two per cent in the ten years ending 1960.

In a letter to The Guardian (22.11.66), Professor Townsend severely criticised government departments for the inadequacy of their surveys on the poverty problem, and mentioned specially the question of nutrition. He pointed out that in the lowest income group families (under £15 a week), there was a protein deficiency in their diets of ten per cent and a calcium deficiency of sixteen per cent. In down-to-earth terms, this means meals of baked beans and chips or bread and jam for your children, and virtually nothing for yourself, like the young mother mentioned by Jean Stead (Guardian, 2.2.66):

. . .  who is 28, looks as if she was once very pretty, but now she is worn and undernourished and her top teeth are missing. She lives on tea and cigarettes, like most mothers in poor families, and rarely has a proper meal. Cigarettes kill the appetite.

So we can begin to appreciate the all-pervasiveness of the poverty condition; there is not a single aspect of our lives it will not touch — and degrade — to some extent or another, depending on our particular position in the income scale. Food, clothing, housing, the bare necessities, and the amenities like holidays or a night at the cinema, nothing can escape. The whole quality of our life suffers.

There are those who have even let go of a once-tenuous hold on impoverished respectability and become ‘drifters’, homeless ones often sleeping rough, unable to compete in the struggle to make both ends meet. An official report published last November (which was criticised for being too low in its estimate) mentioned about 13,500 people who were without accommodation when they applied for National Assistance during a week at the beginning of December 1965. With a priggish disdain so typical of that paper, Guardian writer John Fairhall refers to them as ‘derelicts swilling about at the very bottom of the barrel.’

And having told us about the evil in no uncertain terms, what answer have the experts? The usual palliatives are offered and impertinently described as ‘fundamental’ by their authors; yet none of them could do other than keep the poor that way. For example: '. . .  more decent housing for low-wage families at rents they can afford’ (Abel-Smith, Weekend Telegraph, 25.11.66). The truth is that like so many of capitalism’s problems, this one is gigantic. Eighteen per cent of all households in the U.K. are said to be living below National Assistance levels, and such is the depth of their poverty, that it would cost about £500 millions a year just to relieve the effects on their children. In face of such terrifying facts, the “experts” have no answer.

As we said at the beginning, poverty goes hand in hand with wage slavery at whatever income level. True, not every worker suffers as much as those we have mentioned, but capitalism exerts a downward pressure on all of us and no government can do very much about it. Captured in the phraseology of Townsend (a long-standing Fabian and Labour supporter) the score reads something like this:

It will be one of the supreme paradoxes of history if social inequalities become wider instead of narrower, if poverty becomes more widespread, during the term of office of the present Labour Government. Yet the likelihood of this happening is far from remote.

Enough said.

Eddie Critichfield

Poverty (1967)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty, Socialism and Labour in Power by Peter Townsend (Fabian Society.)

This Fabian tract is based on a lecture given in November 1966 by Professor Peter Townsend of the University of Essex. It gives ample evidence of the existence of poverty—and worse—says absolutely nothing about Socialism and demonstrates the failure of Labour in power.

Reviewing a wide field—income distribution, retired persons, fatherless families, the sick, the unemployed—Townsend examines housing, education and nutrition. “Not only are the numbers of poor large,” he says, “they are almost certainly growing.”

In Townsend’s view, “By the late 1950’s the Labour Party had begun to develop a coherent strategy for dealing with poverty. Of the statements published . . .  before October 1964 the most radical was probably Signposts For the Sixties.” His proposals are similar to Labour’s: increased family allowances are “most urgent”; he wants general pensions and allowances for “the long term sick and those disabled in civil life”; regular state allowances for fatherless families; the end of the “wage stop” in supplementary benefits and earnings related unemployment and sickness schemes.

Leaving aside the matter of why the Labour Party has failed to solve the problem of destitution, let us ask the question; would the complete introduction of their programme—indeed of Professor Townsend’s — abolish poverty, abolish the economic and social problems of the working class? The answer is no.

Poverty is suffered by all workers, to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes it comes as bad housing, malnutrition, inferior schools, inadequate clothing or as fear of what the future holds. These problems, which are unknown to members of the capitalist class, spring from the class division of society.

What has Townsend got to say about this? “Structure determines poverty” — without apparently recognising what that structure is. In 1936 (see The Distribution of National Capital — Daniels and Campion) five per cent of the population owned 80 per cent of the national capital; according to Townsend “Real income re-distribution does not seem to have markedly changed since before the war.” Since the cause of poverty is still there, then, the problem will continue.

Why do different workers suffer different degrees of poverty? All of them have the same problem—of getting the best possible price for their mental and physical energies. If they can’t sell those energies they are unemployed. If they can sell, in the long run their wage is fixed by the value of their labour power. Highly skilled surgeons and erudite professors of sociology are paid more than farm workers and builders' labourers because more effort is needed to produce their particular types of skill.

Workers who suffer extreme poverty —destitution—are those who are unable to work, or whose energies are not in any great demand. Townsend’s solution is to pay lower wages to highly skilled managers and “professional” workers who, he asserts, gain at the expense of the low-wage earners, the children in large families and the sick and disabled.

The short term effect of this can only be, as we said in our pamphlet Beveridge Reorganises Poverty, “a redistribution of misery”. The total poverty of the working class would remain the same. Why does not Townsend suggest rent, interest and profit as a source for redistribution, for increasing low income? Perhaps he recognises these as the source of new capital, so vital to capitalist society.

Townsend does not recognise that the problems of capitalism spring from its basic structure. His tract is but another contribution from one who wants to reform or modify some aspects of capitalism. The only thing to recommend it is the fact that it provides valuable evidence, from a supporter of the Labour Party, that all is not well in Harold Wilson’s heaven. It shows that a Labour government has not eliminated destitution, that “social security” has failed and it supports the case that as long as capitalism lasts poverty will be widespread.

Ken Knight

Poverty and housing (1980)

The Briefing Column from the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Successive governments have taken it upon themselves to tackle the problem of “sub-standard” accommodation for the working class. In 1868, 1875, 1879 and 1882 local authorities were given powers to deal with insanitary property and in the twentieth century, an official housing shortage has been designated. Pious politicians tell us that decent housing is a basic human requirement, but exactly what constitutes “decent housing” is left open to interpretation. We are bombarded with figures telling us that there has been a change in the pattern of occupancy, from 90 per cent rented accommodation in 1914, to 52 per cent owner occupation in 1974. (In that year 17 per cent of homes were privately rented and 31 per cent publicly rented.) Such figures do not take into account that, according to government figures (Social Trends 9), 33,720 people were homeless in 1976; and even these figures only refer to those registered as such with a local authority.

While there is such homelessness, there is much property standing empty — for the only reason that those who are homeless cannot afford access to it. Such people are the victims of the property society in which human needs are subservient to profit-making. For them the 1975 Housing Rents and Subsidies Act offers little comfort, for they do not have the luxury of a rent to pay. They are homeless because of rent arrears incurred, mortgage default, the fact that a landlord has repossessed the property, the loss of a tied property.

But it does not end there, for the accommodation that is occupied, although fulfilling the basic requirement of shelter, offers little more. According to Peter Townsend’s Poverty in the United Kingdom: a Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living, 22 per cent of accommodation suffers from some form of structural defect. 16 per cent of households have no sole use of a toilet and 3 per cent do not have sole use of a sink or wash basin.

His study also points out that 17 per cent of households do not have sole use of a fixed bath or shower and that 4 per cent do not have sole use of a gas or electric cooker. Governments may pay lip service to the problems of poor housing, but the poverty in which capitalism forces the majority of society’s members to live still allows 44 per cent of households to have only one (or even no) room heated in winter, and for 2 per cent to have no electricity for either power or lights. John Wheatley, the Minister for Health in the 1924 Labour Government, dreamed of a garden city in which the working class might live in council accommodation. But in practice council accommodation has offered no more a solution to housing deprivation than the possibility of “home ownership”. Council housing estates are now graded according to their stress factor and those members of society who have least choice of accommodation are often placed in high stress areas.

Absurdly, the working class are prepared to live in the accommodation that capitalism provides, and even go so far as to invent a mythology whereby they can stand proud in the midst of their squalor. The inhabitants of “high status” suburbs look down on the council estates; the inner cities have been deserted by those climbing the social ladder and those inner cities, once “high status” districts themselves, have become areas of multi-occupancy, with their privately rented furnished and unfurnished accommodation. Rather than seeing a common interest between themselves and the other victims of capitalism, they see each other as threats to the standards of living they have achieved.

The only way we can gauge the actual conditions in which we live is to examine the potential that society can offer. The apologist claims that the standard of living has risen, but that does not mean that our position as members of the working class has changed. The property relationships that exist within capitalism deny the working class access to the potential society is capable of creating, and it is only by recognising this fact that we can begin to understand the extent of the poverty in which all members of the working class exist.

Philip Bentley

Workers and parasites (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Colonel and Mrs. Baglie, aged 83 and 66, live in a four-bedroomed, detached house in spacious grounds near Bournemouth. His father had been managing director of a shipping firm and her family were ‘Scottish landed gentry’. They had stocks and shares worth £60,000 and savings worth at least another £30,000. They also owned land and houses in Scotland from which rents were drawn and an unearned income of £3,500 (now equivalent to over £10,000) as well as his army pension. He said, ‘No healthy person need be poor . . . I think the Welfare State has done an awful lot of harm by leading the population to expect the government to do everything for them. It has undermined the feeling of responsibility that a man owes to his family.’’ (Poverty In The United Kingdom by Peter Townsend, Penguin.) 

“A couple in their sixties were evicted from their Leicestershire council house and forced to live rough. Hinkley and Bosworth Borough Council has refused to rehouse them . . . After a working life of 40 years, the man had not worked since May because of a bad back. After their eviction (due to rent arrears and deterioration of property) he lived in a dog kennel for three nights whilst his wife lived in a bus shelter.” (Reported in The Guardian, 8.12.78.) 

“The pursuit of equality is a mirage. What is more desirable and more practicable than the pursuit of equality is the pursuit of equality of opportunity. And opportunity means nothing unless it includes the right to be unequal.” (Margaret Thatcher, 16.9.75.)

Lucky old workers; we’ve got the right to be unequal. As Thatcher and her capitalist friends keep telling us, those who have most to contribute to society are entitled to a bigger share of the social wealth. What would be the point of giving fat incomes to scroungers like nurses, cleaners, doctors, dustmen, typists, farm labourers, social workers and shop assistants? Such inferior beings would only go and waste their money on unnecessary commodities like decent food and adequate shelter. The ones whom Thatcher believes should be more equal than the rest of us are such useful social contributors as high-ranking army officers, managing directors, senile aristocrats and rock stars. After all, where would society be today if Rod Steward hadn’t been paid vast sums of money to give us all the benefit of his permanent sore throat—or if there were no well-paid generals who could devise various ways of blowing us up?

Who are they kidding when they tell us that the capitalist system allows people to consume wealth in accordance with their talents? If the British aristocracy only consumed in accordance with their talents there would be a wave of malnutrition throughout the Stately Homes of England. Under capitalism wealth ownership is not the result of talent or hard work; 32 per cent of land in Britain is owned (or held in trust) by titled families. The largest private landowner in Britain is a man who has so much talent to offer that he has never done a job in his entire life; he is the Duke of Buccleuch who owns 268,000 acres of land, which is approximately equivalent to the landholdings of the National Coal Board. The new Duke of Westminster, who is 27 years old and has reached the staggering intellectual heights of obtaining two ‘O’ levels, owns land worth two billion pounds—that’s two million millions for those readers who employ accountants to add up their wages.

The ownership of immense wealth by a small minority is largely the result of inheritance. So if social privilege is a reward for merit, the only merit which is being referred to is the wisdom of a baby to be born from the womb of a parasite rather than a worker. According to this theory, Princess Anne's son, who will never need to go out and sell his royal labour power, is being rewarded for his initiative, enterprise and intelligence. The fact that he is as yet illiterate and fond of making gargling noises is quite beside the point.

Social parasites

Social parasitism is not confined to the aristocracy. A parasite is an organism which lives by feeding from other live organisms. Such is the position of the entire capitalist class. They can only accumulate capital so long as the majority of people will produce wealth and receive a price for their labour power which is less than the value of their product. The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class is the social equivalent of biological parasitism. But doesn’t it say in the Daily Express that the capitalists get their money and power by hard work? Yes, they get it by our hard work. We make the profits; they take the profits.

What about the so-called self-made-man-the capitalist who has not become wealthy except by employing and exploiting the labour of others. Freddie Laker does not fly his aeroplanes; Jack Cohen did not load the shelves at Tesco; Henry Ford did not build motor cars; Lord Rothermere never contributed a single article to his newspaper. Occasional members of the working class do manage to make their way in to the exploiting class, but they can only ever do so by riding on the backs of their fellow workers. It would be wrong to attack the capitalists for exploiting workers, as under the present system one can only exploit or be exploited. But it is senseless of workers to do the football pools or work like donkeys in the hope that they will one day join the ranks of their own exploiters. Most people are born and die in a class which subjects them to the dictates of the labour market.

Why poverty?

When our leaders tell us that the rich are being rewarded for their abilities they are also telling us something else: that the poor are deprived because of their talentlessness, stupidity and indolence. According to a survey carried out by the Rowntree Trust in 1967- 8, 9 per cent of the population of Britain (nearly 5 million people) are living below the official standard of poverty. Peter Townsend’s informative book on Poverty in the United Kingdom suggests that if a more appropriate “relative deprivation” standard is adopted, and if account is taken of the increased poverty generated by capitalism’s latest crisis, 26 per cent of the population (14 million people) could be said to be living in poverty. That is not to mention the many millions of people in the world for whom poverty means little or no food to eat, inadequate clothing and shelter, and the absence of any security. To attribute the reasons for such poverty to the inferiority of the impoverished is an insult to the working class.

Capitalism causes poverty because it limits workers’ access to wealth. Wages and salaries determine how much members of the working class can eat, where we can live, and every other aspect of our social existence. Under the wages system all workers are impoverished in the sense that we are denied ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution.

The only way to end poverty is to abolish classes and this can only happen when what is now the property of private capitalists or the state is transferred to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole community.

In socialist society there will be no more capitalists. What will become of them? Perhaps a few will put a gun to their own heads at the prospect of a world without cringing employees and debutantes’ balls. Others will conform to the new social order and may even realise the benefit of doing so. If capitalists do not like being dispossessed of their ownership of the means of life it will be too bad, for once the workers have decided in a majority to establish a new social system, the political sensitivities of redundant Queens, disgruntled Dukes and wet-eyed millionaires will not count for much.

Steve Coleman

Inquest on the last Labour government (1972)

Book Review from the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour and Inequality. Sixteen Fabian essays. Edited by Peter Townsend and Nicholas Bosanquet. Hardback £3.50, Paperback £2.20.

There have been four periods of Labour government in this country—1923-4, 1929-31, 1945-51, and 1964-70.

Each one has ended with internal dissension and disappointment, and rejection by the electorate, and each has been followed by inquests to find out what went wrong and proposals to do better next time. For some groups in the Labour Party the explanation is always the simple one that they had the wrong leader. This book does not belong in that category. It is a detailed examination by sixteen “experts”, often a highly complicated technical examination, of Labour government policies in different fields, the effects of those policies and in general their failure to produce the results expected. The essays are grouped under three main headings: The Social Services; Inequality in Income, Wealth and Status; and Human Rights and Social Planning.

The editors admit that this book will not bring much joy to members of the Labour Party:-

In many ways this is a critical book. While noting the achievements, most of the authors have failed to find evidence of marked changes in the direction of fulfilling socialist objectives. Their analyses present a gloomy picture. They confirm the inability of the government to use its power on behalf of the weaker members of the community.

Of course when the authors write of the Labour Party’s “socialist objectives” they do not at all mean the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. What they have in mind is broadly the promise to eliminate extreme poverty and secure a greater degree of equality which featured in the Labour Party’s declaration of policy adopted forty four years ago (Labour and the New Social Order, 1918).

That 1918 declaration is of particular interest because it placed on record the Labour Party’s determination to deal with the inequality of wealth ownership. It referred to “the one-tenth of the population which owns nine-tenths of the riches of the United Kingdom”, and promised a "revolution in national finance” to remedy it. The present book examines what the last Labour government did about wealth ownership. The author is Michael Meacher, member of Parliament for Oldham West and formerly lecturer in social administration at York University and the LSE.

He quotes what he says has been a widely accepted estimate of less unequal wealth ownership, and refers to the belief that inequality is on the decline, commenting "Both assumptions are open to extreme doubt”.

He examines several calculations of wealth ownership and argues that they are seriously inaccurate because, among other reasons, they do not allow for the extensive evasion of estate duties payable on death—“Capital has not been taxed away, it has been hidden away”.

Of various methods of estimating the degree of inequality of ownership he thinks that used by the Economist is “perhaps more reliable”. This estimate, related to the year 1959-60, showed one per cent of taxpayers owning 40 per cent of total wealth, two per cent owning 55 per cent, and seven per cent owning 84 per cent. “Indeed the richest tenth of one per cent was actually found to own 13 per cent of total wealth, a sum of £7,033 millions, representing an average fortune of rather over one-third of a million each”.

While not in exactly the same form as the 1918 figures it is clear that little if any change has occurred in half a century and Meacher doubts if any change is going on now.

Two indications of the uselessness of Labour attempts to improve capitalism are mentioned in the book: male unemployment doubled under the last Labour government and in April 1970 5 per cent of men and 55 per cent of women had earnings under £15 per week.

The book quotes from a statement made in 1934 by the late Professor Tawney about “the degeneration of Socialist parties on assuming office” (by “Socialist” he of course meant Labour). He meant their failure to carry out their declared intentions. About the same time the leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, in his book The Will and the Way to Socialism, claimed that the Labour Party believed in “the abolition of classes and in an equalitarian society”. He explained clearly what he meant by equality. Under Labour government there would be “no little cottages and no large private houses. All would be reasonably well housed” and there would, for example, be no government subsidising of “luxury living for millionaires” because there would be no millionaires.

Attlee was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951, and Wilson from 1964 to 1970. Attlee’s pledge should be read in comparison with what the present authors have to say about housing and the inequality of wealth.

Edgar Hardcastle