From: dave-AT-skatta.demon.co.uk
Subject: Welfare Cuts Leaflets (2/3) (eng)
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 03:36:34 GMT


THE WELFARE STATE ISN'T NOW, AND NEVER WAS, A GENUINE GAIN FOR THE
WORKING CLASS

THE OPPRESSIVE REALITY OF IT IS ALL TOO OBVIOUS TO THOSE IN RECEIPT OF
ITS 'BENEFITS'.

If nothing else, the Fowler proposals for reforming the Social
Security system show what a pack of bastards the present government
are. In response to them the Labour party and TUC are encouraging us
to campaign to defend the Welfare State. Do they take us for complete
idiots ?

The Fowler proposals are not, as claimed, a fundamental reform of the
Welfare State. They merely aim to rationalise it to meet the changed
reality of mass unemployment, and deepen the divisions within the
working class. So aside from half-hearted efforts to tidy up the
accumulated mess of conflicting benefits and regulations, and to end
the 'poverty trap', they are intended to reduce provision for 'the
poor'. This is being done to increase their dependency, force them to
devote their energies to surviving rather than revolting, and frighten
the rest of the working class with the threat of the 'abyss' of
poverty. The poor are to be more visibly separated from the relatively
well off---those with jobs and average wages. These are supposed to
form the 'home-owning two-car-owning share-owning democracy' which the
Tories see as a vital bulwark against resistance to the redistribution
of wealth back to the ruling class. This much is obvious to anyone
with eyes to see.

Less obvious to many who can see this much is that the Welfare State
isn't now and never was a "genuine gain for the working class". Even
less is it something we should be fighting to defend. The oppressive
reality of the Welfare State is all too obvious to those in receipt of
its 'benefits'. The appalling misery of old age on inadequate
pensions. The endless bureaucratic swamp of Housing Benefit and public
housing provision. The arrogance of the medical and social work
priesthoods. The inhuman nightmare of the Social Security system---and
so on.

Yet many still think that their experience isn't a reflection of the
nature and function of the Welfare State, but is simply the result of
'problems' and deformations which would only take a few reforms to
sort out. This sort of misapprehension has been played on by the
Labour Party and the left throughout the history of the Welfare State.
They present themselves as the Progressive Forces which alone will
sort out these 'problems' and defend these 'gains'. This campaign is
yet another attempt to mobilise 'our people' into voting Labour at the
next election.

Today these 'problems' are blamed on the Tory cuts and Tory
monetarism. We're not supposed to remember that it was the
Wilson/Callaghan governments which started the cuts and first adopted
monetarist policies.

The Welfare State is just the contemporary face of the capitalist
state. If it offers all kinds of services and financial
support---things that we need to survive---it doesn't do this because
WE need them but because capitalism needs us to have them in order for
IT to survive. We shouldn't be surprised if capitalism "snatches back"
benefits or imposes new conditions for granting them as its priorities
change. It is only able to 'service' our needs because capitalist
society has developed through destroying our opportunities for doing
so ourselves.

The modern British Welfare State evolved over many decades as
individual capitalists were slowly brought to accept the need to
control the wider social conditions within which their profits were
produced. Because they need an educated, healthy workforce. Workers
who are motivated through a sense of having a stake in society, and
are not motivated by the anger generated through complete
dispossession and destitution. On the other hand they need to directly
intervene in order to shape and dominate eve greater areas of social
life and promote the spread of capitalist social relations to every
part of society.

The Beveridge Report was just a high point in the development of the
modern capitalist state, in its evolution as a framework within which
workers and their dependants were simultaneously compelled and enticed
towards becoming Citizens. People who are economically 'free' (in
other words, free to sell their time and creative activity to
capitalists), but who have a material stake---however small---in the
order of things. Something to vote for, something to lose. But at the
same time, people who are dominated and influenced to an extent
unprecedented in human history.

Labour see this stake being developed through democratic participation
and extended social ownership and control : the Tories see the stake
arising from democratic participation in extended personal property
ownership or control (through credit). Both are tied to the Welfare
State, however welfare is to be doled out. The reality is that 56% of
the adult population receive their main income from the state. 14
million through pensions and other benefits, 7 and a half million
through state employment (including the administration of the Welfare
State).

******************************************

Today, left-wing squealing about the attack on Beveridge is part of a
whole mythology concerning the 1945 Labour government. This is held up
to us as the model of Socialism in Action, since the left want us to
forget the socialism in action of the Wilson and Callaghan years.
Let's look at some of these myths.

The Attlee government agreed to the atom bomb being dropped on
Hiroshima eleven days after it took office, and subsequently initiated
Britain's independent nuclear capability. It used troops against
strikers on numerous occasions (the first time a mere six days after
it took office). During the War for Democracy against the rival German
imperialism, Labour members of the coalition government had been
instrumental in the passing of draconian anti-strike laws, with the
collaboration of the trade unions. The Attlee administration was still
using them as late as 1951.1t repeatedly used military force to help
make countries Safe for Western Democracy (Indonesia, Palestine,
Greece, Egypt etcetera), as well as to police the Empire. Involving
among many other instances of Socialist Internationalism the aerial
bombing of Indian villages and the massacre of strikers by police in
Nigeria. At home, it maintained a wage freeze exactly like subsequent
Labour governments and as part of that openly used its new welfare
provisions to subsidise and thus maintain low pay. (For example
through Family Allowances, another Beveridge innovation which the
Labour Party had opposed before the war). It even introduced the first
Health Service charges after promising not to ...

The Fowler proposals are presented as an attack on Beveridge--- what
rubbish! Beveridge's proposed system was overturned by events years
ago, and the principles behind Fowler's review are all to be found in
the Beveridge report. The basis of the Beveridge plan was National
Insurance against sickness and unemployment based on workers' and
employers' contributions. Social Security, then called National
Assistance, was seen as a safety net for those who had no contribution
record in the scheme's early years. The idea was that it would largely
'wither away'. In reality today, Supplementary Benefit is claimed by
more than twice as many people as those claiming Sickness and
Unemployment Benefit put together.

Women were to be forced back into the family, and those who were
married were not covered by the National Insurance scheme except as
dependants. The costs of child care were obviously not met by the
insurance scheme, so Beveridge proposed Family Allowances for mothers
of two or more children as a universal benefit without contributions
or means testing.

"Taken as a whole, the Plan for Social Security puts a premium on
marriage...In the next thirty years housewives and mothers have vital
work to do in ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race
and of British ideals in the world."
The Beveridge Report ("Social Insurance and Allied Services") para.
117.

The basis of the New Order was to be 'full employment in a free
society'---full employment for male breadwinners, that is, who were
expected to be able to bring home a family wage. In this way,
Beveridge laid the basis for reinforcing the burden of dependency,
unpaid labour and unequal access to benefits on women. This burden has
never been significantly lifted by subsequent governments. For the
Labour Party to criticise Fowler for increasing it is no more than the
pot calling the kettle black.

Because Beveridge was concerned not to undermine the incentive to
work, benefits were set at subsistence levels and were either means
tested or conditional on the recipients seeking work. Low benefits
were also intended to encourage individuals to take out private
insurance (Beveridge Report para. 375)---another way in which Fowler
is proposing to return to the authentic spirit of Beveridge.

In practice, the Beveridge plan was not fully implemented, and the
changing needs of capitalism have long since led to fundamental
modifications to his structure. The emergence of Supplementary Benefit
as the principal form of state welfare, together with the persistence
of low pay and the return of mass unemployment deepened the
unemployment trap (people being better off on benefit and losing any
incentive to work). Attempts were made to counter this through a range
of new means-tested benefits, mostly introduced by Conservative
governments. They include Education Benefits, Housing Benefits and
=46amily Income Supplement, and were be available to the low-paid as
well as the unemployed. However this solution to one problem merely
exacerbated another---the 'poverty trap', where increases in pay for
the low paid simply meant a loss of benefit, and didn't increase
income.

The Labour Party response to this problem was the introduction of
various earnings-related supplements to some National Insurance
benefits, paid for by increased contributions. This was largely to
maintain Labour support amongst the male breadwinning caste, as
growing redundancies accompanied industrial restructuring in the
sixties. It was a fundamental departure from Beveridge, which implied
equal state insurance for all. The Tories have abolished
Earnings-Related NI Supplement, and now are talking about abolishing
State Earnings-Related Pensions. They are quite happy to maintain the
principle of unequal treatment through Selective Targeting. (This is
the 'shifting of resources to where they are most needed' : it implies
the abandonment of the notion of a welfare 'safety net' or a minimum
standard of living, in favour of the notion of 'cost-effective'
welfare, and also increases the scope for further cuts).

*******************************************

On this march we are being urged that our "campaign of opposition must
be even more determined" than this "savage and determined assault on
the Welfare State". In reality we are being invited to use the issue
to campaign for a Labour government. How savage and determined an
opposition to these reforms would this be? The Labour Party has yet to
publish its policy on Social Security, but according to Michael
Meacher, the Shadow Health and Social Services Secretary, three
resolutions passed at the Labour Party Conference form the basis of a
full-scale programme to rebuild the Welfare State. They included a
proposal to raise pensions to 50% of average earnings for married
couples through the reintroduction of SERPS, a substantial increase in
Child Benefit, the end of means testing for Supplementary Benefit and
a new Housing Aid Benefit. These are no more than a redistribution of
the Welfare Cake.

This must be seen in the context of Kinnock's recent announcement that
an incoming Labour government could offer no miracle cures or instant
repairs to the damage done by government cuts in the last six years.
"We would not offer you such a mirage". In the same way the pledges to
reduce unemployment to a million that Labour campaigned on at the last
election have been publicly scrapped. The party clearly hopes that
this display of the New Realism will make it credible. By the same
token, even if the Welfare State were worth fighting for voting Labour
would still be pretty pointless.

Many of course will be voting Labour in the hope that a more radical
set of proposals can be won at conference and forced on the
leadership. This is sheer fantasy. Labour will win with Kinnock or not
at all and he has already shown what he intends to do with resolutions
which he considers electoral liabilities. The Social Security system
is mined with plenty of potential electoral booby-traps as the Tories
are now discovering with their proposal to end SERPS. Meacher caused a
similar row with an unauthorised suggestion about removing married
men's tax allowances. We can rule out fundamental reform unless a
dramatic change in British capitalism compels it. And we can be sure
that such reforms will not be to benefit us.

This campaign is intended to link up with Labour Party campaigns on
the National Health Service, Community Care, Housing and the Family
which will run until the next election. For Labour, welfare is to be
the main election issue. So clearly this campaign isn't seriously
intended to resist the present proposals. The main horse-trading about
=46owler's plan is taking place now. By the time the Bill is produced,
supposedly November, it will be all over bar any minor concessions and
revisions as it goes through parliament Not even the most naive can
still believe that this government will be prevented from implementing
its plans by any consideration except electoral expediency. Complaints
>from middle-class Tory voters about pension reform and Housing Benefit
cuts, and the opposition of the pension companies to universal private
insurance are likely to count for something. The implications for the
poor count for nothing though welfare lobby crocodile tears might
extract a few 'concessions'. Perhaps increased resources for the new
Social Fund or a slightly different balance of winners and losers in
the distribution of benefits. But let's not all touch forelocks at
once.

Is this campaign irrelevant to resistance to these changes? On the
contrary, it's quite instrumental. Instrumental, that is, in the
process of disarming any spontaneous outbreak of doing the necessary.
It achieves this by generating fears rather than understanding, fears
for which the only solutions on offer are to vote Labour, and defend
the welfare lobby who can then continue to explain our new 'rights' to
us. By monopolising the public space for debate campaigns like this
make effective solidarity harder.

***************************************

What does genuine resistance spring from ? It's necessary to recognise
that resistance to the Welfare State has been there from the start. In
the past this has sometimes taken political forms (for example, before
the First World War there were campaigns against the Unemployment
Insurance Act). Today the political arena is dominated by the left,
which only wishes to modify the form, not the content, of capitalist
welfarism. But at the deepest level this resistance stems from
peoples' real needs and circumstances, and takes practical forms. Mass
unemployment and growing poverty mean that more people than ever have
no option but to lie, fiddle, steal and moonlight their way to
sufficient income---alongside those who have never had inhibitions
about doing this.

=46owler's proposals are calculated to make this more difficult, and in
the long term, to shift Social Security staff from administrating to
policing claims. In these circumstances people need information about
the proposed changes to allow them to decide their future strategy for
doing whatever they have to in order to survive. They are confronted
today by bafflingly complex arguments within the welfare lobby and
inaccurate scare-stories from the Labour bandwagon. In either case,
this disinformation goes hand-in-hand with open disapproval of
'illegality' and the idea that solidarity means everyone crawling
hand-in-hand up Capital's backside. As the real content of Fowler's
proposals are revealed later this year, it will be necessary to
circulate useable information about them as widely as possible

Resistance at the everyday level is constant within capitalist society
and the localised forms it takes has obvious parallels with the
current state of workplace class struggle. The aftermath of the
miners' strike has seen the number of strikes reduced. Not, as the
left would have it, because people have been frightened into
submission, but because they are not prepared to strike when they
cannot see it achieving results. By contrast, other forms of workplace
resistance have increased. Absenteeism, for example, has jumped to
record levels. The highest rates are among manual workers in general
services and manufacturing, and regionally in the North of England ---
precisely those areas where New Realism was supposed to have bitten
those still in work the deepest.

Trade union sponsorship of this campaign is understandable in this
context. The current reluctance to strike is also due to a realistic
perception by workers of the unions' function in maintaining
capitalist order, and of the inadequacy of union-organised 'unity'.
This state of affairs will go on until workers begin to develop a
unity of their own

If everyday resistance is constant, it still does no more than sustain
our survival. In the long run, the only way of eliminating the need
for survival and resistance would be to overthrow capitalist society
and replace it with a society where needs and their satisfaction
weren't separated by systems of private property and exchange. That's
not on the horizon today. It would require widespread and large-scale
collective struggles offering a serious challenge to all of the
divisions and alienation of capitalist society. In the meantime
everyday struggle is the ground on which discontent with this society,
and new forms of collectivity based on that discontent, can develop

But to pretend that this will be the inevitable result of increased
misery would be stupid. Just as pronounced, is the tendency towards an
increased atomisation and isolation of working class people. What we
can be confident about is that increased poverty and any
rationalisation of the system of policing it as implied in Fowler's
scheme, will only increase the need for people to act more
collectively in order to survive. On the other hand, increased
alienation, far from bolstering capitalism's grip will undermine the
basic social co-operation necessary for capitalist accumulation.

The beginnings of collective struggle can be seen in the organised
harassment of Social Security investigation teams, in fighting
hospital closures, and most visibly---if also most briefly---in riots
and near-riots.

We believe that the only solution to poverty, oppression, exploitation
and social division lies in destroying any form of society which
perpetuates and institutionalises them. We believe in the need to
develop more effective forms of collective and individual resistance
and attack. That can't be done by fighting to defend the Welfare
State. Its more likely to occur in the course of resisting and
opposing it.

WHAT THE WELFARE STATE NEEDS IS A KICK IN THE TENTACLES.




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