Storymania - Benefit Cutting For Dummies by Colin Baker

Benefit Cutting For Dummies
Colin Baker

When the giant Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed in the autumn of 2008, it symbolised the beginning of a global downturn in the fortunes of capital. Here in Britain, and in the wake of pouring hundreds of billions of pounds sterling into the country's failing financial sector to save it from catastrophe, the UK's coalition government has been taking unprecedented measures since 2010, to slash its welfare spending and reduce the national debt. Top of the government's list is the cutting of various state benefits including unemployment, housing and sickness payments. Ironically, such policies are also affecting not only the unemployed and the disabled / sick, but also millions of low-paid workers, dependent as many now are on child and working tax credits to top up their painfully low incomes. In his recent autumn statement, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne announced yet more public spending cuts as well as placing a cap of 1 per cent on increases to benefit spending until 2016. In real-terms, this cap equates to further cuts in people's benefits. These most recent policies it is hoped, will save the state a further �5.8 billion over the next four years.

To justify its overt rounding on welfare recipients, the government argues both explicitly and implicitly that many job-seekers are lazy, work-shy and / or fraudulently claiming public money, while many disabled and sick claimants so the argument goes, are in fact fit for work. No doubt to soften up the public psyche, such attitudes have been freely disseminated in the mainstream right-wing press in recent months and years. For example, journalist Roy Liddle not too long ago urged all Sunday Times readers to do the following; "Next time you see a young person in a wheelchair, tip it over and drag the occupant down to the nearest jobcentre, lecturing him or her all the while, on the dignity of labour." Liddle also suggested, this time in the Sun newspaper, that many people in Britain are "�pretending to be disabled". Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, has argued that many in receipt of disability living allowance are merely festering. Nor do the sick fare any better. Thus, in 2010, the Daily Mail headline read "76 per cent of those who say they're sick 'can work'." Then there's the unemployed. Iain Duncan Smith it was again, who asserted that any significant increase in unemployment benefit rates would mean that the unemployed would be less minded to try and find a job. In other words it will make them more lazy than they already are. Similarly, Employment Minister Mark Hoban once claimed that "choosing a life on benefits when you're able to work is not an option".

Given this context of drip-feeding such 'news' to the wider public, we should not be too surprised to learn that a 2011 poll conducted by the National Centre for Social Research declared that 54 per cent of respondents believed that unemployment benefits were too high and / or discouraged unemployed people from looking for work. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll published in early 2012, found that almost 70 per cent of respondents believed that Britain's welfare system fosters a culture of dependency. These more recent findings tend to mirror an earlier study published in 2009 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Fabian Society, one conclusion of which, was that people's perceptions of benefit claimants were largely negative (seen as the undeserving poor) while perceptions of hard working, low-paid people were generally the reverse (seen as the deserving poor).

No doubt an insignificant minority, and for all sorts of complicated reasons, try their hardest to remain registered as unemployed / disabled / sick. Maybe a few even make fraudulent claims. But this is manifestly not the case as far as the majority is concerned. Nor for that matter, does it necessarily follow that a generous welfare state encourages people to somehow opt out of work all together. Take this latter point first of all. A very interesting study published in 2009, found that generous levels of welfare provision do not encourage greater levels of unemployment. Indeed, report author, Stockholm University's assistant professor of sociology Ingrid Esser, found exactly the opposite. "Employment commitment is decidedly stronger within more generous welfare states." Moreover, Esser's report clearly showed that unemployed people in the thirteen countries studied, cited various barriers preventing them from finding work such as the real lack of job vacancies, inadequate childcare provision, inadequate state / local authority help (and not simply monetary) and other factors besides. In other words, such unemployed people were far from consciously choosing to live life on the dole. Rather, real barriers were functioning to hamper their various efforts to better their lives.

In the mainstream press and media here in Britain, hardly a day goes by without someone overtly stating, or else implying that the unemployed are lazy or else scrounging off the tax-payer. However, such claims can easily be exposed as largely mythical. In early 2009 for example, the Trades Union Congress published findings relating to the number of jobseekers applying for each vacancy. On average, 10 people competed for each job offer and this rose to a high of 60 applicants per vacancy in more economically depressed areas. In early 2012, research by totaljobs.com found the rate to be even higher, between 15 and 20 competitors per job vacancy, rising to around 50 per vacancy in more 'competitive' areas. Thus, and despite the overall unemployment rate rising by barely 0.1 per cent in the past two years, there are almost double the amount of people chasing each job today, compared to two years ago. For sure, a minority of applicants included in these average statistics will already be employed and perhaps looking for a second income. This is even more likely nowadays given the recently highlighted rate of underemployment in the UK. But most applicants I would suggest, are certainly unemployed and claiming benefit. Think about it then. Would we truly witness such competition if the unemployed were overtly lazy and / or mere scroungers as the government and media relentlessly argue? The root causes of unemployment are not subjective but structural.

A few other prevailing myths about welfare recipients also deserve a mention. For example, and one may be forgiven for thinking otherwise, rates of benefit fraud in Britain are at best, negligible. By the Department of Work and Pension's own estimate, overall fraudulent benefit claims in 2010 / 11 stood at around 2.2 per cent while for 2011 / 12, the figure was lower, at 2 per cent. Given these figures are official government statistics, it is reasonable to assume that they have been exaggerated. Likewise with unemployed single mothers, a Demos study found that a majority have ambitions way beyond that of simply collecting state benefits each week. Many for example wish to save to better their circumstances along with those of their children. However, this is all but impossible when the state forces such people to live almost hand-to-mouth.

Given the weight of evidence existing to plainly contradict the view that many benefit claimants are a bunch a lazy scroungers, responsible for their own plight, why does the government continue to peddle such myths? To understand why this is, we first need to realise that a fundamental characteristic of people's historically evolving social relations to-date, is that they have been both indispensable, yet also independent of their will. They are obviously indispensable because without them, the people in question would perish. More importantly, they are independent of their will because no society based on private ownership of the instruments and material means of production can consciously and collectively decide before hand, what form of social organisation to adopt. On the contrary, throughout history, different social forms have arisen and subsequently established themselves in an utterly natural and spontaneous manner. The upshot of this natural and spontaneous evolution is that people come to regard their specific, dominant pattern of social organisation along with their various institutions, as being in the very nature of things.

More specifically then, people tend to think of the state as a neutral institution which has existed forever, and which functions to meet everybody's material and cultural needs. However, this belief is false. The story of human history to-date has chiefly been one of exploitation and antagonistic class conflict. In reality therefore, the state necessarily exists to maintain the privileges and material conditions associated with the ruling, minority class of the day. In contemporary Britain, this means that the state is capitalist in character. In these circumstances, truth is what works from a ruling class point of view. Pragmatism rules supreme, hence the endless stream of lies about benefit claimants in the press. For their part, and whether they realise it or not, a majority of British MPs quite cheerfully fulfil the collective ideological role of intellectual representatives of the capitalist class. They do so not only because they believe their economic pattern to be in the very nature of things, but also because their material and cultural needs are fully met within the confines of such a system. Therefore, and in the context of the worst global recession in human history, it is simply common sense for the government here in Britain to devote less money to non-profitable activities like paying benefits, and instead direct it towards more capital-friendly ventures, including business subsidies, tax breaks and so on. Moreover, precisely because they function as representatives of a minority ruling class, politicians and others of similar persuasion are always logically obliged to universalise their largely untrue or distorted policies and arguments, to make them relevant to society as a whole. This is why MPs say things like 'if only we can get the lazy unemployed back to work, the whole country will benefit'. Or 'the disabled need to be helped into work so that they can contribute to the economy like the rest of us'. Or things like 'we all want to stop the disabled from simply festering'. Without such a universal content and greatly aided by the media, Parliament would never win sufficient country-wide support for its present benefit-slashing policies.

In this context, politicians may or may not consciously set out to deliberately mislead people. For example, I have no idea for certain whether Chancellor George Osborne and his political allies realise that unemployment is actually a structural problem, that benefit fraud is really insignificant and that many disabled people are genuinely unfit for work. If they do, then they are consciously setting out to mislead people. However, one thing George Osborne et al. undoubtedly believe in, is the eternal existence of the capitalist order. For such politicians, any significant departure from it would signify the onset of anarchy and chaos. This reified, ahistorical, and plainly mistaken assumption is nonetheless simply accepted as absolute truth. If anyone doubts this, just think back to the prison sentences meted out by Britain's judiciary to those found guilty of rioting in London last summer. Thus, even if our politicians are consciously lying about the plight of benefit claimants in Britain today, such deliberate acts of deception are still underpinned by a system of self-deception. For such people fail, or else refuse to understand that capitalism is a transient phenomenon, that it is necessarily decaying and that an acute contradiction now exists throughout its global form between on the one hand, the social character of its productive techniques, and on the other, the on-going private appropriation of its socially produced wealth.

It is undoubtedly true of course that most exploited working people in Britain at present, also currently believe that capitalism is the be-all and end-all of human existence and that their interests are best served by daily toiling for this economic order. Moreover, ruling class propaganda which is always expressed in a universal form, daily functions to further cripple any inklings of critical thought. However, unlike the capitalist class and its representatives, a majority of working people have to concretely struggle on a daily basis to meet their own material and cultural needs not least because they are poorly paid or worse, on benefits! They slowly become conscious of the fact that the interests of capitalists are for the most part, diametrically opposed to those of their own and that they are merely being exploited to meet the requirements of capital. However, lacking a sound scientific theory to help them understand their current plight, the best they can do is lash out aimlessly at the powers-that-be. However, it is reasonable to assume that if enough working people are exposed to the teachings of Marxist theory, this would no doubt dispel many false beliefs presently entertained by such people. It would also make clear to them the political task that they alone must now embrace, if humankind is to progressively advance once more. Perhaps then, politics would come to be seen as a means to an end rather than is presently the case, an end in itself. For unlike the interests of the minority capitalist class, the supplanting of the present economic order does not stand to contradict the interests of the present fallen majority.

The on-going cuts to benefits pursued by the current coalition government here in the UK are utterly draconian, and sole-destroying for many of those affected. There is plenty of evidence available to contradict the myths that benefit claimants are scroungers, lazy or else actually fit for work when in fact they are not. By pursuing such policies, UK politicians, all of whom view capitalism as an eternal feature of human existence, are doing everything they deem to be necessary, in order to raise a sick capital from its knees once more. The essential immediate and medium-term aim of our politicians in this regard, is to reduce wasteful public expenditure as they see it on things like benefit payments and instead use the money to encourage and subsidise private growth. The illusion of such socio-economic permanency and the savage policies flowing from such false beliefs (especially during times of crisis) are unlikely to be dispelled from the minds of those, whose interests are so closely bound up with the minority exploiting class. However, and although a majority of working people also currently think of capitalism as something permanent, it is my belief that a programme of mass education aimed at raising the scientific consciousness of such people, would almost certainly play a fundamental role in re-educating their revolutionary perceptions.