From the Resolution Foundation comes a report on stagflation Britain.

This they say has resulted in:

Real wages grew by 33 per cent a decade from 1970 to 2007, but have flatlined since, costing the average worker £10,700 per year in lost wage growth.

Income inequality in the UK is higher than any other large European country.

Low growth and high inequality means typical households in Britain are 9 per cent poorer than their French counterparts, while our low-income families are 27 per cent poorer.

9 million young workers have never worked in an economy with sustained average wage rises, and millennials are half as likely to own a home, and twice as likely to rent privately, as their parents’ generation.

Half of shift workers in Britain receive less than a week’s notice of their working hours or schedules.

UK companies have invested 20 per cent less than those in the US, France and Germany since 2005, placing Britain in the bottom 10 per cent of OECD countries, and costing the economy 4 per cent of GDP.

Having averaged 33 per cent of GDP in the first two decades of this century, the tax take is now on course to rise over 4 percentage points by 2027-28: equivalent to £4,200 per household.

The Resolution Foundation offers this Fabian solution:

Britain must build on its strengths as the second biggest services exporter in the world, behind only the US, while protecting the place of its high value manufacturing in European supply chains.

Our cities should be centres for Britain’s thriving high-value service industries. But instead, all England’s biggest cities outside London have productivity levels below the national average.

Public investment in the average OECD country is nearly 50 per cent higher than in the UK. Tackling this legacy, alongside the net zero transition, requires public investment to rise to 3 per cent of GDP.

British managers too rarely invest for the long-term. Pressure for change should come from more engaged owners – a smaller number of far larger pensions funds – and from workers on boards.

Hospitality represents a higher share of consumption in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, because it is relatively cheap. Better pay for low earners in hospitality, paid for by higher prices that most affect better off households, will create a more equal UK.

Benefit levels have not kept pace with prices: cuts since 2010 have reduced the incomes of the poor by almost £3,000 a year. Shared prosperity means benefits rising with wages.

A rising tax burden should not just fall on earnings, but should be shouldered by other sources of income and wealth. Wealth has risen from three to over seven times national income since the 1980s.

Higher growth and higher taxes are needed to raise investment, rescue public services, and repair public finances. Higher investment should be funded by higher savings at home, not borrowing from abroad.

https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/ending-stagnation/

There’s no reason to doubt that the people at Resolution Foundation are well-meaning intelligent folk. However, how have they not realised that sticking plaster solutions on the open wounds of capitalism are not the answer to the ills of the British, and global, working class? It’s simple. It’s Socialism.

The Competitions and Markets Authority has found that within the groceries sector of capitalist sector of British capitalism, ‘Some branded suppliers have pushed up prices by more than their costs increased.’

‘ Across the food and groceries sector, the CMA found that high inflation has been driven largely by rising input costs, particularly for energy and key agricultural inputs like fertiliser. But the evidence collected by the CMA indicates that, over the last 2 years, around three-quarters of branded suppliers in products such as infant formula, baked beans, mayonnaise, and pet food have increased their unit profitability and, in doing so, have contributed to higher food price inflation.’

Surprise, surprise as Cilla used to say.

However, own label products often provide cheaper alternatives with suppliers of these products earning lower profit margins and competing to win and retain contracts from retailers. In all but one of the relevant product categories the CMA looked at, as food prices have risen, many consumers have switched away from brands towards own label alternatives, or reduced their consumption, leading to a decline in brands’ market shares and profits. This switching is positive for competition and allows those able to switch, to lessen the impact of high food price inflation. ‘

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-sets-out-autumn-update-in-review-of-competition-in-groceries-sector

Howzabout a system of society where where free goods and services are produced for use not profit and the only competition would between producers trying their hardest to improve the quality of their goods and services for all of society.

There are many examples across the world, including the United Kingdom, of the truth of the maxim, ‘To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.’ The latest example comes from South Korea.

They have utilised their National Security Act, against a 68 year old citizen and jailed him for fourteen months. He apparently has previously fallen foul of this Act three times previously.

His heinous crime? Writing a poem, Means of Unification, which praised North Korea. Under the Act this is verboten.

The BBC reports that he said that ‘ if the two Korea’s were united under Pyongyang’s socialist system, people would get free housing, healthcare and education. Everyone would have a job and fewer people would live in debt and commit suicide.

On the surface this would seem to be the use of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Free expression is permitted but not if you say something we don’t like.

Lee Yoon-seop would appear to be somewhat of an idealist, but a misguided one in this case. North Korea is, nor ever has been, a socialist society. Enough is known about the conditions the working class have to endure in that country and about its ruler to warrant further comment.

If NK were a socialist society, note, despite what Stalin maintained there cannot be socialism in one country alone, then free housing, healthcare and education would certainly be available to everyone. The suicide rate would, hopefully, be dramatically decreased. There would be no debt because socialism is a money free, wage free society where quality goods and services will be produced for use, not profit. Many jobs which are ‘necessary’ under capitalism, or state capitalism, would no longer be needed.

The North Korean authorities must have liked the positive spin of the poem on their society because it won a NK poetry competition in 2016.

It can easily be surmised that NK has much more stringent National Security Acts and the ‘punishment’ for, shall we say criticising that system, or even praising capitalism, would be much worse than the deprivation of liberty for fourteen months.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67540211

Note: the original source for this story quoted the Korea Herald but this writer has been unable to find this item on the Herald’s website.

Horatio Nelson hoisted this signal on his flagship, HMS Victory on October 21, 1805 before the battle of Trafalgar began: ‘England expects every man to do his duty.’

It’s not known if the chief secretary to the Treasury, Laura Trott, sees herself cast in the same mould as Nelson. Visual images of her do not demonstrate any shortage of limbs. Unlike Dud she would certainly satisfy Pete’s  criteria for the playing of Tarzan.

Ms Trott, whatever affiliations she may or not believe she possesses along with Nelson is now, however, invoking the famous exhortation although the British seamen wounded were not expected consequently to work from home.

Ms Trott said: ‘Of course there should be support for people to help them into work but ultimately there is a duty on citizens if they are able to go out to work they should. Those who can work and contribute should contribute.’

She’s also quoted as saying, ‘ we’re going to put the right mechanisms around you to help you with that. But ultimately, you have to engage with that, and that is an obligation on you as a citizen to do this. And if you don’t do this, we will look at sanctions.’

It’s not reported yet whether she has used Horatio to “shame” disabled people; look what he could do and he only had one arm and one eye! Don’t hold your breath. It will come.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/21/disabled-people-work-from-home-laura-trott-benefits

The message, or should that be threat, is underlined on the official GOV.UK website: ‘Stricter benefit sanctions will also be enforced by the Department for Work and Pensions for people who are able to work but refuse to engage with their Jobcentre or take on work offered to them. Benefit claimants who continue to refuse to engage with the Jobcentre will face having their claim closed. The latest published data shows that there were 300,000 people who had been unemployed for over a year in the three months to July.’

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/employment-support-launched-for-over-a-million-people

There is of courses no reason at all why people who are are termed ‘disabled’, a very wide ranging term, should not participate in society in whichever way they see fit. Coercion, from whichever direction it comes does not go well with anyone whatever their ‘status’.

Unfortunately, the vast majority have a perception ‘disability’. They cannot see the way to abolish the social system which disables us all in one way or another. Abolish capitalism. Everyone is capable of playing their part in the achieving socialism .

Life on the Dole Socialist Standard March 1992

The first time that I walked into an Unemployment Benefit Office to sign on the dole, I pulled up my collar and glanced around surreptitiously in case anyone I knew should see me going in there. Socialist or no, forty-odd years of capitalist brainwashing can’t fail to have some effect.

Despite having sold my labour power to the same employer for thirteen years, when “rationalisation” (what used to be called asset-stripping) strikes, the result is redundancy. It’s cold comfort to know that thousands of other wage slaves are suddenly finding themselves in the same position, through no fault of their own but due to the continuing tendency to recession, depression. over-production, crisis which is inherent in capitalism. Nevertheless, the result of the conditioning and propaganda is what its meant to be—guilt, shame and the feeling that losing your job is your fault. A local newspaper reports that there are 35 people chasing every job vacancy in the West Midlands. Another report tells of a man who is so desperate for work that he is offering to pay a thousand pounds to anyone who will employ him.

The real scroungers

With no previous experience of labour exchanges, and having perceptions of such places defined by Bread or Charlie Drake’s The Worker, it’s little wonder that the “no longer gainfully employed” should approach the Unemployment Benefit Office with trepidation. For, in a society where an individual’s worth is measured not by personal qualities, but by their occupation, to lose your job is to lose your status in society and your personal identity. Try renting a television, or applying for credit to buy a car. When replying to the question what is your occupation with the answer “unemployed”, the smile on the face of the salesperson will freeze, and you can bet your last ten pence that your application will be refused.

Perhaps they would be more impressed to be told that you are now an industrial reserve army member. More likely, the mistaken working class perception will flit through their mind—dole scrounger. For you have now attained that enviable state which those who still spend their days fighting through ever-worsening traffic chaos, and increasingly, their weekends, in order to spend their days doing boring, alienating jobs yearn for. You can please yourself as to what you do and when you do it. Unfortunately, for those working class members of the “leisured class” there is one small problem. We all still live in a capitalist society where every necessary means of life, from food to shelter to clothing to transport, is only available if you have the money to pay for it.

To belong to the real “leisured class” means being a member of that minority class who own most of the land, factories, shops, banks, transport, etc—those who real scroungers in society because their wealth is produced for them by the majority who have no other means of living but to depend upon having a job, pension or unemployment benefit.

Added to the obvious problems encountered by workers who find themselves in the position of unpaid wage slave, as opposed to paid slave, is the straitjacket imposed by the Unemployment Benefit Office. If you didn’t know it before, you very quickly discover that your sole purpose on this planet it to provide surplus value, i.e. profits and wealth for the minority ruling class.

Wage slavery

If the fact of living in a society where commodities are produced for profit, not need, isn’t sufficient incentive for you to try your hardest to get a job—after all, if you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it— the UBO, run by other wage slaves, will insist that you are “available for and actively seeking work” before it will even entertain your claim. Even when your claim has been initially accepted, there is likely to be a delay before you begin receiving the pittance known as dole money whilst forms are shuttled back and forth between UBOs and your previous exploiter to ensure that you are not trying to defraud the state. Nobody, it’s said, starves any more. If your previous employer decides that you were a troublemaker, they have the power to bring you damned close to it if they provide the UBO with negative answers to its questions.

On every visit to the UBO to sign on, you are required to prove that you have been “actively seeking work”. After a “permitted period” the 1989 Social Security Act restricts your right to refuse jobs because of the low pay offered. Why does the working class, employed, unemployed, pensioners, housewives and children. continue to put up with the economic exploitation and political control exercised by a minority class?

Understanding the social alternative—a wageless, moneyless, classless, leaderless, stateless society where goods are produced for need, not profit—is as simple as ABC’ compared to the minefield of bureaucracy to be traversed when trying to obtain paltry dole money. Despite the promises of Jam Today, forever being made by those lapdogs of the capitalist class, the politicians, most of us are still struggling to obtain bread and dripping.

The time to make capitalism redundant is long past. It’s the working class which runs capitalism from top to bottom for the benefit of the minority. Think what we could do with the opportunities presented to us by a new society— socialism.

Dave Coggan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/07/life-on-dole-1992.html

Is it time to revive the 1910 music hall song, ‘Don’t go down the mine Dad!’?

A miner is saved from a pit tragedy by by taking notice of his child’s dream that there will be a disaster there that day.

The song should now be renamed, ‘Don’t go down the mine Mom!’

Reuters reports that due to the shortage of manpower because of the still ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia women are now having their labour power exploited as underground coal mining in a bid to keep the capitalists profit high.

The mine’s owners, ,DTEK, the mine’s owner and Ukraine’s largest private energy company, says nearly 3,000 of its 20,000 mineworkers are fighting. This mine is somewhere in Eastern Ukraine, but the owners don’t want its name or location divulged, security don’t ya know,

Altogether it is reported that four hundred plus women work underground at this company’s mines. They join there male counterparts in the capitalist process of exploitation.

The mine in question lost a thousand working class men who went of to fight in the capitalist war. One hundred women went to go and work at that location. Because there were no other jobs says a Ukrainian women now engaged there.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-coal-mines-turn-women-solve-wartime-staff-shortages-2023-11-22/

History abounds with examples of women doing men’s jobs particularly during various conflicts and wars, including making the armaments to maim and kill sons, husbands and brother’s of other women who belong to the working class. Women in Ukraine have also donned uniforms.

Women’s efforts to oppose capitalism should not be overlooked. They are an essential part of the endeavour to replace capitalism with the only sane alternative, socialism, where killing and injuring humankind will be consigned to the dustbin of history it deserves. Let it not be forgotten that women and children have, and are, victims of capitalist hostilities too.

Capitalism isn’t now, or ever has been, fussed who fights on its behalf or who it exploits.

In a speech in 1868 Karl Marx said, ‘It was not until 1833 that the hours of labour for children were limited to twelve. In consequence of overwork there was no time left whatever for mental culture. They also became physically deteriorated; contagious fevers broke out amongst them, and this induced a portion of the upper class to take the matter up. The first Sir Robert Peel was one of the foremost in calling attention to the crying evil, and Robert Owen was the first mill-owner who limited the hours of labour in his factory. The ten hours’ bill was the first law which limited the hours of labour to ten and a half per day for women and children, but it applied only to certain factories.’

The Socialist Party’s Declaration of Principles includes the following:

‘That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.’

THE SOCIALIST PARTY: AGAINST ALL CAPITALIST WARS!

“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” 

The Guardian reports that the ‘National Living Wage’ will increase by a pound an hour: ‘Nearly 3 million low-paid workers will receive a pay increase of almost 10% next spring after the chancellor announced an increase in the national living wage to £11.44 an hour. Jeremy Hunt said the earnings of full-time workers would rise by £1,800 a year as a result of a move that the Low Pay Commission (LPC) said met the 2019 Conservative pledge to end poverty pay in the UK. The increase from £10.42 to £11.44 comes against a backdrop of a cost of living crisis in which inflation peaked at 11.1% – the highest in 40 years. Eligibility for the national living wage (NLW) will also be extended by reducing the age threshold from 23 to 21.’

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/21/uks-national-living-wage-to-rise-by-nearly-10-to-1144-an-hour

From the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party’s support for the concept of a minimum 
wage is not based on its concern for low-paid workers, in fact, Labour’s real aim is to cut the expenditure, in the form of 
benefits, of the capitalist state it hopes to inherit.

The Labour Party went into the 1992 general election committed to introducing a legally enforced national minimum wage which, they said, would eventually amount to two-thirds of the level below which half all wage and salary earners fall (or the “median wage”, as the statisticians call it):

“Labour will introduce a national legal minimum hourly wage, starting at a level of 50 per cent of the mid-point of men’s earnings (the median) . . . Four million people will benefit form this minimum wage. Over time, Labour will increase the minimum wage as a proportion of earnings to a point where no-one is paid less than two-thirds of the median male hourly rate ” (Looking to the Future, 1990, p. 37).

In today’s money this would give an hourly rate of about £5.50, or a minimum wage for a 39-hour week of £214.50, or over £ 11,000 a year. Of course there was never any chance that this was going to happen. You can’t legislate into being wage increases of this order, amounting in some cases to over 50 percent. Capitalism just does not work that way. Its economic mechanism responds not to government decrees but the realities of profit-making in competitive markets. The government could indeed pass a law aimed at ordering employers to pay a minimum wage at this level but, as this would cut into profits, the result in an economy based on the economic law of “no profit, no production” would be an economic downturn and a growth in unemployment.

Shrinking figures

The Labour leaders—who are nothing these days if not economic “realists”— were well aware of this. Which was why they proposed to reach the goal of two-thirds of the median only gradually, starting by introducing a law to fix the minimum wage at half it. This is the £4.15 or so to which Bill Morris and the T & G and other unions are still committed. But even this is pie-in-the-sky which will never come about, and wouldn’t have come about even if Neil Kinnock had entered Number Ten in May 1992. The economic mechanism of capitalism just won’t wear it.

Since Kinnock went, Labour, first under Smith and then under Blair, has backtracked even further. It is still committed to the concept of a national minimum wage but not to any specific amount. This, they now say, is to be fixed by a commission made up of employers, unions and others and, we predict, would amount to about the same as the old Wages Councils, abolished by the Tories in 1993, used to come up with: about £3 or so an hour (in today’s money).

In other words, the most Labour would do would be to restore the pre-1993 situation, extending it to all industries and services so as to be able to call it a “national” minimum. This latter will only be window-dressing since most industries pay their workers above this hourly rate, otherwise they would have been covered by a Wages Council.

But why does Labour—now under arch-realist Blair—want to keep to the idea of a minimum wage, especially as it is going to earn them a lot of stick from the Tories? Since they now take the support of active trade unionists for granted, it can’t be a sop for their benefit. The reason lies elsewhere: it is part of their plan to reduce spending on welfare benefits as their contribution to trying to solve the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state.

A bit of theory

The basis of capitalism is the wages system, under which the work of production is done by people selling their particular ability to work to an employer in return for a wage or salary. Wages for particular types of skill are fixed by market forces at the amount of money workers require to buy the things needed to maintain their particular skill, plus an element to cover the cost of raising a family to replenish the labour force when they retire.

In the long run workers must get paid this amount, otherwise they won’t be able to maintain their skill, and their employer will begin to suffer in terms of absenteeism, increasing labour turnover, shoddy work and lower productivity.

So, in a sense, market forces—aided by pressure from unions—already tend to ensure that wages don’t fall below a minimum level: that below which the workers wouldn’t have enough money to maintain their skill adequately. However, there have always been some kinds of work—those requiring little training or experience and performed for a mass of small employers—where, because supply permanently exceeds demand, and because trade union organisation is difficult, market forces bring about a wage that is below this level.

What this means is that, in the terminology of Marxian economics, these workers get paid less than the value of their labour-power. They don’t get paid a “fair” wage even by capitalism’s standard of fairness, i.e. the full value of what they are selling.

This creates problems both for their immediate employers and for the employing class as a whole which has to foot the bill for the increasing ill-health and destitution that result from paying workers over a long period less than the value of their labour-power.

The problem for their immediate employers is that, even if they wanted to be a “good” employer and pay their workers the value of their labour-power as a means of getting their money’s worth in terms of work done and profits made, they can’t because of competition from other employers. None of them dares make the first move for fear of losing business, indeed of going out of business.

The solution that has been adopted in Britain has been two-fold. First, to introduce minimum wages in the trades concerned and, second, to introduce Family Allowances.

It was the Liberal government in 1909 that took the initiative and set up trade boards, later called Wages Councils, in the “sweated trades”, such as the retail trade, hotels and catering, and the rag trade, where workers tended to be persistently paid a wage below subsistence level. Under this system the employers, the unions and government officials met to fix a minimum hourly rate for the particular trade. It was an offence for an employer to pay below this rate. There was no national minimum wage, only different minimum wages for the different trades.

Subsidising employers

Family Allowances (now called Child Benefit) were introduced by the wartime coalition government in 1945. But, as the pamphlets Beveridge Reorganises Poverty and Family Allowances: A Socialist Analysis which we in the Socialist Party brought out at the time explained, this was not at all what it appeared to be: a money payment by the capitalist state which would leave all those with two or more dependent children better off by that amount.

Under capitalism and its wages system any regular payment received by workers in employment is going to have an effect on wage levels. This is because, as explained, wages tend to be fixed at a level which provides workers with enough money to buy what they need to maintain their particular skill in working order and also to bring up a family to take their place in the labour force when they are too old to work. If the state makes a contribution towards these costs, this means the workers’ immediate employer doesn’t have to.

The effect of any generalised state payment to workers in employment will be to depress, not necessarily the standard of living, but the wages paid by employers. This was why, in fact, Family Allowances were for a long time opposed by the trade unions. As we pointed out at the time:

“The real issue is not that certain unscrupulous employers may seek to save out of wages amounts paid in Family Allowances, but that once it is established that the children (or some of the children) of the workers have been ‘provided for’ by other means, the tendency will be for wage levels to sink to new standards which will not include the cost of maintaining such children ” (Family Allowances, pp. 11-12).

In 1971 the then Tory government of Edward Heath breached a hitherto sacrosanct principle of the welfare state that no means-tested benefits should be paid to any worker in employment. They introduced a new benefit called Family Income Supplement (now called Family Credit), in effect a means-tested Family Allowance, payable to workers in employment whose income was below the poverty line, i.e. more or less what they would have got had they been on what is now called Income Support.

The logic behind this was to provide an incentive for people to take a job, however miserably paid. The result has been unsatisfactory from the point-of-view of the capitalist class as a whole. The cost of all state benefits payable to workers in employment (housing benefit, council tax benefit as well as Family Credit) has spiralled to over £2 billion a year.

Some employers—those in the modern sweated trades—have benefited. Knowing that the state will bring workers with children up to the poverty line they have been enabled to pay these workers below-the-poverty-lines wages. As Labour’s deputy leader John Prescott has put it:

“Family Credit is now part of wage negotiations, with employers offering £1 an hour and saying: ‘I know you can‘t live on that, but if you nip down to Social Security, they’ll make up the difference (Observer, 28 August 1994).

Family Credit and other in-work benefits have, in other words, acted as a subsidy to these employers. This has caused resentment amongst other sections of the employing class who have to pay this subsidy out of taxes that, in the end, fall on their profits. This is where the Labour Party has come in with a proposal to help.

Labour to the Rescue

In their July 1995 campaign pack Low Pay. A Tory Failure, the Labour Party repeats again and again that their minimum wage is designed to reduce state benefits paid to workers in employment:

“A minimum wage will not only act as a floor for pay. It will also ensure that in-work benefits do not act as a subsidy for low-paying and poor employers. ” “Taxpayers would benefit because a floor under wages would reduce the need for tax handouts to low paying employers. Today employers have an incentive to lower wages at the taxpayers’ expense.” “Every taxpayer is now paying £100 a year for in-work benefits for people in low-paid work. People who have no protection against exploitative pay rates are forced into dependency on the benefits system whether they like it or not. And employers have no incentives to raise wages because they know the benefits system will subsidise the poor wages that they pay by what is, in effect, a tax handout to employers. ”

What Labour is proposing (and are rumoured to want to do over maternity pay) is what the Tories did over Sickness Benefit: to cut back on state payments by shifting a part of the cost on to employers in the form of statutory sick pay. Labour’s aim is to shift some of the burden of maintaining workers on low pay at the subsistence level on to the employers who have been benefiting from the present system.

But what about the workers? The low-paid workers existing on the poverty line. It’s not going to make much difference to them since the argument is about who is going to pay their subsistence income and in what proportions not about its level.

As far as the low paid are concerned what will happen is that what the right hand gives away in the form of a slightly higher minimum wage for some the left hand will take away in the form of reduced Family Credit. People on Family Credit get their benefit reduced by 70p for each £1 by which their income increases. So if their hourly wage was increased from, say, £2.50 to £3 they would only be 15p an hour better off not 50p. And if the increase lifted their income above the qualifying level for Family Credit they would find themselves worse off through losing the accompanying entitlement to housing benefit and free prescriptions and dental treatment.

Labour’s national minimum wage is not a genuine reform in the sense of a measure to bring about some improvement in working class conditions. It’s an economy measure designed to save the capitalist state money. They don’t fool us. Let’s hope that they don’t succeed in deceiving too many of the low paid either.

Adam Buick

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-great-minimum-wage-swindle-1995.html

If everything is relative then perhaps many parts of the world might wish that worrying about how to be able to pay increasing energy bills, or coping with a rising cost of living, were the least of everyday worries as opposed to wondering about how to daily survive the deadly effects of war and conflicts.

But, in the UK, the former, for many – the elderly, those with disabilities, and those whose are living on the edge of, or in, poverty,- capitalism’s raison d’etre of exploitation and profits, profits, profits, are of real and anxiety causing concern.

SOYMB recently posted the latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on destitution with the UK. Now comes news that the choice between eating or heating is going to become even harder.

https://soymb.com/2023/11/turn-off-capitalism-not-fridges.html

Numerous readers, of a certain age and above, will recall that within living memory households were dependent upon open coal fires and hot water bottles for their heating needs. The news report below notes that there has been a reduction already in the use by households of gas and electricity.

There will, no doubt, be numerous charities offering advice to the ‘vulnerable’ as to how to keep warm, avoid hyperthermia, and save on energy costs.

There will not be mainstream explanations of the reason for the potentially life threatening cause of the difficult choices which a hard cold winter creates, which is capitalism,. Neither will there be explanations as to how to abolish this iniquitous social system and replace it with one of benefit to everyone – socialism.

The Guardian reports, ‘Household energy bills could climb to an average of almost £1,900 a year in the coldest months of the year under the UK government’s energy price cap, according to a leading forecaster.

The energy price cap is expected to climb from the £1,834-a-year level for a typical home set to take effect from Sunday to £1,898 when the cap is next updated for the months from January to March, say analysts at Cornwall Insight, adding to the burden of the cost of living crisis.

The energy price cap sets the maximum price that suppliers can charge based on the average gas and electricity bill, meaning a cold winter could push bills higher if households need to keep the heating on for longer. The cap remains more than 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The £1,834-a-year cap covering October to December is based on new Ofgem calculations that assume households now use 7% less electricity and 4% less gas, having cut back consumption in the cost of living crisis. When it was announced last month the regulator gave a headline figure of £1,923 a year, using the old methodology to help comparisons with previous quarters. However, in future only the new system will be used.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/sep/29/energy-bills-price-cap

In September 2023 SOYMB posted ‘Huddled Masses Opting Out.’

‘In a supplication reminiscent of the entreaty at the base of the statue of liberty in New York harbour, the UK Work and Pensions Secretary appeals to those of the working class who, through no fault of their own, are unable to offer themselves up to full-time, long-term exploitation, to help reduce the financial burden of running this particular capitalist entity. The MailOnline reports: ‘One million people on sickness benefits could be forced to start looking for jobs including thousands with mobility and anxiety problems as the Government gets set to slash billions from its welfare budget. More: ‘Up to a million sickness and disability benefit claimants are to be ordered to seek work. Unveiled by Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride the blitz is aimed at slashing the £26billion welfare budget’.

https://soymb.com/2023/09/huddled-masses-opting-out.html

Moving on to November, now comes the big stick.

‘BRITS on benefits who refuse to look for work risk losing their right to free NHS prescriptions, dental care and help with energy bills.

The move, set to be announced in next week’s ,Autumn Statement forms part of Jeremy Hunt’s major plan to crackdown on economic inactivity.’

Around nine million Brits of working age are currently unemployed.

On Wednesday Mr Hunt will unveil a £2.5bn “back to work plan” in an effort to bring the figure down. Fresh funds will help up to 1.1 million people find work. Under the scheme benefit recipients who don’t look for jobs risk losing access to free NHS prescriptions, dental care, legal aid and energy bill support. And sick notes will be approved by civil servants instead of doctors in a trial where patients will be treated by therapists working for DWP.’ The Sun 17 November

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/news-money/24767659/brits-will-lose-free-prescriptions-in-benefit-crackdown/

To anyone who thought the Labour Party represented the British working class:

‘Millions of out-of-work Brits are a “horrible, painful toll” on the public purse and are “dragging” down the economy, a top Starmer ally declared last night. (speaking at Labour Party Conference).

Whose economy?

Shadow Cabinet Minister Peter Kyle said: “There are 2.5million people that are just unknown to the economy for reasons that we don’t understand, and there’s no exercise to go find them.“There are 700,000 young people who are not in education, training or work. And that figure has been growing, not diminishing.”

The shadow science and tech secretary hit out: “All of these things are personal tragedies, but they’re also taking a horrible, painful toll on our economy.

“It is dragging our economy down. So we need to get cracking on it.” ‘

The Sun 8 October

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/24329382/

The Guardian has; ‘Speaking on Thursday afternoon, Hunt said the government wanted to address the “rise in people who aren’t looking for work” to help grow the economy.

“These changes mean there’s help and support for everyone – but for those who refuse it, there are consequences too. Anyone choosing to coast on the hard work of taxpayers will lose their benefits.”

Confirming the plans for a benefits crackdown, the Treasury said it would be taking steps to strengthen the current universal credit sanctions regime to incentivise claimants to comply with their work-search requirements and move into a job.

Under the current system, claimants can be subjected to open-ended sanctions if certain requirements are not met, such as attending a meeting with a work coach. These sanctions can result in benefit deductions until a claimant re-complies.’

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/16/unemployed-benefits-in-jeremy-hunt-autumn-statement

From the Socialist Standard, April 2014; ‘The Times (15 January) reported that George Osborne was to tell a conference organised by the think tank Open Europe that ‘Europe will face further economic woes if it fails to cut welfare spending’:

‘As Angela Merkel has pointed out, Europe accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world’s population, 25 per cent of its economy and 50 per cent of global social welfare spending. We can’t go on like this.’

He didn’t explain why not, but the implication must be that, to compete on world markets against the products made in countries which spend less on welfare, Europe has to reduce its welfare spending towards their levels. In other words, a race to the bottom.

One dictionary definition of ‘welfare’ is:

‘1. good health, happiness, and prosperity. 2. the maintenance of persons in such a condition; money given for this purpose.’ (Oxford Reference Dictionary)

On this definition, Osborne was in effect saying that, due to competition on the world market, all countries are forced to reduce the ‘good health, happiness and prosperity’ of their population. What an indictment of capitalism! And what a confirmation of the futility of reformists’ attempts to make capitalism serve human welfare.

But is it true? One thing Osborne ignores is that ‘welfare spending’ is not motivated by a desire to improve human welfare but by a desire to improve the productivity of the workforce – a better educated, more healthy workforce feeling less insecure can produce more profits. This was in fact the capitalist rationale behind the introduction of the so-called Welfare State and why the drastic reduction of such spending to the levels in China or India which Osborne and Merkel seem to be proposing could prove to be counter-productive.

Osborne probably knows this and doesn’t regard such spending as an unnecessary burden that has to come out of taxes that ultimately fall on profits any more than he does military spending which also comes from this. For him, both will be part of the necessary costs of running capitalism. What he will be against is welfare for those who can’t or don’t work and so are useless from a profit-making point of view – the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill, the old, the unemployed and the unemployable. In short, the most vulnerable members of capitalist society.

The fact that welfare has become a dirty word for capitalism shows that it is not a system geared to improving human welfare. If it was, then as productivity increased (as it does slowly from year to year) more resources would be devoted to services and amenities that enhance the welfare of everyone. But this is not what happens. Far from it. The pressure is downwards not upwards.

The fact is that capitalism is a system geared to making profits and accumulating them as more and more profit-seeking capital. That’s the logic which is imposed on all countries through competition on the world market. In this sense Osborne and Merkel are right, but that’s a convincing reason to get rid of capitalism and to replace it with a system in which the welfare of all can and will be the priority. Which is only possible on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources and the end of production for the market with a view to profit.’

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/

The Sun is part of Murdoch’s News Corporation.

The United Kingdom is the world’s sixth largest economy.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have published a new report, Destitution in the UK 2023.

https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2023 (full report)

Socialism Or Your Money Back has many posts about JRF poverty reports.

Here’s one from 2009.

‘The Guardian has an article on new Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on UK poverty and the media and its findings that there isn’t much popular concern over UK poverty and places much of the blame on the media, saying there is little appetite to address themes of poverty. In newspapers, the subject is “worthy, not newsworthy”, and journalists found it was often “difficult to give poverty a focus, since it is ongoing and amorphous rather than a specific ‘event'”. In other words , to paraphrase the Bible , the poor are always with us

Why don’t we have celebrities singing “Let them know it’s Christmas time” to raise money for the 3 million or so children in this country living below the poverty line? Why is there no Bono or Bob Geldof marshalling the campaign to end child poverty? Why can’t campaign groups rouse sufficient outrage to get the public marching on the streets.



“The voices of people with experience of poverty…are severely under-represented in media coverage,” says the report. On television, there is a danger of poverty turning into a “spectator sport” that entrenches an “us and them” mentality, the report also warns.



“There is very little sympathetic portrayal of poor people. And people are looking for reassuring images, that things are OK, things are fair and that people at the bottom are there because it’s their fault and therefore we’ve all earned on merit our position.” (Political commentator)



As a result of this information shortage, many doubt whether there is“real” poverty in the UK and are unconvinced by the concept of relative poverty – the measure by which the government measures deprivation here. The public is either “harshly judgmental” towards people living in poverty or views poverty and inequality as inevitable. The trend of judging individuals as creators of their own poverty seems to be increasing. Journalists quite often used stereotypical pictures and words to refer to people living in poverty. Public awareness of the extent and reality of UK poverty is limited. People often see it as the individual’s responsibility to get out of poverty because they are not aware of the obstacles to achieving this. However,those suffering from poverty and being in receipt of benefits are stigmatised, so people are reluctant to speak out.



While the nature of poverty is very different from 50 years ago in the UK and from absolute poverty in developing countries, not having what most people take for granted is what many find difficult. Perhaps the starkest examples are the cases of parents going without or falling into debt so their children can have what others have, or their children being bullied at school for not having the latest trend. This may not be the poverty of material destitution. But if the measure of a human being consists in the accumulation of material possessions to which he or she may claim then , by that token, we are demeaned. And, ultimately, it is in this devaluation of our human worth — not simply in the fact of material inequality but in the meaning this society attaches to it.

The JRF calls for a debate that goes beyond building awareness of poverty. This needs the presentation of narratives exploring the causes of poverty and inequality. Over the decades the answer to the cause of poverty has been staring all those NGOs and charities and researchers in the face . It is capitalism .



Are all reforms doomed to failure and do not really make a difference to workers’ lives? Of course not – there are many examples of ‘successful’ reforms in such fields as education, housing, child employment, conditions of work and social security. But while there has been some ‘successful’ reforms, none of them have ever done more than keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while reforms have sometimes taken the edge off a problem, they have very rarely managed to remove that problem completely. There have been some marginal improvements, but the social problems that the reformers such as JRF have set out to deal with have generally not been solved – hence the need for an uncompromising socialist party to pursue revolutionary change.

Nobody would deny today that poverty exists in the UK as many JRF reports provide ample evidence of . But does it make sense to argue that because we don’t have socialism yet , we should, in the meantime, fight for reforms to at least reduce the worst effects of poverty. This argument has been voiced by so many for so long that `in the meantime’ has become forever. The time is long past and too many people have suffered, are suffering, and will continue suffering until we attack the cause itself.



There is one way, and one way only, to abolish poverty, and that is to establish a socialist society in which the tools of production will be commonly owned and administered by the population as a whole in their own interests. In such a world, not only poverty but all the social evils created by the profit system will be abolished.’

https://soymb.com/2009/09/reporting-poverty.htm

Fourteen years on, ‘The Guardian has an article on new Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on UK poverty…’The more things change the more they stay the same?

Main Stream Media all seemed to find it headline worthy that people are having to try and save the costs of electricity by turning off their fridges and freezers. Unsurprisingly, they are capitalist supporters after all, the solution to the ills of capitalism were not propounded.

From the 2023 Guardian report ‘a government spokesman said, ‘A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “The cost of living payments have provided a significant financial boost to millions of households – just one part of the record £94bn support package we have provided to help with the rising cost of bills. This includes a 10.1% rise to benefits earlier this year, and we’re investing £3.5bn to help thousands into jobs – the best way to secure their financial security in the long term. Ultimately, the best way we can help families is to reduce inflation, and we’re sticking to our plan to halve it this year, taking the long-term decisions that will secure the country’s financial future.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/14/millions-of-uk-households-forced-to-unplug-fridge-to-cope-with-rising-bills

The conclusion of the 2009 blog post is even more relevant than ever: There is one way, and one way only, to abolish poverty, and that is to establish a socialist society in which the tools of production will be commonly owned and administered by the population as a whole in their own interests. In such a world, not only poverty but all the social evils created by the profit system will be abolished.’

l

It is Armistice night. I have just come home through London along with a portion of the joyful crowds who are going to celebrate. But what are they celebrating? It cannot be the end of wars since expenditure on armaments still grows, and the “East” and the “West” harries the imaginations of diplomats. Is it a victory they would celebrate? But here a million unemployed, and the miners are marching on London to remind legislators that hunger is abroad in the coalfields.

As I travelled on ‘bus and tube my mind wandered over the events of the war and since. The petty squabbles of war “leaders,” military, naval, and political, who each tried to keep a grip on the shoddy coat of glory; the nobleness of purpose with which each saddled the other with incapacity. I tried to think of a leader who possessed the military virtues we were taught to revere when we were children—and I failed to think of one. Even the modesty of Lawrence is lost in a crowd of full-dress photographs taken in the waste places of Arabia. A few short years have stripped the idols, one by one, of the gilding a venal Press and a hypocritical platform painted on with such a lavish hand.

The enemies of wartime have again become the joint partners in the plunder of peacetime. German, Austrian, Italian, French, American and English shareholders are indiscriminately mixed in the giant companies and trusts that take from the workman of different lands all that he produces above the pittance that pretends to keep him.

While the crowds passed before the Cenotaph to-day those who had grown wealthier out of war and peace swept in their luxurious cars to the palaces built out of the blood and toil of slaves. Behind all the mockery and cynicism lie the devastated homes, the cheerless hearths, of millions of the poor. The hollow shams at the top and the bitter misery at the bottom; the trickery and the illusions; the romance and the reality.

The tragedies of the war existed not only in the deaths, the mutilations, and the sorrows of the bereaved, but also in what lay behind much of it. Imagine the feelings of those forced, by fear of a white feather or by conscription, who went to battle without enthusiasm but with much dread. They had to endure the manifold hardships without the inner fire of a cause worth while to sustain them. Of such were many who are buried in nameless graves.



Most of us, particularly the more imaginative, when not drunk with enthusiasm or liquor, suffer the nameless dread of mutilations or death. Thousands, nay millions, went through this agony during those terrible years. Of the young and the old of many countries eight and a half millions were killed , twenty-one million wounded. This country alone had a million dead to mourn for and two millions wounded.



But what are the celebrations for? What have the millions died for? Why do many an old couple sit by the fire dreaming sadly of what might have been? Oh, sordid reality! Oh, cold, comfortless truth! Because one group of money bugs wanted more profit than another! For this the flower of youth was trampled and destroyed by the iron heel of war. And even now, while the horror and dread of those days still stirs restlessly in the mind, like the remnants of the spell of a nightmare, the nations of the earth are still hotly pursuing each other in a headlong race to more terrible wars still, though the wiser ones foresee that the end is not worth the price, in wealth and prestige, that will have to be paid.



And those who so easily sent our loved ones to their graves are niggardly in payment to the mutilated and the dependants. They groan of the height of the taxes, and tell fairy tales of the wealth of the pensioners. They would have us believe, as they orate at their many-coursed dinners, that they are really too poor to stand the strain. When unemployment was widespread before the war it was said that the country was too poor to maintain the human scrap heap of industry. Yet, on the war alone, this country was able to throw away wealth to the amount of over six thousand million pounds in four years! And this while millions of the population were entirely withdrawn from productive work.



And to-day those who might ponder over these things and be dangerous to the powers that prey have their emotions diverted into safe channels. They are given a few cenotaphs, a few processions, a turgid mass of hypocritical sentiments. They mourn by cold monuments and return to work sad, but satisfied.



What a civilisation! What a tragedy!

Gilmac.

From the Socialist Standard December 1927

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1927/no-280-december-1927/

THE SOCIALIST PARTY: AGAINST ALL CAPITALIST WARS!