Press Release from the Centre for Social Justice

‘The UK is in danger of sliding back into the “Two Nations” of the Victorian era marked by a widening gulf between mainstream society and a depressed and poverty-stricken underclass, according to a far-reaching inquiry by a leading think-tank into the state of the nation.

The Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) Social Justice Commission’s report, Two Nations: The State of Poverty in the UK, argues that the most disadvantaged in Britain are no better off than 15 years ago – the time of the financial crash – and cites evidence that for them the jump from welfare into work is not worth it.

The CSJ study also finds that the pandemic lockdowns had a catastrophic effect on the nation’s social fabric, especially for the least well off, where the gap between the so-called “haves” and “have nots” was blown wide open.

The report says;

“During lockdown calls to a domestic abuse helpline rose 700 per cent; mental ill health in young people went from 1 in 9 to 1 in 6 and nearly a quarter amongst the oldest children; severe absence from school jumped 134 per cent; 1.2 million more people went on working-age benefits, 86 per cent more people sought help for addictions; prisoners were locked up for 22.5 hours per day.”

“There is a growing gap between those who can get by and those stuck at the bottom,” the report warns.

Six in ten of the general public say that their area has a good quality of life – this plummets to less than 2 in 5 of the most deprived.

Children, scarred by the pandemic lockdown, are having a particularly hard time. Twenty years ago, just one in nine children were assessed as having a clinically recognisable mental health problem. That figure is now one in five, rising to nearly one in four for those aged 17-19.

If trends continue, the report argues that by 2030 over one in four 5 – 15-year-olds – which may be as many as 2.3 million children – could have a mental disorder. There are likely to be 108 per cent more boys with mental health disorders by 2030 than there would have been if the lockdown had not happened. We should worry about the problems of the next generation.

Mental health looms large in the minds of the most deprived. After higher benefits, they cite improved mental and physical health as pivotal to a better life. The report has found that 40 per cent of the most disadvantaged report having a mental health condition compared to just 13 per cent of the general population.

The report says:

“Britain is sick but being sick pays. The total UC caseload has risen by 106 per cent since March 2020 and the number of claimants with No Work Requirements has increased by 186 per cent. There are over 2.6 million people economically inactive because of long term sickness, an increase of nearly 500,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic. “Over half of those signed off (53 per cent) reported depression, bad nerves or anxiety. The most disadvantaged view mental ill health as the biggest factor holding them back, which only comes fifth for the general public.”

The findings come from the Centre for Social Justice, which nearly 20 years ago published Breakdown Britain, a seminal work that ultimately led to a wholescale reform of the welfare system and the introduction of Universal Credit.

Two Nations: The State of Poverty in the UK has been produced by a high-powered team of Commissioners chaired by former Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens and includes Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Manchester, Tim Farron, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Labour’s Sir Stephen Timms MP, Conservative MP Miriam Cates, and businesswoman Liz Earle.

Lord King said:

“Money is not the only solution to the problem of deprivation. One glimmer of light is the institution of the family – rather than government – as a place of nurture, support, and fulfilment. No family is perfect, and families come in all different shapes and sizes. But if we are able to do more to support the family, then we can prevent the creation of an “unhappy generation”.”

Andy Cook, Chief Executive of the Centre for Social Justice, said:

“This report makes for deeply uncomfortable reading. Lockdown policy poured petrol on the fire that had already been there is the most disadvantaged people’s lives, and so far no one has offered a plan to match the scale of the issues. “What this report shows is that we need far more than discussions on finance redistribution, but a strategy to go after the root causes of poverty – education, work, debt, addiction and family.”

At the heart of the 350-page report is a landmark poll of 6,000 people conducted by J.L. Partners – 3,000 drawn from the general public and 3,000 on the lowest income. The report also heard from over 350 small charities, social enterprises and policy experts, and the Commission travelled to 3 nations of the UK and to over 20 towns and cities.

Crime and an erosion in faith in the justice system, shabby housing and drug addiction and are major obstacles. Both the general public and the deprived cite crime as the worst thing about living in their area.

The most disadvantaged worry twice as much as the mainstream about the quality of their housing and communities being “torn apart” by addiction.

The report declares:

“Although overall crime rates are down, violent crime remains high, and still six per cent of families account for half of all convictions. “Outstanding cases for the Crown courts continue to rise eroding the public’s trust that justice will be done and emboldening criminals. Only 8 per cent of victims are confident they would receive justice as a result of reporting a crime. “Only 17 per cent of the most disadvantaged who rent in social housing rate their quality of life at least 8 out of 10, compared with 52 per cent of those who own a property. “There has been a 63 per cent increase in deaths of people on methadone than before the COVID-19 pandemic. 11.5 per cent of those who have consumed cannabis in the last year take it every day. Before the COVID-19 pandemic deaths from alcohol poisoning had been dropping have now risen 15.4 per cent. Over one in seven children – which could be as many as 1.3 million children – have been classed as Children in Need at least once in the past eight years.

ENDS’

https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/britain-slipping-back-to-social-divide-of-victorian-era

The mission statement of the CSJ: ‘The CSJ’s vision is for those living in the poorest and most disadvantaged communities across Britain to be given every opportunity to flourish and reach their full potential.

We bring this vision to life by seeking to influence the policies the Government creates and the laws it makes, such that it does all it can to address the root causes of poverty.’

Response to the CSJ. The root cause of poverty, disadvantage and a poor quality of life is capitalism. The solution is a straightforward one – the realisation and understanding that capitalism must, has to be, replaced with a system of society based upon free access to quality goods and services which are produced for use not profit. Don’t put your trust in governments or leaders, put your trust in yourself and the majority working class.

Nothing would delight us more than a guarantee that in 2024 a global understanding of socialism and the need to replace capitalism before it does even further to the world and everyone who lives in it.

But the eyebrow raising headline ‘the end of U.S. capitalism’ posed more questions than it answered. A seconds reflection caused the immediate question to spring to mind, welcome as that would be what was envisaged to take it’s place? Was the replacement likely to be a form of state capitalism or the imposition of a Orwellian regime? A little further reading provided the elucidation.

Saxo is a Danish investment bank. Apparently they like to make ‘outrageous’ predictions as to what events might occur in the coming twelve months.

American news outlet, CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) reports on their results for 2024 from gazing into the crystal ball.

One of their predictions was that the European Union, apparently strapped for cash – when are governments whose main concern is in looking after the interests of capitalists in its particular domain not strapped for cash? – wars are expensive things- might implement a two per cent wealth tax on billionaires. Saxo sagely notes that,’ this would be rendered more likely if the population “realises how little in tax billionaires are actually paying’.

The item in question read: ‘In order to avoid social unrest, Congress may be forced to increase fiscal spending, sending the budget deficit above 10% of GDP and meaning the government must foster demand for U.S. Treasurys urgently.

‘The attention goes to the stock market, where the ‘Magnificent Seven’ have now become twelve, thanks to a missed downturn and government support programs directed to lenders and homeowners,’ Saxo said. ‘The group currently comprises Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.’

‘To join the club are Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, JPMorgan Chase, LVMH and ASML. As the ‘Twelve Titans’ multiplies their valuations within a few months, inequality increases between investors and non-investors.” “This dramatic move marks the end of capitalism, as money rotates from private corporations to the public, and holding riskier assets becomes more expensive. Counterintuitively, the ‘Twelve Titans’ consolidate their market dominance, as they benefit from long-term lower cost of funding, while the rest of the stock market collapses.”’

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/05/eu-wealth-tax-and-end-of-us-capitalism-saxos-outrageous-predictions.html

So big business benefits at the expense of everyone else. The more things change etc.

What’s outrageous is the continuing existence of a social system which exploits the vast majority for the benefit of a small minority.

What’s your New Year’s resolution going to be?

From the May 1989 Socialist Standard.

‘It is now ten years since Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham, became Prime Minister. Since then she has earned her place in the Guinness Book of Records. First woman Prime Minister, longest-serving Prime Minister, only Prime Minister to win three successive general elections. She has also earned a reputation for being heartless and indifferent to the lot of ordinary people and concerned only about helping the rich. No wonder she is so intensely disliked by so many people.

She has indeed been the head of an openly pro-capitalist government that has deliberately set out to attack the working class. Her government has legislated against the unions — the only effective weapon workers have to defend themselves under capitalism — and reduced the payments the State pays to workers not in employment. It has ended subsidised housing and made workers pay for a whole range of services which in the past were available on a free basis (the latest being eye tests). It has reintroduced the Victorian distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor and again made submission to a Means Test a condition for access to most State benefits.

It would, however, be a mistake to attribute the sufferings workers have had to endure over the past ten years to the actions of one particular capitalist politician, however ill-intentioned, class-prejudiced and domineering she might be. There is no such thing as Thatcherism as something different and

worse than ordinary capitalism. What Thatcher has done is to have presided over the operation of capitalism during the worst part of the slump phase of its economic cycle. During such a period redundancies and unemployment reach a maximum and governments are forced to slash social benefits as a way of lowering the tax burden on the reduced profits of capitalist enterprises.

When Thatcher endlessly repeated “There Is No Alternative” she was in fact displaying a clearer understanding of how capitalism works than did the Labour and other opposition politicians. There really was no alternative (apart from socialism, of course). Any government of capitalism during the worst part of a slump would have had to behave in essentially the same way. In short, it was capitalism not Thatcher that has been responsible.

What has distinguished Thatcher has been style rather than content. Whereas other politicians, even Tory ones, would have apologised for having to take the measures capitalism was imposing on them, not Mrs Thatcher. She applied them enthusiastically, seeing them as steps in the cultural revolution from “dependency culture” to “enterprise culture” she believes it her mission to carry out. She has openly proclaimed her aim to be the complete eradication of “State Socialism”, by which she means the theory and practice of the Labour Party — nationalisation, government intervention, redistribution of wealth from rich to poor by means of improved State benefits, subsidised housing, transport and other services — what should more properly be called state capitalism. What she wants is “to roll back the frontiers of the State” and allow the freest possible operation of the forces of the market. In this respect she is more of a Free Trade Liberal than a Tory.

The Labour Party in power has indeed been a failure — the Labour governments of the sixties and seventies not only failed to improve working class living standards as promised, but worsened them for many workers while at the same time mismanaging the finances of the capitalist State by massively inflating the currency — but this has not been the failure of Socialism. It has been the failure of reformism and state capitalism to which we in the Socialist Party have always been opposed.

Unfortunately, this has been seen as the failure of Socialism and has allowed the intellectual defenders of capitalism to seize the initiative. The Free Marketeers re-emerged from the dustbins of history to preach laissez-faire, the survival of the fittest (the profitable) and death to lame ducks and other weaklings and to proclaim that capitalism, profits, inequality, the market were no longer dirty words. Indeed their views can almost be said to have become the official State ideology under Thatcher. Faced with this intellectual offensive, the leaders of the Labour Party have conceded defeat and now promise to run the market economy better than the Tories. Few believe them and most of their activists remain nostalgic for state capitalism, but in any event capitalism whether private or state can only run in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of a profit-taking class.

So workers should not be taken in by the so-called Thatcherite Revolution which is essentially only window-dressing, one of a number of possible ideological justifications for what any government of capitalism would have been forced to do under the same circumstances. Indeed, the Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand have pursued the same policies, not excluding the denationalisation measures particularly associated with Thatcher.

It is for this reason that we say that Thatcherism is a myth and refuse to fall for calls for the return of a Labour government or some anti-Thatcher coalition. Capitalism without Thatcher would remain capitalism, and it is capitalism and not Mrs Thatcher that is the cause of the problems facing wage and salary workers.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/thatcheritis-1989.html

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2023/no-1432-december-2023/

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

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