Welfare? That is only for corporations and the rich

Welcome to the new welfare state - Coalition government style. Despite the fact that we are supposed to be struggling with a massive structural deficit and our economy is stagnant, the Chancellor, George Osborne, found plenty to give away in last weeks budget in terms of  welfare - for the 1%. We certainly ain't in it all together but what we do know is that this is a government which punishes the needy and rewards those who have much, much more than they need. 

From 1st April we will see yet more cuts in welfare, the punitive bedroom tax,  and further massive cuts in public services. Add to that an ongoing clamp down on public sector pay which is reducing the standard of living of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom are low paid. In contrast the richest in the UK will receive a massive tax cut and corporations will see further cuts in corporation tax. George Osborne is also doing his best to create another house price boom by allowing for £130 billion to back house buyers, a move which can only make it more difficult for people who want to buy houses.

As I've posted before the government's austerity cuts programme has nothing to do with reducing the deficit and everything to do with the demolition of the welfare state and privatisation of public services. The truth is that the main recipients of welfare in the UK are the 1%, the corporations and the rich. Whilst the 99% see their living standards cut further in order to pay for a crisis caused by neoliberal capitalism, corporations like Starbuck's benefit from not paying taxes and tax dodgers avoid £120 billion in tax. It may be hard for some people to accept but we are all under attack - from our own government. There is only one option - organise and fight back to protect our living standards. Groups like UK Uncut have lead the way but there is much more work to be done. Its time to get involved. Come and help us defend our communities!

Liam Byrne's approach to 'welfare' is reactionary nonsense

Let me start by telling you a story - once upon a time there was a party in the UK called The Labour Party. It arose from the trade unions and working class struggle. Its focus was social justice, and its agenda was about decent healthcare, jobs, housing, worker's rights, and education. After World War II, in 1945, The Labour Party won a spectacular election victory, and came into power with a mandate which produced what became known as the 'Welfare State', the NHS, better (council) housing and educational opportunities for all. It aimed to protect people from the vagaries of the market, and it succeeded. Millions of ordinary UK citizens, like me, were lucky enough to benefit from those changes.

Now, The Labour Party is a hollowed out shell, filled with middle class career politicians and MPs who have been parachuted onto the green benches of parliament, because they are Ed and Tony's cronies, replacing most of the working class antecedents who once filled many of those places. It is a party in thrall to the market, a centre-right party promoting the most reactionary kind of right-wing populism. The last Labour government, which preferred to be called  'New Labour', eagerly adopted the 'benefit scrounger' stance promoted by right-wing propaganda sheets such as the Daily Mail, and Minister James Purnell introduced measures to bash benefit claimants and the unemployed.

Step forward in 2012, Liam Byrne, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to give us Labour's latest welfare vision. Byrne talks about William Beveridge whose report, published in 1942, paved the way for the Welfare State. Beveridge proposed measures, which I outlined above, to fight the five - "Giant Evils' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness". This was to be achieved by the concept of 'Social Security', in which ordinary people paid National Insurance so that when they became ill or unemployed they could rightly claim benefits from the state.  Those 'benefits' were not 'something for nothing', they were entitlements which people paid for. It was a great system and it worked, especially in the context of governments which aimed to create full employment, as Byrne concedes in his article.

But what Byrne goes on to say is pure 'free' market orthodoxy and a continuation of New Labour's 'benefit scroungers' stance, which is all about blaming the victims of the market for their pitiful situation. It is reactionary nonsense. Those unfortunate enough to be unemployed in an economy where the 'free' market has failed to create anything like full employment are to continue to be battered and forced into some kind of workfare programme, which is simply unwaged-slavery, where people are forced to work for corporations for nothing. I have no doubt that a decent bloke like Beveridge would be horrified by the way in which the concept of Social Security has been deliberately twisted and undermined by neoliberal parties like Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Tories, and the shameful way in which the unemployed, disabled and poor are now treated. But what is most shameful is the fact that the Labour Party has helped to destroy what it created, kicking people when they are down, so that the corporations and the rich can benefit from unwaged-slavery and tax cuts.

We need to end the dependency culture of the 1%

You'll often hear the 'free' market fundamentalists on the reactionary right of politics complaining about the 'entitlement culture' and the 'dependency culture'. What they mean is that people, usually unemployed, believe that they are entitled to benefits, or handouts from taxpayers, and that they become dependent on them. The result is that these people either never feel the need to work for a living, or have become almost incapable of finding work. The approach of our reactionary coalition government is well summed up in this article from The Sun, which crows about the government's plans to:

"smash the dependency culture that condemns millions to a life on the dole"

But its not the dependency culture that condemns people in the UK to a life on the dole, its the failed ideology of neoliberalism and the economic policies of privatisation and deregulation which have destroyed jobs in the UK over the past 30 years. So what do the reactionary right do? Blame the victims of course! Since the failures of 'free' market capitalism can never be admitted, it is essential that the blame is dumped onto individuals like the 'benefit scroungers', who have been made scapegoats for the UK's economic problems.

A depression era dole queue

Papers like the Daily Mail and The Sun promote the denigration and hatred of the benefit recipients as a distraction from the real cause of our country's problems - neoliberalism and Thatcherism. The aim is not just to shift the blame, but also to move the UK from a system of decent social security provision to a grossly inadequate system of welfare 'handouts'. This not only allows savings for greater tax cuts for the rich, but also helps to grind the underclass even further into poverty, creating a pit into which people fear to fall, thus making them more likely to work for less.

But its not the so-called 'benefit scroungers' that we need to be angry about. Its the really big cheats in our society, the tax dodgers, who should be causing us concern. There really is a serious problem with entitlement and dependency cultures throughout the world. Its the dependency of the 1% on ever increasing wealth to the detriment of the rest of us, and its the culture of entitlement which the 1% have which makes them think they should own everything on the planet, and not have to pay taxes. If we are going to have a fair and socially just society we need to end the entitlement culture and dependency culture of the 1%.