CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING!

"Observers might conclude that the DWP had been tasked with designing a digital and sanitized version of the 19th century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens." 

"As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'". 

These are just two of the many devastating sentences in the recent UN report on Britain by their rapporteur on extreme poverty, Professor Philip Alston. 

In terms of facts and figures, there is not that much new in his account of poverty and inequality in the fifth-richest economy on earth. It's more the source and force of presentation of this searing condemnation of the state of Tory Britain that has hit the headlines - and inflamed the feelings of Tory Ministers like Amber Rudd, who whinge that it's not representative of the UK, 2019. 

In fact, this short, sharp, 20-page Report - based on far-reaching research and two weeks of face-to-face meetings with people affected - is all too realistic, all too accurate, and therefore all the more an indictment of the life-crushing poverty and inequality that is in the bone-marrow of capitalism. 

Poverty and Destitution 

One in five of the UK population (14 million people) live in poverty - 4 million of them at least 50% below the poverty line. 

A further 2.5 million are less than 10% above the official poverty line; one emergency away from falling into the pits of penury. 

'Destitution' is a word sometimes demeaned by over-use. The official definition of destitution is having less than £10-a-day after housing costs, or having to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period. An incredible 1.5 million citizens of the world's fifth-richest economy experienced destitution in 2017! 

Some of the symptoms of this appalling state of affairs, identified by the UN Report, include "a shocking rise in use of food banks [a four-fold increase since 2012 - RV] and rough sleeping...falling life expectancy for some...denial of benefits to the severely disabled...impoverishment of single mothers and people with mental illness..." 

 

'Systematic Immiseration' 

But Professor Alston rightly points the finger at the Tory government for consciously driving people down into the muck and misery of poverty. It's not the natural order of things, nor some god-given condition. 

He accuses the Tories in scathing language: 

"Much of the glue that held British society together since World War Two has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos... There's been a systematic immiseration of a significant part of the population... Austerity has deliberately gutted local authorities [on provision of libraries, youth facilities, parks and other services], leading to unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation." 

Alston identifies the cruel abomination of Universal Credit as one major cause of this suffering - an accusation made flesh and bone by one of the community activists he met in Scotland, Ruchazie's Jamie Clark: 

"I've seen people get into two months' rent arrears while they wait 8 weeks for their first payment of Universal Credit. In that time they've been threatened with legal action by their housing provider. I know from personal experience the impact it has on your mental health and family life when you live in fear of eviction because you can't pay the rent."

Warning the Exploiters 

But Alston also rightly highlights that "60% of the people in poverty are in families where someone works." 

That's 60% of 14 million people, left stranded in poverty because a family member or members suffers poverty pay and/or insecure contracts; victims of a system that has systematically robbed wages in favour of profits. 

As Alston warns, alongside "massive disinvestment in the social security network", this low-wage economy has "created a highly combustible situation that will have dire consequences."

As well as lambasting the Tories for their track-record, their ideologically-driven austerity agenda, the UN rapporteur is hereby warning the ruling capitalist class of the social and political upheaval they are storing up. 

'Capitalism Isn't Working' 

An even more stark version of the same alarm call has been issued by Nobel prize-winning economist, Professor Sir Angus Deaton, in his far-reaching report on inequality in the UK, for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. 

"There's a real question whether democratic capitalism is working, when it's only working for part of the population", the IFS report cries out. 

It goes on to warn that widening wealth gaps "make a mockery of democracy", with the assessment that "people are more troubled by inequality than at any time since the 1940s." 

'Deaths of Despair' 

This major new study shows that the share of household income going to the richest 1% has tripled in the past 30 years, as Britain has become one of the most unequal societies on earth, after the US. Deaton describes the contrast between "runaway incomes for high earners" with the rise in what he calls "deaths of despair" - early deaths through addiction and suicide - linked to poverty, social isolation and mental health problems. 

Since the 2008 bankers' crisis, such 'deaths of despair' have rocketed from 30 to 61 per 100,000 for men, and from 15 to 26 per 100,000 women. 

The capitalist economist's devastating picture of growing, galloping inequality lacks any substantial proposals to overcome it, but concedes "Falling trade union membership may have removed constraints on wage dispersion, increased the surplus going to executives, or more generally reduced the political clout of ordinary workers against other dominant groups." 

Emergency Measures Against Poverty and Inequality 

These two authoritative reports condemn the Tories and capitalism as a system for failing the millions; deliberately! So what possible solutions to poverty and inequality can we advocate? 

The meek and mild recommendations of the UN Report to restore local authority funding, reverse benefit caps and scrap the two-child limit are welcome and necessary, but wholly inadequate in the teeth of a social and human catastrophe. 

The benefits system needs to be fundamentally overhauled, to transform it into a genuine 'social security system' for those most in need, or at times of greatest need. 

Going beyond that, the battle for a decent wage and secure jobs is critical. For an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage for all over 16, scrapping the lower youth rates, as an emergency step towards a real living minimum wage. And for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all who want it, abolishing the poverty and mind-bending insecurity of zero-hours or short-hours contracts. 

For a Legal Maximum Income 

Equally, the trade union and socialist movement needs to take serious action against inequality, around the demand for a legal maximum income, initially set at no more than 10 times the minimum wage. 
That would help reverse the rising tide of extreme incomes for those who take but don't make wealth - and add to social cohesion and well-being.

Along with progressive taxation of the rich and big corporations, such fighting demands would vastly strengthen the organised trade union movement - which the IFS report acknowledges is one of the pivotal requirements to combating inequality. 

As we've written before, it's no accident that inequality was at its narrowest in Britain when the unions had over 13 million members, with collective bargaining covering the big majority of workers - the mirror opposite to today's situation. 

Democratic Ownership 

If we are to challenge the widening gap in wealth, health and life expectancy itself, we need the audacity to question the whole source of such appalling inequalities: the ownership of wealth and its means of creation. 

It's not 'democracy' that isn't working, it's capitalism - a system of ownership of wealth and power that excludes the vast majority of the population from any meaningful democracy, let alone a secure lifestyle. 

Why should a handful of bankers, a few hundred industrial corporations, and shrinking numbers of fabulously rich landowners dictate the lives of billions of people across the globe? 

We need to build a socialist party and trade union movement that campaigns for real democracy - democratic public ownership of land, industry, finance and services - with a plan of sustainable social production that creates hundreds of thousands of homes, decent jobs, clean energy and free public transport. 

There's no question about it: capitalism is not working. Our task is to organise for its replacement, in defense of both people and planet. That's the democratic and socialist future that fills the thinkers of capitalism with dread.