Cut & Run

In the last blog, I argued that the kind of draconian cuts, in Public Spending, being discussed at the moment, make no economic sense for British Capital. They probably make no political sense either, except that the parties have entered a Dutch auction around what they perceive as being a popular idea – actually recent opinion polls show it isn’t. Whatever happens, the very fact of the discussion of such cuts, in services so important to workers, should provide us with the lesson that we cannot afford to allow the bosses or their state to run them!

Pensions

For the last 100 years, the bosses, via their state, have been robbing money, from our wages, by law, in Tax and N.I., supposedly in order to provide us with a Pension. The bosses state is the Monopoly supplier of this pension. In fact, its like the old system of Truck, where bosses used to similarly take money from workers wages to cover the cost of their accommodation in company housing, or would pay them in tokens, that could only be redeemed at the Company owed shop.

Like the Truck System, it disempowers workers, from obtaining the best deal, forcing them to accept whatever terms for their Pension, the biggest Capitalist Monopoly of all – the State – chooses to offer them. The consequences of that are what you would expect. For decades after the State Old Age Pension was introduced workers paid N.I. and taxes for it, but did not live long enough to draw it!! Those who did only received a pittance. It was a bit like a Mafia run, protection racket.

Yet, in the 19th Century, workers had not only created their own Trade Unions to cater for their needs, but had created Friendly Societies, through which they could collectively build up their resources to cover such things as Unemployment, Sickness and Old Age. These Societies, by using the workers small savings collectively, could turn them into Capital, which is what Marx had suggested was necessary if workers were to break free from their condition. They could be used to finance Co-operative production, or the buying up of Capitalist firms, and the profits from that activity would then cover the workers needs in relation to those Benefits. It would provide not only a much greater return on their savings than the scant unemployment provision, or the Pension most workers never lived to collect, but also strengthen the economic and social position of workers. Its no wonder Capital keen to undermine such a development by introducing State run schemes, and thereby robbing the workers of the resources they could have used more effectively themselves.

Of course, Social Democrats sold the idea on the basis of it being a means of redistributing wealth and income. But, in 100 years of Welfarism, no such redistribution has occurred. On the contrary, the gap between rich and poor has widened. As Eric Hobsbawm says, in “Industry and Empire”, all that Welfarism has done is to transfer money from one section of the working class to another section of the working class. In doing so, it not only wastes huge sums of money collecting and redistributing that money in taxes and benefits, via a vast bloated State bureaucracy, but it necessarily sets up conflict between those workers from whom taxes are taken, and those to whom benefits are paid. Its no wonder the Tories and Right-wing media are able to whip up hatred and division within the working class on that basis.

With no effective control over the bosses state, whenever it decides it is in the interests of Capital accumulation, the first place it turns is to these Benefits and pensions. The Tories broke the link of Pensions with wages knowing that the RPI grossly understates inflation, particularly for Pensioners. Gordon Brown offered pensioners an increase of 75p a week!!!

Now, as workers actually begin to live long enough to receive their pensions, and perhaps have a few years of active life to enjoy them, the response of the bosses state is predictable – it wants to raise the retirement age to 67 or even 70. The bosses and their state argue that because workers are living longer, and the costs of maintaining this older population are rising workers need either to pay more into their pensions, or draw those pensions for a shorter time, or both.

They lie. The retirement age was set at 65 decades ago, when life expectancy was around 70 on average. Life expectancy now is only around 80, or 10 more years of life. According to this study from the - TUC workers output in Britain rose by 69.6% in the last 30 years alone. (See Page 4) On average productivity has been rising by more than 2% a year. Put another way a 2% increase in productivity compounded over 100 years means that each worker produces more than 7 times what they produced back then. Okay, workers consume more of the things they consumed back then, and consume a wider range of products, but even allowing for that the increase in productivity means that rather than extending the working life, there is scope for it to be cut considerably. Just taking the 69.6% figure for the last 30 years means that the original 5 years of retirement could be extended to almost 9!

It is not that workers are not producing enough wealth to cover their retirement, it is that Capital consumes more of the wealth we produce. The money that the bosses rob from us via their state, in taxes and N.I. on the pretext of providing for our needs, goes instead to finance its own activities like the Bank bail-out, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or to buy nuclear weapons systems, or to finance the waste and corruption of the bloated state bureaucracy.

Both the Tories and labour claim that cuts will be needed, yet both remain committed to spending billions on replacing Trident! We cannot afford this State run Truck system and protection racket any longer, which forcibly takes money from our wages for something many of us will never receive, and for those that do, is continually under threat and subject to uncertainty.

Already workers have close to £400 billion in their own Pension Funds, which again they have no control over, and which is used in the interests of Capital, and against the interests of workers. The Trade Unions should launch a campaign demanding that workers be given total control over their own money in their Pension Funds, through democratically elected Boards. That is a basic bourgeois democratic right. Indeed one of the fundamental principles of Capitalist law and ideology is that individuals should have the right to dispose of their own property. Yet that basic right is denied to millions of workers! The Trade Unions should work with the Co-op Bank to establish a Workers Co-operative Pension Fund to manage the workers money, to which all of these private pension funds should be transferred, thereby using the expertise within the Co-op sector rather than relying on the “City” Fund managers. I addition, a calculation should be done of how much money should exist within the N.I. Fund to cover Pensions given workers tax and NI payments from their inception, and the actual payments made, so that this could be also transferred into such a Workers Fund, and enabling workers to then make their N.I. payments to this fund under their own control rather than to the bosses state.

Combined this would give workers close to £1 trillion immediately to invest, enough to buy up lock, stock, and barrel the majority of FTSE 100 companies, thereby drastically transforming the workers economic and social position overnight.

Health & Social Care

I’ve already slagged off the inadequacies of the State Capitalist NHS, and its poor provision for the needs of workers in previous posts such as US healthcare, The NHS and the Left , and Healthy Debate , so I don’t intend to add to that here. Instead, I intend to focus on practical alternatives that could be adopted here and now. After all, its not possible to simply roll out a workers alternative to the NHS overnight. In part, I’m motivated by a recent discussion on Charlie McMenamin’s Blog , and partly on my own experience relating to my Mother, as well as drawing on some of my experience from my former role as Vice Chair of Staffordshire County Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee.

Not only is Social Care likely to be one of the first areas looked to in relation to any cuts, but it is an area that has already faced on going cuts over the last few years as the cost of caring for an increasingly aged population rises. Council run Care Homes have been closed, old people have been encouraged to remain in their homes, and children have been encouraged to look after their parents. In fact, one of the Working Groups of the Health Scrutiny Committee whilst I was Vice Chair looked at the number of kids – some as young as 8 – who were fulfilling roles on a more or less full-time basis as Carers for their parents. In truth we do not know how many kids are fulfilling this role, but the known figures themselves are pretty shocking.

Moreover, whether a Care Home is for Children of for the Elderly both involved taking residents out of their existing environment and placing them in alien surroundings. For elderly people, not only do they face losing the familiar surroundings of their home, but all of the generations of friends and acquaintances that have been built up are taken away too. New friendships often arise with other residents, but it is not the kind of disruption an elderly person needs at a time in their life when they can feel generally uncertain. As repeated stories continue to demonstrate care is often not what it ought to be. I was continually shocked at the Monthly Reports that were presented to the Social Services Committee that set out just how little if any education was being received by children in the County’s Care homes, often no more than a few hours a week, frequently none at all. And when myself and the Chair of the Committee did eventually force the Department to do something, that something ended up to be just to appoint yet another well-paid bureaucrat to look into it, with no improvement in subsequent months as a result!

In both Council run and Private Residential Care homes workers are low paid, and with low status difficult jobs to perform. As a consequence they are usually understaffed with a consequent effect on care for residents. Even basic care is often lacking let alone the kind of encouragement to engage in stimulative activities that both the elderly and the underprivileged child requires. Councils are not even allowed to run Nursing Homes, but Councils do finance the Residential Care component of such accommodation. The Health Care component is also supposed to be covered in the same way that a stay in a hospital bed is free, but reports continue to abound about people being charged for what appears to be Health Care, especially where they have their own resources such as a house that can be sequestered.

Yet, in some ways this clearly provides an opportunity for workers. In a situation of a Co-operative scheme or a Co-operatively managed estate, there is no reason why the Co-operative could not establish its own Residential Care homes – for both Children and for the Elderly – to provide Social Care on a Permanent or Respite basis. As in the case of Private Nursing Homes and Residential Care homes it would then be able to negotiate with the Local Authority to cover the cost of residents stay. It would also mean that residents could remain in their own Community, and maintain their relationships with friends and acquaintances.

A couple of years ago my son made a film for the NHS and Stoke City Council about Bradeley Retirement Village , which gives some idea of the kind of facilities that could be developed. He was really impressed with what he saw such as one young woman who was confined to a wheel chair, but who within weeks of entering the village was taking part in organised activities including absailing!!! Stoke Council and the NHS also have another such village in Berryhill, and another in progress at Meir. But, bringing such functions under workers ownership and control via Housing and Estate Management Co-operatives can develop and protect them against the potential for future cuts, as well as ensure that they are open to a wider range of people including those totally dependent on Benefits.

Moreoever, as will come to later in talking about Education, by being a part of a Co-operative Community that has ownership and control of a wide range of assets and facilities, residents can also be encouraged to participate in a wide range of activities to keep them physically and mentally active. For example, they could make use of Health and Fitness Facilities at Sports Centres, which could be extended to include suitable spa and physio facilities. They could take advantage of educational facilities within Community schools, whether it be a simple use of the library, to use of computers, or additional learning. Not only would this benefit them, but it would enrich the learning experience of children too, as well as possibly reducing levels of anti-social behaviour in the classroom.

But, there are many other similar developments that could be made. Last week my son went to have some skin tags removed. He didn’t go to the Doctor he had them removed at the local Co-op Pharmacy. Increasingly, Pharmacies are undertaking such minor medical work taking the strain off GP’s. The fact that this was a Co-op Pharmacy demonstrates the potential. I have argued in the past that we should all be members of the Co-op, and campaign for the idea of setting up Management Boards for each Co-op Shop, made up of members from the Community in which its situated. The same applies to Co-op Pharmacies. That would immediately give workers a direct ownership and control over a growing area of healthcare within our communities.

But, as Pharmacies are taking on work previously done by GP’s, so GP’s are taking on work formerly done by Hospitals and Clinics. In Stoke there is already a Doctor’s Co-operative that provides locums, and out of hours facilities for other GP’s. But, given the nature of healthcare such Co-ops should not be just producer Co-ops – I have no idea of the politics of the GP’s involved in this one, but clearly they can function as nothing more than a Partnership – but should also involve the local Community in owning and controlling their function. Particularly, as the idea of Polyclinics develops along the lines that it operates in Europe, the establishment of Community based Co-operative Clinics could begin to make healthcare properly accountable to the workers that rely on it, whilst not immediately challenging the fundamental basis of the NHS.

Part of the problem that workers face with healthcare is that they confront a huge monolith as atomised individuals, and do so at times when they are most vulnerable. By bringing workers together collectively in Co-operative organisations whether they be Housing and Estate Management Co-ops, Residential and Nursing Care Co-ops, or Community Primary Healthcare Co-ops that atomisation can be broken. A Care Home can draw up a legally binding contract for a range of healthcare required for its residents setting out a minimum that must be provided, thereby preventing that being cut in the future. Though, this might sound like heresy, if the NHS cannot guarantee or refuses to enter such contracts, then a campaign should be launched for the right to enter into such contracts with other Healthcare providers who will, with the State reimbursing the cost. That would for now mean private healthcare providers, but would open the door to Co-operative Healthcare providers setting up to meet that need.

This after all is the basis on which workers proceeded in the 19th Century to create their own source of supply in place of the poor quality goods they were being offered by the Company stores, and the small shopkeepers who adulterated the workers food to cut their own costs, and inflate their profits.

Education

Most Councils have policies setting out their belief that schools should be Community facilities. Few if any actually put that into practice. Go past most schools in the evening, at weekends or holidays and the only people you will see using them are the kids who’ve climbed over the gates. Yet, schools are potentially tremendously important facilities for every community. I’ve already spoken earlier about the way they could be used by the elderly, especially where schools have sports centres or facilities attached. In rural and other areas where Libraries have either never existed, or been closed or are under threat of closure, the existence of a school library only requires extension to provide for all the Community rather than just the kids in the school.

In my blog The Plebs , I spoke about the Plebs League and the National Labour Colleges Movement. Co-operative Communities could restart such initiatives using existing school building and facilities providing a range of classes outside those offered within the confines of the normal “Evening Classes” constrained by the limitations of the bourgeois curricula imposed by Local Authorities. Moreover, our schools are full of alienated kids, who resort to anti-social and disruptive behaviour. Not only would the general culture of a Co-operative Community create conditions which would mitigate against that alienation, but the general involvement of the Community within the school throughout the day would help minimise any anti-social behaviour. And by providing education that addressed the real needs and concerns of those kids outside the normal school environment, they might be encouraged to develop the learning process discovered in that environment into a greater involvement during the school day too.

As I wrote in my blog Marxism, Education and The State , education is an arena of class struggle too. As the Plebs said, there is no such thing as class neutral knowledge. No matter the politics of individual teachers bourgeois education acts as a transmission belt of bourgeois ideas. Only by creating an alternative workers educational system can that be changed, but alongside the development of such an alternative bourgeois education has to be challenged in the schools and colleges. That cannot be left to individual or even groups of teachers to undertake what are essentially guerrilla tactics. Moreover, as stated in the above blog, just as with the way in which workers confront the health Service as atomised individuals so do students and parents confront the educational system. The very working of the Capitalism instils those concepts of competition, and the idea of education as nothing more than a means of getting a better job, which undermine any attempts by radical teachers to try to make it more than that. But, that atomisation as with healthcare can be overcome via a Co-operative Community, particularly one whose educational horizons are widened by the ideas that can be developed through a Labour College system.

One of the underlying assumptions that socialists have about future socialist society is the idea that children will cease to be seen as the property or responsibility of individual parents, but will once again as they used to be, be seen as society’s children, as the basis of future society, and therefore, the responsibility of all. Simply establishing a Co-operative community will not bring about such a change of itself, but the very working of a Co-operative Community, will engender the idea that all its members should not only help police it against anti-social behaviour, but should also provide assistance to parents to help prevent the kinds of problems that lead to such behaviour. Extending that mindset, and such a Community confronting a school within its midst as a collective will immediately change the relationship. The Community as a collective will be concerned with the needs of its children’s not each parent being concerned only with the needs of their children, and that in itself will impose a different set of conditions on teaching within the school, as well as developing a more pro-active involvement in its day to day affairs. A relationship which will be furthered to the extent that members of the Community are involved in the school throughout the day, not just as assistants, whereby they become absorbed into the schools establishment, but as consumers of its products.

On that basis the general lessons that such a Community will engender of Co-operation and solidarity will naturally be reflected in its children who could be supported in establishing their own unions, and collectives within the school to present their own needs and demands.

Responding To The Calls For Cuts

Instead of simply responding to the current propaganda surrounding proposed cuts by a reflexive defensive response, workers should respond aggressively and offensively by developing their own agenda along the above lines to spell out how they could provide for themselves under their own ownership and control those vital services which the bosses state now says it is unable to provide.

But, we can do more than that. The bosses and their parties claim that these cuts are necessary, yet as stated earlier neither the Tories nor Labour will commit to cutting the billions of pounds for replacing Trident. The Tories, in fact, have got plans for other expensive offensive weapons schemes, whilst they plan to cut spending on those basic necessities for keeping troops safe – despite hypocritically criticising Labour for not properly providing troops with adequate supplies. The Tories have said they would scrap the plan for ID cards, but only in order to give that money away in tax cuts for their rich supporters. Labour could achieve the savings it needs by scrapping Trident, scrapping the proposals for ID cards, and by bringing the troops home from Afghanistan, and other parts of the world.

A much better defence of British workers could be achieved via the means I have set out in my blog Proletarian Military Policy . Co-operative Communities running and monitoring themselves, having their own democratically controlled neighbourhood patrols, which could be built into a local and National Militia, could give much better security and defence against terrorism, and against drug dealers and criminal gangs than any amount of Big Brother methods such as ID cards, CCTV, and so on, which form a battery of weapons aimed as much at British workers and their organisations as against any foreign threat.

The left has to provide workers with an alternative to the failed ideas of the past, and to simply fighting a fire fighting battle against attacks from the bosses and their State. We have to give workers a vision of a future worth fighting for that is different from the failed offerings of Capitalism and State socialism, a future they can begin to implement themselves today.