In 1795, the justices of Berkshire established a scale of relief for
the poor and underemployed in England. This revolutionary departure
from the draconian, punitive English Poor laws established a base line
of survival or minimum standard of living to be guaranteed to those
whom circumstances placed below this level. Known as the Speenhamland
system, this approach soon prevailed throughout England. As Karl
Polanyi pointed out in his essential book, The Great Transformation,
Speenhamland effectively established, for the first time, a "right to
live.” It was abolished in 1834. Polanyi remarked, "Indeed, nothing
could be more obvious than that the wage system imperatively demanded
the withdrawal of the ‘right to live’ as proclaimed in Speenhamland –
under the new regime of the economic man, nobody would work for a wage
if he could make a living by doing nothing.” In other words, the logic
of capitalism is inimical with a "right to live”.
This truth was
borne out two centuries later when our elected officials under Bill
Clinton again wrenched the "right to live” out of the welfare system
and enforced the imperatives of the labor market. The timing was
fortuitous. Decades of vulgar media accounts of welfare laziness and
indolence had wormed its way into the popular imagination and
employment was relatively high. Few saw this as a scheme to relieve a
tight labor market and pressure wages downward – the same logic that
drove the abolishment of Speenhamland.
Now, a decade and a half
later, the labor market is non-existent and there is no "right to
live”. Hopefully, history will settle the score with those responsible
for the destruction of our welfare system, but, in the meantime,
millions face a bleak future in the face of a teetering economy and
mass unemployment.
Eighty years ago –July 4, 1930 – 1,320
delegates assembled to form the National Unemployed Council, an
organization that grew to 800,000 members by 1938. This founding
meeting came on the heels of demonstrations nationwide engaging nearly
a million and a half unemployed in March of 1930. Both the
demonstrations and the National Unemployed Councils were organized by
the Communist Party and the Trade Union Unity League. These actions led
to the later enactment of Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and
other vital, life-affirming social programs.
No such
organization exists today, though one is urgently needed to fight for
the needs of the millions who have been thrown off the unemployment
relief roles – the gutting of Unemployment Insurance. The size of the
civilian labor force has shrunk dramatically from May to June,
indicating unemployed workers losing their benefits or discouraged from
looking for work. Their numbers will explode to at least three million
by the end of July if unemployment benefits are not restored. To add
perspective, one must count, in most cases, spouses, children and other
dependents to fully appreciate the brutal effects of these lost
benefits.
At the same time, those lucky enough to have jobs
are experiencing greater hardships. In June, average hours of work
dropped, as did average hourly wages. Jesse Rothstein, chief economist
for the Labor Department, quoted in The Wall Street Journal,
said: "It’s hard to overstate how deep the hole is….” Many "don’t seem
to be appreciating the gravity of the situation.” That would include
our politicians and the media. They seem to share more with Richard
Hastings, macro and consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities,
who wrote about the unsuccessful vote on extending unemployment
benefits: "The vote’s message was probably healthy: move in with your
parents and learn to take care of something other than your next
tweet.” Surely, there is a special place in hell for Hastings and his
ilk.
Polling by the Pew Research Center gives a snap shot of the
effects of the downturn on those still clinging to a job: 28% have had
their work hours reduced, 23% have suffered cuts in pay, 12% were
forced to take unpaid leave, and 11% were made part-time. These drastic
changes in the work place have generated equally drastic changes in
personal habits, from spending less on expensive items to deferring
marriage and children. Mainstream economists will focus – correctly –
upon the potential loss of buying power, while conveniently ignoring
the accompanying intensification of the labor of those holding jobs and
the resultant increase in the rate of exploitation for the sake of
profits.
In this desperate accounting, a distinction is lost.
All would agree that in one sense the devastation befalling working
people is a result of the economic crisis. But, more importantly, the
pain of unemployment, impoverishment and hyper-exploitation is the
result of both corporate and political policy decisions; people in
power have decreed with their decisions that most people will suffer.
This understanding cuts through the fatalism and despair that grip so
many. There are other policies that would not saddle the majority of us
with such a bleak future.
This same understanding should awaken
people to the cynical, dishonest offensive against Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid now being mounted by our political elites.
Wildly exaggerated claims about the insolvency of these programs have
circulated for decades, mostly as cover for the financial sector’s
rapacious hunger for the assets held by or flowing through them. For a
brief moment, attention turned away, thanks to the implosion of the
financial sector and the embarrassing disappearance of massive wealth
to banking irresponsibility. With the financial sector now alive and
well, due to an obscenely generous transfusion of public funds,
attention has returned to stripping these programs – this time under
the ruse of "deficit reduction.” One can only marvel at the slavish
creation by our corporate media of the new fear of "unsustainable”
sovereign public debt. In a short time, opinion makers, politicians,
and academic economists have joined hands to manufacture a fictitious
monster threatening the very foundations of our way of life, a way of
life that is merely a fleeting memory for most. With nearly two-thirds
of the US population believing that this apparition is our greatest
threat, the attack on the last remaining elements of a people’s economy
is swiftly moving forward.
Whether one believes in apparitions
or not, the debt-scare could be answered in many ways that would not
disable these popular programs: taxes could be raised on corporations
and the wealthy; revenues could be generated in myriad ways; from taxes
on risky speculative ventures in the financial sector, foreign military
aggression could be ended; the military budget could be dramatically
slashed; the CIA could be eliminated; single-payer health care could be
enacted; the costly criminal justice system could be dramatically
reduced by replacing punitive judicial measures with treatment and
rehabilitation; etc.
But it is abundantly clear that policy
makers have their sights on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
They have drawn conclusions from the recent European experience of debt
hysteria provoking austerity - austerity exacting the huge loss of
jobs, income and benefits in the public sector, as well as radical
surgery on the social safety net.
The Obama Administration
sought to begin this process by encouraging the Congress to establish a
committee to address "fiscal responsibility,” with entitlement programs
clearly the target. With the forthcoming November elections in mind,
Congress balked. Determined to move forward, the Administration
established a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
and extracted a promise from Congressional leaders that their findings
would receive an up-or-down vote after the November elections,
shielding the potential damage from a popular backlash against Congress
as a result of the vote.
The Commission is loaded with
debt-scolds sharing a history of advocacy of privatization, market
friendliness, and public-sector austerity. President Obama has set a
tone of cost cutting by declaring that "All of us should be worried
about the fact that we have been running the credit card in the name of
future generations. We’ve got to get our debt and our deficits under
control…especially on big-ticket items… That’s going to be our project
for the next couple of years.” He made no mention of extracting
revenues from the multi-millionaires and billionaires who have profited
hugely from generating and managing that debt.
The members of
the Commission, most vocally its co-chairs, have been transparent about
its goals of cost cutting and focusing on entitlement programs. Alan
Simpson, one of the co-chairs of the Commission, "reassured” that no
one over 58 needs to worry about Social Security benefits. The
not-so-hidden implication is that everyone else should be worried!
Just
as in 1834, we are now confronted with a massive, determined effort to
destroy the "right to live” in the face of a deepening crisis of
capitalism rapidly eroding jobs and benefits for the majority of US
citizens. They are caught in a vise of collapsing living standards on
one side and draconian policy decisions on the other. It is not a
moment to contemplate electoral prospects or renew our vows with hope,
but a time to act. Desperate times are not served well by pragmatism
and maneuvers to subtly shift the balance of forces. Instead we need to
project new and not-so-new, but bold policies that challenge the
dominant trends in US politics. We can debate the political nuances of
these dominant trends – whether they are spawned by the strength of the
ultra-right, the spinelessness of Democrats, or the consensus
obsessions of the President – but it is more important that we move on
to organizing and leading a fight back. We must organize and build movements to stop the aggressive wars of our military and our imperialist allies.
We
must fight for a federal jobs program of the boldness of the New Deal
that puts swift job creation above contractor profits. Such a program
must have strong affirmative action constraints.
We must demand unlimited unemployment insurance until employment returns to historically stable levels.
We
must demand a shorter workweek with the same pay for private sector
jobs, a move that will stimulate new hiring in this sector. We must demand the broadening and strengthening of welfare for those who have fallen away from the job market.
We
must make every effort to derail the ruling class plans to eviscerate
the popular entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid.
These are life-or-death immediate demands that cannot wait for the formalities of the November election.