It’s all about creating a pool of impoverished lumpenproletariat so that general wages can be driven down and more profit made.

 

The idea is to create fear amongst those who are working that there wages are being eaten by this lumpenproletariat to disguise the fact that they are in reality the victims of a rapacious capitalism which does not share out the wealth.

 

It is hardly less crude than the euthanasia campaigns run by the nazi’s.

 

Thing is it is ultimately denying a large number of people the right to live at all.  It is medieval in its conception, effectively creating a new class of outlaws who are criminalised from the word go because there is no other way to live.

 

Let’s be under no illusions, there is no more right to demonstrate in this country than there was in Libya, ineffective quiet protest yes, so long as no-one sees it and it creates no disturbance. Really what is the point?

 

Larry

 

 

I think a lot of current research concerning the welfare state has to be considered in the context of a narrative which, while it has been spun for the last 20-30 years, has been gathering pace in the last few years.  To simplify, this is a shift away from the ‘welfare state’ being seen as a ‘good thing’ which everyone has a stake in, to a residualised benefit system which is exploited by the undeserving and fraudulent.  To take just one example, when supplementary benefit (the forerunner to Income Support) was originally introduced, to replace National Assistance, the political and popular rhetoric was dominated by the aim that Supplementary Benefit should be seen as an entitlement, and as a move away from stigma attached to the Poor Law origins of National Assistance.  Now, the political and popular rhetoric accompanying welfare benefit reform is about a) the need to make work pay (Universal Credit) and b) the need for conditions and sanctions to make sure that only the ‘genuinely sick’ get long-term benefits (ESA). (And the word ‘entitlement’ is well on the way to becoming the dirty word that it is in the USA)

 

To understand what answers to questions like “Do you agree or disagree: The benefits system is working effectively at present in Britain” mean, we need to understand what people take to mean by ‘effectively’ and in order to understand that we need to contextualise it within the dominant ‘stories’ that are being told about the benefit system.  In the early years of the welfare state, people would have been more likely to think that an effective benefits system was one which they felt they could rely on in hard times.  These days, they are more likely to want to judge it on whether it supports those who really ‘deserve’ support or whether it (also) supports people who don’t want to work – because that is the dominant narrative (and we are all influenced by this narrative in one way or another).

 

Jenny