Love the Unempolyed - in praise of entitlement
This month, the number of British unemployed rose to 2.26 million (7.6%), and is expected to reach 3 million next year. Unemployment is widely considered one of the major social problems of our time. So, what is unemployment, why does it exist and what should we make of this phenomenon and those experiencing it? Further, how does unemployment as well as public attitudes to and treatment of the unemployed affect those with jobs? Joan Robinson, who held a professorship of economics at Cambridge University and was a close associate of the legendary J.M. Keynes, provides us with the following insights:
"The first function of unemployment (which has always existed in open or disguised forms) is that it maintains the authority of master over man. The master has normally been in a position to say: 'If you don't want the job, there are plenty of others who do.' When the man can say: 'If you don't want to employ me, there are plenty of others who will', the situation is radically altered. One effect of such a change might be to remove a number of abuses to which the workers have been compelled to submit in the past . . . [Another that]
the absence of fear of unemployment might go further and have a disruptive effect upon factory discipline . . . [the worker may use]
his newly-found freedom from fear to snatch every advantage that he can . .”1
So unemployment is of great benefit to bosses in the frequent instances where their interests conflict with those of their workers (pay, conditions, job security etc). Professor Robinson was echoing the views of economist Michael Kalecki who argued that the main cause of unemployment was the fact that governments work to deliberately maintain it in order to keep wages low and maintain the power of boss over worker. The hypothesis that unemployment is pursued as a matter of government policy is not lacking in empirical confirmation, indeed it is openly admitted. Economic Journalist Doug Henwood tells us:
"there's supporting testimony from Alan Greenspan. Several times during the late 1990s, Greenspan worried publicly that, as unemployment drifted steadily lower the 'pool of available workers' was running dry. The dryer it ran, the greater risk of 'wage inflation,' meaning anything more than minimal increases.”2
Esteemed economist Dean Baker continues the story:
“The Fed justifies limiting job growth and raising the unemployment rate because of its concern that inflation may get out of control, but this does not change the fact that it is preventing workers, and specifically less-skilled workers, from getting jobs, and clamping down on their wage growth."3
There is a half-truth behind this stated concern. Where a fall in unemployment causes a rise in money wages via a shift in the supply/demand ratio for labour, firms may (in cartel fashion) raise prices across the board. This means that real wages (measured in terms of what they can buy) stay the same. Realising this workers demand further money-wage increases and in response firms again raise prices. A government wishing to avoid runaway inflation has two options, either control prices by preventing this cartel behaviour or control wages (usually by increasing unemployment). As governments are in thrall to capital, and the former would mean a reduction in profits, it is not considered. The latter option is presented as the only one. As economist Edward Herman explains, this approach:
“has a huge built-in bias. It takes as granted all the other institutional factors that influence the price level-unemployment trade-off (market structures and independent pricing power, business investment policies at home and abroad, the distribution of income, the fiscal and monetary mix, etc.) and focuses solely on the tightness of the labour market as the controllable variable. Inflation is the main threat, the labour market (i.e. wage rates and unemployment levels) is the locus of the solution to the problem."4
A detailed and empirical discussion of the deliberate maintenance of unemployment by governments can be found in Dean Bakers The Conservative Nanny State. Free online here:
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
This can and does take active forms, such as the raising of interest rates, but its passive form is much more significant. Governments have an enormous ability to mobilise resources, which could easily be used to provide employment for all, but isn’t. A measure of this ability can be seen from the recent bailout – overwhelmingly used to defend the possessors of inordinate privilege from their own mismanagement rather than secure jobs for ordinary people. A high rate of unemployment is usually, more than anything, the result of efforts by government and the business lobby to discipline working people – this required during a recession where falling profits result in efforts to squeeze even more from working people.
This understanding must change our view of unemployment markedly. Even if we were to accept the (in my view laughably false) arguments of professional apologists – that unemployment is necessary to the effective functioning of the economy, and so that governments are justified in deliberately maintaining it – it would be idiotic to blame the unemployed for their condition, when it is an explicit aim of government policy. The idea that the solution to unemployment lies in personal responsibility, incentives, labour market flexibility and the like looks equally ridiculous, as should any of these things significantly reduce unemployment, governments will take measures to raise it again.
The Dole, Unemployment Benefit, Welfare - whatever it is called in your country - now looks absolutely essential. The most meagre and insufficient token restitution to those governments have robbed of their livelihood. And we would be deceiving ourselves if we thought that it only the unemployed who are harmed, or that is only the welfare of the unemployed to which Benefits are essential. Indeed, as Professor Robinson explains, it is precisely for its effects on those with jobs that unemployment is maintained. On the moral course for someone placed in this position, Oscar Wilde's imortal wit remains as pertinent as ever:
“Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates [dole], which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.”5
What of obligations to his fellows? (most) taxpayers are not responsible for the condition of the unemployed. Should he not endeavour to contribute to society rather than living on the work of others? In a just society, perhaps. Under the present system of extortion social responsibility takes more pressing forms, which assuming the responsibility to contribute actively works against. Wilde continues:
“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.”
The unemployed serve two purposes in the extortion of working people. The first is passive suffering. To sit as an example to disobedient workers – step out of line and that’s you. The second is the active self debasement they perform when seeking work. Driven by the misery they experience, they engage in sordid competition with their fellows – who will accept the worst pay and conditions, who will do the most for the least – unemployment for the loser. The effects of this travel all the way up the pay scale. As competition for lower tier jobs becomes more fierce, desire for, the number of people desiring and so competition for higher tier jobs increases.
To see this clearly is to see that it is absolutely immoral for an unemployed person to take personal responsibility for her situation. It is equally immoral to accept any guilt, shame or stigma. Worse, but much more understandable, is for an unemployed person to accept undignified work. As far as social responsibility goes, the first duty of the unemployed is to seek what happiness they can, to live with dignity and not to debase themselves in the pursuit of work.
What is the social responsibility of the unemployed is the self-interest of working people. In the cries of the gutter press ‘dole scroungers’ are the new witches. Scapegoats for all societies ills. Working people must fight this slander, not only for the sake of its targets, but for their own. The solidarity of others does wonders for self esteem and is crucial to maintaining the dignity of the unemployed in particular and the working class more generally.
Abolishing or seriously mitigating the dynamics outlined in this article requires collective action. This requires organisation which comes from solidarity and the wide recognition of the manner in which the vast majority are induced to compete for the favour of a privileged minority (employers). From this a culture of dignity, a wide scale recognition of the anti social character of the work ethic, submissiveness in the workplace and general acceptance of unpleasantness in competition with your fellow worker. More importantly, from the spread of such a culture would emerge political fight for the abolition of unpleasant conditions which drive workers such competition, and the strength in numbers needed to win it. Where unemployment exists, the fight for higher benefits, with no paperwork or obligations for the recipient. But preferably for the condition of more jobs than workers.
The first prerequisite for all this is a mentality of entitlement. Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do. How will we get it? The same way we got the entitlements we do have. Wilde says it best:
“the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious … Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
Sources:
1 Robinson, Joan, Collected Economic Papers: vol. 1, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1973, pp. 84-5
2 Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, pp. 206-7
3 Baker, Dean, The Conservative Nanny State, LULU, 2006 p. 31
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
4 Herman, Edward S., Beyond Hypocrisy, South End Press, Boston, 1992, pg 94
5 Wilde, Oscar, The Soul of Man Under Socialism,
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/his...ilde_soul.html
