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Title: Rethinking Welfare
Author: Lucien van der Walt
Date: 2006
Language: en
Topics: state welfare, critique
Source: http://libcom.org/library/rethinking-welfare-radical-critique

Lucien van der Walt

Rethinking Welfare

Government has introduced various welfare measures to alleviate poverty.

Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions] has called rather for

the introduction of a universal basic incomes grant. Lucien van der Walt

argues that unions have been sidetracked by technocratic demands and

that the demand for welfare should be linked to the struggle of the

working class to reinvent society.

— Union policy on welfare has become centred on technical questions such

as funding, targeting and delivery and has strayed from considering how

these questions relate to labour movement strategy. In short, policy has

replaced politics, and issues like welfare have become linked from the

project of building the working class movement as a popular force to

change society.

WELFARE AS CAPITALIST SYMPTOM

Technical questions should be secondary to strategy.The need for welfare

is a symptom of capitalist society, based on production for profit,

exploitation at work, and distribution through the market system.The

state and state corporations protect this system.

In such a system there is no link between needs and income: goods are

sold, but cash income is not tied to needs.The neo-liberal Ludwig von

Mises found no distinction between production for profit and for need

because “in the capitalistic system profits can only be obtained if

production meets a comparatively urgent demand.”[1]

This is untrue, for investment is directed to profitable areas, and

given that 10% of the population gets 70% of the income, production for

profit inevitably discriminates against the working class.

Neither investment nor work is democratic, for decisions and ownership

are centralised in the hands of private employers and state officials.

Work under capitalism is authoritarian and uncreative, whilst a third of

the economically active population is unemployed. People are unemployed

because they are working class and therefore lack resources to live

outside wage labour. ‘Class,’ ‘power,’ and ‘state’ are three inseparable

terms, one of which presupposes the other two, and in Bakunin’s words

they boil down to this: “the political subjection and economic

exploitation of the masses.” [2]

How, then, can we move towards a world “where men will be able to work

out their dreams after having acquitted themselves of their duty to

society?”[3] And where does welfare fit in?

In the capitalist system working class people need as much welfare as

possible. But this is only a stopgap. Unless production for profit is

replaced by production for need, and centralised power is replaced by

democratisation, the problems will continue.

Only a powerful, self-managed working class movement can change the

situation, for only the working class has an interest in changing

society. Only such a movement can replace capitalism and the state with

self-management at work and the community and create a libertarian

communist or anarchist order and a democratically planned economy.

At the heart of that movement must be the unions.

WELFARE AS TACTIC

Struggles for welfare are therefore only tactics in a broader strategy

to change society, and that strategy should centre on building a working

class movement capable of reinventing the world.

What principles frame this strategy? First, welfare is not a charity,

but a right, an expression of the frustration of human needs in

capitalism. The demand for welfare is an indictment of this society.

Second, struggles for reforms are the lifeblood of a popular movement. A

movement that cannot fight around immediate issues, cannot fight to

change society more fundamentally. Furthermore, immediate struggles

build working class confidence, power and organisation.

Third, the basic lever to change society is not policy innovation, but

the mobilised power of the working class,and more welfare requires,

accordingly, more struggle.

Fourth, democracy and self- management and political education are vital

to 1abour.A movement based on the delegation of decisions to leaders,

bureaucrats, a political party, or even union policy experts, cannot

change society. It can only change the elites in charge. Self-managed

methods alone lay the basis for a democratic future.

Finally, internationalism is central. The working class is multiracial

and multinational, and to divide its struggles is to invite defeat.The

local ruling class is interlinked with ruling classes abroad, and llas

never been ‘patriotic’ to its ‘own’ workers. Policies like “Proudly

South African” cripple the working class ideologically, opening the

gates of xenophobia and “Yellow Peril” ideas.

WELFARE STRUGGLES FROM BELOW

All tactics must be subordinated to the goal of building a powerful,

self-managed working class movement as part of a strategy for a better

society. This means the struggle for more and better welfare is foremost

about more popular mobilisation.

The heart of a movement for progressive social policy is a progressive

popular movement, not technocratic policy processes or parliamentary

lobbies. Demands should be formulated from below, in a participatory

process that develops the power and consciousness of the working class.

This approach identifies needs expressed from below, and formulates

demands accordingly, generating more effective positions while

strengthening the working class movement more broadly

The process through which demands are formulated is most important;

indeed, more important than details of concrete proposals.

Welfare should not be funded through redistribution within the working

class.The burden of funding must come from the ruling class, for only a

class-based redistribution is just.

This is not to say that there should be a non-contributory welfare

system.Just as a libertarian communist society would operate on the

basis of “from each according to ability, to each according to need,”

the idea of everyone contributing is a valid one.

Capitalism is a skewed system, though, so working class contributions

should be at a flat, low rate, while the ruling class should face

punitive and escalating charges.

LINKING WELFARE TO RIGHTS

The structure of welfare payments shapes society. Insisting, for

example, that child support grants only be allocated to women via their

husbands reinforces the traditional family.

How can welfare allocations under capitalism be made consistent with

creating libertarian communism? Means testing should be opposed. It

assumes income from wages is a fair measure of need, ignores the

problems with the wage system, and makes money more important than

rights.Allocation by need should be promoted instead. For example, a

flat rate for pensions which should be calculated by individual

circumstance.

It is often assumed welfare means grants, but there should be more

emphasis on communal provision such as free hospitals, refunds on

medical bills, free housing, rent controls and free electricity.This

provides space for fostering self- management and solidarity.

The aim is to delink meeting needs from ability to pay and the wages

system, and to place rights centre-stage, linking this to class struggle

and redistsibution.

WELFARE IMPOSED ON THE STATE

Neo-liberal arguments have resonance with ordinary people who are

subject to queues and sullen government staff.This can be dealt with by

rejecting the empty choice between market and state in favour of a

society harmonising freedom and equality.

To build a powerful working class movement requires building outside and

against the state to supplant it with self-management. Regarding

welfare, this means imposing welfare on the state, and independent

monitoring by working class structures, with mandated and

non-remunerative posts.

The basic justification for welfare outlined here is in the language of

rights and rights cannot be evaluated by fiscal criteria. It may well be

that expanding demands from below quickly break the boundaries of

current fiscal ‘realism’.

If, however, the existing system finds it ‘unrealistic’ to meet the

needs of people to a meaningful life free of the poverty is it the

rights or the system that must go?

[1] Ludwig von Mises, “The organisation of production under socialism”.

‘Socialism‘ Indianapolis, Liberty Classics, p124

[2] “Bakunin, [1872], 1971, “Letter to La Liberte,”in Sam Dolgoff,

editor, 1971, ‘Bakunin on Anarchy‘, George Allen and Unwin, London, p.

280, emphasis in original

[3] Peter Kroptkin, [1892]1990, ‘The Conquest of Bread‘, Elephant

Editions, London, p. 101