Welfare and Dignity
Posted by: Philip Stokoe at 14:34, January 9 2016.
When Margaret Thatcher claimed that there was no such thing as a society, she began the ruthless attack continued by governments of both political parties on those who are needy in our country. Dave Bell in his excellent paper, “Primitive Mind of State”, describes the way that those who receive welfare have been caricatured as follows,
“The Welfare State does not provide people with the basic necessities of life as part of duty of state but instead is a mechanism by which people are dis-empowered, creating in them a helpless state of invalidism. The ‘have-nots’ instead of ‘getting on their bikes’ and competing in the market place, stay at home and whinge and whine for nanny state to do something for them.”
In this paper he argues that the denigration of welfare arises from an argument that stimulates a primitive fear of dependence. He suggests that human beings have a natural inclination to disown the dependent parts and it helps to have somewhere to project that into, which can then be denigrated and diminished. I think that he is quite right and I recommend this paper. What I want to do today is to add an extra dimension to the cost of this demonising. It is my contention that the capacity to look after others is a quality that marks maturity in an individual and dignity in a nation without which there is very little to stop us remaining in a primitive or infantile state. In fact, I want to go further and suggest that this is a sign of an ill society.
In their 2014 paper, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman revealed the statistics about the inequality of wealth in the United States that Bernie Sanders has been quoting ever since, namely that 0.1% own more wealth than the bottom 90% of the population. What Sanders goes on to suggest, which I think completely captures the problem, is that this 0.1% are not satisfied with their enormous wealth but move heaven and earth, and this includes forcing governments to give them opportunities to avoid paying tax, to gain more and create a bigger and bigger divide. He says about this behaviour that it is a form of mental illness. Not only do I think that he is correct about this, I think that it reflects a societal illness which, like most mental illnesses, can be traced to an unconscious belief that is held to be a fact.
One of the other symptoms of this malaise is described by UNICEF in their reports about child poverty in the 23 richest countries of the world. Mexico heads this shameful league table with a score of 26.2% but the United States comes 2nd at 22% of all children being below the national poverty line and the United Kingdom is 4th at 19.8%. It will be no surprise to you that the Scandinavian countries are at the opposite end of this table along with Belgium and Luxembourg. This fits with the theory that it is the extent of inequality in any country that is the primary cause of social disturbance and dysfunction. (Wilkinson, R & Pickett, K, (2010) “The Spirit Level, why Equality is Better for Everyone”). I have to say that I once heard politicians arguing against this book and its argument and I felt the same as I did listening to Nigel Lawson attacking the idea that there is no such a thing as climate change especially that it is primarily caused by human beings. Most of the time I feel that it is important to listen to people who have a different point of view but there are some times when doing so, colludes with a massive denial of a vitally important reality and we just have to accept that there are going to be people still claiming that the earth is flat.
There is a perfectly proper debate to be held about the relationship between greed and envy and, in a different context, I would like to contribute to that debate. For the moment I want to make a more general comment and that is to say that a way to stimulate the more primitive part of the personality is to arouse what I am going to call greed, or create anxiety about a threat to personal wealth or possessions. I remember the development of the idea of “Essex man” during Thatcher’s dominance. I was particularly sensitive to it because I lived in Essex at the time. It seemed to me that what she and her government did was cleverly to create an idea that any of us could become beneficiaries of the yuppie, community of wealth. The Harry Enfield’s character “loadsamoney” seemed to epitomise both the excitement and the serious possibility that every one of us could benefit.
In my view the encouragement of greed also stimulates fear of loss and fear of envious attack. In other words, it creates a ripe audience for this sort of propaganda that Bell describes and which has been growing further and further across subsequent governments.
It seems to me that the development of an idea of a villain who can be identified so clearly, the scrounger, serves to distract us from a more dangerous enemy. This fits with the neo-conservative strategy of creating, by which I mean inventing, an enemy in order to create anxiety amongst the population so that the neo-cons can provide a hero to stand against this enemy and protect us. The common thing about these enemies is that they do not really exist, they have been invented, but they are identified with a person or a group or a country which really does exist. The “scrounger” has obviously been invented to stop us seeing the real enemy who are the people who control the politicians because they are the people with enormous wealth.
An example of what I’m trying to describe is the banks; everybody knows that the banks created the 2008 financial crash. We also know that governments around the world acted to provide finance to keep these banks operating. We know but appear not to want to know that no bank has suffered any major loss, they have all remained profitable. In contrast we have all been required to accept a loss of finance so that we can “pay back” the debt. This is called austerity and our government tells us it is the “right” thing to do. If the purpose of societies to maintain the richest people in a state of comfort and financial security, then it obviously is the right thing to do, i.e. that the rest of us accept enormous loss to achieve this aim.
Of course the point about that is that it creates a model in which those-who-have take from those beneath them on the financial ladder. This is why the people who pay for the debts that the financial institutions created of those in the greatest need within our society. It is exactly the same organisational set up as a culture of bullying.
What is our emotional experience in the face of generosity? When we hear stories of other people’s generosity, doesn’t it give us a good feeling? There was, of course, a lot that was wrong with Victorian society but some things continue to impress and amongst them are those group of people who, having made a lot of money, chose to put it back into society; philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Barnardo, and Henry Wellcome. Is it not true that their stories make us feel good and even proud to be in some way linked to them?
If we can be really honest with ourselves, is it not also the case that being generous ourselves actually makes us feel better? What I’m saying is that I believe that the capacity to give is an important part of what makes for social cohesion and community. Greed, taking and envious attack are all reactions to a particular form of anxiety which feels like a threat to us personally. In other words, when these emotional states and their related behaviours are stimulated, we have been moved into a more primitive level of functioning; we become more infantile. The state of mind that allows us to perceive reality and manage ambiguity and which is necessary for creativity and development, requires some effort and its rewards are emotional. The reward for greed is material. The accumulation of material is not creative nor does it provide for an opportunity to grow and develop.
My point today is that, if we collude with the destruction of our welfare system we shall create a society that is ill and in which growth and development will gradually cease. Mindless greed killed off the Buffalo in the United States, it has created the most serious global crisis that we could imagine and it is destroying parts of us that make our society civilised, mature and creative. It seems to me that an essential characteristic of a civilised society is the creation of a community which looks after those who are needy. This characteristic makes for a dignified society; we lose dignity when we turn the needy within our society into bad people unworthy of our concern.
We are at a critical point in the history of social Britain; successive governments, building on a fear of welfare scroungers, have been destroying that amazing thing created after the Second World War which, even at a time when the country was in enormous debt, gave us dignity – the welfare state. The moment we fall for the trick that measures love, concern and compassion in financial terms, we have lost dignity and our claim to humanity.
References
Bell, D (1996). “Primitive Mind of State” in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 10: 45-57
Saes E & Zucman G, 2014 Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913; evidence from capitalized income tax data, National Bureau of Economic Research. http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf
Unicef Child Poverty in Rich Nations: http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard1e.pdf
Wilkinson, R & Pickett, K, (2010) “The Spirit Level, why Equality is Better for Everyone” Penguin Books