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From the Poor Law to benefit cuts
Sunday 10 October 2010 Keith Flett Printable page PrintableEmail Email
An argument that is often made to socialists is that while we are still going on about the inequalities and iniquities of capitalism, the world has in fact moved on and the system has changed - hence socialism is no longer relevant.
Capitalism is a dynamic system and socialists need to take account of developments. That after all was what Lenin's Imperialism was about.
However at root the exploitative system of market capitalism that has been in place in Britain for more than 200 years remains at core the same.
Often difficult arguments around the falling rate of profit are needed to make the point, but sometimes historians can help.
In the Making Of The English Working Class EP Thompson noted how Bronterre O'Brien, the "schoolmaster of Chartism" and editor of the Poor Man's Guardian, attacked the middle-class government of the Whigs as being the most anti-working class of the lot.
Later, while trying to construct alliances around Chartism to achieve change, O'Brien came to regret his earlier vehemence against some of those he now wanted to work with.
There are striking similarities in the nature of the ruling-class projects of the 1830s and the 2010s.
The idea of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 - a Whig measure - was to make claiming relief very unattractive, to promote work as the only practical alternative and so to create and mould the flexible labour force that the new capitalism needed.
In the discussions around the Act it was argued that the only capital working people had was their labour and so they needed to be as mobile as possible to benefit from it.
In addition capitalism needed a mobile workforce as well - workers to staff the great ironworks then being developed for example, and navvies to build the railways with that iron.
It is difficult not to get a strong whiff of something very similar from Iain Duncan Smith's plans to reform the benefit system, and in particular George Osborne's announcement at the Tory conference of a benefit cap for the less well-off which may well have the effect of making some move to cheaper areas of housing than those they currently lived in.
In his final book Ill Fares The Land the late historian Tony Judt argues that the 1834 Act was the key piece of 19th-century legislation since it assumed that people would work if the alternative was less attractive - the less eligibility principle - rather than grasp that a market economy could rarely offer the possibility of full employment, and that in order for there to be flexibility of labour this was hardly desirable anyway.
Judt makes the point that after a long welfare and Keynesian-focused gap the idea is on its way back. It certainly is with the current government.
But the Poor Law and the workhouse were not only the way that early market capitalists planned to get a flexible workforce. There was also the example of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Following the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1825 which had outlawed many workers' organisations, trade unions made considerable gains leading to a brief national confederation - Robert Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trade Union.
Unions were the weapon on our side as the law was on theirs. While politically they had Tories and Whigs to administer the laws, our side gave birth to the world's first working-class movement - Chartism - to challenge them.
In the battles to come the struggles of the 1830s can provide an important historical perspective.
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Copyright Morning Star, all rights reserved
published by the Peoples Press Printing Society
From the Poor Law to benefit cuts
Sunday 10 October 2010 Keith Flett Printable page PrintableEmail Email
An argument that is often made to socialists is that while we are still going on about the inequalities and iniquities of capitalism, the world has in fact moved on and the system has changed - hence socialism is no longer relevant.
Capitalism is a dynamic system and socialists need to take account of developments. That after all was what Lenin's Imperialism was about.
However at root the exploitative system of market capitalism that has been in place in Britain for more than 200 years remains at core the same.
Often difficult arguments around the falling rate of profit are needed to make the point, but sometimes historians can help.
In the Making Of The English Working Class EP Thompson noted how Bronterre O'Brien, the "schoolmaster of Chartism" and editor of the Poor Man's Guardian, attacked the middle-class government of the Whigs as being the most anti-working class of the lot.
Later, while trying to construct alliances around Chartism to achieve change, O'Brien came to regret his earlier vehemence against some of those he now wanted to work with.
There are striking similarities in the nature of the ruling-class projects of the 1830s and the 2010s.
The idea of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 - a Whig measure - was to make claiming relief very unattractive, to promote work as the only practical alternative and so to create and mould the flexible labour force that the new capitalism needed.
In the discussions around the Act it was argued that the only capital working people had was their labour and so they needed to be as mobile as possible to benefit from it.
In addition capitalism needed a mobile workforce as well - workers to staff the great ironworks then being developed for example, and navvies to build the railways with that iron.
It is difficult not to get a strong whiff of something very similar from Iain Duncan Smith's plans to reform the benefit system, and in particular George Osborne's announcement at the Tory conference of a benefit cap for the less well-off which may well have the effect of making some move to cheaper areas of housing than those they currently lived in.
In his final book Ill Fares The Land the late historian Tony Judt argues that the 1834 Act was the key piece of 19th-century legislation since it assumed that people would work if the alternative was less attractive - the less eligibility principle - rather than grasp that a market economy could rarely offer the possibility of full employment, and that in order for there to be flexibility of labour this was hardly desirable anyway.
Judt makes the point that after a long welfare and Keynesian-focused gap the idea is on its way back. It certainly is with the current government.
But the Poor Law and the workhouse were not only the way that early market capitalists planned to get a flexible workforce. There was also the example of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Following the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1825 which had outlawed many workers' organisations, trade unions made considerable gains leading to a brief national confederation - Robert Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trade Union.
Unions were the weapon on our side as the law was on theirs. While politically they had Tories and Whigs to administer the laws, our side gave birth to the world's first working-class movement - Chartism - to challenge them.
In the battles to come the struggles of the 1830s can provide an important historical perspective.
Bookmark and Share
Latest Features
Will the real Netanyahu please stand up?
Uri Avnery
Grappling with the multiple public personas of Israel's zig-zagging prime minister
From the Poor Law to benefit cuts
Keith Flett
The current wave of attacks on welfare rights have been seen before in the class conflict
The Muckraker
The Star's new diary coloumn
Losing those chains
Keith Ewing
Labour MPs must back McDonnell’s Bill
Will Miliband fudge this opportunity?
John Haylett
The Labour Party’s reaction to class conflict will be a better guide to its direction
Contacts
Copyright Morning Star, all rights reserved
published by the Peoples Press Printing Society
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