The Way We Were: If what used to be called the social wage (education, health, welfare payments such as Working For Families) had to be picked up by the bosses, then our society would very rapidly degenerate into something resembling early industrial Britain. The capitalists couldn’t pay their workers enough to cover the now non-existent social wage, so they wouldn’t. Human-beings would, wherever possible, be replaced by machines, and those without a stake in the new order of things would be left to starve in squalor.
SUSAN ST JOHN’S INDIGNATION at the way the Working For
Families (WFF) payment has been cast as an employer subsidy is palpable. “Blaming WFF for low wages”, exclaims Susan “is a bit like pointing to our high rate of suicide and blaming it on the existence of the mental health services.” Neither is she slow to sheet home the “true cause of low wages”. This, she says, is to be found in “casualised hours, precarious employment, automation, globalised labour markets and falling wage share of output due to loss of union power.”
St John is scathing in her condemnation of the purveyors of
what she regards as the “subsidy myth”. Matthew Hooton, Eric Crampton on the
Right; Bryce Edwards on the Left; and “others”.
Well, among those “others” I must acknowledge myself. Until
relatively recently, I, too, was convinced that WFF, by topping-up the
manifestly inadequate wages paid to workers, acted as a multi-billion-dollar
subsidy to the employing class. Instead of the bosses paying their workers a
living wage, those workers were being kept afloat by the taxes paid by other
workers. How could that be fair?
But then I found myself seated next to Susan at one of Laila
Harré’s “salons” and was set straight on WFF in the most forthright fashion.
Where were the critics of WFF prepared to call a halt? Susan
demanded. If this particular “subsidy” was torn away, why not the taxpayer-funded
public education system? Or public health? Just imagine how much more the
bosses would be required to pay their workers if their wages were to cover not
only the additional costs associated with raising children, but also the cost
of private education and private health insurance? And what about the roads and
the electricity grid? What about the water supply? Or sewerage disposal? How
high would wages have to be lifted if every man and woman in the country was required
to pay for all this crucial infrastructure directly – rather than by means of
taxation?
The fact of the matter, Susan informed me, is that the
entire capitalist system is subsidised. The viability of the present economic
system; the ability of every company – private or public – to return a profit
to its shareholders; rests upon the willingness of the state to pick up the
lion’s share of the costs of raising, educating and keeping healthy all those workers
whose daily labours keep their employers in business.
It was not always so. In the very early years of capitalism
workers were paid just enough to cover the cost of keeping a roof over their
heads and food in their bellies – less if demand faltered or prices increased
sharply. The contribution of the state was limited to providing the soldiers
necessary to restore order if the capitalists’ workers, driven to utter
desperation, rebelled; the courts in which the ringleaders could be convicted;
and the prisons (or penal colonies) in which such miscreants could be safely
immured.
It didn’t work. As industrial technology grew ever more
sophisticated, the need for a well-educated workforce grew ever more urgent.
Likewise, with workers’ health. Deadly diseases left gaping holes in the
working population. Clean water, hygienic waste disposal, unadulterated food, safe
housing: all of these improvements, supplied collectively via rates and taxes,
were crucial to improving the quality of life of the working-class. They were
no less important, however, in keeping the capitalists profitable. Assessed
from the perspective of the long-suffering wage and salary earner, the whole
edifice of industrial civilisation looks suspiciously like an employer subsidy!
Which is precisely Susan St John’s point. If what used to be
called the social wage (education, health, basic infrastructure) had to be
picked up by the bosses, then our society would very rapidly degenerate into
something resembling early industrial Britain. The capitalists couldn’t pay
their workers enough to cover the now non-existent social wage, so they
wouldn’t. Human-beings would, wherever possible, be replaced by machines, and
those without a stake in the new order of things would be left to starve in
squalor.
And, yes, you’re right, what this all adds up to is the
far-from-novel conclusion that capitalism is an economic system subsidised by
the many to the inordinate advantage of the few. Working For Families is,
therefore, a very long way from being the most egregious example of society
picking up the tab for meeting at least some of the needs of its most
vulnerable members. Suggesting that the bosses take over this responsibility is
pointless: they have neither the means, nor the inclination, to do so.
And, no, you’re not wrong, capitalism is, indeed, a grossly
exploitative and unjust system which only goes on working because the people
who keep the wheels turning get up every morning and, well ….. keep the wheels
turning.
One hundred years ago, working people understood this. Hell,
they even sang about it:
They have taken untold
millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain
and muscle not a single wheel could turn.
We can break their
haughty power, gain our freedom, when we learn
That the union makes
us strong.
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us
strong.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 28 August 2018.
