Beating the retreat

The new Ken Loach film, The Spirit of  '45, will no doubt set off a fresh round of nostalgia for Old Labour and the cradle to the grave Welfare State. While it would be inaccurate to say that the working class did not gain from the introduction of various reforms in 1945, how can we decry the introduction of the NHS, a universal service based on need not income, it would also be amiss of the Socialist Party to be uncritical of the purpose and consequences of them. As Loach says we need to remember and learn from the lessons of 1945 and it is suffice to say that he and ourselves draw differing conclusions. The Socialist Party saw the welfare state and NHS essentially as the ‘redistribution of poverty among the workers’ from those without to those with dependants, maintaining a sufficiently healthy and efficient working population, keeping unemployed workers from becoming unemployable, and insuring the capitalist class against working-class discontent. For the capitalist class the welfare state and the NHS meant increased profits and were seen as ‘a necessary expense of production’. When the welfare state was founded, it was heralded as a triumph for social equality. The Socialist Party, however, developed a unique analysis that has proven to be more or less correct.

Cradle to Grave

The hope and future vision of a stable, poverty-free capitalism was shared by many during the war and early post-war years. All the major political parties applauded the Welfare State and they vied with each other, during the election campaigns, to claim credit for bringing it into existence. The Conservatives made the most of the fact that the government which set up the commission to inquire into the problem of reorganising the social services was a coalition Government predominantly Tory. The Liberals claimed their share of the glory because Sir William Beveridge, who gave his name to the report, was chairman of the Commission, and a Liberal. To the Labour Government was left the triumph of passing the legislation. The truth about it all was that the Welfare State arose not through the good will of any political party but because of the need to adapt the social services to the changing conditions of capitalism. The need to allay any possible working class discontent after the war and of course, it was a benefit for employers to have a healthy efficient workforce that they needed.

Why the Welfare State received cross-party support with Tories accepting its principles and not merely Labour and Liberal Parties is explained by Bruce Bartlett who held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations:
"Historically, it has been conservatives like the 19th century chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, who established the welfare state in Europe. They did so because masses of poor people create social instability and become breeding grounds for radical movements...The welfare state was devised to shave off the rough edges of capitalism and make it sustainable. Indeed, the conservative icon Winston Churchill was among the founders of the British welfare state."

Bartlett's comments echo what Tory MP Douglas Hogg (later Lord Halisham) said in the debate on the Beveridge Report in the House of Commons in 1943: “Some of my hon. Friends seem to overlook one or two ultimate facts about social reform. The first is that if you do not give people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution....Let anyone consider the possibility of a series of dangerous industrial strikes following the present hostilities, and the effect that it would have on our industrial recovery....” (Parliamentary Debates, 17th February, 1943, Col.1818.).

The proponents of palliatives view the state is a means of class reconciliation and collusion where in reality its intervention, via social reforms, is an attempt to soften the tension of class conflict.

 Keynes had expressed the ruling class point of view when he called the Beveridge proposals for the British welfare state “the cheapest alternative open to us”. Labour MP Richard Crossman explained in 1955:
“The fact is that ever since 1945 the British trade unionist would have enjoyed a far higher wage packet if his leaders had followed the American example and extorted the highest possible price for labour on a free market. Instead of doing so, however, they exercised extreme wage restraint. This they justified by pointing out to the worker the benefits he enjoyed under the welfare state—prices kept artificially low by food subsidies; rents kept artificially low by housing subsidies, rent restriction; and in addition the Health Service.”

Across the world welfare systems are being dismantled but not completely. After all, one of their aims is to provide certain limited support for workers who are ill or unemployed so that they might be returned to the labour market at a later date. It is unlikely that welfare services can ever be restored to Ken Loach's cherished memories. The private sector is generally the profit-making sector of the capitalist economy and the oft-repeated message of governments everywhere in this recession is that the proportion of national income commandeered by the state must be reduced if profits are to be restored to adequate levels. The state is in a sense parasitic on the profit-seeking sector and when this latter is in difficulty, the state will trim its spending. Governments, not just in Britain but everywhere, have had to resort to drastic measures to raise money. They have had sold off state assets to the private sector. They have undermined the integrity of their state by introducing into it the degraded standards of the marketplace and by hiving off whole sections to private businesses. They have considerably worsened the working conditions of public sector employees. And they have drastically reduced the scope and level of services provided by national and local government.

The hope of sustained economic growth to pay for expanding welfare services is an increasingly forlorn one. The welfare state of the future is likely to be only a shadow of what it once was. It demonstrates that reforms can be just as easily taken away. At one time the Labour Party wanted to reform capitalism into something different and better. There was indeed a time when the Labour Party’s ideal was to shift the source of people’s income away from work and more and more towards as-of-right payments from the state. The more daring of their thinkers looked forward to a time when, in return for some socially useful work, everybody would be guaranteed a decent income by the state sufficient to meet their needs. They saw this as coming about as a result of the extension of the system of transfer payments to parents, pensioners, the unemployed, the sick and disabled which already existed. It was an argument that the way forward lay through more, not less, of people’s income being provided by the state, a way of gradually transforming existing capitalist society into something different. It was never going to work since taxing profits to pay people a decent income goes against the whole logic of the capitalist system and it hasn’t.  There never was a golden age of the welfare state. The history of income maintenance in Britain has been the history of coercion, discipline and surveillance. Now the Labour Party isn’t even a genuine reformist party but, in its thinking as well as its practice, is whittling away state benefits. Between them and the Tories, the only difference is one of tone and style.

 The welfare state was set up to try to reform capitalism into something better for workers but it now merely aspires to make capitalism work a little bit more efficiently. To fight battles for reforms over several decades as Ken Loach has done and then see the reforms put into reverse surely must leave him demoralised enough that now the case against the capitalist system as whole is now stronger than ever. Were a future government to restore the NHS to its pre-Thatcher condition and, however unlikely, re-nationalise whatever industries had been sold off, there would be no certainty that this would last. The idea that capitalism can be reformed, by means of a growing public sector and an expanding welfare state, into a better system of society has been utterly discredited and disproved in practice yet Loach keeps hankering for this lost golden age. Reforms are always liable to be reversed if the economy ran into trouble and capitalists sought to reduce the costs of the state. This is precisely what happened.

Band-aid society

The National Health Service has  trumpeted as the finest achievement of the Labour Party throughout its entire history. What did the NHS claim to do at its inception?  Its chief architect Aneurin Bevan was very sure of his aims: it was to be an institution which would take care of all the medical needs of the working class for evermore and, without charge. No matter how expensive the treatment might be medical attention could be obtained for all for free. It was a bold, solution to the poor state of health of the mass of the working class after a long period of economic depression followed by six years of war.  Like its companion, the Beveridge scheme for social security, it was implemented by the Labour Party but had the support of other parties, who generally recognised that some form of welfare was badly needed. The proponents of the NHS are sincere (for the most part) in believing that it brings a massive benefit to society. The NHS is always a political battleground, and the major political parties often focus their campaigns on the issue because they think it is a potential vote winner. All politicians agree, it seems. The NHS is broken, and something must be done. What they propose must be done varies - spend more, switch to more private healthcare, cut red tape, etc - but the unspoken assumption is that the NHS is a good thing in and of itself.

But has it worked?  In fact it never lived up to its hype from the beginning; within months charges were being introduced for dental and optical services and then prescription fees. The NHS has always been a get-you-back-to-work service to keep workers in a fit state to produce profits. There is no such thing as an adequate health service within a capitalist system of society and there never can be. It has to be paid for, and the money has to come from the capitalist class. The original set-up has been modified, tweaked or altered repeatedly, all, we are told in the interests of efficiency. And every government produces a fresh plan with a fanfare that promises to solve all problems. As the longest running institution of its kind the NHS is probably the creakiest in Europe. The conclusion must be that to fulfil the professed aims of Bevan for a health service that would cover the needs of the working class was never more than a pipe dream.
Ken Loach believes that any deficiencies in the NHS can be put right by a change of government and that it lies within the power of the political process to achieve a viable health system. This is a fallacy. The money system we live under is inherently biased towards satisfying the demands of a minority ruling class who are only concerned with having a working class fit enough to go to work. One of the many crises in the NHS is a reflection of the growing recognition that the increasing costs of medicine are not producing a commensurate increase in labour productivity - what the medical journals euphemistically refer to as "cost effectiveness". The rickets and TB of the Victorians are being replaced by illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. The NHS has managed to carry on so far as a more or less viable service largely due to the dedication and hard work of its workforce, members of the working class.

 Although socialists recognise the benefits the NHS brings to workers who otherwise would not have access to healthcare, they are far from the ardent uncritical supporters such as Ken Loach tend to be. We see that although the NHS suggests possibilities for how a service free at the point of use and based on needs could be organised, fundamentally, it is not free from the market system and a long way from being the fount of joy he proclaims it to be. Contrary to popular belief, the NHS is not dedicated to satisfying the human need for health care, or the eradication of disease. Medical practice and research in capitalist society is strongly influenced by its role in maintaining a healthy labour force.  It is an integrative mechanism that helps hold class-divided society together. To place the basic argument in Marxist terms, medical care is important for the reproduction of the forces and relations of production. The reproduction of labour power is provided for through the payment of wages - which enables us to feed, clothe and house ourselves at a historically and culturally specific level - but also through the state, which has, to an extent, taken responsibility for the collective reproduction of labour power by providing education, social security, and other welfare services. The development of the NHS was in part a recognition that a shift away from unskilled manual work to other forms of employment would require a healthier workforce and a more stable and qualitatively superior one. To put it more plainly, the NHS helps keep us fit for work so that we are forced to keep on selling the only thing of real value we own - our creative abilities - to our employers. The foundation of the NHS was a contradictory one, serving the interests of capital and, as a byproduct, that of the workers.

The demand for a healthier society is in effect a revolutionary demand, since the health-damaging aspects of production cannot be removed in response to any political reform of capitalism. Only socialism can offer an appropriate remedy.

State-Owned Capitalism

But 1945 was not entirely about the welfare and healthcare. In 1918 the Labour Party was committed to "democracy in industry," and "Nationalisation and workers' control " but no Labour Government intended to concede such power (nor would Lenin or Trotsky).Nationalisation was a technocratic act, placing industries under the control of managers thought better capable of running them than their predecessors, though they were often the same persons. Nationalisation run on normal capitalist lines and brings no comfort to the workers. Early Labourites such as Keir Hardie  argued that nationalisation, though not much worthwhile for its own sake, was justified because it was a necessary step to the achievement of socialism (or "free Communism" as he sometimes called it). Later Labourites dropped Keir Hardie's argument and put in its place the view that wholesale nationalisation is the ultimate aim, to be achieved gradually industry by industry. But to make this acceptable they had to claim that nationalisation is itself of great and immediate advantage. Generations of workers were converted to this belief and learned that it was false. Nationalisation turned sour on the Labour Party. In a sense the declining faith in nationalisation and the Labour Party to effect real change is a positive development for real socialism as the results of Labour in government can be seen for what they are – management of capitalism with some, and not always benevolent, reformist tinkering. Workers merely changed one employer for another; little else changed, for the state undertaking, has got to pay its way. Nationalisation is state capitalism and leaves untouched the real problem of the working class of emancipating themselves from capitalist exploitation.

Conclusion

 It is time that Ken Loach and others like him are weaned off the superficial attractions of “achievable” reforms. Faced with an electorate who refuse to vote for capitalism-supporting candidates, confronted by a majority who no longer believe “there is no alternative”, challenged by a growing socialist movement that says revolution is possible and shows how life and society could be so much better, what else can those who wish to support capitalism do than concede as much as possible, in effect to narrow the gap between the old and new systems? What workers don't appreciate is the deceit that Labourism has involved. Promising crumbs off the master's table to divert attention away from the attempts by definite socialists to secure the whole loaf, the bakery and the wheat-fields.