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| END POVERTY WITH COMMON OWNERSHIP |
The New Zealand Government's $25 increase to benefits isn't
enough to get families out of poverty, the country’s Salvation Army says.
The Salvation Army's Major Campbell Roberts says the
changes, they don't go far enough.
"The increase is insufficient to address the poverty
and hardship that is impacting so many families that we work with." The
Salvation Army doesn't back moves to require parents to return to work when
their child turns three, rather than the current age of five. Major Roberts
told MPs while work is an "important factor in helping to take people out
of poverty", there is "clear evidence" it doesn't work for
everyone in every situation. Major Roberts says those who came up with the
proposed new measure don't have an adequate understanding of the nature and
requirements of workplaces, or the nature and impact of poverty on families. There
are situations where the work on offer, for example overnight cleaning work or
short-notice on-call casual care work, may not ultimately benefit families and
children.
The World Socialist Party (New Zealand)
says the criticism from the Salvation Army does not go far enough. Poverty
remains a running sore incapable of remedy while capitalism lasts. After over a
century of patchwork tinkering this problem is still with us. Confident
declarations by politicians and enacting of palliative reform legislation has
not altered the situation. Is it not high time this poverty producing system
was done away with once and for all? The problem is that religious do-gooders are
no answer to the problem. Patronising the poor with charity is insulting and
useless.
Nowadays every youngster is constantly bombarded from all
directions with the message: “You can make it if you try hard enough.” This “motivation
advice” is regarded as a big advance on the bad old days when low-caste
children were taught humbly to accept their place at the bottom of the pile.
But the new message is actually even crueler than the old one, because it
carries the clear though unspoken implication that if you don’t make it that
will mean you didn’t try hard enough. “You only have yourself to blame.” Those
who perform this charade of “equal opportunity” must know very well, only a few
of the children before whom they “dangle” the will ever make it and is an
exhortation for poor kids to hurl themselves against a brick wall – again and
again and again. The remarkable thing is not that some of them commit suicide
but that most of them do not. Such are the fruits of efforts at reform –
undertaken in many cases with the best of intentions – that leaves intact the
capitalist structure of our society.
While those who are “poor” at a particular moment may be
only a minority, though a very substantial one, studies of lifespan poverty
experience show that many have the experience of being “poor” at some time in
their lives. It is this continuous large-scale movement of workers into and out
of “poverty” that gives the lie to the conventional idea of “the poor” as a
separate social group or even as a sort of special “underclass”. A large
majority of workers are always at significant risk of falling into poverty; the
fear of poverty occupies a crucial place in their psyche. The typical
suburbanite can become destitute and homeless very easily. All it takes is a
single negative life-event such as the loss of a well-paying job, a serious
illness or accident, imprisonment or divorce. Especially during a slump, masses
of “middle class” workers find themselves stranded among “the poor.” Poverty
and relative prosperity are alternate phases in the life of a single social
class, the working class – a life marked by abject insecurity and dependence.
Most members of the working class are not poor most of the time, but it is “the
poor” who most starkly embody the essence of working class status.
The Salvation Army, according to the WSP(NZ), shrinks from presenting
the truth - that the poverty of the working class is due to robbery and the
remedy is to stop the robbers by ousting them, first from political, and then
from economic power. Workers will get nowhere calling for capitalist justice.
What we must do is unite anger with understanding and turn these upon the real
enemy: those who rob us of the fruits of our labour. All over the world capitalism
holds sway. Workers strive for a lifetime to achieve some level of security.
The acquisition of money continually dominates their thinking. Blind to the
basic realities of the capitalist system, they have yet to learn that their
problems are inherent in it and can only be abolished by ending the social
system which breeds them, and replacing it by world socialism, a moneyless,
classless society.
WSP(NZ) website:
E-mail:
wsp.nz@worldsocialism.org
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| CHANGE OUR WORLD - BUILD SOCIALISM |
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