-Caveat Lector-
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Welfare deform a failure
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 23:37:17 -0600 (CST)
From: Michael Eisenscher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: ?
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
[With the nomination of welfare deform hero Tommy Thompson for secretary of
immiseration, this article becomes all the more relevant. - tc]
The People
December 2000 (Vol. 110, No. 9)
Welfare Reform No Success For Capitalism's Poorest Victims
By Ken Boettcher [EMAIL PROTECTED]
When welfare rolls reached a 30-year low last year, THE PEOPLE reported
that politicians and pundits of all stripes had "raised a kind of 'I told
you so' cacophony...crowing about the 'success' of welfare reform." The din
of that chorus has not faded since.
One might assume that by "success" the politicians and pundits mean that
the "reform" accomplished what many of these self-same folks said was their
motivation in seeking it: to replace degrading dependency on the state with
independence and self-sufficiency. A spate of recent studies on the effects
of the 1996 welfare reform act makes clear the real nature of that "success."
"The recent data show that while millions of former welfare mothers have
jobs, their incomes are often lower than before the reforms were enacted,"
as an article in BUSINESS WEEK put it. No national studies on the effects
of unceremoniously dumping millions of people off the welfare rolls have
been concluded. The original law did not provide for such studies, even
though the lives of millions of human beings, many of them children, were
at stake. Nonetheless, ample evidence of the effects exists. BUSINESS WEEK
recently cited some of that evidence.
- -- A study of Census Bureau data reported that "the average annual income
of the poorest 20 percent of single mothers -- half of whom have been on
welfare at some point -- fell by 4 percent, to $8,410, between 1995 and
1998, the latest year available....Because, while welfare payments for this
group fell by $802 a year over this time period, paychecks from work
climbed by only $244 a year."
- -- Five states that followed women recipients after they left the rolls
-- Wisconsin, Michigan, South Carolina, Missouri and Iowa -- "reported that
between 1996 and 1998 close to half had lower incomes after their welfare
checks stopped," according to BUSINESS WEEK.
- -- South Carolina and Wisconsin also reported significant increases in
the number of single mothers reporting that they have periods of time when
they are without money to buy food, that they are behind in their rent or
housing payment, that they lack money for child care and that they could
not pay for needed medical care.
- -- A new study by the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, reports
that "at least two-thirds of former welfare recipients still depend on
government assistance programs such as Medicaid or food stamps." "Clearly,
welfare reform is failing to make people independent," says author of the
study Lisa E. Oliphant.
- -- The U.S. Conference of Mayors reports, according to BUSINESS WEEK,
that "last year...visits to soup kitchens and food banks jumped by 18
percent." "That was the biggest rise since the last recession, in 1991."
Moreover, the situation is likely to get much worse. The welfare reform act
mandated that states dump 25 percent of recipients off the rolls within its
first 18 months as law. That shift is the one that produced the effects
noted above. The act mandates an additional 50 percent be dumped by the end
of 2002.
"Most of the mothers who have found jobs so far," BUSINESS WEEK wrote, "are
those with more skills and less-troubled personal lives. Many of those
remaining on the rolls have serious problems: physical disabilities, mental
health issues, or abusive spouses. When these women eventually get pushed
into the labor force, they're likely to have an even tougher time earning a
living."
If BUSINESS WEEK's suggestion that "education and training are key ways to
help those struggling to make it after welfare" is any indication, a
movement to "reform" the 1996 "reform" may be afoot before long.
Workers should be wary of any such movement. Why?
The evidence shows that welfare reform had little to do with increasing
self-sufficiency and reducing the human degradation of dependency on the
state. Rather, it was and is a brazen act of contempt for the working
class. Like the 19th-century English "moralists" who attacked Britain's
"Poor Laws" that provided a dole, the backers of today's welfare reform
maintain that welfare breeds laziness and illegitimacy, and that welfare
recipients are being tossed off the dole for their own good.
If "morality" has anything to do with welfare reform, however, it isn't a
morality that benefits working-class families. Rather, it reflects the
immorality of a ruling class bent on curbing the costs of operating the
political state with no other purpose in mind than to pocket even more of
the wealth produced by workers.
Dumping millions more workers onto a labor market that already has millions
unemployed -- the so-called economic boom notwithstanding -- will produce
another economic benefit to the capitalist class that has no doubt occurred
to many backers of such "reform." With millions more workers forced into
the labor market, the downward pressure on wages will grow.
The "morality" of "welfare reform" is entirely economic in scope. Simply
put, what benefits the capitalist class is moral.
Socialists maintain that welfare is not worth fighting for. It wasn't worth
fighting for even when the political state first implemented it. Indeed, it
WASN'T fought for, at least not by the working class. It was GIVEN by the
political state, in the name of capitalism, and for capitalist purposes. It
was an effort to drive the wedge of a handout between the desperation of
millions of impoverished workers and the possibility that some would begin
to trace the roots of their economic desperation to capitalist ownership
and control of the economy. In short, it was a hedge against the growth of
class consciousness among capitalism's wage slaves.
Now, with the same ease that it was "given," the "handout" is being taken
away. The capitalist class believes it has outlasted any threat from
workers, and now seeks to demoralize the working class further by injecting
its welfare victims back into the labor market. That is one of the problems
with all so-called reforms under capitalism. They change nothing
fundamental while leaving the power to rule in the hands of a despotic
minority.
The contemptuous capitalist class, seeing no evidence of working-class
organization that might present a real threat to their system, has
convinced itself that workers will continue turning the other cheek while
capitalist "morality" bleeds them dry, or that the increasing extent of
ruling- class control over society through the repressive apparatus of the
political state is adequate to protect capitalist rule should continued
impoverishment drive more workers to organize or otherwise retaliate.
Rather than fight for more reform, workers should work to prove this
capitalist-class assessment wrong and fight for a new kind of future. They
must realize that placing hope in any capitalist antipoverty reform -- one
that proposes to cut welfare, or to increase it -- is to place unwarranted
credence in a monumental fraud. They must channel their energies toward a
fundamental change.
Dependence on the capitalist state and all the social maladies that may
follow from it are produced by capitalism, which requires that the whole
working class be dependent for its very right to life upon a tiny minority
class that owns and controls the economy.
Nothing will change today's picture of economic insecurity and poverty
short of the ABOLITION of its cause -- the capitalist system -- and its
replacement by socialism, under which all will share in the democratically
managed and socially owned abundance that our advanced means of production
can yield. Educating and organizing effectively for the single-minded
accomplishment of that fundamental change will produce far more concessions
to the immediate needs of working-class families than any appeals to
capitalist "morality" ever could.
Copyleft (c) 2000 Ken Boettcher/Socialist Labor Party.
{Note: The Socialist Labor Party is a DeLeonist group -- non-Leninist,
democratic Marxists and syndicalists. This post appeared today on a number
of lists; I got it from IWW News. -- RS)
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