Origins Welfare State V2

Nicholas Deakin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000558098
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

First published in 2004. Consisting of both shorter pieces and reprints of entire books, this set restores to circulation a number of key texts from the debate about the future of welfare that took place in Britain following the depression. The collection covers the following areas: The period during which the country felt the full impact of the world depression. A number of solutions were put forward during this time to address the arising issues - in particular the consequences of mass unemployment. The approaches ranged from orthodox Marxism to modified conservatism and "middle opinion" A key feature of the debate was the concept of planning as a device to enable governments to cope with economic and social problems. * A range of different ideas were widely canvassed during the war years. It was considered that successful conduct of war could then be applied to the problems of peace. This set resurrects certain proposals, influential in the climate of the times, which have subsequently dropped out of circulation Early assessments dealing with the implications of Welfare State legislation are also included. Although the implementation of the welfare programme was in effect a bipartisan process it did not take long for doubts to be expressed - some of which were directed at the principles on which the Welfare State was being constructed. Volume 2 includes 'Plan for Britain' and ' What have we to defend?'.

PLAN FOR DEMOCRATIC BRITAINCHAPTER IWHAT LABOUR WANTS

DOI: 10.4324/9781003101581-1

GREAT BRITAIN is a country of exceptionally rich natural resources, inhabited by a people second to none in skill and productive capacity, and possessed of an equipment for creating wealth which has been built up by two centuries of continuous and rapid economic growth. Great Britain is, moreover, a democracy in the sense that the people have the right by their votes to determine who shall form the Government and to turn out of office any Government which fails to do their will.

With these political and economic endowments, Great Britain ought to be, if not an earthly paradise, at any rate a community in which no man, woman or child need go short of the necessary good things of life. There ought to be no question of under-nourishment or bad housing or preventable disease among any section of the people —at all events, no question of these evils falling upon anyone except by his own fault. Yet it is common knowledge that at least a third of the whole population and at least half the children do not get the food which is requisite for healthy living: that despite all the house-building of recent years a large proportion of the population are still living in overcrowded conditions, many of them in dwellings that are fit only to be pulled down; and that disease is much more widespread among the poor than among the well-to-do, being fostered by bad diet and bad living conditions, as well as by want of proper medical attention and the low level of public health services in many of the poorer and more backward parts of the country.

These facts are well known. The answer is often made that, bad as the situation admittedly is, it is getting better and we are slowly conquering the evils of under-feeding, bad housing and disease. I do not deny that there have been improvements, or that, on the average, the standards of living of the people have risen in recent years. But averages are cold comfort to the large sections of the people who have not shared in these advantages, but on the contrary have in many cases found their situation getting worse. It is scant consolation to a miner in the Rhondda or West Cumberland or to a Lancashire weaver to be told of the relatively high wages that can be earned in some of the expanding industries of Greater London. It does not satisfy the mothers of Stockton-on-Tees that the children of Coventry are better nourished than they used to be. It is not enough that on the average the income of the people has increased; for “riches are like muck, which stinks in a heap, but spread abroad makes the earth fruitful.”

The test of the goodness of our government is not whether things have improved, but whether they have improved enough. It would be a miracle if, on the average, we were not a good deal richer to-day than we were, say, a generation ago. The pace at which science has caused advances in almost every field of production has been immense. Over the past thirty years agricultural methods have been revolutionised, so that food production has risen by leaps and bounds and is limited to-day only by the size of the market—that is, by the purchasing power of the consumers. There is no physical obstacle to the production of plenty of good food for us all: there are only economic obstacles, which arise, not from the lack of productive power, but solely from the world’s failure to organise its affairs aright. The situation is nearly the same in industry, though there of course whatever energy we devote to making useless things, such as armaments, must leave less available for meeting the real needs of life.

In both agriculture and industry the power to create wealth has been advancing so fast that it would be a miracle if there had not been an improvement in the average standard of life. After all, there is a limit to what the rich can personally consume; and in many fields the capitalists who control industry cannot secure the advantages of mass-production unless they can find expanding markets for their goods. In order to swell their own profits they must make many things cheap enough for large numbers of persons to buy them. There has been, therefore, a great cheapening of many kinds of goods and services that used to be beyond the pockets of even the better-paid members of the working class. From motorcars and cycles down to gramophones, wireless sets, artificial silk stockings and lipsticks, what were once the luxuries of a few have been reaching an ever-widening circle of middle-and working-class consumers.

I do not mean that all things get cheaper. We know very well, to our cost, that they do not. Some goods it pays the capitalists to reduce in price as far as they can, in order to enlarge the market to the widest possible limit. But there are other goods, including some of the vital necessaries of life, that remain woefully dear. This occurs whenever a group of capitalists, after considering the situation, thinks that higher profits can be made by holding up prices than by reducing them. It happens especially where the demand for a thing is what the economists call “inelastic,” so that a moderate reduction in its price will not bring about any considerable increase in the quantity bought. Bread is the classic example of “inelastic” demand. Coffins furnish an even more extreme example.

As matters stand to-day, what is very liable to happen is that luxuries get cheaper, whereas many of the necessaries of life do not. For on the whole the goods whose cost falls most as the scale of output is increased are of the luxury, or semi-luxury, type, whereas the cost of producing some of the basic necessaries actually rises if larger quantities are called for. The cost of producing milk, or bacon, for example, may increase when more is wanted, whereas the cost of producing gramophones will go on falling almost indefinitely as output is enlarged. Of course, I do not mean that the cost of producing milk or bacon does not fall as the efficiency of methods of production increases. It does; but if at any given time, with the technique of production at a certain level, we want more milk or bacon, the cost of producing the additional supply will tend to be higher because it may involve the use of worse land, or a rise in the price of fodder, or the pressing of less efficient farmers into the service; whereas it is broadly true that the output of the lighter, mass-produced manufactured goods can be expanded at decreasing cost or, at all events, without any rise in cost.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the high prices of many of the necessaries of life are due mainly to their being produced under conditions of rising cost as the demand increases. Their prices are high, in a great many cases, because they are kept high artificially, and of deliberate purpose. For example, the price of milk is kept high for the housewife, while millions of gallons are diverted at ridiculously low prices to the manufacturing market, and used for making butter and cheese which could be bought much more economically from Canada or New Zealand. The price of bread is kept high partly because the consumer is made to pay a subsidy in aid of the British farmers, who receive payment well in excess of the world price, and partly because the millers and distributors are organised in close combines which deliberately keep up the price. Many other foodstuffs are made dear by tariffs on imports, or by restrictions on the quantities that can be placed on the market. This applies to many kinds of vegetables and fruits, to potatoes and hops, and to sugar and tea. And it should be added that in nearly all the food trades there is an appallingly wide margin between the prices paid by the housewives and the prices received by the farmers who first market the goods.

I am not saying that it is wrong to subsidise the farming industry: we will come to that question at a later stage. What I am saying is that foodstuffs are dear largely because, for good or bad reasons, they are deliberately made dear to the consumers of this country. Every tariff, every quota, every restriction imposed by a Marketing Board, as well as every ring formed by food manufacturers and distributors, and every waste and inefficiency in the processes of transport and distribution, makes food dear. There may be good reasons for some of these measures; but let us not forget that they are artificial interferences with the natural and scientific forces that make for increasing plenty and cheapness of the basic necessaries of life.

In the case of many foodstuffs it can at any rate be argued that the farmer and the farm labourer have a right to a “square deal,” and that it would be ruinous to leave them at the mercy of world economic forces. As I have said, we will discuss that question later. But, quite apart from the farmer and the labourer, there is a host of other persons who, with much less excuse, are busy holding up the prices of necessary goods and services. From bricks and cement to pipes and stoves and electrical appliances, almost everything that goes to the making of a house is under some sort of price control by a ring which is trying to extract the largest possible profit from supplying it. There are rings in the tobacco trade, the drink trade, the trade in sewing cotton, the supply of electric current, coal and other fuels, and many household goods besides. An immense number of the goods we buy in packets under various trade-marks are supplied by rings of producers of what are called “proprietary articles,” the prices of which are inflated by the huge sums spent on advertisement and the arts of “salesmanship.” A rapidly increasing proportion of the total prices we pay for everyday goods is absorbed not by the cost of producing them, but by the costs of advertising and distribution. At each successive census, fewer persons out of every hundred employed are engaged in actually making things, and more in hawking them, or carrying them about, or making book-entries about them. We waste in “overhead” expenses a large part of the advantages conferred on our generation by the improving technique of actual production.

It is the natural and unavoidable consequence of a policy of making things artificially dear that many people are prevented from buying them, however great their need may be. But, if there are fewer buyers, there will also be fewer products, and fewer workers will be needed to make them. Accordingly, men and women who might be making things that are badly wanted, or rendering other forms of useful service, are thrown idle, and can find no one who is willing to employ them. Where this happens, the number of buyers is further reduced because of the loss of purchasing power by the unemployed. More workers are thrown out: production is further decreased. There is an immense waste of resources, with the loss falling most upon those sections of the community that are least able to protect themselves. The rings which can hold up prices come off best: the more competitive producers —the small men who have to scramble for their share of the market—suffer along with the workless and those whose wages are cut down when trade is bad.

If, in the face of all these restrictions and wastes and profiteerings, the standard of living nevertheless rises for the majority of the workers, by how much more would it rise if the whole community were directing its united efforts to producing as much as possible, instead of allowing the amount of production to be deliberately kept down? I do not agree with those who say that it is already within our power to create universal plenty and at the same time greatly to reduce the load of labour for every worker. The arts of production have not yet advanced quite so far as that. But we could undoubtedly produce a great deal more than we are producing—sufficient at least to guarantee to everybody enough good food, decent clothing and shelter, and a tolerable share in the lesser luxuries and amenities of life. Furthermore, if, as a people, we were really trying to enlarge production to the furthest possible limit consistent with reasonable leisure, and were applying to that end all the scientific knowledge and technical resources at our command, universal plenty would be, I am convinced, only just round the comer, instead of an infinite distance away.

This book is about the means to plenty—that, and nothing else. Its purpose is to set before the reader, in the simplest possible language, how the advance towards universal plenty could and should be made. It will not suggest that we can, by any policy, clean up in an instant or even in a few years the whole monstrous mess which is called the “economic system.” The process of reorganisation is bound to take time; and I am holding out no Utopian promises that everybody’s standard of living can be doubled as soon as we get a Government that will carry through the appropriate measures. What we can do is to make a beginning, not merely by putting poultices on some of the worst sores, but also by setting to work to build up a real economic system—by which I mean a system planned for plenty and not for profit of the few, which is often best served by keeping things scarce and dear.

What is essential at the outset is that we should have a clear vision of our aim. There has been a great deal of so-called “planning” during the last few years under the auspices of the National Government; but nearly all of it has been planning for scarcity and not for plenty. The Government has “planned” for dearness and for the profit of the capitalists, not for the well-being of the mass of ordinary people. There is no magic virtue about “planning” as such: it all depends on what the planning is for.

Our planning must be for plenty. That involves, at the outset, certain principles which must be unflinchingly applied. The first of these is that no vested interest, however powerful, shall be allowed to hold up the production of any commodity or service of which the people stands in need. If the farmer, or the labourer, or anyone else, has to be guaranteed a tolerable standard of living, this must be done by methods which will not restrict the consumption of the people, or prevent goods that are needed from being made. Let that be our first principle.

Secondly, wherever there is unemployed labour there is in that labour an unrealised power to create wealth. Accordingly, we must act on the principle that no available labour shall be left unemployed for more than such brief periods as may be accounted for by friction in changing jobs, or an occasional idle period due to unavoidable interruptions in the continuity of production—i.e. cases in which it is not worth while to seek out alternative employment, because the unemployed worker will soon be re-absorbed in his or her regular job. We must make up our minds to abolish, once and for all, all long-term unemployment, by pensioning off those who are not fit for work, and by finding useful employment for the rest.

Thirdly, we must no longer leave the use which is to be made of the available supply of productive labour to the blind workings of chance or to the unregulated action of the profit motive. We must set to work to plan what is to be produced, in order to ensure that the best use is made of the available resources for raising the standard of living among the people. I do not suggest that we can apply this radically novel principle all at once, over the entire field of production. But we must begin to apply it. Whereas, so far, the State has intervened in the control of what is to be produced mainly for the purpose of enabling this or that group of capitalists to go on making a profit, we must intervene in order to promote the production of those goods which are most needed for the purpose of improving the standard of life.

These three principles will furnish us with general guidance in working out our positive policy. There will, of course, be many difficulties in their practical application; for it cannot be easy to change over from a system in which the interests of the profit-makers are given the first place to one in which the entire emphasis is laid on the maximum satisfaction of human needs and desires. But it is of vital importance, before we begin to frame our detailed policies, to lay down as clearly as possible the basic principles on which we are preparing to act; and I believe that these three principles furnish the general guidance which is required in order that we may be able to tackle the difficulties of reorganisation in the right way. Let us call them the three principles of Plenty, Employment, and Social Control. They will be worked out and applied in a practical way in the subsequent chapters of this book.

CHAPTER IITHE NEED FOR A PLAN

DOI: 10.4324/9781003101581-2

THE purpose of industry is to purchase—what? The answer should be: useful goods and services which men and women want and need in order to enable them to live fuller and happier lives. But, as matters stand, that is not the answer. The purpose of industry, organised and controlled as it is, is to purchase not goods but profits—for the benefit of those who own the capital with the aid of which it is carried on. This capital belongs not to the whole people, but to a limited class of capitalists, great and small; and the control of it belongs in practice to a very much more restricted group than the whole number of its owners. The possessor of a few shares in a great capitalist company has no real control over the use that is made of his capital; he merely receives a share in the profit that is secured by using it to set labourers to work. The control, as distinct from the ownership, is in the hands of a relatively small number of bigger capitalists, who settle economic policy practically without reference to the smaller owners.

The small capitalists, no doubt, are fully as intent on profit as the large capitalists who actually control the situation. But it remains true that, under modern conditions, the small capitalist is usually no more than a functionless participant in the profits of industry, with no voice in the settlement of policy. It is the narrow group of great capitalists who enter into mutual arrangements for the regulation of prices and output, promote new companies and fix with the bankers for the advancing of the necessary credits, and thus in effect decide what is to be produced and in what fields output is to be encouraged or restricted. Politically, Great Britain is at any rate supposed to be a democracy; but industrially the country is governed by a narrow oligarchy of Very rich men.

In personal virtue these rich men are perhaps no better and no worse than the general run of mankind. I do not suggest that they take a malicious pleasure in holding the community to ransom. But they are placed in a position of enormous power, without any corresponding responsibility to serve the public interest. It is fully in accordance with the moral code under which business is conducted that they should try to make as much profit as they can: indeed, they can plausibly argue that it is their duty to do this, as trustees for the general body of shareholders whose capital they control. Some profit they must make, if they are to remain in business at all; and, as the making of profit is regarded as the test of their success as business men, the more profit they make the greater will be their prestige and honour among their fellow-capitalists, and in the main among the common run of men.

There are some lines of business in which it happens that the largest profits accrue to those who give the consumers the best service. It was once the belief of the economists, and indeed of most people whose voices were heard, that this would be nearly always the case, because competition would compel the rival business men to offer their wares to the public at the lowest possible prices. It was recognised that there were exceptions—natural or artificial monopolies which enabled those wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Chapter I What Labour Wants
• Chapter II The Need for a Plan
• Chapter III Towards Socialism—The Next Step
• Chapter IV The Social Services: 1. Childhood and Youth
• Chapter V The Social Services: II. The People at Work
• Chapter VI The Social Services: III. The Unemployed—Sickness and Old Age
• Chapter VII Housing and Slum Clearance
• Chapter VIII Schools and Universities
• Chapter IX Agriculture and Food Supply
• Chapter X The Land Workers
• Chapter XI Coal
• Chapter XII Power
• Chapter XIII Transport
• Chapter XIV The Metal Trades—Armaments
• Chapter XV Textiles
• Chapter XVI Planning
• Chapter XVII The Distressed Areas
• Chapter XVIII Finance and Banking
• Chapter XIX Public Finance and Taxation
• Chapter XX Compensation
• Chapter XXI The Political Machine
• Chapter XXII Conclusion
• List of Books and Pamphlets on Labour Policy
• What have we to Defend?
• Preface
• Chapter I The Present War
• Chapter II Nationalism
• Chapter III Four National Faults
• Chapter IV What, Then, Have We to Defend? The Virtue in the British Social Tradition
• Chapter V And our Empire?
• Chapter VI A Better Society—Socialism and the British Tradition
• Conclusion
• Appendix: The Emotional Sources of Nationalism