Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms suggest that unemployment is the fault of lazy people. The argument does not consider structural conditions nor recognise that many people are not working because there simply are no jobs for them; instead it implies that people are not working because they are lazy. It also maintains a narrow definition of work. For example, single parents looking after children perform socially valuable work but this is not recognised as such.
There is also some confusion over the actual nature of welfare. Welfare was intended to help people who needed it. It was not created as something for which people should have to work. Its advocates want to force people to work and demand that those who refuse to take any kind of work, no matter how meaningless or degrading, will lose benefits. This assumes that poor people should lose the right to choose.
It is not clear that this will foster the sense of individual responsibility that its advocates champion either. People on welfare share the problem of unemployment, but many, especially those who will be turfed from ISA on to JSA, are also victimised by violence, abuse, mental illness, disability and emotional problems. Such people may feel defeated and crushed, and achieving some success in meaningful activity might well help them.
Yet it is difficult to see how forcing people to do soul-destroying jobs through this scheme will help their self-esteem or produce a sense of social responsibility. People resent being forced to do meaningless jobs that will not help them but are merely intended to create the impression that they are not “getting something for nothing.” It would be more useful to create real jobs that would allow people to earn a decent living and feel a sense of pride. Similarly, structural explanations that explain why jobs are scarce are more useful than fanciful stories about the laziness of poor people.
I find that many of those who support these plans misunderstand the situation. What they see as the causes of poverty – apathy, lethargy, lack of hope – are more often its effects. This reform offers emotional appeal and easy answers to complex problems. Affluent people usually see the system as one of unlimited opportunities and believe poverty is due to failure to take advantage of those opportunities. Having profited from the system, they believe in it and express a self-congratulatory view: “we worked hard and deserve our success”; the failure of others to achieve similar success must be the fault of those individuals themselves.
The explanation always shifts the cause of unemployment away from structural factors to the moral character of the claimant. This is the most useful tool in the Tory’s divide and rule box. By diverting working class ire towards the “undeserving” poor, highlighting the depravity of the benefit claimant who squanders his or her pittance on a consoling six-pack of beer, the rich and big corporations can enjoy their vast wealth undisturbed.
