Work and the workers

Rachel Reeves (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) and Amelia Gentleman (writing for The Guardian) unwittingly gave me my current obsession. I am now counting the 'dead cat' and 'dog whistle' stories. I reckon that the run up to the Labour leadership election in the UK will give me plenty of opportunities to write about it.

In an  interview with The Guardian, published on 17th March, Ms Reeves stated that


'... Labour did not want to be seen to be the party of the welfare state. “We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those who are out of work,” she said. “Labour are a party of working people, formed for and by working people.”

The response to these fifty odd words has been quite something to behold. In essence, the commentators would suggest, the Labour Party has abandoned people who are disabled and chronically ill, unemployed, retired or otherwise unable to work. For the party that built the welfare state, this is a big retreat. Understandably, there is a lot of anger among Labour supporters and it was a gift to people who are anti Labour. 

Rachel Reeves seemed to back pedal a bit, stating on Twitter  that "Labour are the party who represents everyone, whether they are in work or out of work. That means a strong safety net 4 ppl who need support"


Then Amelia Gentleman helpfully tweeted the full quote from Ms Reeves

Now I haven't got much time for Ms Reeves. I think she is firmly embedded in the New Labour project and as such has been swept along with the much discredited 'austerity is necessary' idea. But I have some sympathy for the idea that Labour is the party of workers. That has always been the case. It has always been the case for every organisation that aligns itself with The Left. Thus we have the Socialist Workers Party, the Workers Revolutionary Party and so on. None of these organisations would tolerate the idea that they had abandoned people who don't work. 

It's part of a much wider discourse which has, effectively cast people into one of two categories: 'hardworking tax payers', who are the 'goodies; and 'those who claim benefits', who are the 'baddies'. In the real world, those categories are fraught with difficulties. Pensioners, for example, are really in the 'those who claim benefits' group, but at the moment are protected from most of the venom that is directed towards, for example, the disabled. Pensioners are perceived as righteous folk who have done their duty as far as work is concerned. People on disability benefits, on the other hand, are portrayed as malingerers or skivers, regardless of their work history. 

At the centre of the story is work and particularly how work is defined and categorised.'Work' has become synonymous with 'being engaged in remunerative employment for an employer'.It ignores the work outside that definition. So people who care for disabled or frail dependents or neighbours are not 'working' and their contribution to the overall health of our society is side stepped. Full time parenting isn't 'work' either.
In accepting this narrative, we're accepting the ideology that underpins the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor rhetoric. For me, I expect this kind of ideological commitment to a particular kind of work from Tories. It's unforgivable from the left. It completely ignores Marx's interpretation of the working class as a group who had a particular relationship with capitalism- not just those who are, at that moment, working. Because the left as a whole fails to address or challenge the very narrow view of what constitutes a working person means that we're in a continual battle to 'excuse' people from work instead of fighting for the rights of people who work in different ways. We don't bother with trying to ask the question in a different way. Could we ask for example, are carers workers and should they be able to demand at least a living wage, paid from taxation? 

The 'work is the saviour' narrative creates an illusion that people have no value unless they are employed in a particular way, no matter how pointless or valueless the work actually is. It measures 'value' by the income we receive from an employer - even if the income is buttons. That value is the only value. The inherent value of a person is relegated. The value of being part of a community is non existent.  Nothing matters except your place in the labour market. 

Now Rachel Reeves could have avoided the bait altogether. She could have said 'working class'. She could even have involved herself in a discussion about what 'working people' actually means (for what it's worth, I think Labour mean 'working class' but they are too afraid to say it). Her response was clumsy and the Guardian reporter who reported it is probably rubbing her hands with glee because she 'trapped' Reeves into that statement and thus generated a whole flurry of publicity for herself.

But aside from that, Labour people and people who are claiming to represent the working class must challenge this interpretation of the world and as a first step we should be reclaiming the term 'worker' and yes, even 'working people' as one that represents all of us.