The State of Tony Blair's Britain

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Gap Between Rich and Poor Continues to Widen:
The State of Tony Blair's Britain

The Institute for Public Policy Research on August 2 released a research paper on the “State of the Nation”.

            The report says, “Britain is still far from being a fair and just society. Parental social class and ethnicity still heavily influence life-chances, whilst democratic participation is falling and political influence is polarizing according to class and wealth. Women continue to be more likely to live in poverty while the percentage of wealth held by the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population has increased from 47 per cent to 54 percent over the last ten years.”

            In a “10 point fact-file” the report writes:

* Since 1997, the richest have continued to get richer. The richest 1 percent of the population has increased its share of national income from around 6 per cent in 1980 to 13 per cent in 1999.

* Inequality in disposable income (after taxes and benefits are accounted for), appears to have slightly increased since 1997 after significant increases in the 1980s.

* Wealth distribution is more unequal than income distribution, and has continued to get more unequal in the last decade. Between 1990 and 2000 the percentage of wealth held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population increased from 47 percent to 54 percent.

* In 2001 the UK ranked 11th out of the 15 European Union nations on child poverty rates. (That year) 23 percent of children in Britain were living in households earning below 60 percent of median income.

* Working-age adults without children constitute an “unfavoured group”, who have not benefited from government policy. In 1994 they constituted 25 percent of people in poverty. By 2002/03 this had increased to 31 percent.

* In 2003 women in full time work earned on average 82 percent of what men earned. For part-time work the pay gap is even wider: in 2003 women earned only 60.4 percent of what men earned.

* Intergenerational social mobility appears to have declined. Sons born to fathers from the richest fifth of the population in 1958 earned, on average, 13 percent more than those from the bottom fifth of the population. In comparison, sons born to wealthy fathers in 1970 earned 37 percent more then their poorer contemporaries. People from a professional background remain over two times as likely to end up professionals, as someone from a manual background.

* The poorest continue to be more likely to suffer from crime and the fear of crime. Around 4.8 percent of individuals earning under £5,000 a year were burgled in 2003/4 compared with approximately 2.7 per cent of those earning over £30,000.

* Deprived communities suffer the worse effects of environmental degradation. Industrial sites are disproportionately located in deprived areas: in 2003, there were five times as many industrial sites in the wards containing the most deprived 10 percent of the population, and seven times as many emission sources, than in wards with the least deprived 10 per cent.

Comment

The full report on the “State of the Nation” is available at www.ippr.org. The report details poverty and inequality in Britain and certain trends in the distribution of wealth but fails to identify any cause. The social conditions prevailing in the “nation” appear to emerge subjectively from a lack of moral will to combat poverty or from a failure of government policies to sufficiently enforce equality and fairness in the distribution of wealth. The cause of the growing gap between rich and poor seems to be a lack of moral conviction to distribute the nation's wealth fairly. A remedy, only vaguely suggested, appears to be a need to rectify the moral shortcomings and attitudes of the nation.

            The report does not discuss the origin of the nation's wealth that is “unfairly” distributed. The social product in Britain has two sources: internally from the labour of the people transforming raw material and semi-finished commodities into finished commodities, and externally from the labour of people in other countries supplying Britain a net surplus of raw material, semi-finished and finished commodities and money.

            The distribution of the social product is conditioned by the relations among people who are engaged in social production within Britain and the relations with countries that supply Britain with social product. Impassioned sentimental hand wringing over poverty and inequality or unfairness of the distribution of wealth will not result in any significant change in wealth distribution or the growing gap between rich and poor. More importantly, if this hand-wringing is in fact not intended to address this problem but is instead, as we suspect, a new propaganda offensive to disorient the people of Britain into believing that the moral shortcomings and attitudes of the nation (sic – Britain is a state, not a nation) then its aim is to convince the people of Britain to tighten their belts yet again and enter into further strategic partnerships with the British ruling class to more effectively exploit their own labour and that of the oppressed nations of the world. Far from reducing the gap between the rich and the power, the result will be to further concentrate the wealth at one poll and further immiserate the impoverished and oppressed at the other.

            Modern production is social in nature both within the economy of any given territory and in its relations with other economies. The recognition of the social nature of production does not extend to the ownership of the social product or the main means of production. Private ownership of social production dictates that distribution is determined by a struggle over private ownership of the social product. Struggle over private ownership of the social product is a matter of force and respective might greatly influenced by state intervention in the form of a regulatory system of laws, courts, prisons and police. The regulatory system governing distribution of social product reflects private ownership of the main means of production and capital in its many forms. The principal private owners of the social product are the principal private owners of capital and the main means of production. The legal regulatory rules governing the distribution of the social product are conditioned by the viewpoint and position of power of the principal owners of capital and the main means of production.

             Those who are not the principal owners of capital and the main means of production must fight to establish their private claim on the social product whether they participate directly in social production or are simply members of society. They are at a disadvantage because the regulatory system does not recognise the claim of labour to private ownership of the social product it produces. The regulatory system does not recognise the right of members of society to private ownership of social product on the basis of their existence as human beings. The regulatory system recognises the right of owners of capital to private ownership of social product on the basis of size, power and influence within the state. The regulatory system recognises society's right to ownership of social product only if the pooled social product is needed by the principal owners of capital in order to provide infrastructure and the military might to enforce their private claims internally and internationally.

            The greater the ownership of capital is concentrated in fewer hands the greater becomes the power of the few principal owners of capital to dictate the private distribution of social product. The state and its regulatory rules recognise the greater concentration of ownership as having a commanding say over the private distribution of social product and its use. The only way to reverse the situation significantly is to restrict the right of the principal owners of capital to control, use and privately distribute social product.

            The claim of private ownership of social product by the vast majority of people who are not principal owners of capital but work on the social means of production must come first and be recognised by the regulatory system as having first claim of private ownership of social product. The regulatory system must recognise the private claim on the social product by all members of the society by virtue of being human. The regulatory system must recognise the claim of society itself on the social product. The claim of the principal owners of capital over the social product must only be recognised after all other private and social claims have been fulfilled.

            All net surplus of social product coming into Britain from abroad during the twentieth century must be returned and no new surplus social product must be allowed to enter the country under any circumstances. A net surplus of social product coming from another economy means a net loss for that economy. The net loss of social product suffered by the oppressed countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas is a result of robbery by the economies of the triad (the US, Europe and Japan). The robbery of social product and the competition within the triad over this robbery are pushing the world to a catastrophic war of re-division of spheres of influence and robbery. One way for the people to make a contribution in reversing this disastrous situation is to disallow the entry of any net surplus of social product into the triad of which Britain is a significant member, and forcefully demand a return to the oppressed countries of the net surplus social product that has been stolen from them in modern times.