Incapacity Beneft and Income Support to be scrapped

I saw this as well. I also heard that JSA is going to be cut from six months to four - can anyone confirm this?

I don't think it's any accident this is being pushed through very quickly, with support from the Tories (a nice example of the one-party state in action). They are clearly terrified at the damage that the coming deluge of unemployment is going to do to the already fragile public finances.

Incapacity Benefit has been under attack for some time, yes. Although this looks like a further step towards legislating it away. I've not heard about income support being scrapped before though - or is scrapping it only for people also on IB?

There's been a general trend of attacks under Labour for 10 years, of course. One of their key roles for British capitalism has been that they've been able to continue them under the guise of "reform" in a way the Tories could never have managed. And, for ten years, Labour have pointed at the Tories and their "extremist" programmes saying "you think we're bad, look at what would happen if this bunch of nutters get back in". And the Tories played their role as "right-wing nutters" quite dutifully.

The ongoing attacks are a policy of the whole bourgeoisie, not just New Labour. There may be slight differences of implementation, but fundamentally they all agree on shrinking the welfare budget. Like economic policy (at the last election, the difference between the proposed spending plans of the three main parties was less than the margin of error in Treasury reports), many of these differences are just role-playing for public consumption.

As has been mentioned already, many of these attacks have been in the pipeline for sometime. There's been a fair share of sensationalism around some of them, as well as some political bickering, all in the name of "debate". This may have been because of a real debate within the ruling class on how far to go, or simply for public consumption. Whatever the case, it's now clear that the internal bourgeois debate is closed and that these measures will go ahead, although there will, of course, be some token opposition from Labour back benchers.

LB, doesn't that strike you as different ideologies to accomplish the same thing? After all, all the parties agree with a tightening of the screws? Why do they agree? The idea that they're chasing votes seems to suggest that "the voters" are somehow in control and the parties are competing to give the voters "what they want". But who decides what voters want? Mostly the media - who set the framework for these debates - who are, quelle surprise,controlled by the same ruling class embodied in the political parties and, above all, the state.

Both parties have long term plans based on their ideologies, and while the implementation and effect of those plans on those on IB or JSA are likely to be very much the same (as we said when Labour continued with JSA after taking leadership from the Tories http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue48/welfare.html ), I just sense this particular announcement is opportunistic electioneering so I don't see anything new here that is in direct response to the current economic climate that D303 was implying by comment, "They are clearly terrified at the damage that the coming deluge of unemployment is going to do to the already fragile public finances". The threat to IB, and other parts of the welfare state by both parties, has been on the agenda for ages and as such I don't think our rulers are, as a whole, terrified by employment rising in response to the current climate in terms of public finances. For example, official figures tell you that only 2% of total benefits budget is used for people not on sickness benefits who are unemployed (see http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn13.pdf ) so any increase due to increased unemployment is really not going to have much relative effect on the overall welfare budget. On the other hand sickness and disabilities benefits is 16% of overall benefits so both parties can see that they could save money by cutting IB.

Indeed. For New Labour at least, a reduction in the 16% of benefits budget represented by sickness and disability benefit is not the only point of the reforms. It's as much about fitting everyone into UK PLC whether they like it or not ... rights and responsilbilities, raising expectations - roll those r's when you say it! It's what Socialism is all about.

OK. So we can accept that this is not really anything new? This does leave the issue of why so little action has been taken (in Britain at least) for over a decade to really address these continued attacks on the unemployed, either as a movement of the unemployed or as a solidarity campaign by others.

Sorry if the following is very UK specific...

What we are seeing is really a widening out of what's been experimented with for years at least since 1996, starting with JSA 'Job Club', 'Restart inteviews', 'New Deal Options' (including education & voluntary sector workfare) etc. Benefits that are due to be taken away from single parents were completely removed from 16/17 year olds many years ago. Before then was the Tories' YOP and YTS (youth opportunties/training programme/scheme) followed by their 'Project Work' workfare pilot programme for the long-term unemployed, that was continued by Labour as the New Deal after they won the 1997 general election. And as I said above, it was already announced sometime last year that Incapacity Benefit was being scrapped for new claimants from October 2008, but note this is also something that has been planned by both parties for ages, and partially implemented already by introdcution of the 'All Work Test' at the end of the 1990s.

So in short I am bit loath to fall into any 'revolutionary change in benefits system' rhetoric. In Britain anarchists like those of us in A(C)F and libertarian communist groups like Subversion in particular have traditionally been well up on analysing this continuous attack on the unemployed and in the past at least, were strongly involved with claimant action groups. Much of A(C)F's and other stuff on the matter is documented here http://www.geocities.com/ncajsa

Perhaps it just seems to be new because what's been going on over the last decade has been ignored by the left since the unions rolled over and let JSA by imposed by Major and continued by New Labour. I think the new anti-poverty coalitions and other newish independent claimants groups such as the one in Liverpool are a important development that could address this lack of attention.

Considering that unemployed workers did apparently organise in the 30s, the apparent inability for the unemployed to organise today is a cause of concern. Off the top of my head, I would put this down to several factors, some of which also affect the class struggle generally:

- one of the functions of the welfare state was to dampen any self-organisation by unemployed workers in this regard and to make them dependent on the state. Many traditions of self-reliance in this regard were lost (i.e. deliberately and consciously obliterated by the bourgeoisie) by the proletariat;

- specifically, this means a worker who is made redundant will have access to benefits, redundancy pay, etc. for a few months before finding himself completely destitute - by the time this point is reached, he has been isolated from his comrades and utterly demoralised by the futile effort to find work.

- unemployment is the hardest condition to struggle against. The main weapon of workers - the strike - is lost to them. It is true to say that those who have "lost the factory must gain the streets", but this is easier said than done. It can only succeed when linked to wider struggles or descends in the self-destructive riots where the class character of the proletariat is often subsumed into a community or racial ideology.

- the state has been careful to manage the growth of unemployment. It has bent over backwards to prevent large gatherings of unemployed, e.g. by staggering sign-on days, etc. Usually the most contact unemployed workers have with each other is through training schemes and things like JobClub (which are so thoroughly depressing, you're only thought it to get out as soon as possible);

- those efforts to organise that do appear, immediately fall under the control of the leftists. Unlike employed workers in struggle, where the battle with leftism is often fought on the terrain of whether to strike and/or how to strike and have a more direct experience of their own power, the unemployed generally lack confidence and direction and are more easily controlled;

- the crisis in the 30s was open and massive with immediate effects that were obvious to everyone, while the crisis since the 70s has appeared as a series of conjunctural recessions that the bourgeoisie presents as singular events, rather than a series of step in an overall tendency towards decline. As a result, the depth of the crisis is not immediately visible;

- the slow pace of the crisis has allowed the bourgeoisie to limit the scope of unemployment. Generally, It has increased continuously but there have also been periods of recovery and stabilisation. The initial isolation of the unemployed has allowed the bourgeoisie to set up an ideological cordon sanitaire by demonising them as scroungers. This poisonous campaign (now running for over 20 years) has had serious effects on the capacity of employed workers to link their struggles to their unemployed comrades;

- the nature of the crisis has also allowed the bourgeoisie to inculcate illusions about capitalism: it is simply a matter of finding the right economic policy to sort out the problem;

- the growing effects of social decomposition (which permanent, mass unemployment seriously aggravates) manifests itself in the growing "lumpenisation", especially of young people, many of whom have never had (and never will have) work. They are unable to see themselves as a class, are viewed with contempt by the rest of society because of their degraded conditions (economic, social, cultural, etc.) and in the absence of big struggles are unable to find any other example of solidarity other than gang-culture (itself peddled by the bourgeoisie through the medium of certain forms of music etc.).

Despite all these restraining factors, there is still potential for unemployment to have a radicalising effect as the crisis deepens and the class develops its struggle:

- the advance of the crisis is progressively destroying illusions in the system - all the economic policies fail and the new ones fail even more quickly than the old ones did (Reaganomics lasted 10 years, as opposed to the Keynesianism of 30, globalisation less than ten, the internet economy less than 5, etc.);

- the growth of unemployment makes it more difficult for the bourgeoisie to hide it, and more difficult to isolate workers. When everyone knows someone on the dole its harder to write them all off as scroungers;

- the impact of the crisis on the bourgeoisie itself, the growing ineffectiveness of all their counter-measures and the bankruptcy of the welfare state is making it more and more difficult for it to maintain this apparatus. While in the short term this will mean a horrific increase in the suffering and misery for millions, it will also lay bare (in conjunction with the impact of the crisis on those still working) the reality that capitalism can no longer offer the worker anything at all which can only radicalise the response to the crisis;

- the solidarity that will be rediscovered in the struggles of the employed workers can then be extended to those on the dole. There will be a long road before this level of solidarity is reached but once the point is reached it could manifest explosively and quickly.

This article is worth reading to understand corporate pressures and academic concepts underpinning the Welfare Reform Act (2006) that was taken forward in the Freud report, and in the detail of the current announcement: New Labour and the end of welfare - http://www.compassonline.org.uk/article.asp?n=563&offset=20

An important point to note is "The Government target [of 80% employment] can be achieved by bringing in the private sector on long term, outcome based contracts. A price per claimant is calculated on the savings in IB costs when the claimant moves back into work. The income generated by the outflow of people from IB would be the incentive driving business toward the Government target. "

Now clearly this saving is achieved whether you actually get work or you get kicked off Incapacity Benefit. No private contractor would be stupid enough to let their income rely on former claimants actually getting a 'sustainable' job, so we can presume they will get paid for the latter. Now, exactly who will be making the decision that you haven't been trying hard enough to get work (or prepared for work)?