Refusal of work and the crisis of the work ethic

its certainly an interesting way of understanding the deployment of police-state technology in a time of low class struggle, and is more attractive than Schnews' recent psuedo-primmo thesis that 'the collapse' is coming.

Well a large percentage of people on IB have been put on it to keep them off the unemployment stats. There simply are not enough jobs to go around. The collapse of the work ethic is not a good thing for class struggle. We don't work for bosses because we have a work ethic, we do it because we have to. When we fight for ourselves and for each other that takes something close to a work ethic, when we educate ourselves and others that is our work ethic. They want us to believe that inaction is pleasure, it makes us weak and it stops us fighting.

Next week raw informs us the pope is a paedophile nazi.

Think it might be the other way round with "refusal of work" as a response to low levels of class struggle (can't beat them so you try to go round them). You could try and correlate NEETS figures, if they're at all reliable which I suspect they're probably not, against number of strike days and see if there's any relationship. It'd be rough but it might give some guide.

Interestingly, John Reid has just announced a plan to up the number of prison places by 80,000 to take into account an attempt to toughen up sentencing for both major and minor offenders. He seems to have moved substantially out of step with the bulk of the judiciary to do so.

Having said that, I doubt the number of people on IB is a deliberate dropping out of work for most people (at least in the initial stages), it's closer to being a means for the state to keep unemployment off the books - it's been made pretty clear for years that if you have 'a problem' you get less hassle than if you simply can't find employment when applying for benefits.

They're launching (as reported in Freedom) a major offensive to try and stop that now though, which could suggest that what you are suggesting - ie. large scale movement from a formal economy where there are no jobs left to an informal one bypassing punitive state control - is becoming/has been the unwelcome outcome of that policy.

Agree with this - it is infuriating the inference that you must be lazy if you can't find work or are not well enough given that these conditions are mostly created by our socio-political economy. Also that you are lazy if you don't want to slave at someones elses expense. Jef is right - being written off and disenfranchised is a way to stop us fighting and use our drive and "work ethic" to improve our lives. Also agree with most of Raws points aussi. This is a good topic for a thread. And now I really HAVE to go!

Love

LW X

Hi

Think I'm mostly with Jef Costello on this.

Unemployment is an attack on the working class and the culture of benefits dependency is a product of the disintegration of the capitalist economy. The work ethic is certainly in crisis, but this doesn't represent any advance for the working class.

In fact, the growing lumpenisation of sections of the proletariat (i.e. unemployables, marginalisation, etc.) is a serious problem for us, fuelling the decomposition of working class neighbourhoods etc. Whole generations of children now grow up with no hope of ever getting a job, unless it's being a drug dealer. Without the discipline of the capitalist workplace, without knowing the solidarity of the proletariat in either work or struggle, they are pushed to the margins of the working class.

The "work ethic" crisis which the bourgeoisie presents as "benefits scrounging", represents the complete atomisation of the working class. It is not the conscious and collective withdrawal of labour represented in the strike.

In the 30s, despite being mostly a period of defeat for the working class, unemployed workers formed associations that attempted to represent them in wider society - but in the phase of crisis dating back to the 60s this has not happened. Back in the 70s the ICC hoped that mass unemployment would provide a radicalisation of the working class. In practice, the growth of permanent mass unemployment has constituted a drag on the development of the class struggle by atomising us and weakening our political capacities.

Nonetheless, when those proletarians still in work begin to move on a massive scale, the immense anger of the unemployed will be unleashed. Our unemployed comrades may have lost the factory, but together we can still gain the street!

I dont know about this, sure all work has a disciplinary nature, not just in the sense of being told what to do andbeing regimented but the fact that your coerced into towing the line save your sacked and cant afford to pay your bills. However even mundane work that doesnt at first appear to be connected to the profit motive does have an economic value, it keeps people off the dole for starters and provides them with the funds needed to buy food, shelter and other products, which in turn creates profits for those selling these products and enables them to expand, employ more people if necessary and again bolster profits.

good discussion this, thanks for the contributions.

Yes, I don't agree with that either- it just seems an empty assertion to me.

raw, can you give some examples of

I think you're on a dead-end thinking that for most people it is a specfic choice to be out of work. The main driver is that they can't find work, or that the work they can get is not well-paid enough to be worth it, or requires skills they are denied through poverty/lack of base education. The loss of social positon and dignity associated with being dole scum is still powerful unless you can inspire fear in people (eg. join a gang).

You may not get this in London but most outlying places don't have much in the way of opportunity, especially in the areas which bore the brunt of deindustrialisation (unemployment corresponds almost exactly with this). Tis one of the reasons for the mass migration to the city.

er no thanks

been there done that

Yeah I know, that's why I said 'most' people

Nah I wasn't saying they should be excluded, indeed I'm in complete agreement that reaching out to the unemployed is something that should be as much a part of any lefty's remit as workplace solidarity. But the reason they are there, and its ramifications for how the government are planning to break it up, edges more to what I said earlier than towards a burgeoning culture of resistance, imo. And thus has an impact on the process of engagement.

That's a good point. When the factories were taking on full time staff in Wrexham (which was pretty rare, they mostly used temps) the queues for application forms at the job centre wound round the entire town centre - people would literally queue for days. I've seen the same in Liverpool when Merseyrail were hiring.

I don't think there are many people choosing to work in the informal economy - mostly they have to.

I think I'm in agreement with most that I don't think that a specific refusal of work is a motivating factor for most people. But once they have been thrown onto the scrap heap they will tend to try and make the best of it, and if they are then successful in finding opportunities to work cash in hand, or deal drugs then that refusal to work can later become something that people choose to continue with (and I'd say even that is a minority). Incapacity is also far more attractive for anyone on benefits because there seems to be less pressure on you to look for work that there is with the dole.

However, I do agree with the point that having pushed large numbers of people out of the workplace, the ruling class have now responded by ratcheting up other forms of social control to replace the discipline of the workplace.

The whole thing kinda reminds me (although on a smaller scale it must be emphasized) of the growth of the black- and grey- markets in the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. So if it keeps expanding then it could be the case that this informal economy starts to undermine the official one. But so far I don't think we've seen the same level of incompetence in responding to these developments that was the case with teh Soviet Union.

Anyway, I think its a very interesting point of discussion (deriving theory from practice and all that). But can anyone see a way in which these trends could lead to anything other than a kind of drop out culture and to the atomisation of communities and instead become something positive?

Edit - double post

I think that there are less work refusers than you think Raw.

It is well documented that the ID claimant numbers skyrocketed in former industrial areas and that this wa largely to keep unemployment figures down.

People don't often choose to work off the cards, I've never met anyone in blackmarket labour who wouldn't have taken a job with the council or something similar. I've done casual work, and it wasn't through choice. That's why casualisation is a fucking problem.

The problem is that the lumpen population is to big, we are having trouble supporting it, this problem will not get any better.

Some might point to the Black Panthers, who politicised 'lumpen' ghetto youth. Trouble was, a stalinised gang structure reproduced alot of the same competitive, hierarchical crap as the original gangs. All the pompous titles, 'Chairman', 'Field Marshal', 'Minister' for this'n'that etc. The hierarchical, rivalrous attitudes also made it all the easier for the state to ferment murderous internal discord thru COINTELPRO etc. (Though some local Panther chapters didn't get much into the gun-toting pose and concentrated on community work.)

http://libcom.org/library/james-carr-black-panthers-all-that

School leavers can't go on the dole nowadays, can they? Its either college or some usually crap training course. So they get a 'socialising process', for what it's worth. In the 60s, 70s it was easy to be on the dole and you could drop in and out of work, find black work easily, live cheap, in squats or low rent housing. So, along with high strike levels and low productivity ('the British disease', 'sick man of Europe', etc) there was refusal of work both within and without the workplace.

With Thatcherism triumphant, both forms of work resistance declined... and the rest is history.

When did anyone last her of claimant's unions?

They seem to have died out JSA prtests are the absolute last I've heard of them.

What do you mean here Jef? And who's "we"?

Yeah this is true. The demise of the 9-5, job for life is also something a lot of people feel positive about, the thought of rotting away do the same repetitive crap looking at the same grey wall for the rest of your life is not appealing to people. Of course casualisation as is just means that you do repetitive crap in front of different walls, without income security, sick pay, holiday pay or anything, and for many people it's just as inescapable as a dull job-for-life. But still...

Do you actually think most of these new laws are being emplyed against ''work refusers'' then, because i'm inclined to think thats bollocks.

most new laws over the last few year have ben largely based in rhetoric, rather than action, to make us think the government cares or is ''doing something'', in effect its just another publicity stunt.

Oh and i think if you told any of my mates that the reason they had a shit temp job was because they were ''refusing to work'' you'd be likely to get a kicking, and i can't say most of them are particularly violent, its just thats the average response your going to receive. I mean you can vaguely apply that sort of stuff to teenagers and kids drifiting in and out of further education, but even then its a bit balls, but once your talking about people in their 20's its nothing but cobblers to think that most casual workers can be deemed to be ''work refusers'' who are glad to not have a stable full time job.

By we I mean society, it's a problem for the bourgeoisie as to maintain order they have to try to buy them off without giving them productive work, which is a drain on their finances. Well we the working class have to pay for it ultimately, although as we pay for everything that's hardly news.

Got to agree with this, casualisation is in no way designed to benefit us. They will never give us anything worth having unless we have fought for it. We cannot incorporate

because it is not designed to benefit us, it was brought in to screw us. Only the middle classes can afford to take career breaks and retrain and find new jobs for the hell of it.

Hi

Ha ha.

Love

LR

Interesting thread.

There are two premises here.

First that there are a number of people on the sick and in the cash in hand economy who choose this as a lifestyle because they can't be fucked with 9-5 style work, and that there is a larger body of people who have been forced into the same position because they can't find a job.

Second that this group, 'NEETS', would make good organisers.

The position I certainly have no problem with. It's true. I know many such people, could even have been labelled one myself. In Glasgow there are numerous communities where unemployment is around 5-10% but people on the sick sends the total without work in the area to around 50-60-70%.

I do have a problem with the second premise. My problem is that many of these people are junkies, jakies, people who are incapable of holding down a job, and people who have no wish to relate to the rest of society because they're a bunch of misanthropic, individualist bastards.

There are causal factors for all of this, and it is a reification of everyday class violence but there's a reason why people who can afford not to choose not to live in housing schemes where most of these people live.

Moreover people who have consciously chosen not to fight the man but get round him wherever possible, as Raw posits constitute these NEETS that government is concerned about, are not going to make good militants as they are the kind of people who consciously choose not to cause problems but to opt out, to improve their lot and fuck the rest. I'm being general here but in areas where these sort of people live there's usually a total absence of any collective spirit, except amongst "working people". You go to any scheme and very often the only people who give a damn are those who self identify as "honest people", "working people", etc. which is a pain in the arse because quite often too even if those people are just as shafted as everyone else or out of work themselves they'll entertain ridiculous illusions that we all still live in

Socialdemocracyland whereas your 'NEETS' won't be half as daft, but absolutely won't get involved in anything collective and will always be asking "what's in it for me."

I think instead of theorizing these developments as the growth of a potential work-refusenik social grouping we should see it as the continued growth of a highly individualist, marginal section of the working class [and a much larger section of the working class forced into the same economic position] who don't see any benefit to their involvement in mainstream society and who are increasingly coming into conflict with a state concerned with the growth of the cash economy. I think if there were any sense that a collectivist mentality were being entertained by many of these people we'd see more struggles amongst the unemployed or more community action in housing schemes than there is at present.

The class struggle in Britain is at a very low ebb. Looking for a way to theorise this in a positive light can't change this fact.

If we want to reach out to 'NEETS'-type people we'll have to be answering questions like "what's in it for [them]," and even then don't hold your breath. Class struggle in Britain apart from amongst the miners has always been largely the domain of the labour aristocracy, and it stands to reason that you can only start fighting back once you stop treading water.

Part of the role of discipline, workfare and other punitive measures is not so much to regulate (e.g. JSA jobsearch records, and jobsearch contracts which are such pish) as purely to keep people stressed out and on the treadmill.and stop them from getting to the privilleged position where they can consider their future and potentially fight for improvements.

As I understand it, the "refusal of work" was originally a widespread thing in the 1970s. Heaps of people simply found work too boring, too disciplinarian, too nasty and refused to work. It worked as a tactic because under full employment, you can simply give the manager/boss/foreman the finger, live off the money you earned for a few months, and then pick up another job when you wanted to. And you could choose which job you worked in. Workers had much more say back then.

But in today's conditions of high unemployment and precariousness, such a tactic doesn't work so well. I think most posters have already covered this. But to add my two cents, these days, jobs are hard to find, in my experience most workers (including many lumpens) are competing with each tooth and nail just to get jobs, and retain the ones they have, rather than refusing to work.

from what I see, most workers funnel their job dissatisfaction into many things, most of which aren't a refusal to work or some other kind of overt resistance. for example, its quite common for someone who is pissed off with their job to simply look around and line up another job. Plus just because formal levels of class struggle (such as strikes) are at an all time low, it doesn't neccessarily follow that informal levels of struggle (such as pulling sickies, and the work to rule) are at an all time low. (this is mentioned in an article by Curtis Price in Collective Action Notes where in the US in the 1990s levels of work to rule went up when strike activity was at an all time low).

Sure a minority of workers are kind of refusing to work by being on welfare. But what differentiates this from the 1970s experience was the the refusal to work was widespread. office workers and factory workers and all sorts were involved. this was why it was so threatening to capital, and why Newsweek and the all big zines carried front page articles on it in the 1970s, and (partially explains) why capital brought in neoliberalism as a way of breaking down this resistance. now it seems to be limited to a small minority. its not so threatening to capital. its annoying to them, but not a major threat.

In terms of the incapacity benefit, I don't know much about it, so my comments might be completely astray. Does the incapacity benefit pay more than the dole? If it does, then i think people could be overlooking the obvious. People might simply be getting on the IB cos it pays more! That is certainly the case here in New Zealand with the sickness and invalids benefits. Plus you dont get hassled as much to work as well) So if true then the rise in the IB may be simply explained not by a refusal to work but instead as a matter of survival (ie. the dole is so meagre it doesnt pay for the basics such as electricity and food so you're forced onto the IB just to get by) (that is the case in NZ). Lumpens are driven to do lots of "illegal" things such as "benefit fraud" just to get by, and then the state tries to clamp down on this activity and paint lumpens as criminals. I could rabbit on lots about all the disciplinarianism directed at us lumpens (i'm a chronically ill lumpen with a long term sentence) but that is about it for today.

(Most of the activity by lumpens is individualised, atomised, just like the rest of the working class, but there are some encouraging things, like lumpens forming community gardens, self-help centres) (although a lot social centres and community groups for lumpens are actually a new form of disciplinarianism on lumpens, centres who employ workfare labour and whatnot)

I think lumpens are an important topic. That is because i think lumpens are going to be an ever increasing proportion of the working class. Lumpens are not just about the unemployed. Even if unemployment decreases, heaps of baby boomers are approaching pension age. So there is an ageing population. Increasing numbers of people from the "global south" are trying to enter "fortress Europe" and if they make it, many of them become lumpens. A high proportion of lumpens are recent immigrants and ethnic minorities. Plus increasing numbers of people are getting sick these days. I think this is because of capitalism, namely increasing poverty under neoliberalism, the stresses of being worked too long and too hard, plus also the ecological meltdown. People's immune systems are getting overloaded with toxins from toxic workplaces, the food they eat, water they drink and the air they breathe.

So what does this mean for class struggle? I'm not sure. Its a bit of a powder keg in the urban slums where lumpen youth live. Maybe riots like those in France will become more common. Plus maybe many elderly people will become slowly more radicalised, pissed off with their meagre pensions and poor health care? I hope so, but I dunno, as the elderly have a reputation for being somewhat conservative. I think that struggles over health provision will become more and more important. An increasing number of workers will be looking after the elderly and sick. Rest homes will become important centres for class struggle.

To me, hand in hand with this lumpenisation is precariousness. Its well known that part time & temp/casual workers are experiencing conditions and pay very similar to that of a lumpen. In fact, this has resulted in a kind of grey merger between the two. I think Negri and Hardt in perhaps one of their saner moments mentioned this in Multitude (and i'm no Negri fan btw). Lumpens and the precariat have a lot in common, often simply because people who work part time are on the dole, or regularly are forced onto the dole for long periods, and then get a short term contract job.

So there is plenty of room for common action between these wings of the proletariat. In fact, I think that is what is happening in some instances around the world. In New Zealand, two semi-syndicalist unions (Unite! and the AWU) have had some success in recruiting both lumpens and the precariat together in what Unite! calls a "community based" union for "all low paid workers". I found during my time in the AWU that lumpens easily worked with, and saw common bonds with, precarious labourers and vice versa. Unite now has been established in Australia too. In Argentina a while back and in France recently, lumpens and the precariat played important if not pivotal roles in those rebellions.

As an aside, I would say one of the biggest problems in class struggle today is trying to get solidarity going between the rich wing of the proletariat who have skilled, well paid, relatively unprecarious jobs and the poors (that is, the precariat and the lumpens), cos in my experience there is now a huge gulf b/w the two. Maybe a lot of the hostility against us sicko lumpens expressed in this thread is an indication of this gulf (eg. myths that we are all "drug dealers", "junkies", a problematic drain upon the working class (hence we aren't considered part of the working class), "people who are incapable of holding down a job, and people who have no wish to relate to the rest of society because they're a bunch of misanthropic, individualist bastards", and so on don't help. You're all just buying into capital's myth that us sick lumpens are danegrous crims and junkies and irresponsible elements, hence we need to be disciplined and controlled. Bollocks to that. Its important to see us lumpens not as junkies or crims or passive victims or as a drain upon the waged working class, but as active agents.