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Beyond Dependency orBeyond Capitalism?

A critique of New Zealand’s driveTowards Workfare.

David Bedggood,Department of Sociology,University of Auckland.

Private Bag 92019, Auckland.New Zealand.Tel. 64 09 3737599 / 8617Fax.64 09 3737439Email <dr.bedggood@auckland.ac.nz>

ABSTRACTThe paper attempts to critique, from a Marxist standpoint, the move towards workfare in NewZealand by examining the neo-liberal assumptions underlying the concept of ‘welfaredependency’. Its focus is the “Beyond Dependency’ Conference organised by the NZdepartment of Social Welfare, among other organisations, in April 1997, to promote theideology of ‘well-being’ resulting from work. The Beyond Dependency Conference brought anumber of ‘overseas’ experts to NZ as part of the Coalition Government’s drive towards theCommunity Wage which is designed to replace the Unemployment Benefit. The paperconcludes that this is a clear move to provide an ideological justification for forcing theunemployed into the reserve army of labour, in order to reduce the labour costs facing NZemployers who must now compete in an open, deregulated market. The paper also critiquesthe most common market-liberal responses to the market-liberal policies and finds that theKeynesian assumptions on which welfare-liberalism rests, while always deficient in their graspof how capitalism works, have been outmoded by the demands of the global economy on theNZ state. It concludes that a revolutionary transformation of the social relations of productionwill be necessary in order to go beyond Dependency, and beyond Poverty.INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to critique from a Marxist standpoint the underlying neo-liberal assumptions of so-called welfare dependency and draw out the political implications of this critique. The revival of a ‘market rights’ discourse that opposes ‘welfare rights’ discoursedraws on long-established arguments of classic free market theorists such as Hayek (1949).The argument, in summary, holds that state provision of welfare services is a drain on privatesavings, and therefore acts as a disincentive to innovation and hence economic growth. Themore familiar argument operates at the level of the firm where entrepreneur’s savings aretaxed. However, in Hayek’s language, all individuals are entrepreneurs including those whosell their labour on the market. Hence the latest attack on welfare rights is dressed upideologically as a defence of the rights of individuals to become independent of the state andself-reliant in finding work on the labour market. This is justified by appealing to the conceptof ‘civil society’ in which individuals take responsibility for their actions within a consensualmoral framework or ‘virtue’ (Murray, 1988; James, 1989; Green, 1993,1996; Jones, 1997).While in general, ‘dependence’ on the state is defined as an impediment to marketrights, some welfare rights are conceded to the ‘deserving poor’ who cannot work for reasonsof child care, age or injury, as the basis for ‘targeted’ or specific state income support.However, the precise question of whom is ‘deserving’ i.e. who can or cannot work, is now tobe under constant review, so that income support goes only to those who are proven to begenuinely ‘dependent’. Those who are marginal, are “forced to be free to chose” - that is towork (Kasper, 1996; Jones, 1997). Therefore, ‘Beyond Dependency’ reduces to gettingbeneficiaries off state welfare and into private work where they learn to take responsibility fortheir actions – including having children out of wedlock (Green, 1996:xiii; Morgan, 1995).The promotion of the recent

Beyond Dependency

Conference

(BDC) focussed on thepositive message of making individuals independent of the state in order to exercise their right