In a recent headline, writers in the London Times lamented that “Britons’ tolerance of fraud could cost benefits system £2bn a year”. And what is to blame for this hideous prospect? They, the “low integrity” of an increasing section of the British working class, of course.
“In the 12 months to March, the government lost about 2.8 percent of total welfare spending to fraud. This was higher than the previous year and double pre-pandemic levels. The department estimated that the ‘long-term behavioural trend’ would mean a 5 percent annual increase in losses from fraud each year over the next five years, suggesting taxpayers would lose £9.5bn a year to fraud by 2029.”
“In its annual report published on Monday, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) said that its efforts to battle fraud were running into a ‘headwind’ of an increasingly dishonest society, which had consistently pushed up losses in the benefits system.”
“Tolerance of tax evasion and benefit fraud by others has also risen, with officials citing a recent study suggesting that one in five Britons can now be classed as having ‘low integrity’, up from one in 14 just over a decade ago.”
“Last year a study by the University of Portsmouth measured people’s integrity based on whether they were prepared to commit ‘deviant acts’. In 2011, the original research found that 85 percent of respondents thought falsely claiming benefits was never justified. In 2023, the comparable figure was 67 percent.”
“Edward Davies, the policy director at the Centre for Social Justice, an independent centre-right think tank, said: ‘The pandemic seemed to somewhere break the social contract and pour petrol on harmful behaviours – we’ve seen that coming through in economic inactivity, school exclusions and now fraud.’” (Max Kendix and Chris Smyth, 22 July 2024)
Enrichment of a few, impoverishment of the mass
Of course, it was not ‘the pandemic’, but the capitalist crisis of overproduction, the huge financial bailouts of the business class (the capitalists), paid for by cuts, austerity, wage reduction, increased taxation for workers and inflationary money-printing, all of which have combined to systematically rob the working class and further enrich the wealthy.
This wealth transfer and the consequent impoverishment of working people has been exacerbated by huge energy inflation, which was put on steroids by Nato’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the accompanying regime of economic sanctions. And all these policies were supported to the hilt by every one of Britain’s mainstream imperialist political parties (Tory, Labour, LibDem, Green, ‘Reform’, SNP and Plaid).
Moreover, this all came on top of the foundational fraud that has always characterised the capitalist system of production for profit: wage slavery. It is the wages system itself which daily and hourly robs each and every worker of the value they produce, systematically impoverishing the entire class of working people in order to enrich the owners of capital.
Despite the desperation being caused by the cost of living crisis now besetting British workers, the state has not extended benefits to help the growing numbers of needy but has instead continued to force them down, both in terms of the real purchasing power of any benefit received and in terms of the numbers of people considered eligible to receive such benefits.
Is it to be wondered at that workers no longer feel bound by the discipline of the capitalist regime; that they no longer respect ‘rules’ that the rule-makers themselves so conspicuously flout at every opportunity?
It was not ‘the pandemic’ that broke the ‘social contract’ but the dwindling position of the exploited in relation to the exploiters, which has caused both desperation and a steady diminution in the trust of the working masses towards the pillars and representatives of the British capitalist state.
Corruption endemic to capitalism
What the governmental and state handling of the pandemic did indeed do was to deepen the already rapidly growing divide between workers and capitalists, and to expose more clearly than ever the utter contempt of Britian’s ruling class for those over whom they lord.
It also highlighted the endemic corruption in the corridors of power and the total impunity with which our ‘elected representatives’ are able to enrich themselves at our expense – just so long as their policy actions are in line with ruling-class agendas.
The examples of rule-breaking and corruption by politicians during the pandemic are too numerous to list. It is well known to every worker that hundreds of millions were gaily doled out by these scoundrels in the guise of unmonitored ‘contracts’ (with accompanying kickbacks) to the pub landlords, party donors and hedge fund sponsors of their choice.
Under cover of the pandemic, the government and Bank of England presided over yet another massive campaign of money-printing, deflating our currency (and thus robbing workers of wages, savings and pensions) in order to bail out the stock market when it crashed early in 2020, and to follow that with seemingly limitless hand-outs to big pharma and big tech corporations, which were the main beneficiaries of the lockdown policy of Boris Johnson’s regime, and to a multitude of others including airlines, hotel chains, logistics contractors, hedge funds and more.
And who could forget the Greensill scandal, during which former prime minister David Cameron was enticed with share options worth £30m to defraud the nation? Or the fact that even after this corruption had been exposed, he was rewarded not with a trial but with a peerage and an unelected position as British foreign secretary?
Of course, the honourable and decent way for workers to respond to all this would be by waging an organised class struggle to raise wages (a move that is systematically sabotaged by the corrupt relationship between the Labour party and the trade union leadership) and, most importantly, by joining the revolutionary movement for the overthrow of the entire system of capitalist wage-slavery.
Let the Times’s columnists be careful what they wish for. A ‘high integrity’ working class will not content itself with trying to redress the balance via mere petty fraud and benefits ‘cheating’. British workers will attain true dignity by raising themselves above their current tolerant attitude toward the massive fraud, corruption and theft of the capitalist class, accompanied as it is by the wanton use of brute and bloody violence in the form of extortion, armed robbery, mass murder and serial genocides.
The capitalist system is based on the systematic expropriation of the working masses; on our subjection and exploitation. We must and will raise ourselves to reclaim our birthright: the ownership of the means of production and subsistence themselves.
Only by overthrowing the corrupt, decadent and parasitic system of monopoly capitalism, the system of enrichment through theft, with its inevitable impoverishment of the masses of workers and its unstoppable drive into economic crisis, social dislocation and war, can we build lives of dignity and integrity. Only then will a society characterised by respect and peaceful cooperation between individuals and nations cease to be a pipe dream.
