Cuts are an ideological assault on the concept of welfare and the market economy denies our nobler side, says David Bell
Times of crisis force us to think about fundamental questions such as, "What is a good society?" The welfare state, founded upon the principles of progressive taxation and universal welfare, expresses an ideal of the good society, where the community as a whole provides for the other, and those in need receive this provision as of right. Such an institutional structure serves to express the more communal part of our nature, which strives towards generosity, compassion and concern, and contains the more selfish (narcissistic) side that greedily pursues its own interests and sees others only as potential competitors.
Universal benefits such as child benefit have a social and psychological value, binding people together in a community, whereas targeted benefits are divisive; one breach in this foundational principle undermines the whole edifice.
Our relationship with awareness of our own vulnerability is far from comfortable – we have a natural tendency to locate it in other people – it is he, not me, who is in need, it is she, not me, who is vulnerable. Unfortunately, this projective system has a drive of its own: as it gathers momentum it acquires contempt, providing the psychological soil for destructive social processes such as racism or homophobia to germinate.
The cuts express an ideological assault on the concept of welfare – originating with Margaret Thatcher and now escalating violently. This ideological position can be characterised as follows: the welfare state does not provide people with the basic necessities of life as part of a duty of state but instead is a mechanism by which people are disempowered, creating in them a helpless state of invalidism. The "have-nots", instead of "getting on their bikes" and competing in the marketplace, stay at home and whinge for the nanny state to do something for them. Namely, to have one's basic needs met is to be treated as if suffering from a state of infantile dependence and to be dominated by a delusion of an inexhaustible supply of provision.
In this kind of thinking, or more properly non-thinking, the world collapses into simple binary categories – "us and them" – and all complexity is lost.
Those on welfare become just "scroungers". Worst of all, many who are legitimately entitled to benefit identify with this propaganda and collapse into despair. The nanny state slogan expresses this perverse logic and hatred of vulnerability.
The social cleansing process where those on benefits will have to vacate their homes will further fuel this process, as it lends support to the sense that "they" do not deserve to live here.
Civilisation, as Freud pointed out, had to develop ways of managing human hatred and greed, givens of our nature, through creating structures that contain it. This insulation is breaking down. The free market both perpetuates and receives its justification from the ideology of the "survival of the fittest", giving force to a primitive moralism: those who survive have a right to, because they are superior to those who, now morally inferior, failed as they had no right to survive.
The market economy may be a necessity of life, at least for our current epoch, but as an ideal of social institutions it necessarily fails to support the nobler side of our nature.
• David Bell is president of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and a consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust.
Times of crisis force us to think about fundamental questions such as, "What is a good society?" The welfare state, founded upon the principles of progressive taxation and universal welfare, expresses an ideal of the good society, where the community as a whole provides for the other, and those in need receive this provision as of right. Such an institutional structure serves to express the more communal part of our nature, which strives towards generosity, compassion and concern, and contains the more selfish (narcissistic) side that greedily pursues its own interests and sees others only as potential competitors.
Universal benefits such as child benefit have a social and psychological value, binding people together in a community, whereas targeted benefits are divisive; one breach in this foundational principle undermines the whole edifice.
Our relationship with awareness of our own vulnerability is far from comfortable – we have a natural tendency to locate it in other people – it is he, not me, who is in need, it is she, not me, who is vulnerable. Unfortunately, this projective system has a drive of its own: as it gathers momentum it acquires contempt, providing the psychological soil for destructive social processes such as racism or homophobia to germinate.
The cuts express an ideological assault on the concept of welfare – originating with Margaret Thatcher and now escalating violently. This ideological position can be characterised as follows: the welfare state does not provide people with the basic necessities of life as part of a duty of state but instead is a mechanism by which people are disempowered, creating in them a helpless state of invalidism. The "have-nots", instead of "getting on their bikes" and competing in the marketplace, stay at home and whinge for the nanny state to do something for them. Namely, to have one's basic needs met is to be treated as if suffering from a state of infantile dependence and to be dominated by a delusion of an inexhaustible supply of provision.
In this kind of thinking, or more properly non-thinking, the world collapses into simple binary categories – "us and them" – and all complexity is lost.
Those on welfare become just "scroungers". Worst of all, many who are legitimately entitled to benefit identify with this propaganda and collapse into despair. The nanny state slogan expresses this perverse logic and hatred of vulnerability.
The social cleansing process where those on benefits will have to vacate their homes will further fuel this process, as it lends support to the sense that "they" do not deserve to live here.
Civilisation, as Freud pointed out, had to develop ways of managing human hatred and greed, givens of our nature, through creating structures that contain it. This insulation is breaking down. The free market both perpetuates and receives its justification from the ideology of the "survival of the fittest", giving force to a primitive moralism: those who survive have a right to, because they are superior to those who, now morally inferior, failed as they had no right to survive.
The market economy may be a necessity of life, at least for our current epoch, but as an ideal of social institutions it necessarily fails to support the nobler side of our nature.
• David Bell is president of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and a consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust.
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