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A timid whisper
Unjust Rewards: Exposing Greed and Inequality in Britain Today
By Polly Toynbee & David Walker
Granta Publications, 2008, £12.99
Reviewed by
Sean Figg
THIS IS a book about the massive wealth-gap that has
become an established fact in Britain over the last decade, dense with
statistics and research. After ten years of New Labour you can guess
what is coming. Since 1997, the top 10% of income ‘earners’ have
increased their share of income to 27.3%, leaving the bottom 10% with
just 2.6%. The personal wealth of the top 10% has expanded from 47% to
54%. Fifty-four billionaires are ‘worth’ £126 billion. In contrast, 13
million, or one in five, live below the poverty line, which for a
childless couple is a measly £11,284 per year. As the authors say, "the
UK is sliding backwards… the top 10% of taxpayers got a higher share
than they did in 1937, before the creation of the welfare-state".
Focus groups are used in one chapter to examine the
views of the rich themselves. One banker comments: "Is it fair or
unfair? is not a valid question. It’s just the way it is". When asked
about redistribution of wealth, "arguments against… ranged from threat
to bluster to attack… whatever, the poor didn’t deserve it". But this
does not stop Toynbee and Walker believing the best of these
individuals. After presenting evidence of child poverty to the focus
groups, they assert: "Once convinced about child poverty and how it can
be alleviated, people will change their positions". But to what? As the
chapter on the rich and charity correctly states, "philanthropy is no
excuse". But most of the book reads as an attempt to persuade the rich
themselves to agree to a higher rate of tax.
This attitude underlies a serious flaw: who is this
book actually addressing? Most often it is directed to the rich and
powerful themselves. Occasionally, it is directed to some supposedly
tax-averse middle class. This is despite the authors’ own statistics
showing that only 1.5% ‘earn’ over £100,000 per year. Why not address
the book to the 90% of the 31.6 million taxpayers on less than £40,000?
The trade unions are not even mentioned. Labour Party welfare policies
are given a treatment, such as the New Deal, Sure Start and Skills for
Life. But it is the potential of these policies that is waxed lyrical
about more than the underfunded reality. No mention is made of the
Labour policies that created the super-rich playground the book is
criticising.
"None of this is revolutionary", is Toynbee and
Walker’s understatement when describing the reforms they propose in the
final chapter. Most address failings of the tax system and suggestions
for closing loopholes. One is to raise the minimum wage. Most are
progressive and socialists would support them. But the key questions are
studiously avoided. Who will implement these reforms? On this, not a
word. Much like in Polly Toynbee’s regular Guardian column, we are
touring the dream world of what New Labour could be if only it were not…
New Labour! The avoidance of the loans for peerages scandal over several
pages supposedly devoted to "making the honours system honourable" is
embarrassing.
Nothing in the proposed reforms comes close to
encroaching on the root of inequality, the question of ownership and
control of the economy. All the wealth enjoyed at the top of society is
created by the efforts of millions of working-class people. Why should
the vast majority share any of the wealth they create with the parasites
at the top? It is only through controlling and owning the economy that
the rich are able to heap everything on to their own plates. The focus
group justifications about being ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ are so
much ideological smoke and mirrors to obscure this simple fact. Whether
the provision of public services should be through the public, voluntary
or private sector is described as a ‘second-order debate’. On the
contrary, New Labour’s privatisation policies are an example of how
wealth is redistributed to the top by changing who owns and controls
public services.
Toynbee and Walker are not opposed to poverty, they
are opposed to too much poverty. They are not opposed to the domination
of society by a tiny minority as long as they are not too blatant about
it. Too much inequality and the poor will be unhappy. Too much
redistribution and the rich will be unhappy. But how can Toynbee and
Walker make everyone happy? Like all good reformists they argue that a
massive wealth-gap does not best serve society, class does not come into
it. They comment that "trust corrodes and social bonds snap when such
pumped-up rewards are paid to the few, undermining the confidence and
mutual regards on which markets and the economy depend". Who else missed
the ‘trust’, ‘bond’ and ‘mutual regard’ between exploiter and exploited?
Toynbee and Walker would like to attempt a balancing
act. But, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. The
distribution of wealth is decided by the weight of contending social
classes in the class struggle. Only a strong labour movement can ensure
a fairer distribution of wealth in capitalist society. Only socialism
offers a political alternative to the ownership and control of the
economy by a minority. Reflecting the impressionism of reformism,
Toynbee and Walker appeal to the rich, raising a timid
whisper, ‘please sir, can we have
some more?’ In other conditions they would doubtless implore the working
class to not demand ‘too much’. When it comes to the longer-term and
fundamental interests of the working class and poor these two writers
are not to be trusted!
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