Social Service Workers and the Grip of Neo-liberal Capitalism Part Two: Privatization and Austerity's Path of Destruction

Social Service Workers and the Suffocating Grip of Neo-liberal Capitalism Part Two: Privatization and Austerity's Path of Destruction

by Danny Haiphong

"Austerity and privPlaceholder teaserPlaceholder bodyatization heighten the social control function of social services, punishing and dehumanizing recipients for receiving benefits that fail to meet basic needs.”

Fidel Castro once stated that a revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. Social service workers are being swept away by a rapidly changing future. Austerity and privatization threaten the very existence of social services. In this period of permanent capitalist crisis, privatization and austerity measures are the capitalist class's only option capable of maintaining profits under the current economic order. Social service workers are deeply entrenched in and endangered by neo-liberal capital's end game, one that seeks to either eliminate social services all together or model them in the logic of the corporate ruling class.

Austerity and privatization are deeply interlocked developments of US capitalist crisis. Austerity is the forced reduction of funding for social programs at all levels of public administration. The roll-back of social programs paves a path for hedge fund-backed corporations or foundations to replace the public sector. The corporate take-over of the public sector is termed privatization by many scholars and activists. Wall Street's permanent crisis has forced the ruling class to extend its insatiable lust for investment and profit to the "social safety net." This is part of the broader capitalist agenda of looting the last remaining wealth of the exploited classes to the ruling class.

The Reagan Administration's bust of the PATCO strike and the Clinton Administration's elimination of "welfare as we know it" are seen as watershed moments in the development of privation. Privatization's three decade or so march to the bottom amounts to a full-fledged assault on the working class and poor. For example, housing is thought of by most as a human right and a basic need. However, HUD, the federal agency that administers public housing, has been perpetually cut to bare bones while at the same undergoing a shift toward privatization. Private management corporations backed by Wall Street hedge funds have received millions in federal subsidies to provide "low-income housing" in their pursuit of gentrification. This has only enriched financial speculators at the expense of the working class and precipitated the need for the federal government to scantly fund services for its growing homeless population.

"Privatization and ausPlaceholder teaserPlaceholder bodyterity measures are the capitalist class's only option capable of maintaining profits under the current economic order.”

Public housing is just one arena of the public sector being engulfed by corporate enterprise. Public education is another prime target, with cities like New Orleans making a complete transition from public education to for-profit charter schools. Finance capital has made it clear that nothing is safe from corporate theft. The city of Detroit is under the private "emergency management" of Jones Day law firm in preparation for the wholesale transfer of the city's public sector into the profit streams of the same banks (Barclay's and Bank of America) responsible for Detroit's economic crash.

These instances appear extreme on the surface but really represent a decades-long process of capitalist crisis. Social service workers need to understand that privatization and austerity is a logical development of the crisis-ridden capitalist system. Capitalists have calculated that permanent crisis and the profit-motive cannot exist together in the era of finance without gutting the public sector in the process.

For the last three decades, US imperialism and privatization have targeted Black America in particular. Austerity cuts to and privatization of public education, TANF (formerly AFDC or "welfare”), public housing, healthcare, and programs like Head Start have gone hand in hand with mass Black incarceration, militarized policing and surveillance, and discussion in Washington of slashing the once untouchable social programs of Medicare and Social Security.

These developments of capitalism's final stage afflict the most pain and suffering on America's Black community. The erosion of the already imperfect social safety net and the disintegration of labor unioPlaceholder teaserPlaceholder bodyns have aligned perfectly with the rise of the militarized police state. This alignment point's to the tendency of capital to transition to fascism in the midst of a growing, mostly Black population of surplus labor. The US is the number one environmental polluter of the planet and is by far the top dog in polluting human life with misery and exploitation, especially Black life.

Social service workers often find themselves frustrated at the glaring limitations of the profession when it comes to addressing the concrete conditions of US neo-liberal capitalism. The profession binds social service workers by law to refrain from building relationships with oppressed people outside of the workplace. To make matters worse, social service institutions have colluded with the national security state to produce workplaces hostile to anti-establishment political organizing. The increasingly punitive and exclusionary social service system, rife with intrusive and demoralizing eligibility requirements and sanctions, seeps into the ideological tendencies of individual social service workers.

"The erosion of the already imperfect social safety net and the disintegration of labor unions have aligned perfectly with the rise of the militarized police state.”

When AFDC was slashed from the Federal budget and broken up into state block grants under the TANF system in 1996, social service workers effectively became another arm of the police to ensure recipients were meeting program requirements. Under the new system, recipients were required to participate in full-time hours of "job activities" per week while receiving only a portion of the fixed state block grant. Additionally, states were granted much flexibility toward instituting draconian measures to police TANF recipients. Some implemented a drug test requirement, for which Utah still abides. Austerity and privatization heighten the social control function of social services, punishing and dehumanizing recipients for receiving benefits that fail to meet basic needs.

Political direction is the key element of effective resistance to US neo-liberal capitalism. Without it, social service workers risk harming oppressed people without making any contribution to the fight for a new, socialist system based on human need and against neo-liberal theft. Social service workers are told in the workplace and the classroom that the profession is based on the principles of social justice, self-determination, and the belief that every person inherently possesses dignity and self-worth.

What the profession doesn't explain is that from Ferguson, MO to Palestine, Black and indigenous life is structurally devalued by the prevailing racist power structure. The devaluation of oppressed people is the most important staple of profit sustenance under the rule of white supremacy and US neo-liberal capitalism. Social service workers need to step out of the profession's culture and organize with oppressed people in the streets. While social service institutions see the oppressed as potential "clients," a revolutionary movement is built on the organization of the oppressed as the potential grave-diggers of the old system and the architects of the new.

Danny is an activist and case manager in the Greater Boston Area. Danny can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com.

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