May 3, 2010
On the Genealogy of Benefit Scrounging
“Certainly one quality that nowadays has been best forgotten – and that is why it will take some time yet for my writings to become readable – is essential in order to practice reading as an art – a quality for the exercise of which it is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man! – rumination.”
- Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Preface.
Benefit scroungers. Surely everyone hates ‘em.
Why?
If people who have jobs really believe that The Scroungers pursue lives of Riley at taxpayer expense, why don’t The Workers down tools and join the benefits gravy train? Either they don’t really believe that scroungers live the high life, or they prefer to work than to claim state support.
It’s no objection to reply that people who work, but hate scroungers, are in fact motivated simply by the pride and dignity of an honest day’s work; that they would never live on hand-outs no matter how luxurious. Because all that indicates is that scrounger-hating-workers prefer pride and dignity to dependency on government subsidy. What that doesn’t explain is why there is so much vitriol hurled at “scroungers”. In the gutter press, from questioners in the third leader’s debate, in vindictive government campaigns – the “scrounger” is a figure of public hate par excellence.
A promising explanation begins by considering the straightforward thought that most people don’t like paying when others free ride. If I am working hard and paying tax, it appears uncontrovertibly wrong and objectionable if others live at my expense without incurring fair comparable burdens.
In itself that is a normal and healthy response to free-riding layabouts. Yet taken alone it doesn’t account for the intensity with which the British engage in what is virtually a national hobby of “scrounger”-hating. Certainly free riders are annoying, even infuriating. But as we saw above, people who work must at some decisive level prefer to work than to claim benefits – otherwise they would join the dole queue. So why isn’t the prototypical reaction to “scroungers” simply that they are very annoying but that ultimately one prefers one’s working life to their sponging life, so one is glad one is not a benefits “scrounger” – though it would be nice if the state stopped using taxes to fund them? Why instead is the common reaction overwhelmingly characterised by intense hatred? And where does this hate come from?
Reading this article by Julian Sanchez, it occurred to me that the answer may be that popular hatred of benefit scroungers in this country is tied to a form of ressentiment. It’s important to be clear that ressentiment isn’t simple resentment, rather:
“Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, an assignation of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.”
Although Sanchez doesn’t draw the source explicitly in his piece, the most famous and influential account of ressentiment can still be found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Accordingly, it’s helpful to recap Nietzsche’s most eye-catching illustration of how he thought ressentiment could function in the formation of values, particularly those related to hate.
Imagine a group of eagles who regularly feast upon lambs. These eagles possess no ill will towards the lambs – on the contrary they like them very much, for the lambs are most tasty. The eagles (being eagles) simply eat lambs; it’s just what eagles do. On the other hand the lambs are most resentful of the eagles. But it’s not just that the eagles eat them, it’s also that the eagles exhibit strength, aggression and rapacity which the lambs utterly lack. Accordingly, the lambs form psychological coping-mechanisms to deal with the fact that they live at the permanent mercy of the eagles. They tell themselves that they, the lambs, are good and the eagles evil. In turn, they define lamb-like qualities – meekness, weakness, passivity – as being good, and oppose them to eagle-like qualities – strength, rapacity, aggression – which they correspondingly term evil.
And the lambs tell themselves another self-aggrandising story: that the eagles choose to be evil; that they could be good lambs, but instead decide to be evil eagles. Not only does this increase their perceived evilness, it also augments the lambs’ goodness. But of course this is all a self-serving deceit. The eagles eat lambs because that is just what eagles do. The lambs don’t eat lambs because that’s just not what lambs do. Yet by defining good and evil in terms that flatter the lambs’ meekness, and then blaming the eagles and praising themselves for their respective “free choices”, the lambs develop a value system that simultaneously allows them to cope with living at the mercy of the eagles, valorises their own weakness, which is the transformed into a paradoxical psychological strength, and disguises the true source of the lambs’ frustration (their weakness vis-à-vis the eagles) by laying the blame at the eagles’ door. Lying behind all this is a powerful ressentiment against the eagles by the lambs.
Nietzsche thought this essential analysis of value-formation through ressentiment lay at the heart of Judeo-Christian moralising. It formed the back-bone of one of his major critiques of Christianty: that it is a “slave morality” born in hatred, that warps the psychological well-being of its adherents. For Nietzsche, Christianity was quite obviously a metaphysical fairy tale – but that wasn’t the point. The point was that this value system rooted in ressentiment was profoundly unhealthy for its adherents. It rendered people hate-filled, stunted and warped. And it would be better if those individuals of sufficient character strength could over-come the Christian value system and create their own in its place.
Clearly there can be no simple transposition of Nietzschean ressentiment into an analysis of prevailing hatreds of contemporary benefit “scroungers”. For a start, I’m not suggesting that “scroungers” do not really “choose” to scrounge, or that their scrounging is in truth a form of strength and superiority, that non-scroungers correspondingly exhibit ressentiment towards and disguise via value revaluations. That would be over-simplistic, and wrong.
Nonetheless it seems there is an important element of ressentiment in the common hatred of “scroungers”, and I’ll now try and explain what I think it is. Although people who work instead of “scrounging” at some decisive level prefer to work than to claim benefits, the fact remains that for most people work is a drudgery, an unpleasant experience that is done out of necessity not joy. If most people could give up their day-jobs, they probably would. And who can blame them?
But most people cannot give up their day jobs. Instead, they must find ways of coping with them. One obvious source of coping is to take pride in a job well done. Often this will be a healthy and commendable psychological experience: there is great value in hard work and working hard, and correspondingly it is often good and right to take pride, and feel dignity, in being a hard worker. Furthermore, we value and prize independence, and insofar as working makes one independent it is good to take pride and dignity in that. Similar stories can be told about providing for one’s family, building a self-sufficient life, and so forth.
Yet not all pride and dignity is of this straightforward sort. There can also be pride and dignity in not being like others whom one dislikes. Often this too is perfectly healthy and normal. There’s nothing particularly wrong with taking pride in being better than Mr Jones whom one knows to be a liar and a thief (though there might be if that pride becomes over-bearing or too self-congratulatory). But sometimes it’s more complicated – and here Nietzsche is an interesting guide.
If you work a job that you don’t like and would much rather you didn’t have to, taking pride in that work will help reduce the unpleasantness of the daily grind. If you can augment that pride – by adding not just praise of yourself in isolation, but the belief that you are better than others – then in turn this will reduce the acuteness of the experienced unpleasantness you are trying to ignore. Furthermore, if those you are evaluating yourself in reference to can be deigned bad people, then you gain the augmented satisfaction of not only having pride in not being like your antagonists, but of being better than them because they are bad and you are good. Furthermore, you can more easily suppress the fact that you work because you have to work to sustain the lifestyle you lead and uphold the over values you possess (independency, pride in providing for your family etc), and supplement this with the belief that you work because you are better than the “scroungers” – the same “scroungers” who are, heavens above, not just scrounging but stealing your taxes!
This analysis will be found distasteful and uncomfortable by many. Which is all to the good. Nietzschean analyses of the hidden psychological depths of moralising aren’t doing their job if they’re not making you squirm. But to those who would charge me with positing a false analysis, I’ll end with a further postulation and question. My postulation is that if the above is correct, we’d expect to see hatred of benefit claimants fall roughly in line with the extent to which people enjoy their jobs. In advance of empirical research to verify this, I’d nonetheless bet that that’s exactly what we’d find. Secondly, if my analysis is wrong, why then is there such special ferocity reserved in this country for benefit “scroungers”, when tax avoiders and evaders – who exhibit many similarities in the sense that they are free riders, and indeed ones that by many estimates cost the taxpayer far more than “scroungers” – receive nothing like the same moral condemnation and outrage?
Mark said,
May 3, 2010 at 2:45 am
If someone taking money from you is morally equivalent to somebody not giving money to you, shouldn’t everyone be in prison?
Tim Worstall said,
May 3, 2010 at 7:00 am
There’s a simpler explanation of the “hatred” of benefits scroungers. Based on this evolution stuff, plus a bit of experimental economics.
Human society is only possible because of trust. We’re certainly the only predator that manages to live in such large groups with such a minimal amount of in group predation. The internal levels of violnce (of murder for example) within Chimpanzee bands are hugely higher than in modern human societies. But from what we understand of hunter gather bands such levels of violence were again hugely higher than in modern societies. The chance of a man dying by murder was some 14% for example (based on studies of extant such hunter gatherer bands).
Something has changed in the 10k years since we started this agriculture thing and informed ponderers hit upon trust as being the thing that has.
However, trust can be cheated, so we also seem to have developed “strong reciprocity”. If our trust is extended and returned then we carry on. But if our trust is extended and then we’re cheated then we are vehement and even violent in punishing the cheater.
That’s the evolution bit. Then there’s the experimental economics. You’ll have seen all those experiments where people have some cash and it has to be divided? One person has $100 and has to decide how much of it to give to another. The second person has to decide whether to accept the offer. If the offer is accepted then the money is divided in the manner the first thought of. If the offer is declined no one gets any money.
The inevitable outcome of these games is that the second person will reject a division they regard as “unfair”. An offer of $60/$40 will almost always be accepted but one of $90/$10 rejected. The second person will willingly lose $10 in order to punish the first for offering such an unfair division.
We could also look at the prisoners’ dilemma from game theory. When played once there’s no good solution…..however, when the game is played repeatedly then it quickly settles on the solution being reciprocity. Betray if betrayed previously , cooperate if cooperated with previously. Doesn’t take all that many iterations to get cooperation continuously.
We do cooperate more than any other animal (except perhaps the social insects but that’s entirely different, they’re closely genetically related and we’re not). And such cooperation requires a punishment mechanism for freeloaders, freeriders and cheaters.
And strong reciprocity is that punishment mechanism.
While I’ve of course no evidence at all that your theory is wrong I do think that this one is simpler. Anjd more in accordance with what we already know about us shaved apes.We resent freeloaders because we’re built, mentally, to do so. It’s the flip side of being able to trust.
Then we get to Occam’s shaving kit and have to decide whether the simpler explanation is in fact the correct one…..
Paul Sagar said,
May 3, 2010 at 8:27 am
Tim,
it’s a long way from your simple evolution story to the modern complexities of socialised moralised man. And as for what you are terming “experimental economics”, what you really mean is “the solving of co-ordination problems and the development of mechanisms to overcome short-term destructive sorites paradoxes” – which was well discussed by Hume and Smith in the 18th Century, Hobbes in the 17th and in a different though relevantly similar form Machiavelli in the 16th. Again, however, there’s a long road to travel between the observed need for institutional pay-off structures to regulate people’s behaviour and the complex psychologies now exhibited.
And it’s worth remembering that Ockham’s Razor is a piece of general advice, not a dogmatic mantra. If the simpler explanation isn’t explanation enough, then it isn’t sufficient explanation.
Of course, your story isn’t incompatible with mine. But it doesn’t supplant it simply on the basis of greater simplicity – because I’m pointing to a complex problem.
Nick said,
May 3, 2010 at 9:40 am
On the “experimental economics” point, work has been done showing that economics students are more likely than others to accept the $10 in a single-shot game (the economically rational response). I would hesitate to claim that this finding is the result of lower levels of trust/”strong reciprocity”, and appears to correlate more closely to Paul’s theory of ressentiment. If you understand the rationality behind a problem and view it as win/win, you’re less likely to morally reject it.
Both theories seek to explain the emergence of excessively strong antipathetic feelings towards others who behave in a manner that contradicts the rules by which society is structured. Again, the discrepancy between reactions to benefit-scroungers and tax-avoiders/evaders (if correct) supports Paul’s theory as the evolutionary logic would be the same to punish those who abuse trust by escaping their responsibilities at the upper end of the income scale as at the lower end. But there is not the same feeling that one could have chosen the same approach as those scroungers but didn’t, which exists in the Nietzschean account.
Paul Sagar said,
May 3, 2010 at 10:06 am
Thanks for that Nick, all good points.
Also, there’s a much better place to go looking for the account of rules designed to control self-interested behaviour that when aggregated jeopordises the pursuit of all self-interest: Hume’s Treatise, Book III.
As Hume argues, values/virtues like “justice” and “promise-keeping” cannot be “natural” in the way that (say) affection for one’s children is (i.e. spontaneous and immediate) – they are human inventions, which nonetheless we feel to be entirely natural because we grow up in societies where we are conditioned and socialised to uphold values like obeying the rules of justice and promise keeping and respecting property and so forth.
But the point is, these virtues are “aritificial” – we have invented them (which is not to say they are not “real” or “important” – they manifestly are both, but their origin is one of invention by human society, because need is the mother of all invention etc). But we can only have invented them (and here this is me, not Hume) within the last, say, 10,000 years, and probably less because the complex systems of justice and social reciprocity we now operate with probably only came into existence with the immediately pre-Helenic cultures of the middle East (though that is largely speculative).
And we know from basic evolutionary science that 10,000 years is the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. It simply is not long enough for the evolutionary mechanisms to have gotten going to the extend needed for this to all be a story about passing-on genes a-la-chimpanzees. So our attachment to “artificial” virtues like justice cannot be hard-wired into us, it must be something we are socialised into – though admittedly we possess the underlying capability to be socialised, which is certainly an evolved trait. But that underlying capability to be socialised will be latent in all human beings – so again it now becomes hard to explain on the evolutionary story why in e.g. France the benefit scrounger – whilst disliked – does not (dis)enjoy the extreme levels of public hatred and vilification that the British case demonstrates. Yet if it was “all about evolution, stupid” then we’d see a much greater uniformity across cultures. But as we’ve seen, the kinds of time-scales we’re talking about just aren’t big enough for the evolutionary story to get going, and unsurprisingly we don’t see the ressentiment uniformity we’d have to expect if evolution was the answer. And furthermore, the whole point about people resenting free-riders looks perfectly-adequately explained by the view of justice as an “artificial” virtue: if justice is going to get going in civil society, we’re going to need to develop value systems that discourage free-riding – and hey presto, that’s exactly what we’ve got. No reference to evolution necessary. Okham’s Razor cuts both ways.
Dan said,
May 3, 2010 at 12:05 pm
“And we know from basic evolutionary science that 10,000 years is the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.”
Well, this is by no means obvious. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion
As for your main point, it seems to me as though the hatred of benefit scroungers could be said to stem from the same source as, say, the Marxist hatred of the capitalist class – the perception of exploitation.
Secondly, if my analysis is wrong, why then is there such special ferocity reserved in this country for benefit “scroungers”, when tax avoiders and evaders – who exhibit many similarities in the sense that they are free riders, and indeed ones that by many estimates cost the taxpayer far more than “scroungers” – receive nothing like the same moral condemnation and outrage?
Maybe because people have some kind of residual intuition that they are entitled to the fruits of their own labour, and that there is a morally relevant difference between a) benefiting through coercive expropriation of other people’s earnings and b) retaining (even if through possibly illegal means) a higher proportion of your own earnings.
Peter said,
May 3, 2010 at 1:47 pm
In terms of why I get pissed off by benefit scroungers, I’d probably have to explain it in terms of free riding and fair play. Why should I have to work a shitty job when others who could work get money for sitting on their arses? As you say though, it seems hard to explain the vitriol if that’s all we have to work with. Maybe it’s just because lots of people just really hate working as much as they have to. Yes, most people would rather work than sit on their arses watching daytime TV, but it doesn’t follow from that that they’re happy to work a 37 hour week or whatever, especially if the work is boring.
(of course, I think the set of benefit “scroungers” is much smaller than the Mail, Sun etc make it out to be. But there are some out there, and they do piss me off! A mate of mine’s ex [not naming names] has a mild medical condition that in my non-expert-opinion would not prohibit her from working, yet sits on incapacity benefit. And it pisses me off because *I* have to work!)
As for why there’s more vitriol for scroungers than those who structure their tax affairs in morally dubious ways, I think it’s just that most people are more familiar with scroungers then they are with well-off people who can afford fancy financial planning. Like I say, I personally know people who I’d class as scroungers. I don’t personally know Lord Ashcroft types. I think the same is true for most working class people. Scrounging is much more in your face.
MJW said,
May 4, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I have a big problem with the tax avoidance part of this, it’s a blind spot that most people who make such statements have, so I’m not just picking on you. Tax evasion is illegal, end of, but tax evasion is not, it’s just a legally valid response to external influences. The people who whine about tax avoiders being free riders invariably don’t make the case for why they are free riders, what they tend to do is present subjective moral pleadings that avoiders should contribute more and that’s just not the same thing as showing someone as free riding. Instead it all hangs on the concept of “fair”, and what is “fair” is subjective. If someone pays into the system far more than they take out is that fair? What if they pay in far more than they take out but pay in less than they could if they didn’t tax avoid? That may or may not be “fair” depending on your perspective, but it’s certainly not free riding.
The free rider is letting someone else contribute for them, the tax avoider may or may not be free riding, but if they’re paying in more than they get out then complaints that they should pay more are moral arguments not free rider problems.
The scrounger who free rides expects someone else to pay their way for them, the tax avoider who pays more than they take but less than they could isn’t expecting someone else to pay their way for them. There is a separate (but often conflated) argument that the more the tax avoider pays over and above what they take out the less the others have to contribute but that’s not the same thing as them free riding.
Bad Conscience said,
May 9, 2010 at 12:25 pm
[...] that the contamination problem remains at their end, knife-wielding Tories are exhibiting classic ressentiment and blaming it all on Dave. The sheer self-deluded ingratitude of their behaviour, combined with [...]
Liberal Conspiracy » Cameron’s Tory critics are deluded beyond belief said,
May 9, 2010 at 6:06 pm
[...] that the contamination problem remains at their end, knife-wielding Tories are exhibiting classic ressentiment and blaming it all on [...]
magistra said,
May 9, 2010 at 8:26 pm
I want to introduce a family aspect to this. To what extent is it ‘scroungers’ as a whole who are resented, and to what extent is it specifically ‘scroungers’ with children, especially large families, who are really demonised? I think there’s far more hatred of the latter than of single people on benefits. That to some extent still fits with your ressentiment motif in two ways. Firstly, having children for working couples means taking a substantial cut in household income nowadays, and it’s galling to imagine there are people who don’t have to worry about the costs of having another child (even if that ignores the reality of child poverty). It’s also probably frustrating for those mothers of young children who don’t want to work to see mothers on benefits getting paid for staying at home with their children.
But there’s also another aspect. ‘Scroungers’ having children, especially more children than is typical for those in work, raises the spectre of an ever increasing number of the unemployed to support, given that unemployment is becoming increasingly persistent across the generations. There probably are tax avoiders having four children each and passing on their tax avoidance strategies to all of them (that’s what trust funds are there for, after all), but it’s much less obvious to the general public. When you add that the children of those on benefits are more likely to be disruptive at school, etc, it’s not surprising there’s worry about them, even before you throw in misogyny about the low moral standards of some working class women etc.
richard said,
August 25, 2010 at 12:57 am
Im a simple man of simple pleasures. But what pisses me off is why i should go to work in war torn Afghanistan while people on benifits sit at home doing fuck all. Theres no excuse for not working, theres job for everyone??? all i can say is FUCK YOU ALL YOU BENIFIT SCROUNGING PRICKS!!!!!! Go to college and learn to read, i have no respect for any of you. It pisses me off when ive got to risk my life to earn my wages. The eagle and lamb crap i just read was the sort of thing im used to, you toffy nosed CUNTS.. get a grip and live in the real world…. You make me sick..
Gideon Osborne and the Dodo of Keynes « Bad Conscience said,
September 10, 2010 at 7:32 am
[...] is politics. And there’s alotta newspaper inches available for bashing the scroungers. Because everybody hates those bastards. With their £65.45 a week. Living the life of riley. On £65.45 a week. The [...]
“Alarm Clock Britain” vs. The Enemy « Bad Conscience said,
January 12, 2011 at 7:34 am
[...] or imaginary). This need not be at the level of crude resource competition, but at the level of complex psychological accommodation. Accordingly, we must entertain the possibility that human society is only viable to [...]
Chris said,
February 3, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Well there’s no excuse for not working other than there being around four million people of working age more than there are jobs. No matter the level of wishful thinking involved, Santa isn’t suddenly going to magically make four million jobs turn up out of thin air, and blaming people for not having jobs that management has moved offshore appears to be apportioning blame in entirely the wrong direction.
looking at this in reverse, If an individual is single, with no dependents, would it be considered moral for that person to go for a job in competition with people who have families to support? Would it be a moral action to sacrifice ones employment opportunities so that other more needy people could survive financially?
DarkestAngel32 said,
February 8, 2012 at 12:49 am
Currently there are around 400,000 job vacancies. The official unemployment figure is 2.6 million. Plenty of jobs? I hardly think so, and for the record, being on benefits is not fun. Personally, I dont live in luxury (and I can read thankyou) and neither do my children, whom I had while I was working/being supported by a working partner. The problem of individuals who have never worked is minimal. The problem of those who have been out of work for a number of years is minimal. More people in work claim housing benefit and tax credits (which are benefits) as a result of low wages and high cost of living. Therefore when benefit claimants are demonised in sweeping generalisations, it is insulting to those who claim and work, and those who want to work but are unable to find employment. It also insults those who would do anything to be able to work but can’t through disability or caring responsibilities. Benefit rates in this country are extremely low compared to other european countries. I wonder, is there the same hatred of us in other countries?
Chris said,
February 8, 2012 at 12:57 am
and of those 400,000 vacancies, roughly 1/4 are transient vacancies, that will be taken by people who are already in work, more a shuffling of the pack of the employed rather than vacancies for the unemployed