Amid the Philpott opportunism, the ardently Anglophile Matthew Franklin Cooper has seen the future, perhaps even the present, that George Osborne has in mind for Britain:
Read here, or here if you hit the paywall.
One hundred ninety-six million sterilisations, and three hundred thirty-six million terminated pregnancies, a significant proportion of which we can be sure were forced on the women carrying them. And that is just what has been documented officially by the state which carried them out.
For scale, the latter figure is over seven times the highest estimates, by which I mean the hyperventilations of the likes of Frank Dikötter, of the total excess deaths (a figure which includes both born and unborn, by the way) attributed to the Great Leap Forward famine. This is utterly unconscionable.
Let us be clear. The one-child policy implemented by Deng Xiaoping, which is responsible for most of these abortions and sterilisations, is linked intrinsically to the other neoliberal ‘reforms’ he ushered in. These reforms were liable not to be popular in the long run with the working classes; what better way to control the disgruntled at cost, therefore, than by crushing them demographically over the course of a generation?
Naturally, the people who benefitted most from reform-and-opening can merely pay off the requisite agencies for permission to have more than one child - this sort of population control is always aimed first, if not solely, at the people on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
The big question which bears asking, then, is: are Deng Xiaoping and his cronies behind the One Child Policy likely to be held historically accountable for this mass slaughter of the unborn and mutilation of women the way Mao Zedong is being for the GLF?
No wonder that Owen Jones was so anti-Malthusian on The Big Questions.
Read here, or here if you hit the paywall.
One hundred ninety-six million sterilisations, and three hundred thirty-six million terminated pregnancies, a significant proportion of which we can be sure were forced on the women carrying them. And that is just what has been documented officially by the state which carried them out.
For scale, the latter figure is over seven times the highest estimates, by which I mean the hyperventilations of the likes of Frank Dikötter, of the total excess deaths (a figure which includes both born and unborn, by the way) attributed to the Great Leap Forward famine. This is utterly unconscionable.
Let us be clear. The one-child policy implemented by Deng Xiaoping, which is responsible for most of these abortions and sterilisations, is linked intrinsically to the other neoliberal ‘reforms’ he ushered in. These reforms were liable not to be popular in the long run with the working classes; what better way to control the disgruntled at cost, therefore, than by crushing them demographically over the course of a generation?
Naturally, the people who benefitted most from reform-and-opening can merely pay off the requisite agencies for permission to have more than one child - this sort of population control is always aimed first, if not solely, at the people on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
The big question which bears asking, then, is: are Deng Xiaoping and his cronies behind the One Child Policy likely to be held historically accountable for this mass slaughter of the unborn and mutilation of women the way Mao Zedong is being for the GLF?
No wonder that Owen Jones was so anti-Malthusian on The Big Questions.
Once again, as you ought to be aware, the issue is not the poor having too many children on welfare. It is the welfare state being used to replace the father and support unmarried households-something you ought to oppose.
ReplyDeleteIf you pay women to have children outside of marriage, then a generation of Karen Matthews is what you will get.
You get what you pay for, so to speak.
This was not an unmarried household. Or a jobless one. I am about to do a whole post on this.
ReplyDeleteThis case, as we all ought to agree, is unrepresentative of anything.
ReplyDeleteBut the wider issue that Owen Jones and his liberal Left cohorts will not address is the welfare state undermining marriage among the poor.
See libertad Gonzalez excellent research which found the most generous European welfare states (such as Britain) were the countries with the highest rates of illegitimacy and teen pregnancy.
The countries with the most harsh benefits systems were the ones with the lowest rates (that, and not "sex education" is the real reason for Holland's low rate of teen pregnancy for example).
In other words, you have to change the subject completely.
ReplyDeleteThis was anything but a fatherless home, and it had two full-time wages, fully taxed and all the rest of it, coming in. Even when Philpott's mistress took her wage away with her person and her children, his wife was still bringing in hers.
Say it again: his wife. His lawful wedded wife, whom he married in church, and to whom he will doubtless remain married until one of them dies.
Of the six children who died, five were his, and all five of those were the products of that fully legal, church-blessed marriage.
If only "fully-legal, Church-blessed weddings" were the norm among child benefit claimants.
ReplyDeleteIf right-wing conservatives are so worried about welfare dependency, then why do they oppose full employment policies? Could it be that they are more worried about labor’s hand becoming too strong, with the resulting demands for higher wages and better working conditions? Does the Right see mass welfare dependency as preferable to a strong labor movement?
ReplyDeleteI would say so. I believe welfare dependency increased in Great Britain under Thatcher in the ‘80s after she gutted British industry. The same is true for the U.S., where deindustrialization devastated the inner cities and increased welfare dependency as the traditional sources of male employment dried up.
If you want to end welfare dependency and revive the traditional father-led household, we must return to policies favoring full employment, strong labor unions and an emphasis on dignified and well-paid male employment.
Hmm...Dikotter's convincing, I'm reading him at the moment. And he's no apologist for Deng.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, it is. You do realise, don't you, that it was until very recently a universal benefit, and has only just been withdrawn from the upper middle classes only, who will have their revenge at the forthcoming county elections? Evidently not.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we had the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Western Europe throughout the New Labour years was a sign of rising numbers of "church-blessed weddings" among British teens, was it?
ReplyDeleteOr was it a sign of a child benefit system encouraging irresponsibility and faithlessness?
Neither.
ReplyDeleteAnd the withdrawal of Child Benefit from top rate taxpayers alone is about to cost the Conservative Party a thousand councils seats and control of five counties in one night. Juts try and withdraw it from any more people than that.