‘WE can clamp down on anti-social children before birth’, said Prime Minister Blair on Thursday.
That anti-social behaviour is in the genes, is the only conclusion that can be drawn from Prime Minister Blair’s latest reactionary remarks concerning ‘trouble makers,’ whom he says can be identified while they are still in the womb.
This is with the qualification that the problem genes belong to the working classes, especially those sections of the working class that live on the country’s council estates.
Blair is not talking about the offspring of ruling class bankers and businessmen who have done an ‘Enron,’ or the offspring of families of ruling class cocaine sniffers and alcoholics.
He is not talking about ringing the alarm bells as soon as a female in one of these problem families becomes pregnant, putting society in danger of being overwhelmed by thieves and drug takers.
He is talking about the unborn sons and daughters of working class families from the council estates, who produce the wealth that the ruling class enjoys but have very little to show for it, except a host of intractable problems.
Blair’s world is made up of a good society whose tranquility is endangered by bad individuals from bad working class families who resist and refuse to accept the moral values of this decent society.
This is absolute reactionary nonsense which, for example, damns the vast majority of Australians as criminals, since they are the descendants of convicted criminals and criminal families.
As far as Britain is concerned, from the many thousands of children who have already been given ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders) Blair deduces that every family on every council estate is suspect as a potential breeder of ‘tomorrow’s troublemakers’. How to stop this breeding of tomorrow’s troublemakers is his issue.
Blair intends to set up a new branch of the state apparatus to spot the families whose children will grow up to be a ‘menace to society’.
Among the targets for such measures are teenage mothers, mentally ill people on benefit and families with drugs and drink problems.
They will be made an offer that they cannot refuse. Accept ‘help’ or face reprisals or sanctions.
What will happen when the problems of problem families persist, or even worsen, as the crisis of capitalism becomes more excruciating.
In fact, Blair’s proposals and reactionary outlook prepares the way for ‘final solutions’ to these ‘problems’.
There will be those who, inspired by Blair, propose that measures to ensure that the breeders of these problems, from teenage mums to problem parents to the mentally ill, are neutered to prevent them from producing more ‘menaces to society’.
Of course, these are not new ideas. They emerged under, and were tried out extensively by, the Nazis, who took power during the massive crisis of German capitalism in the 1930s. They murdered these ‘problem people’.
In fact, the only solution to the problems being created by the death agony of capitalist society is a revolutionary one.
Capitalism is by its very nature anti-social. It treats people as sources for making profits and super exploits them, ruthlessly dispensing with them when they are no longer profit producers.
It sacks them, cuts their pensions, slashes their benefits, makes their lives hell and robs their children of their future – as the present government is doing.
It is the law of the jungle. Its dehumanisation, corruption and destruction of people is routine.
Children are subjected to its pornographic methods of production and sale as soon as they are barely out of their cradles.
It is this crisis-ridden mode of production, thrashing around in its last days, that needs special measures and special treatment, along with its ruling class and their political servants.
The special measure that crisis-ridden capitalism requires to resolve its problems is burial by a socialist revolution of the working class – and the sooner the better.
