The system that sucks life out of the old

We should be able to enjoy old age (Pic: Wikimedia commons)

Too many older ­people in Britain face ­isolation, ­dependency and poverty. In many pre‑capitalist ­societies, older people were respected for their ­memories and experiences.

Now they are dismissed as ­unproductive and a burden. Old age has become viewed as a weakness. 

In 2024, 11 million people in Britain were over 65 years of age. By 2035 this figure will rise to 16 million. 

Life expectancy isn’t going up for everyone. Men in the poorest areas live an average of ten years less than those from wealthy areas. This inequality is even greater when it comes to living a healthy life into old age. 

Life expectancy among the ­poorest communities is actually falling. 

In places where people are living longer, this should be cause for celebration. But in a ­capitalist system, older and sicker people mean more costs. 

Caring for the elderly and the long-term sick too often falls on the family. But women work longer hours and have less time to ­provide care for their relatives. Many retired women provide essential ­support with childcare—and care for parents. 

Desperate relatives seeking support for their loved ones have to navigate a bewildering system of care. 

Care is big business—it was worth £17 billion in 2023 in Britain. Some 95 percent of the 245,000 care home beds are provided by the private sector. 

The British Medical Journal reported in 2023 that healthcare services taken over by private equity companies provide worse care at higher costs. 

These are management ­partnerships that take over ­companies, axe jobs, saddle the company with debts, grab super profits and run.

These companies grabbed millions from the older people they were supposed to care for—and stuck it in the overseas bank accounts of their super-rich investors. 

Care homes rely on low-paid migrant women who have to leave their own families to work. But immigration restrictions mean a shortage of care workers. In 2023, there were 165,000 vacancies in the elderly care sector. 

Care for the elderly provides nothing the system really values—unless it is performed for profit.

Christine

Christine cares for her 97 year old mother, and looks after a grandchild for one day a week. 

“I have never been so busy”, Christine told Socialist Worker.

“My mum is as sharp as a tack but she is physically very frail. It was a nightmare getting any help for her. 

“A few years ago, she had peritonitis and we were told she would die—but she survived. She was discharged and got a month of visits—and that was that.

“They said to me, ‘We understand your mother has daughters’—I said ‘Yes, and they live 75 miles away.’ I was astounded.

“During Covid, my mum was given a Do Not Resuscitate notice. Who would do this? Who would decide my mum’s live was not worth saving?

“The whole system of social care should be nationalised. These private companies are like vampires sucking blood out of a system that should be about caring and compassion. Pensioners, families, councils—they are all being ripped off by hedge funds.” 

Helen

Helen Davies is a hospital social worker in north London. She told Socialist Worker, “Some families and people who need care have positive experiences, but the whole thing is really falling apart.

“Older people with assets over £23,000 are self-funders. Lots of people fall into that bracket because their homes are worth something. 

“Social services and social care are stretched to the max. Local councils are constantly reviewing who provides the services, looking for the cheapest, which is unlikely to provide the best quality.

“And there is a scandal around the people who are brought to work in care homes, whose work visas are tied to their employer.

“There have been cases where workers come here having been told they will get board and lodging. They find that they are living in the care home itself and are used to provide overnight care. They never get a break. If they report any poor practice, they could lose their visas.

“It is slavery by another name.

“Older people admitted to hospital are given no time to recover. As soon as they are ‘medically stable’ they are discharged. They want to get rid of ‘bed blockers’, but people who don’t get the care they need just end up coming back into hospital a few weeks later.

“They are locked into a cycle of repeat admission, of trauma.”

Dennis

Dennis White told Socialist Worker about trying to care for his dad.

“My dad was really fit until he was 91. He had a fall and was on the floor for a long time. He went into hospital and was never the same again. 

“He managed at home with visits from carers for a few months, then he decided he wanted to go into a home.

“The home costs £1,500 a week. The council has lent dad the money on the basis that he pays them back when his house is sold in the future. But the council charges interest on the loan. 

“It is scandalous. Care workers do a difficult job, and they are not paid well, so where is all the money going?”

How we won right to retirement

In the past, pensions were paid by the crown to those who had managed to please them in some way or other or to attract mercenaries. 

The poor were expected to work until they dropped. But they were often cared for in extended families and local communities. 

It took the Kett’s Rebellion of 1549 and other uprisings to force through the creation of the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601. This was a national system of protection for the destitute and those unable to work, paid for by the poor rates, a kind of land tax.

During the 18th century radical ideas began to circulate. The landed gentry handed out pensions as charity to legitimise their own status and reward subservience. 

The revolutionary idea of universal provision for older people was born out of the French Revolution that began in 1789. 

Thomas Paine outlined detailed plans in his famous Rights of Man in 1791—funding pensions for everyone paid for by the taxation of wealthy estates. Such ideas encouraged the French revolutionaries to consider support for older people as a matter of right.  

Their National Convention organised a “Fête de la Vieillesse” (festival of the old people) and legislated for old people’s homes to be established across France. 

The idea of spending more money on the poor prompted a huge backlash. Reverend Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. He denounced all proposals for social insurance. Such measures removed the “goad of necessity” and led to overpopulation. 

Malthus’s ideas infected public debate and were enshrined in government legislation.

The New Poor Law of 1834 aimed to clamp down on relief provided by the 1601 Poor Law. 

The New Poor Law forced anyone claiming relief to enter the workhouse, where families were separated and inmates forced to work on starvation diets. This criminalisation of poverty provoked a mass campaign of popular agitation across the manufacturing districts of northern England.

Workhouses, known as Bastilles, were attacked and their inmates liberated. By 1837 parliament had received petitions signed by over 200,000 people demanding the repeal of the Poor Law. 

Demands for social care continued as urbanisation broke up community ties and left older people with only their families to fall back on. A Liberal government passed the first Old Age Pensions Act of 1908. Recipients had to be over 70 and of “good character”.

The 1945 Labour government created a universal system of pensions. These were tied to years of waged employment and so excluded women who had not worked outside the home. Miserly state pensions were combined with new workplace pensions that entrenched the inequalities of the labour market into old age.

The era of neoliberalism meant the dismantling of the welfare state. In the 1990s, the World Bank reported that the only way to avert an “old age crisis” was to make people fund their own retirement.

Security in old age was turned into a commodity, a product to be bought and sold for profit. 

Financing retirement income is now central to the global economy. Pension funds generated £71 billion in the British economy between 2021 and 2024. 

Pension funds own 30 percent of the British stock market. They fund fossil fuel extraction, weapons manufacturing and the tobacco industry.

Private pension schemes rely on fragile and unpredictable world markets, which feeds instability.  

The management of pension funds is highly concentrated in the hands of a few conglomerates. They charge huge fees which are paid from the pension pot. 

Karl Marx explained alienation as a process in which workers found that the fruits of their own labour became a force turned against them. Now there is a new layer of alienation. Workers find that their own savings are being used in financial speculation hostile to the wellbeing and survival of their own communities. 

Defending the right to dignity in old age can still mobilise mass resistance.

In March 2023, French president Emmanuel Macron tried to raise the pension age to 64. He was met with a wave of resistance that saw up to 700,000 marching through Paris and wildcat strikes breaking out.

Such mass action demonstrates the potential to fight for collective provision for old age—and the possibility of wider social change.

Such a change would involve diverting resources to give older people choice, dignity and agency. It would enable both families and paid carers to have the time and energy to provide the care and love older people deserve.