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Class4: The Welfare State: Decline &Transfiguration. The totality of all social welfare programs in any given national setting. Varies greatly in size, type, and importance depending on the country.
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Class4: The Welfare State: Decline &Transfiguration • The totality of all social welfare programs in any given national setting. • Varies greatly in size, type, and importance depending on the country. • Most elaborate in the most advanced (that is, richest) countries---W. Europe, North America, and a few other places (e.g., Australia/New Zealand). • European welfare states tend to be of the “mature” or “cradle to grave” type. The US welfare state in contrast usually classified as “immature.” (See session#1 for details) • Level of ws development depends on the “balance of contending groups:” that is, which groups have the political initiative.
THE WELFARE STATE: ADVANCE (1) • The welfare state is the product of many generations of relentless popular struggle against injustice and oppression. • It’s “golden age” (1945-70) was thought by many to mark a fundamental turning point in human history: henceforth the benefits of industrial civilization would be distributed more equitably thanks to increased productivity, popular political pressure, and the need to maintain a high standard of consumption if capitalism itself were going to survive. • No one wanted to go back to the “bad old days,” when poverty was common and material insecurity the general lot of many if not most people. • In short, optimism about the future, and specifically the future of the welfare state, was widespread.
WELFARE STATE: ADVANCE (2) • The optimism of this period was exemplified by the so-called Marshallian theory of the welfare state that posited the following 3 stage historical evolutionary process: Social Rights (economic security) • Political Rights (franchise) • Legal Rights (due process)
Welfare State: Decline (1)ORThe Professors Confounded • Political support and state funding have everywhere been declining around 1970. • Some now retrospectively claim that the welfare state was simply an industrial age phenomenon anachronistic in the post-industrial era of specialist labor and individual initiative • Globalization is, however, the most immediate causal factor in welfare state decline
Welfare State Decline (2): Globalization as the Master Theme of our era • Has promoted the • powershift from labor to capital; from social welfare programs to corporate profit priorities. • downsizing of the welfare state and the non-profit sector • privatization and increased political and economic inequality IT’S ALL MINE! Please let go of me!
Welfare State Decline (3): Causes, Evidence And Consequences • Disappearance (?) in popular expectation that activist government could solve our national problems. (Social transformation/demographic fading of the Depression/WWII generation.) • Few new social welfare programs; reduction or elimination of established ones • Privatization of former state services: e.g., prisons, welfare, and maintenance. • Growing economic inequality, racial tension, and political alienation.
HOMOGENIZATION Continuation of current trends resulting in creation of a globally integrated “consumer culture,” which replaces virtually all local cultures . Formal retention of state sovereignty and political democracy as a façade for collective corporate power. RESISTANCE Growing resistance to current trends based on the following possible factors: religious belief collapse of the world economy increased worker immiseration environmental collapse ALTERNATIVE GLOBAL FUTURES
