Class4: The Welfare State: Decline &Transfiguration 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 “maturemature” or “cradle to grave” type. The US welfare state in contrast usually classified as “immature.immature.” (See session#1 for details)

• Level of ws development depends on the “balance of contending balance of contending groups:groups:” that is, which groups have the political initiative.

THE WELFARE STATE: ADVANCE (1)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)WELFARE STATE: ADVANCE (2)

• The optimism of this period was exemplified by the so-called Marshallian Marshallian theory of the welfare state that posited the following 3 stage historical evolutionary process: Social Rights (economic security)Social Rights (economic security)

• Political Rights (franchise)Political Rights (franchise)

• Legal Rights (due process)Legal Rights (due process)

Welfare State: Decline (1)Welfare State: Decline (1)OROR

The Professors ConfoundedThe 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

• GlobalizationGlobalization is, however, the most immediate causal factor in welfare state decline

Welfare State Decline (2): Welfare State Decline (2): Globalization as the Master Theme of our eraGlobalization as the Master Theme of our era

Has promoted the• powerpower shift shift from labor to

capital; from social welfare programs to corporate profit priorities.

• downsizingdownsizing of the welfare state and the non-profit sector

• privatizationprivatization and increased political and economic inequalityinequality

IT’S ALLMINE!

Please letgo of me!

Welfare State Decline (3):Welfare State Decline (3): Causes, Evidence And Consequences 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.

ALTERNATIVE GLOBAL FUTURESALTERNATIVE GLOBAL FUTURES

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