(c) Hulton-Getty collection.
Edmund Burke wrote that "government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants".(1) Governments have a wide range of possible actions.
Governments produce. Like independent organisations, governments may offer services to customers - e.g. insurance, banking or commercial production. There is no rule which says that government activity has to be tax-based or financed.
Political views on welfare are often divided into 'left' and 'right' wing views.
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The left wing is: |
for welfare |
for public provision |
collectivist |
for institutional welfare |
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The right wing is: |
against welfare |
against public provision |
individualist |
for residual welfare |
The positions people hold are not, however, straightforward. There is an individualistic left wing, and a collectivist right wing. Left-wingers favour social security (which enable people to buy food in the private market) rather than soup kitchens (which can be publicly provided). Many right-wingers accept the principle of institutional welfare, and many left wingers are uncomfortable about institutional measures, like earnings-related pensions or student grants, which favour richer people over poorer ones.
From the perspective of welfare, the main political positions are:
Marxists see society in terms of a conflict between economic classes. A dominant class (the bourgeoisie or 'capitalist' class) owns and controls the means of production; an industrial working class, the 'proletariat', is exploited by them. The marxist analysis of welfare concentrates principally on its relationship to the exercise of power. The state can be seen either as an instrument of the ruling capitalist class, or as a complex set of systems which reflects the contradictions of the society it is part of. It is often argued that welfare has been developed through the strength of working-class resistance to exploitation.
Marxism is not a single doctrine; it has come to stand for a wide range of opinions within an analytical framework that is critical of 'capitalist' society. Neo-marxists argue that the state has two main functions. The first is to improve the conditions for the accumulation of capital - that is, the chance for industries to make profits. The second is to legitimate the capitalist system, by introducing measures (like welfare policies, pensions and health services) which lead people to accept the system as it stands. The requirements of accumulation and legitimation may be contradictory, and the costs of legitimation have led to a 'legitimation crisis'.
The basic objections to marxist analyses are that the description of 'capitalism' is false; that power in society is divided, and not based in ownership; and that states which promote the welfare of their citizens are not pretending to be more legitimate - they are more legitimate.
There are many forms of socialism. The main models, which can be found in various permutations, include representations of socialism as
Socialism is confused with Marxism or communism in many popular texts (and on Wikipedia). Marxism was a prominent form of socialism in the early 20th century, but there were socialists before Marx, and Marxism is irrelevant to much of the mainstream. Socialism in Europe grew from a range of religious, occupational and communal groups. Historically, socialism is strongly associated with working-class movements, and in much of Europe 'socialist' issues are closely linked with labour relations. The socialist group in the European Union identifies its role in terms of socialist values and principles rather than an ideal model of society.
The key socialist values are 'liberty, equality, and fraternity'. Some socialists would add to that issues of rights and democracy.
Socialism is egalitarian, in the sense that socialists are committed to the reduction or removal of disadvantages which arise in society. The 'Fabian' tradition, a reformist movement, attempted to achieve greater equality through spending on social services.
Social democracy depends, like socialism, on the values of liberty, equality and fraternity (or solidarity). This is fused with a model of liberal democracy, based on rights.
The differences between social democrats and socialists are hazy, because their ideals may coincide in some aspects and not in others, but two are particularly important. First, many social democrats are individualists rather than collectivists; even if they accept arguments for mutual aid or the reduction of disadvantage, they think it important to stress the liberty of the individual, to develop individual rights (as liberals do), and often to restrict the role of the state. Second, some social democrats are not concerned to remove inequality, but only to mitigate its effects through social arrangements which protect people from the worst consequences of a market society. Others favour equality of opportunity, which implies the opportunity to be unequal.
External link: Swedish Social Democrats: "Our principles and values" (PDF)
Conservatives believe in the importance of social order. This is reflected in a respect for tradition, an emphasis on the importance of religion, and a stress on the importance of inequality - such as inequalities of class or caste - as the basis for structured social relationships. Welfare is a secondary issue, but the kinds of concerns which conservatives have are likely to impose restraints on welfare, with a particular emphasis on traditional values in work, the family, and nationhood. Welfare does raise concern where it is seen to have implications for public order - one British conservative commented, in commending the Beveridge report, that "if you do not give the people social reform they are going to give you revolution."
Christian democratic thought is closely related to conservatism, but it also has important distinguishing features. Like conservatives, Christian Democrats place a strong emphasis on order; but order is to be achieved, not primarily through state action, but by moral restraints. These moral restraints have principally in Europe reflected the influence of the Catholic religion. Catholic social teaching has emphasised both the limits of the state and the responsibility of people in families and communities for each other; christian democrats tend, then, to favour limitations in the role of the state while at the same time accepting moral responsibility for social welfare.
Liberalism begins from the premise that everyone is an individual, and that individuals have rights. As a political position, liberalism has been important as a means of defending people from abuse by authority. Although liberalism was initially a radical doctrine, it has also been used since the 19th century to stand for a defence of propertied interests.
The central value of liberalism is freedom. All freedoms are not equally important; the main liberal values are concerned with certain particularly important freedoms, such as freedom of assembly, of speech, and of worship.
Liberals mistrust the state and argue that society is likely to regulate itself if state interference is removed. Hayek argues that all state activity, whatever its intentions, is liable to undermine the freedom of the individual; that society is too complex to be tampered with; and that the activities of the free market, which is nothing more than the sum total of activities of many individuals, constitute the best protection of the rights of each individual.
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| A rally of British fascists in 1939. (c) Hulton-Getty collection. |
Fascism is often represented in the academic literature as a pseudo-ideology, lacking any coherence or system of thought. This was a political position taken post-war in an attempt to deny the romantic and emotional appeal of fascist thought. Fascist ideology is based in an authoritarian collectivism. The individual is meaningless; the collectivity (the state, the nation or the race) is paramount. Fascism has been characterised by a strong social agenda; in Nazi Germany, the desire to foster racial supremacy included extensive state intervention in society and the economy, with a stress on socialisation (both through schooling and youth movements) and eugenic policies.
Eugenic ideologies existed before fascism, and although they were discredited by their association with medical murder and the holocaust they have resurfaced in recent years. They are characterised by the nineteenth-century belief that socially constructed characteristics, like poverty, crime or sexuality are inborn, and that they will inevitably find a way to emerge unless breeding is regulated. Repeated attempts in social science have found no empirical support for the belief that such characteristics are replicated between generations.
Currently the extreme right in Europe is racialist and nationalist rather than collectivist. The Front National in France has argued for a 'national preference''. The FN mayor at Vitrolles, for example, offered a bounty for children born , for "French families" only.
Social policy is to a large extent dominated by economic policy, because economic policy determines the amount that government is prepared to spend. There are two main views of public spending: monetarist and Keynesian.
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Keynes: "the man who saved capitalism". |
In recent years both views have been supplanted by a new financial orthodoxy, which combines government regulation with market-based provision, "targeted" expenditure and balanced budgets.
Internal link: British economic policy
Taxation is supposed to do many things at once: the aims include
The finance of public activity, meanwhile, depends not just on taxation, but on
It follows that while welfare services can be paid for by taxation, the terms are not simply equivalent.
There
are competing views of the impact of social welfare on the economy. One view,
the 'handmaiden' model, sees welfare as
an essential complement to industrial development: social policy helps the economy
to grow by serving the workforce, providing services to industry and offering
a secure basis for development. This has been the dominant model in Germany
. Keynesian economics sees spending on welfare as a useful
economic regulator, helping to balance the economy in periods of recession.
On the other hand, both neo-liberals and marxists
have represented the welfare state as a major burden on economic performance.
Public expenditure is seen as a fetter on economic growth .
There is no consistent evidence to support either view. The relationship of the economy and public spending is complex. Atkinson has brought together evidence from a wide range of opposing studies. Although developed countries generally spend more on welfare than less developed countries, developed countries with higher welfare spending do not generally do better or worse than developed countries which have less. (2)
The graph showing the relationship between welfare spendng and national income (GDP) is drawn from OECD data. It is possible to give the impression to give the impression that the relationship is negative or positive, by selectively excluding some results, but the truth is that shows no clear pattern. Beyond the OECD, the general trend is that richer countries tend to spend higher proportions of their GDP on social protection.
The term "crisis" is used fairly indiscriminately by critics of the right and left. From the perspective of the right, welfare is undesirable and economically damaging. To Marxists, welfare is often represented as unsustainable. Neither position is supported consistently by the evidence, but as both positions are held on faith they have been impossible to dislodge.
Pierson points to three main uses of the idea of a "crisis". They are:
If we take "crisis" in its normal, everyday sense, as a sudden, serious problem, there is no current crisis of welfare.
Further reading
M Mullard, P Spicker, Social policy in a changing society, Routledge 1998
V George, P Wilding , Welfare and ideology, Harvester Wheatsheaf 1994
T Fitzpatrick, Welfare theory, Palgrave Macmillan 2011
