[p2p-research] Origins of welfare states (was Re: US/European post-WWII experiences)

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> Regarding unions and such, they were much stronger in Europe, before and
> after the war, and the welfare state was a recognition of that strength ...

Just to clarify something, are you saying the main reason Europe has a 
strong social safety net and more public works than the USA is mostly 
stronger unions? Where unions are, essentially, assemblages of peers working 
towards a common goal of social equity, including directing tax funds 
towards public ends?

There is no mention as to origins of the European Welfare states here:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_welfare_state

Are there any other factors anyone would suggest that made a big difference 
(in the 1945-1955 period)? Or would one argue a social safety net is more an 
ideological carryover of the better parts of European feudalism with roots 
going back hundreds of years, in a way that the USA did not have (given the 
socialistic natives is the USA were mostly wiped out by plagues and war)?

This suggests roots that were in the 1800s and then the Great Depression:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Early_welfare_states

Which might suggest if the current economic downturn continues, that there 
might be change in that direction. It's ironic that welfare states are being 
dissolved now (due to globalization etc. putting pressure on incomes), just 
as automation and better design is exponentially reducing the need for human 
labor, and in that sense the need for welfare states with a basic income is 
increasing (or some other alternative, a gift economy, local household 
production, increasing schooling, war, etc. or a mixture, where obviously 
I'm not advocating the increased schooling or war options).

From:
   "The Attack on the Welfare State"
http://newsportal.european-left.org/english/opinions/economics_political_economy/detail/artikel/the-attack-on-the-welfare-state/
"""
   Discussion  of the welfare state and the European social model has 
intensified in the last years. This is of vital importance, not only for 
European workers and citizens, but also in terms of the role Europe is to 
play in the world. After World War II, a social contract was established in 
Europe, founded on four basic values:
   • the right to work in life-long jobs based on full employment,
   • the eradication of poverty by granting a minimum income and public 
assistance to prevent social exclusion;
   • protection against social risks;
   • promotion of equality of opportunity supported by public investments in 
health care, education, transportation, culture, leisure, etc.
   The destruction of this heritage presents new difficulties for all who 
fight for effective improvements in civil rights or social conditions.
Any struggle to defend and to improve the social security systems in Europe 
is therefore a real contribution to building a new world social and economic 
order, with more dignity, justice and humanity.
   The public welfare system, universal and solidary, is under strong attack 
due to intense capitalist globalisation, transformations in labour 
conditions and in the international division of labour, global competition 
and the general social and labour deregulation. The pressure for the 
“Minimum State” and “Minimum Rights” is defining the future of the welfare 
model. ...
"""

Note that, at least in the USA, there has been a very direct tension between 
unions and increasing productivity through automation or better design (the 
now bankrupt GM is a typical example).

In any case, full employment and life-long jobs is totally counter to a 
post-scarcity world view of a world moving beyond jobs and "work" as it is 
usually defined. Example:
   http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves 
useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To 
abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and 
qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down 
massively on the amount of work being done. At present most work is useless 
or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I 
think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure -- 
we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing 
variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other 
pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. 
Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial 
barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become 
recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other. ..."

But, at the core of the welfare state seems to be a focus on jobs, like from 
the Wikipedia article above: "Beveridge recommended to the [UK] government 
that they should find ways of tackling the five giants, being Want, Disease, 
Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. He argued to cure these problems, the 
government should provide adequate income to people, adequate health care, 
adequate education, adequate housing and adequate employment."

This is also of interest in seeing how a peer economy of any sort fits in to 
a welfare state:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Two_forms_of_the_welfare_state
"""
   There are two ways of organizing a welfare state:
   According to the first model the state is primarily concerned with 
directing the resources to “the people most in need”. This requires a tight 
bureaucratic control over the people concerned, with a maximum of 
interference in their lives to establish who are "in need" and minimize 
cheating. The unintended result is that there is a sharp divide between the 
receivers and the producers of social welfare, between "us" and "them", the 
producers tending to dismiss the whole idea of social welfare because they 
will not receive anything of it. This model is dominant in the US.
   According to the second model the state distributes welfare with as 
little bureaucratic interference as possible, to all people who fulfill 
easily established criteria (e.g. having children, receiving medical 
treatment, etc). This requires high taxing, of which almost everything is 
channeled back to the taxpayers with minimum expenses for bureaucratic 
personnel. The intended – and also largely achieved – result is that there 
will be a broad support for the system since most people will receive at 
least something. This model was constructed by the Scandinavian ministers 
Karl Kristian Steincke and Gustav Möller in the 30s and is dominant in 
Scandinavia."""
"""
(Although others suggest more distinctions of types of states.)

So, that difference may be better in explaining why there is not much 
support for a welfare state in the USA but much more support in Europe?

Of course, then there is the question of why there is that difference?

Anyway, I should say one reason I'm interested in this is that, beyond the 
basic income aspects for survival in a world with less jobs but still 
dominated by a market economy, it would seem that as state with better 
welfare benefits would indirectly make possible more alternative peer 
production as gifts to a commons (Linux came from the Finnish welfare state, 
for example -- where in the USA, Linus would have been working two jobs to 
pay for college). In the USA, without universal health coverage, not 
participating in the mainstream labor market (with a job at a solid company 
with good health benefits) also makes participating in peer alternatives 
much physically riskier. This book on "How to survive without a salary" was 
written by a Canadian, not a US American:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Survive-Without-Salary-Conserver/dp/1895629683

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/