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

Thu Jul 30 14:21:51 CEST 2009

Dear paul,

the notion that welfare solidarity may be a holdover from feudalism is an
interesting hypothesis, but I don't really know ... it could ...

but one has to remember that europe was highly unstable before WWII with a
strong labour and socialist movement, the Soviet boogeyman, and that the
workers all came back in arms at the end of the war, with most of the
prestige going to the left-sided partisans ...

I think there was a notion of survival of the system, making big social
reforms more palatable, and of course partially financed by the U.S.
marshall plan at the beginning ...

Also important is the original of the welfare state in the worker's own
mutualist traditions, very strong from the latter half of the 19th century
onwards, which the state merely formalized ...

Michel

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> 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/
>
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