Welfare State

History

By Steve Millet, (anarchist) author of the book, An Anarchist Perspective on Social Welfare‎ :

Origins and history

The foundations of the Welfare State

The foundations for today’s Welfare State were laid over three hundred years ago when the establishment and consolidation of the nation-state in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought about increasing legislation aimed at social control. The breakdown of the mutual aid communities of the Middle Ages [3] and rapid population growth threw up new and more worrying problems for the fledgling governments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; as the number of beggars and vagrants rose, concerns about social unrest merged with a moral imperative to stamp out idleness. At first it may seem unreasonable to go back three hundred or so years to begin an investigation of the Welfare State, which is usually assumed to have emerged from the collective experience of the Second World War. In fact, there is a long history of State intervention in welfare provision in Britain, beginning with the first coherent English Poor Law of 1572. The evolution of State welfare policy in Britain from the Tudor period has led one writer to conclude that ‘it is not a total anachronism to call (the welfare apparatus), as it had developed by 1700, a welfare state’.[4]

The early Poor Law legislation authorized local parishes to raise revenue for the relief of the poor, while banning most forms of begging and codifying punishments, usually whipping, for vagrancy. In addition, workhouses began to be erected, in greater number after 1610 when their building was made compulsory in every county for ‘one keeping, correcting and setting to work ... of rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and other idle ad disorderly persons’. [5] That the legislators’ concern was with issues of morality and public order is clear, while in the late sixteenth century, Parliament began to take an increasingly lenient view of the actions of the élite, legalizing usury for example, it passed an increasing number of Acts aimed at controlling the manners and social behavior of the ‘lower orders’. ‘All this suggests that the machinery of the poor law was not designed as an economic regulator, but as a moral, social and political one’.[6]

It was at this time that the differentiation between the respectable or labouring poor, those unable to find work through no fault of their own, and the idle or dangerous poor developed. The preoccupation with this latter group often led to a degree of paranoia about the threat to stability and order by vagrants, a fear that resulted more from social stigma and the involvement of vagrants in petty crime than in any real threat of not or rebellion.[7] Tie social division was exacerbated by the funding of poor relief through local rate, which created categories of ‘payers’ and ‘receivers’, although the vagaries of the economy meant that the boundary between the two groups was fluid, and many who were payers one day could easily find they were receivers the next.

The development of the contemporary Welfare State

The Tudor and Stuart Poor Laws were eminently suited to small rural communities, and formed the basis for poor relief until the coming of industrialism and the creation of an urban proletariat destroyed the traditional structures of the village community. The demands of capitalism for a controllable pool of human resources found voice in the new class of industrialists and businessmen who were brought to power by the Reform Act of 1832. To them ‘The old system of local parish relief was seen a mollycoddling the labourer, sheltering him from the bracing wind of competition and costing the taxpayer dearly to boot’.[8]

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1831 ushered in a more explicitly punitive regime, centred around the infamous workhouse; but the rapid expansion of the industrial cities created problems of public health and rising crime that forced government intervention with the Public Health Act of 1848, the Police Act of 1856 and, at the turn of the century, an ever increasing body of welfare legislation in the areas of health, education and employment.

By the 1890s, with the precedent having been set by the earlier Acts, increasing pressure from working-class organizations [9] combined with fears about national degeneration had coalesced into various demands for government action. Bismarck had already demonstrated the possibility of integrating the working-class movement within the capitalist system through welfare reforms. But for many, a fin de siède national uncertainty, precipitated by the appalling health of Boer War recruits and Britain’s failing economic performance in the face of competition from Germany and the USA, sparked the urge to reform what was seen as an essentially decadent social system.[10]

This drive for increasing State intervention led the Liberal governments of the early twentieth century to pass a series of laws covering many aspects of social welfare: workers’ injury compensation; State education and school meals;[11] old age pensions; limitations or the hours children could work; health and unemployment insurance. The extent of these reforms was such that, by 1911, Britain certainly had an embryonic State welfare system. The reasons for the creation of this system are less clear, but it has become apparent that it had less to do with philanthropy than has been suggested in the past. On the contrary, recent research has suggested that:

The desire to retain as much as possible of the existing capitalist economic system, at a time when it was under increasing pressure from within and without, seems to have been the most important motive in the origins of the Liberal reforms.[12]

In adapting to the changing nature of capitalism, and consequently increasing the number and degree of State intervention, the governments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began a new series assaults on institutions that they perceived as disorderly and not toeing the central line. Education Boards were abolished to be replaced by Local Education Authorities, while the local boards of governors or public assistance centres that attempted more liberal and humane regimes were taken over by central government.[13] The Liberal reforms remained the keystones of State welfare provision until the Second World War, during which all aspects of public life came under the control of the national government.[14] It was this high degree of central control, and the election of a Labour government at the end of the war, that precipitated the next phase in the evolution of the Welfare State.

The post-war Welfare State

It is not accidental that the Welfare State as we know it today came about under the aegis of the Left. Initially there were both pro- and anti-State strands in the Socialist movement, but it was the Statism of the Fabians and Social Democrats that gained the ascendancy, ‘Both social democratic reformers and socialist revolutionaries wanted to supplant the anarchy of the market with the rationality of bureaucracy.’ [15] Socialism became associated with social management and the struggle for self-management became peripheral.[16] Instead, the belief that socialism could be brought about by the rational management of the nation’s resources — underpinned by the strategy of mass nationalization of industry — became the dominant idea of the Left in Britain and engendered a belief in the necessity of strong central political control. Although there remained a tension between the different wings of the labour movement until the Second World War, most of the energy of the anti-Statist wing, as exhibited in the syndicalist and Guild Socialist movements of the pre-First World War period, was spent by the 1940s. Labour’s manifesto was, by 1945, primarily Fabian Socialism.[17] This signalled the triumph of the expert — scientific, economic and technical as well as political. The technological advances of the war and the bureaucratic structures created under the national government allowed the prospect of a degree of control of society that had previously been undreamed of. Keynesian demand-management seemed to offer a means of controlling the economy and, for the socialists, keeping the capitalists at bay. According to Anthony Crosland, the State could no longer be seen as simply the executive committee of the capitalist class — it was now the (social) State that called the tune.[18] With the post-war boom and the resurgence of an interventionist United States, the possibility of a social-capitalism providing for all arose — a consumer society where the need to promote demand led to a welfare system directed towards supporting consumption. ‘The Welfare State had furnished the prerequisites for the regeneration of capitalism, in which it could appear in a new and benevolent guise: no longer the stern taskmaster, but the bringer of all good things.’ [19]

Welfare, then, became more all-encompassing, as the State increasingly took on the role of needs-satisfier. Welfare was still administered from on high, and the Welfare State was a strictly top-down institution, but the elements of social control became less clear, even as the working-class districts were bulldozed to make way for an ‘expert’s’ idea of adequate living requirements. The State could, apparently, provide for all. The penalty for this was the unfreedom of the totally administered society; but, as Marcuse point out, ‘Geist and knowledge are no telling arguments against the satisfaction of needs’.[20]

As the post-war boom came to an end, the extravagant claims made of the Welfare State became open to question. The increasing demands put on the social democratic State appeared to be destabilizing it economically, ironically for the same reasons (needs-satisfaction) that initially promised to legitimize it.[21] But while the Welfare State bordered on crisis, the crisis management that was instituted to rescue social democracy, by Labour in the 1970s and continuing under the Conservatives, aimed not at abolishing the Welfare State, but at paring down the offer of needs-satisfaction to certain, more valued members of society. Consequently, the element of social control evident in all forms of social welfare became more apparent, as attempts to cut public spending failed while the State supported increasing wealth-generation aimed at the better-off sections of society (while targeting the less well-off under the guise of a series of moral crusades). This has been particularly evident in the use of benefits as a means to penalize single mothers and reassert the primacy of the role of men as economic providers. The divisiveness of a system that separates welfare providers (in the form of taxpayers) from those in need has become increasingly clear as wealth has become more concentrated: the middle classes have become more entrenched, and the welfare system itself is increasingly viewed as economically unsustainable.

While the element of social control has become increasingly obvious, so has the failure of the Welfare State to live up to the dreams of its creators. It is to this question — of the efficacy of the State as provider of welfare — that I turn to next."

(https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/steve-millett-neither-state-nor-market?)

Discussion

Loss of Autonomy

NEF-uk:

"We are not overwhelmed with evidence that more of the same public services would bring commensurate benefits. A defining characteristic of the welfare state has been that paid public servants provide help to individuals who are needy and have problems. It has saved a lot of people from destitution and early death, but it is a deficit model that generates a culture of atomised individualism and dependency. If you are just a passive recipient of the ministrations of others who are paid to look after you, you can lose control over what happens to you. If your voice is unheard and you feel unvalued, this undermines your physical and mental well-being. You get used to thinking others know more and are better placed to fix your problems – although what they do will not deliver the best outcomes, because your own wisdom and capabilities have not been brought into play. In many services, especially health, you are treated as an individual (if you are lucky) or as a body part (if you are not), with no account taken of context or relationships.

Notwithstanding the phenomenal achievements of the British welfare state over the past 60 years, things have moved on and it is time for change."

(nef: The Great Transition: social justice and the core economy)

The efficacy of the Welfare State

By Steve Millett, (anarchist) author of of the book, An Anarchist Perspective on Social Welfare‎ :

"The Welfare State in Britain is often held up as the primary achievement of the post-war Social Democratic consensus, a move away from the barbarity of naked capitalism that defined the 1930s. Given the reverence accorded the Welfare State, even asking pertinent questions — Exactly how efficacious is the Welfare State?; Has it promoted equality?; Has it affected the distribution of wealth? — can be difficult; and when the questions are asked, finding clear answers is not easy, although there has been significant work done in this area over the last twenty or so years.

One of the difficulties in answering these questions is that of not comparing like with like. The post-war world was in many respects different to the pre-war one, in ways that have already been mentioned. Capitalism was reconstituted as consumerism; industries were nationalized; governments intervened in the economy; State bureaucracies grew; and a technical and professional élite was created, commanding high incomes as well as high prestige. There was undoubtedly an increase in the amount of wealth in the economy, but it is less clear that its distribution was anything to do with the emerging Welfare State. For example, although the bottom 80 per cent of the population increased their share of the wealth by two and-a-half times between 1924–10 and 1951–6, it is difficult to argue that this was due to the redistributive effects of the Welfare State. Indeed, after this, the figures change very little over the next twenty years, a period when it would be expected that the post-war Welfare State would begin to seriously challenge the distribution of wealth.[22] Le Grand suggests that in Britain in 1980 the share of the national income received by the bottom half of the population had not changed since 1949.[23] In other words, if the standard of living of the poor increased, it was because the cake was bigger, not because they received a greater share of it. The gap between rich and poor did not decrease, and people tended to stay in their place in the social hierarchy, as Lois Bryson puts it ‘[i]t was as if people were standing on a slowly-moving escalator’.[24] While it would be reasonable to expect some redistributive effects of State-provided welfare, it appears that these were not from the rich to the poor.

Although there seems little doubt of a continuing and significant redistribution of wealth away from the very wealthiest portion of the population to the less wealthy majority of the population, the bottom portions of the population have been relatively unaffected ... the thrust of wealth redistribution has been from the very wealthiest to the merely wealthy or affluent sections of the population.[25]

It was still the case in 1984 that the richest 10 per cent of the population owned 53 per cent of the marketable weal:h, while the poorest 50 per cent owned only 6 per cent.[26]

It is likely that the position of the worst-off in Britain has worsened in the last fifteen or so years — in fact, much evidence is brought forward to show the failure of the Right’s claims that a ‘trickle down’ effect will eventually make everyone better-off. But this criticism is still couched in terms that suggest simply increasing spending on State welfare, without necessarily questioning the nature of the provision of welfare. While it is a tragedy that the number of homeless families increased to over 93,000 and the number of people below Supplementary Benefit level began to approach three million between 1979 and 1985, the most striking statistic is that in 1979, before the Conservative government and after thirty years of the Welfare State there were still 56,750 homeless families and 2,090,000 people below Supplementary Benefit level.[27]

In her book Welfare and the State: Who Benefits? Lois Bryson carries out an overview of some of the research that has been done into the distribution of State welfare. Looking at a variety of studies that cover not only Britain, but Continental Europe, Scandinavia and Australasia, it is clear that in most areas of State Welfare the better-off benefit more than the less well-off. This is particularly true in health and other services, and most markedly in education, described as ‘the public provision whose benefits are most systematically related to income’.[28] In health, reports from a variety of sources have consistently shown that in Britain the poor suffer more than the better-off. There are marked differences in mortality rates between the occupational classes, both sexes and at all ages. At birth and in the first month of life, twice as many babies of unskilled manual parents die as do babies of professional class parents.[29]

In terms of healthcare it has been suggested that the top socio-economic group (professionals, receive up to 10 per cent more NHS expenditure per ill person than the bottom group (manual workers).[30] This inequality continues in the field of housing where, even though public provision of housing assists the less well-off, issues of taxation effectively mean the system is biased in favour of not only owner-occupiers, but the wealthiest owner-occupiers.

Le Grand (1982) suggests that this disparity in service use is because of the following:

The better-off have more time to utilize services;

They are more able to take advantage of extant services (particularly education);

They are more likely to be able to get services provided for them and keep those services in the face of cut-backs.

This last point is particularly significant given the attacks on State-provided welfare carried out by governments over the last fifteen or so years. Not only do the poor get comparatively little from the Welfare State, in times of retrenchment they have to struggle to keep what little they have. Bryson reveals that sociology has a name for this process – the Matthew Principle, after the Gospel of Matthew: ‘For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath’.[31]

Bryson looks not only at service provision, but also at fiscal and occupational assistance. Although she notes that the actual effects of different measures vary from country to country and time to time, she concludes that ‘Investigation of the intricacies of taxation systems largely confirms that fiscal welfare, like occupational welfare and most social welfare, conforms to the Matthew Principle. Essentially all three welfare systems entrench the current social hierarchy’.[32] It appears, therefore, that claims that the Welfare State has supported social justice and redistribution of wealth are open to question.[33] There is little evidence to support the widely-held view that the solution to welfare problems can be conceived within the framework of State intervention. Rather, the State consistently acts to maintain existing hierarchies, leaving the poor, as ever, at the bottom of the ladder. This suggests that a genuine attempt to re-organize social welfare may have to be constructed outside of the State; and it is to alternatives to State-provided welfare that I turn next."

(https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/steve-millett-neither-state-nor-market?)

The Anarchist Alternative to the Welfare State

Steve Millet:

"Social welfare and the anarchist alternative

Despite this assertion, that the existence of the State is incompatible with a welfare society, it is reasonable to question whether such a Stateless society would indeed be able to provide adequately for the welfare of its members.

There are some issues which would appear to suggest the necessity of some form of State body, such as:

• The scale of the welfare problem;

• The need for large-scale co-ordination of services;

• The need for some form of professionalism and expertise.

However, these areas can also be seen as part of the anarchist alternative. Although the welfare problem is huge, it is in many respects the result of the current economic system, and no amount of State welfare is going to alleviate the problems as long as this system exists. This is particularly true of the already mentioned disparities in welfare that exist in class-divided societies, and the potentially apocalyptic effect that capitalism has on the environment. In addition, if State welfare provision is equivalent in most cases to social control and if social control is the antithesis of genuine welfare, then, although the idea of massive State aid is seductive, it must in the long-term be seen as counter-productive: as simply increasing dependency and forcing people to accept welfare or someone else’s terms. Many issues of welfare can be resolved not at the level of the State, but at the level of the individual or the community. The enormous scale of human welfare need can instead be seen as an aggregation of smaller needs, best served at a much more localized level.

Anarchists are not against organization or co-ordination, but suggest alternatives that do not require a — commonly a confederation of (rural and urban) communes. These communes would allow the possibility of maximum control by the population over their environment, while a confederation of communes would deal with issues over a wider geographical area.[45] Assuming that these mutual-aid communities would function to provide, as essential, basic subsistence at the very least, the issue of minimum standards of provision becomes less of an issue – particularly if all members of the community or other functional group have equal access to the means of welfare. Where resource-differences still existed, they could be dealt with through the confederated co-ordinating bodies.

Professionalism, expertise and technology[46] are areas that are very difficult to imagine outside of the framework provided by capitalism and the State, and a scepticism towards these areas as they are presently conceived suggest to many people an atavistic position that anarchists do not generally hold. Anarchism has frequently been perceived as harking back to a ‘golden’, pre-industrial age, and there are elements of this in the approach of some anarchists; but in most cases this criticism is unfair. It is true that anarchists have looked for historical examples to demonstrate the possibility of their suggested alternatives, and the evidence has often shown that certain alternative, more ‘anarchistic’, ways of organization are not in any way against ‘human nature’, but that they have flourished at certain times in most cultures. The co-option of the tools of reason by the agents of capitalism has resulted in a growing degree of hostility to the course of the development of science and technology — not surprising given the arrogance of the scientific establishment; the consistent application of science to produce better ways of killing more people; and, overall, the increasing separation of science and technology away from ordinary people and into the hands of an élite that can, directly or otherwise, use them for control and profit.

Despite this, it is important to recognize that in criticizing the use or application of something, a particular discovery, a method, a type of work — it is not always necessary to extend the criticism to the discovery, method or whatever, in itself. Admittedly, the dividing line is not always clear, as scientific and technological advances rarely proceed with issues of ethics as a central concern. However, in many ways science and technology, as the tools of reason and in an ethical and ecological context, are the best way humanity has to solve many of the problems it faces. While prevention is better than cure, and many illnesses that afflict us could well be eliminated if we lived in a more ecologically harmonious way, this would not dispense with the need for some medical care. Informal arrangements and various forms of ‘alternative’ medicine would no doubt be used extensively, but it would not necessarily be the case that all forms of conventional medicine would have to be discarded. It is also possible that informal arrangements may not always be the best way to deal with people’s problems — they may sometimes prefer healers, counsellors or advisors that they are not familiar with. This suggests that there may still be the need for specialists in certain fields, and for certain people to have high levels of technical expertise.[47] This in turn suggests the need for institutions to train and examine these people. And, since the liberation of learning does not automatically mean the abolition of institutions of academic and practical expertise, but a reordering of these along non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian lines, these institutions (which could be organized along the lines of guilds or syndicates)[48] would not require experts to be deferred to, nor the entrenchment of bureaucracies, since there could be various countervailing structures to offset this tendency.[49] Of course, there may not be a need for many specialists of this sort, but the aim of anarchism is to offer a realistic alternative to capitalism and the State, and people are not going to suddenly become indestructible, perfectly balanced, or totally reasonable!

The idea that we can only break down the State by constructing other relationships gives a crucial importance to welfare initiatives, because they are the means by which the prevailing hierarchies can be challenged on the basis of principles of mutual aid and cooperation. Certainly the radical feminist tradition considers that one reason for separatist women-only welfare provision is ‘to develop a new relationship between welfare providers and clients based on shared knowledge and power within non-hierarchical, democratic welfare structures, which could again challenge conventional, hierarchical welfare institutions’.[50] In the past, experiments and projects such as those mentioned briefly above have often been undermined by a lack of political vision. Where these groups come together in the face of a specific problem — as is often the case with community activism — their primary function is to attempt to obtain something from the constituted authorities. They consequently disperse when these aims are met (or not), and rarely attempt to radically alter the structure of service provision in the community. Attempts at more long term projects may, on the other hand, lack a radical social critique, which can undermine their ability to liaise with other projects to create a genuine countervailing power. In both cases the groups need to be aware not only of the potential for change, but of the libertarian tradition of which they are a part.[51] A more widespread, over-arching social and political agenda would help begin this process, as has been suggested by some Canadian activists:

It is important for the various citizens’ organizations to acquire a comprehensive vision of society and for them to tie their specific struggles to this. A food coop, a housing coop, an ecology group, etc.... could form a new social network, thereby laying the foundations of a new society. The multiplication of citizens’ initiatives opting for a collective mode of operation is an indispensable objective if we are to ensure that the working classes take their neighbourhood, their city, into their own hands.[52]

This approach would offer the possibility of developing new modes of action and theory within the context of a genuine attempt to negate State power. The difficulties involved in this kind of activity are enormous, not least in the provision of adequate resources, but with State-provided welfare increasingly seen as a burden on tax payers, the receivers of welfare may, in the long term, have little choice anyway. It should, though, given the limitations of the Statist option, be an alternative accepted with mere than just resignation; rather, it could be the means of beginning to create a genuine non-Statist welfare-community, free of dependence on politicians, bureaucrats and experts. To quote Kropotkin again:

Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity ... Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centres on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you![53]

It is ironic for anarchists that the failure of the Left to eliminate capitalism has at the same time led to the growth of the State; autonomy and empowerment are achieved no more through a bureaucrat’s pen than through the ‘unseen hand’ of market forces. As long as welfare is the preserve of the State, it will be used as a form of social control; and, as Kropotkin eloquently described in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, handing over our welfare to the State undermines our innate social capacities and allows the pretence that we are atomic individuals, dependent on no-one – ‘self-made’ as the phrase has it. This is a myth — is is obviously a myth as regards the Welfare State since it is the wealthy that benefit the most from the State provision of welfare. Somewhere in this mythology of dependence and independence something essentially human — our capacity for caring and co-operation — is lost. The failure of the State to provide social welfare should not be seen as undermining the idea of social welfare itself, but of invalidating the role of the State; welfare is inextricably linked to empowerment, which is why State-provided welfare is always going to have minimal success. At the same time we should be under no illusions as to what the effects on the poor will be of the paring down of what State provision there is in the name of the market: without a viable alternative, the market simply means sink or swim, and to sink means poverty, destitution, homelessness, even death. The attempt to free welfare from the State cannot be left to the free marketeers of the Right. The need for democratic and participatory alternative to the Welfare State has never been more urgent."

(https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/steve-millett-neither-state-nor-market?)