The thought as I walked to work this morning:
From a Left perspective, the Welfare State was part of a larger crisis-driven accommodation (including collective bargaining , wage regulation, and support for business) designed the 'manage' Capitalism in a way that bought off sufficiently large section of the working class. It was a price Capitalism, in days when it was primarily domestic Capitalism, was forced to pay to ensure worker quiescence.
In a globalised world, in which global value chains allow nearly optimum incorporation of high-price labour (R&D, design, management etc) in some locations with cheap manufacturing labour in others, the 1930s Welfare State no longer serves its original purpose. States like NZ now attempt a challenging balancing act - reduction of welfare provision to the point that social cohesion is (just) sustained, and returns to Capital are maintained. All notions of power-sharing and respect inherent in the Social Democratic model of the Welfare State are abandoned. The balancing act has an ideology- neo liberalism. The Social Democratic parties of the Welfare State (Savage-like Labour Parties) become anachronistic, and seek to redefine themselves as useful within the new reality.
Is this Mr Shearer's new broom, I wonder?
IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW: The Ruminations of Robert Winter
Crikey, Robert. You need to start walking WITHOUT a thesaurus in your hand - you'll find you speed up by an average of 1 - 2 kms per hour!
ReplyDelete@XChequer: it scans at about 5km an hour.
ReplyDeleteLmao!!!
ReplyDeleteHaving just published a comment on the POAL thread, this might be the right forum to say that while I don't want to be in a union, I would certainly prefer for unions to exist to maintain checks and balances against unbridled corporate greed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post, however. It does feel like the scales are tipping to far one way.
Good stuff.
ReplyDelete