The Welfare State
by Charles A. Burris
The history of the welfare state is the history of the state's savage war of aggrandizement and seizure of authority against civil society. Whether in Germany, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in Canada, in Scandinavia, or in the United States, the coercive state systematically destroyed the "voluntary sector" of civil society and those intermediary institutions that protected the individual from the direct contact and control by the state [much as the Church did for nearly all of the previous two millennia]. Within the short space of two or three decades the protective sphere covered by workingmen's social and other fraternal duties had been stripped to nothing more than drinking associations, with all other matters taken over by the state apparatus. Henceforth, the workingman and much of the middle class reported directly to the bureaucracy of the state's intrusive regime. Everything they did was in some way or another regulated, regimented and overseen by the state. The dire effects of this calculated collectivism was malevolence not benevolence, aggression not altruism, genocide not generosity.
Highly recommended as a beginning scholarly examination of this topic is the online Mises Institute article by economist/historian Murray N. Rothbard, Origins of the Welfare State in America.
1. The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, 1850-1914: Social Policies Compared by E. P. Hennock
- Hennock examines the array of independent and only loosely connected
Friendly Society health and unemployment [social insurance] regime
throughout Britain & Wales. He sees that this motley 'organization'
of free & voluntary organizations that dealt amazingly well with the
delivery of social, medical, or burial services should have been
'rationalized,' centralized, & brought under state control.
- The title pretty much sums up the contents of this very informative
and useful study. The flow of ideas and policies from Germany to England
are as important as the slightly later flow of those ideas and policies
(as modified by the Brits) from the UK to America. This book also serves,
in part, as a foundation and as an introduction to Hennock's later book,
above.
- This is an extraordinary collection; all of the essays are extremely
good and helpful towards understanding the first principles and the
initial foundation of the welfare state in the UK.
- The state in the UK systematically destroyed the 'voluntary sector'
and the intermediary institutions that protected the individual from the
direct contact and control by the state. Within two or three decades the
sphere covered by workingmen' social and other fraternal duties had been
stripped to nothing more than drinking associations.
- This volume establishes the central theme that the most important
feature of British political life since the nineteenth century has been
the extension of the role of government at all levels. Part of an
outstanding three part series.
- Described as the authoritative and definitive guide to the
contemporary welfare state, consisting of nearly fifty newly-written
chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a
comprehensive account of the modern welfare state. Divided into eight
sections, it opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical
case for (and against) the welfare state.
- The Welfare State Reader has rapidly established itself as a vital
source of outstanding original research.
- Belloc famously predicted the rise of the 'Servile State,' along the
lines adopted by Parliament as the Welfare State.
- While this is a sweeping and substantial study of how the ideas that
ultimately created the social welfare state were transferred back and
forth between England and the United States, it is an ultimately flawed
analysis.
- These are three works by David A. Greene (items #10, 11 and 12) which
must read together in order to get a properly balanced account of the
heyday of the mutual society system of social and medical insurance on
the one hand, and on the other hand, the complete strangulation of civil
society by the British state.
12. Mutual Aid or Welfare State?: Australia's Friendly Societies by David G. Green
13. >From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 by David T. Beito
- Just as David Green's studies above are mainly about the UK, Beito's
study is about the similar story in America. This is a deep and
meticulous scholarly study of America's mutual aid societies and all of
the social insurance sorts of personal distresses and misfortunes that
often afflicted the workingman and the middle classes [i.e., civil
society].
- The spawning of the welfare state and the warfare state went hand in
hand. In particular note the pivotal role of the Fabian Society and race
imperialist Viscount Alfred Milner, the force behind Cecil Rhodes's Round
Table movement to consolidate the British Empire (see Carroll Quigley's
Tragedy and Hope, and The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to
Cliveden).
- Fabian socialists such as George Bernard Shaw supported both the
welfare and warfare state as essential to the survival of the British
Empire. It was called "Social Imperialism.
- Palmer details how the Fabian-led British socialists of the Labor
Party were destroying Great Britain.
- Domhoff details the origins of the welfare-warfare state from Otto
von Bismarck to Richard T. Ely to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
- Higgs charts the accellerated growth and development of the
welfare-warfare state in war and peace during the 20th century.
- Murray relentlessly destroys the empirical and ideological basis of
the modern welfare state.
- This is by far the best book on England's welfare state. It describes
how the welfare system operates, day to day, how it punishes both the
young and the elderly just for trying to get ahead, or just trying to
keep one's head above water.
22. Is the Welfare State Justified? by Daniel Shapiro
- In this book, Daniel Shapiro argues that the dominant positions in
contemporary political philosophy – egalitarianism, positive rights
theory, communitarianism, and many forms of liberalism – should converge
in a rejection of central welfare state institutions.
- Richman further details the orgins of the welfare state in Bismarck's
Prussia and antebellum Civil War pensions in America.
- The welfare state rests on the assumption that people have rights to
food, shelter, health care, retirement income, and other goods provided
by the government. Kelley examines the historical origins of that
assumption, and the rationale used to support it today.
26. >From Warfare State to Welfare State: World War I, Compensatory State Building, and the Limits of the Modern Order by Marc Allen Eisner
- Eisner further outlines the tremendous impact and rationale World War
I 'war collectivism' played in ushering in FDR's New Deal welfare state.
(see Murray N. Rothbard's two pivotal essays, 'War Collectivism in World
War I,' and 'World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals.'
Both available online.)
- Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term
poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values,
one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for
victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no
responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own
lives.
- Marshaling a vast array of research, Piven and Cloward persuasively
demonstrate how public relief has been used to avert civil chaos during
economic downturns and to exert pressure on the work force during periods
of stability.
- Critics such as David Gordon have pointed out its factual flaws in
interpretation but Goldberg gets 90% of it brilliantly correct. Not a
scholarly treatise but a fast-paced polemic showing the common
ideological roots of American progressivism and European fascism, a
legacy continuing with today's welfare-warfare state.
- Flynn's brilliant expose of the fascist orgins of FDR's New Deal, and
its close ideological relationship to Mussolini's and Hitler's
regimes.
- Schivelbusch dares compare the collectivist ideology and pragmatic
public policy applications of Roosevelt's New Deal, Mussolini's Corporate
State, and Hitler's National Socialist Third Reich. Excellent companion
volume to Flynn's As We Go Marching above.
- In this groundbreaking book, historian Götz Aly addresses one of
modern history's greatest conundrums: How did Hitler win the allegiance
of ordinary Germans? The answer is as shocking as it is persuasive: by
engaging in a campaign of theft on an almost unimaginable scale – and by
channeling the proceeds into generous social programs – Hitler literally
'bought' his people's consent.
- Excellent in documenting the social welfare component of National
Socialist Germany under Hitler.
- Huntsford dissects the fascist model of the social welfare state of
Sweden.
- Eugenics was not new in the Progressive Era, but acquired impetus
with the advent of a more expansive government. Expansion of state
coercion meant that it became possible to have not only eugenic thought,
but also eugenic practice. Millions of 'the unfit' were targeted for
sterilization and elimination. Weimar and National Socialist Germany
looked to the US as a model.
- Garrett's classic expose' of the destructive nature of the
welfare-warfare state under presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry
Truman.
- Originally published in 1944, this book was seen as heretical for its
passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of
production. For Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government
with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the
horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
- A searing look at Washington’s craven response to the recent myriad
of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom
with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state –
especially the Federal Reserve – has fallen prey to the politics of crony
capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central
planning, and financial bailouts.
- America is on the brink of financial collapse. Decades of political
overpromising and underfunding have created a wave of debt that could
swamp our already feeble economy. And the politicians’ favorite tricks –
raising taxes, borrowing from foreign governments, and printing more
money – will only make it worse. Only one thing might save us: Roll back
the government.
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