Negri on globo

Max Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net
Tue Jan 8 11:14:06 PST 2002


Doug makes the right point, IMO.

You could have the same problem under socialism. Imagine two nations, one rich, the second less so, and social benefits that paralleled their overall resources. There would be the same interest in conditioning benefits on citizenship and related obligations. Inequality breeds exclusion, and capitalism is not a necessary condition for inequality.

mbs


> >Few things in social life are inevitable, but consider this - the
> >good things you've mentioned that some nation-states provide, like
> >social benefits, do depend on notions of citizenship, which depend
> >on notions of exclusion. The Scandinavian welfare state, as
> >admirable as it is, couldn't survive a regime of open borders. Nor
> >could even our very minimal welfare state in the U.S. survive free
> >traffic across the Rio Grande. It makes me uncomfortable to confront
> >these sorts of facts, but they're real. What do you make of them?
> >
> >Doug
>
> Why attribute the limits of social welfare to the idea of
> citizenship, rather than to capitalism? Capitalism limits the
> quantity and quality of social welfare, even with zero cross-border
> migration.
> --
> Yoshie



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