Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com, Sun Nov 21 21:55:25 PST 2004:
>Carrol Cox wrote:
> > > 4) Would socialism involve a sort of welfare state?
> >I don't see how this is a coherent question.
>Because of your as-yet unrevealed idea of what socialism would be?
The welfare state funded by progressive taxation rests upon private production largely independent of the state, the existence of most jobs and a tax base (profits and wages) being consequently dependent on profit rates and individual private investors' willingness to invest in production at home (not abroad), all determined by the market.
Ideally, under socialism, people, through the government, democratically deliberate and determine what and how much to produce, what and how much to consume today, how much to invest in what forms of future production, etc. Under the formerly existing socialist states, the party (rather than people), through the government, made such decisions, eventually depoliticizing workers. Either way, though, the socialist political economy is fundamentally different from the welfare state under capitalism, which is why the capitalist power elite couldn't tolerate socialism but did tolerate the welfare state when a socialist alternative existed as a threat and depression made workers rebellious.
The compromise between capital and labor that was the welfare state lasted until the mid-1970s, when stagflation hurt profit rates and made workers restive again, who challenged the trade union bureaucracy that had brokered the compromise. In response, the capitalist power elite attacked workers, through a set of policies called neoliberalism -- the beginning of the end of the welfare state.
It's of course worth defending what's left of the welfare state, just as it is worth defending what's left of socialism like Cuba, but we can't defend either by voting for the Democratic Party. -- Yoshie
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