The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State

Asbjørn Wahl

Description

In an age of government imposed austerity, and after 30 years of neoliberal restructuring, the future of the welfare state looks increasingly uncertain. Asbjorn Wahl offers an accessible analysis of the situation across Europe, identifies the most important challenges and presents practical proposals for combating the assault on welfare.



Wahl argues that the welfare state should be seen as the result of a class compromise forged in the 20th century, which means that it cannot easily be exported internationally. He considers the enormous shifts in power relations and the profound internal changes to the welfare state which have occurred during the neoliberal era, pointing to the paradigm shift that the welfare state is going through. This is illustrated by the shift from welfare to workfare and increased top down control.



As well as being a fascinating study in its own right that will appeal to students of economics and politics, The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State also points to an alternative way forward for the trade union movement based on concrete examples of struggles and alliance-building.
Introduction

1. The Power Base

2. The Turning Point

3. The Shift in the Balance of Power

4. The Attacks

5. The Brutalisation of Work

6. The Misery of Symbol Politics

7. Challenges and Alternatives

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Social Services
• Public Policy
• Political Science
• Welfare

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 07 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849647038
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WELFARE STATE

The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State

Asbjørn Wahl

Translated by John Irons

First published 2011 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright © Asbjørn Wahl 2011; English translation © John Irons 2011

This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.

The right of Asbjørn Wahl to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 3140 9 978 0 7453 3139 3

Hardback Paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America

CONTENTS

List of figures and tables Preface

1 Introduction  Freedom and equality  Who owns the welfare state?  Power and polarization  The nonhistorical approach  About the book

2 The power base  Historical background  The class compromise  System competition  The content and ideology of the compromise  Restraining market forces  A broader concept of the welfare state

3 The turning point  Globalization – or market fundamentalism?  Deregulation  The economy of madness  Privatization  Three phases – three stages  Monopolization and corruption  What went wrong?

4 The shift in the balance of power  Attacks on the trade unions  The end of the class compromise  The employers failed in Norway  The undermining of democracy  Deregulation and privatization

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ix xi

1 4 8 11 14 17

20 22 25 31 33 35 39

43 43 45 48 55 59 60 64

66 66 71 73 75 78

V I

C O N T E N T S

Forms of organization and management Supranational agreements and institutions The myth of the powerless state

5 The attacks  Poverty and increasing inequality  Pensions under attack  But Norway is best …  Crisis and shock therapy  The transformation of welfare

6 The brutalization of work  Labour as a commodity  Brutalization and exclusion  The demands of neoliberalism  Social dumping  Driving forces  Abolish workfare policies!  Loss of welfare?

7 The misery of symbol politics  The workfare fiasco  Blessed are the poor?  From power struggle to legal formalism

8 Challenges and alternatives  Changes to power relations  The struggle is already on  The European Union as a barrier  Internal politicalideological barriers  Politicization and revitalization  A new course!  Freedom

Notes Bibliography Index

82 85 89

93 98 101 107 115 121

126 127 130 137 142 145 150 154

159 160 165 171

178 179 183 188 192 198 204 208

213 225 235

FIGURES AND TABLES

FIGURES

2.1Thepowerofprivatecapitalwaslimitedvia  wideranging state regulation 3.1Thecomprehensiveregulationsofprivatecapitalhave  been removed 3.2GrowthinGNPpercapitaglobally 3.3TherelationbetweenfinancialassetsandGNP  globally 3.4Therelationbetweenfinancialtransactionsand  international trade in goods and services per day 4.1Unemploymentinanumberofmajorindustrial  countries 4.2Thewageshareoftotalincome(factorincome)inthe  EU15, Germany, the United States and Japan between  1975 and 2006 5.1Thedevelopmentofincomeinequality(theGini  coefficient) in Norway, 1994–2005 6.1PercentageoftheNorwegianpopulationbetween  16 and 66 receiving a disability pension

TABLES

4.1Levelofunionizationinselectedcountries(asa  percentage of the work force) as the neoliberal  offensive made its impact 4.2AnnualaveragetaxlevelasapercentageofGNP  in OECD countries, 1990–2002 4.3IncomeandtaxationforNorwegiandivisionsof  multinational companies, 2002 6.1Effectsonhealthandworkingenvironmentof  various types of insecure work

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3

6

46 47

4

5

9

1

6

7

8

0

108

132

6

9

8

8

0

1

139

To Anja and Vegard

PREFACE

This is an updated and partly newly written, translated version of a book I published in Norwegian in 2009. My aim with the book is to challenge conventional interpretations of the welfare state. I do this by linking the analysis of social development, welfare and work with more fundamental power relations in society. Such analyses have been in short supply over the last few decades.  At the political level our experience is that fundamental causes and driving forces in society are nonissues, while symbol and symptom politics flourish and political spin doctors do whatever they can to deceive us. The critical potential of social science is in a poor state, while an army of social scientists in institutes of applied research are massproducing superficial descriptions of isolated social phenomena – to the great satisfaction of their employers.  The book is also meant as a warning about the threats to the social progress which was won through the welfare state, if we are not able to resist the offensive by market forces and regain and reinforce democracy in our societies. As I have been working on the manuscript, these threats have increased enormously across Europe and the Western world. Particularly in the European Union, we have seen not only attacks on social protection and public services but direct massacres of them, in the countries most strongly affected by the economic crisis.  While the financial crisis contributed to delegitimizing neo liberalism and the current economic model, our experience is that neoliberals and financial capital are still running the show. Rather than regulating the speculation economy, they therefore seem to be using the opportunity to complete their ‘silent revolution’ by forcing further privatization and cuts in public budgets on countries in deep economic crisis. In the European Union we are seeing frightening developments in the direction of a more authoritarian regime, where economic and political power is being further dedemocratized and centralized through the socalled Euro Plus Pact and new legislation on economic government and enforcement mechanisms (popularly called ‘the sixpack’, since it contains six pieces of legislation).  This more than anything else illustrates the current defensiveness and weaknesses of the labour and trade union movement, the deep political crisis on the Left and the lack of ambitious alternatives to the current economic model. It is therefore a matter of urgency to

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