The New Welfare Consensus

Darren Barany

Description

Winner of the 2019 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award presented by the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association

Families on welfare in the United States are the target of much public indignation from not only the general public but also political figures and the very workers whose job it is to help the poor. The question is, What explains this animus and, more specifically, the failure of the United States to prioritize a sufficient social wage for poor families outside of labor markets? The New Welfare Consensus offers a comprehensive look at welfare in the United States and how it has evolved in the last few decades. Darren Barany examines the origins of American antiwelfarism and traces how, over time, fundamentally conservative ideas became the dominant way of thinking about the welfare state, work, family, and personal responsibility, resulting in a paternalistic and stingy system of welfare programs.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Contending Conservatisms: Locating Divergences and Commonalities

1. The Old Libertarian Right and American Antiwelfarism, from the Interwar Period to 1960

2. Traditionalist Conservatism and New Right Antiwelfarism, the World War II Era to 1960

Part II. The Ascendance of the Neoconservatives

3. Fertile Terrain for Antiwelfarist Ideology in the 1960s

4. The Rightward Drift of American Liberalism and the Neoconservative Attack on the Social Safety Net in the 1950s and 1960s

Part III. Mobilizing A Countermovement and Constructing the Welfare Poor in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s

5. Elite Mobilization Against the Safety Net

6. Stabilizing the Myth of the Welfare Queen: The Economistic Paternalism of Reagan-Era Antiwelfarism

Part IV. The New Welfare Consensus

7. PRWORA and US Welfare Policy Discourse in the 1980s and 1990s

Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• États-Unis
• History of the Americas
• 20th century
• Sociology
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 11 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438470566
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE NEW WELFARE CONSENSUS
THE
NEW WELFARE CONSENSUS
Ideological, Political, and Social Origins

DARREN BARANY
Cover: Photo of National Welfare Rights Organization March in NY to End Hunger (Series 8, Poor People’s Campaign, May–June 1968), from the Jack Rottier Photograph Collection, 1953–1983, courtesy of George Mason University Special Collections Research Center, University Libraries. Photo of Clinton and Reagan, courtesy of Ronald Reagan Library, C49841-11A 10/13/88.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Barany, Darren, author.
Title: The new welfare consensus : ideological, political, and social origins / Darren Barany.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040344| ISBN 9781438470559 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438470566 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Public welfare—United States—History—20th century. | Welfare state—United States—History—20th century. | Welfare recipients—Employment—United States—History—20th century. | United States—Politics and government—1945-1989. | United States—Politics and government—1989-
Classification: LCC HV95 .B28 2018 | DDC 361.973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040344
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to the memory of my parents, MARY AND ERNIE

“Policy,” of course, is the Machiavellian term for “deceit,” so immediate and overt honesty can be camouflage for ultimate exploitation …
—Marshall McLuhan
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I CONTENDING CONSERVATISMS: LOCATING DIVERGENCES AND COMMONALITIES
Chapter 1 The Old Libertarian Right and American Antiwelfarism, from the Interwar Period to 1960
Chapter 2 Traditionalist Conservatism and New Right Antiwelfarism, the World War II Era to 1960
PART II THE ASCENDANCE OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVES
Chapter 3 Fertile Terrain for Antiwelfarist Ideology in the 1960s
Chapter 4 The Rightward Drift of American Liberalism and the Neoconservative Attack on the Social Safety Net in the 1950s and 1960s
PART III MOBILIZING A COUNTERMOVEMENT AND CONSTRUCTING THE WELFARE POOR IN THE 1960s, 1970s, AND 1980s
Chapter 5 Elite Mobilization Against the Safety Net
Chapter 6 Stabilizing the Myth of the Welfare Queen: The Economistic Paternalism of Reagan-Era Antiwelfarism
PART IV THE NEW WELFARE CONSENSUS
Chapter 7 PRWORA and US Welfare Policy Discourse in the 1980s and 1990s
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Table 1.1 Libertarian/Economic Conservative Positions on Equity and the Welfare State
Table 2.1 Traditionalist/Social Conservative Positions on Equity and the Welfare State
Figure 2.1 Libertarian and Traditionalist Conservative Positions on Equity and the Welfare State and Their New Right and Neoconservative Synthesis
Figure 3.1 Percent ID Welfare as MIP and Median Incomes (SSA Data, 2004 Dollars), 1959 to 1980
Figure 3.2 Annual Inflation and the Poverty Rate
Figure 3.3 Percent ID Welfare as MIP and Percent Reduction in Poverty, 1960 to 1980
Figure 3.4 Percent ID Welfare as MIP and Number of Annual NYT Articles on Welfare
Figure 3.5 Percent ID Welfare as MIP and Number of Annual TV News Stories on Welfare
Figure 3.6 Percent of Respondents with Negative Opinion of Welfare
PREFACE
MEMES THAT CELEBRATE NEWS OF STATES SUBJECTING NONWORKING POOR parents to drug tests so that they and their children may continue to qualify for poor relief or grumble about food stamp recipients buying premium products with their benefits at the grocery store are familiar on social media. These sentiments come up casually in conversations about “wasteful” welfare programs and welfare “cheats.” A genuine and pervasive lack of empathy for poor families and the practice of blaming them for the conditions of poverty in which they live, especially poor families of color, is evident and encoded in contemporary policy discourse. In the existing ideological climate, stark conditions of inequality are explained away by conjuring narratives about personal failings and accountability, cultural pathology, and family disorganization. This book reexplores the history, social conditions, and relevant texts to tell a story about how aspects of this milieu came to be. It addresses poverty, inequality, and policy through an interpretive analysis of welfare state discourse in particular. It is a story about political ideas that, in certain conditions (economic, social, ideological, and political), became orthodoxy in relation to policy reform and policy analysis. It is an important story because it clarifies why we think about work, family, poverty, personal responsibility, the welfare poor, and antipoverty measures the way we do.
The investigation mainly covers the interval from the interwar period to the signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. While this era saw the sequence of legislative developments leading up to the bill, more importantly, it is one in which an emerging social policy narrative was essentialized in the public consciousness and within formal policy circles. Pages have been dedicated to these matters before, but this text focuses historically on the contemporary welfare consensus in relation to its ideological and political foundation and how its persistence has affected the existing policy culture, one which constrains antipoverty policy discourse as well as legislative endeavors and outcomes. It considers the theoretical and historical origins of today’s political debates around social policy, equality, and distributive justice, both between the right and left and also within each political formation, as they have endured particular intellectual struggles and histories. The literature on poverty, inequality, and policy is quite vast. However, critical texts that look at the tensions bound up in welfare state programs and the corresponding political discourse, as well as how politics, programs, and policy are mediated by prevailing ideologies, are far less prevalent.
This work entails a comprehensive history and analysis of the ideas and policy that now encompass mainstream thinking on welfare. The study represents a theoretical approach that draws on antecedent and key developments associated with the tradition of critical theory. One might regard it as a critical theory of the welfare state that engages the key tenets bound up in the contemporary welfare consensus in connection with the social, political, and economic systems that both generate and are generated by such ideology. Offered here is a contribution to the larger policy studies discussion, which clarifies the systemic necessity and content of ideological practice in order to shed light on the logic, meaning, and objectives of contemporary welfare state discourse in relation to the ethos and requirements of late capitalism. It details that process as it relates to the imperative and internal logic of late capitalism’s survival and through unfolding the meaning and tensions bound up in the relevant texts and rationale of the corresponding political institutions and corresponding conditions that contributed to dispersing those ideas and gradually helped restructure the American political culture to one in which austerity- and poverty-induced misery have been largely normalized.
Not long before this book’s release, it was tempting to interpret developments like the passing and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or the movement behind Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign as evidence that perhaps the moratorium on benefit expansion has receded. Rather, the culmination of these developments reveals that the existing policy consensus that steers outcomes toward system interests is very much intact. Even at the time of the ACA’s development and passing, this consensus steered that legislative process toward a modest market-oriented strategy, which, while expanding coverage, ensured large profits for insurance companies and excluded a public option after a protracted and ugly ideological fight from right-wing advocacy groups. Regarding Sanders’s campaign, due to the leaking of private Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mails, it is now known that top officials in the DNC disparaged Sanders, despite presumptions of neutrality, and, as a clear gesture of partiality, worked to shield Hillary Clinton from criticism during the primary campaign (Shear and Rosenberg 2016; Sainato 2016). During the primary election cycle, Sanders openly criticized the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, a significant part of President Bill Clinton’s legacy. At the time of the bill’s passage, Hillary Clinton supported the measure and helped ga