Welfare

[tradeunionsupporter]

Is Welfare used by the Capitalists to keep the Poor from revolting against the Capitalist system ?

[RGacky3]

What do you think?

[Optiow]

Of course it is. It is much harder to create communism in reformist states than in full blown capitalist ones.

[#FF0000]

They do it because a lot of people are going to be underemployed or unemployed in capitalism, and people who are incredibly broke are a drag on an economy for a number of reasons (aside from the whole revolution thing).

Things aren't so conspiratorial. Capitalists aren't moustache-twirling villains meeting behind closed doors overtly scheming on how to fuck over workers.

[Revolution starts with U]

Welfare serves to stave off revolution. And it may, or may not have been designed for such effects. But it is not supported by most people for such reasons. As #F said, it's because people are generally good people and don't want to face the inevitable consequences of real capitalism.

[Dimmu]

I do not really agree with some opinions presented here..

Welfere was not something born because capitalists thought it was a good idea or something. Welfere was born mostly because the people forced this change onto the capitalists.. No laws that benefit the poor are passed by the state, they are passed because they people force the state to pass them.

Capitalists have always been against the welfare since it does not make people desperate enough to become a wage-slave for McDonalds or other crappy corporations. If you look a the Republicans in the US or any other capitalistic part somewhere else then you will see a clear mission to reduce the welfare so the people will be forced to accept the horrible conditions just so they can feed themselves or their families.

[Thirsty Crow]

Welfere was not something born because capitalists thought it was a good idea or something. Welfere was born mostly because the people forced this change onto the capitalists.. No laws that benefit the poor are passed by the state, they are passed because they people force the state to pass them.

That's generally true, but it lacks a certain nuance.
What I'm getting at is this: it was the revolutionary threat, and not a specific push for a set of reforms, that forced the advanced capitalist nation-states to produce class compromise deals which afforded the working class unprecedented level of living standards (historically speaking, this took place with post-WWII reconstruction and capitalist restructuring).
The so called welfare state is a means of co-optation of a labour movement heading towards radical ends.

[#FF0000]

I do not really agree with some opinions presented here..

Welfere was not something born because capitalists thought it was a good idea or something. Welfere was born mostly because the people forced this change onto the capitalists.. No laws that benefit the poor are passed by the state, they are passed because they people force the state to pass them

I actually agree with you here. It's not that they're good people. It's a reform, like all reforms, that aims to make capitalism work better.

[Thug Lessons]

Welfare has a dual political purpose in modern society. These programs were originally enacted to appease the masses and to address the inefficiencies of lassiez-faire capitalism, but today they also serve to create divisions within the working classes. A certain stratum, the 'middle class' for a lack of a better term, loves to look down on those on public assistance as lazy parasites who refuse to work, and are happy to align with the rich against these apparent enemies. Of course, the 'middle class' have their own respectable social programs, in the form of social security pensions, unemployment insurance, national healthcare in some nations, and so on, but the contradiction here is rarely grasped.

I do not really agree with some opinions presented here..

Welfere was not something born because capitalists thought it was a good idea or something. Welfere was born mostly because the people forced this change onto the capitalists.. No laws that benefit the poor are passed by the state, they are passed because they people force the state to pass them.

Neither of these views are entirely correct. Social democracy, Keynesianism, etc. are neither mere assumptions of working-class politics nor devious plots to undermine working-class politics. Keynes himself, for his part, didn't see his prescriptions as either, but simply as the best way to regulate a capitalist economy. Probably most politicians who advocate them have a similar view, though those earlier concerns also play a greater or lesser role. If you're talking about something like the programs of Clement Attlee in the UK, it's closer to a real expression of working-class politics, (albeit in a reformist, opportunist, labor aristocratic form), whereas something like FDR in the US was more an attempt to limit the role of the working class and undermine the support of more radical solutions, like those advocated by Huey Long or the red unionists at the CPUSA.

[Desperado]

Capitalists aren't moustache-twirling villains meeting behind closed doors overtly scheming on how to fuck over workers.

Neither are the capitalists always conscious of the oppression they create.

[danyboy27]

welfare is the result of the revolt that happened worldwide at the begining of the industrial Era.
The capacity for capitalist to create so much with machine allowed them to keep a shitload of worker unemployed and starving.

Workers wanted to be able to eat and have a roof over their head, and after a shitload of them where shot, beaten and tortured, the governements, for the sake of the system itself, cave in and created several measures to help the unemployed to get food and shelter.

It worked, and the number of protest greatly diminished beccause of that.

the rulling class will always give to the working class what they want if threatened, but they will do everything they can to give the smallest amount.

If the workers in the early 1900s would have continued to make pressure on their governements despite the concessions made by the rulling class, they could have it all.

[Revolution starts with U]

"...You have nothing to lose but your chains"

[MarxSchmarx]

"welfare" as we know it today was also a way that the modern state consolidated its power over people. In particular, as the power of traditional religious institutions and community obligations declined, the state stepped in in part to ensure a vested interested by the people in the state as opposed to potential rivals from civil society like local elders, labor unions, churches or even socialists. Bismarck was notorious for implementing strategies like this.

[Tim Finnegan]

If you're talking about something like the programs of Clement Attlee in the UK, it's closer to a real expression of working-class politics, (albeit in a reformist, opportunist, labor aristocratic form), whereas something like FDR in the US was more an attempt to limit the role of the working class and undermine the support of more radical solutions, like those advocated by Huey Long or the red unionists at the CPUSA.

That's a very useful comparison, because it shows that the state of class struggle in any given society cannot be inferred from relatively superficial elements such as welfare, legal reform, and so forth. These things are concessions made by the ruling class to the working class, but how and why they are made can only be determined by a fairly close study of the society in question.
Besides, the logic doesn't follow, or at least suggests a frame of reference deployed no more broadly than the American coastlines. In Britain, post-war labour militancy was at its height in the 70s, when the welfare state was still strong, and has decline alongside it ever since Thatcher came to power, each complementing the other. As much as these reforms may act to soothe the working class, they also act to stabilise its membership and so provide a base for class politics; people who can't tell you where or how they'll be living in six months time will, nine times out of ten, be apolitical rather than radical. Mass radicalism is produced by the intersection of many complex factors, it's not something that can be manufactured, least of all through self-imposed precariousness.