The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction

Prior to the 1930s, welfare policy was aimed at the poor and relief was usually meagre and stigmatizing. After the 1930s,
welfare policy was aimed at the middle classes as well,

In Britain, state power had been slowly growing since the 16th century, but it surged during the 19th century when problems of industrial society came to be seen as the responsibility of national government.

The fundamental problem was that the system of poor laws and local charity was designed to operate in rural society as a means of relieving old, sick, or invalid individuals who were beyond the care of kin. It was a residual system: a supplement to the care-giving of families and an emergency fallback in hard times—and altogether unequal to the problems of industrial, urban society.

The creation of welfare states was prompted by the failure of existing systems of social provision.

welfare state government emerged as a functional response to the problems of urban, industrial, market societies—above all, to the new risks and insecurities generated by untrammelled market capitalism.

This historical dialectic is what Polanyi famously called the ‘double movement’. On one side, the triumphant forces of laissez-faire liberalism, building a new society based on market freedom, private interest, and a minimal state; on the other, a widespread, diffuse reaction prompted by the pragmatic collectivism of various authorities who took steps to cope with emergencies, repair market failures, and manage the social upheavals caused by the capitalist juggernaut. In the USA, a similar process unfolded: an ideological commitment to laissez-faire and market individualism being offset by public welfare laws at the local level and large-scale disaster relief periodically doled out by the federal authorities.

Even as they maintained their free-market creed, British governments recognized ‘exceptional circumstances’ where protective measures were necessary and laissez-faire principles should be set aside. The regulation of factories, mines, and railways; the provision of public education; the promotion of public health and much else besides were areas that justified central government intervention. City governments did even more: providing clean water, sewers, and sanitation; regulating housing; providing public washhouses, libraries, and parks; and creating a form of ‘municipal socialism’ that stood in stark contrast to free-market principles.

And the social question—how to regulate market capitalism so as to produce a necessary minimum of social security, social integration, and social justice—is, in contemporary societies, chiefly answered by the welfare state

The welfare state is a damage-limiting, problem-solving device rather than anyone’s ideal social relationship.

These core elements of the welfare state are abidingly popular with the electorate, and are supported even by avowedly anti-government political movements such as the Tea Party.