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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

"there is no such thing as a free lunch" « Previous | |Next »
August 17, 2010

Australian conservatism has a neo-liberal strand and a statist one. These can be seen in its responses to the welfare state, which is celebrated by social democrats as civilizing capitalism. However, the underlying ideas behind the smokescreen of election battles is up against a preliminary difficult of the key terms of political theory now having a very wide and often contradictory set of meanings.

The term "the welfare state," commonly denoted an industrial capitalist society in which state power was deliberately used (through politics and administration) in an effort to modify the play of market forces. There are three types of welfare state activities: provision of minimum income, provision for the reduction of economic insecurity resulting from such "contingencies" as sickness, old age and unemployment, and provision to all members of society of a range of social services.

In Australia, as in Britain, where the crisis of the 1970s was diagnosed as one of Keynesianism, neoliberalism emerged as a radical anti-Keynesian movement that sought to dismantle major Keynesian institutions and policies. In this context, the welfare state, a fundamental Keynesian institution, was identified as a part of the ‘problem,’ and became subject to the neoliberal ‘solution.’ The welfare state was a problem in that it has discouraged people from seeking work, and it has created a large, centralized, uncontrolled and unproductive bureaucracy.

The aim of the neo-liberal mode of governance is to roll back the welfare state in order to limit government. This tendency can be seen in the various proposals to reduce welfare dependency and getting people to stand on their own two feet. The phrase "there is no such thing as a free lunch" is often used.

Neoliberalism is is usually characterised in terms of the free market, small government, privatisation, and the separation of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor and the rule of law. It is frequently traced to Friedrich Hayek's classic text The Constitution of Liberty. The neoliberal state ensures individual liberty through the provision of ‘choices’, which individuals then take responsibility for. Social solidarity is downplayed in favour of the virtues of self-reliance.

A neoliberal state can include a welfare state, but only of the most limited kind.Using the welfare state to realise an ideal of social justice is, for neoliberals, an abuse of power: social justice is a vague and contested idea, and when governments try to realise it they compromise the rule of law and undermine individual freedom. The role of the state should be limited to safeguarding the free market and providing a minimum level of security against poverty.

Conservatives argue that the unfettered market is amoral and destroys social cohesion. The statist strand in Australian conservatism can be seen in the compulsory income management of welfare (unemployment) payments and requiring the unemployed to relocate to centres of high job growth to find work or lose their payments. This accepts that the welfare state is with us, for better or worse, that it is necessary to "make prudent accommodations", and to use the welfare state for conservative ends. So we have the conservative idea of the welfare state being accepted in order to preserve the position of the bourgeoisie in an unequal society: --property's ransom for security. The minimal welfare state serves a politically functional role to ensure social stability and cohesion.

The problem for neo-liberals is that just straightforwardly hacking away at government spending, doesn’t have an impressive track record both because voters don’t much care for austerity budgeting, and (more importantly) because the government and civil society are so intertwined. Those neoliberals who have become convinced that the minimal welfare state they favour is politically impossible, do not usually become social democrats. Most opt for a paternal, conservative welfare state, which aims to prepare people for the labour market, rather than promoting any idea of social justice and equality.

The statist strand represents constraints on individual freedom and is at a odds, or in tension with, the neo-liberal strand that appeals to the ethical basis of the neoliberal state--the concern for negative freedom and the rule of law. Hence the contradiction within Australian conservatism.

This contradiction is resolved in the rhetoric of limiting government and empowering local communities.This pathway is one of advocating a transfer of responsibility — for schools, hospitals, police forces — to local governments and communities. In a nation with a vast and creaking welfare state the rhetoric is one of people putting more faith in voluntarism, charity and the beleaguered two-parent family.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:48 PM | | Comments (1)
Comments

Comments

Never mind that the prosperity of Europe and the USA was based on one continuous free lunch, and still is--via the process of Empire in its various forms over the past 500 years or so.

The title of a 1993 book by Chomsky: Year 501 The Conquest Continues.

And of course the neo-brutopian hacks such as Ferguson and Berkowitz are in town to promote the brutopian gospel.

The stolen-wealth of (the other) nations made the blood-sucking mother country very rich.