Concept
Welfare state
Overview
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life.
There is substantial variability in the form and trajectory of the welfare state across countries and regions. All welfare states entail some degree of private–public partnerships wherein the administration and delivery of at least some welfare programs occur through private entities. Welfare state services are also provided at varying territorial levels of government.
The contemporary capitalist welfare state has been described as a type of mixed economy in the sense of state interventionism, as opposed to a mixture of planning and markets, since economic planning was not a key feature or component of the welfare state. Early features therein, such as public pensions and social insurance, developed from the 1880s onwards in industrializing Western countries. World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II have been characterized as important events that ushered in the expansion of the welfare state. The fullest forms of the welfare state were developed after World War II.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In bourgeois society living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In Communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
States what Welfare state is; the author is tied to Welfare state in the knowledge graph.
Later on, the organic laws are called into existence by the “Friends of Order,” and all the above named freedoms are so regulated that, in their enjoyment, the bourgeoisie encounter no opposition from the like rights of the other classes. Wherever the bourgeoisie wholly interdicted these rights to “others,” or allowed them their enjoyment under conditions that were but so many police snares, it was always done only…
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
States what Welfare state is; the author is tied to Welfare state in the knowledge graph.
And such an education will of itself tend to do away with the evils of the existing economic situation. In the degree in which men have an active concern in the ends that control their activity, their activity becomes free or voluntary and loses its externally enforced and servile quality, even though the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. In what is termed politics, democratic social organization makes…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Welfare state is.
Philosophers who discussed Welfare state
- Jürgen Habermas
- Slavoj Žižek
- Murray Rothbard
- David Pearce (philosopher)
- Leonard Peikoff
- Ayn Rand
- Marquis de Condorcet
- Hans Albert
Related ideas
- Egalitarianism
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Distribution of wealth
- Fascism
- German language
- Ashoka
- German Empire
- Industrial Revolution
- Cato Institute
- Statism
- National Health Service
- Laissez-faire
- Karl Marx
- Trade union
- Southern United States
- Latin America
- Grace in Christianity
- Labour Party (UK)
- Liberalism
- Great Depression
- New Deal
- Max Weber
- Mercantilism
- Industrialisation
Opposing perspectives
- Cato Institute
- Social democracy
- Gender equality
- Great Depression
- World War II
- Mixed economy
- Socialism
- Equality of outcome
- Democratic socialism
- Working class
- Social liberalism
Place in the tradition
Part of Communism.