Wut?
@Archangel1313 The welfare state was the capitalist’s answer to working class organization and its victory in the Soviet Union. It was a concession and therefore a means of control. It’s also an alarming sign that capitalism seems to believe it no longer needs it.
That contradicts most of 20th century history. The welfare state was implemented because of Capitalism’s failures during the great depression. After the stock market crash in the late 1920’s, so many people were left out of work, that the government needed to step in and not only start providing people with guaranteed employment, but also subsidize those that couldn’t be employed. This was also when they implemented social security and began implementing universal healthcare systems to pay for people’s medical care.
This was largely paid for by historically high taxes on the very same people that caused the financial crisis in the first place.
Capitalists have never approved of these programs. They were forced to provide for people who weren’t working. To them, that’s the equivalent of theft. It’s the entire reason they have been trying so hard to dismantle the welfare state, ever since…and abolish the tax system that funds it. As far as they’re concerned, if you can’t afford to pay for these services at market value, you deserve to starve and/or die untreated.
Not quite. Capitalists agreed to make temporary concessions, with the dissolution of the USSR there was no longer a rival system that offered good safety nets with fewer resources and under constant siege. Then, the capitalists removed them over time. See here:
For capitalists, welfare comes from taxation, which as paid from the social fund this includes coming from worker’s wages. Welfare is merely like electricity for a capitalist, both necessary in that they maintain the conditions for commodity production, and as such both are minimized to the degree they can be, just like worker’s wages.
Was the USSR really the “threat of a good example”, as opposed to Europe and Scandinavia?
Yes, absolutely. For starters, post WWI, Europe was in dire straits. A lot of the allied powers were desparate to pay back the inter-ally debts they owed to the US, the rising imperial power at the time, and these countries in turn charged Germany massive reparations. This indirectly assisted in fascism coming to power in Germany, along with a need to kill the communists organizing all over Europe to follow in the footsteps of the Russians. The Nazis were an effective anti-KPD kill force.
In fact, the social safety nets that Europe has now were in large part a direct response to increasing communist sympathies and risk of revolution. The soviets had massively expanded safety nets, and workers were sympathetic. Another thing to note is that Europe was imperialist (still is), World War I was more about deciding where colonial lines would be redrawn than anything else. This imperialism is what funded US and western European safety nets while maintaining capitalist profits, the soviets funded their safety nets through their own labor.
I recommend reading Concessions.
@Archangel1313 > implemented because of capitalism’s failures during the Great Depression
Yes, exactly. People were organizing. Rising up. Capitalism did approve those programs, in order to keep them from doing so. Or do you think that you no longer live under capitalism, because capitalism “would never have approved” welfare?
Socialism is not when you have a welfare state.
Oh, God no. You have your labor history backwards, my friend. The Great Depression fueled the labor movement in ways nothing else could. That time of desperation is what inspired an entire generation to fight back against capitalism and its failure to elevate the needs of the common good. The utter disregard for the consequences of unregulated greed led to the worst economic collapse in modern history. Millions of people paid the price for their arrogance and short-sightedness.
Those programs were a thumb in the eye of the capitalists that crashed the global economy, and cost that entire generation its promised future. The so-called welfare state was the resulting penance the Capitalists were made to pay, in compensation for that mismanagement. And people everywhere were not only fed up with accepting their idea of prosperity…they were refusing to be used as tools to create wealth for someone else. That is what strengthened unions.
For a brief time, governments around the world actually tried to hold those capitalists responsible for the suffering they had caused. Knowing that the government itself stood with them, inspired millions to fight for workers rights. The labor movement expanded greatly after the depression, as a direct response to it…not the other way around.
You’re forgetting that the USSR was a rising country that already provided better safety nets, the US and western Europe copied them. When capitalism entered crisis, the bourgeoisie opted to bribe the working class with welfare to lower the chance of revolution, and make up for the loss with imperialism. With the dissolution of the USSR and diminished rates of profit overall, welfare became more expensive and thus the capitalists were free to roll those bribes back.
@Comrade Ferret The fact that I can say this in a supposedly communist forum and have as many people upvoting it as downvoting it really speaks volumes about how absolutely fucking cooked Lemmy is.
Lemmy.ml has tons of liberals from other instances, which is a blessing and a curse.
Totally baloney… with a little exception. It’s true, that a welfare state culls some of the reasons to make an uprising. But a welfare state doesn’t take away any ability to self organize, or ability to work with each other.
A true welfare state would promote innovation and aspiration at the bottom. But a welfare state created to shut the protests down, would have welfare with demands. Like if you get welfare you should spend all your time looking for work, and you can’t earn anything, and your help will only be enough to survive.
This meme is pretty clearly referring to capitalist welfare states, and not welfare in general. Welfare under socialism is different from under capitalism in purpose and structure.
Clearly? Where is it clear? This meme is attacking welfare states, to thr harm of those who needs it.
@Ardens Welfare with demands…so like, every welfare state.
