Early US anti-welfare arguments framed socialized risk as destroying family moral solidarity

Evidence

The comprehensive forms of social insurance that had been implemented in Germany under Otto von Bismarck as early as the 1880s, and in other European states throughout the following decades, were much slower to be accepted in the United States, where they had to overcome both elite and popular attachment to notions of personal and family responsibility. Throughout the early twentieth century, opponents of social welfare argued that the socialization of risk would destroy the family as a moral institution by displacing economic solidarity among kin. Even public assistance to noncontributing dependents such as widows and the aged was attacked as a threat to the values of family responsibility and self-support. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 219

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the intellectual genealogy of the ‘family responsibility’ construct that anchors the US poor-law tradition against European social insurance.
• XREF: Connects to the broader historiographic claim here that the US welfare state was bifurcated by gender from the start — foregrounds the moral-economy argument of opposition, not just material. — connects to: American welfare opponents framed socialized risk as a threat to family morality; Neoliberals attacked welfare as a threat to family, race, and dignity — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 178; Family loyalty is central, not marginal, to American neoliberal welfare theory — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 213 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• American welfare opponents framed socialized risk as a threat to family morality #corroborates (0.97)
• Neoliberals attacked welfare as a threat to family, race, and dignity #expands (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 178
• Family loyalty is central, not marginal, to American neoliberal welfare theory #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 213
• Becker saw welfare as destroying the family’s natural insurance function #expands (0.80)
• Social insurance displaced religion and family as primary risk-bearing institutions #expands (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 273