Erosion of agrarian and producerist political languages enabled modern cash transfers

Evidence

Two devices will prove helpful as we track these discontinuities. The first distinguishes “a priori” from “a posteriori” conditions on the reception of grants (see table 1.1). What conditions do recipients have to fulfill to receive grants, and what expectations—both implicit and explicit—are tied to them after their receipt? The second factor spans traditions that drove grant ideology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—“agrarianism” and “producerism.” The first centered on how a republican regime could achieve stability. … In the end, it was the erosion of these older political “languages,” as Skinner calls them, that opened space for new notions of cash transfers to emerge in the 1930s and 1940s. — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets, 61

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets up the book’s central analytic axes: a priori/a posteriori grant conditions and the agrarian/producerist tradition split.
• XREF: connects to: Cash transfer strategy shifted blame for poverty from government to individuals — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets: A Global History…, 181; Decomposition of planning-state coalitions drove welfare’s cashification — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets: A Global History…, 375; Redefining poverty as a distinct culture justified cash floors over redistributive policy — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets: A Global History…, 149 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Redefining poverty as a distinct culture justified cash floors over redistributive policy #expands (0.90) — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets, 149
• Taxing peasants in money forced them into debt and market dependence #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 311