Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state

Evidence

What really mattered was ensuring that the provision of a vital minimum did not interfere with the moral and subjective qualities underpinning a competitive market order. In his contribution to the Princeton MPS panel, Röpke told his colleagues that, if they did not want to leave the individual entirely alone to face the ‘vicissitudes of life’, they must develop rules, principles and distinctions to ensure that concessions to state provision did not legitimise the welfare state, which ‘we are all convinced, is the ruin of a free and prosperous society and of the dignity of the self-respecting individual’. A compatible policy had to avoid the weakening of the family, individual responsibility and the will to work for a living. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 206

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s austerity/neoliberalism reading: this is the intellectual origin of conditional cash transfers and workfare conditionality debates. — connects to: Adenauer-era economics aimed to dismantle the welfare state rather than build it — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2516; Reagan’s California welfare reform enacted neoliberal family-responsibility policies — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 242; Friedman’s negative income tax aimed to gut welfare bureaucracies, not eliminate redistribution — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 232 (+16 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the ‘sacrifice’ piece — the welfare state framed as ruin of self-respecting dignity parallels sacrificial logic themes, though more centrally it extends the ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure theme as social infrastructure.

Broader Connections

• Röpke proposed abolishing the welfare state except for a bare minimum #exemplifies (0.88) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 214
• Neoliberals framed welfare states as existential threats to individual rights and civilisation #expands (0.82)
• Neoliberalism replaces the welfare state with a traffic-cop state #expands (0.82)
• Ordoliberal economic ideas became socially embedded through a welfare-state compromise #complicates (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 366
• Cold War security needs made the welfare state an intolerable impertinence for neoliberals #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1333
• Neoliberal thought framed welfare rights as contradicting rather than completing civil rights #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 162