New Deal agencies functioned as improvised precursors of an authoritarian welfare state.

Evidence

The trade unions, which had been strengthened, were giant, hierarchical lobbying organizations. One of the measures characteristic of the New Deal was the creation out of thin air of institutions whose main task was administration. The image that was being offered was one of an ever-changing variety of caring organizations ready to intervenethe improvised harbingers of an authoritarian welfare state, with Roosevelt’s `fireside chats’, broadcast on the radio, providing soft background music. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 270

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry and administered society; a direct Frankfurt-School claim about the New Deal’s administrative form. — connects to: The welfare state originated as an insurance policy against revolution — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1993; The state is transforming from a welfare apparatus into a security apparatus.
• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes welfare-state institution-building as a soft form of authoritarian administration rather than its antidote — a claim worth sitting with.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The welfare state originated as an insurance policy against revolution — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1993; The state is transforming from a welfare apparatus into a security apparatus.