Substitute legitimation through welfare deepens rather than resolves legitimation deficits.

Evidence

The interventionist state now sought to satisfy its need for legitimation through a `substitute programme’by sustaining a system that offered social security and upward mobility in proportion to achievement. In order to be able to ensure this, and thus assure the loyalty of the masses to the capitalist form of society, considerable scope was required for manipulation through state intervention, extending deep into social and private life. This, in its turn, increased the state’s need for legitimation all the more. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 676

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s ‘administered state’ and Pollock’s state-capitalism thesis on compensatory state programmes.