The Welfare State functions as capital’s flexible adjustment mechanism, not labor’s victory

Evidence

Under these circumstances, the prospects for a streamlined containment of the centrifugal tendencies depend primarily on the ability of the vested interests to adjust themselves and their economy to the requirements of the Welfare State. Vastly increased government spending and direction, planning on a national and international scope, an enlarged foreign aid program, comprehensive social security, public works on a grand scale, perhaps even partial nationalization belong to these requirements. I believe that the dominant interests will gradually and hesitantly accept these requirements and entrust their prerogatives to a more effective power. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 205

Categorization

• XREF: Reads against received left history of the welfare state as a labor conquest; connects to Frankfurter School debates over organized capitalism and to contemporary arguments that the New Deal stabilized rather than replaced capitalism. — connects to: Capitalist states enable capital reproduction rather than serving it functionally — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1669; Welfare states were created as revolution insurance, not capitalist benevolence — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1675; Capital and state influence each other multidirectionally, not one-way in the last instance. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1671 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Capital and state influence each other multidirectionally, not one-way in the last instance. #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1671
• Welfare states were created as revolution insurance, not capitalist benevolence #corroborates (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1675
• Decomposition of planning-state coalitions drove welfare’s cashification #expands (0.72) — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets, 375
• Financialization may erode the postwar capital-labor social pact #complicates (0.70) — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 142