The welfare state originated as an insurance policy against revolution

Evidence

The least reflective of capital’s managers believe their own propaganda: the welfare state was a regrettable moral lapse, an indulgence. The thought that it was an insurance policy against revolution doesn’t compute anymore: why worry about revolution now? Reality is now more real than it ever was, established as a kind of granite, inertial certainty, from which the possibility of change is a priori excluded. Beneath the frenzied “simulation of productivity”, a sterile no-man’s land, which does not move, which remains forever icy and silent… The more intelligent of capital’s agents, however, must realise that this cannot continue for much longer now. Nihiliberalism is a smash and grab raid, a last hurrah before they helicopter off behind the compound walls, and let everything else descend into an Oryx and Crakestyle dystopia. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1993

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Fisher’s ‘capitalist realism’ thesis and the earlier passage in this same chapter on Bergsonism as late capitalism’s ideology; also connects to his essay on ‘the privatisation of the welfare state’. — connects to: Welfare states were created as revolution insurance, not capitalist benevolence — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1675; The welfare state functioned as revolution insurance now being forgotten. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1675; Welfare benefits once granted to masses become politically irreversible — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3826 (+1 more)
• SEED: An essay angle on the welfare state’s counterrevolutionary genealogy — that its dismantling signals capital’s confidence that organized resistance has been neutralized.

Broader Connections

• Welfare states were created as revolution insurance, not capitalist benevolence #corroborates (0.98) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1675
• Wealthy Italians pressed the state to showcase welfare as an antirevolutionary device #exemplifies (0.92) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 270
• The welfare state functioned as revolution insurance now being forgotten. #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1675
• Welfare benefits once granted to masses become politically irreversible #complicates (0.72) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3826