Working people experienced the corporatist state as imposition rather than benefice

Evidence

Whether in the growing dole queues or in the waiting rooms of an overburdened National Health Service, or suffering the indignities of Social Security, the corporatist state is increasingly experienced by them not as a benefice but as a powerful bureaucratic imposition on “the people.” The state has been present to them, less as a welfare or redistributive agency, and more as the “state of monopoly capital.” And since Labour has foregrounded the requirements of monopoly capital above all others, what is it that can be said to be “false” in this consciousness? — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1119

Categorization

• QUESTION: Hall’s rhetorical question invites rethinking when popular criticism of the welfare state is genuinely valid rather than false consciousness.