RADICAL QUESTIONS
185
or could
be
such a criticism. To what order of problems would it
address itself?
The Function of Criticism in the Welfare State
The welfare state preserves the essential character of capitalist
economy, in that the interplay of private or corporate owners in the
free market remains dominant; but
it
modifies the workings of that
economy, in that the powers of free disposal by property owners are
regulated and controlled by political organs. A more detailed descrip–
tion of the welfare state as a static "model" is provided by Henry
Pachter:
The welfare state is a capitalistic economy which largely depends
on the free market but in which the countervailing powers
have been politicized and are consciously employed to balance
the economy,
to
develop the national resources or to pursue
fixed goals of social policy. . . . The fully developed welfare
state has at its disposal a wide range of economic instruments,
classical as well as Keynesian and statist.... The welfare state
may achieve techniques of industry-wide planning, price-fixing
and over-all control of development, but though it will na–
tionalize the coal industry in France and England, erect a TVA
in the United States and build a government steel mill for
India, it stops short of expropriation. On the contrary, its
proclaimed
aim
is to preserve the structure of property and to
protect the formation of a free market. Whatever expropriat–
ing is to be done must come through the free play of the
market, as is being done, e.g. in our farm economy despite
price supports. The basic relationships of buyer and seller, em–
ployer and employee, owner and non-owner are no different
from those prevailing under pure capitalism, but they are sup–
plemented by state interference in two important areas: where
classical capitalism is indifferent to the distribution of income,
the welfare state at least tries to make income differentials less
steep; also, whereas under pure capitalism the development of
resources is but an accidental by-product of the profit incentive,
the welfare state sets itself definite goals of developing public
and private facilities....
. . . We should not be misled by its efforts to plan, regulate and
control production, to redistribute income and to curb the un-
