HERE AND NOW
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characteristic error of its apologists that they write about the reality
as
if
it
were in fact a good deal closer than it is to the model.) But
this point of perfection cannot be reached, if only because the wel–
fare state appears within a given historical context, so that it must
always be complicated by the accumulation of problems provided by
a capitalist economy and a specific national past; complicated, further,
by concurrent international conflicts which, as we now see, can cru–
cially affect and distort its formation; and complicated, as well, by
a series of pressures, ranging from status ambition to moral idealism,
which it is not, as a society, well equipped to handle.
Within certain limits having to do with basic relations of power
and production, the welfare state remains open to varying socio–
political contents, since it is itself the visible evidence of a long and
continuing struggle among classes and groups for greater shares in
the social product. That the welfare state exists at all is due not mere–
ly to autonomous processes within the economy, or enlightened self–
interest on the part of dominant classes or moral idealism which over
decades has stirred segments of the population into conscience; no,
the welfare state is primarily the result of social struggle on the part
of the labor movement.
If
the working class has not fulfilled the
"historic tasks" assigned to it by Marxism and if it shows, at least in
the advanced industrial countries, no sign of revolutionary initiative,
it has nevertheless significantly modified the nature and softened the
cruelties of capitalist society. The surrender of the Marxist revolu–
tionary perspective should by no means be equated with the view
that there will not or need not be major social change.
In a curious way - the analogy need not be stressed - the wel–
fare state has served a function similar to that of Communism in the
East. I do not suggest an equivalence in value, since for myself, as a
socialist, there can be no question that it is immensely more desirable
to live in a society that allows political freedom and thereby organized
struggle and independent class action. Yet, from a certain long-range
perspective, one could say that both the welfare state and the Com–
munist societies have had the effect of raising the historical expecta–
tions of millions of people, even while offering radically different kinds
of satisfaction and sharing in common failures. Both have enabled
previously mute segments of society to feel that the state ought to
act in their behalf and that perhaps they have a role in history as
