Liberal Economists and the British Welfare State: from Beveridge to the New Right (original) (raw)

The chapter explores the relationship between liberal economists and the welfare state in three ways. First I look at the liberals whom Hayek associated with collectivism in the 1940s, Beveridge and Keynes, and ask how different their conceptions of the welfare state were from his. The I look at liberal critiques of different aspects of the welfare state: income support, the National Health Service, education, housing and employment policy. Finally I offer brief observations on the impact of the New Right on the welfare state in the 1980s.

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Neoliberal Economists and the British Welfare State 1942 1975

Liberal economists' attitudes towards the welfare state are examined to see how clearly neoliberalism can be distinguished from other forms of liberalism. Three questions are asked. First, how could Friedrich Hayek believe he could accommodate elements of the welfare state agenda set by William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes into his thinking? Second, why did Hayek become increasingly critical of the welfare state? Third, how far did Lionel Robbins, John Jewkes and Alan Peacock agree with him? All three might be regarded as neoliberals according to the litmus test set by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehve, that is membership of the Mont Pèlerin Society or a think tank associated with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Yet Robbins, Jewkes and Peacock are on a spectrum between Mirowski's definition of neoliberalism as a belief that freedom is to be found in the unfettered market, and classical and democratic liberals' belief that people have to be nurtured to become effective citizens and have to be protected from the market's disruptive effects. It is suggested that a nuanced approach is required in explaining why liberal economists came to believe the welfare state should make more use of markets and pricing systems for registering preferences and apportioning resources.

Creating the Welfare State in Britain, 1945–1960

Journal of Social Policy, 1996

ABSTRACTPolitical consensus on the scope and structure of the welfare state in post-war Britain has been much overstated. The Labour governments (1945–51), committed to universalism and a planned economy, gave state welfare a central role in guaranteeing ‘fair shares for all’ and used it to help secure union co-operation over wage restraint. The Conservative governments (1951–64), committed to the restoration of ‘sound finance’, abandoned these objectives and attacked components of the welfare state designed to control prices and mediate demands for higher wages. The author concludes that, for comparative social policy studies to be effective, differing frameworks of state welfare have to be more exactly defined.

Father of the welfare state? Beveridge and the emergence of the welfare state

William Beveridge is usually considered the “father of the welfare state”, thanks to the 1942 Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services he authored for the British Government. In this extraordinarily detailed and argued document, Beveridge draws the architecture of a complete welfare state based on a revolutionary approach: universalism. Every citizens receive coverage for a set of social risks, as a right based on contributions paid by everyone. Universal social insurance, universal health care and public commitment to full employment are the three pillars of the new welfare state proposed by Beveridge. In the first part, the paper discusses the intellectual environment and the historical contingencies that favoured the elaboration of the Report, and outlines the architecture of the new public approach to welfare. In the second part of the paper the impact of the Beveridge Report on post-war British welfare legislation is analysed. Finally some reflections on its value for current welfare reform are proposed.

'From Beveridge to Turner: Laissez-Faire to Neoliberalism', Capital and Class, 34(2), 2010: 163-180.

2010

Current attacks on pensions can be seen as part of the neoliberal project to undermine welfare provision; but this paper argues that such attacks are nothing new. A historical comparison shows that many of the commonly held assumptions and arguments against pension provision are mistaken, and in some cases, highly misleading, with discourses or ideologies first touted in the 1940s being reused in the present period. This paper identifies those arguments that were misleading or false in the past, thus allowing us to see through them in their current forms.

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