Welfare Collectivism: Beyond Selective Insurance

Abstract

What came to be described as the postwar welfare state emerged from a number of diverse ideological sources. We might identify one-nation conservatives, social liberals, social democrats and democratic socialists as all having a substantial input into the welfare institutions which grew and developed throughout the twentieth century. Even if we leave aside the socialistic influences (see Chapter 7) we are still left with a range of political ideas which, stretching across the ideological Centre, are notoriously difficult to condense under one convenient heading. The social policy literature is strewn with attempts to devise a snappy headline: industrialism (Titmuss, 1974), reluctant collectivism (George and Wilding, 1976), institutionalism (Mishra, 1977), neo-mercantile collectivism (Pinker, 1979), reformism (Taylor-Gooby and Dale, 1981) and the middle way (George and Wilding, 1994) to name but a few. My own preference is for the heading which forms part of this chapter’s title: welfare collectivism, a term which encompasses the views of those such as Macmillan, Keynes, Beveridge and Butler, with a fair amount of influence spilling across from social democrats like Crosland.