Welfare State: Social Rights & Economic Growth
The Welfare State and Economic Intervention
This technique does not always work properly because it is not compulsory and thus, contradictory to the free market view. Another instrument is nationalization, which means public ownership and management of basic industries. This meant that such industries had to avoid competition and the profit motive and make better use of resources. All countries carried out nationalization of these sectors and others, such as atomic research. Resources that are natural monopolies should not be privately owned. Rather than ideological reasons, nationalizations were due to the need to embrace technology industries with inadequate and poor profitability. There were general political and economic reasons for the nationalizations, which were quite complex. In any case, nationalizations and the existence of a broad sector of public finances are not an essential element of the welfare state.
Changes in approaches made after World War II showed that they could achieve previously unknown growth rates. It also showed a direct relationship between economic growth and the growth of social protection. The climate changes also generated substantial progress in the development and use of technology, social practices, and in the family. The problems are monopolization, non-productive capital investment, the lack of efficiency attributed to capitalism, its inability to prevent crises, and the hugely unequal and unjust distribution of wealth and income.
The State is not only an instrument of domination of a particular social class but a structure linked to the capitalist mode of production.
Despite the structural state economy, the state has a range within that allows different policies depending on the trends that are activated in each state and at every moment. What characterizes the welfare state is the use of state power to modify the reproduction of the workforce and to keep the non-working population in capitalist societies.
Social Rights and Expansion of the Welfare State
The labor movement until World War I was an opposition movement. Its victory in Russia was reflected in the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Weimar Constitution and other legislation included a broad social element, but neither survived. The labor movement was divided into communist and socialist factions. After the end of World War II, democracies asserted a legal and political formula that could be adapted to the changing needs of technological, social, and economic development.
The rule of law becomes a social state of law to safeguard political democracy. It had to incorporate the social dimension in dealing with economic crises and intervene to maintain the running of the economy. Economic and social policy should unite to guarantee subsistence.
The Constitutions tried merging the rule of law and the social state. According to Forsthoff, the rule of law presupposes a high degree of formalization. These are about the separation of powers, the concept of law, the principle of legality of administration, and the independence of the courts. They separate the individual from the State.