The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror by Manfred B. Steger

Author:Manfred B. Steger [Steger, Manfred B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2008-07-15T03:07:00+00:00

I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment; though this need not exclude all manner of compromises and devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative. But beyond this no obvious case is made out for a system of State Socialism which would embrace most of the economic life of the community.65

His lifelong aversion to "state socialism" notwithstanding, Keynes offered a theoretical justification for a mixed economy that provided a powerful macroeconomic rationale for the ideological codifiers of mid-century welfarism in the First World. Put into practice most spectacularly in Britain by the postwar Labor government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, this innovative mixture of central planning, nationalization of key industries, and regulatory measures ushered in three decades of economic prosperity and political stability-the First World's Golden Age of "managed capitalism."66 During this period, employers were generally willing to pay relatively high wages as long as putting spending money into the hands of consumers did not eat too deeply into their profits or investments. In exchange for maintaining labor peace and rising levels of productivity, workers received higher wages and important social protections.67 Reaching the zenith of its popularity in the early 1960s, the modern welfare state offered its citizens unparalleled social security benefits "from cradle to grave," including universal health care, generous unemployment assistance, free or low-cost public education, and generous old-age pensions.

Indeed, the broad ideological appeal of welfarism went beyond the mere provision of social services by the state. T. H. Marshall, one of its most eloquent proponents, noted perceptively that the growth of social welfare had led to a significant expansion of conventional ideas of citizenship. Concepts of "civil" or "political rights" located at the core of liberal definitions had been complemented by the idea of "social rights." Indeed, citizenship in modern industrialized nations now included "the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in a society."68 Although the nation-state still constituted the primary conceptual and geographical container of postwar welfarism in the West, the nearly universal acceptance of Keynesian principles had reduced the importance of the national imaginary and its associated political belief systems-hence Bell's claim that ideology had come to an end.

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