PARADED as amongst the greatest achievements of ‘advanced’ capitalist countries in the post-World War II period, the welfare state epitomised an era of widespread social prosperity. The mass of people in Western Europe, North America, and Australasia was largely guaranteed public education, healthcare, water, electricity, and other material needs. Working-age populations either found work in bustling manufacturing industries or received significant unemployment benefits. The anti-communist US ideologue, Walt Rostow, boasted that the ‘West’ had successfully entered the age of high mass consumption.

Today, as mass protests rock France, the welfare state can officially be pronounced dead. The convulsions were triggered by high school and university students demanding accountability for the rapidly deteriorating and underfunded education sector. The demise extends to all spheres of life, and to all parts of the so-called developed world.

The welfare state itself was not a gift from above but a compulsion forced upon ruling classes of Western countries petrified of working-class populations at home and colonised people demanding self-rule in Asia and Africa. The fear was that the masses would be taken in by the irrepressible........

© Dawn