POLI 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Decommodification, Authoritarianism, Social Stratification
30 Mar 2017
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If you are impoverished in a capital society, you are outside society. Europe has used welfare policies (pension, employment, insurance, health care, child care, etc. ) to undo inequality & class division, secure quality of life. Post-war -> welfare + democracy = best way to tackled new inequalities. Welfare system decommodifies labour and establishes social citizenship. If they fail in the long run, people will start to look elsewhere (i. e. communism, authoritarianism) In a capitalist system, everything is for sale including your labour. This clashes with the idea that we have social rights (we"re not just working machines) Employers once did not care about one"s life outside (or inside) the factory. Everybody (not just aristocracy) should have some leisure time. People need to be less tied to the market economy. Citizens wholly dependent on capitalism are not citizens. Social rights is more comprehensive, involving quality of life.
