Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
I have borrowed this term from Richard Crossman. When he wrote his contribution to the New Fabian Essays in 1952 he took stock of the present state of socialism, as the original Fabians had done in 1889. He hoped to discover ‘a philosophy of Socialism’ with life in it. But he failed. An obvious place to look for it was in the Welfare State, as it had emerged from the hands of the post-war Labour government. But the Welfare State, he decided, was not socialist; it was ‘the climax of a long process, in the course of which capitalism had been civilised and to a large extent reconciled with democracy’. Later on he referred to the product of this process as ‘welfare capitalism’. He ought to have called it ‘democratic-welfare-capitalism’ because, as I shall argue, democracy deserves to have a position as a third party of independent status, not just to be taken for granted.
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