Abstract: This paper is premised on the assumption that the emergence of the welfare state in the earlier part of this century was a progressive state. It represented a non-Marxian alternative to class conflict and demonstrated the capacity of capitalism to reform itself. It showed that the state could be compassionate towards the popular classes in society. The paper, however, notes that contemporarily there are socio-political forces which seem intent to take us backwards; dismantle the welfare state in the name of the market. It notes the activities of the International Monetary Fund; the World Bank and some within the academia. The offensive against the welfare state seems to have intensified over since the break up of the Soviet Union and Marxist states in Africa as if to argue that they collapsed because of socialism. The paper argues that the problem in the USSR was not socialism but totalitarianism. It notes that there are still socialist/welfare states in Denmark and Sweden which may have been more socialist than the USSR. This triumph of the Lockean, limited government which has assaulted the welfare state in Africa could be the beginning of inter-class tensions, particularly given the fact that the economies of many African countries are debt-laden. The welfare state was a sign of progress; its progressive demise is evidence of reaction. However, not much can be done to reverse the trend until the popular classes are better organized to protect their interests.
A few years ago I wrote a paper on the fortunes of civil society in Uganda (Mujaju, 1995). I demonstrated that, at the time when the nationalist struggle was launched in Africa and Asia, the state was considered to be a compassionate one. In Britain in 1946, the Labour party had been voted into office and inaugurated the most massive programme which was designed to allay the fears of the vulnerable - the working - class. A number of private firms were taken over by the state; the health sector was reorganised; social security was put in place. Once again it was clear that Britain did not have to undergo a revolution for the rights of the weaker classes to be protected.
In the United States, an economic depression, in the 1930s, had threatened the future of capitalism by demonstrating the vulnerability of capitalism to economic fluctuations and internal contradictions such as those which Karl Marx had predicted. President Roosevelt emerged as the USA president and launched the New Deal which contained measures such as social security and the intervention of the state in the economy which, in ordinary circumstances, many would have condemned as being socialist. These measures, too, demonstrated that you do not have to go through a revolution for capitalism to be responsible. The state was flexible enough to accommodate change and, in the process, improved its stature.
These were the times when African nationalists as well as those in Asia were beginning to emerge and launch their nationalist struggle. Many of them, Nehru of India, Bandaranike of Cylon, Nkrumah of Ghana as well as Nasser of Egypt - all of them had no hesitation in assuming that the state which they were striving to control was a good vehicle for transforming society. Many of them never talked of civil society and the need to protect it. The state was seen as being a progressive force.
Ten years ago I wrote another paper, which was presented to the Eldoret Congress of OSSREA. It was about a public sector without a public philosophy and I focused on Uganda where the massive public sector had been characterised by corruption, an extreme case of the state institutions being privatised by management, workers as well as boards of directors. The end result was that the public enterprises and the state which owned them were going through a crisis of legitimacy and I accounted for this in terms of the absence of a public philosophy (Mujaju, 1990: 139-153). Over the years the situation worsened considerably to the extent that many came to the conclusion that the enterprises should formally be sold off. The Uganda Government followed suit and many of the enterprises have indeed been privatised. Elsewhere in Africa and beyond, experience has not been very different. The state has compromised itself and it no longer has the esteem which we have noted above. More and more people are talking of protecting civil society.
How can we account for this rather sudden turn about? How can the state which had, contrary to Leninism, shown that it had such a historic mission undermine itself to such an extent that people should now openly say that they should be protected from it? It is not possible for people to define the state as their enemy while at the same time regarding with favour, the welfare component. If the state is hated, so also will the welfare state suffer. What is happening today is that crucial social forces are agitating for the withdrawal of the state from many functions. The public sector as well as the welfare state are indeed on trial.
This paper is about the tribulations of the welfare state, its rise as well as its fall, and we shall attempt to answer the aforementioned questions. We shall define the welfare state as one which has the economic and institutional capacity to attend to the social-economic needs of its vulnerable people, by providing such facilities and services as social security, housing, health and education, such that, if the state did not provide them, the people would be at a major disadvantage.
We shall adopt a historical perspective and look at the forces which produced the welfare state and those that have sustained it. In this connection we shall refer to the events of the 1840s and 1890s. We shall probe the logic of the welfare state and note the contemporary offensive against it and will make an assessment of the role of the welfare state in history. It will be the contention of this paper that the welfare state was undertaken in Europe as a reaction to social and political pressure which was, in part, a result of greater strides in industry which led to the formation of socialist and communist political parties, and represented a non-Marxist alternative to political development. It will also be contended that the welfare state was also a response to the 1930 economic depression which had tended to confirm Marx's thesis that capitalism was susceptible to economic fluctuations and internal contradictions. Its demise in Africa will be attributable to poor organisation of the popular classes; abuse of office and corruption among the bureaucratic elites as well as the successful offensive of imperialism as demonstrated, in part, by the collapse of the Soviet Union and changes in the domestic politics of such countries as the U.S.A., Britain, Germany. We shall conclude the paper with the argument that the welfare state represented a progressive stage in the development of society, which was a result of years of struggle. Therefore, the current offensive against it is a retrogressive stage and could be seen as the biggest bonus for communism in contemporary society. We now turn to the genesis of the welfare state.
Before we can understand and appreciate the meaning and character of the welfare state, it is necessary to be clear about Locke's idea of the government or the common wealth as he sometimes calls it. This, in turn, is not possible without going into what he calls "a state of nature". Locke talks of the "state of nature" which is man's state prior to the constitution of what he repeatedly refers to as common government or civil (political) society.
According to him, the state of nature was a "state of perfect freedom" in which man was free to "order their actions and dispose of their possessions" as thought fit. In ordering their nations, men proceeded "without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man". It is also a "state of equality wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than the other". All men of the "same species and rank are born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties should also be equal one amongst another"1 without subordination or subjection.
Specifically on the issue of property which is of critical importance in Locke's formulation, he takes us to the biblical story of creation in which God, after having created the earth, the water and their habitation and after He had created Adam, He gave man dominion over the plants and the animals which inhabited it. Locke then stated:
As much land as man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much so his property. He, by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right to say everybody else has an equal title to it and therefore he cannot appropriate; he cannot enclose, without the consent of his fellow commoners, all mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all man kind commanded man also to labour and the penury of his condition required it of him (Locke, 1962:2).
The right to property is a crucial matter for John Jocke and he gives a firm indication that this is because it is sanctified from on high. It must be clear that his conception of the state of nature contrary to the idea of Thomas Hobbes, presents man very positively. Man was happy in Locke's state of nature unlike the conflict or the war which characterised Hobbes state of nature. So, man is under no compulsion to seek refuge in a contrivance which makes him surrender all his rights.
His concept of government or political (civil) society is much more positive. The biggest missing link in the state of nature is an authority which adjudicates conflicts. Men, therefore are equal, free and independent and they pursue their interests or property in consonance with the dictates of God. But since every man pursues those interests, is he not likely to conflict with the others? In case this happens, who settles the conflict? If every individual was a judge, in case of conflict, is it possible for him to be fair? Is it right that one should be a judge in a case in which one has a personal interest? According to Locke, this is the compelling reason for the establishment of a government; to establish an authority which will justly adjudicate (Locke, 1962:47). But what are the terms of establishing such an authority?
According to Locke, such an authority must be established with the consent of the people. The contract among the people is based on consent of the people. After all, having lived in the state of nature as free, equal and independent people, they cannot concede to the state power to which they do not consent. As he says: "The only way whereby any one divests of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with the other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living one amongst another" (Locke, 1992:52). So consent is critical.
But what does he consent to? He consents to the establishment of an authority, a government as already outlined. But it is not unconditional. First of all, it cannot be absolute or arbitrary power. Man had no authority to surrender to the state absolute power for the simple reason that he did not have it over himself in the state of nature. Therefore, it had to be an accountable government. It is an authority which is bound to dispense justice on the basis of promulgated laws. Therefore the power of this authority is very circumscribed and limited (Locke, 1962:71-72). Much of the individual's life is, therefore, to remain unregulated. According to Locke therefore:
... the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject... and this community may be said in this respect to be always the supreme power but not as considered under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take place till the government be dissolved (p. 78, emphasis original ).
Therefore the government or authority which Locke postulates is an accountable and limited government which leaves great areas of life in the hands of the citizen, and with possibilities of its dissolution if it does not live up to the expectations of the people. What is the relevance of all this to the subject matter currently under examination?
Our interest in John Locke's formulations is premised on the assumption that these formulations have formed the basis of the constitutions of many contemporary states. The constitution of the United States of America, which was written over 200 years ago, very much reflects the philosophy of Locke. That constitution protects the institution of private property. Laws exist against trespass as well as nationalisation except in rare cases where adequate compensation is mandatory. When the United States was formed, it had a small government, which left room for the individual American to do much on his own initiative. The same was the case in the countries of Europe. A small, limited government which assumed the efficacy of the citizen was the order of the day. The government was characterised by the existence of ministries of finance, foreign affairs, commerce and public works. Such ministries as health, education and housing did not exist because it was assumed that the individual citizen was capable of handling these responsibilities himself. This was particularly so because industrialisation was in its infancy.
With industrialisation, society became more complex. Prior to industrialisation there were two classes. The landed gentry and the aristocracy on the one hand and the peasantry or serfs on the other. The serfs or peasants were not a real problem to the state. They were provincial, living in the country-side where they depended on their own efforts. Even when they were squaters on the lands of the aristocracy, they cultivated the land and grew their own food. They were not particularly well regarded and they paid tribute, largely in kind, to the landlords. When industrialisation set in, all this changed.
New classes such as the middle class and the working class arrived on the economic and political scene. Unlike the peasants, these two classes very much mattered. The middle class were rivals for power with the aristocracy. While the aristocracy wielded ascriptive power, the middle class, such as the small business elites, as well as the professionals, wielded achieved power. Their place in society was not easily accepted, as migrations to the United States, Canada and Australia demonstrated. They were feared because they did not constitute a neutral force. They were capable of fighting for themselves. They asserted their own power. The European revolutions of the 1830s clearly demonstrate this (see for details Thomson, 1988, Part 3). It did not take long before the political systems of Britain, France, Italy and the Scandinavian countries reformed their political systems in such a way as to give the middle class the enjoyment of their power. There was no way in which the business elite, the lawyers and teachers could have remained in the ante-rooms of political power.
As society grew further, and industry expanded, the working class emerged. Initially greatly inconvenienced by low pay and long working hours, poor sanitation at the factory level as well as poor residential conditions, the working class became big and restive. Moreover much of industry was labour-intensive; there was no way industry could do without them. A combination of the restive working class and discontented middle class - particularly in view of the writings of Karl Marx which predicted doom for capitalism - produced a situation wherein the working class, having achieved economic power through the power of strike, also wielded political power (see Thomson, Part 5).
It was in conditions such as these that the Welfare State emerged. Britain, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries proved to be flexible to the demands of a combination of the working class and the middle class. The middle class and some of the workers were given the vote and the trade unions were legalised. Workmen's compensation, unemployment benefits, factory inspection and minimum wages, as well as the length of the working week, all these were on the drawing boards in the 1880s and beyond. The flexibility of those countries made it possible for them to avoid the radicalisation of the working class movement; as a result socialism which had been the root of these struggles, assumed a non-Marxist dimension, while in more rigid countries such as Russia, the working class movement was taken over by revolutionary Marxists and this led to the nullification of the reforms of 1905 and the success of the communist revolution of 1917.
Again, because of the concessions of Britain in the 1945-50 parliament, the Labour Party was able to inaugurate nationalisation of some industries, the establishment of a national health scheme, complete with a health insurance; and more spending on education, as well as the creation of social security. In the case of the United States of America, these measures had been precipitated by the economic depression of 1930. In order to establish the credibility of capitalism which had been threatened by the depression which did not appear to affect the socialist state of the Soviet Union, such measures as social security and deliberate state intervention in the economy which had been dubbed as socialist measures in the USA, were undertaken and capitalism was able to stabilise. A welfare state had emerged in the USA and this was taken further in the 1960s when medicare and medicaid programmes were instituted, and departments such as housing and health were established.
The traditional Lockean state was a laissez-faire one as we have seen. The government was only tolerated because of a basic preference for the independence of the individual. The government was small in size because its functions were limited. Under the welfare state arrangement, the functions of the state are expanded to cover different categories of people; its size, too, is bigger. Ministries such as health, education, social welfare and labour are added to the list. Therefore, the welfare state is bigger and more expensive.
The groups of people who are covered in this expanding function of the state are the poor and vulnerable ones. Therefore, this expansion of state responsibilities means that the size is bigger and there is a corresponding rise in the cost of maintaining it. Where does this money come from? It cannot be said that the money will come from the sectors thus incorporated, since they are poorer. If they were richer, there would be little need for the state to be involved in them. Therefore, the money has to be raised from taxation, the rich being taxed more highly in order to redress the imbalance. Higher taxation is therefore one mode of raising revenue. The other one is deficit financing which means living beyond one's means. Deficit financing in these circumstances goes along with the expansion of the money supply so that the country lives off perpetual borrowing from the banking system. Usually both these strategies are resorted too. This means that the richer portion of society may be outraged by higher taxation and they are usually very well placed to start a fight against it. The record of politics in the USA and Britain in the last 20 years makes this clear.
The welfare state does not only stop at the expanded role of the state, as indicated by the number of its departments and ministries. Of importance also are the public sectors. By these we mean the participation of the state in the productive and service sectors. In order to ensure that there is full employment it may become necessary for the state to set up productive enterprises whose raison d'être is not mainly maximising profit. Sometimes, because of this, it may become necessary for treasury to feed money into them in order to set the pace for further industrialization, so that the state invests in areas where the private sector may be reluctant to invest. The point is that the state may find it difficult to regulate the economy and give it the right push unless it is itself an owner of property or business (see for more details Mujaju, 1990).
In addition to these, the state will normally have a hand in owning the utilities such as roads/highways, railway, power supply, etc. Not many enterprises will want to invest in these. Since they are necessary for the economy, even conservative states own these firms. These, too, may need funding from the state in order to make them affordable for the people. Further still, governments which are compassionate, find it necessary to provide subsidies on some services which may otherwise be unaffordable. Imported food or commodities usually benefit from such subsidies, sometimes from political considerations. It is common knowledge, for example, that the United States Government has for long subsidised the price of wheat in the United States to ensure that the grain farmers are kept afloat. The question we raised earlier must again be posed now. Where does all this money come from? The answer we gave earlier must be reiterated. The people who bear the brunt of these taxes, or who feel that they can benefit if the state exited from some of these preoccupations, do not usually hide their anger at all these developments, as we shall demonstrate. The welfare state, as shown already is not without enemies. To this we now turn.
Before we discuss the offensive against the welfare state in Africa, we should examine the prevalence of the welfare state generally. We shall find that much of the 20th century has been a century of the welfare state. We have discussed the emergence of the welfare state in the USA as well as Britain. We can also refer to the most massive welfare state in the former Soviet Union, in a country where the Tsar had granted reforms, including the convening of the Duma (parliament) but who soon undid these reforms at his earliest opportunity (for a detailed discussion, see Thomson, 1988:376-427). Because of his inflexibility, he was swept aside during the 1917 revolution which was organised by the communist party.
In Africa, as already indicated, even the most conservative parties such as the Democratic Party in Uganda and the Democratic African Union of Kenya were not averse to the idea of the welfare state. We could refer to Tanzania, Zambia, Sudan and others where, the welfare state triumphed. The point is that after colonial Britain and capitalist America had embraced the idea of the welfare state which they implemented in this century, it was taken for granted that, on emerging to independence, the former colonies, too, would be captivated by the same. Almost everywhere health, housing, education, labour and social security were socialised while at the same time the public sector was on the rise.
Just as we can say that the welfare state was generally welcome almost everywhere, so we can also say that as we come to the close of the 20th century, the welfare state generally is on trial. In Europe and the United States in the 1980s, we have seen leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party and British Prime Minister in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, leader of the Republican Party and President of the USA in the 1980s, as well as Dr. Khol, leader of the Christian Democratic Party and Chancellor of Germany for part of the 1980s and 1990s. These leaders have sought to wind back the clock of history and assaulted the welfare state. They have campaigned against big government and what they call unlimited government spending, a big national debt, and the threat of inflation. They have particularly argued for a balanced budget by which all mean that the state has to withdraw from many of its welfare functions, as well to sale public sector enterprises. This is a clear return to the ideas of Locke which we examined earlier.
Within Africa, one has to assert that the offensive against the welfare state has not been waged by indigenous forces only. Here in Africa there is still a wide acceptance of the state as a major actor in the economy; a provider of welfare services and an animator generally; so hospitals and schools, housing and urban development and social security - all these are still valued and the state is expected to provide them. The public sector, too, is still valued. What has happened is that two major forces have exerted considerable pressure on African governments to follow the Lockean way.
The first forces are the multilateral and bilateral donor agencies to which African countries rush for economic assistance when they fall into financial trouble. The World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) top the list of forces against the welfare state. Their conditionalities for giving economic assistance to African countries are now very well known. They include a demand to reduce the budget deficit; withdrawal from the social-welfare sector by introducing cost-sharing in schools and hospitals; elimination of subsidies, if any, on essential commodities; devaluing the currency and reducing inflation and liberalizing the economy. These are dogmatically upheld by the donors and are conditions for the award by them of financial assistance.
But what has happened to African countries that places them in the condition of beggars? For a long time they were able to discharge their responsibilities in the social sector without resorting to these agencies and accepting these crippling conditions. This leads us to examine the second factor accounting for the decline of the welfare state. This is the terms of trade between Africa and the North.
Almost the whole of Africa is a producer of raw materials such as tea, cotton, coffee and sisal. There are also minerals such as copper in Zaire and Zambia. These commodities are exported in unprocessed form; there is no value added to them. These commodities are produced competitively and without relating the product to the needs of the international market. They are over-produced. Because the supply is greater than the demand this leads to the lowering of prices. Yet, African countries invest immensely in the production of these commodities. The result is that Africa and the rest of the third world are engaged in economic undertakings which make them incur major losses. This is accentuated by the fact that, although Africa produces these commodities, it does not consume them. Thus Africa is entirely dependent on the vagaries of the international market which produces all the manufactured goods we need, including the inputs in our agricultural production. To make matters worse, we lack the unity needed among producers to agree on a retention scheme, thus regulating supply to fit international demand.2 Africa's economy is, therefore, in a mess, not because of the welfare state and the sins of the public sector, but because it is not earning enough from its daily economic activities.
Because of the foregoing, African countries have been forced to have recourse to donor agencies which are controlled by the same countries which are responsible for the iniquitous world economy. In the process the welfare state is sacrificed. The offensive against the welfare state manifests itself also on another plane. This is from the men and women of letters who sympathise with conservative forces which stand to gain from the demise of the welfare state.
Sometime ago, I asked a Ugandan fellow academic who was very excited by the IMF/WB formulations as to what would be the role of the state if IMF/WB had their way in Africa. He answered that the state should confine itself to law and order and foreign affairs so that the rest would be taken up by the entrepreneur class. There are many who stand to gain from the misery of others.
The campaign against the welfare state among academics started a long time ago, although it is presently reaching its zenith. It started with such men as Hayek (1946:24-43) an economist who called economic planning Europe's road to serfdom. In a country of limited resources, there is nothing more important than planning because then one knows how to channel one's resources to priority areas. Hayek was, of course, offended by the centralised plans of the former Soviet Union which he called a threat to freedom. There are different types of plans; the fact that the Soviet Union preferred centralised plans does not reflect on all plans. Planning and welfare spending, were no doubt objectionable to Hayek because they challenged his ideological core but there can be no question that a welfare state stands to gain something from planning.
Henry Hazlitt wrote another provocative book which he called Man Versus the Welfare State. In it, the author is horrified "by the increase in government spending, an enormous increase in the burden of taxes, chronic deficits, and a constant loss in the buying power of the people's earnings and savings". He concluded the paragraph by saying that "social security has brought an ominous increase in social insecurity" (Hazlitt, 1971:2).
There is a great deal of fascination about privatisation which is a beneficiary of the offensive against the welfare state and the public sector. One author who reviewed this offensive noted that privatisation does not always lead to economic competition since in many cases it leads to monopolies which are often criticised by liberal economists (Aharoni, 74-75). Professor J. K. Galbraith notes that public enterprises are often criticized in the USA and beyond, where they are associated with socialism which has pejorative connotations in the USA, but in quite a number of countries in Europe where the word socialism is evocative (Galbraith, 1974: 281), they are appreciated. Another scholar who reviewed the debate about state-owned enterprises argued that "state owned enterprises have failed to deliver the expected results, not necessarily because the concept was poor, but because governments did not implement it well." According to him the state interfered in the operational work of these corporations instead of confining itself to giving the strategic guide-lines (Ramamurti:206-207). Like Hayek, William Simon keeps to this idea of freedom and argues that "the loss of personal freedom and dignity is too great a price to be paid in the expanding functions of the state." He also deprecates economic disruption through chronic deficits and expansion of the money supply (Simon, 12-13).
To some extent, the foregoing analyses will have shown why the welfare state was established. We need not, therefore, spend more time than is necessary on this section. The first point which we need to stress is that the great changes which were brought about by industrialisation created vulnerable classes. Industrialisation created a working class which was very vulnerable. The owners of the means of production were practising rabid, exploitative capitalism which sought to maximize profit. They tried to keep their expenditures as low as possible in order to earn high profits.
Moreover, the morality and responsibility on the part of industrialists had not been entrenched. So, children were employed, for long hours; mainstream labour was worse; there were no housing facilities for workers; there was no health insurance. The workers had no property; the only power they had was the power to withdraw labour. It is these conditions which Karl Marx used to predict that under mature capitalism, the poor would get poorer while the rich would get richer. This was the era of irresponsible capitalism and Marx was able to predict that capitalism would collapse because it was riddled with internal contradictions. A number of countries did not heed Marx's prophesy. But many countries, as already identified, concluded that there was no reason why they should please Marx through inaction.
One can, therefore, say that the establishment of the welfare state was a result of two things. One was compassion, through the realisation that true citizenship should be extended to the labouring and poor people. Secondly, there was pressure from the labouring masses which made the authorities conclude that realism dictated that action be taken. Compassion and realism made it necessary for the authorities to act. But there was also a third factor. This was the realisation that inaction could prove disastrous for the regimes, as the Tsar of Russia discovered in 1917. The welfare state can, therefore, be seen as the biggest force against Marxism in many countries of Europe. Although some were unhappy about the impending welfare state, many realised that it was a better alternative to a Marxist revolution.
Moreover, as democracy spread, particularly at the turn of the century in Europe and presently in the countries of Africa, certain functions were expected of the state if the attraction of revolutionary Marxism was to be neutralized. Every political party, even the conservative parties of Europe and America had to say something attractive to the popular classes in order to win their votes. In Africa now one of the problems the IMF and World Bank must face in their bid to reduce public spending and its associated complications is the fact that the people regard health, education and social security services to be their entitlement which must not be touched. For a long time both Kaunda of Zambia and Nyerere of Tanzania were locked in controversy with the IMF and the World Bank, largely because these two leaders were unwilling to trim their socialism and incur the wrath of the people. One reason why Museveni of Uganda is very popular with these agencies is that he has implemented these iniquitous policies without arousing the open wrath of the people. Disbanding of the welfare state now is not so easy. It is, for those who do not like it, prudent to maintain it.
With regard to the public sector, we have already seen why countries find it necessary to establish it. The World Bank and IMF would want quicker steps towards their liquidation. But in most countries of Africa the pace is slow because of the attractions of retaining the sector. Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and even Ghana are moving slowly in that direction; it is Uganda's case which has confounded observers. President Museveni, has amazed many with the enthusiasm he has shown in selling the public enterprises. For a confessed Marxist, Museveni's enthusiasm is hard to understand, but perhaps people should know that Museveni is essentially a military man who, during the May Presidential elections, intimidated the Ugandan voters by claiming that if he was not elected his army would intervene. This was when it appeared that his opponent, Dr. Paul Ssemogerere, might win the election. The people simply concluded that it was futile to elect Ssemogerere. Museveni is a military man to the core; that is the reason why he can ignore popular clamour. The public sector is an important addendum to the welfare state.
It must be stated that contemporary bureaucratic and political elites in Africa have contributed to the decline in public esteem of the welfare state and the public sector. These institutions have been privatised by these elites long before their governments decided to formally privatise or sell them. These institutions have suffered the most advanced haemorrhage ever known to man - corruption. So far as Uganda is concerned, I have gone into this experience in the paper cited earlier, focusing on the demise of the public sector philosophy. Modern elites, not only in Uganda but also elsewhere in Africa, have turned the service sector and the public sector into a heaven from which they derive private resources to become crafty entrepreneurs who will buy discredited welfare state and public sector enterprises at "reasonable prices". When this happens one cannot blame donors and even Museveni for calling for the formal selling of these enterprises.
By way of conclusion, let us direct our attention to the tribulations of the welfare state. When it was established mainly and progressively at the turn of the century, the welfare state opened political space and expanded economic opportunity to those who had never mattered. Let it also be remembered that there were intensive popular struggles in demand of the welfare state. A view seems now to have emerged that the welfare state no longer matters. The assault against it has been demonstrated and articulated. Do we agree that it no longer relevant?
About one thing we are very sure. The welfare state was an epoch-making development and represented a progressive stage in our century. However, one event seems to have undermined it. This is the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union as the first socialist country in the world, which rose to superpower status, was an example for many to emulate. With its fall, socialism was immediately on trial. My view is that socialism fell in the Soviet Union, not because of reasons intrinsic to it, but because socialism was pursued and maintained by force and totalitarian control.
There is probably more socialism in Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, etc. than there was in the Soviet Union, but these countries are small and inconsequential in world politics. As a result they lack ideological visibility. There is nothing really wrong with socialism that we can learn from the Soviet experience. The Soviet dictatorship downgraded socialism. The fact that communist political parties are now thriving in Russia and have won elections in Poland, let alone doing well electorally in Bulgaria and other former communist states, is sufficient evidence that people remember them with some nostalgia and are responding negatively to the new Lockean concepts of limited and small government.
Professor Galbraith has pointed to the obvious fact that socialism is regarded pejoratively in many western countries. Many in the west have sought to use the collapse of socialist states as a ground for spreading their hatred to the new countries, and it seems that they are succeeding. The former Marxist regimes in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe which was tending towards socialism, and Ethiopia have all abandoned Marxism as if to prove that socialism was defective. This does not change the fact that the welfare state, which represents the human side of socialism, was a landmark. The absurdities of Soviet politics should not divert our attention from that fact.
Speaking of the future fortunes of the welfare state one can say that the real danger to it comes from the fact that the popular classes are no longer effectively organised. In both the United States and Britain, and now in France, the working class and its allies in the middle class outnumber, the members of the Republican Party in the USA the Conservative Party in Britain and the Gaulist Party in France. Yet, they have allowed conservative leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Jacques Chirac to emerge. If they knew their historical mission, and knew that these leaders were threats to their interests, they could have voted for leaders of more persuasive inclinations.
The fact that socialist parties in Africa have collapsed like their master parties in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union proves that these parties were weak and not firm in their resolve to protect the weaker segments in their societies. Welfare states may be on trial, but with the experience of countries in Europe still intact, the world has not yet come to an end.
As the welfare state is on trial, Locke has been revived. The role of the state is looked at in very narrow terms. Ownership of property is beginning to dictate events. Led by Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, African leaders have put on their priority agenda the need to produce an indigenous entrepreneurial class. It is often forgotten that Denmark and Sweden, both social democratic countries which are running efficiently, also have an indigenous middle class which owns property. They are given every opportunity to thrive and public sector properties are sold to them "on reasonable terms" as they continue to privatise. The functions of the state are receding and cost-sharing is on the rise. They think that they can do away with the welfare state. Let me stress that the welfare state is not full-scale socialism, although it comes close to it. Let not the pejorative phobia of anti-socialism in the west make us hate a historical experience which saved many from squalor. The offensive against the welfare state is unprogressive because it winds back the clock of history.
The real challenges to the welfare state in Africa as well as in other parts of the Third World are the iniquitous terms of trade which arise from the contemporary world economy. These are formidable and they will continue as long as our economies are competitive and produce things we do not consume while the things we need are imported. On this basis we cannot develop or get out of the debt trap. There is an opportunity for us to engage in economic cooperation. South-South cooperation is one solution, supplemented by regional cooperation. The future is not entirely hopeless.
1. All quotations are from Locke (1980). See also Macpherson (1962, ch. 2).
2. President Museveni of Uganda about 5 years ago, in conjunction with the government of Brazil, negotiated a retention scheme for coffee which was later backed by the coffee producers so that over supply could be regulated. As a result of this, coffee prices soared.
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