The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism

The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism PDF Author: Walter Korpi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100072638X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
First published in 1978, The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism looks at the position of the working class in the Swedish pattern of welfare capitalism and compares it with other capitalist industrial countries. Beginning with an analysis of class, class conflict, power and social change in classical and modern social theory, Professor Korpi discusses the development of the Swedish labour movement and its strategies of class conflict. He focuses on the situation of the worker at the workplace and in the community, on the functioning of the labour union, on industrial conflict, and on the political views and standpoints of the workers. He also examines political developments in Sweden and discusses the prospects for a development towards economic democracy. A challenging and comprehensive study of Swedish social democracy in action, carried out by a Swede within a comparative frame of reference, the book presents an analysis which is of central relevance to all capitalist societies, especially when mass communist parties in Europe appear to be moving towards reformistic socialism. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, social class, economy and history.

The Working Class and Welfare

The Working Class and Welfare PDF Author: Francis Geoffrey Castles
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780868616612
Category : Asistencia pública - Nueva Zelanda
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description


The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism

The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism PDF Author: Walter Korpi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100072638X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 1978, The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism looks at the position of the working class in the Swedish pattern of welfare capitalism and compares it with other capitalist industrial countries. Beginning with an analysis of class, class conflict, power and social change in classical and modern social theory, Professor Korpi discusses the development of the Swedish labour movement and its strategies of class conflict. He focuses on the situation of the worker at the workplace and in the community, on the functioning of the labour union, on industrial conflict, and on the political views and standpoints of the workers. He also examines political developments in Sweden and discusses the prospects for a development towards economic democracy. A challenging and comprehensive study of Swedish social democracy in action, carried out by a Swede within a comparative frame of reference, the book presents an analysis which is of central relevance to all capitalist societies, especially when mass communist parties in Europe appear to be moving towards reformistic socialism. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, social class, economy and history.

Workers and Welfare

Workers and Welfare PDF Author: Michelle L. Dion
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973634
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
After the revolutionary period of 1910-1920, Mexico developed a number of social protection programs to support workers in public and private sectors and to establish safeguards for the poor and the aged. These included pensions, healthcare, and worker's compensation. The new welfare programs were the product of a complex interrelationship of corporate, labor, and political actors. In this unique dynamic, cross-class coalitions maintained both an authoritarian regime and social protection system for some seventy years, despite the ebb and flow of political and economic tides. By focusing on organized labor, and its powerful role in effecting institutional change, Workers and Welfare chronicles the development and evolution of Mexican social insurance institutions in the twentieth century. Beginning with the antecedents of social insurance and the adoption of pension programs for central government workers in 1925, Dion's analysis shows how the labor movement, up until the 1990s, was instrumental in expanding welfare programs, but has since become largely ineffective. Despite stepped-up efforts, labor has seen the retrenchment of many benefits. Meanwhile, Dion cites the debt crisis, neoliberal reform, and resulting changes in the labor market as all contributing to a rise in poverty. Today, Mexican welfare programs emphasize poverty alleviation, in a marked shift away from social insurance benefits for the working class.

The Working Class Majority

The Working Class Majority PDF Author: Michael Zweig
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487279
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The United States is not a middle class society. Michael Zweig shows that the majority of Americans are actually working class and argues that recognizing this fact is essential if that majority is to achieve political influence and social strength. "Class," Zweig writes, "is primarily a matter of power, not income." He goes beyond old formulations of class to explore ways in which class interacts with race and gender.Defining "working class" as those who have little control over the pace and content of their work and who do not supervise others, Zweig warns that by allowing this class to disappear into categories of middle class or consumers, we also allow those with the dominant power, capitalists, to vanish among the rich. Economic relations then appear as comparisons of income or lifestyle rather than as what they truly are contests of power, at work and in the larger society.Using personal interviews, solid research, and down-to-earth examples, Zweig looks at a number of important contemporary social problems: the growing inequality of income and wealth, welfare reform, globalization, the role of government, and the family values debate. He shows how, with class in mind, our understanding of these issues undergoes a radical shift.Believing that we must limit the power of capitalists to abuse workers, communities, and the environment, Zweig offers concrete ideas for the creation of a new working class politics in the United States."

Middle Class and Welfare State

Middle Class and Welfare State PDF Author: Marlon Barbehön
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000059707
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book examines the relationship between the middle class and the welfare state. Taking an interpretive approach which understands the middle class as a socially constructed category, it combines discourse analysis, welfare state theory, and interpretive policy analysis in an innovative way to investigate how the middle class becomes a meaningful object of public debates and policymaking. Comparing Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the book reconstructs the prevalent images and meanings of the middle class from each country’s public debates and tracks how the middle classes with their various meanings and characteristics are entangled with the identification of societal problems, the articulation of political demands, and the construction of welfare policies. Ultimately, it shows how the formation and consolidation of different welfare regimes can be interpreted as specific ways of solving the puzzle of how to incorporate the middle class in the construction of a welfare state consensus. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative welfare state research, policy analysis, political sociology, political theory, and European and comparative politics.

The Once and Future Worker

The Once and Future Worker PDF Author: Oren Cass
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641770155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
“[Cass’s] core principle—a culture of respect for work of all kinds—can help close the gap dividing the two Americas....” – William A. Galston, The Brookings Institution The American worker is in crisis. Wages have stagnated for more than a generation. Reliance on welfare programs has surged. Life expectancy is falling as substance abuse and obesity rates climb. These woes are not the inevitable result of irresistible global and technological forces. They are the direct consequence of a decades-long economic consensus that prioritized increasing consumption—regardless of the costs to American workers, their families, and their communities. Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency focused attention on the depth of the nation’s challenges, yet while everyone agrees something must change, the Left’s insistence on still more government spending and the Right’s faith in still more economic growth are recipes for repeating the mistakes of the past. In this groundbreaking re-evaluation of American society, economics, and public policy, Oren Cass challenges our basic assumptions about what prosperity means and where it comes from to reveal how we lost our way. The good news is that we can still turn things around—if the nation’s proverbial elites are willing to put the American worker’s interests first. Which is more important, pristine air quality, or well-paying jobs that support families? Unfettered access to the cheapest labor in the world, or renewed investment in the employment of Americans? Smoothing the path through college for the best students, or ensuring that every student acquires the skills to succeed in the modern economy? Cutting taxes, expanding the safety net, or adding money to low-wage paychecks? The renewal of work in America demands new answers to these questions. If we reinforce their vital role, workers supporting strong families and communities can provide the foundation for a thriving, self-sufficient society that offers opportunity to all.

The new working class

The new working class PDF Author: Ainsley, Claire
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447344197
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Recent events such as the Brexit vote and the 2017 general election result highlight the erosion of traditional class identities and the decoupling of class from political identity. The majority of people in the UK still identify as working class, yet no political party today can confidently articulate their interests. So who is now working class and how do political parties gain their support? Based on the opinions and voices of lower and middle income voters, this insightful book proposes what needs to be done to address the issues of the 'new working class'. Outlining the composition, values, and attitudes of the new working class, it provides practical recommendations for political parties to reconnect with the electorate and regain trust.

America's New Working Class

America's New Working Class PDF Author: Kathleen R. Arnold
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271048999
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Today’s political controversy over immigration highlights the plight of the working class in this country as perhaps no other issue has recently done. The political status of immigrants exposes the power dynamics of the “new working class,” which includes the former labor aristocracy, women, and people of color. This new working class suffers exploitation in advanced industrial countries as the social cost of capitalism’s success in a neoliberal and globalized political economy. Paradoxically, as borders become more open, they are also increasingly fortified, subjecting many workers to the suspension of law. In this book, Kathleen Arnold analyzes the role of the state’s “prerogative power” in creating and sustaining this condition of severe inequality for the most marginalized sectors of our population in the United States. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical literature from Locke to Marx and Agamben (whose notion of “bare life” features prominently in her construal of this as a “biopolitical” era), she focuses attention especially on the values of asceticism derived from the Protestant work ethic to explain how they function as ideological justification for the exercise of prerogative power by the state. As a counter to this repressive set of values, she develops the notion of “authentic love” borrowed from Simone de Beauvoir as a possible approach for dealing with the complex issues of exploitation in liberal democracy today.

Labor's Love Lost

Labor's Love Lost PDF Author: Andrew J. Cherlin
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610448448
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Two generations ago, young men and women with only a high-school degree would have entered the plentiful industrial occupations which then sustained the middle-class ideal of a male-breadwinner family. Such jobs have all but vanished over the past forty years, and in their absence ever-growing numbers of young adults now hold precarious, low-paid jobs with few fringe benefits. Facing such insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. This has created a large marriage gap between them and their more affluent, college-educated peers. In Labor’s Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew Cherlin offers a new historical assessment of the rise and fall of working-class families in America, demonstrating how momentous social and economic transformations have contributed to the collapse of this once-stable social class and what this seismic cultural shift means for the nation’s future. Drawing from more than a hundred years of census data, Cherlin documents how today’s marriage gap mirrors that of the Gilded Age of the late-nineteenth century, a time of high inequality much like our own. Cherlin demonstrates that the widespread prosperity of working-class families in the mid-twentieth century, when both income inequality and the marriage gap were low, is the true outlier in the history of the American family. In fact, changes in the economy, culture, and family formation in recent decades have been so great that Cherlin suggests that the working-class family pattern has largely disappeared. Labor's Love Lost shows that the primary problem of the fall of the working-class family from its mid-twentieth century peak is not that the male-breadwinner family has declined, but that nothing stable has replaced it. The breakdown of a stable family structure has serious consequences for low-income families, particularly for children, many of whom underperform in school, thereby reducing their future employment prospects and perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of economic disadvantage. To address this disparity, Cherlin recommends policies to foster educational opportunities for children and adolescents from disadvantaged families. He also stresses the need for labor market interventions, such as subsidizing low wages through tax credits and raising the minimum wage. Labor's Love Lost provides a compelling analysis of the historical dynamics and ramifications of the growing number of young adults disconnected from steady, decent-paying jobs and from marriage. Cherlin’s investigation of today’s “would-be working class” shines a much-needed spotlight on the struggling middle of our society in today’s new Gilded Age.

White Working Class

White Working Class PDF Author: Joan C. Williams
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633693791
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017 Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness. White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.