ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the nature and origins of the pre-1996 US system of welfare assistance to single mothers. It shows that in contrast to a system based on the provision of universal public goods, such as that in France, the established US welfare policy generated popular political opposition to redistributive programs and support for individualist ideas of civic virtue. The chapter shows how the theories of justice in the work of John Rawls and Thomas Nagel fail to see this consequence and hence justify policies that are politically unstable. It highlights argues that the ide8a of neutrality in Rawls and later theorists lends itself to the judgment that many of the poor are undeserving of public assistance, and also prevents us from seeing a unifying class interest in the reduction of labor time as the fruit of collective action. The chapter suggests that a social democratic welfare system structured around universal public goods advances an oppositional vision of human ends.
