ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two parallel paradoxes associated with the theme (Westergaard, 1978; 1980a; 1980b). The first paradox is familiar, though no less significant for this. It is grafted as it has been onto capitalist modes of resource allocation, public provision for welfare in western countries lacks anchorage in any such conception of distributive justice as its ostensible direction to meeting human needs implies. The second paradox concerns critique of welfare policy from the radical left. Such critique has forcefully identified limits set to public provision by its capitalist context; yet the critique has itself been too rarely buttressed by express formulation of a distributive ethic. Of course capitalist practice and ideology prescribe working rules for distribution; and these indeed give class structure much of its shape. The logic is strangely at odds with the thrust of Marxist class analysis, whatever may be read into the fine print of Marx's writings.
