ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Dr Pabst argues that the prevailing system is based on a double impersonalism of commercial contract between strangers and individual entitlement in relation to the bureaucratic machine. The postliberal and Blue Labour alternative, which Dr Pabst’s paper defends, seeks to fuse contract with gift and to see solidarity as more primary than rights or contracts. In theory and practice, binding contract to gift means mutualising the market, pluralising the state and re-embedding both in the relations that constitute society – the principles and practices Pabst’s chapter explores. Pabst outlines a ‘middle’ position between an exclusively religious and a strictly secular perspective. This model, Pabst contends, is consistent with past theological engagements with civil society and the state, and more successful according to secular criteria: more economically secure, more equal and more conducive to civic participation.
