ABSTRACT
Neither the appearance of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) in 1935 nor its dramatic transformation sixty years later into the program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (e.g., welfare reform) were accidental. Both developments are best understood as part of historically specific strategies adopted by the powers-that-be to manage crises in the workings of the economy that disrupted the conditions necessary for economic profitability and political stability. The most recent crises of profitability occurred in the 1930s and the 1970s. The collapse of the economy in the 1930s and the crisis of capital formation in the mid-1970s signaled that the policies in place for the prior forty to fifty years-including social welfare policies-had unraveled. They no longer worked for the elite and had to be “reformed.”
