ABSTRACT
The rise of the welfare state may be seen as introducing a middle alternative between those who recommended the moralization of the people and those who advocated class struggle. The former and latter occupy symmetrical positions: the forbearance of persons of means toward the suffering, on the one side, and the struggle of the exploited against the exploiters, on the other. These are symmetrical because there is nothing in common between them, nothing at all negotiable between these polar extremes. By way of contrast, the welfare or “social state,” if we may call it that, began its trajectory when the notables ceased to dominate without sharing their wealth, and when the people failed to resolve the social question on their own terms. A realm of compromise was opened that gave a new meaning to the “social.” This was neither simply to mediate the various conflicts of interest by social management, nor to overthrow society itself by revolutionary violence, but rather to negotiate compromises between the two different positions. That is, both to transcend the moralism of the philanthropists and temper the socialism of the “levelers.”
