ABSTRACT
The advantages of collaboration increasingly reveal themselves, but this is news that few have wanted to hear, given an antipathetic background culture. More diffuse than the socialist-feminism that traduces family care and solidarity is the view that autonomy and independence are vital and central to self-realisation. The deterministic model of individuals waiting to have their 'needs' met by experts and bureaucrats helped to overturn the post-war welfare state as a system of mutual insurance writ large, or a national extension of local solidarity and reciprocity. Insofar as social or welfare programmes are necessary, the neoliberal position has usually been that any support must be targeted to the needy, or the unfortunate few who cannot prosper under free market relations – although this has not been vigorously thought through. The transfers that individuals make between themselves within households could be regarded as the line of welfare in society, yet these are penalised through changes to the tax and benefits systems.
