Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 18:38:03 -0400
Subject: Re: M-I: Yesterday's Welfare Deadbeats Given an Unexpected 
From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant)


Today's New York Times article on the attempts by government officials
to partially destigmatize welfare recipients that is to reverse stigmas
that these very same officials and politicians themselves had  
strenuously worked to create in the first place can be understood
in terms of the classic analysis of the functions of welfare systems
written by Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward in *Regulating
the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare*  (NY: Random House, 1971).

Their argument can be summarized in  the following quote:

	The key to an understanding of relief-giving is in the functions
	it serves for the larger economic and political order, for relief
is
	a secondary and supportive institution.  Historical evidence
	suggests that relief arrangements are initiated or expanded
during 
	the occasional outbreaks of civil disorder produced by
	mass unemployment, and are then abolished or contracted
	when political stability is restored...[E]xpansive relief
policies
	are designed to mute civil disorder, and restrictive ones
	to reinforce work norms.  In  other words, relief policies are
	cyclical-liberal or restrictive depending on the problems of
	regulation in the larger society with which government must
	contend.

Welfare policies can be thought of as a tool by which the government
attempts
to regulate what James O'Connor calls the 'surplus population' which is
generated by the normal functioning of the capitalist economy.  During
the
1960's and 1970's US welfare policies were in expansive phase in
response to the social unrest of that period.  Since the 1960's were
also a period of unprecedented prosperity it was possible for
the government to expand welfare (in conformity with the legitimation
function of the state) without impeding capital accumulation.  From the
1970's on though it became increasingly apparent that the state could
not carry out its legitimation function (through expansive social welfare
policies) without running into a contradiction with its other function
of ensuring conditions for continued capital accumulation.  Since the
1980's welfare policies have become increasingly restrictive culminating
in last year's welfare reform legislation.  During periods of welfare
expansion the main priority of the state is to calm social unrest even if
this means pulling people out of the labor market.  Hence, the 
stigmatization of welfare recipients is functional for maintaining work
norms  the working class.  Now that government at both the
federal and state levels is committed to deliberately restrictive
policies the main priority is to push recipients back into the
labor market.  At this point the stigmatization of welfare recipients
is no longer seen as functional since this may deter employers
from hiring recipients and impede the objective of pushing recipients
back into the labor market.

			James F.


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