Workers and the Beginnings of Welfare State-Building in Argentina and South Africa
Journal Article
2007
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African Studies
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Taylor & Francis
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
The rapid commodification of labour and needs under capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generated profound social as well as economic and political changes and conflicts. In response to these, and in part to changing inter-‘national’ relations, ‘modern’ states were built, with war-dominated states being transformed into states that were involved in a myriad ways in the economic and social lives of their subjects or (increasingly) citizens. Repression was one possible response to the ‘social question’, but in all industrialising societies states sought, sooner or later, to resort less to repression and more to state regulation of the employment relationship and state participation in paying a ‘social wage’. Workers became embedded in new relationships with the state and assumed new identities, either as citizens or as client-subjects (depending on the degree of democracy).
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Reference:
Seekings, J. (2007). Workers and the Beginnings of Welfare State-Building in Argentina and South Africa 1. African Studies, 66(2-3), 253-272.