Social Safety Net

The social safety net is one of the key hallmarks of a democratic-capitalist society (respect for the rule of law, human rights, civil rights, etc., being among others). While it serves as a kind of “insurance policy” for the capitalist system against the possibility of ordinary class-struggles (e.g. trade-union activity) spiraling out of control into revolutionary upheavals that would cripple the system or destroy it altogether, it is created by means of class-struggle. That is, it involves the working classes demanding the creation and maintenance of the social safety net against the wishes of the capitalist class, which, for the most part, is opposed to the social safety net because it views it as a burden on society not only because the social safety net requires tax-payer financing but also because it believes, typically, that it is an undeserved “give-away” that encourages working class indolence. In other words, there is a profound irony here in that even though the capitalist system as a whole benefits from the existence of a social safety net, it is instituted at the behest of the working classes (by means of their struggles) and not the capitalist class itself. In capitalist-democracies, such as this one, the social safety net is always one of the main items of agenda in all national elections; though this may not necessarily be obvious to the working classes—especially that large section that invariably falls victim to that powerful weapon of propaganda that the capitalist class has so masterfully learned to use by means of its ownership of the mass media and the deployment of think tanks: the subjectification of working class objective interests and its obverse (objectification of subjective interests).

So, what exactly is a social safety net? It is wages, both monetary and in kind, paid out to the public by society—hence it’s a form of public wages—that come out of taxes paid by the citizenry in order to ensure that the weak and the vulnerable (the young, the old, the disabled, the sick, the unemployed, the poor, and so on) are protected to some extent from the negative (predatory) consequences of capitalism that undermine the overall quality of life of the citizenry—including protection from utter destitution. As you can guess, the term comes from the fact that it is analogous to the safety net that hangs below a high-wire act in, say, a circus. However, there is another irony here: many of the benefic

iaries of the social safety net, today, do not appear to comprehend this fact. The social safety net, therefore, is not a charity, as conservatives would like you to believe; rather it is a mechanism for ameliorating (albeit in the mildest way) the socially deleterious consequences of that axiom of capitalism: “profits before people.” Consider this: it is not a coincidence that in every country in the world today—repeat, every country—where political chaos and mayhem reigns, there is an absence of either any kind of a social safety net or a social safety net that only exists, for the most part, on paper; that is, it does not work in practice for a number of reasons, chief among them being corruption and the absence of the rule of law.

Taking the example of the United States, the key components of the social safety net (which for the most part has been, for obvious reasons, the handiwork of Democrats, not Republicans)—depending upon which state you reside in (some states have weaker social safety-nets than others, especially those in the South)—include:

• the minimum wage;

• social security; • food stamps; • tax-payer-funded education (schools, colleges, etc.); • tax-payer-subsidized transportation services (rail, subway, buses, etc.); • unemployment insurance;

• disability insurance,

• Medicare;

• Medicaid;

• personal bankruptcy;

• welfare;

• tuition assistance;

• Head Start program;

• Veterans Affairs healthcare system;

• public libraries; and so on.

It should not be surprising that the social safety net is always—repeat, always—among the key permanent elements of class struggles in any capitalist democracy. (No folks; prisons are not part of the social safety net.) Incidentally, a social safety net also exists for the bourgeoisie (even though they don’t need one); though, of course, it’s never portrayed as such. What are some of the elements of the social safety net for the bourgeoisie? They include: financial bail-outs; tax-breaks; bonuses; stock options; so-called “right-to-work” (anti-collective bargaining) legislation; and so on. See also Bourgeoisie; Class-struggle; Democracy; Public Wages.