in Esperanto
Chapter 5: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY -- WELFARE
A communist society is essentially a welfare society in which everyone can live without worrying about food, clothing, housing, medical care, or nursing care. How is this possible?
1. Welfare system without any financial resources is not a utopian policy.
1.1. Contradictions of the Welfare State
Let us first confirm that so-called welfare is by no means a monopoly of communism, but rather an implication of preventing impoverishment of the working class within the framework of capitalism, as in the often idealized Nordic countries. As discussed in Chapter 1, it was also a form of capitalism with heavy makeup.
However, such capitalist welfare has one decisive limit. It derives from the fact that the bearer of welfare is the state - the welfare state. The state depends on tax revenue for its welfare financial resources. In other words, most of the welfare financial resources depend on the income of wage workers, that is, wage serfs. It was because wage serfs are almost tax serfs.
Even so, during the period of rapid growth and accumulation, when the rate of wage growth is high, national tax revenues will increase, there will be a surplus to implement stable welfare policies and raise the living standards of wage-earners. After all, it's just a de facto tax refund service. The golden age of the idealized "high welfare state" in Northern Europe was the period of rapid growth and accumulation until the middle of the 1970s, or the 1980s at the longest.
Eventually, with the oil crisis, the golden "good old days" ended in the advanced capitalist countries, and as we entered an era of slowing growth and global competition, wage income for workers stagnated and the nation began to fall short of tax revenues. Then, the welfare state begins to shake due to the intervention of the “small government” dogma derived from neo-liberalism = capital supremacism.
In this way, a capitalist welfare state has the contradiction that it thrives when the masses benefit from economic growth and capital accumulation and do not need welfare so much, and comes to a standstill when the masses desperately need welfare in times of low growth and economic crisis.
The necessity of rebuilding the welfare state is sometimes called out, but the wall of financial resources is thick. A tax increase is inevitable, but in such a case, the capitalist nation knows how to shift the burden onto labor rather than capital, so rather than raising the corporate tax, it would start raising the consumption tax for the common people. It is mandatory. If the government were to run into a fiscal deficit that could not be covered by such tax hikes, it would not only face the crisis of rebuilding the welfare state, but also the survival of the state itself.
1.2. Two types of "welfare society"
The United States has refused to accept the concept of a welfare state because of its ideology that emphasizes individual freedom. For this reason, when the Roosevelt administration introduced the social security system in the 1930s, facing the Great Depression, it came to be called the New Deal policy, with the implication of revising the social contract of the people.
However, the welfare state is a taboo in the United States, and even after the implementation of the New Deal policy, the capitalist self-help principle has not changed. On the other hand, many of the welfare services are provided by private volunteer groups and profit-making welfare organizations based on the spirit of mutual assistance, making up for the lack of welfare services provided by the state.
In that respect, it can be said that the United States, which rejects the very concept of a welfare state and is based on the principle of self-help, is practicing a kind of communist welfare centered on mutual assistance by the private sector.
However, it is only an external approximation, and its essence is, of course, different from communism. Private welfare in the United States is basically nothing more than the practice of social capitalism, which entrusts welfare services to wealthy people's donations and profit-making enterprises.
On the other hand, it is logically natural that the welfare of a communist society where the state is abolished is not centered on the state, nor is it entirely tossed to voluntary or commercial welfare of the private sector. It will center on a welfare society in the true sense of the word.
Specifically, the commune, which plays a central role in administration related to daily life, and the regional area as an intermediate municipality, which serves as a base for regional medical care, will work together to provide services as the forefront of welfare. In that respect, communist welfare has a strong character of public welfare, but it does not mean that all private welfare will be publicly requisitioned.
In a communist society, all private welfare organizations and private hospitals are refined into unpaid volunteer organizations. This is the inevitable result of the abolition of the wage labor system in a communist society. These private volunteer organizations are registered with communes or regional areas, and under their supervision, they will provide their own unique services free of charge.
1.3. Completely free welfare
It may invite skepticism about whether advanced welfare services can be realized by relying on volunteers. However, isn't welfare originally based on the spirit of volunteerism?
However, there may be some truth to the concern that if even highly skilled professionals such as medical doctors become unpaid volunteers, the number of aspiring doctors will drop sharply, leading to a decisive shortage of MDs.
Indeed, it is possible that today's MDs are attracted by their high income and attract many applicants, but is this the true nature of the profession? It is difficult to understand under capitalism, where even many non-commercial functions have become quasi-merchant based on profit-oriented, but MDs are originally supposed to be public and humanitarian functions specializing in the treatment and prevention of diseases.
This is related to education, which is the subject of the next chapter. In a communist society, a medical education system will be introduced in which those who have a high awareness of such public functions can become MDs.
In any case, communist welfare, whether public or private, is strongly characterized as a system of mutual assistance supported by gratuitousness because of money system. But its greatest strength lies in the fact that it is to be released from the unstable element of financial resources, which means all welfare entities will be able to fully provide truly necessary services without worrying about money in a communist society.
