The Welfare State: from the Imperfect Present to the Accomplished Future (Experience of Critical Reflection)

Abstract

Social state appears in the conditions of capitalism in order to smooth class contradictions and support the poor. The aim of the study is to substantiate the cognitive and design capabilities of the reflexive – critical approach to the understanding of the state as an ideal and reality. The author argues that social is not only the state that protects the interests of people in difficult situations, but also that seeks to maintain a balance between different groups, working towards national harmony and creating equitable conditions for the free development of each person, regardless of his social affiliation.
The article gives the substantiation of the critical theory as a tool for the analysis of the social state. It is presented by the author as a form of theoretical self-reflection, a kind of revolutionary practice, research activities (analytical modeling) and design. The last two forms are associated with the construction of different "critical models" of the social state, differing orientation to the past/present or future. Depending on the nature of the problems to be solved, the author identifies three main types of social statehood: the minimalist state, the state with a developed system of social protection (or the welfare state), the state of personal well-being. Each of them has its own critical model, focused either on the past/present or the future. In this case, the specified time coordinates are supplemented by the categories of perfect and imperfect, expressing different (respectively – high and low) degree of human emancipation.
The author presents the criticism of the really functioning social state by the leading social theorists in two analytical versions: the anti-system criticism of the Social state, which reveals the systemic contradictions of capitalism, its social and existential critique of the life of the world, and the meaning of its life-oriented interests.

Further, the author, relying on the critical analysis of the social state, and a number of variants of its critical modeling in the conditions of the Russian reality, offers Two options: a critical analysis of the imperfect present (the minimalist state, which has developed in modern Russia), and the system of restrictions (the orientation of the living state, and the critical model of the imperfect future (the protecting state). In the first case, the author uses the experience of anti-system and existential criticism, and in the second – his vision of the state with a developed system of social protection as a project of imperfect future, which will inevitably be replaced by a better future (the state of personal well-being).