Staatseingriff und Ökonomiefunktion / State intervention and the economic function
AbstractThe origin of the function of the Welfare State is to be explained as a reaction, firstly, to forceful social claims by the working class and, secondly, to its hereby increasing political weight which the state had to take into account for the sake of its own survival. With the adoption of social obligations, the state in capitalism enters into a specific dependence from the economic system. Since the state is not a producer, it has to acquire the necessary financial means from the economic system to function as a Welfare State. The extraction of financial means from the economic system (especially in the form of taxes) can occur all the more easily, the more smoothly the economic system itself functions. The state is, therefore ‚out of its own interests‘ dependent on the promotion of the economic system. The intervention of the Welfare State affects, on the other hand, the function of the economy. Whilst the Welfare State provides an, at least rudimentary, existence beyond the labour market and occupation, it evades the constraintive situation: wage labour or starvation, to which the non owners of the means of production were subject to under ‚classical‘ conditions, and therefore strenghtens their conflict potential. The corollary of this is that the function of the capitalist crisis to purge wage costs, can no longer unfold itself. Consequently this results in a change of the particular character of capitalist crisis and in a development, which in its tendency burdens the state with ever increasing social problems, to be solved, without enableing the state to sufficiently expand its financial margin.