“This superb book provides the most illuminating analysis of welfare and the welfare state to appear in decades. David Matthews brilliantly analyzes the contradictory and dialectic character of welfare programs under capitalism, as they provide limited services while continuing to exploit and stigmatize poor and working people. Such profound insights emerge partly from the author’s own experiences growing up in a family that depended on public welfare. The book concludes hopefully, as Matthews describes a transformed, post-capitalist welfare system based on local solidarity, mutual aid, and love.”
—Howard Waitzkin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Health Sciences and Sociology, University of New Mexico
“At the very outset in this work, David Matthews underlines that among the available key works on the subject of social welfare, ‘class as a collective agency of social change is missing.’ That there is something fundamental going on in the interaction between welfare policies and the class that it affects, which over a period of time affects social change. This here forms the premise and the very promise of this refreshing work on the politics of class struggle and its interaction with the state and the subsequent impact such a politics brings on the overall nature of the welfare policies. Historically, working classes have used their collective strength to win small measures from the state in the form of housing, public education, health, and other important aspects covered by social security as their right which is not only a step forward for a more evolving progressive politics but also very crucial for the development of working-class agency. The welfare state and its continuous interaction with the working classes eventually leads to the sharpening of the latter’s political struggles vis-à-vis the burgeoning Capitalist ecosystem, and prepares them to continue the fight for their betterment. What becomes clear throughout the text is the indispensability of working class struggles for the overall development of the political economy; while it is very much located within the Capitalist scheme of things, the actual turn of events within such a political economy depended on the vitality of the working class struggles. Thus, the centrality of class struggles for achieving a welfare state—which though located within the larger idea of the capital, is also the resultant outcome of the working class struggles against Capital.Locating the politics of welfare and its dialectics vis-à-vis Capitalism within the modern history of British political economy, the work makes a persuasive case for realizing the significance of welfarism in building the strength of the working class as opposed to the more conservative Marxist position seeing the latter as an extension of the reach of Capitalism. Throughout the book it’s been emphasized, at times rather repetitively, that although welfare fortifies Capital by maintaining the reproduction of social classes whose labour is central to its own existence, it is nonetheless crucial for the survival and betterment of the working classes. That the workers need state support not only to be useful for the labour required for the Capital, but to be a class conscious of its own rights which eventually goes far in honing their struggles against Capitalism. Matthews, reflecting on the extensive corpus of Marxist literature on this subject, underlines that the state, which historically has been used to suppress the toiling masses in order to maintain the social order which privileges the ruling class, nonetheless perforce agrees—thanks to the evolution of procedural democracy—to protect and oversee the development of resources that must sustain and nurture the working classes. Thus, it keeps the space for politics to fill in to mobilize the workers further for their own class interests—something which will be difficult to pursue in a conservative state opposed to welfarism.Following Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963), another crucial point which this work makes—something which was also demonstrated, albeit in a different context, by Vivek Chibber in Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013)—is the singularly important agency of the working class in defending their own interests against Capitalism. Welfare measures like social security, housing, education and health brought in by the state have historically evolved through the organized struggles of the working classes, and not due to any perceived benevolence of the state committed to protect the interests of the workers. Thus, a welfare state becomes a state conceivable through the struggles and movement of the social classes engaged in labour, thereby further amplifying the dialectical importance of labour and Capital and the emergence of the welfare state.Notwithstanding the struggles waged by the British working class against Capitalism, this work could have deployed a more analytical approach to the history of colonialism and its relationship with the development and the evolution of not only the labour, but also the material origins of that robust post-War welfare state which perhaps would have been a nonstarter, had it not been for the colonial legacy. The political elite and the capitalist who have benefited immensely from exploiting British colonies, and therefore had the material wherewithal to ensure a cushion to the domestic working class by advancing welfare measures is a story which is obvious in this work; but somehow it overlooks the colonial past and the crucial role played by imperial interests in the very possibility of building the welfare state.However, the focus being the welfare state and its relationship with the workers, the indispensability of the working class struggles which were central to inaugural of the welfarism is a point well received, and this book makes a compelling case for looking into welfarism with a fresh perspective and not to see it simply as the tool of the state to keep the workers at bay from the doings of Capitalism.While the book puts great emphasis on class, it is unable to capture the evolving diversity in British society, and the conflict and struggles which came about in its wake. It doesn’t tell us much about the rising racial conflict, and how the growing ethnic divide could be factored into the role of the welfare state. How race, gender and ethnic minorities all intersect with Capitalist welfare systems remains wanting in this work. The book falters in understanding that the welfare state also plays a pivotal role in extending its benefits to the marginalized population whose marginalities are the direct results of their ethnic and cultural identity. That the amelioration of marginalized people’s economic status—who continued to be discriminated, primarily due to their immediate cultural/ethnic/gender identity—hinges on the proactive role of the state located in a progressive political society doesn’t find much discussion in this work.This brings me to the concluding chapter, full of radical promises of the theoretical possibility of a progressive society, which puts forward an erroneous and a textual understanding of the underdeveloped countries. For instance, if we look at the political situation in India, values like ‘care and love’ for members of society are greatly wanting, which Matthews thinks are available in ‘non-Capitalist’ societies and are lacking in the ‘advanced capitalist nations’. This understanding is rather simplistic and ignores the origins, mechanisms, and the spread of the structural inequalities plaguing the so-called ‘Third World’ nations. The reach and hold of neoliberal Capitalism notwithstanding, many such countries are still caught in the web of primordial and customary values which privileges a tiny section of elites over its vast populace. The working of the caste system in India could have been just one pointer to grasp these contradictions. Lastly, the work appears to downplay much that has been achieved by the spread of modernity, and the values gained through the gradual unfolding of European enlightenment, which actually went a long way in making the English working class organize struggles against Capital, and its subsequent manifestation as the welfare state within the western political society. The book undoubtedly is an emphatic account of the efficacy of engaging with the state on radical terms in the interest of working classes. Undoubtedly, the radicals have a lot to learn with the evolving—yet receding—influence of the welfare state in constitutional democracies.”
—Moggallan Bharti teaches at the School of Development Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), Delhi, The Book Review, Volume L Number 4 April 2026