Avatars de la protecció social

Abstract

All through the last century, from the two last decades of XIXth century till the end of the 1970s, social protection has developed a whole cycle of nationalization and de-nationalization. From being voluntary and pluralist, it became state-owned and compulsive after the Second World War, and now it is increasingly becoming private and demonopolized again. The key issue of such evolution has been the commodification of the labour force, but it also has depended on changes in social structure and its effects upon the distribution of political power. Social protection goes beyond mere compensation of social inequalities to constitute, modulate and naturalize them; and it does so both under direct state administration and under the so-called welfare pluralism. Anyway, the degree of state intervention always depends on social-org a n izational dynamics which regulate social inequality. There f o re, the removing of public involvement in social protection should not be analyzed as a «lost», but better as a change in the patterns of social domination. This article seeks to explore some aspects of that cycle, and to present a general view of the debate on de-nationalization of social protection in Spain.