The Benevolent State

‘The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.’ Albert Camus.

Some time ago the corporate state was called the mixed economy. It was meant to be kinder than the rabid free market economy of the USA and freer than the stultifying regulatory economy of the USSR. There were those who controlled private capital and those who controlled the state. Each had their place.
Those who controlled private wealth were like Father was supposed to be; male, dynamic, but ultimately destructive if left to his own devices.
Mother State was there to keep the boys in order, to soften the rough blows we receive each day and to protect the weak from the strong.
Nowadays Mother State is everywhere, sticking on the plasters and handing out the pills. Those naughty bankers have been on the rampage.
Oh, Mother State, come protect the poor powerless peasants!
We are sick, feeble, a bit thick, helpless in the face of the cigar chomping capitalists!
We don’t need our chapels and self help co-operative societies. They can fade away when we rest our heads on the warm bosom of Mother State.
We can forget how the children were once taught by their parents, taught at Sunday School, taught in little independent schools up and down the land. Mother State will provide free universal education.
And there’s no need for mutual aid societies, for hospitals built by local subscription, with local effort, the love and care of family and neighbours and friends.
According to the Narrative there was no education, no health care, no social security till Mother State stepped in.
The workers in field and factory, feeble in body and mind, and deficient in should and shouldn't, could not so much as organize a piss up in a brewery, according to the Narrative.
The workers, the passive backcloth of history, not the doers but the done to, those without willpower or history or culture, we need the help of Mother State.
So we are told. Such is the Narrative.