The Welfare State System and Common Security: A Global Vision for a Common Future

281 Pages·2022·4.265 MB·English

by  B. Vivekanandan

The Welfare State
System and Common
Security
A Global Vision for a Common
Future
b. vivekanandan
foreword by j.p. roos
The Welfare State System and Common Security
Also by B. Vivekanandan
AS THE MIND UNFOLDS: Issues and Personalities (editor)
BUILDING ON SOLIDARITY: Social Democracy and the New
Millennium (editor)
CONTEMPORARY SOCIALISM: An analysis (co-editor)
CONTEMPORARY EUROPE AND SOUTH ASIA (co-editor)
ECHOES IN PARLIAMENT: Madhu Dandavate’s Speeches,
1970–1990 (editor)
GLOBAL VISIONS OF OLOF PALME, BRUNO KREISKY AND WILLY
BRANDT: International Peace and Security, Cooperation and Development
INDIA LOOKS AHEAD: Jayaprakash Narayan Memorial Lectures,
1990–2001 (editor)
INDIA TODAY: Issues Before the Nation (co-editor)
IN RETROSPECT: Reflections on Select Issues in World Politics, 1975–2000
INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL POLITICS: Some Selected Essays
INTERNATIONAL CONCERNS OF EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS
PATHFINDERS: Social Democrats of Scandinavia
PROFESSOR M.S. RAJAN: An Outstanding Educationist and
Institution Builder
THE ISSUES OF OUR TIMES (editor)
THE MODERN COMMONWEALTH
THE SHRINKING CIRCLE: The Commonwealth in British Foreign Policy,
1945–1974
WELFARE STATE SYSTEM AND COMMON SECURITY: A Global
Vision for Common Future
WELFARE STATE SYSTEM IN SCANDINAVIA: Lessons for India
WELFARE STATES AND THE FUTURE (co-editor)
WHY SOCIAL DEMOCRACY: Essays by Prof. B. Vivekanandan
B. Vivekanandan
The Welfare State
System and Common
Security
A Global Vision for a Common Future
Foreword by J.P. Roos
B. Vivekanandan
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
ISBN 978-3-031-05221-7 ISBN 978-3-031-05222-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05222-4
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To
PROFESSOR (DR) NIMMI KURIAN
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
F
oreword
Professor B. Vivekanandan is a very fascinating and many-sided academic;
an Indian from Kerala, a former Chairman of the Centre for American and
West European Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, who
has specialised also in the Nordic Welfare States, and especially the Swedish
variant. He has published several books on various themes around the
Welfare State and Social Democracy, most notably: Pathfinders: Social
Democrats of Scandinavia; Building on Solidarity: Social Democracy and
the New Millennium; Welfare States and the Future; International Concerns
of European Social Democrats; and Global Visions of Olof Palme, Bruno
Kreisky and Willy Brandt.
I was honoured to meet him when I participated in an important
International Seminar on ‘Welfare State Systems’ which he organised at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in April 2001. In the Seminar,
we formulated, and agreed on, a New Delhi Declaration on Global Welfare
State, where we propounded a view of the possibility of a global perspec-
tive for the welfare state. In a sense, this book is an extended version of our
Declaration, but not only that: it also propounds a combination of
Common Security and the Welfare State. I am very happy that Professor
Vivekanandan took up the challenge and he is eminently qualified for the
task, both coming from India and being very well acquainted with the
Nordic Welfare State System. He has visited the Nordic countries several
times and knew well the iconic figures of the European Social Democracy—
Olof Palme, Bruno Kreisky, Willy Brandt and Kalevi Sorsa. Thus, the book
vii
viii FOREWORD
covers both the origins of the Welfare State, its present situation and its
future, besides the facets of the Common Security System and its
ramifications.
As Professor Vivekanandan points out, the idea of ‘One World’, and
humanity’s indivisibility, is embedded in the world thought. The earliest
record of it has been found in thousands of years old Indian Upanishads,
which spoke about Advaita (indivisibility of the humanity) and Vasudhaiva
Kudumbakom (Earth is a family), long before the Swedish statesman, Per
Albin Hansson, articulated, in the early 1930s, his Folkhemmet (People’s
Home) for building up a Welfare State in Sweden, and, equally, long
before Wendell Willkie articulated his concept of ‘One World’ in 1943.
They envisaged a world system, in which equality and humanism perme-
ated and enveloped all countries, cultures and Continents. This is Professor
Vivekanandan’s great dream, too.
The book presents the Welfare State System as the best system for the
world in the future. The System’s ‘best’ ranking would become unassail-
able when it gets fortified by the Common Security System, as enunciated
by Olof Palme. The vision is that when universal, institutional Welfare
State Systems in the world get synchronised with the Common Security
System, it would invariably humanise the mechanism of security and social
transformation in the world, since peace and prosperity would reign
supreme everywhere. Human development world over will be at its zenith,
and all parts of the world would become equally delightful living places. It
would make cross-country migrations, in search of better living condi-
tions, redundant and would place humanity on the pedestal of Common
Future. It would also make military build-ups, and military alliances, for
national security unnecessary.
Common Security is one of the two strong and mutually reinforcing
components of the peace structure which this book presents for ensuring
a peaceful ‘Common Future’ and well-being of the humanity; the other
component of it being the Welfare State System. Common Security
System, as an external component of a complementary security architec-
ture, can easily form an integral part of an internal Welfare State System of
countries. The gigantic resources the Common Security System would
invariably release, in real terms, in every country can transform the world
into a peaceful and prosperous Common Home of all peoples. But the
world statesmanship has not yet put such an integrated system in place,
except in one region of northern Europe.
FOREWORD ix
Thus, the Welfare State in Vivekanandan’s book is very much a Nordic
and European affair. He does discuss critically the European Union from
the welfare state perspective (the EU is not a social, but economic union),
and he presents an interesting parallel. The great origin story of the EU is
that it was a peace project to prevent potential wars between the European
nations, notably Germany and France, which is somewhat questionable.
Professor Vivekanandan proposes that the Welfare State does indeed have
a real peace dimension. I am satisfied that the connection of welfare state
and peace is much stronger than that of the EU and peace, if we look at
recent actions—or rather, inaction—of the EU in the various crises that
have plagued Europe and the world.
However, Professor Vivekanandan does not restrict his overview only
to Europe and the Nordic countries. He offers an extensive view of the
development of the Canadian Welfare State System also. Here he discusses
obstructions to the welfare state and strategies adopted to bring it down.
He analyses convincingly not only the open attempts at dismantling but
also the stealth attacks against the Welfare State in the guise of privatisa-
tion programmes. Unfortunately, this is not only true in Canada but also
in the Nordic countries. He describes Finland as an example partly from
this perspective. So he discusses extensively the effects of the 1990 eco-
nomic crisis on the Finnish Welfare State, as well as the impact of the
European Union, which Finland joined in 1995.
At present, there is great uncertainty about the future of the Welfare
State System. There are the Thatcher-Trump style proponents of an
extreme version of capitalism where the state and especially taxes and
social protection are seen as pure evil; there are those who believe that the
only way to ‘save’ the Welfare State is to cut it down completely, privatise
and incentivise it, leaving only a small part of the system intact; there are
those who think that only privatisation and reorganisation can make the
Welfare State work; and finally there are those who think that the solution
lies in the regeneration of the old basic principles of the Welfare State, with
more democracy, more solidarity and more self-organisation. In this
framework, Professor Vivekanandan is a great optimist who believes that
the classic Welfare State System will prevail, also in countries like India.
For him, the Welfare State System is a peace structure at the national
level which engenders peace, cooperation, harmony and solidarity in soci-
ety. Common Security is another complementary peace structure at the
global level, which also engenders peace, cooperation, harmony and
x FOREWORD
solidarity. The peace dividends of their joint operation at global level are
incalculable. A union of the Welfare State System and the Common
Security System would guarantee peace and prosperity in the world, since
they tend to humanise the mechanism of national security and social jus-
tice in the world. Indeed, the establishment of the Welfare State System in
all parts of the world would form a firm foundation for stable domestic
peace everywhere. With the Common Security System as the bedrock
of peace and cooperation in the World, solidarity approach would become
a natural phenomenon. In the environment, discussion and negotiated
settlement would become natural methods to resolve all contentious issues
in the world.
I fervently hope that he is right, but it would have been interesting to
see Professor Vivekanandan confront the enemies of the Welfare State
more directly. Now he propounds mainly the positive aspects of the
Welfare State System and believes that they will necessarily prevail. I hope
so, from the bottom of my heart.
Taken together, Professor Vivekanandan’s book is a formidable
volume which seeks a radical reorganisation of the global system for
attaining lasting peace, prosperity and happiness in the world. It calls
for attuning the system to the Common Future of mankind, anchored
in the Welfare State System and Common Security. With his deep
knowledge of the flaws in the contemporary international system,
which he acquired through his scholarly research and wide travel dur-
ing the last several decades, Professor Vivekanandan is pointing the
way for attaining enduring peace and prosperity for mankind through
the synchronisation of two positive contemporary streams—the
Welfare State System and the Common Security System.
The book underlines also that, for the well-being of the humanity, it is
high time to rescue the global security system from the clutches of the
deterrence doctrine and place it under a sustainable Common Security
doctrine, befitting the present epoch of the human civilisation. It would
transform the Earth into an arena of peace and cooperation. Refreshingly,
the volume contains a quest for finding peaceful solutions to all conten-
tious issues in the world, besides a reiteration of the imperative need of
de-escalating confrontations in the world, through negotiations and coop-
eration among the political leaderships across the world.
As the world is becoming more globalised, it is imperative that people’s
welfare and global security are also placed in a more positive frame which
ensures equal sharing of the total welfare in the world.