Note this extract from the anarchist FAQ in which a view of welfare and reform very different (sensible?)to your all or nothing approach:Because of this contradictory nature of welfare, we find anarchists like Noam Chomsky arguing that (using an expression
popularised by South American rural workers unions) "we should 'expand the floor of the cage.' We know we're in a cage.
We know we're trapped. We're going to expand the floor, meaning we will extend to the limits what the cage will
allow. And we intend to destroy the cage. But not by attacking the cage when we're vulnerable, so they'll murder us. . .
You have to protect the cage when it's under attack from even worse predators from outside, like private power. And
you have to expand the floor of the cage, recognising that it's a cage. These are all preliminaries to dismantling it.
Unless people are willing to tolerate that level of complexity, they're going to be of no use to people who are suffering
and who need help, or, for that matter, to themselves." [Expanding the Floor of the Cage]
Thus, even though we know the welfare state is a cage and an instrument of class power, we have to defend it from a worse
possibility -- namely, the state as "pure" defender of capitalism with working people with few or no rights.
This is my position.
