“The greatest beneficiaries of the modern welfare state, after all, were the middle classes.”

—  Tony Judt

Chap. 14 : Diminished Expectations
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 21, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The greatest beneficiaries of the modern welfare state, after all, were the middle classes." by Tony Judt?
Tony Judt photo
Tony Judt 37
British historian 1948–2010

Related quotes

Gregory Benford photo

“Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 43 (p. 445)

Paul A. Samuelson photo

“After 1929 it was the sturdy middle classes, and not just the lumpen proletariat, who were down and out. It was not all that unfashionable or disreputable to be bankrupt. By the last Hoover years, the states and localities had run out of money for relief. In middle-class neighborhoods like mine, you constantly had children at the door, asking by mouth or with a note for a dime, a quarter, or a potato: saying, in a believable fashion, we are starving.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Samuelson (1985; p, 6) as cited in: Klein, Daniel B., and Ryan Daza. " Paul A. Samuelson (Ideological Profiles of the Economics Laureates). http://econjwatch.org/file_download/767/schultzipel.pdf" Econ Journal Watch 10.3 (2013): 561-569.
1980s–1990s

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Antonie Pannekoek photo
Hugh Gaitskell photo

“The success of the middle class alliance depended on the acceptance by the working class element of middle class leadership and middle class ideas.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Chartism: An Introductory Essay (1929), p. 85

Rosa Luxemburg photo

“The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight…”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

"The Politics of Mass Strikes and Unions"; Collected Works 2 <!-- p. 465 -->
Context: The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation.

Georg Büchner photo
Gloria Steinem photo

“Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: If you think about Martin Luther King and others in the leadership of the Civil Rights movement, they were all college-educated, middle class people. Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class.
It’s true that the National Organization for Women in its early years was white middle class. But once it was joined by younger women from civil rights groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) it changed profoundly. In any case, my life’s ambition is to make white women as smart as black women. Because the group of women who still vote against their own self-interest are white married women.

Cecelia Ahern photo

Related topics