New Article: Who Needs the State?: We Do (Maybe)

New Article: Deborah M. Weissman, Who Needs the State?: We Do (Maybe), N. Car. L. Rev., (Forthcoming). Abstract below:

The interdependency between private needs and public support is nowhere set in as sharp relief than in the relationship between the family and the State. Families perhaps the most intimate of all social arrangements depend upon government “safety net” guarantees to families in need. But the norm of State support to families is a condition that exists principally in the breach. Indeed, the State operates within a settled political economic context that grants families “negative liberty” but denies households positive right to assistance in order to subsist. The State has largely signaled an economic and moral indifference to the care and well-being of households.

These circumstances have summoned mutual aid activists to fill the void created by the failure of State to function in behalf of the commonweal. Acting on principles of prefigurative politics, these entities have sought to establish protocols of cooperation and reciprocity to support communities in need. The importance of mutual aid extends beyond elevating norms of altruism and practices of generosity and implies the need to develop self-sustaining systems of support to assist families without releasing the State from its obligations to citizens.

This article considers ways to organize social responses to support families in need. It critically examines State institutions and mutual aid entities to assesses their comparative strengths and weaknesses in the context of a neoliberal political economy. It does so in the context of pandemic-related supportive. It concludes by identifying the challenges of relying on State or mutual aid and suggests that adequate support for families in crisis requires multiple strategies and collective efforts.