Avatars de la protecció social

All through the last century, from the two last decades of XIXth century till
the end of the 1970s, social protection has developed a whole cycle of nationalization
and de-nationalization. From being voluntary and pluralist, it became state-owned
and compulsive after the Second World War, and now it is increasingly becoming private
and demonopolized again. The key issue of such evolution has been the commodification
of the labour force, but it also has depended on changes in social structure and
its effects upon the distribution of political power. Social protection goes beyond mere
compensation of social inequalities to constitute, modulate and naturalize them; and it
does so both under direct state administration and under the so-called welfare
pluralism. Anyway, the degree of state intervention always depends on social-org a n izational
dynamics which regulate social inequality. There f o re, the removing of public
involvement in social protection should not be analyzed as a «lost», but better as a
change in the patterns of social domination. This article seeks to explore some aspects
of that cycle, and to present a general view of the debate on de-nationalization of social
protection in Spain.