Isn’t it obvious for whom a welfare state was created? We take for granted that beneficiaries of the welfare state are its citizens and that the state is the institution that secures it.

While it may be true that the welfare state offers some benefits to citizens, the major beneficiary is the state itself.

Priming

The argument for my politically incorrect statement lies in the expression itself.

To make the answer more intuitive, let us pose the question: Who is the beneficiary of a well-fed cow? The cow, obviously. Who is then the beneficiary of a welfare state? The state, as it was a cow from a previous statement.

The concept »welfare state« denotes a state that is well-fed. That is the true meaning of the concept, regardless of how we rationalize it afterward. The true meaning is unavoidably primed* with the expression itself. We could also say that the subconscious meaning is there before we consciously rationalize it into something different.

The etymological perspective

The etymology of the concept »welfare« dates to the Enlightenment, when it denoted the care of the absolute ruler for his subjects.

Note that beneficiaries were subjects, citizens in contemporary terminology; however, welfare emanates from sovereign power. A very important classical reference is Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes argues that the welfare and security of the people justify an almost absolute sovereign power, because only a strong ruler can prevent civil war and social collapse, as excellently explained by Pulenthiran Nesan in his paper Examining Absolute Sovereignty’s Function in Preserving Social Order: A Study of Thomas Hobbes’ Political Philosophy (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, 2025). In accordance with his support for absolute sovereign power, Hobbes emphasizes that the ruler must act to promote the general public welfare.

The etymological point about the emanation of welfare spreading from the sovereign down to the people aligns with my initial observation, with a twist.

A welfare twist

If historically, sovereigns actually trickled down their property to the populus to prevent riots, with the rise of democracy, the populus trickles up its property to the sovereign (the state), which then presents welfare food received as allocated to social benefits, as if the state were the owner of that welfare. The cow (the state) that was fed by its citizens redistributes part of the food back to citizens as if it were a true monarch with its legal property.

Note that I do not enter the question about the legitimacy of property, neither of historical monarchs (absolutists) nor of the present-day Joe Doe or Jeff Bezos. Legitimacy is a moral, and thus an intersubjective, category that can always be disputed. We are talking about the legality of property as defined by the constitutions and other legal regulations of particular states. The fact is that we feed the state with a part of our legally earned property.

Welfare society, not welfare state!

My purpose for the moment is not to develop mechanisms to exclude the unnecessary intermediary (the state) from the necessary welfare of citizens, since such measures will not be accepted until the priming changes. First, we must accept that it is the society that must be a welfare society, a well-fed society, a society that redistributes benefits to citizens who are in need, and not the state. We, the citizens, must feed the citizens, not the state. We thus must accept the concept of a welfare society and reject the welfare state. Until this speech act is reversed back to society, the state’s priming will prevent any real change.

The redistribution of individual property, as regulated by respective parliaments, can easily be managed within civil society without the “help” of the state. The state is unnecessary and, as a result, a costly intermediary that, on top of that, presents itself as the owner of its citizens’ wealth. The state should take care of its own security and that of its citizens. The Parliament should regulate, and civil society should manage the redistribution. So simple.

And we are back from humanism, in the form of collectivism, to homonism, as an expression of a society governed bottom-up, since it emerges from the actions of individuals within civil society.

 

*Priming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)