Friendly Societies were the main actors in the provision of social welfare in Europe between the first third of the 19th and the rise of welfare states. These societies were based on mutual aid and governed by rules which were largely inspired by the relief-focused brotherhoods of the Ancien Régime, ...
(Show more)Friendly Societies were the main actors in the provision of social welfare in Europe between the first third of the 19th and the rise of welfare states. These societies were based on mutual aid and governed by rules which were largely inspired by the relief-focused brotherhoods of the Ancien Régime, adapted to the needs of the new industrial society. In Spain, traditional friendly societies reached their peak during the 1920s and 1930s, after which they began to decline. Previous works chiefly attribute this decline to factors such as the small size of many of these mutual-help networks; their ignorance of actuarial techniques; the inflation in medical costs; the membership aging; the competition of sick insurance companies and other forms of sociability; and the growing role of the State in social welfare (Pons & Vilar 2011).
The proposed paper analyses the relations of conflict and cooperation between workers’ mutualism, represented by the Federation of Friendly Societies of Catalonia, and the different administrations (provincial, regional and State) during the long period of implementation of public social insurances in Spain (mainly accidents, old age, maternity and sickness). This began in 1900 with the Work Accidents Law and ends in the 1940s with the establishment of Compulsory Sickness Insurance. The Federation was not against compulsory public insurances, but it wanted the participation of traditional friendly societies in the welfare system, as in Great Britain and France. After the Civil War (1936-1939), the Francoist regime imposed a statist model of sickness insurance, but given the economic precariousness, was forced to the collaboration with larger mutual societies and entities such as the Federation itself. Collaboration with the State became a determinant for the survival of a mutualism which, after a process of professionalization and concentration, continued to be important in Catalonia.
Cited references:
Pons, J. & M. Vilar. 2011. “Friendly Societies, Commercial Insurance, and the State in Sickness Risk Coverage: The Case of Spain (1880-1944).” International Review of Social History 56: 71–101.
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