ABSTRACT
Although New Right theorists seem to have captured the leading role in the contemporary public debates over welfare policy, they certainly do not represent the entirety of liberal theory on this issue. In the face of Nozick's articulation of the right to private property, for instance, egalitarian liberal theorists articulate the right to subsistence, or the right to the satisfaction of basic needs. Despite the exhortations to the indigent to independence and responsibility heard from the New Right, the theorists examined in this chapter emphasize the claims on, or the entitlement to, a range of basic resources. These arguments are important for challenging the near hegemony of the New Right in the debates over welfare reform. By emphasizing the right to welfare these egalitarian liberal theorists have sought to remove welfare provision from the more contingent status of policy choice; the decision to make welfare provision should not be left to the vicissitudes of electoral politics. These theorists have sought firmer ground by identifying the provision of welfare benefits with what it means to be a person or, alternately, a citizen. Indeed, the right to welfare can be a politically powerful argument. It is the language of contemporary democratic states and movements.
