THE DYNAMICS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTS OF “MARKET” AND “WELFARE STATE” IN THE POST-TOTALITARIAN LEGAL FIELD OF UKRAINE: CURRENT CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS IN THE CONTEXT OF EURO-ATLANTIC INTEGRATION

Abstract

The article examines the essential and axiological parameters of the concepts of “market” and “social state” (which in the legal and sociological literature begins to supplant the term “welfare state’ due to its more powerful heuristic potential) in the legal field in general and the post-totalitarian legal consciousness of Ukrainian citizens in particular. The modern idea of social progress in the legal system is based on the postulates of behavioral economics by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the deep awareness of the “paradox of consequences” by Max Weber, the traditional glorification of the “invisible hand” by Adam Smith and belief in the cyclical reincarnation of laissez-faire regimes in Europe and “free hands” in the United States of America. It has been proven that the legal reversal of post-totalitarian Ukraine towards a simplified rational order threatens the degradation of the legal system and law-enforcement practice in Ukraine to the level of discredited ideologues of Soviet “socialist values”. Deeper consequences than the deformation of the logic of the legal sphere, the “clientization” of citizens, are revealed at the level of private-law relations, because under the conditions of total dependence of citizens on the state it cannot provide the principle “for everyone as needed” in a view of the everpresent limited resources. Accordingly, the processes of “atomization” of society are unfolding, the lack of preconditions for solidarity interaction makes it impossible for the effective influence of legal norms to regulate access to a limited source of social benefits. It is concluded that a real (not declarative) departure from the paternalistic (state-guardian) paradigm and the discourse of dominance both in the legal social security framework and general conceptual level is possible only under the condition of full integration of the concept of “market” as a philosophical and legal category into the legal design of Ukraine with the parallel purification of the other concept – the “social state” – from the rudimentary layering of discredited socialist values of Soviet model (when still at the level of mass legal awareness, “social” and “socialist” states are almost identical concepts).