At central capitalist economies, social welfare has been described as both, a 20th century conquest of the working class in the attainment of social rights and, on the other side, as a social fabric ‘buffer' between the working class and the state, preserving the status quo; aka the capitalist mode of production itself. Some peripheral capitalist economies instituted labour rights and social welfare at a later stage of the 20th century, under imperialism dependency. The international economic scenario was then contrasting with the post World War II consensus: an international economic oil crisis and a widespread discontent with the post wars social democratic agreement. Under the Marxist Dependency Theory this paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyse this phenomena, arguing that the ‘delayed capitalist welfare' of some peripheral countries has specific characteristics which can be highlighted through critical political economic analysis.