Freedom and the Welfare State

Bill Jordan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429889158
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1976, Freedom and the Welfare State, critiques the Welfare State in Britain and analyses the relationship between freedom and welfare. The book considers philosophical, literary and political expressions of the ideals of liberty, and relates them to present-day issues in social policy and the social services. It tackles the major questions emerging in the current welfare debate such as, does state assistance destroy individual initiative and independence and, are welfare institutions agencies of social control which reinforce the dominant economic order?

1
Three Traditions

To what extent is freedom compatible with attempts by the state to promote the welfare of its citizens? Does liberty reside in independence from state interference? Are welfare institutions necessarily agencies of social control which impose constraints on individual autonomy? Do some people require the state’s protection, and if so, should they enjoy the same rights and liberties as independent citizens? These questions are the starting point of this book.

But it is not meant to be an abstract and philosophical discussion of these issues. My interests are in social policy and social work–not in building theoretical models of society, but in the ways people actually think and feel and live together. As a framework for the development of an analysis of these questions, I have identified three elements which seem to me to be likely to influence the future relationship between freedom and welfare in our own society. These elements are really no more than constellations of attitudes; but they have come to form separate and recognisable traditions which have run through society like underground streams, coming to the surface in politics, in literature, in philosophy or in everyday life. Each of these traditions has a history of its own, sometimes expressed in an extreme crystallisation of values at a certain point in time, sometimes in more subtle, long-term and subterranean influences upon people and events. There are other such traditions; I have selected the three most relevant to welfare issues and institutions.

The present-day expressions of these three traditions in relation to the questions I want to consider are, first, the new Conservative political philosophy; second, the libertarian ideology and lifestyle; and third, the new role of social work as part of a strategy for dealing with social problems. The crucial issues in the current debate about the Welfare State between these three elements are their conflicting views of the relationships between welfare and freedom, and between the state and its citizens.

The Conservative Party’s claim to represent the first tradition I wish to identify is quite recent. Only since the 1974 elections has the new leadership of the Conservative Party enunciated principles which call into question the expansion of the social services and increases in welfare expenditure. In September 1975 Mrs Thatcher made a speech in New York in which she questioned the use of state intervention to promote equality between citizens, suggesting that it was destructive of national prosperity, and damaging to individual liberty. The speech confirmed increasing evidence that the new Conservative leadership was reaffirming objections to the provision of services that were first stated by nineteenth-century Liberals.

Broadly, these objections rest on the following presuppositions; that private enterprise in industry is the most efficient method of maximising production and thus prosperity for all; that individual enterprise and responsibilty should be encouraged and rewarded as much as possible; that every man should provide out of his earnings for himself and his family; that very few people need free provision of welfare services or benefits; and that most people prefer to make provision for themselves, to choose how to allocate their resources between their various needs. These presuppositions lead to a number of conclusions about welfare. First that state intervention, in so far as it attempts to impose collective solutions on individual citizens, reduces their autonomy and freedom of choice. Second, that benefits and services provided without charge by the state are neither properly valued nor economically used. Third, that the provision of free services diminishes initiative and independence and destroys people’s powers to find their own solutions to problems. And fourth, that the high level of taxation required by the expansion of social services slows economic development and undermines individual energy and ambition.

The notion of society which this tradition postulates is of a system of obligations. The political and economic order are based on definitions of what people in different social roles have a right to expect from each other, and the duties they owe each other, which are seen as functional for this system. Freedom therefore resides in the opportunity to live one’s own life and make one’s own choices within the limits set by these rights and duties. The state should not infringe this freedom more than is absolutely necessary, and then should avoid doing so in such a way as to upset the balance of mutual obligations between citizens. So much has this nineteenth-century liberal view of society become part of our cultural heritage that, however subterranean its tradition may have been during the post-war period, modern Conservative politicians have only to use certain phrases to evoke the whole constellation of values associated with it.

The second tradition is opposed to the first in almost every respect. What I shall call the libertarian standpoint is, in its present expression, as much a style of life as a counter-argument. It is the tradition of anarchism and syndicalism rather than that of authoritarian and centralist communism, though it springs mainly from Marxist sources. Starting from the proposition that in a capitalist society all other social relationships are derived from the productive process, which rests on exploitation, it does not go on to develop a rival structure of a unified society with an alternative productive organisation. Instead it emphasises that the family and the state, like the factory, are institutions by which the individual is estranged from his true potential, for they demand that he take his place in relationships and processes that perpetuate the unjust distribution of power. The libertarian standpoint distrusts all forms of authority, and all intermediaries between the individual and effective action. It is only by resistance against all authority in every formal institution that the individual can express himself and be free. The libertarian point of view is highly critical of the present Welfare State in several respects: its centralism, its bureaucratic structures, its denial of participation and control to recipients of provisions. But it also draws attention to the extent to which the institutions of the Welfare State attempt to control society’s most potentially dissident members, the people who are not sharing in the benefits of prosperity, the deviants and the nonconformists. Resistance against these institutions thus becomes particularly relevant to the struggle for freedom. For libertarians, freedom resides first in breaking down traditional definitions of social obligation and then in substituting a new perception of relationships in which individuality, spontaneity and self-direction will be positively pursued. The concept of welfare as state provision is challenged by a notion of an ideal relationship between individuals, in which needs will be recognised and met. Libertarianism thus opposes the Labour Party’s traditional view of welfare.

Libertarian writers like Marcuse, Laing and Cooper, Germaine Greer and the sociologists of the interactionist school conceptualise the disillusionment of one part of the middle class with the post-war Welfare State; the new Conservative leadership expresses the disillusionment of another section. Both suggest that our present institutions are destructive of freedom, but their views of freedom are very different. When Sir Keith Joseph launched the new Conservative philosophy with his speech on the population in October 1974, his attack was principally on left-wing intellectuals and their influence on the morals of the poor, with their ideas about freedom without responsibility. Conservatives tend to see libertarians as products of a Welfare State which has removed the sense of the individual’s social obligations. Libertarians see the Welfare State as reinforcing traditional values.

The third tradition is rather more difficult to identify and define. It has tended to express itself in the administration of the social services rather than in political philosophy, and has found few such eloquent spokesmen as the first has had. It is the paternalism of the old Poor Law, and particularly of the first three decades of the nineteenth century; the attempt to use social provision to buttress and buffer a section of the population deemed to be incapable of organising its life without such support. It is based on a notion that the casualties of material progress should be looked after by the state, partly for their own sake, and partly for its own, for it sees them not only as inadequate or irresponsible, but also as often dangerously unruly and lawless. It believes that assistance should be very carefully provided in such a way as to enable a degree of supervision, influence and control to be exercised over those who require it. It is not particularly interested in questions of freedom, for it assumes that those who need provision are only too willing to sacrifice a good deal of their liberty for this relief, and that it is in their interests, and those of the state, that they should do so.

In the past ten years, this tradition is the one which has most clearly emerged in the administration of the Welfare State. In particular, it has emerged in the way in which social work has been used for two functions it did not perform in the 1948 version of the welfare provision. First, whereas it was previously segregated from the business of giving material and financial aid, social work is now entrusted with responsibilities for providing discretionary benefits, usually to the poorest sector, and making sure that they are reflected in ‘improvements’ in their life styles. Second, whereas before social work was virtually only involved in the investigation and supervision of deviant behaviour on behalf of the courts, either during or after a court hearing, it is now increasingly used as an alternative to a court appearance. Powers given to social workers to supervise both the deprived and the deviant have significantly altered the civil and social rights of a sector of the community. These processes have, in an unspectacular way, slowly changed the relationship between freedom and welfare in the Welfare State.

In becoming involved in these tasks, social work has come to occupy the territory of the third tradition I have identified; yet its origins lie in the first, and it has also had one sortie into the second. Nineteenth-century social work was built upon a respect for clients’ freedom within a context of clearly defined social obligations. It reflected the current liberalism in its avoidance of interference except in essentials. Not until the inter-war years did a section of the social work profession become identified with anything approaching a libertarian standpoint; then, in the wake of Freud (in psychology) and leftist politics, it sided with the breaking down of the constraints of traditional morality and formal institutions, and espoused individual self-fulfilment and autonomy. Alternating between these two conflicting traditions, social work was finally swept away by the rising tide of the third, of protective paternalism. While claiming still to uphold ‘client self-determination’, it opted in practice for a preventive principle, justifying interventions in terms of forestalling various kinds of catastrophe–family breakdown, neglect or rejection of children or the elderly, institutionalisation, destitution, homelessness, mental illness, court appearances. By showing itself willing to step in to prevent all these disasters from occurring, it made itself the natural tool for a policy which required a professional skill both to translate selective assistance into behavioural modifications, and to supervise the day-to-day lives of people defined as potential burdens or threats to society. The social work services are thus in the process of becoming, like a system of poachers’ nets, the means whereby the poorest and most deprived members of the community are denied escapes from their situations. Classified as potential threats to themselves and their children, social work’s clients pay the price for assistance in loss of freedom and of full citizenship.

If (speeded on by the economic crisis) we are approaching a crossroads in social policy, there seems to be some point in reviewing the interrelations between these three elements over the question of welfare and freedom. To do justice to this task, I feel that it is first necessary to analyse the concepts of freedom contained in each tradition, and then to consider the problem of state intervention in the light of the issues raised by this analysis. But the analysis of freedom which follows as Part One of this book is intended to apply to all citizens, and not simply to recipients of welfare provision. If we believe in a state which attempts to promote the welfare of all its citizens, then we need to analyse how we understand and value our freedom before we can discuss state intervention in others’ lives. To treat the issue of welfare as separate from the other rights and obligations of citizenship is to presuppose that state intervention only takes place in the event of social inadequacy or moral inferiority. I deliberately start with an analysis of freedom and social obligations in the most general terms, to avoid any such assumption.

Furthermore, the study will be as concerned with personal liberty and with interpersonal obligations–between individuals, between family members–as with civil and social rights. Libertarian writers have drawn attention to the very close connections between the conventional expectations of personal and family responsibilities and the formal obligations of institutional role relationships. They have also suggested that the overthrow of traditional values in personal and family relationships is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for the breaking down of formal institutional roles, and that any true welfare state requires a prior revolution in the personal sphere. The relationship between personal and political liberty will therefore be examined.

In Part One of this book, I shall be mainly concerned with the first two traditions I have identified. The third has not developed its own characteristic notion of freedom, but asserts that, for the needy, assistance is more important than citizenship. It therefore serves mainly as a counterpoise. What I shall do in this part is consider possible justifications for intervention in others’ lives with assistance or advice, and how these can be reconciled with notions of freedom. This will lead to an analysis of the justifications for professional interventions by social workers. I Part Two, I introduce the paternalistic concept of welfare, and go on to show how social work has come to serve its ends. In Part Three, I discuss whether freedom and state intervention for welfare purposes are compatible. The whole subject of freedom and welfare is so complex that it is difficult to divide it up in a logical way, so as to present a single thread of argument throughout the book. Thus the contents of a number of chapters could have been introduced at several different points, and the order in which ideas are discussed is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. What I hope will emerge by the end is that an important struggle between three very different notions of freedom and welfare is at this moment taking place in our society. The dilemmas raised by this struggle are fundamental to the definition of the sort of society ours is to be–issues that have been debated and discussed in philosophy and literature for several centuries. It is a struggle which is too deep and complex to be confined within the banal context of party political bickering about social policy, or to be fragmented between the competitive claims of the social sciences.

Part 1

Freedom

2
Liberty and Liberation

In this chapter I shall start to distinguish between the nineteenth-century liberal and the libertarian views of freedom. Concentrating mainly on the former tradition, I shall suggest that liberals have accepted certain moral, social and economic constraints on freedom as necessary for a healthy society, and that libertarians reject most of these constraints as incompatible with true freedom. I shall then examine the nature of social influences and obligations in the light of these two views.

It will be convenient for the purposes of this chapter to take as the spokesman for the nineteenth-century liberal tradition John Stuart Mill, whose Essay on Liberty was published in 1859. In many ways, Mill was a more radical and progressive champion of freedom than most of his liberal contemporaries. His advocacy of the positive value of spontaneity, originality and individuality indicate that he was not merely concerned to establish the right to what Sir Isaiah Berlin¹ has called ‘negative liberty’–the individual’s freedom from interference with his actions by others. However, I shall argue that in general the liberal tradition seeks to mark out for the individual a limited sphere of freedom from interference, whereas the libertarian tradition promotes a programme of action for ‘positive liberty’–self-determination, self-direction and control of his own life by the individual–which it often refers to as ‘liberation’.²

Mill was primarily concerned to define the proper limits of authority over individual freedom of belief, of life style, of behaviour and of association. He saw authority as taking two major forms: that of law, and that of ‘public opinion’ (i.e. social prescriptions backed by social sanctions). He gave his definition of the limits of authority in one simple principle:³

that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilised society, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

The phrase ‘against his will’ indicates the kind of constraint Mill saw as objectionable. He distinguished sharply between attempts to exhort, advise or persuade people into courses of action, and attempts to coerce them. He saw legal and moral coercion as necessary and beneficial in questions affecting social and moral obligations of one person to another or others. The law and public opinion should enforce the duties the individual owed others, and Mill assumed these could be authoritatively deduced and catalogued, in statute and in social convention. However, once these duties had been discharged, the individual should be left free to choose his own way of life. ‘The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.’⁴ Indeed, Mill insisted that the health and vigour of any society depended on giving citizens their freedom, and encouraging them to use it; and he deplored a tendency by the state and public opinion to lay down conventional modes of behaviour for every situation. ‘In our times, from the highest class of society to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a dreaded censorship.’⁵ ‘A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can be accomplished.’⁶

With this definition of the constraints on freedom, Mill’s analysis of the forces which restricted men from positive, self-governing action was strictly limited. It suggested that all men of talent and intelligence would, in a society of wise laws and tolerant opinions, be free and prosper, and find the expression of their potentialities most suited to themselves. The weakness of Mill’s argument, of course, and one which is all the more apparent to us now because of the nineteenth-century context in which he was writing, was that freedom from coercion by law and opinion did nothing to provide the opportunity for men to develop the faculties they possessed; and the social, political and economic situation of the time was such that most men were condemned to a life of relentless toil in order to survive. Yet Mill wrote as if economic necessity and subjection to the laws of the market were not a form of compulsion but rather the essence of freedom.⁷

it is now recognised, though not ti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Three Traditions
• Part 1 Freedom
• Part 2 Welfare Institutions
• Part 3 A Welfare Society
• Notes