The Assault on Social Policy

William Roth, Susan Peters

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780231537971
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Poverty in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Based on incisive analyses of economic globalization, class, politics, and bureaucracy, The Assault on Social Policy examines the ordinary speech used to make poverty and extreme inequality seem acceptable, the corporate strategies co-opting the distribution of wealth and other resources, and the negative effect of these efforts on our more vulnerable citizens, such as those with disabilities, incarcerated individuals, children, and the elderly. This second edition incorporates new research on the hotly contested policies dealing with poverty, welfare, disability, social security, and health care. It also takes stock of the ongoing effects of globalization and adds a chapter on education.

CHAPTER

Policy

TO DEFINE “POLICY” at the outset of an inquiry is to perpetrate an injustice. Readers may come away thinking that they understand policy and can designate it like a specimen in a museum, and they may even have the illusion that being able to do so somehow constitutes knowledge. In fact, however, establishing the meaning of words is surprisingly difficult. In Western philosophy Plato first undertook the task, and subsequent philosophers have often been concerned with language and meaning. One possible understanding of policy might be that it is a socially constructed, authoritative, systematic set of rules that governs the allocation of resources. We could go on and list competing definitions of policy; we could modify our definition in their light. In the end, though, what would we have achieved? Would we have given readers insight? And what about defining such words as “authoritative,” “rules,” “governs,” and “resources”? These are surely as troublesome as the term “policy.” As is often the case, breaking one word into many, particularly if the constituents are more problematic than the initial word, explains nothing.

Another preliminary clarification is needed. The word “social” is rarely used in this book except as a modifier of the word “policy.” Social policy is a subset of policy. Further, the word “society” is also avoided, except when its meaning is clear and uncontested. The term “society” is often as misleading as the word “America” (as in “What is good for society?” or “What is good for America?”). It is even more mysterious that society, America, and even corporations—per the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling of 2010—are spoken of as personal actors. Thus society needs, wants, or asks for more health; America declares a war on drugs; society needs better education; and society has entered the revolutionary age of the Internet.

Only persons or organizations may want, or not want, something. As we shall argue explicitly, what “society” wants, needs, or asks for is usually what haves want, need, or ask for. Only recently, with the advent of the economic recession in 2008, are the needs and rights of have-nots discussed in the media, except as human-interest stories. Instead, have-nots are seen as objects of charity, as marginal people whom haves, in various fashions, wish to keep marginal. In short, society does not speak with one voice, nor is it the human body writ large. In fact, the meanings of terms like “society,” “America,” “policy,” “social policy,” “haves,” and “have-nots” are contested and political, which will shortly become evident in this chapter and more broadly in this book.

The examples of social policy presented in this book contribute to an ostensive definition of policy. Significantly, and inevitably, they deal with private policy as well as not-for-profit and public policy. Evident throughout is that private policy is overwhelmingly corporate policy. Each example is presented differently to show the multitudinous facets of social policy. Accordingly, different perspectives will include political conflict, historical development, public discussion, the relationship of social policy to the welfare state, and the relation of both to private policy. Since much social policy redeems failures of the economy, pays for public support by taxation, and is increasingly moving from the public to the private sector, there is an imperative for economic argument in the discussion of social policy (see chapter 2).

Seeking clarity, let us begin with examples of what policy is not. First, policy is not inherently ethical. The policies of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia are sufficient examples of this. Policy is also not neutral. Almost always, policy benefits some at the expense of others. It is also not God-given or natural, but is constructed by human beings. Only rarely is social policy fashioned as the answer to a social problem. Seldom, too, is a social problem discovered by experts. To expand our definition, let us examine the constituents of policy such as resources. These include material resources like money, goods and services, and time, as well as less tangible elements such as health, knowledge, beauty, and skill. Of course, explanations of additional resources such as life, liberty, and happiness would require volumes.

Words like “authority” and “govern” also require elaboration.¹ Authority might mean the legitimate use of power, but then what do we mean by legitimate?² Surely a parent’s use of power to prevent a child from running into traffic is legitimate. The urgency of the situation and the parent’s greater wisdom make it so. But it is a mistake to regard society as a family and to rely on the wisdom of the ruler, the ruling class, political parties, and so on. Further claims of legitimacy have enormous consequences and are properly open to question.

“Power” is a term central to politics and to political science. According to some, power is transitive, whereas others believe it is delegated.³ Power exists both inside and outside government. Although many are uncomfortable with power, regarding it as a means of coercion, violence, and force, others are perfectly at ease with it, viewing it as a tool for freedom and autonomy. The word “power” is part of the Greek word for democracy, which means roughly “people’s power or rule.”⁴ Almost all modern governments call themselves democracies. Most political scientists regard democracy in its literal sense as an ideal, at best, but more commonly as an illusion. The self-proclaimed founder of policy sciences, Harold Lasswell, explicitly differentiated between the elite and the masses, reserving political action to the powerful and the influential. Variants of this view pervade modern political science.

Political science includes the ways that policies are made, implemented, and evaluated.⁵ The most immediate revelation from political science is that policy is far more complicated, indeed messy, than is revealed in many texts on the subject. Another contribution from political science is more profound: policy is the precipitate of politics. Though not epiphenomenal, policy cannot be understood without understanding politics. And politics cannot be understood without comprehending power.

Power has been variously understood as a resource or a relationship. Viewed as a relationship, it is transitive, meaning that if A has power over B and B has power over C, then A has power over C.⁶ As a resource, power can often be exchanged for other resources or values such as wealth, skill, and knowledge.⁷ Power need not be confined to the political arena. It also exists in corporations, bureaucracies, and families. Indeed, recent formulations of power place it everywhere; manifest power is the coagulation of instances in which power may not be recognizable as such, as in categorizing, knowing, seeing, and labeling. Power is involved not only in categorizing, labeling, and knowing, but even in deciding where power does and does not exist. Although some conceptual danger is attached to thinking of power in such broad terms, it has become useful, perhaps even necessary, in today’s world where power is often elusive, obscure, dispersed, and ubiquitous.⁸

Politics and the policy that issues from it are usually contested. To the degree that the opponents are haves and have-nots, the contest almost always goes in favor of the more powerful haves. If the contestants are have-nots, formal policy is less likely to evolve, since the policy choices of contests between have-nots seldom have any bearing on the lives of haves. When the choices of the have-nots do begin to affect the haves (e.g., when drugs infiltrate suburbia, when crime harms haves, when deficient education makes too many have-nots unproductive), then haves may institute policy. Usually power and wealth are connected—wealth frequently buys power, and power often commands wealth. The powerful and the wealthy are linked to each other; indeed, they are frequently the same. Policy is a product of power, and since haves have more power than have-nots, it is not surprising that policy is so often made by and for haves: people and organizations wielding power and wealth. According to Joseph Stiglitz, the upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. This group saw their incomes rise 18 percent over the first decade of the twenty-first century, while middle incomes fell, matching those of Russia and Iran during the same period. Income inequality leads to shrinking opportunity, which further undermines economic efficiency, as observed, for example, in underinvestment in infrastructure, education, and medical care.⁹ When this gap between rich and poor widens, a whole range of social problems get worse, including physical/mental illness, violence, children’s health, drug abuse, and crime. Most of these problems are more common in countries like the United States and Britain, which have large income differences compared with countries like the Nordic countries or Japan.¹⁰

When those contesting the policy are haves, the policy in question may be war, truce, negotiation, or law. Minus the amendments, the U.S. Constitution is largely a compilation of agreements among haves. Of course, haves may occasionally downplay their differences to keep power from have-nots. All this must strike the person of principle as disagreeable, counterintuitive, even subversive. Nonetheless, most of it is there for the reading in those documents of, by, and for haves, including agreements governing commerce, corporations, bureaucracies, and so on, and may be readily glimpsed as well in the business press.

A disturbing aspect of the current use of power is that it is not the only conceivable use of power, although its public relations, when not obscuring the issue, would make us think it is. In fact, other uses of power are surely possible, such as power for democracy—power of, by, and for the people, including the have-nots, and power to liberate and to do good.

Although haves may conspire against one another regarding policy, only rarely is the policy of haves over have-nots conspiratorial in nature among haves. Indeed, it is usually openly talked about for logical reasons: haves keep other haves informed since a free market of ideas is an advantage to them, particularly considering that largely haves buy and sell. It is worth noting that, as a rule, conspiracy theories are more misleading than what they are supposed to uncover. The difficulty lies in extracting the main events from the sideshows that dominate the media.

Indeed, the media has become so significant that it is necessary to understand how elites make use of it.¹¹ Important to this understanding is that the media is overwhelmingly owned by corporations. Like any business, their principle goal is profit, which may come from selling advertising space to other corporations. What appears on television as the evening news is only the tip of a gigantic iceberg that includes production, sales, and organization. The major networks are wholly owned by giant corporations. People engaged in the media are likely to live out most of their lives among haves. The Rupert Murdoch scandal in 2012 is a prime example of the far-reaching impact of a corporate media mogul. As owner of one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, Murdoch used his position to influence the political advancement of politicians he personally supported, as well as to influence the candidates’ positions on key policy issues.¹²

Sex and violence sell not only in the movies but also on television, in magazines, and over the Internet and thus dominate the news. The millions spent on the legal prosecution of key politicians, such as President Bill Clinton, Justice Clarence Thomas, and more recently Senator John Edwards, are dwarfed by the costs of and profits from covering the stories. These are stories of importance, ones routinely ignored by those who profess a distance from and boredom with the coverage of scandals and the differential coverage by various media shows on television, ranging from The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News to The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.¹³

During the Cold War there was not only an arms race but a propaganda race. The question was phrased crisply in the media, in education, and in public relations: why is a country that is able to sell all sorts of goods and services losing the propaganda race with the Soviet Union? Whether we were indeed losing the race was at best questionable and was ultimately found to be untrue with the breakup of the Soviet bloc, which was attributed, in some measure, to the permeation of new information technologies into the Soviet Union.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States took propaganda seriously. It not only played a role in the contest between haves in the Eastern and Western blocs but also was a factor in haves winning over the hearts and minds of have-nots in both blocs. Here the United States was ahead, since the use of crude forms of power, such as torture and murder, are less practiced on American citizens; in fact, haves’ control over the hearts and minds of have-nots reached such a high level in this country that violence was usually unnecessary. However, with the onset of the Great Recession in the United States in 2008, the poor and the middle class attempted to break this control and to challenge and redress the economic, social, and political inequalities with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In the past, cruder forms of power did exist in the United States in ghettos, prisons, and institutions comparable to the relation between haves and have-nots in some other countries. While these exercises of brute force were not usually conspiratorial, their occurrence rarely made it into the media, have-nots generally not being the subject of salable stories but rather marginalized, segregated, and kept apart from haves.¹⁴ More recently, when images where shown to American citizens exemplifying the torture of war detainees in Guantanamo Bay, there was unprecedented public discussion of the military’s ethical and legal treatment of prisoners of war (“terrorists”). Although far from being true, equality of opportunity is still a professed American goal. Equality of opportunity means upward mobility, which accounts for some of the popularity of the success and deeds of haves.¹⁵

Propaganda techniques, including public relations, advertising, and marketing, are openly taught at institutions of higher learning and widely practiced by the media, the government, and corporations. In such propaganda, morsels of truth exist—sometimes because of the necessity of communication among elites, sometimes as interesting stories tucked away on inside pages, and sometimes where the media attacks elite interests to enhance profit.

Myths of extreme importance are routinely subjects of public relations. One such myth, which we discuss later, has to do with what is and what is not considered politics. Another, about the naturalness of free markets and private property, has had a reincarnation not only nationally but also globally. According to this myth, the Soviet bloc imploded because of the self-evident inefficiencies of state planning and the lack of privatization. There is some truth to this, but it is not the whole truth. According to the free-market and private-property myth, the once flourishing Asian tigers, which were taking advantage of U.S. free markets through Oriental wile, martial arts, industrial espionage, even a work ethic characteristic of the golden days of American capitalism (which we were striving to recover), in 1997 and 1998 were, in the midst of their economic crisis, revealing the bankruptcy of their other methods of gaining economic power. More recently, the Arab Spring uprising reflected the same form of methods being used to maintain an economic stronghold over citizens. Instead, many American economists agree that there are indeed many ways to achieve development,¹⁶ a conviction the United States put into effect in its trade relations with China, ignoring such issues as human rights, prison labor, and even national security.

The private free market fiction is an important achievement of the American media, the educational system, social discourse, and politics in an environment where corporations wield the power that they do. Examples of this myth include our justifications for dismantling the welfare state and the entrenchment of newspeak,¹⁷ such as flexible labor markets (meaning workers who are easy to boss around), special interests (meaning labor unions and environmental groups), jobs (meaning profits), globalization (meaning the ascendancy of transnational corporations over nation-states), welfare reform (meaning welfare repeal), and privatization of Social Security (meaning increased corporate profit and destruction of the social safety net).

In fact neither private property nor the free market is natural.¹⁸ Both are social and political constructs relying on law, regulation, customs, even the threat of force. A market economy requires the legal structure of contracts, laws enforced against theft and bribery, other modifications to the market, and an effective system of taxation. This became exquisitely clear as markets and private property overwhelmed the former Soviet bloc. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution is substantially a set of regulations that govern markets. That the market requires laws and power for its operation and sustenance is also clear, evidenced explicitly by the collapse of the housing market, as well as bank and lending institutions, that followed government deregulation during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Some (e.g., the Austrian school of economists) have claimed that these laws are natural, like the laws in Newtonian physics.¹⁹

The private free market myth was discredited by the onset of the Great Recession of 2008. Numerous causes of this recession underscore the fact that the free market can no longer be considered reliably rational, naturally efficient, or self-regulating. The following causes demonstrate the vast degree of inefficiency that led to the Great Recession:

• Housing finance manipulation (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other lending institutions, including the regular ba...