Idea Transcript
MARXISM AND SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION: A SHAKY START Mark
Cowling
Abstract This article examines Taylor-Gooby and Dale’s interesting attempt at producing a marxist account of social administration in their book Social Theory and Social Welfare. It argues that their distinction between ’materialist’ marxism and the ’idealist’ Social Administration tradition breaks down because of an inadequate definition of ’idealism’ and because their own variant of marxism is ’idealist’. Their attempt to apply a marxist analysis to Britain departs from their own conception of a materialist approach. Their claism about what socialism can achieve are dubious. Their book should be seen as one possible marxist approach, and other
possibilities explored.
Taylor-Gooby and Jennifer Dale’s book, Social Theory and Social Welfare [Edward Arnold, London, 198 i . All unspecified page references are to this book.] has Peter
been seen as a milestone in the development of a marxist account of social policy, in that it is an explicit attempt to develop the marxist method of analysis in this area. The book’s reviews have been generally favourable. [B. Deacon, 1982, Critical Social Policy, vol.1, no.3, pp.85-6; R. Pinker, 1982, British Journal af Social Work, vol. 12, no.2, April, pp.215-6; R. Misra, 1982, Social Policy and Administration, vol. 16, no.2, pp.159-161, and, mildly favourable, R. Weale, 1982, Journal of Social Policy, viol.11, pt.l, January, pp. 111-112.] The methodological distinction which TaylorGooby and Dale make between materialism and the idealism of the social administration tradition has been rapidly taken up [eg the reviews by Carpenter and Mishra in Critical Social Policy, vol.2, no.1, summer 1982]. Their book therefore provides a useful point at which to take stock of progress so far in the development of a specifically marxist account of social policy. In this article I shall show that although they have performed a useful task in mapping out the general area, their main achievement is to show how much remains to be analysed if marxism is to be capable of contributing to the discipline or to the development of welfare in Britain. I shall discuss four interrelated areas of difficulty in their work their dismissal of reformist socialism and of the social administration tradition as ’idealist’; their application of marxism to the analysis of capitalist society, in particular to Britain; their claim that their marxism is ‘materialist’; and their claims about what socialism can do. I shall argue that marxism is ambiguous, and that the best way to move on from Taylor-Gooby and Dale’s initial survey is to elaborate a series of distinct marxist perspectives.
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The dismissal of idealism Taylor-Gooby and Dale claim that marxism is distinct from reformist approaches to social administration because the former is materialist, whilst the latter is idealist. We are given to understand that an idealist analysis is pretty useless. In my view, however, their distinction breaks down. Part of the problem lies in the way they define idealism and materialism. For Taylor-Gooby and Dale ’the idealist approach to the analysis of
society’ : ’... has two aspects: the view that society consists of a plurality of structures or institutions united by a relatively weak linkage, so that one may be changed without any major repercussions for others; and the view that change is to be achieved through change in convictions. These rest on the notion that social reality ultimately rests on ideas - the collective motiviations, aspirations, norms and values of its members. Piecemeal change through the creation of motives by intellectual conviction is possible because the make-up of society is constituted through the bundle of ideas governing people’s minds. If the structure of ideas is changed, it is possible to reorganise society appropriately’.
In contrast, materialism: ’... tends to see society as a totality of relations, strongly influenced by brute facts of human existence beyond conscious control ... This leads to a tendency to deny the possibility of resolving [problems] within the social whole in which they originate ... Change in the system as a whole is required to solve problems’. [pp.70-71, cf., p.86] And its marxist version stresses the overriding importance of mode of production ...
[pp.SO-51 ]. What is assumed in the definitions is a linkage between marxism, materialism and the standpoint of totality, ie of seeing all aspects of society as linked [cf., pp.92,i 24]. But idealists are equally capable of seeing society as a totality. Hegel’s philosophy, for example, is a form of idealism which tries to show how every phenomenon in each period of human history is linked together by an underlying spiritual essence, so that everything is the realisation of spirit. In contrast to the totalising claims of Hegel’s system, Marx’s work, with its heavy concentration on the capitalist mode of production and its very limited comments on pre-capitalist periods of history, has ’relatively weak linkages’. Marxism does happen to claim that stronger linkages exist between aspects of society than are accepted by writers within the social administration tradition, but what characterises it as materialist is not this feature but the primacy of the material world over ideas. To assert that society is simply founded on ideas does not sound very plausible; by adding the ’weak linkages’ concept to the normal definition Taylor-Gooby and Dale make it easier to denigrate reformists. It is possible that Taylor-Gooby and Dale were led to attack reformists as idealists by their study of Tawney, whose condemnation of capitalism from the standpoint of a Christian ethic, and whose insistence on ’intellectual conversion’ as the first condition of reform certainly seem to mark him as an idealist in the full sense [p.74]. However, as we shall see, their other victims seem to be condemned at the first mention of an idea, or at any suggestions that a reform could work. In arguing that neoclassical economic theory was incorrect, that equilibrium could be reached in the economy at a level which did not fully utilise resources, Keynes was surely analysing material reality. He was doing so in a way which probably contradicts marxist economic theory, but Taylor-Gooby and Dale do not feel impelled to argue with him on that score. Instead, he goes down as an idealist because he thought ’political relations could reform economic relations’, and because he thought that once his theory was understood it would be taken up [p.74]. What is not stated at this point is that Marx thought that ’political relations could modify the economy’, (ie that the dictatorship of the proletariat can build a socialist economy) and that communist propaganda is worthwhile because the working class will see that it makes good sense. 7
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Titmuss attracts Taylor-Gooby and Dale’s fire not because he calls for state intervention but because he thinks there is a human need for ’integration’ [p.78], and thus shows his idealist homs. A marxist can presumably write about ideology without continually parading his background assumptions and yet still write something of value; similarly, could not Titmuss’s writings on The Gift Relationship be taken as a study of a special area to which a marxist background could be added? But worse than this, what do our ’materialist’ authors think about Titmuss’s ’idealist’ goal of ending alienation when it is espoused by Marx? Well, they agree with it [p.222]. Crosland devotes the first three chapters of his classic, ?’he Future of Socialism [J. Cape, London, 1956] to arguments which claim to show that the traditional marxist account of capitalist society is not valid in principle, and is particularly not valid as applied to the Britain of 1956. The principle that the ownership of the means of production determines the other features of society has been falsified by the widely varying conditions found matched to either private or public ownership in different countries. In Britain the abolition of the acute poverty experienced before the second world war, the spread of nationalisation and of planning, have led to a strong labour movement, so that power in the economy is evenly divided. These assumptions are reasons for believing that state intervention in an egalitarian, socialist direction would have some success; but Crosland is very careful to look empirically at the success of the measures he proposes. Thus, whilst at first sight one might think that worker directors and profit sharing would be realisable and desirable within his framework he argues that the former is impractical and the latter is of no great use [The Future of Socialism,
pp.358-365]. Crosland’s arguments seem to demand an empirical reply. He gets one - for a paragraph. The closure of steel plants at Shotton and Corby because of the Thatcher government’s decisions on steel subsidies echoes the fate of Jarrow in the 1930s, and shows that: ’An increase in the power of the state is no guarantee that disasters resulting from the barbarism of the market will not be repeated’. [p. 8 1] This reply is a bad reply. That state power is being wielded in an anti-working class manner by the Thatcher government does not demonstrate its ineffectiveness.
In the next paragraph we are back to ’idealism’, the exaggerated significance of parliament, ’disproportionate emphasis on the psychological manifestations of changes in the business structure’, etc [p.81]. Crosland is arguing that current material conditions permit more scope for ideas to take effect than traditional marxists will allow them. Marx allows for a greater efficacy to ideas in the exceptional conditions of postrevolutionary society. In either case a critic should not apply blanket philosophical condemnations, but argue that the analysis of material conditions is incorrect. Within comments
reason
from Crosland that we must ’concentrate our effort’
are
not, contra
Taylor-Gooby and Dale, a sign of rampant idealism. Taylor-Gooby and Dale also argue against Crosland that the ’capitalist goal of growth’ contradicts the ’humanist goal of welfare’, a point which I shall take up later. It would be possible to mount a defence of the other major ’idealist’, Galbraith, on similar lines.
The
application of marxism
to
capitalist Britain
If marxist ’materialism’ is to be taken seriously, it should provide a coherent and plausible account of capitalist society, and, following from this, a strategy for the working class. Moreover, if ‘idealism’ is the key criticism of socialist rivals, marxism’s analysis should be clearly materialistic. Taylor-Gooby and Dale fail on all these counts.
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They are less concerned than they should be about fundamental problems in marxist economics. In this framework, in its traditional form, the concept of surplus value is basic. However, say Taylor-Gooby and Dale, the fact that: analysis of the process of extraction (of surplus value - CMC) has since been challenged [Steedman, Marx after Srqflia, New Left Books, 1 97l’]] need not concern us here’. [p-92] ’Marx’s
In another venture into marxist economics they discuss the low rate of profit in Britain over recent years. Marx himself was very proud of his proof-that the rate of profit must inevitably fall; Taylor-Gooby and Dale prefer a more contingent explanation of the fall of profits in Britain on the lines of that given by Sutcliffe and Glyn [A. Glyn and B. Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, Penguin 1972], although ’the debate gets exceedingly complicated and confusing’ and is not be discussed here ...[p. 254]. For writers so concerned to produce a materialist analysis major problems in the account of the economic base should give rise to more worry. Marxist ’materialism’ has difficulties in other areas: ’Major differences, for example in the degree of centralisation of the state apparatus between France and the USA, and in the scope of welfare activities between Britain and the USA, cannot be reduced to differences in the
capitalist mode
of production’.
[p. i 84]
and Dale do not take the dubious Althusserian route around this problem of putting emphasis on ’decentred totalities’ so that the economic somehow ultimately does determine these differences after all. They are more naive: ’... the identification of social functions does not constitute an explanation of what human
Taylor-Gooby
actors
We
actually do’. [p.184]
to be getting some scope for idealism, of which more later. Further, marxist materialism cannot directly explain most of what Taylor-Gooby and Dale see as the current problems of the British state, which seem to acquire their form rather than their substance from the capitalist mode of production. Whilst unemployment is doubtless caused by capitalism, concern about territorial inequality, leading to Scottish nationalism; and concern about racial and sexual equality [pp.20S6] would surely recur under socialism, as the revolution will not abolish races, sexes or regions. Coming to the major question of explaining the welfare state, Taylor-Gooby and Dale are ambivalent about its achievements. Their first chapter seems to rate it a seem
success:
‘Unemployment at the turn of the century meant starvation charity or the workhouse. Now it means boredom and meagre living. Sickness meant bills and worry. Now it means waiting lists - and so on. The result is immeasurably greater (though by no means perfect) security for (most of) the needy. Since most of the working class run the risk of falling into this category through the social contingencies of marital collapse, retirement, sickness, unemployment, homelessnes; and so on, this represents a profound social change’. [p.5]]
In
a nutshell: although imperfect, the welfare state broadly lives up to its name by securing widespread basic welfare. However, ’the welfare state has failed to achieve the objectives of its originators’. It has failed to eradicate poverty, has made little impact on the chances of working class children, even those entering grammar schools, has failed to eliminate slums, has not achieved equal access to health care [pip.135-6]. Before going on to explain these gross failures, more analysis is surely needed of the balance of success or failure, as the two passages virtually contradict each other. When it comes to explaining the welfare state one is initially alarmed to fmd TaylorGooby and Dale giving lists of factors which include virtually everything possible and explain little [pip.189,191]. However, unlike some other marxists, they do back one factor. working class pressure, applied through the trade unions and the Labour Party ’has more often than not been the main factor determining whether the state will initiate
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reform’. [p.234j The obvious strategy to recommend on the basis of this analysis would be support for further reforms through the trade unions and the Labour Party, perhaps with some modifications designed to improve the results. However, this must be too close to ‘idealist’ reformism for Taylor-Gooby and Dale. Contradicting their view that other forms of class struggle ’have had a much smaller effect on the welfare state’ [p.234] than the unions and the Labour Party, they say that ’a revolutionary challenge to the existing social order’ must include community struggle and groups suffering sexual, racial or national oppression [pp.185-6]. Elsewhere they consider three possible socialist strategies, the Alternative Economic Strategy, building a Leninist Party and a broad, non-parliamentary anti-capitalist coalition on the lines suggested in Beyond the Fragments [S. Rowbotham, L. Segal and H. Wainwright, Merlin, 1979] and conclude that ’all the strategies involve immense problems’ [p.264]. In particular, the one with the best chance of being implemented, the Alternative Economic Strategy, relies on the same partnership of trade unions and Labour Party which they castigate as reformist, and ’has little to say about welfare’ [p.264]. It seems that Taylor-Gooby and Dale virtually admit that the strategies which their ’materialism’ lead them towards are less effective than that based on ’idealism’.
Is
Taylor-Gooby
and Dale’s marxism
really ’materialist’?
question arises above which leads me on to a discussion of the extent to which Taylor-Gooby and Dale’s marxism is ’materialist’. If marxism explains capitalist society in relation to the capitalist mode of production, how is it that the working class must unite with those engaged in community, racial, sexual and national struggles in order to overcome capitalism? Isn’t the explanation actually invoking other factors? A
And, if so, how are these factors combined with economic analysis? Or economic plus ideological and political analysis based on the capitalist mode of production, if that is a better formulation? In fact we find a whole series of undigested and probably mutually contradictory accounts. Let us start with the most materialist:
a marxist analysis is the view that the economic level is fundamental: physical production is also the production and reproduction of social relations and the values on which
’Central to
such relations rest’.
[p.153j
This appears to argue for productive forces determinism, on the lines of G. Cohen. [G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, Oxford, 1979.1 Getting a little vaguer, we have the formulation that production relationships ’tend to’ produce appropriate ideas as well as goods [p. i 30]. But the idea that the economy is fundamental needs explanation. It is not true that it ‘determines what happens elsewhere’, but it ’sets certain basic limits’ [p.142, cf., p.188]. What else has an effect within the limits? And what are they? One influence is ideology, which ‘... influences but does not determine social action’. [p.138]. It is a ’powerful part’ of the chains which the proletarians have to lose [p.101 ]. This raises some very vexed questions about the relative autonomy of ideology, and the degree to which social action has any effect For example, presumably reading about the experience of planned economies influences British. workers - this is given as a factor which ’inhibits the development of class consciousness’ [p.189]. But if British workers are free to be attracted to or repelled by any other society worldwide, ’ideology’ has considerable freedom from its immediate material foundations. Further, the state’s policies are an expression of dominant values’. [p.96]. Values are presumably part of ideology. So, to the extent that the state has scope for manoeuvre within the requirements of the economy, its policies are as unconstrained as its ideology. So far I have simply shown that Taylor-Gooby and Dale lack a definite position on the longstanding problem in marxism of how to make sense of the idea of the relative autonomy of the ideological and political levels, together with the
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ultimate determining role of the economic base. It is perhaps unfair to expect them to solve this problem, although they should be more aware of the way it limits the analytical power of marxism. But for people whose chief criticism of other socialists is ’idealism’, ie the notion that changing ideas changes society, the next development is staggering. They state as a general principle that: ’Any satisfactory approach to a form of society must do justice to the twin components of social reality: society is experienced by its members as an over-arching framework of constraining factors. At the same time human action is experienced as (at least potentially) free, and society consists in the sum total of actions of its members’. [p.137, cf., pp.114,126-7] To be clear, they are not saying that we must account for an illusory experience of freedom; they are saying that we are free, but within certain constraints [cf., pp.9091,130,219]. If this freedom means anything, is capable of having any effects, then we seem to have an idealist deviation. Taylor-Gooby and Dale do not, however, rest there. More idealist than the assertion that ideas can have an effect is the assertion of normative principles which are not closely tied to an empirical analysis, and the attempt to use these as a foundation for change [cf., attacks on Crosland, p.81, or on the social administration tradition, p.123]. This is precisely what Taylor-Gooby and Dale do in their discussion of need - they rely, as did Marx in his early writings of 1844, on the concept of’true human needs’ and ’true human nature’: ’
’Can we argue that the needs created by capitalism are a distortion of true human needs without invoking some universal, absolute standard of human need which is external to society? Turning to non-material needs, the notion that labour is alienated must imply the converse, that non-alienated labour is possible in a society where there is a right relationship between people.’ [pp.221-2] Here a normative judgement about ’true human nature’ is being made. How is it justified? One attempt is: ’In the fmal analysis normative judgement cannot be avoided. Nevertheless such judgements have to be made every day of our lives and it is not for academics to refuse to participate.’
[p.222] No, indeed, it is only reformists, academic or not, who must refuse or be condemned for ‘idealism’. Another attempted justification is to say that capitalism creates consciousness of needs which it cannot satisfy, a dubious point to which I shall return [p.222]. Finally, they appeal to the idea of a: ’... free society in which people will have a free choice, such that it will actually be possible to discover what true needs are.’ [p.223] But they also say the ’key question’ is how we can’ create and reoognise’ such a society. So, we are to use normative principles founded on what people will, or would, decide in a ’free’ society, the outlines of which are very vague, and the road to which is uncertain - in discussing the three possible roads or socialist strategies mentioned above Taylor-Gooby and Dale write of ’the absence of clear perspectives’ [p. 265]. Crosland begins to look like a crude materialist.
Taylor-Gooby and
Dale’s
account
of what socialism
can
do
Taylor-Gooby and Dale’s book is the most sustained attempt so far at giving a marxist account of social administration. As we have seen above, the book founders on its inadequately thought-out marxism. It suffers, as does much of the writing on marxism and the welfare state, from trying to look at ’the’ marxist perspective. ’The’ marxist perspective is highly ambiguous: Bernstein, Gramsci, Stalin, Trotsky, Althusser, the Frankfurt School, the later Sartre,.Luxemburg, Mao, all have good claims to be called ’marxist’, but they obviously differ substantially on numerous important questions. It 11
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would be better to look at ’a’ marxist perspective. For one author, for instance, this could be an account founded on economic determinism and the acceptance of Marx’ss economic laws, which would claim to show what must happen to the welfare state in Britain in future. For another it could be a comparison of the social administration and reformist tradition with humanist marxism of the kind ultimately espoused by TaylorGooby and Dale. The approach I would back is one which accepts that reformism has worked to a considerable extent [cf. Taylor-Gooby and Dale’s optimistic quote above]; that health care and education work on principles close to ’from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’. If we add to this that the reproduction requirements of capitalism are highly flexible (they are satisfied in both South Korea and Sweden), we can perhaps try to see what features of a communist society can be built into our own society without positing total collapse and revolutionary reconstruction. In other a version of marxist reformism should be developed. In this context some final comments should be made on what Taylor-Gooby and Dale have to contribute to our understanding of a socialist Britain. One immediate point is that they do not discuss Marx’s slogan for socialist society or his slogan for communist society (’From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’), despite devoting a chapter to ’Needs’. The character of communist society varies dramatically depending on whether ’needs’ means ’basic needs’ - presumably of the kind already provided, more or less, by the welfare state - or whether it means ’wants’, which implies an indefinitely large expansion of production. This matter of principle aside, I am concerned that some of their claims for socialist society do not stand up to scrutiny. I have already referred to the likelihood that some problems based on regional, sexual and racial differences would persist under socialism. Here I want to look at four other
words,
questions. First, growth. Taylor-Gooby and Dale attack Crosland, as I mentioned above, on the grounds that there is a contradiction between ’the capitalist goal of growth and the humanist goal of welfare’ [p.82). To some extent, however, growth versus welfare must be a problem for any society which seeks growth. Economic growth produces desirable goods in the future, but, in a socialist society with no capitalists or kulaks to expropriate, this must be at the expense of present consumption, be it social or individual. Growth also tends to produce disruption and pollution and may require incentives for key workers. To promise in a socialist Britain planned growth would ease these problems is reasonable; to claim that they would disappear is not. Second, Taylor-Gooby and Dale claim that capitalism creates consciousness of needs which it cannot satisfy [p.222]. What they have in mind particularly is Hirsch’s problem of socially scarce goods, such as the pleasure of driving on uncongested roads - as car ownership spreads, satisfaction diminishes [pp.88-9,232]. Socialism might reduce the snob appeal of some goods, and it might create a different rationing cars or Mediterranean summer holidays, but I cannot see that Hirsch’s problem is actually soluble under socialism in the sense that ‘an uncluttered Mediterranean holiday for all’ could become as realisable a slogan as ’a digital watch
system for for all’.
Third, we have the criticism of capitalism that ’not all members of capitalist society able to satisfy their basic needs for survival’ [p.230]. This refers to infant mortality figures, and appears to be making the dubious claim that everyone would be able to satisfy the basic need for survival under socialism, ie these figures would be nil. It may, however, be that the claim is a muddled version of the criticism of capitalism that infant mortality figures vary around the UK [p.221 ], ie babies do not have an equal chance of survival. I am sure that a socialist society would make every effort to achieve regional are
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equality, but the idea that any society which fails to ensure fully equal survival chances should be ’indicted’ [p.221]is utopian. Fourth, social administration is attacked because intervention in distribution with a view to planning economic growth has failed to solve poverty and unemployment. The problem is that production relations have been left unchanged [p. 151]. Unless socialism halts technological innovation I cannot see that it will necessarily preserve manufacturing jobs. What it could perhaps do is to reemploy the displaced workers on socially useful but unprofitable work. However, this can be done through current ’distributive’ techniques, and is being done at present, albeit in a gross ly inadequate and botched fashion. The four issues reinforce the case for the ’marxist reformist’ approach which I advocated above: it is not clear that socialism, as such, will solve these problems; and it is clear that there are ways of trying to tackle them now, before the hoped-for socialist revolution.
Mark
Cowling,
Teesside
Polytechnic
Bibliography 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Mick Carpenter, 1982, Review of Ian Kennedy, The Unmasking ofmedicine, CSP, vol.2, no. 1 , pp.1003. G. Cohen, 1979, Karl Marx’s Theory of History : A Defence, Oxford University Press. C.A.R. Crosland, 1956, The Future of Socialism, Jonathan Cape, London. B. Deacon, 1982, Review of Taylor-Gooby and Dale (1981) in CSP, vol.1, no.3, pp.85-6. A. Glyn and B. Sutcliffe, 1972, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, Penguin, Hannondsworth. R Pinker, 1982, Review of Taylor-Gooby and Dale (1981), British Journal of Social Work, vol. 12,
no.2, April, pp.215-6. R Misra, 1982, Review of Taylor-Goohy and Dale (1981) in Social Policy and Administration, vol.16, no.2, pp.159-161. R. Misra, 1982, Review of T.H. Marshall, The Right to Welfare, CSP, vol.2, no.1, pp.105-107. S. Rowbotham, H. Wainwright and L. Segal (1979) Beyond the Fragments, Merlin, London. P. Taylor-Gooby and J. Dale (1981), Social Theory and Social Welfare, Arnold, London. R. Weale (1982), Review of Taylor-Gooby and Dale (1981),Journal of Sarial Policy, vol.11, pt.1, January, pp.111-112.
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