Conditionality, Discretion and TH Marshall's ‘Right to Welfare’

In this chapter, Robert Pinker discusses T.H. Marshall's concern with welfare pluralism, his study of citizenship and welfare, and his contribution to the development of social policy and administration. He begins with an overview of Marshall's achievement in the field of sociology and some of his major works such as Sociology at the Crossroads and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, along with the essays entitled ‘Value Problems of Welfare-Capitalism’ and ‘Citizenship and Social Class’. Pinker continues by analysing Marshall's thoughts on the relationship between the inequalities of class and the prospective equality of citizenship and his argument that collectivist social services contribute to the maintenance and enhancement of social welfare so long as such interventions do not subvert the operation of the system of competitive markets. Pinker concludes with an assessment of Marshall's views on social and political rights, the problem of poverty, and the concept of ‘democratic-welfare-capitalism’.

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The Other T. H. Marshall

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279400025150 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 341-362 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

A. M. Rees

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

The Political ◽

Social Rights ◽

Current Interest ◽

Capitalist Class ◽

Class System ◽

The Right ◽

Right To Welfare ◽

National Membership ◽

The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the writings of T. H. Marshall contain not one, but two, theories of citizenship, and there is a problem about whether they are compatible with one another. The second, less familiar, theory is mainly developed in Marshall's later works, especially The Right to Welfare, but many of its essential features can be found in Citizenship and Social Class, although not in the sections of that work which are most frequently quoted. Several areas where Marshall's shifting views contributed to this second version of citizenship are discussed: citizenship as national membership and as a body of obligations, the reality of social rights, discretion versus enforceable entitlements, citizenship as a bearer of its own inequalities, the relationship with the capitalist class system. Increasingly, Marshall came to restrict citizenship to the political sphere, thereby endorsing a conventional liberal view: but then he was, it is argued, in many respects a pretty conventional liberal. The article concludes by noting the paradox that much of the current interest in Marshall's thought is because a ‘strong’ view of citizenship is attributed to him which he may never have held, and which he certainly relinquished towards the end of his writing career.

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