SEXUAL DIVISIONS IN CARING: ARE THEY INEVITABLE? In recent years, feminists have increasingly insisted on making explicit the true meaning of ’community care’ as it applies to elderly and handicapped people, ie, for community read family, and for family read women, and have rightly been suspicious of attempts to increase such ’community’ provision, seeing them as part of the political agenda of getting women out of the labour market and back into the home, to provide unpaid health and welfare services for members of their own families It is important to go on saying this, because the message has only been ’heard’ (that is, heard and accepted) by a minority of those who write about social policy, or of those who make and implement policies about social service provision. It is also important to go on studying the impact of such policies upon women (and indeed upon men), and building comprehensive and up-to-date critiques as these policies develop through the 1980s. At the same time, it seems to me that this debate on sexual divisions in caring for highly dependent individuals has reached something of an impasse, which needs to be acknowledged before it can move on. The question, to express it crudely, is this: we know what we are against, but do we know what we are far? We are clear what we want to reject: we reject socalled community care policies which depend on the substantial and consistent input of women’s unpaid labour in the home, whilst at the same time effectively excluding them from the labour market and reinforcing their economic and personal dependence upon men. But what do we want * I would like to thank participants in the workshop which I led on this theme at the CSP Conference in April 1983 and especially Lesley Doyal, who encouraged me to write up my paper. Thanks are also due to Dulcie Groves and David Morgan, who commented on the written

Community care: developing non-sexist alternatives:

The current stage of ‘neo-capitalism’ or ‘state monopoly capitalism’ is characterized by a qualitatively expanded role of the state in capitalist social formations. [1] One expression of this huge politico-economic weight of the modern state is the prolonged expansion in state expenditures, such that they now exceed one half of gross domestic product in contemporary Britain. [2] Yet despite this, there have been only isolated studies by Marxists which systematically examine the causes and consequences of this unprecedented growth. In the following sections we propose to outline the patterns and trends in state expenditure in the major capitalist economies; briefly to analyse the nature of the modern capitalist state and its socio-economic setting; in the light of this to attempt an explanation of the growth and composition of state expenditures; and finally to consider briefly some of the major economic and political consequences of this phenomenon. Beforehand, however, it is incumbent on us to consider current theories and state why we regard them as unsatisfactory or incomplete. To this end, the recent studies of O’Connor, Yaffe and Barratt Brown will be singled out for attention.

/pdf/state-expenditure-in-advanced-capitalism-6q24p68xi5.pdf

State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism

The Welfare State in Capitalist Society: Policies of Retrenchment and Maintenance in Europe, North America, and Australia

Since the middle of the 1970s the welfare state has been under attack in several major western countries. In Canada (except perhaps in British Columbia) social expenditures and social programmes have not been significantly cut back. Instead, they have steadily eroded despite increasing demands from a growing dependent population. This erosion has been effected through a variety of means: a shift to more selective social programmes, the addition of premiums and user fees, and the privatization of social services. More families and unattached individuals in the bottom quintile of the distribution of income are finding themselves increasingly dependent on social benefits for their income. Cutbacks have an immediate effect on the standard of living of the dependent population, particularly single parent women, children, and the elderly.

The Welfare State Since 1975

This article revisits traditions of observational fieldwork inside welfare institutions which formed a core part of past social administration teaching and research in the United Kingdom. Drawing on archive materials, a historical exploration of journal contents and some supplementary interview data, it is argued that such approaches—though carried out in a less theoretically pluralist, more vocationally‐oriented time for the subject of social policy and administration—were at the same time valuable in facilitating critical perspectives on how welfare bureaucracies work. Their popularity is potentially rising once again in social policy teaching. Where cultivated alongside an appreciation of theory and where carefully integrated into university social policy departments' wider pedagogical and curricular strategies, they may be of benefit today to students and more senior scholars alike.

/pdf/social-administration-revisited-traditions-of-observational-1isbe3rglb.pdf

Social administration revisited: Traditions of observational fieldwork and their value

This paper develops from the marxist critique of social policy under capitalism a speculative picture of socialist social policy. It draws its ideas from:(a) socialist theory of the state, human nature, family life, and the relationship between need and resources(b) 'socialist' countries such as Russia and Cuba(c) struggles about welfare policies under capitalism.It attempts to answer a number of questions posed by the discipline of social administration about the nature of socialist social policy.

Social Administration, Social Policy and Socialism:

This paper reviews the strategies for welfare presently being articulated in social policy literature in both Britain and Hungary. The similarity between the range of strategies in both countries is discussed. These include free market, welfare pluralist, welfare corporatist, alternative social planning and, in the case of Britain only, social revolution. The strategies are evaluated in terms of whether on or other is more likely to find sympathetic response among popular opinion in both countries. The marginalisation of the revolutionary strategy for welfare is commented upon. The immediate excuse for this discussion paper is the so called review of the welfare state instigated by Fowler for the Thatcher Government but the wider context is more important. This context has three identifiable elements: a) The state solution to the problems of social welfare has been challenged in Britain (and other western capitalist countries) in the past ten years. The challenge has come in a remarkably parallel way from both the right with its case for consumer sovereignty through the market and the left with its case for user control through less bureaucratic, centralised, and professionally dominated forms of provision. b) The Fabian mould within which the academic study of social administration had been cast for many years in Britain has been broken. A variety of competing intellectual approaches and consequent political strategies now confronts the student of social policy. c) A similar challenge to statist forms of welfare and a consequent breaking of the mould of state orthodoxy has also taken place in some Eastern European countries; most notably in Hungary. A range of political strategies for welfare are now being discussed in intellectual and government circles in Hungary that reflect those available in the West. Within this context this paper has two concerns. The first examines which of the competing strategies now available is most likely to find a sympathetic response among the population. More particularly, given that the strategies * This paper represents work in progress. The ideas contained in it have been discussed with Sidney Jacobs and Fiona Williams at Plymouth Polytechnic and various colleagues in Hungary. I am indebted to all of these for their contribution to this work. The particular political conclusions however represent my own and not a collective opinion. We are all indebted to the British Council for funding the dialogue with the Hungarian colleagues.

Strategies for welfare: East and West Europe

This article reports the results of a recent survey into the attitudes of a small sample of working-class voters in Plymouth. The survey in general reinforces the conclusions of previous studies regarding the perceptions of who benefits from state welfare, which are the preferred and less preferred services, the existence of a bedrock of defence of state welfare coexisting with reported negative experiences of some aspects of state welfare. The new contribution of this pilot survey is to test the potential receptivity of voters to a range of alternative welfare strategies in the light of the experience of Thatcherism ranging from free market, through welfare pluralism, the status quo, and welfare corporation, to radical redistribu don and the alternative social strategy. The potential if minority support for radical redistribution and the alternative social strategy on the one hand and welfare pluralism on the other is reported. The free-market and welfare-corporatist strategies are not preferred.

Working-class opinion and welfare strategies: beyond the state and the market

development of advanced equipment, hospitals and other resources which will still be needed. Neither George and Manning nor the books mentioned above really offer coherent and constructive suggestions for a socialist social policy that would avoid the authoritarianism and injustice of the ’strong state’. What George and Manning do suggest is that in a socialist state of the Soviet variety there is less conflict between economic and social goals, and they suggest that: ’socialist social policy implies basically an attempt at comprehensiveness and conscious direction of the social processes, whereas capitalist social policy is oriented towards partial, isolated changes in response to perceived social ills ... there is less contradiction between economic and social policy in a socialist society, whereas in capitalism social policy is either strictly subordinate to or in conflict with economic policies’ (Roos 1977)... Social policy under capitialism [isl essentially subordinate and supportive of the system, while under socialism it is a medium for change towards the communist society. (p.166). Yet of course this begs the question of what is the kind of socialist or communist society we wish to see. Neither this book nor recent ’radical’ writings in Britain, mentioned above, answer this question. What Socialism, Social Welfare and the Soviet Union does show is that even in the Soviet Union where socialism has yet to be fully achieved, social welfare can be in many ways a real improvement on capitalist welfare. This may be a limited achievement (both for the USSR and for the book), but it is not one to be scorned.

Bob Deacon

Papers

Social Administration, Social Policy and Socialism:

Strategies for welfare: East and West Europe

Working-class opinion and welfare strategies: beyond the state and the market

Reviews : Social Theory and Social Welfare Peter Taylor-Gooby and Jennifer Dale Edward Arnold 1981, £5.95 paperback

Book reviews : Approaches to Social Welfare P. Bean and S. MacPherson (eds) RKP, London, 1983, £6.95 pbk, £13.95 hbk