This simple poem about the Great Depression starts a conversation about the relationship between altruism and social change. Brecht poses a profound social question. Should we be glad ‘a few men have a bed for the night’ or despairing that ‘it will not shorten the age of exploitation’? The answer depends on how you read the poem and is ultimately shaped by your own subjectivity. The Project for Critical Reflection (no date), in a commentary on the poem, also poses a series of challenging questions that go to the core of the ethical purpose of social work. These questions provide the meta-themes for a continuing professional development (CPD) curriculum in social work: ‘Is the service you provide changing the world?’; ‘What kind of change is possible and how do you know whether you are achieving it or not?’; and ‘How important is justice to service work and how do you know whether you are achieving it or not?’.

The writer J.G. Ballard remarked: ‘Marxism is a social philosophy for the poor and what we need badly is a social philosophy of the rich’ (quoted in The Irish Times, 2012). Quite so! Brecht's poem, A bed for the night, draws on his burgeoning Marxist world view but also that enduring civic virtue – altruism – about which he is deeply conflicted, as the poem reveals.