Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:28:35.943Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Welfare State in Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Get access

Extract

The phrase “welfare state” is of recent origin. It was first used to describe Labour Britain after 1945. From Britain the phrase made its way round the world. It was freely employed, usually but not exclusively by politicians and journalists, in relation to diverse societies at diverse stages of development. Historians also took over the phrase. Attempts were made to re-write nineteenth and twentieth century history, particularly British history, in terms of the “origins” and “development” of a “welfare state”.

Type
On the Welfare State
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) I.L.O., International Labour Conference, 34th Session, Objectives and Minimum Standards of Social Security (1950), pp. 34Google Scholar. See also “Survey of Post-War Trends in Social Security” in International Labour Review, June, July, August, 09, 1949.Google Scholar

(2) I.L.O., Approaches to Social Security (1942), p. i.Google Scholar; Objectives and Advanced Standards of Social Security (1952)Google Scholar; Thomson, D., Briggs, A., Meyer, E., Patterns of Peacemaking (1945), p. 340, ch. VII, appendix II.Google Scholar

(3) Titmuss, R. M., Problems of Social Policy (1950), p. 506.Google Scholar

(4) Mowat, C. L., The Charity Organization Society, 1869–1913 (1961), p. 75.Google Scholar

(5) Dicey, A. V., Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (1914 edn.), p. 1.Google Scholar

(6) Titmoss, , op. cit. pp. 509–10.Google Scholar

(7) Cd. 6550 (1944) § 8, § 33. See also Cd. 6404 (1942) and Briggs, A., “The Social Services” in The British Economy, 1945–50, (ed. G. D. N. Worswick and P. Ady, 1952), pp. 365–80.Google Scholar

(8) Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class (1949), pp. 47 and 48.Google Scholar

(9) Bentham, J., Works (ed. J. Bowring, 1843), vol. III, p. 35Google Scholar. Cf. Keynes, J. M.'s view of the “agenda” of the state in The End of Laissez Faire (1926).Google Scholar

(10) Webb, S., in Fabian Essays ([1889] 1948 edn.). p. 43, p. 46.Google Scholar

(11) H. Bland, ibid. p. 198.

(12) McCulloch, J. R., Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by Death (1848), p. 156.Google Scholar

(13) The passage comes from his Oxford lectures of 1847–8. It is quoted in Robbins, L., The Theory of Economic Policy (1953), p. 45Google Scholar. See also for a modern comment on the history of the term laissez faire, McGregor, D. H., Economic Thought and Policy (1949), ch. III.Google Scholar

(14) Wallas, G., Human Nature in Politics ([1908] 1929 edn.), p. 13Google Scholar. There is a fascinating, if controversial, account of poor law and market in Polanyi, K., Origins of Our Time (1946).Google Scholar

(15) The Fleet Papers (1842), p. 58Google Scholar; (1841), p. 39; Leeds Intelligencer, 10 08 1833.Google Scholar

(16) Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 05 1843Google Scholar; Driver, C., Tory Radical (1946).Google Scholar

(17) The phrase is taken from his Stones of Venice (1851)Google Scholar. (Works, ed. Cook, and Wedderburn, , vol. XI, p. 263)Google Scholar. The term “living wage” was first used by the English Cooperator, James, Lloyd, in the Beehive, 07 1874Google Scholar. The term “fair day's wages for a fair day's work” was older.

(18) Foxwell, H. S., The Claims of Labour (1886), p. 249.Google Scholar

(19) Quoted in Finer, S. E., The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952), p. 477.Google Scholar

(20) Senior, N., Journals Kept in France and Italy (1843), pp. 150–2Google Scholar. In this journal Senior compared England with Switzerland. The “pure democracies” of small Swiss cantons, he claimed, resisted the spell of “the political economy of the poor” because all their adult males “venerated their clergy, their men of birth and of wealth and their institutions”. He did not see that “deference” was as much a feature of nineteenth-century England. Estimates of the likely effect of the extension of suffrage on popular demands for a new political economy were influenced by estimates of the power of “deference”. See Bagehot, W., The English Constitution (1872 edn.)Google Scholar; Briggs, A., The Age of Improvement (1959), ch. x.Google Scholar

(21) “Much of that tact which dreads the ballot is a dread of the loss of aristo-cratical influence which prevails by gold, and of the gain of the influence which prevails by popularity” (Letter of 14 October 1852, quoted in Finer, , op. cit. p. 478).Google Scholar

(22) For details, see Roberts, D., Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (1960), esp. pp. 152244.Google Scholar

(23) McGregor, , op. cit. p. 54.Google Scholar

(24) Brebner, J. B., “Laissez faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-century Britain” in Tasks of Economic History, Supplement VIII (1948)Google Scholar to the Journal of Economic History. For the dangers of explaining in terms of D'cey's “abstrartions”, see also MacDonagh, , “The Nineteenth-century Revolution in Government: a Re-appraisal” in the Historical Journal (1958).Google Scholar

(25) Bland, , loc. cit. p. 195, p. 200.Google Scholar

(26) Ibid. p. 200.

(27) Quoted by Thompson, D. in “A Note on the Welfare State” in the New Reasoner, No. 4, 1948.Google Scholar

(28) See Tsuzuki, C., H. M. Hyndman and British Socialism (1961), p. 56, p. 148.Google Scholar

(29) The Fleet Papers (1842), p. 190.Google Scholar

(30) Yet Beatrice Webb herself said of her poor law scheme in 1907: “The whole theory of the mutual obligation between the individual and the State […] is taken straight out of the nobler aspect of the medieval manor”; Our Partnership (1948), p. 385.Google Scholar

(29) Beales, H. L., “The Making of Social Policy”, (L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Trust Lecture (1946), p. 5Google Scholar. The mercantilist parallel usually refers not only to welfare policy but to population policy (which, through such devices as family allowances, has “welfare” implications) and to protection (which also has “labour” implications).

(30) Métin, A., Le socialisme sans doctrines (1901)Google Scholar. See also Siegfried, A., Democracy in New Zealand (1906).Google Scholar

(31) Metin, , op. cit. p. 229Google Scholar; Condliffe, J. B., New Zealand in the Making (1930), pp. 164–5.Google Scholar

(32) Hancock, W. K., Australia (1930), p. 61Google Scholar. For general reflections on the role of the state in Australia, see Encel, S., “The Concept of the State in Australian Politics” in the Australian Journal of Politics and History, 05 1960.Google Scholar

(35) See Wilson, A. and Mackay, G. S., Old Age Pensions, An Historical and Critical Study (1941), ch. II, III, IVGoogle Scholar. See also Titmuss, R. M., Essays onThe Welfare State” (1958), pp. 1819.Google Scholar

(36) Mowat, C. L., “The Approach to the Welfare State in Great Britain” in the American Historical Review, 10 1952Google Scholar. It has also been called “an extended form of outdoor relief”. See Abel-Smith, B., “Social Security”Google Scholar in Ginsberg, (ed.), Law and Opinion in England in the Twentieth Century (1959), pp. 352 ff.Google Scholar

(37) Reeves, W. Pember, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand (1902), vol. II, p. 244Google Scholar. For more recent appraisals, see Sutch, W. B., The Quest for Security in New Zealand (1942)Google Scholar; Mendelsohn, R., Social Security in the British Commonwealth (1954).Google Scholar

(38) Hobson, J. A., The Evolution of Modern Capitalism (1902), p. 321.Google Scholar

(39) Milner, A., Introduction to A. Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution (1923 edn.), p. xxvGoogle Scholar. Toynbee anticipated the Fabians in these lectures, delivered to working-men in the early 1880s, by contrasting the age of capitalist anarchy with the age of regulation which had preceded it. For movements in liberal political economy at this time, see Hutchison, T. W., A Review of Economic Doctrines, 1870–1929 (1953), ch. 1.Google Scholar

(40) Green, T. H., Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (1895 edn.) pp. 206209.Google Scholar

(41) Haldane, R. B., Autobiography (1929), pp. 212214.Google Scholar

(42) See, in particular, Hobhouse, L. T., Elements of Social Justice (1922)Google Scholar; The Labour Movement (1893)Google Scholar; Democracy and Reaction (1904)Google Scholar; Liberalism (1911)Google Scholar; “The Philosophical Theory of Property”, in Property, its Duties and Rights (ed. C. Gore, 1915)Google Scholar. For the significance of his work, see Hobson, J. A. and Ginsberg, M., The Life and Work of L. T. Hobhouse (1931).Google Scholar

(43) Hobson, J. A., The Crisis of Liberalism (1909), p. 3Google Scholar. For Hobson, see Brailsford, H. N., “The Life and Work of J. A. Hobson” (L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Trust Lecture, 1948).Google Scholar

(44) McCallum, R. B., “The Liberal Outlook”, in M. Ginsberg (ed.), Law and Opinion in England in the Twentieth Century, p. 75.Google Scholar

(45) Dawson, W. H., Bismarck and State Socialism (1890), p. ix.Google Scholar

(46) Fay, S. B., “Bismarck's Welfare State” in Current History, vol. XVIII (1950).Google Scholar

(47) “A British Bismarck”, Professor Driver has written, “would have commanded all his uncritical devotion, but Wellington was no Bismarck” (Driver, , op. cit. p. 189).Google Scholar

(48) Schumpeter, J. A., History of Economic Analysis (1954), p. 765.Google Scholar

(49) The pre-history of this approach leads back to Sismondi who has important links with Mill and the English utilitarians. He is a seminal figure in the critique of industrialism and the demand for welfare legislation.

(50) Wagner, A., Rede über die soziale Frage (1872), pp. 89Google Scholar. Von Schmoller, G., Über einige Grundfragen des Rechts und der Volkswirtschaft (1875), p. 92.Google Scholar

(51) For the background of these attempts, see Ginsberg, M., “The Growth of Social Responsibility” in Law and Opinion in England in the Twentieth Century, pp. 326.Google Scholar

(52) See Mayer, G., Bismarck und Lassalle (1927).Google Scholar

(53) Dawson, , op. cit. p. 35Google Scholar. This remark was made in 1884. Five years earlier the Emperor, referring to the antisocialist law of 1878, had said, “a remedy cannot alone be sought in the repression of socialistic excesses; there must be simultaneously the positive advancement of the welfare of the working classes”, (quoted ibid. p. 110).

(54) Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. III (1938), p. 445.Google Scholar

(55) Titmuss, R. M., “Health”, in Ginsberg, (ed.), Law and Opinion in England in the Twentieth Century, p. 308. Cf. p. 313Google Scholar: “The fundamental issue of 1911 was not […] between individualism and collectivism, between contract and status; but between different forms of collectivism, different degrees of freedom; open or concealed power.”

(56) Booth, C., Life and Labour of the People in London, 17 vols. (18921903)Google Scholar; Rowntree, B. S., Poverty: A Study of Town Life (1901).Google Scholar

(57) Webb, B., My Apprenticeship (1926), p. 239.Google Scholar

(58) For Booth, see , T. S. and Simey, M. B.Charles Booth, Social Scientist (1960)Google Scholar; for Rowntree, see Briggs, A., Seebohm Rowntree (1961)Google Scholar. See also Rowntree, B. S. and Lavers, G. R., Poverty and the Welfare State (1951).Google Scholar

(59) “In intensity of feeling”, Booth wrote, “and not in statistics, lies the power to move the world. But by statistics must this power be guided if it would move the world aright” (Life and Labour, Final Volume, Notes on Social Influences and Conclusion (1903), p. 178).Google Scholar

(60) See inter alia Mowat, C. L., The Charity Organisation SocietyGoogle Scholar; de Schweinitz, K., England's Road to Social Security (1943)Google Scholar; Pitkin, C. W., Social Politics and Modern Democracies, 2 vols. (1931)Google Scholar, vol. II being concerned with France; Bremner, R. H., From the Depths; The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (1956).Google Scholar

(61) See Abrams, M., Social Surveys and Social Action (1951)Google Scholar; Young, P. V., Scientific Social Surveys and Research (1950)Google Scholar; Jones, D. C. Caradog, Social Surveys (1955).Google Scholar

(62) The British controversy is well described in Cormack, U., “The Welfare State”, Loch Memorial Lecture (1953)Google Scholar. For Sweden, see The Royal Social Board, Social Work and Legislation in Sweden (1938).Google Scholar

(63) Mendelsohn, , op. cit. ch. IIIGoogle Scholar: Brown, J. C., Public Relief, 1929–39 (1940)Google Scholar; Williams, E. A., Federal Aid for Relief (1939)Google Scholar; Douglas, P. H., Social Security in the United States (1939 edn.).Google Scholar

(64) Quoted in Hancock, W. K., Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, vol. II. (1940), p. 275.Google Scholar

(65) I.L.O., Social Security in New Zealand (1949), p. III.Google Scholar

(66) See Briggs, A., “The Social Background”, in H. Clegg and A. Flanders (eds.), Industrial Relations in Great Britain (1955)Google Scholar; Urwick, L. and Brech, E. F. L., The Human Factor in Management, 1795–1943 (1944)Google Scholar; Proud, E. D., Welfare Work, Employers' Experiments for Improving Working Conditions in Factories (1916)Google Scholar; Kelly, E. T. (ed.), Welfare Work in Industry (1925)Google Scholar; P. E. P., “The Human Factor in Industry” [Planning, 03, 1948).Google Scholar

(67) P. E. P., “Free Trade and Security” (Planning, 07 1957)Google Scholar; “A Comparative Analysis of the Cost of Social Security” in International Labour Review (1953).Google Scholar

(68) Burns, E. M., Social Security and Public Policy (1956), p. 274.Google Scholar

(69) For the nature of the nineteenthcentury pattern, see Baernrbither, J. M., English Associations of Working Men (1893).Google Scholar

For industrial relations, see Clegg, and Flanders, , op. cit.Google Scholar

(70) Titmuss, R. M., Essays on the Welfare State, pp. 2122.Google Scholar

(71) Ibid. p. 19.

(72) See Peacock, A., “The Welfare Society”, Unservile State Papers (1960)Google Scholar; Titmuss, R. M.. “The Irresponsible Society”, Fabian Tracts (1960)Google Scholar; Saville, J., “The Welfare State” in The New Reasoner. No. 3, (1957).Google Scholar