IN CONTEXT
Socialism
Social welfare
1848 In A General View of Positivism, French philosopher Auguste Comte argues for scientific social analysis.
1869 The English section of the Charity Organization Society is established to promote charitable work among the “deserving poor.”
1889 Social reformer Charles Booth finds a third of London’s population lives in poverty.
1911 The National Insurance Act expands UK insurance for unemployment and illness.
1942 Economist William Beveridge’s Social Insurance and Allied Services lays the foundations for the welfare state in the UK.
By the late 19th century, with industrial capitalism firmly entrenched in Britain, public concern turned toward its consequences. Industrial towns and cities were home to swathes of people deprived of work, cut loose from society, and living in squalor.
A Royal Commission was established in 1905 to address the problem, but in 1909 its report produced a weak set of proposals. As a member of the commission, pioneering social researcher Beatrice Webb produced a far more radical minority report, arguing for a welfare state that would provide protection against unemployment and illness. She and Sidney Webb, her husband and collaborator, opposed the view that the poor produced their own poverty. They argued that social problems could be solved by benevolent planners, administering society in the best interests of all.
"It is urgently necessary to ‘clean up the base of society.’"
Beatrice Webb
Planned society
Countering those who stressed the superiority of unregulated markets, and a continuing reliance on charity and self-help for the poor, the Webbs offered a new vision of an orderly society. However, like many of their contemporaries, they were eugenicists, believing the “stock” of humanity could also be improved by this kind of benevolent planning. To Webb, the wishes of the poor, and their attempts to alleviate their own conditions, were insignificant. She believed a rational society would emerge, in which the majority would accept the wise rule of the planners.
See also: Eduard Bernstein • Jane Addams • John Rawls • Michel Foucault