Critical Social Policy

Claus Offe (editor, John Keane ), Contradictions of the Welfare State, Hutchinson, 1984; Disorganised Capitalism, Polity Press, 1985.

In Janet Finch and Michael Rustin (eds), A Degree of Choice: Higher Education and the Right to Learn, Penguin, 1986 .

There is evidence of some increase in the responsibilities taken by men for domestic work and child care, given in Jonathan Gershuny and Sally Jones , 'The changing work/leisure balance in Britain: 1961-84', in J. Home , D. Jary , and A. Tomlinson , (eds). Sport,Leisure and Social Relations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.

Keane's and Owens' original formulations about the social wage are on pages 175-6 of their After Full Employment, Hutchinson , 1986.

There is a possible trade-off between the level at which a social wage or benefit is most likely to be set, and its degree of conditionality. One can envisage that at subsistence levels, benefit might be granted with few questions asked or conditions set, since the level is itself a disincentive. Where such a 'social wage' were markedly lower than incomes from work, it might scarcely conflict with a work-based value-system. But the nearer a social wage approximates to normal wages (for example as was the case for wage-related unemployment benefit) the greater the likelihood of an obligation to accept work or retrain as a condition of eligibility. This latter is the pattern in Sweden, with its egalitarian and inclusivist ideas of citizenship.

Goran Therborn , Why Some People are more Unemployed than Others, Verso , 1986.

Andrew Glyn , A Million Jobs a Year, Verso, 1985.

The relationship between the political system and the failures of economic policy in Britain is discussed in A.M. Gamble and S.A. Walkland, The British Party System and Economy Policy, 1945-83, Oxford University Press, 1984. See also my 'Restructuring the State', New Left Review.

Richard Layard , How to Beat Unemployment, Oxford University Press , 1986.

My paper on a statutory right to work is in For a Pluralist Socialism Verso, 1985.

Keane and Owen recognise, in their book, the problem of reconciling the 'pro-employment' values of those classes (including much of the working class) who gain from their role in the labour market, and those so marginalised as to be, in Andre Gorz's view, wholly negative to the work ethic.