Social exclusion and capitalism

Abstract

This article was stimulated by Levitas's (1996) reminder that we need to consider the fundamental nature of capitalism when dealing with the issues currently identified in European social politics under the rubric of 'social exclusion'. It draws on accounts of the simultaneous processes of development and underdevelopment as capitalist strategies in order to understand the apparent bifurcation of the contemporary social order. A critique of 'regulation theory' perspectives on these issues, and of the kind of social politics derived from them, is informed by a vocabulary drawn from 'complexity theory'. The article reviews available statistical descriptions of household and individual circumstances in the UK and of changes in these circumstances over time, and concludes that the reserve army has been effectively recreated en masse as a method of facilitating capitalist accumulation and that much of contemporary social policy has to be understood as facilitating this process.