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Social Policy: Unilateral Transfer or Reciprocal Exchange†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Robert Pruger
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There is absolutely no way to attack poverty through the transfer of economic resources without also profoundly affecting, for better or ill, the social bond. Definitions of social welfare generally recognize ‘…the mutually supportive obligations of people to each other’. Yet many serious and competent social thinkers apparently deny the significance of reciprocity in those social exchanges that are arranged as a matter of social policy. The predominant view is that social policies are ‘…characterized not so much by exchange by which a quid is gotten for a quo as by unilateral transfers that are justified by some kind of appeal to a status or legitimacy, identity or community’. Titmuss refers to the grant or gift as a unilateral transfer which ‘…is the distinguishing mark of the social (in policy and administration) just as exchange or bilateral transfer is the mark of the economic’. It will be argued here that this view, useful in some ways, also seriously distorts perceptions and has a deleterious effect on the design and implementation of programmes that make up the official helping enterprise in general, and programmes of income maintenance in particular. Most often social policy transactions are erroneously conceived in ideal or pure terms, bearing little or no resemblance to economic or market exchange. In reality, however, the vast majority of all transactions, economic and social, occur on a continuum between these theoretical poles.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , October 1973 , pp. 289 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 Wickenden, Elizabeth, Social Welfare, in a Changing World, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965, p. 12.Google Scholar

2 Boulding, Kenneth, ‘The Boundaries of Social Policy’, Social Work, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1967, p. 7.Google Scholar

3 Titmuss, Richard M., Commitment to Welfare, New York: Pantheon, 1968, p. 22Google Scholar. Titmuss, two pages earlier, appears to contradict himself when he suggests that social administra tion is concerned ‘…with different types of moral transactions, embodying notions of gift-exchange, of reciprocal obligations, which have developed in modern societies in institutional forms to bring about and maintain social and community relations.’

4 Nisbet, Robert, The Social Bond, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1970, p. 63.Google Scholar

5 Some authors treat psychological rewards as beyond the meaning of exchange, since such rewards do not appear to be dependent on any particular response from the receiver. The actor experiences the psychological reward entirely as a function of the relationship between his own behaviour and his internalized beliefs; the receiver is merely object. Von Mises resolves the issue for himself by calling this ‘autistic exchange’ (Human Action, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949, p. 196.Google Scholar) The point of view taken here is that the quantity of human activity, and most particularly those activities that must be repeated over time (e.g., charitable giving), that persist merely because the actor believes it to be right and independent of the response of others, is minimal. Thus, limiting the scope of the concept may serve useful analytical purposes, but it does not thereby seriously reduce the kinds and amount of social actions encompassed.

6 Wolins, Martin, ‘The Societal Function of Social Welfare’, New Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 1 1967, p. 5.Google Scholar

7 Gouldner, Alvin, ‘The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement’, American Socio logical Review, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1960, p. 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Emphasis in the original.)

8 Belshaw, Cyril S., Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965, p. 26.Google Scholar

9 Smelser, Neil, The Sociology of Economic Life, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965, p. 87.Google Scholar

10 ‘The Troubled American: A Special Report on the White Majority’, Newsweek, 6 October 1969.Google Scholar

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12 Steiner, Gilbert Y., Social Insecurity: The Politics of Welfare, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966, p. 113.Google Scholar

13 United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Social Security Administration, Social Security Handbook, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, February 1969, p. 312.Google Scholar

14 Steiner, op. cit., p. 109.

15 Ibid., pp. 18–47.

16 See, for example, Cloward, Richard A. and Epstein, Irwin, ‘Private Social Welfare's Disengagement from the Poor: The Case of Family Service Agencies’, in Zald, M. (ed.), Social Welfare Institutions, New York: John Wiley, 1965.Google Scholar

17 Social Security and Welfare Proposals, Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means (House), Part 1, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970, p. 220.Google Scholar

18 Titmuss, op. cit., p. 62.

19 Herskovits, Melville, Economic Anthropology, New York: Knopf, 1952, p. 155Google Scholar, cited in Dillon, , Wilton, Gifts and Nations, The Hague: Mouton, 1968, p. 72.Google Scholar

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21 Marcus, Grace, ‘The Psychological Problem in Providing Assistance as a Public Service’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 17, 07 1947, p. 436CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Emphasis added.)

22 For example, ‘We also know that if there was a slack, for example, in the tendency to buy more automobiles, then those same hardcore unemployed who were hired would be the first laid off.’ Public Service Employment, Hearings before the Select Subcommittee on Labor of the Committee on Education and Labor, House, 90th Congress, Second Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 104.Google Scholar

23 Howard, Donald, Social Welfare: Values, Means and Ends, New York: Random House, 1969, p. 68.Google Scholar

24 See, for example, Weisbrod, Burton A. (ed.), The Economics of Poverty, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965Google Scholar: Hamilton, David, A Primer on the Economics of Poverty, New York: Random House, 1968Google Scholar; The Federal Budget, Inflation and Full Employment, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Fiscal Policy of the Joint Economic Committee, 91st Con gress, First Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970.Google Scholar

25 Under certain conditions unemployment may be construed as a gift. Some activists in the Women's Rights Movement, for example, have taken the view that wives who give themselves over to the drudgery of house work (thereby freeing their husbands to give themselves over to the exciting pursuit of job and career) offer through their unemploy ment a gift of excessive value. This, however, stands in some contrast to the view that holds the unemployment of housewives to be something forced on them by prevailing values, requiring corrective political action. In this latter instance, the question of repayment does not seem to be involved. The retirement test in social security may also be interpreted in a manner that illustrates this point: in exchange for his substantial withdrawal from the labour force, thus making room for a younger person, the aged person receives a retirement pension. Increasing awareness that social security benefits provide the retired person with a standard of living that compares less and less ade quately with that enjoyed by employed persons, as well as a generally less romanticized notion about the ‘joys of retirement’, have over the years resulted in a gradual and consistent liberalization of the retirement test. And, finally, in the private sector (and most recently in the railroad industry) impediments to needed automated procedures in the form of the vested job rights of workers have been overcome through negotiated arrangements for company funding of early retirement and union consent to the non-replacement of those workers.

26 Malnutrition and Federal Food Service Programs, Hearings before the Committee on Education and Labor, House, 90th Congress, Second Session, Part 1, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 96Google Scholar; also cited in Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1969, Hearings before the Ad Hoc Hearing Task Force on Poverty of the Committee on Education and Labor, House, 91st Congress, First Session, Part 5, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969, p. 2145.Google Scholar

27 Piliavin, Irving, The Welfare Recipient and His View of the Welfare Institution, unpublished group research project, University of California, School of Social Welfare, June 1966.Google Scholar

28 House of Representatives, Compilation of the Social Security Laws, Vol. I, 90th Congress, Second Session, Document No. 166, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 167.Google Scholar

29 The situation of the welfare recipient may be compared in this regard to that of astronauts, efficient defence plants, civil servants who contribute money-saving ideas, all veterans and others who are perceived to serve some national or public purpose.

30 Titmuss, op. cit, p. 126. Though headlining the fact that ‘Talent Drain to U.S. Begins to Slow’, The Christian Science Monitor, on 24 March 1970Google Scholar, indicated that in 1969 the United States accepted 10,300 scientists and engineers and 2,500 physicians as immigrants.

31 The French have particularly resented their forced dependence on the United States that resulted from World War II, and have since then aggressively sought to re-establish a relationship of equals. When their actions earned the official displeasure of the United States (e.g., their participation with Britain and Israel in attacking Egypt following the latter's seizure of the Suez Canal, or their decision to achieve an independent nuclear capability), the French argued that their assertions of independence really were gifts to the United States, even if such benefit had to be forced on their benefactors. The Christian Science Monitor staff correspondent in Paris, for example, reported:

‘French officials hold that the development of France's nuclear power should be welcomed by the United States. They say it shows that France means to be “independent”. They add that this “will of independence” by the French people is a guarantee that they will make the greatest possible effort to give themselves adequate armaments and to fight well if the time comes to do so.’

Welfare clients taking ‘independent actions’ (e.g., pressing suits against official decisions believed to be illegal, questioning budgets, etc.), are also likely to irritate donors by their ‘ungrateful’ behaviour. Even much more moderate actions may be expected to be upsetting if it is true that, as stated by Elizabeth Wood of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and reported in the San Francisco Chronicle as late as 26 April 1970, six years after the statutory proclamation of ‘maximum feasible participation’, ‘The concept that a tenant had a right to express an opinion and that it was useful to listen to him is absolutely new.’

32 Cited in Nisbet, op. cit., p. 66.