The Reconstruction of Socialist Social Policy

Abstract

The question of how to effect a transition from capitalism to socialism has become all the more urgent in Britain, as the baleful effects of Thatcherism on social and economic relations have become ever more apparent. In the absence of any serious prospect of the emergence of revolutionary movements which have the capacity to destroy the existing state apparatus and replace it overnight with alternative social forms, socialists have come increasingly to give serious attention to the construction of transitional or ‘prefigurative’ programmes, which have the function of posing socialist answers to the human waste, poverty and insecurity that are now once again, quite clearly, an integral feature of the capitalist form of production and its associated social relations. These prefigurative socialist programmes must clearly encompass the entire field of social policy, in order that they can challenge the right-wing arguments now active in all the social policy areas, and also in order to generate socialist responses to the wide variety of social needs that are experienced across the social structure. I shall deal in a provisional way with the questions of the family and youth later in this chapter.