The Quality of Mercy
Review by Lucy Sullivan
Click here for PDF version

Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against
By David Smidtz and Robert E. Goodin
Cambirdge University Press, Oakleigh, Victoria 1998, 212pp, $26.95,
ISBN 0 521 56461 1

A fairly cautious friend of mine, in a moment of inexplicable motivational aberration, stopped on a country road for a hitchhiker of outlandish hippie appearance. Her two young children were with her, and Michael, as was his name, immediately organised her daughter out of the front passenger seat into the back, so that he could have the position of greater comfort and priority. As they set off he asked if they had any lollies, and by the end of the trip had demolished all but three from a large tin. He insisted that my friend, by now in a state of advanced trepidation, go some six kilometres out of her way to drop him exactly where he was going, even declining to get out of the car on the opposite side of the road from his destination.

On the way he told her several tales of his doings. Not long before she picked him up he had gone to a farm house and asked for food. On being refused, he had taken a number of avocadoes from a tree in the yard. ÔThe Lord helps those who help themselves,Õ he said, in confident self-justification. He presented my friend with two avocadoes as a parting gift.

There is an obvious slippage between the traditional meaning of the saw Michael quoted, and the meaning he attributed to it. Its intention has been to encourage personal effort, not theft of the fruits of the labour of others. Although the viability of this distinction, of this veritable antithesis in moral meaning is obvious, I hope, to most of my readers, it is resolutely denied by Robert Goodin, in his critique of the new discourse of responsibility and independence in relation to welfare. His essay appears in Cambridge University PressÕs Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against, a book in which two self-avowed philosophers contribute contrasting essays on the desirability of obligation-free welfare, with Goodin for and Schmidtz against.

The new element in the discourse of welfare of the last decade or so (in fact, it is a recurring element whose importance was recognised at least as far back as Elizabethan times) is an attempt to respond to the reality that, given the fallen nature of humanity, relief of need contains within itself the seeds of renewal of the problem it seeks to allayøthat is, that if a livelihood is provided for those who cannot or will not find work, the temptation is created not to work even when work is possible and available.

Schmidtz accepts human imperfection and the need for rewards and punishments to keep the worst and best of us on track, and therefore his focus is on prevention of welfare dependency, conceived as a social illøon the need for a response which is prophylactic rather than iatrogenic (in which the process of treatment causes a new disease); whereas Goodin maintains a deterministic theory of human natureøthe ÔgoodÕ (the middle classes) will be good no matter what the rewards and punishments, and the ÔbadÕ (the underclass) will be just as imperviously badøincapable and unfortunate. Goodin therefore focusses on palliative care. The question, he says, is not whether it is good to take personal responsibility, but what to do for people who do not. Neither prevention nor cure have a place in his social landscape.

GoodinÕs tone throughout is one of moral superiority and opprobrium towards those who beg to differ from the Fabian viewpoint which has dominated thinking about welfare for most of this century. This is odd in that he appears to believe that by showing that the proponents of self-reliance derive their views from a ÔmoralÕ position he has demolished their argument. Schmidtz takes the more traditional academic approach of argument within a context of ultimate uncertainty.

GoodinÕs view of the moral imperatives of welfare is as fixed in the terrain of mid-century as if the developments of the last three decades had never occurred. He appears to believe that disparagement of the English Poor Law for its distinction between the ÔdeservingÕ and ÔundeservingÕ poorønamely between those who cannot and those who will not workøis self-evidently proper, rather than merely a weapon used in the early battle for its substitution by non-judgmental state welfare under Fabian auspices.

Under the Poor Law of last century, the able destitute were required to work, and those who refused were not eligible for relief. Support for those who could not workøthe elderly and the disabledøwas provided in their own homes, but those capable of work were provided with institutional relief (the workhouse) rather than money, so that market employment (economic independence) remained their only means to independent living.

Goodin rightly discerns in present day suggestions that able welfare-recipients should recognise an obligation to making themselves independent (Reagan, Thatcher, Mead) a repetition of the discriminatory efforts of the Poor Law, and this makes them, by definition, anathema. He quotes MichaelÕs ÔThe Lord helps those who help themselvesÕ as evidence of the long history of this pernicious attitude, which he also acknowledges in the words of one of the great nineteenth century pioneers of the investigation and relief of poverty, William BoothøÔthe curse of relief expected and relied upon.Õ

The modern discourse of responsibility in welfare, like the Poor Law, projects different conditions for the able as against the helpless, thus repeating the old deserving/undeserving dichotomy. Old Age Pensions are not a target for disapprobation on the same scale as is the Sole Parent Benefit, or the ADFC as its equivalent in the United States is called. (The arguments of both essayists address the American perspective.) Goodin marshalls what I can only consider a flagrantly specious series of points, so adrift are they from reality, in order to argue that this discrimination is not valid, and that therefore all Ôsafety nets must be unconditional.Õ

Thus Goodin rejects any attribution of responsibility to individuals for fertility or health, as if such matters as using birth control, eating well and avoiding drugs were beyond individual control. He seems to have lost sight of the possiblity of abstinence, of having sex only in an established partnership which can provide for the child, and does not even raise the question in order to demolish it. He would say that these irresponsibilities are socially determined, but fails to see that the very belief that they are beyond control for some classes is part of social determination, for non-stigmatization releases behaviour. He says that the disadvantaged are least able to access birth control, but does not account for the relative absence of unmarried mothers before the pill, nor acknowledge that their ÔdisadvantageÕ is perhaps a result, rather than a cause, of their non-use of birth control.

The responsibility and prudence which serve to distinguish the deserving from the undeserving are, he asserts, mythical: it is simply not true that people make Ôwhole lifeÕ plans. Anyone who has read Passages or seen the series 7-, 14-, 21- etc Up will know that this is by no means universally true. That the plan may be changed, and is unlikely to be entirely fulfilled, is not the point. An attitude of planning shapes behaviour in the direction of prudence. Goodin actually recommends against eschewing the use of heroin on the grounds that one cannot be sure that one will become an addict. Such beliefs and attitudes, projected onto a generation, are the basis of the welfare problem.

Using a counter-analytic rhetoric, Goodin argues that because some forms of dependency are proper, there are no grounds for impugning others as improper. We see no harm in our dependence on banks and police. Why then disapprove of dependence on welfare? Goodin canvases a range of possible differences between approved and disapproved dependency in order to demolish them, but misapplies the crucial one of exploitation. Police and banks may exploit those who engage their services. But welfare dependency is an exploitation of those who provide the service. The bank client can withdraw his custom, but state-provided welfare does not permit the provider, the working taxpayer, to withdraw his service if it is exploited. At least, Goodin would not have it so, for this is what the welfare obligation argument is all about.

This opacity of understanding appears again when, in relation to the pregnant teenager he asserts (p.132): ÔIt is unclear why dependency on the state should be so much more objectionable than personal dependency on parents.Õ The girl, dependent on her parents, must recognise obligations and duties to them which balance her dependency and will serve to influence her future behaviour; while the girl dependent on the state which dispenses obligation-free welfare is under the impression that she is a free agent. In fact, her freedom represents someone elseÕs (some other parentÕs) expropriation.

Perhaps GoodinÕs most stunning assertion (surely post-modernist) is that the expectation of working is socially constructed and is ÔfoistedÕ upon young and old alike. What underlies the acquisition of even the basics of food and shelter is apparently invisible to him. In his view, work is presumably optional for the whole human race. Given this ethereality, perhaps it is not surprising that he fails to perceive the Ôearned rightÕ principle which was so prominent in the minds of the founders of AustraliaÕs early welfare structure, and which creates the moral difference between the benefit provided for the old person who can no longer work and for the young person who never has and intends not toøwho pursues lines of action (such as pregnancy and drug abuse) which will put her/him in the incapable category.

But from the palliative care viewpoint, the reality of need takes precedence, and the need of the single mother is not only as real, but as deserving, as that of the aged person. GoodinÕs determinism means that he will not acknowledge the single motherÕs voluntary role in the construction (in a material, not conceptual, sense) of her need, as compared with the inevitability of aged infirmity.

Goodin does not see that the obligations sought for the welfare-dependent are no different from those under which the self-dependent operate. He is outraged that the welfare dependent should have to comply with any rules of eligibilityøsuch as giving personal details and reporting for confirmationøforgetting the much larger burden of compliance required of those who earn an income (who have to report every day, stay there for hours, and even perform designated duties). He deplores the earlier disqualification from ADFC if co-habiting with a man as ÔarbitraryÕ, but apparently has no similar qualms about disqualification arising from marriage.

He damns schemes which make welfare payments dependent on taking training as ÔthroffersÕ (threat + offer) øas morally wrong, since they remove free choice: train or starve. But the person who works for a living is equally in the grip of a throfferøhe too will lose his payment if he does not perform as required. Such schemes merely return the welfare-recipient to the normal position of the working population. If everyone assumed the freedom of choice Goodin requests for recipients, everyone (including welfare recipients) would starve.

Goodin argues that the collectivism expressed in welfare schemes is not different in character from that expressed in private insurance schemes, and that there is therefore no case for regarding only the latter as involving self-reliance. But again, the distinction between deserving and undeserving is crucial, as is the distinction between assurance and insurance. Disapproved welfare dependency, that which eschews obligationøthe dole bludger and the sole parent by choiceøis that which avoids the contributions implicit in assurance and the exercise of prudence implicit in insurance. He argues for an absence of obligation in welfare on an analogy with the removal of fault elements from various insurance schemesøfailing to see that this development has produced problems for insurance similar to those which have occurred in welfare.

ÔWe have,Õ he says (p.158), Ôfor all sorts of purposes, abandoned distinctions based upon ascriptions of personal responsibility, liability and blame. We have, for all sorts of reasons, shifted instead to no-fault schemes of compensation.Õ Therefore we should be Ôwary of reverting to models of Òpersonal responsibilityÓ in other social welfare contexts where causal factors are similarly complex and intertwined.Õ The first step was, he says, no-fault workers compensation, followed by no-fault divorceøboth of which have been PandoraÕs boxes of expense to the taxpayer. It may have looked, in anticipation, as if the effort to be just was fruitlessly costly, but in the working out this has not been so, and in all sorts of areas, not just welfare, bureaucracy is in reverse from this error of judgment. The cost of reading water meters turned out to be less than the cost of the extra water used when Ôuser-paysÕ was abandoned, and it has now been re-introduced. Insurance has moved into no claim bonuses and charging higher premiums for some categories of insurers in response to careless exploitation. It has recognised the problem Goodin is denying.

It is more effective, he says, to install airbags in cars than to persuade individuals to buckle up. This is patently untrue. Seat belts are used effectively when they are made obligatory, and are more reliable than airbags, which also make cars more costly. Be this as it may, Goodin asserts a universal moral responsibility for one anotherÕs welfare, despite voluntary destructive behaviour, which he apparently finds no need to justify philosophically, relying instead on accusations of bigotry against those who disagree. (No doubt his belief in social determinism underlies this position, but his belief in the unrelievable incapacity of welfare recipientsøtheir sub-humanity (no free will) and stupidityøis just as worthy of this label.)

His version of where responsibility lies is becoming increasingly influential in the mores of litigation, and yet is profoundly dysfunctional. He, and the courts, prefer to place responsibility on the non-participants in an event, rather than assert the responsibility of the participant to take preventive action. He would not blame the mother who watches her child fall into the family pool and drown and makes no effort to save it, but rather the neighbour for not building a fence around the pool for her. To Goodin, the neighbour was responsible for the childÕs drowning. And if the fence is built, but the mother props the gate open for ease of access, and the child drowns, Goodin would not blame the mother, but the neighbour for not providing some extra device which will protect the child without inconveniencing the mother.

There is no end to this tale of saving the innocent, of collective responsibility. The sins of the fathers (and mothers) will be visited on the children, no matter what efforts society makes to recompenseøas we see in the depressed lives of welfare children. The only solution is for the fathers to stop sinning. Goodin, with his abstract tender heart, encourages them to continue.

After using the variety of applications which such words as self-reliance and dependence enjoy as the crux of his deconstruction of the new welfare critique, Goodin admits that there is a need for further analysis and that their breadth of meaning is problematic to their moral purchase. Schmidtz, by contrast, attempts to show that a negative moral effect in one context does not necessarily cancel out a positive one in another. In particular, he explores the differences in practical and motivational utility of different types and levels of collectivism. A key concept in his argument is what someone has termed, with historical reference, Ôthe tragedy of the commons.Õ

While GoodinÕs view of society is essentially staticøan underclass who cannot help themselves and a middle class who must help them, Schmidtz, by contrast, specifically espouses a dynamic perspective. For him, the problems which welfare palliates are created by the actions of individuals, and the focus should be on preventionøon the reform of behaviour. In that individual behaviour is influenced by social structures, reform of the latter is also implicated.

It is important that the premises on which social structures are built are conducive to societyÕs productive operation, and Schmidtz daringly (bigotedly?) suggests that, in these terms, the ideal of equality of material possessions may be dysfunctional. A particular version of equality of possessions is represented by the commons, the collective ownership of common property, without regulation. If a piece of land is held in common for grazing purposes, without rules as to stocking, the outcome is for every person with common rights to put as many animals as possible on it, to maximise his gains, and the outcome is degradation of the land and loss of sustainability. Schmidtz sees dangers of this outcome for the collectivization of welfare, without rules of accessøthe depletion of societyÕs resources and bases of productivity. The opposite of collective ownership of property is private possession. Whatever the principles of first possession, private ownership never remains equal across a society. Schmidtz discusses the philosophical justification of private propertyøits value-added consequences which derive from and justify the owner, and which in large part make it preferable to common ownership, which depletes rather than adds value. Theoretically this need not be so, but in practice it is hard to avoid.

he motivational difference which derives from private ownership and makes it profitable is, Schmidtz says, internalisation of responsibility, in contrast to the externalised responsibility of the commons. This means, not that externalisation is absolutely tied to collective enterprises and internalisation to private ones, but rather that care must be taken to ensure the continued operation of internalised responsibility in collective operations.

A perfect example of failure to achieve this is, he says, the creation of unfunded retirement systems. By contrast, the Friendly Societies of earlier in the century, which insured against many of the same eventualities as state welfare covers today, retained internalisation of responsibility. Their structure of membership and contributions meant that they could only thrive if mutual responsibility was exercised. But private insurance in itself does not guarantee internalised responsibility, as the current rash of suing for accidents shows. The impersonal protection the state offers to large insurance companies and banks leads to irresponsible policies and membership behaviour. The same applies to state welfare.

In SchmidtzÕ view, then, the concepts of justice and equality have many faces other than equal sharing of possessions at each point in time. We live in a market economy, which has shown itself, despite some problems of distribution, remarkably productive of material well-being. But a market society cannot function if it attempts at the same time to guarantee a right to enjoy a comfortable life as a non-contributor (which is another aspect of the problem of the commonsøfor example the person who grazes cattle but does not fertilise, drain or water while others do).

Schmidtz also discusses the role of state regulationøthe lesser need for it where private property is concerned, but nevertheless its necessity at levels where private market activities impinge on one another, and the internalised collectivism represented by such mutually agreed operations of the state.

SchmidtzÕ exploration of the healthy functioning of a productive society contrasts with GoodinÕs disregard for what must occur if society is to be able to provide at all for the welfare dependants on whom his attention is focussed. But Schmidtz does not really come to grips with the problem which now confronts us, of how to turn back from the iatrogenic therapy which was so enthusiastically administered in the Õ60s and Õ70s and resulted in the growth of the new disease called the Ôunderclass.Õ

Although social breakdown has not gone so far in Australia as in the US, we too are in a situation in which cure, as well as prevention, is required, and Australian social values, despite GoodinÕs contempt, do not allow us simply to cut off the diseased limb. Some states in the US have sharply reduced the availability of welfare, and as a result welfare dependency has, statistically, diminished. But we do not yet know what effect this might have at a national level, and in the longer term.

About the Author
Lucy Sullivan is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.

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