The Transformation of England (Routledge Revivals) by Mathias Peter;

Author:Mathias, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1979-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

We should doubtless give more weight to the labour market setting bargaining powers for labour, enabling successful bids for higher wages and the consequent enhancement of expectations, rather than the reverse sequence, which de Toqueville underlines, of enhanced expectations leading to demands for higher wages. But the clarity of insight about opposed social philosophies grounded in contrasting social structures is of direct relevance to the persistence and pervasiveness of the ‘leisure-preference’ doctrine in Europe. In the United States this analysis was projected upon the black labourers, who were commonly identified with a motivational structure (as slaves or ex-slaves) similar to that of the unregenerate poor in Europe.

The strength of the doctrine was, in part, independent of its truth exactly because it was consonant with a social philosophy of wide appeal, which signalled a set of social attitudes important in these social groups irrespective of their truth, although a superficial credibility was doubtless a necessary gloss for more deeprooted and instinctive satisfactions. It could be argued that, over the centuries, attitudes to the poor and diagnoses of poverty have been more directly consequential upon the implications of general value systems held by the non-poor, who shape policies, than upon empirical enquiries, where enquiry was ostensibly value-free, with controls built in against bias. In turn such ‘subjectively’ held opinions have ‘objective’ influence. Prescription rests upon diagnosis. Legislation depends upon the assumptions of causation which shape the objectives of policy; and those assumptions become integral with prevailing social philosophies.

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