Six The inclusive society

Solidarity has long been established in the political lexicon of European countries, and with its widespread use comes a degree of ambiguity. For practical purposes, there are very different understandings of solidarity. One model of solidarity bases it in rational cooperation and mutual aid. In developing countries, the primary strategy has been to facilitate the integration of people into the formal economy, an approach which has the decided advantages of increasing their income, and giving them access to formal patterns of exchange, but the disadvantage of requiring specialisation and making people vulnerable to economic forces. In developed economies, and in particular in Europe, the main strategy has been to increase the coverage of solidarity, by extending or modifying the existing networks of social support.²⁹⁶ Mutualism has been used to draw people into networks of solidarity, established on a mutual basis. It is expressed in a concept of solidarity as mutual insurance, based on pooled risks, mutual contributions and clear rules of entitlement.

The main other model sees solidarity in terms of collective action, shared responsibility and a commitment to redistribution. This is often expressed in terms of redistributive policies, special provisions and responsiveness to need. Solidarity is used to reduce differences between different members of the solidaristic group – at which point, it becomes egalitarian. The ‘solidaristic wage policy’ in Sweden, aimed at diminishing the range and dispersion of wage settlements, was overtly egalitarian in its aims.²⁹⁷

This distinction is based in a shift in practical action, but it also represents a theoretical divide. It reflects to some degree the same kind of distinction as that between individual and social concepts of liberty and equality, because it is concerned like them with the difference between people in diverse circumstances and the needs of the group. However, it cannot be described as a distinction between ‘individual’ and ‘social’ concepts of solidarity, because both approaches are distinctly social. Both elements, too, represent aspects of fraternity. Nor can it be identified with ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’ models, because there are conservative perceptions which are firmly based in social relationships. Perhaps the best way of thinking about the distinction is to separate ‘mutualist’ from ‘collective’ obligations. Mutualist obligations are based in the relationship of each person to other people, and the group. In this category, there are insurance arrangements, cooperatives, self-help groups. Collective obligations are defined in terms of the group, not the person. In relation to social welfare, this includes action for rights, egalitarian policies and state support for excluded groups – although it also includes many other forms of collective action, including charity and voluntary action.

Solidarity is strongly identified with actions beyond the scope of government – including domestic, voluntary, charitable and altruistic behaviour. The role of government in promoting solidarity is ambiguous, and there are two main patterns of action. The first is the attempt to introduce measures which in some sense express social solidarity – typically the introduction of measures for social protection or the relief of poverty. In social security policy, solidarity originally was taken to refer principally to mutually funded insurance policies. It has come increasingly to refer to schemes which go beyond the scope of insurance, like the Allocation de Solidarité Spécifique in France (which extends benefits to unemployed people whose entitlements from contributions are exhausted),²⁹⁸ or ‘solidarity contributions’ in Switzerland (which require people to put money to the general fund without gaining entitlements).²⁹⁹ Bertrand suggests that social assistance:

…expresses a feeling of solidarity in respect of the poorest people (les individus les plus désherités) in a society.³⁰⁰

This understanding is much more common in continental Europe, where social Catholicism has been influential, than it is in English-speaking countries. Nevertheless, the 1944 White Paper on Social Security made similar claims, arguing that:

The scheme as a whole will embrace, not certain occupation and income groups, but the entire population. Concrete expression is thus given to the solidarity and unity of the nation, which in war have been its bulwarks against aggression and in peace will be its guarantees of success in the fight against individual want and mischance.³⁰¹

Second, governments can attempt to promote solidarity by supporting and encouraging solidaristic action in society. Governments support voluntary and charitable activity through a range of persuasive measures, incentives (especially through tax) and subsidies. The patterns of intervention include regulation, by establishing the rules and settings under which such independent agencies operate; provision, through purchasing policies, financing, employment of different social services; and planning, including placing resources, the development of incentives, legal controls, and bargaining and negotiation in the field. It has often been argued that, beyond this, governments effectively incorporate the work of such schemes into their own plans of action.³⁰² The pattern of interlocking services and activities is variously called ‘welfare corporatism’, ‘welfare pluralism’, or a ‘mixed economy of welfare’.³⁰³ This cannot reasonably be avoided: governments cannot plan effectively if they do not take the work of independent and non-governmental organisations into account. This strategic approach to the development of solidarity has also been central to the development of social policy in the European Union. The European Union does not have the structures, institutions or legal competence to provide social protection directly, but it has established a strategy of promoting solidarity and planning initiatives to fill the outstanding gaps, while gradually extending competence in these areas.³⁰⁴

Some conservative critics of the welfare state have argued that state intervention is liable to reduce solidarity, rather than to promote it. Green argues that the state has driven out voluntary and charitable provision, and that a mix of independent providers, if given the opportunity to flourish, could provide welfare just as effectively as state provision.³⁰⁵ The evidence that the state has ‘crowded out’ voluntary provision is tentative, at best. The historical argument depends on counterfactuals – what might have happened if the course of a nation’s history had been different – and comparative evidence is necessarily bound by cultural differences. There may be more charitable donations in countries where there are tax incentives to give such donations, and there are more and larger mutualist associations functioning in circumstances where the state does not provide a national alternative, but neither point takes account of the wide constellation of alternative solidaristic and not-for-profit arrangements. There is some evidence that more can be done beyond the state, because the arrangements in several European countries do just that. Welfare is provided through a mix of mutualist, voluntary, charitable, occupational and commercial organisations. The role of the state is often understood as supplementary to the solidaristic networks which exist elsewhere in society.

Green’s argument has intriguing parallels with the case made by Richard Titmuss. Titmuss emphasised the importance of altruism and reciprocal obligations in social relationships. His example was blood donation: he believed that social arrangements based on altruism and moral obligation were not only morally superior to the systems of the market, but produced better results. Voluntary blood donation produced more and better-quality blood than the market alternative.³⁰⁶ In political terms, Titmuss’s and Green’s arguments are opposed, but they have strong common elements. Both suggest that the effect of dominant arrangements – the market, in Titmuss’s view, and the state, in Green’s – has been to mask the importance of voluntary and charitable effort. Both suggest that the role and capacity of solidaristic social networks is underestimated. And both use, to establish their case, a combination of moral and pragmatic arguments – stressing both the practical strengths of voluntarism, and its moral virtues. To that extent, both approaches lend support to a policy of fostering, promoting and encouraging solidarity through voluntary action.

The problem with this position is that voluntary action has little chance of developing as a primary method of distribution; at best, it is a complement to services. Nowhere has an emphasis on voluntary solidarity, the private market or a combination of the two, led to adequate provision in its own right. The state is consequently forced to act as a provider of last resort. Once the state has accepted this role, it will act more effectively and efficiently if it expands its responsibilities.³⁰⁷ In most systems, the role of the state has been established only after the development of voluntary and mutualist effort; and in many of those, the state has effectively replaced or supplanted the activity, rather than complementing it.

There are two main arguments for extending networks of solidarity. The first is a general argument about obligations towards every human being: people have human rights. The main difficulty here is that human rights, by their very nature, extend beyond the scope of existing networks of solidarity. If every human has a right, and other humans have the responsibility to respect those rights, there would be a rather more extensive commitment to international aid than is currently recognised. It could be argued that human rights have to be expressed through the action of specific governments: governments accept responsibility for people who are within their territory, and who are not the responsibility of another state, at the time when their needs are expressed. Although this rule generally applies in international law to stateless persons, it is not generally accepted for others who are not protected by their own governments, and hardly any governments have accepted responsibility on this basis. (Exceptionally, the UK National Health Service did so from 1948 to 1981, offering free health care to all visitors, including tourists.)

The main alternative model is based in a concept of national solidarity. Governments recognise a responsibility to their own citizens. Necessarily this falls somewhat short of a general human right, but within the territorial confines of a government’s sphere of authority, it would imply both a commitment to comprehensive coverage and a continuing commitment to expatriate citizens. Some governments do accept the principle of comprehensive coverage, although commonly this is done through supplementary residual services. Many governments accept responsibility for their own expatriate citizens, either through the development of reciprocal agreements or (more rarely) through the continued provision of benefits to citizens living abroad.

There is no reason, however, to suppose that solidarity will necessarily be extended. The most obvious problem with the structure of solidarity, as I have outlined it, is that it does not allow adequately for adaptation to changing circumstances. Where there are changes affecting the participating membership, it is not clear that solidaristic arrangements will alter along with them. Where there are changes in underlying conditions, such as changes in the structure of professional groups which affect the contributory base, there is no intrinsic reason why benefits should continue to be paid: no one has the obligation to meet them. Where people’s needs increase beyond the commitment of the schemes they have participated in – for example, because of the growing numbers of dependent older people – there is no guarantee that the scope of provision will extend to meet those needs.

The general arguments for extending solidarity may be compatible with the interests of people within the existing networks if the costs of including more people do not outstrip the benefits of including them. The effect of expanding a network can be to reduce vulnerability to particular events, and so to smooth risks. There are, however, several reasons why people who are participating in a solidaristic network might not wish to extend the network to include people who have previously been excluded. The first is the contributory base. The ability of people on lower incomes to contribute is limited. Equally, their employers are often less willing to contribute, because the employment is low paid, because it is more likely to be temporary or insecure, and of course because poorer people are less likely to have stable employment relationships in the first place. Expanding solidarity to people who find it difficult to contribute reduces the financial security of the network. The second problem is the nature of the need: people on lower incomes not only have a lower ability to contribute, but in some respects – including health care and employment insurance – their risks are greater. (The exception is pension entitlement, where people who are less able to contribute may make up for it by their shorter life expectancy.) The third problem is institutional: once a solidaristic organisation has been set up, there is of necessity a complex series of rights and obligations governing its action. Government arrangements are characterised by legislation to allow variations of aims and objectives. Private enterprise is generally able to adapt to new circumstances at the behest of managers. If, for example, a firm producing wire baskets wants to focus instead on providing marketing services, it can do so.³⁰⁹ By contrast, voluntary, not-for-profit organisations are much more restricted. Charities which have outlived their usefulness are allowed, through the doctrine of cy-près, to change their mode of operation, but this is a regulated procedure, necessary to avoid the abuse of charitable donations. Mutualist organisations are slightly more flexible; they are nominally owned by the members, and can be varied with the explicit consent of the membership. The standard institutional response to a declining mutualist base is not to extend new forms of membership, but to close, either through merger with compatible organisations or through distribution of the society’s assets.

The growth of new rights and obligations seems to require a sort of contract, in which people are engaged (either actively or tacitly) in the development of solidaristic agreements by consent. Historically, this has happened through a gradual process of expansion: from an initial basis, membership of mutualist groups has expanded to incorporate new members. There are some cases of a scheme being introduced through a large-scale agreement: one is the pioneering extension of social protection in Germany to include provision for the dependency needs of very old people.³¹⁰ More typically, however, the settlement has to be instituted by government, precisely because it is only through external intervention that the formal limits of solidarity can be overcome. Many governments have come to welfare late in the day, and the main effect of action has been to push the boundaries of solidarity outward, ensuring (often through the introduction of some element of compulsion) the inclusion of people who might otherwise not have been included. There is nothing within the process of mutualism that promises to produce a similar effect, and it is unlikely that this would have happened without external intervention.

In previous parts of this book, I have considered the question of what makes a free society, and what makes an equal society. The idea of a ‘solidaristic society’, however, is simply tautologous: solidarity is not usually thought of as a model for society, because patterns of solidarity define what a society is. A society is not just a group of people who happen to live near each other. People are linked by a complex series of relationships, expressed through solidarity and obligation. Everyone has a relationship to other people – typically as a son or daughter, a brother or sister. These relationships come with obligations: the nature of family relationships, and the effect of generalised reciprocity, means that everyone has duties to others. As each person grows and develops, the circle of social relationships extends outwards. People are socialised – they learn how to behave in society and what to expect – but beyond that, they form more relationships with other people. Nearly everyone has several relationships of this kind, and there are overlapping, interconnected obligations. The pattern of obligations can be seen as a part of a ‘network’, but there is not a single network; there are many. A society is made up of a series of interlocked networks.

Societies which promote solidarity can, however, be contrasted with a different kind of social arrangement, the idea of an ‘atomised’ society. People become like ‘atoms’, or very small particles, which are all distinct from each other. People are individuals; contact is limited to necessary exchange and interaction; no one is in close relationships to other people. The principle can be found in criticisms of different societies. One example comes from concerns about the dangers of totalitarian regimes in the 1940s – Orwell’s Nineteen eighty-four describes a world where personal relationships are seen as a threat to the power of the state. Another comes from recent criticisms of North American society, which suggest that assertive individualism may endanger social bonding. Putnam’s Bowling alone points to the decline of the civic culture in the US, and paints a picture of a society where people are less likely to join other organisations, participate in social events or spend time with families than previous generations were.³¹¹ Making society less atomistic, and more solidaristic, implies that people are brought into relationships of responsibility and obligation. Solidarity is a principle, rather than an ideal, but it is not difficult to imagine a society where people are tied to each other by a sense of mutual obligation and support. The model is based on an idealised family, and extended beyond the family to the community at large.

‘Community’ is a very vague term, with as many interpretations as ‘society’ itself: in a well-known article, Hillery lists 94 different definitions.³¹² Within those definitions, we can trace two main strands. The first is based in interests or characteristics of a group. Social groups are not just collections of people. They have three main features: identity, membership and connecting relationships. Identity means that the group is recognisable as a social category: people of African Caribbean descent are, people with red hair are not. Membership implies that it is possible not just to identify the group, but to identify who is within the group and who is not. Relationships are the most important element. We cannot talk about ‘people with schizophrenia’ or ‘women’ as a social group, because despite the common issues, and common identity, they are not bound by social relationships. When people talk about the ‘business community’, by contrast, they usually mean to imply that people in business are identifiable as a group, that there will be networks of contact between the members, that they have common interests and that because of those they will respond to certain issues in similar ways. The ‘Jewish community’ in the UK is linked by identity, culture and networks of social relationships.

The second understanding of community is geographical, identifying community with neighbourhood or area. This is not genuinely different from the first idea: it represents, rather, the belief that the characteristics of social groups apply in geographical areas. If this meant only that people live in the same area as others, the attribution of community would be questionable. The term implies, beyond that, that the effect of living in the same area is to bring people into social relationships with each other. This may or may not be true: some areas have a strong sense of community, and a strong identity, while others have transient populations and atomised social relationships.

‘Community action’ has become one of the characteristic modes of operation on the political left. It takes several forms. Community work consists of action to foster social relationships within a community: extending facilities (such as a playground or communal garden), creating structures where people can meet and form social relationships (a community centre or a support group for people with young children), encouraging community events (a coffee morning or a disco) and offering help and advice to people in a community (typically welfare rights or energy advice). Community education is concerned with developing capacity, understood as the skills and potential for collective action in a community. It covers such activities as advice work, adult education and the formation of community groups. Community organisation is concerned with political development: it tries to develop to structures needed for political mobilisation, participation in collective action, and voice in the decisions which affect people.

The idea of community has been invested with a strong emotive appeal. People who talk about ‘community’ may be thinking descriptively, but they may also be asserting something about the nature of the relationships and bonds which are identifiable within a group – discussions of the ‘gay community’ or the ‘disabled community’ are illustrative, because the assertion ignores enormous diversity and disjunction in the experience of both categories. Social groups are central to collective action, and the appeal to a collective identity can help, in itself, to bring together the group which is capable of doing it. At the same time, Iris Young argues that appeals to ‘community’ can have the opposite effect. In her view, community is often exclusive, an excuse for ‘bigots and conservatives’ to shut out outsiders. Further, she suggests, it detracts from the work of radical groups:

Many radical political organisations founder on the desire for community…. [It] often channels energy away from the political goals of the group, and also produces a clique atmosphere which keeps groups small and turns potential members away. Mutual identification as an implicit group ideal can reproduce a homogeneity that usually conflicts with the organization’s stated commitment to diversity.³¹³

Exclusion is the central problem associated with solidarity. By identifying the people we have responsibilities to, the principle of solidarity also defines those to whom we do not have responsibilities.

There are economic arguments for inclusion, and some political ones – such as the belief that lack of responsibility leads to social and political disorder. However, the case against exclusion is fundamentally a moral one. Quite apart from solidarity, there are many other moral principles which argue that we do have responsibilities to other people, even if we do not have an identifiable relationship to them. The most basic argument is humanitarian: people should not be left without means of support, medical care or the necessities of life. That means that there has to be some kind of mechanism to deliver such necessities. This argument is also expressed in the view that people have human rights, universal rights which go beyond the rights of citizenship.

Exclusion can be defended. No society can accept responsibility for all the problems in the world, and without some criteria for inclusion and exclusion it would not be possible to do anything. Equally, at the level of organised networks of solidarity, like social services, there are practical limits to what any network can do. There have to be rules, and some system for determining who will be served, and who will not be. (There are social services which have no criteria at all for distribution, like some soup kitchens, because the practicalities and geography make it unlikely that they will be seriously compromised, but they are unusual.) Commonly, criteria for selection are reinforced by rules for exclusion. In insurance-based systems, non-contributors have no entitlement in principle to services – although it is striking that many systems will allow for services to be delivered nevertheless, either through the establishment of complementary or residual systems or through modifications in the principle of insurance to allow for solidaristic responses.

In many social protection systems, there are restrictions on claims from strangers – usually migrants, because casual visitors can be expected to be covered by reciprocal arrangements with other national systems. Integrating migrants into welfare systems – a central focus of European Union policy – is partly motivated by a desire to deal with people universally, but there are also sound arguments for doing so. There is a case for pooled contributions and risks: pensions, in particular, depend on contributions for the current generation of workers, and the exclusion of any large class of workers undermines the contributory base. Further, exclusion can cause distortions in the labour market: the exclusion of certain categories of people from protection can foster a dual labour market, distinguishing those who are covered (and for whom contributions must be made) from those who are not. (From the perspective of the migrant, the case is less clear: the argument for joining mutualist schemes depends on an individual calculation. Where this is inconsistent with social objectives, there may be arguments for compulsion: joining a social security scheme becomes part of the rules of joining the club.)

In the context of social welfare, the idea of solidarity has come to have several quite specific implications for the organisation and delivery of welfare services. The model developed most explicitly in France, and from there it has spread, via the medium of the European Union, to a number of other European countries. People enter relationships of solidarity when they are incorporated into networks of mutual support. The French Code de sécurité sociale declares that ‘the organisation of social security is founded on the principle of national solidarity’.³¹⁴ In the period after the Second World War, French social policy aimed to extend solidarity across all groups, leading to a ‘patchwork quilt’ of different services. Insurance is redistributive, in the sense that the people who benefit are not those who pay, but it does not just involve a simple transfer of income from rich to poor. In French social policy, the kind of redistribution associated with mutualism is usually referred to as répartition, which we might for this purpose translate as re-allocation rather than the more conventional ‘redistribution’. Solidarity consisted of sharing and pooling risks. The underlying principle of mutual responsibility made it necessary to consider supplementing insurance with additional arrangements, to ensure the inclusion of others to whom they accepted responsibilities. When some mutualist funds were unable to cover costs, and other funds were required to stand in for them, the arrangements between funds were described as ‘solidaristic’.

The process of extending insurance was complete by 1974, but it was clear that many people were still left out. They were the people who had not been able to work, and consequently were not able to contribute. René Lenoir’s book Les exclus pointed to the problem of people who were excluded, in the sense of not being part of networks of solidarity.³¹⁵ French governments responded in two different ways. The first was the extension of solidarity beyond the remit of insurance, an issue which was discussed before. The second part was the attempt to ‘insert’ people who were excluded into society. This began with benefits in the 1970s for young people and people with disabilities, but subsequently the principle became identified with a general attempt to provide a basic safety net. The Revenu Minimum d’Insertion combined entitlement to a minimum income through a means-tested benefit with the requirement to negotiate a personal ‘contract for insertion’ with the benefit authorities. This model has been profoundly influential in Europe, spawning both direct imitations of the method (for example, in Belgium, northern Spain and Italy) and a general set of policies across Europe addressing the issues of social inclusion. The European Union has developed a series of policies intended to build on existing networks of solidarity, to extend provision to increase coverage, and to introduce specific measures to include the excluded. This shows the direct influence of the French model.

Solidarity is potentially a conservative principle, emphasising social order. It is also potentially exclusive. The ideal which has been pursued on the left is not simply a society with greater solidarity, but an inclusive one. A society which is inclusive should be able progressively to extend its boundaries, developing and strengthening networks of solidarity, building a sense of social responsibility and community, drawing in people who are excluded, and fostering collective action. In the 1960s, this ideal was commonly described in terms of ‘integration’: ‘by and large’, Boulding wrote, ‘it is an objective of social policy to build the identity of a person around some community with which he is associated’.³²⁶ Currently the emphasis mainly falls on social inclusion.

The idea of social inclusion is treated very differently in different societies. Partly, this is true because the problems are understood differently, but also because in the European Union, the commitment to combating exclusion now incorporated in the treaties, and the availability of European funding for specific projects, has encouraged governments to reinterpret their policies in the light of the idea of inclusion. Silver notes three different paradigms. The ‘solidarity’ paradigm emphasises social cohesion and exclusion through marginality and social dysfunction. The ‘specialisation’ paradigm understands exclusion as the product of economic and social processes, including the failures of markets and the concentrations of deprivation produced through housing systems. The ‘monopoly’ paradigm, associated with Marxist views of capitalism, suggests that exclusion stems from the actions of those who exclude others: the primary response is through the extension of membership of the community and the promotion of greater equality.³²⁷

These perspectives are informed less in truth by patterns of sociological thought than by the existing practices of the countries which have applied them. Policies for ‘activation’ of labour, urban regeneration and social work with marginal groups have all been represented as forms of inclusion, but in every case they preceded the idea of inclusion as a conceptual justification for the activity. The diversity of interpretation tends to muddy the water, but that should not detract from the power of the core ideas. The idea of social inclusion appeals to both left and right as a means of extending a sense of shared commitment and mutual responsibility. For the right, this implies social cohesion, stability and order. For the left, inclusion implies full membership of society and the ability to participate. Principles of social justice, normalisation and empowerment are commonly enlisted as ways of reinforcing that general approach.