Social Service Workers and the Suffocating Grip of Neo-liberal Capitalism Part One: The Foundation

by Danny Haiphong

“Capitalism’s neo-liberal crisis impedes the effectiveness of social service programs and endangers the very existence of them.”

I'm a social service worker in the area of homelessness and housing. Everyday, I see my clients get beat up and beat down by the US capitalist system. Police brutality, hunger, and substance abuse are daily realities for the most dispossessed sector of the working class. Public housing takes years to obtain in the state of Massachusetts, time that oppressed people do not have. Every second of life is urgent and uncertain.

Social service workers in the US are bound to neo-liberal capitalism in ways that hold us back from making a contribution to the worldwide struggle against the conditions imposed on our clients. Capitalism’s neo-liberal crisis impedes the effectiveness of social service programs and endangers the very existence of them. The profit-squeezing grip of finance and monopoly capital force working class and oppressed people into an ever-growing surplus labor trash heap. What good are social work values of dignity and self-determination in the midst of growing austerity, privatization, imperialist war, racist police brutality, and mass surveillance? In two-parts, the historical development of social services is examined to shed light on the role of social service workers in the rapidly changing context of US neo-liberal capitalism.

In nearly all social work courses that teach the history of the profession, the British Poor Laws are cited as the birth of social services in the emerging Western capitalist order. These laws responded to the English transition from feudal social relations to capitalist social relations. The English system of agriculture was transformed in the 16th century from a nobility system aristocratically tied to the Crown to one that was dominated by private capitalist landholdings. Some peasants were rehired as proletarians to work the land, but many more were displaced. Peasants migrated to the city centers, where structural unemployment and underdevelopment pushed a large sector of the population into homelessness, hunger, and poverty.

“What good are social work values of dignity and self-determination in the midst of growing austerity, privatization, imperialist war, racist police brutality, and mass surveillance?”

English Poor Laws responded to the growth of "vagrants" by using a tiny fraction of taxes paid to the Crown to fund "poor relief." Relief came mostly in the form of food and employment assistance. Employers hired surplus labor to do the most grueling work in town and urban centers. The laws allowed employers to publicly humiliate recipients of poor relief. For a few years, the Crown legalized the enslavement of surplus laborers as a form of poor relief until it was deemed too costly for British capitalists to provide even minimal subsistence to surplus laborers without extracting any surplus profit from them.

Social services are rooted in the British response to capitalist development. The primary objectives of Poor Laws were to dull the sharpest edges of super exploitation and add another mechanism of social control to the penal system. As a whole, "poor relief" consistently made the distinction between the "deserving poor" and "vagrants" who were believed to be socially irredeemable to the bourgeoisie. In continental USA, the US capitalist system mirrored this model in its own context. The English colonial system in North America established the system of white supremacy as the primary social control mechanism to stabilize capitalist development. US-based social services are thus rooted in both white supremacy and capitalism.

White supremacy was the first "social service" in the English colonies of North America. English colonialists legalized white supremacy in response to the labor rebellions of united European and African bond-laborers. European indentured servants and proletarians were endowed with the power of whiteness from their capitalist masters. At the same time, Africans were forced into chattel bondage and indigenous people were driven off their land. Newly endowed "white laborers" had the privilege of entering into contractual obligations with employers, freeing them of the slightest possibility of permanent and hereditary enslavement reserved for Africans. White Americans were additionally elevated in social status above that of Black and Native peoples. Despite having no vote or access to property, white laborers were promised a modicum of subsistence and political privilege, which was, and still is, denied to Black and indigenous peoples.

Institutionally, social services developed out of the bourgeoisie's need to stabilize the forces of capitalism and white supremacy. US industrial capitalism's tendency to consolidate and monopolize threatened to undo the white supremacist system of African chattel bondage. The Homestead Act of 1862 was in a way a "social service" legislated in response to the displacement of white farmers and the inability of industrial capital to provide full employment to the white proletariat. This Act gave government subsidies and land allotments to White Americans and European immigrants, provided they settle West of the Mississippi river. To pave way for White settlement, the US government brutally displaced the Indigenous nations in the region.

“Social control means ensuring the interests of US capitalism are met with the least possible resistance from the exploited classes.”

It wasn't until the early to mid 20th century that the combination of capitalist crisis and social struggle forced the US ruling class to institute a comprehensive policy of social welfare. By this period, the US was the leading white supremacist and capitalist superpower in the world. From the 1920's through the 1970's, social movements were successful in forcing reform but unsuccessful in taking the state power necessary to transform capitalist and racist social relations. Important reforms like the Social Security Act (1935), National Labor Relations Act (1935), and Economic Opportunity Act (1964) improved the economic conditions of millions, but did so under the lordship of capitalism’s and racism’s need to stabilize economic/social crises.

Social service workers thus have a long history of presiding over programs dictated by the ruling class for the purpose of social control. Social control, in this context, means ensuring the interests of US capitalism are met with the least possible resistance from the exploited classes. White supremacy is the linchpin of US capitalist social control. The system of white rule ensures social policy is "targeted" and non-universal, leaving social services politically vulnerable. Strict eligibility requirements for what remains of "War on Poverty" programs and the targeted exclusion of Black America from New Deal legislation left a lasting footprint on how social services are administered in the US. Each and every existing program in the US reinforces the notion of a "deserving poor." In the US imperial context, "deserving" is synonymous with white and the expectation of following the rules of white supremacy.

Social service workers in the US have for years now been trained to work in programs that stabilize poverty, reinforce white supremacy, and amplify the stress and shame of capitalist exploitation. Those with a conscience often drop out of the social service profession once it becomes abundantly clear that there is little room within the institution for revolutionary change. Turnover is made easier by the anti-union atmosphere and low monetary return for burnout inducing work. Under such conditions, what is the future of social services in the present age of austerity in privatization? This question will be explored in part two.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and case manager in the Greater Boston area. You can contact Danny at: wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com.

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