Adequate Poor Law Act Of 1601: A Marxist Analysis Of Welfare

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The concept of twenty first century welfare provision is commonly considered to be the provision of social security or benefits payments, social housing, health, social work and educational services. However, historically, the provision of welfare in Britain has been in place since the ineffective Elizabethan Poor Law Act of 1601 and earlier. This paper sets out to critically discuss the extent to which a Marxist analysis of the welfare state is useful covering the period from 1834 up to the inception of the post war Welfare State. Firstly it will provide a background of Marxist ideology moving on to discuss twentieth century Marxist thinking and finally it will consider reforms through this timeframe to provide an analysis to what extent …show more content…

The new poor law of 1834 introduced the workhouse and a more centralised system of administration. It reduced support drastically supporting only those who could work, as opposed to those who would not (Fraser, 2003, p.54). Moreover the bourgeoisie believed the poor were idle drunkards and poverty was much more a personal misfortune than a public issue arguing that access to help should be limited to the “deserving poor” only (Walsh et al, 2000, p.123) a perception repudiated by Mills who argued that to justify mass poverty and unemployment by such factors was an evasion and a failure of government to deal with the real dynamics of poverty, inequality and unemployment (Mills, 1959). Rowntree and Booth further evidenced the clear link between poverty, unemployment and low wages in the findings of their social surveys on poverty thus eliminating the propaganda of the deserving and undeserving poor (Fraser, 2009, pp.318-319). Richard Oastler argued the new Poor Law was yet another example of the callous exploitation of the working class (Fraser, 2003,

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