ABSTRACT
It is pretty well certain, of course, that no matter how justly a society was organised there would be members of it who would suffer from disadvantages of one kind and another: there would still be diseases and accidents, bereavements, personalities suffering from stress, and so on. The dilemma presented by the problem of disadvantage is the choice between working for a social order which is not so deeply wedded to it, and working to relieve the condition of people currently suffering from it. The first premise of Community Action is that the great bulk of serious disadvantage that people suffer from in our society is a product of that social order. A second premise is that geographical concentrations of disadvantage in our society can be identified: the concentrations that constitute the 'inner-urban problem', attracting government rhetoric every ten years or so, but substantial government funds never.
