ABSTRACT
The return of mass unemployment upsets so many of the assumptions of the postwar welfare state, including the domain of social work. This is not only a matter of fiscal policy, in terms of how the welfare state would be financed through national insurance and taxation. It is first necessary to recognise that social workers are often bewildered by the problems of unemployment for good reasons, because, just as mass unemployment undermines the expectations of what might count as a ‘successful’ life for so many people, equally social work’s own accustomed attitude as to what might count as ‘success’ is thrown into disarray. One central recognition to emerge from a review of the underpinning assumptions of social work’s ‘radical’ hour is that it was quite incapable of providing anything which could effectively replace the ‘rehabilitative ideal’, which itself had become redundant not because of the radical critique, however, but as a consequence of the altered political economy of the west.
