ABSTRACT
The “social question” may be characterized as a concern about a society’s ability to maintain its own cohesion. This threat of breakdown is borne by groups whose very existence shakes the cohesion of the whole collectivity. Who are these groups? The problem here is complicated, due in part to the conceptual fuzziness that accompanies the term “social.” We will explicitly consider one by one its different accepted usages. But we must begin with a major distinction, even if it will have to be qualified later on. The populations who benefit from different social interventions differ fundamentally according to whether they are or are not capable of working, and they are treated in a totally different ways according to this criterion.
