ABSTRACT
It should be clear from the preceding chapters that this book treats welfare rights as an ambiguous phenomenon. T.H. Marshall, whose concept of social rights was discussed at length in Chapter 1, looked upon social rights as a civilising influence, a form of 'class abatement' with consequences both for the stability of society and for the structure of social equality. Implicitly, this civilising influence would not only tame the excesses and redress the diswelfares of the capitalist system, but it would also temper or refine the conduct of the working class. The nature of this inherent ambiguity is most clearly brought out by Ian Gough, who has written of the welfare state that:
adjudication'; that is the right to be governed by the decisions of established authority with the power to translate imagined rights into realities (see Scruton 1991: 16-18). Rights are an explicit challenge, not only to traditional paternalistic authority, but also to newer forms of administrative authority. Fabian academics such as Richard Titmuss (1971), for example, have expressed themselves to be in favour of 'creative' or 'individualised' justice administered by compassionate xperts, rather than the crude 'proportional' justice bestowed by rights that are legally prescribed. There are therefore those on both the left and right of the political spectrum who would question the need for rights that might impair the exercise of benevolent authority in the interests of the welfare of the people.
