Social Work, Social Movements, and the Fight for Justice

Introduction: Social Work and Social Movements

During the early part of the 20th century, social work was primarily a means of helping individuals, but it did little to question the status quo for larger groups of people. Beginning in the 1950s, however, broad-based social movements began to challenge relationships that had previously been regarded as private matters. While the underpinnings of these movements took root in the 1950s, they became prominent throughout the 1960s. These movements transformed issues that had previously been considered private — such as the relationship between the sexes — into public concerns. It is fair to say that social movements politicized previously private issues, bringing broader attention to certain deep-seated inequities. This led to meaningful change, though not as much as movement leaders sought. Galeano and Klein both discuss the idea of social work as a social movement, and the relationship between the everyday work of helping individual people and the larger concept of helping groups of people.

Galeano on Charity, Solidarity, and the Welfare State

Galeano's view of the 20th century is a pessimistic one, and he extends that pessimism to social work itself. He likens social work to charity — an apt comparison in the context of a welfare state. There can be little question that parts of lower-class America function as a welfare state, not simply because they receive assistance, but because policies and programs seem aimed at preventing those populations from ever achieving genuine autonomy. Galeano is sharply critical of that type of assistance. According to him, "charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations. In the best of cases, there will be justice someday, high in heaven. Here on earth, charity doesn't worry injustice, it just tries to hide it" (Galeano, p. 312).

He contrasts this with solidarity, which is unifying in character. This contrast illuminates the difference between a communist or socialist society and a welfare state. Though the two concepts are often treated as similar, they are in fact very different — though the distinction is meaningless in the absence of a broader shift in societal attitude. Galeano also correctly points out that many Western countries, most notably the United States, are resistant to the underlying social change that would usher in socialism; they remain so attached to the idea of capitalism that they resist socialism even when it might improve the living conditions of many people. At the same time, Western nations remain committed to foreign aid, which he argues simply perpetuates the welfare state dynamic.

Klein on Anti-Corporatism and the Limits of Movement Building

Klein's worldview does not appear as pessimistic as Galeano's, though he does acknowledge the futility that can undermine a global anti-corporatism movement, even as he supports its goals. Klein's article suggests that social work and social movements have arrived at something like a post-movement stage. In the symposium he describes, for instance, the stated goal was to end corporatization. Yet the participants — and the demonstrators in the streets — did not share a single common goal. Many of them opposed specific corporations because of specific harmful practices. Those differences make a sustained social movement extremely difficult to maintain.

Consider, by contrast, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Liberation Movement. Although leadership within each movement did not always agree on ultimate goals, broad overarching objectives united their participants. Moreover, those movements had tangible consequences for everyday Americans. The absence of such a unifying purpose in contemporary anti-corporatist activism is, for Klein, one of its central weaknesses.