Volume 28, Number 5 · April 2, 1981
Life with Father
By Michael Walzer
Wealth and Poverty
by George Gilder
Basic Books, 306 pp., $16.95
In April of 1913, R.H. Tawney wrote in his commonplace book: 'People want rights—freedom, in order that they may perform duties. The hardship of the wage-earner is not simply that he has insufficient food and housing, but that he is deprived of the means of performing certain primary duties, care of home, wife and family, direction of the industry by which he lives, a share in public life. Hence the way of freedom is also the way of duty.'[1] Here is a vision of what the goals of a welfare state ought to be: to relieve distress, certainly, but also to recognize and enhance the sense of social membership. Welfare programs that don't serve both these goals should be criticized and reformed.
Review, 3111 words
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