Thomas Humphrey Marshall - Ideas

Ideas

T.H. Marshall wrote a seminal essay on citizenship, entitled "Citizenship and Social Class". This was published in 1950, based on a lecture given the previous year. He analysed the development of citizenship as a development of civil, then political, then social rights. These were broadly assigned to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively. His distinctive contribution was to introduce the concept of social rights understood as the welfare rights. Social Rights are awarded not on the basis of class or need, but rather on the status of citizenship. He claimed that the extension of social rights does not entail the destruction of social classes and inequality. T.H. Marshall was a close friend and admirer of L.T. Hobhouse, and his conception of citizenship emerged from a series of lectures given by Hobhouse in LSE. Hobhouse is more philosophical, whereas Marshall is under the influence of measures taken by Lord Beveridge after the WWII. All of these people were involved in a turn in liberal thought that was called "new liberalism", a liberalism with a social conscience.t.h.marshall also talk about industrial citizenship and its relationship with citizenship. he said that social rights precursor ed by political and civil rights.

Marshall's analysis of citizenship has been criticized on the basis that it only applies to males in England (Note: England rather than Britain). Marxist critics point out that Marshall's analysis is superficial as it does not discuss the right of the citizen to control economic production, which they argue is necessary for sustained shared prosperity. From a feminist perspective, the work of Marshall is highly constricted in being focused on men and ignoring the social rights of women and impediments to their realization. There is a debate among scholars about whether Marshall intended his historical analysis to be interpreted as a general theory of citizenship or whether the essay was just a commentary on developments within England.

The essay has been used by editors to promote more equality in society, including the "Black" vote in the USA, and against Mrs. Thatcher in a 1992 edition prefaced by Tom Bottomore. It is an Anglo-Saxon interpretation of the evolution of "rights" in a pacific reform mode, unlike the revolutionary interpretations of Charles Tilly, the other great theoretician of citizenship in the twentieth century, who bases his readings in the developments of the French Revolution.