Review of The Politics of Turmoil, by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, (N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1973), 365 pages.

Reviewed by Gordon Welty
Wright State University
Dayton, OH 45435 USA

The decade of the Sixties can be taken as the era of the testing of modern sociological theory, the theory ultimately derived from Weber and Pareto, as introduced and interpreted to the American audience by Parsons, Burnham and Henderson.

An important moment of this theory, as assimilated, was the professional and the manager. In part this moment reflected the enhanced role of institutionalized and specialized learning in modern society; in part it was itself an apology, a masking of the foundational flaws of that society which the Great Depression evidenced.

The role of professional and managerial strata emerged over against a lay or client stratum, and the "War on Poverty" is the supreme example of that relationship, at once its realization and its verification. But if the apologetic masked real movements of social forces, hid, for instance the enhanced class differentiations of American society, the "War" would be expected to fail.

Cloward and Piven can be taken as writers of the third generation of modern sociological theory. In the collection of essays reviewed here which constituted preparatory material for their Regulating the Poor, as well as extensions of the same theme, the obfuscation brought by modern general sociology is clear as it distorts time and again Cloward and Piven's sensitivity to urban society and their prescriptions for that society.

Since the "armistice" of the War on Poverty, a re-reading of their mid-Sixties essays shows how strikingly they anticipated, in some respects, outcomes: The few black professionals elevated into the traditional bureaus; the mass of blacks left behind, the American Dream a nightmare. A re-reading also shows how strikingly dated in other respects this thinking is, forever lost with the diffuse activism of the Sixties.

The decline of this domestic activism coupled with the decline of the war in Southeast Asia has turned into the collapse on several fronts of the American Empire, opening new possibilities, unconceived by Cloward and Piven.

Let us note some shortcomings of Cloward and Piven's work, and some openings for political action that have appeared. For instance, they find class differences where there aren't any (e.g., the "working classes" are contrasted to the "lower classes"), differences of migratory patterns which are vanishing within an increasing multi-national reserve army without supplementary unemployment benefits.

The Vietnamese refugees, like the earlier Cuban and Hungarian refugees, are limited in number and consequence. Historically then, the absence of any new wave of migrants means Cloward and Piven's "class difference" will never recur. Never since the Thirties (or earlier) were the objective conditions for political action so favorable.

Likewise, they overlook class factors where they do exist, supposing for instance that the public bureaucracies "are essentially neutral, aligned with neither class or party," thus ignoring the particularity of interests which the educational, social service, mental health and correctional professions serve, interests which the recent interprofessional squabbles over malpractice insurance illustrate. But their defective analysis leaves them acknowledgedly with no practice.

Such confusion and passivity is the offspring of sociology, giving occasion to calls for diffuse adventures on the part of the least mobilized and organized, the most vulnerable.

While they have pointed out the role of social welfare in a system of advanced capitalism, the limitations of their analysis, limitations imposed both by their historical epoch and their intellectual tradition, can be spurs to a more totalistic vision and practice.

As Cloward and Piven themselves cautioned, "Those who lead an attack on the welfare system must be alert to the pitfalls of inadequate but placating reforms which give the appearance to what is in truth defeat."