In his article on citizenship and social class, T. H. Marshall traces the history of citizenship in England and divides it under three types of rights: civil, political, and social. He states they all began as one. However, with time they separated, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century, respectively. Each of these types of rights emerged because the public demanded them, and each went its own way, without regard for the other rights. They were completely separate. It wasn’t until recently, in this century, that the three types of rights managed to meet again and walk side by side in cooperation. Rooted in its history, capitalism also plays a role, in the maintenance of the rigid lines between them and in their eventual union.
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Each man was given the “power to engage as an independent unit in the economic struggle and made it possible to deny to him social protection on the ground that he was equipped with the means to protect himself” (21). The inequality did not stem from defective civil rights but more for the lack of social rights. Therefore, a tension began to grow between capitalism and citizenship with the rise of political and social rights for the lower social classes. That gave rise to industrial citizenship, citizens who were fighting for political power and demanding humane laws of aid, which one gained were used in a way that put them at odds with the structured social class …show more content…
It was each to their own, and this undermined what citizenship stands for. Marshall sums it nicely by saying, “the rights with which the general status of citizenship was invested were extracted from the hierarchal status system of social class, robbing it of its essential substance” (19). The social class system disregarded citizenship and what it stood for. It was dismissed with the belief that social inequity was "necessary and purposeful" (19). Marshall mentions Patrick Colquhoun whose says that poverty is necessary in order for there to be riches because a poor man with no funds is forced to work hard in order to live, and thus he accumulates riches. But Marshall argues that while social class allowed the poor “to exist as a driving force [it] inevitably produced a certain amount of the latter [indigence]” (20), and no specific family should remain in such a
Each man was given the “power to engage as an independent unit in the economic struggle and made it possible to deny to him social protection on the ground that he was equipped with the means to protect himself” (21). The inequality did not stem from defective civil rights but more for the lack of social rights. Therefore, a tension began to grow between capitalism and citizenship with the rise of political and social rights for the lower social classes. That gave rise to industrial citizenship, citizens who were fighting for political power and demanding humane laws of aid, which one gained were used in a way that put them at odds with the structured social class …show more content…
It was each to their own, and this undermined what citizenship stands for. Marshall sums it nicely by saying, “the rights with which the general status of citizenship was invested were extracted from the hierarchal status system of social class, robbing it of its essential substance” (19). The social class system disregarded citizenship and what it stood for. It was dismissed with the belief that social inequity was "necessary and purposeful" (19). Marshall mentions Patrick Colquhoun whose says that poverty is necessary in order for there to be riches because a poor man with no funds is forced to work hard in order to live, and thus he accumulates riches. But Marshall argues that while social class allowed the poor “to exist as a driving force [it] inevitably produced a certain amount of the latter [indigence]” (20), and no specific family should remain in such a