Paternalism

History of Paternalism

The term paternalism first appeared in the late 19th century as an implied critique predicated on the inherent value of personal liberty and autonomy, positions elegantly outlined by Kant in 1785 and Mill in 1859. The etymology of paternalism, rooted in the Latin pater (father), reflects the implicit social hierarchies of patriarchal cultures, in which fathers or male heads of families were understood to be authority figures responsible for the welfare of subordinates and dependents. In this tradition, adult members of states, corporations, and communities functioned under the presumably benevolent authority of kings, presidents, and executives. Prior to industrialization, patronage systems informed the stratified economic, political, and social arrangements prevalent throughout Europe and the Americas. Paternalism, as it evolved through the industrial age of the 19th and 20th centuries, applied the model of family relations and practices of patronage (fatherly protection, tutelage, and control) to relationships between classes of people understood as unequal: employers and workers, the privileged and the underprivileged, the state and the masses.

Historically, then, paternalism is a critical term applied in the West to the system of beliefs and practices emerging in the transition from a social order of patriarchal class structures, including slavery in the United States, to a free society of autonomous and equal individuals. Although it is not defined by a single institution or set of institutions, paternalism was prevalent among the early industrial companies. For example, the efforts of Ford's Sociological Department to promote clean and sober lifestyles included monitoring employee bank accounts, church attendance, and family life—measures now considered extremely intrusive but not uncommon for a time when laborers were largely employed by people whose wealth, education, and social privilege far exceeded their own. In the United States, the ongoing debate between social reformists and free market advocates shifted from the political and economic integration of former slaves in the late 19th century to a broader concern in the 20th century with the rights of workers, the poor, children, and other marginalized groups such as criminals, the mentally ill, and people with disabilities.

Following several decades of relative silence about paternalism in the mid-20th century, the term was reintroduced, in the context of criminal law, to become a topic of extensive philosophical debate with the 1971 publication of Gerald Dworkin's article on morality and law. As the discourse of paternalism has evolved, its meaning has become more nuanced. Responding to what he considered intrusively interventionist policy and program changes affecting the poor (e.g., welfare, child support, homelessness), Mead defined the “new” paternalism as “social policies aimed at the poor that attempt to reduce poverty and other social problems by directive and supervisory means.” From a different perspective, free market advocates apply their longstanding opposition to paternalism in championing social policies that emphasize the freedom of individual citizens rather than dependence on government or employers in planning and paying for their own health care, college education, and retirement. Standing's 2002 argument against supervision of the poor as the means of ensuring their economic security echoes Mead but insists that the human need for (and right to) collective agency and guaranteed “structured reciprocities” of mutual responsibility between citizen stakeholders and their government cannot be dismissed as paternalism.

...