SOCIAL ASSISTANCE. – It is difficult to find a satisfactory definition of social assistance or social service.
The definition is either too broad, ending up by embracing all social, educational, recreational, union and health work, or it becomes so narrow as not to include more than the organization of alms-giving. Perhaps it is better, rather than persisting in the search for an a priori definition, to follow social assistance in its historical and concrete evolution. In this way certain aspects can be identified which characterize and specify these activities and distinguish them from related and complementary forms of social activity. In the evolution of social assistance three periods can be distinguished: the first period comprises Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages; the second, shorter one, runs from the 16th to the 19th century; the third is the contemporary one.
1st period. – The first Christian communities immediately concerned themselves with meeting the needs of their members, who were occasional victims of the struggle for existence. This activity is that of neighbour helping neighbour; it is a direct and personal activity. Very soon, however, a certain organization begins to take shape. Assistance is also given at a distance and through intermediaries, as in the case of the collections organized by St Paul among the wealthier churches on behalf of the poor of Jerusalem. Even the personnel entrusted with the management of ecclesiastical goods and the distribution of alms becomes, in a certain sense, specialized (deacon or rector), and is called “dispensator in rebus pauperum.”
The gifts which serve the poor come from offerings, bequests, but also from a certain legal imposition. Over time, Christian genius discovers that, in most cases of occasional need, there are certain groups with constant needs which do not find suitable social organs. Thus are born hostels for pilgrims (xenodochia), hospices for the poor, the sick and orphans (ptochia), works for prisoners (for these works the councils even authorize the sale of sacred vessels). Later come the Monti di Pietà, lazzaretti, free schools, etc.
Moreover, the medieval guilds and confraternities organize assistance for their sick, widowed and orphaned members. It has even been suggested that the great cathedrals which sprang up everywhere at that time were not built solely out of a spirit of worship, but also in order to provide work for the growing number of unemployed, which would correspond, in a certain sense, to modern public works. What characterizes this long period is that social assistance develops on the margins of a stable and fundamentally healthy artisanal and agricultural economy. Normal social institutions provide for human needs more or less satisfactorily. Society has its victims, but they seem rather to be occasional victims than products of the system. Where social life causes more serious harm, it is still thought that the evil is merely “moral” and that a simple advance in moral consciousness will eliminate all inconveniences. Social assistance is thus strongly marked by a realistic character. It is enough to awaken in all members of society the spirit of love and justice for the social machine to function satisfactorily. But these assertions must not be pressed too far: faced, for example, with the spread of usury, despite the canons of the councils, theologians and moralists analyse the economic structures of enterprise, and the Franciscans establish the first Monti di Pietà.
If at the beginning of the Christian era there were some abuses among the poor, the control exercised was usually sufficient to distinguish the idler from the true poor; but in the course of time, with easier travel from place to place, bands of beggars are seen wandering from hospice to hospice, and the need is felt to discourage false poor people. An English ordinance of 1348 states: “Whereas voluntary beggars refuse to work, being able to live on alms, abandoning themselves to idleness, vice, theft and other abominations, no one shall give them aid by reason of alms.” In England and elsewhere, workhouses are founded, but they resemble forced labour camps more than poorhouses. At the end of this first period, therefore, the awareness grows that social assistance can become counterproductive; that alms-giving can contribute to making the poor immoral: this discovery is decisive for the evolution of social assistance.
2nd period. – Great economic and social changes are maturing. St Thomas More, in his Utopia, notes: “In one way or another they must leave their village, poor wretches, men, women, children, orphans, widows with their small possessions in a bundle, and go away, leaving their little houses, not knowing where to go. They wander aimlessly: what can they do but steal or beg? They are thrown into prison because they do not work: and yet they would so gladly work; but there is no work for them anywhere.” This problem is aggravated by the industrial revolution. The old institutions, such as the guilds, are no longer able to organize work and production satisfactorily. The industrial machine becomes like a monster that devours men, women and children. When they are working, it keeps them in poverty, and at every crisis it throws them onto the streets. It begins to be seen that unemployment and poverty are no longer phenomena against which a “moralizing” attitude is sufficient; the inevitable impact of economic development on individuals and certain classes of workers is discovered.
Social assistance thus enters its second phase, in which emphasis is placed above all on the legislative reforms necessary to prevent man from being crushed by society in his struggle for existence. In all countries, with more or less good grace (rather less than more), social laws are promulgated to protect working women, minors, and minimum wages. To remedy cyclical crises and to regulate the sanitary organization of industry, insurance against unemployment, accidents at work, etc., is organized. It is no longer the individual poor person, but society which interests social assistance. It is discovered that society can become an organism in which the circulation of goods becomes defective, that certain categories are no longer admitted to benefit from it, or participate in it to a very reduced degree. Society produces within itself the “pariahs.” The proletariat is within it, but not in communion with II. Social assistance seeks to identify the defects of the system which produce these wretched people, no longer as an occasional product, but almost as a constant by-product; it seeks, supported by other forces, to influence and rectify existing structures or to found new social structures. But while the new social assistance is concerned with the objective factor, the old one survives: effective when it came to the aid of the occasional victim, it is no more than a caricature of itself when directed towards the victims of the system.
3rd period. – It is necessary to wait for the discoveries of contemporary psychology, pedagogy and psychiatry for social assistance to enter its third phase of development. A deeper understanding of man, of the influences exerted by his environment, by the large and small communities in which he is inserted, makes it possible to understand that man can receive mental distortions, become a “pariah” in the civilization in which he lives, even when in certain respects his economic life is satisfactory.
that social assistance cannot be limited to employment or wage problems; it must take into account certain moral and psychological factors. For example, the harm done to a man’s psychology by living as a stranger in an overgrown organization where he cannot exercise his responsibilities is seen. It is also understood that workers’ housing cannot be mere cheap dormitories; ways must be found to create living communities in large cities, and so on.
The same problem exists in large-scale industry: it is not enough to give the worker security and work; one must restore to man the possibility of conscious and responsible participation in the productive process. From this perspective, social assistance resumes the study of all assistance organizations and laws. It is seen that even smaller and more natural communities, such as the family, can produce a kind of “pariah” or “proletarian,” that is, a member not integrated into the social organism. Thus arise assistance works that are no longer purely materially organized, such as pedagogical and moral clinics, and so on. Having reached this point in its development, social assistance has become conscious of its raison d’être and its working method. Its purpose is to reintegrate the “economic pariah” or the “cultural pariah” into the social group to which he belongs. Its method is psychological, economic, or administrative analysis that makes it possible to identify those individual and collective defects that cause man and society to separate from one another. In the light of these considerations, one sees how