From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism.

• Author: Moore, Allison

Is liberalism in America poised to regain a workable popular consensus? Recent political commentary suggests that it is,(1) and Democrats have been struggling within their ranks to define and control the identity of this revived liberalism.(2) In From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism, Gareth Davies enters the fray with a historical account of why the New Deal liberal consensus was once lost. Davies's thesis is that in the period 1964-1972, liberal leaders came to embrace an "entitlement" ideology that repudiated the values of work and self-sufficiency central to Progressive, New Deal, and Great Society "opportunity" liberalism (pp. 2-3, 12). The book gives a balanced history of the ideological underpinnings of opportunity liberalism and its politically damaging transformation, and offers insight on which strands of liberalism bear reviving.

I

Davies argues that America's dominant social philosophy is individualism, defined "within the specific context of national attitudes toward dependency and work" and associated with "a persistent tendency to denigrate dependency and elevate self-help" (p. 8). He traces the individualist ethic in the rhetoric of opportunity liberalism through successive liberal movements, seeking to establish it as a "traditional and authentically liberal" position (pp. 2-3). By his account, Progressive-era reformers built a liberal political consensus by rejecting laissez-faire conservative doctrines while insisting on individual self-help.(3) New Deal liberalism continued this tradition of government activism that nevertheless disparaged dependency, creating social insurance and public works programs that linked income to employment. Great Society liberalism also upheld the ideal of individual self-sufficiency, adding rehabilitative job assistance services and work conditions for welfare recipients.

The "one major exception to this tradition of opportunity-centered liberalism," however, arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It consisted of "radical notions of income by right ... [with which] American liberalism remains associated in the public mind" (p. 3). The "entitlement" liberals successfully attacked work requirements and other conditions placed on welfare recipients. They favored reforms to guarantee an unconditional minimum income. But the entitlement approach, in Davies's opinion, was doomed to "inevitable defeat" (p. 233). Moreover, it led liberals to the politically disastrous "denunciation of societal values ... [and the] abandonment of the search for consensus" (p. 184). Davies's pointed implication is that liberals can recapture a national consensus only by reclaiming individualism and work-oriented ideals as their own.

Reclaiming opportunity ideology does not necessarily force liberals down a single path, however. The book reveals that a variety of strategies, including a full employment policy, public works projects, social insurance programs, and rehabilitative job training and placement efforts, are consistent with liberal work and self-sufficiency ideals. All these strategies reject laissez-faire in favor of government action to create income security, but each ties income security to work requirements in a significantly different way.

The possibility of alternative ways of linking work and self-sufficiency raises two challenges to Davies's thesis. First, are middle-class Americans really estranged from entitlement ideology, as Davies claims, or do they just object to treating income support as an "entitlement" for the poor? Middle America seems to favor an entitlement-like "no strings attached" approach in government programs for its own benefit. Second, is Davies right to locate the welfare...