Beyond Radicalism: An Historical-Materialist Framework for the Social Policy Curriculum

Abstract

This paper develops an historical-materialist framework of analysis that looks beyond circumscribed political ideology to the socioeconomic relations among humankind. The framework is used to examine critically both the contemporary American socioeconomic system and the radical state capitalist alternative. The framework generates implications and choices for social work, social policy, and the social policy curriculum.

To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself.