From liberal organicism to social citizenship

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to explore the historical genealogy and the process by which social citizenship was constituted in Spain. Because its origins lie in nineteenth -century social reformism, the reasons why it appeared and the repercussions it had require analysis. This analysis clearly reveals that social reformism emerged as the result of the internal crisis of the imaginary of classical liberal individualism and its ensuing reframing in organicist terms. Given the incapacity of the liberal regime to attain the promised social, economic, and harmonious egalitarian political order, the new individualist organicism promoted the adoption of new ways of reaching this objective. The most important was the announcement of social reforms, which required state intervention in economic and labour relations. With time, these measures of reform would acquire the condition of social rights and give rise to the institution of so-called social citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Social citizenship
• organicism
• social reform
• welfare state

Acknowledgment

I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewer of my manuscript for her/his careful reading and insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There is no room here to provide more detail of each of these explanations and theories. For a summary of them, see (Cousins 2005), 19–33 and Esping-Andersen 1990, 13–33.

2. A widespread explanation presents social reforms as an initiative promoted by fin-de siècle cultural and political progressism, of which so-called “Krausism” would form a large part. Although the reforms have also been attributed to the initiative of conservatism (see, for example, Montero 1997, 59–77).

3. Gumersindo de Azcárate was a Republican intellectual and political leader and the first President of the Institute of Social Reforms (Instituto de Reformas Sociales, 1903) and Segismundo Moret was a leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister in 1905–1906.

4. Antonio Cánovas was the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in the decades of 1870 and 1880.

5. José Manuel Piernas Hurtado (1843–1911) was Professor of Political Economy and a influential theoretician of social reformism.

6. On the New Liberalism and its connection to individualist organicism, see, for instance, Freeden (1978) and Logue (1983), on the British and French cases, respectively. On the case of Spain, see Cabrera (2014).

7. Adolfo A. Buylla was an intellectual and professor and one of the main organizers of the Institute of Labour (Instituto del Trabajo, 1902), the antecedent of the National Welfare Institute (Instituto Nacional de Previsión, 1908).

8. Eduardo Sanz-Escartín (1855–1939) was a sociologist and conservative politician and President of the Institute of Social Reforms.

9. The attitude of workers’ organizations with regard to social reform measures has been studied in detail in (de Felipe 2014) and (de Felipe 2016).

10. The new diagnosis of the causes of the workers’ movement required having detailed information about the living and working conditions of the working class. To obtain this information and to advise the government on drawing up the social reform projects needed, in 1883, the Social Reform Committee (Comisión de Reformas Sociales) was created. Moreover, owing to that, social reformists began to grant sociology and the “social sciences” a greater role as an auxiliary discipline in the task of legislating on “social matters” (See Canalejas Méndez 1903, 510).

11. The author also uses the term “humanitarian law” (23). Dato’s expression, in (Morote 1904), 377. José Canalejas was a leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister in 1911 and Eduardo Dato was a leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in 1914 and 1920.

12. This new stage of social reformism lies beyond the scope of this article and cannot be addressed in detail here. On this question, see Divassón Mendívil 1990.

13. See, for example, (Bergamín 1920; Callejo de la Cuesta 1935), and (Luño Peña 1935).