A Crisis of Social Democracy? Professionalism and Flexible Accumulation

It almost goes without saying that the political and socio-economic landscape of Britain has undergone a major upheaval in the past twenty years. One element of this has been the ongoing ideological struggle within the professions over what exactly professionalism means. This struggle has come about because for the first time in fifty years or more a real battle is being fought to determine who controls professions and professionals, how they are assessed, what their function is, how their services are to be delivered and paid for, and so on. I refer to this struggle as a crisis of professionalism. This contest is ongoing in the legal system, the National Health Service (NHS), education, accountancy, social work and other areas. It is important because it is part of a wider struggle over whether or not vast areas of social activity should be regulated by the market and/or by quasi-markets or by some form of welfarist-social-democratic structure. In short, the crisis of professionalism (and professionals) is at the centre of the attempt by the New Right to destroy the social-democratic consensus that dominated Western capitalism for a significant part of this century.