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1 Hans Zeisel, Book Review of the Death Penalty: A Debate 325 (1985)

handle is hein.death/dthpenb0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Book Reviews 325 useful illustrations because radical social work is a permanent party of opposition and discontent, and movements that are absorbed by society and become part of a new consensus would not fit the radical social work perspective. She does, early on, promise that the women's liberation movement will be an exception (pp. 68-73). That promise is not fulfilled. The radical Left serves a useful function in community life. It is, frequently, the source of new ideas that, on initial presentation, appear outlandish and outrageous. Over time, some of these ideas come to be accepted by the larger community. We can find many examples in our recent past. And although most of the political content of radical social work is not well developed, it is not the political content itself that is repugnant. Rather, it is the clearly expressed desire to use social service agencies and the workforce of those agencies to achieve political goals. That objective must be resisted whether the political goals are of the Right or the Left. Certainly, the greater threat to social services today comes from the Right. But the rationale for radical social work, with all of its self-righteousness and claim to knowing what is good, and true, and moral, is very much like the rationale of the moral majority. No, I believe that the interests of poor, dependent, and deprived people will be better served if we sustain a social welfare system that is statutorily defined, delivered through well-run organizations and bureaucracies, and implemented by educated professionals who understand their specialized functions as well as the limits of their authority. While there is a good deal that is wrong with how the system now functions, vast improvements in American social welfare were attained between 1935 and 1980; our objective should be to protect those advances and, after this current neo-conservative government has exhausted its credibility, improve upon them. Withorn notes, though only in passing, that unlike Britain, for example, the American social welfare system developed without the strong support of a labor movement that is committed to the welfare state. The British welfare state emerged, she says, from a political process that consistently sharpened the working-class notion of what it wanted from the state (p. 24). That is an important observation, because it suggests that it is naive to focus on professional social workers and program managers to reform our social welfare system. There is every evidence that those people are not even a minor obstacle to reform. Rather, it is the American electorate, Congress, and state legislatures that must come to perceive the value of a social welfare system that meets people's needs with fairness and equity. This is an arduous and difficult task that requires patience and courage. For some social workers, it is probably easier and perhaps more gratifying in the short run to attack social work. But is it not a pity to see all of that energy and compassion directed against itself? Harry Specht University of California, Berkeley The Death Penalty: A Debate. By Ernest van den Haag and John P. Conrad. New York: Plenum Publishing Corp., 1983. Pp. xii+ 305. $16.95. Treatises with pro and con in their title are part of an old tradition. But the format in which two authors join in defending their respective positions is a relatively new development, inspired perhaps by our adversary legal system. The authors of The Death Penalty: A Debate apparently agreed on the significant issues of the problem, then wrote and exchanged position statements, rebuttals,

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