The question posed by Iain Ferguson in his book Reclaiming social work: Challenging neoliberalism and promoting social justice accurately identifies the challenges facing social work today. These challenges arise from a number of familiar factors – the marketisation of social care services, the demoralisation of social workers under the combined pressures of managerialism and the public opprobrium arising from child protection scandals. Radical social work has suffered a particular loss of focus and direction as a consequence of the fragmentation of the left and the new social movements of feminism and anti-racism from which it emerged. Yet the traditions of radical social work, particularly its critique of the theory and practice of casework, provide both ideas and inspiration for rising to the challenges of the new millennium.

Individual autonomy in question

Iain Ferguson's question implicitly recognises the scale of the problem experienced by the Left and progressive forces over the past 20 years. While there has been progress, the setbacks, particularly of the labour movement internationally, mean that the goals of socialism (first raised in the ‘bourgeois revolutions’ of 1848, transiently triumphant in the Russian Revolution 1917, and, for our generation, revitalised in the revolts of 1968) are now in abeyance. But the problems go even deeper; even the goals of ‘liberty, equality and solidarity’ proclaimed by the French Revolution of 1789 are now disparaged. The convergence of the gloomy ideologies of neoconservativism and post-modernism reflect a wider loss of confidence in any conception of human advance or social progress. Enlightenment values – respect for scientific rationality, the commitment to universal concepts of freedom and equality (even democracy) – are widely questioned in the prevailing climate of pessimism and despondency (McLennan, 2010).

The demise of the rival solidarities of capital and labour has undermined collective modes of identity and activity in politics and civil society. Just as the rolling back of the state has betrayed neoconservative hopes of unleashing a vibrant spirit of enterprise (confirming only the dependence of decadent private capital on state support), the decline of collectivism has not produced a dynamic individualism (confirming that robust individuals are nurtured in networks of social solidarity).