The difficulties or impossibilities of defining and measuring indicators of social growth in many areas of social policy is one among many reasons for current disenchantments and discontents. They have resulted in two consequences which I wish to discuss later: (i) the dominance of the economic and the technocratic over the social in the approach to the problems of change and (ii) trends towards the depersonalisation of access to and the use of social welfare services. Both can lead to the abstraction of people from their social context, a theoretical attempt to isolate what cannot be isolated.

During the United Nations First Development Decade, which was a period of rapid political, economic and social change and of escalating wars, violence, expenditures on arms, and catastrophe, the world’s total gross national product increased by $1,100 billion (Society for International Development, 1972). Something like 80% of this increase went to countries where per capita yearly incomes already average over $1,000 and where only one-quarter of the world’s population resides. By contrast, only 6% of the increase went to countries where per capita incomes average $200 or less but they contain 60% of the world’s people. While the average income in the developed countries stands in 1972 at approximately $2,400 the comparable figure for the developing countries is $180. A severe and growing maldistribution of the world’s wealth and income is thus in evidence. Moreover, among many of the developing nations in which significant economic growth has occurred there is evidence that inequalities in their societies have increased; the poorest sectors of these nations may actually have grown poorer while élite groups have prospered during the First Development Decade. The price paid by the more affluent nations for, for example, coffee and sisal dropped by more than a half between 1950 and 1970. This fall had more effect on the standard of living of poor producers in Tanzania, South America and other areas than any increase in social welfare expenditures or international aid (The Internationalist, May-June 1972).