Thomas Humphrey Marshall

Thomas Humphrey Marshall (19 December 1893 – 29 November 1981) was an English sociologist who is best known for his essay "Citizenship and Social Class," a key work on citizenship that introduced the idea that full citizenship includes civil, political, and social citizenship.

Biography T. H. Marshall was born in London on 19 December 1893 to a wealthy, artistically cultured family (a Bloomsbury family). He was the fourth of six children. His great-grandfather acquired an industrial fortune and his father, William Cecil Marshall, was a successful architect, giving Marshall a privileged upbringing and inheritance. He attended Rugby School, a public boarding school and then read history at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Marshall was a civilian prisoner in Germany during the First World War. This was interrupted when he became the Labour candidate for Farnham in the 1922 election. Despite being unsuccessful, Marshall found the experience beneficial because it brought him into close contact with working-class people and exposed him to the injustices and prejudices within the British class system.

Marshall became a tutor in social work at the London School of Economics in 1925. He was promoted to reader and went on to become the head of the Social Science Department at LSE from 1944 to 1949 and Martin White Professorship of Sociology from 1954 to 1956.

His papers are held in the Archives of the London School of Economics, along with an oral history interview he gave to the historian, Brian Harrison, in July 1978 about his niece, the suffragist Catherine Marshall.

Marshall died on 29 November 1981 in Cambridge.

Academic research Citizenship and Social Class T.H. Marshall wrote an essay on citizenship – which became his most famous work – titled "Citizenship and Social Class." This was published in 1950 and was based on a lecture given the previous year. British citizenship was originally bestowed upon those of a higher status group with their own civil, political, and social privileges. Yet Marshall argued that, with the expansion of capitalism, a "new kind of citizenship slowly pulled apart the package of privileges hitherto enjoyed exclusively by the well-born." This concept of individual civil rights "also undid statutes and customs that constricted the 'right to work.'" Working people could now legally pursue employment, which corresponds with the need of capitalism for labor markets. Universal Suffrage There is a complex interplay between these conceptions of citizenship. According to Marshall, "once citizens are recognized as full members of society, they also receive undeniable social rights, such as protection against poverty."

This expansion of social rights "replaced earlier ideas of providing material assistance only as a matter of charity or, as under earlier social welfare legislation, of making state assistance conditional on recipients forfeiting their civil or political rights." Class inequality within capitalist societies created tension with Marshall's emerging ideas of citizenship. He argues that the creation of social rights are necessary in reducing this tension between civil, political, economic inequality. Marshall saw this process as a struggle unfolding over many centuries and looked to the future in hopes of a more egalitarian society. drew "enormously from Marshall."

Anthony Giddens's discussion of citizenship in The Nation-State and Violence (1985) builds on Marshall's distinctions and analysis.

Marshall, along with Stein Rokkan, is credited with the establishment of "what has become the standard narrative of the evolution of modern democratic citizenship."

Marshall's emphasis on social rights influenced both theoretical literature and policies pursued in the twentieth century.

Criticisms Marshall's analysis of citizenship has been criticised on the basis that it only applies to males in England (note: England rather than Britain). His theories specifically applied within English contexts of social reform and therefore were not subject to comparative analysis. Marxist critics point out that Marshall's analysis is superficial as it does not discuss the right of the citizen to control economic production, which they argue is necessary for sustained shared prosperity. From a feminist perspective, the work of Marshall is highly constricted in being focused on men and ignoring the social rights of women and impediments to their realisation.

There is a debate among scholars about whether Marshall intended his historical analysis to be interpreted as a general theory of citizenship or whether the essay was just a commentary on developments within England. The essay has been used by editors to promote more equality in society, including the "Black" vote in the US, and against Mrs. Thatcher in a 1992 edition prefaced by Tom Bottomore. It is an Anglo-Saxon interpretation of the evolution of rights in a "peaceful reform" mode, unlike the revolutionary interpretations of Charles Tilly, the other great theoretician of citizenship in the twentieth century, who bases his readings in the developments of the French Revolution.

Although Marshall was specifically concerned about the class inequalities within capitalist societies and their impact on citizenship, William Wilson and Janet Finch note his neglect of issues pertaining to race and gender relations.

Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning argue that Marshall's claim that citizenship rights are extended in a certain order – civil, political, and then social citizenship rights – "is no longer the prevalent one in the developing and transformation countries of the contemporary era."

Other scholars find Marshall's "story of inexorable upward progress" as assuming that all victories for social rights were an "irreversible achievement" rather than the result of "bitter struggles involved in winning basic rights for all." However, since capitalism rests on the exploitation and inequality of laborers, the development of social rights challenged this economic system. The state responded to these "opposing interests by granting some rights to the working class" while still preventing them from obtaining greater influence to overthrow the system.

Whereas Marxists point to the internal contradictions of capital accumulation and class inequality (intra-systemic), Marshall sees phenomena that are anti-systemic as partly "alien" to the social system. Anti-system refers to one of the three branches of social phenomena that Marshall defines in Sociology at a Crossroads and Other Essays. It posits that conflict is incompatible with the operation of a social system yet is simultaneously an inevitable part of that system. The other two branches are known as "non-system" and "pro-system."