R. M. ティトマスにおける戦争と福祉

Abstract

Titmuss’s “War and Social Policy” (1955) is known as a masterpiece Warfare-Welfare thesis, a thesis that emphasises the close linkage between warfare and welfare. His thesis presents a historical view that the Second World War (WWII) promoted the development of universal social services, and that post-war social policies succeeded the legacy as unfinished business. However, revisionist historians qualified this view, some of them calling it a myth. This paper examines why Titmuss presented such a so-called myth in the contemporary political context of the National Health Service. The examination reveals that, on the one hand, Titmuss’s Warfare-Welfare thesis systematises the view that welfare, or social policy, had functioned as an essential elements of modern warfare. On the other hand, in the early 1950s’ controversial context, Titmuss’s argument signified a trade-off model of the Warfare-Welfare thesis. He regarded WWII as war to win a peace in which welfare would be given a higher priority. He also stressed the continuity between the Great War and post-war social policy, including the National Health Service. This view, in practice, functioned as the basis for antagonism against the rearmament of the early 1950s.