The ‘rediscovery’ of poverty in the 1960s in the United States and the rising welfare expectations all over the world have sharpened a continuing debate about the relative merits of a variety of proposals for dealing with want. A discussion of the Soviet approach may provide a useful perspective for us and for other countries. Income maintenance programmes in the Soviet Union, as they had developed up to 1968, have been studied by this author. In this paper, an attempt is made to bring developments up to date, focusing on what they suggest in regard to policy for the 1970s.

The history of the development of social work as a professional discipline from its early beginnings in the 1900s to the present time has exhibited two contradictory trends. Sometimes social work has seemed to be the conscience of society. During other periods it seems to have been an apologist for the status quo, devoting its efforts to adjusting clients to the existing social institutions. These trends can be identified by the activity of social work during changing historical periods in the United States as well as by the professional leaders associated with these eras.

The so-called ‘hunger marches’ are a familiar feature of the depression and unemployment of the inter-war years. Their inspirer was the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (N.U.W.M.) which between 1922 and 1936 organized six national demonstrations consisting of contingents from various parts of the country, converging on London. They were protesting against unemployment and low rates of assistance, ‘work or full maintenance at trade union rates’ being the recurrent demand. There were also many local demonstrations and the organization won considerable support, particularly from younger unemployed workers frustrated by the inertia of the official labour and trade union leadership.