Plato Re-Moulded

In Plato’s republic Plato spoke about government and what is good government. He stated that philosopher kings would make good leaders. He felt that the philosopher kings could set “good moral code” for the rest of the citizens. He believed that philosopher kings could be put into place to try to make people more “virtuous.” In today’s world we can view politicians as philosopher kings with a particular agenda. Instead of making people “virtuous” they are in place to mould people to be a certain way and are influenced by corporations and other influential individuals who hold wealth. We as citizens give governments the power to influence us and mould us, if we did not give them this power they would not be elected. As social worker’s we have to be aware of power and how it is exercised along with knowledge and where it comes from. In practicing critical social work we have to question dominant discourse and ask ourselves how it has come to be?


As critical social workers we can either choose to be an agent of social change or an agent of oppression. Moffat in his article on surveillance and government speaks about social workers that work as agents of social control by oppressing the poor, they are put in place to “punish and discipline the irresponsible poor (Moffat, 1999).” If we work for agencies that oppress the people we serve then how can we change those agencies to emancipate marginalized groups from this control? Critical social work looks at the “self” and understanding the “other” and how the two are related. In any depiction of the "other" the "self" has always been evident. It is also important to know the historical circumstances of the marginalized people we serve, and look at intersecting oppressions whether the oppressions stem from race, class, age, sex, etc. Foucault speaks about capitalistic societies as being “enclosing societies”; he goes on to describe societies as “getting rid of not the dead but the living (Foucault, 1999).” Through social control getting rid of the living is possible because people are molded into what the state wants them to be. In critical social work practice we have an opportunity to educate ourselves on social control and also to reflect on what social constructions are part of our lives. We are also able to see how we act as “agents of social control”. If we fail to see ourselves as agents of social control and fail to be aware of who we are as people we will never truly help our clients. In critical social work we have to move from being agents of social control to agents of social change. It is a journey and it is vital we embark on this journey, otherwise why are we being educated at a University that preaches critical social work? We need to ask ourselves why are we here? Why did we choose to study critical social work if we were not going to put it into practice?