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Sidney Webb is often represented as a descendent of the utilitarians. Social democracy and the welfare state thus stand as the continuing development of Enlightenment rationalism. Alternatively, Webb appears as the representative of a new managerial and administrative class. Social democracy and the welfare state here stand as the elitist and bureaucratic expressions of the power of this class. In contrast to these conventional views, this paper locates Webb in the context of a radicalism, peculiar to the 1870s, composed of ethical positivism and evolutionary sociology. He became a socialist because of his positivist ethic. He defined his socialism in relation to an evolutionary philosophy. And he later adopted collectivism as a result of turning to positivist sociology. Webb's collectivism, however, provided little assistance in dealing with the dilemmas of the inter-war years. His ethical positivism and evolutionary sociology led him to turn to solutions apparently offered by the Soviet Union. This reinterpretation of Webb suggests a new view of social democracy and the welfare state. We should see them as the changing products of particular ideational and political contexts such as those of the 1870s and 1930s

Responds to critics (all, 2002) of his The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999). Discussed are philosophy's relationship to history & sociology; meaning & intentionality; the self & language; & knowledge & truth. A. Lee

A common view of ideologies reifies them to postulate an unchanging core of moral principles or debates that frame changing attitudes to particular policies. Thus, scholars have sought to map New Labour onto ideological traditions by comparing it with the core features of the traditions. In contrast, this article argues that ideologies are in a constant process of change, with every one of their elements being open to such change, and with change in one element having spillover effects on others. New Labour should not be compared with reified ideologies but rather traced historically as a refashioning of socialism to meet problems such as inflation, the underclass and the changing nature of the working class, where the consequent changes in policy have entailed further changes in ethical principles.