An Aristocracy of a Sort THAT admirably instructive (and entertaining)
book, The English Middle Classes, with which Mr. Lewis and Mr. Maude made their joint bow to the public three years ago, contained a single pregnant chapter on the professions : their essential nature, their status, their rewards, their relations to their clients and to the State, their immediate and remoter problems. Rereading that chapter, one realises both the firmness of the authors' resolve not to let their subject run away with them and the strength of their temptation. In their new book, Professional People, they have provided the full-length study for which that chapter was, in a sense, a preliminary sketch, and much more beside ; and have displayed the same shrewdness, objectivity, humour and sense of historical perspective as distinguished their earlier volume.
In what does the professional man differ from other skilled workers? The authors conclude, from a historical and contemporary survey, that no single test will serve. But" it is perhaps in morality that we find the L.C.M. of professional life "—not merely the morality of the worker putting his heart into his job but the fiduciary sense of duty towards client or employer, a sense sometimes embodied in a strict and detailed professional code, sometimes expressing itself more generally and intangibly. Other accepted characteristics—a fixed standard of qualifications resting on a common expertise acquired through a recognised training-course and subject to a recognised test ; public acknowledgement of status ; the existence of a formally organised professional group concerned not merely with collective bargaining but with standards and duties—are neither entirely exclusive to the professions nor common to them all. It is with the impact of current developments on this " L.C.M. " the professional ethic, that Professional People is chiefly, though not exclusively, concerned.
This impact is complex. The ever-growing need of the modern community—and particularly of the Welfare State—for professional ability has brought the professional something more than full employment ; coupled with an equalitarianism, and a creeping inflation, which have reduced his income both absolutely and relatively, it has meant a pressure of overwork good neither for the individual nor for his professional standards. Where no amount of overwork can fill the gap between supply and the State-subsidised demand, a new threat arises : the threat of an imposed dilution and lowering of quality. One may feel that the authors are rather too ready to stigmatise indeterminately the most unmistakable dilution, such as has taken place in teaching, and the most rational and mutually beneficial hiving-off of comparatively unskilled pro- fessional work, as in the proposed provision of" nursing aides."
The threat of dilution, however, is a real one, not only to pro- fessional skill in the merely technical sense but to professional ethics. So is the development of a predominantly salaried professional class, and of the" socialised profession "whose client is the State, armed not only with monopoly but also with coercive power. Standing on the same footing as any other skilled employee, distinguished from the trained artisan or official functionary only by the right to put certain initials after his name, the professional has no more to sustain his particular integrity and responsibility than the dwindling impetus of a tradition built up in independent practice. When that impetus is finally gone he will become—to the general loss— no more than an irresponsible technician or expert.
These pressures, rather than any merely economic decline, cipnsti- tute the chief danger ; though the economic decline, hitting the independent practitioner hardest, reinforces their effect. The eco- nomics of professional life are illuminatingly studied in a chapter on rewards and costs which could easily stand on its own feet as a careers-guide for aspiring professionals. Its depressing moral is that the aspiring professional would do much better, materially speaking, to go straight into the Civil Service. But the authors return in the end from the material calculus to the intangibilities of standing, ethics and purpose ; to the mutual responsibilities of the professions ; to the paradox of their importance and weakness. Professional people, they conclude, need" to face the fact that they are an aristocracy, of a sort, and to understand and uphold the personal attainments, as well as the exercise of power, which are
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