Emancipatory social work: An anticapitalist perspective

The global definition of social work, as articulated by the International Federation of Social Workers, states that social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that, amongst other things, promotes the empowerment and liberation of people. The knowledge base for social work has a rich history of different theoretical perspectives, frameworks and practice models that have attempted to highlight key aspects of human oppression, discrimination and marginalisation and tease out the implications for social work practice in these domains. These approaches have included anti-discriminatory practice, anti-oppressive practice, anti-racist practice, and feminist and empowerment perspectives. In the same tradition, this paper draws on the work of US analytical Marxist sociologist, Eric Olin Wright to consider how his concept of emancipatory social science could be harnessed by social work practitioners, researchers and policymakers to advance human emancipation and what this might mean in different practice domains. The article will focus primarily on a close reading of two of Olin Wright’s publications–Envisioning Real Utopias and How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century. The article argues for the value of emancipation over empowerment as a concept to convey an authentic commitment to human liberation. It also considers the implications of emancipatory social work for relationships with service users in the context of anti-capitalist struggle and discusses the ramifications for decolonising social work practice in a settler colonial state.