A fascinating discussion on the social veiw of responsibility VS individual responsibility.
Excerpt..
"The notion of 'responsibility' lies at the heart of what one might well call our suppression of the social. Whatever it is we seek to understand - ranging from the reasons for personal distress to the 'evil' of spectacular crime or the failure of public servants to avert some social disaster - it is always to an unanalysed and unanalysable individual, internal world (where 'blame' is harboured) that we turn our gaze. This evasion of the obvious - that it is the way our society is organized and structured that constitutes the main source of our difficulties - is understandable only in terms of the extent of the powers which are deployed to maintain it. This can be seen very clearly in current political discourse.
As essential cogs in the vast economic machine designed to extract profit for the minority at the top of the social pyramid, politicians have an important role in representing disadvantage as personal moral failure. How wittingly they perform this role is open to question but, as a matter of 'commentary', is a question of little interest. The distal pressures on the advocates of the 'third way' to reinforce an interiorized view of responsibility are enormous."
More...
http://www.davidsmail.freeuk.com/pubfra.htm