The State, the Market, and General Practice: The Australian Case

This article examines the development of general practice in the latter half of the 20th century, documenting the issues of concern to both the profession and the state. General practice developed hand in hand with the welfare state in Australia. As the structural changes associated with restructuring of the welfare state have advanced, so have the fortunes of general practice declined, despite significant attempts in the 1970s and 1980s to “save” general practice by both the profession and the state. These structural changes have operated on two fronts, the economic and the cultural. On the economic, changes to the employment of general practitioners clearly indicate ongoing proletarianization, particularly in a changing environment of labor-capital relations. At the cultural level, development of the self-help and the women's movements and the elective affinity of these groups with the individualism of the new right are leading to deprofessionalization. The author advances this argument in a review of general practice over the last 40 years and in a case study of community health services. Theoretically he argues for a combination of the proletarianization and the deprofessionalization theses.