[5] Despite being unsuccessful, Marshall found the experience beneficial because it brought him into close contact with working-class people and exposed him to the injustices and prejudices within the British class system.
[16] His papers are held in the Archives of the London School of Economics, along with an oral history interview he gave to the historian, Brian Harrison, in July 1978 about his niece, the suffragist Catherine Marshall.
Yet Marshall argued that, with the expansion of capitalism, a "new kind of citizenship slowly pulled apart the package of privileges hitherto enjoyed exclusively by the well-born.
[31] Marxist critics point out that Marshall's analysis is superficial as it does not discuss the right of the citizen to control economic production, which they argue is necessary for sustained shared prosperity.
From a feminist perspective, the work of Marshall is highly constricted in being focused on men and ignoring the social rights of women and impediments to their realisation.
[32] There is a debate among scholars about whether Marshall intended his historical analysis to be interpreted as a general theory of citizenship or whether the essay was just a commentary on developments within England.
[33] The essay has been used by editors to promote more equality in society, including the "Black" vote in the US, and against Mrs. Thatcher in a 1992 edition prefaced by Tom Bottomore.
Although Marshall was specifically concerned about the class inequalities within capitalist societies and their impact on citizenship, William Wilson and Janet Finch note his neglect of issues pertaining to race and gender relations.
"[10] Marshall's ideas of social citizenship influenced institutions of health and education in addition to setting new rules for minimum wage, hours of labor, working conditions, as well as safety in the workplace and compensation in the event of an accident.
The state responded to these "opposing interests by granting some rights to the working class" while still preventing them from obtaining greater influence to overthrow the system.
This path "'leads into a country where sociology can choose units of study of manageable size – not society, progress, morals and civilization – but specific social structures in which the basic processes and functions have determined meanings.'"
[38] Marshall's analysis developed a deeper understanding of social phenomena and identified the "time and space limitations of concepts," namely what he refers to as the first and second paths in the crossroads of sociology.
[38] There is some disagreement regarding Marshall's very broad definition of "social systems," as some find that it covers too many different entities and therefore blurs "the distinction between society and state, and between the whole and the part.
"[38] Modern political science pioneer Seymour Martin Lipset argues that Marshall proposed a model of social science based on the middle-range theory of social structures and institutions, as opposed to grand theories of the purposes of development and modernisation, which were criticised by modern sociologists such as Robert K. Merton for being too speculative to provide valid results.
[39] By using such a middle-range approach, Marshall and his mentor L. T. Hobhouse believed that rigid class distinctions could be dissolved and middle-class citizenship generalised through a careful understanding of social mechanisms.
The activities are repetitive and predictable to the degree necessary, first, to permit of purposeful, peaceful and orderly behaviour of the members of the society, and secondly to enable the pattern of action to continue in being, that is to say to preserve its identity even while gradually changing its shape.
"[43] Whereas Marxists point to the internal contradictions of capital accumulation and class inequality (intra-systemic), Marshall sees phenomena that are anti-systemic as partly "alien" to the social system.