Richard Tawney

Richard Henry Tawney (born November 30, 1880 – January 16, 1962) was an English writer, economist, historian, social critic, and a leading advocate of Christian Socialism.

Life

Richard H. Tawney was born in Calcutta, India, the son of a respected Sanskrit scholar. He was educated at Rugby High School and later attended Balliol College, Oxford where he studied modern history. At high school he became a good friend of William Temple, later to be Archbishop of Canterbury. While at Balliol, Tawney joined the Christian Social Union, starting his lifelong involvement with social issues of the 19th century English society.

After his graduation in 1903, Tawney left Oxford, and together with his colleague from Oxford William Beveridge, moved to Toynbee Hall. He there came in contact with Workers' Educational Association, an organization that was involved in research on different social issues, among others adult education. He joined the staff of the WEA in 1905, serving later as its president (1928-1944), and remaining with the organization until 1947.

In 1906 Tawney joined the Fabian society and accepted position at the University of Glasgow to become an assistant in economics. Three years later he married Jeanette Beveridge, sister of his friend William Beveridge. The couple moved to Manchester in 1909, where Tawney started to work on his first book - The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912). He lectured at the University of Glasgow until 1912, when he moved back to London and took up an appointment as Director of the Ratan Tata Foundation. The Foundation was based at the London School of Economics and did research on fighting poverty in India.

During the World War I Tawney served in the British army, as a sergeant in the Manchester Regiment. In 1916 he was badly wounded in the battle of the Somme. He wrote about the whole experience in his essay The Attack (published in 1916). Following the recovery, he worked at the British Ministry of Reconstruction, and was elected a fellow at the Balliol in 1918.

In 1920 Tawney became a lecturer at the London School of Economics, where he remained for the rest of his career. He was appointed the Professor of Economic History in 1931. In 1926 he helped found The Economic History Society with Sir William Ashley, and worked for 7 years as joint editor of its publication Review. Among his important works from that period are The Acquisitive Society (1921), Secondary Education for All (1922), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) and Equality (1931).

Tawney was politically and socially active. He served on numerous committees and public bodies, including Sankey Coal Commission, the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, and the Education Committee of the London County Council. He was also involved within the Church of England, writing on the social teachings of the church. He twice ran for a seat in the House of Commons for the Labour Party without success.

Tawney retired from teaching in 1949, but continued to write. He died on January 16, 1962 in the nursing home in Fitzroy Square, London, England.

Work

A famous socialist, Tawney helped to formulate the economic and ethical views of the British Labour party through his many essays and books, and he participated in numerous government bodies concerned with education, trade, and industry. He views on capitalism, democratic values, socialism, and education, are of particular interest and will be mentioned here:

Equality

Tawney published his two influential books, The Acquisitive Society (1926) and Equality (1931), which contained harsh moral condemnations of the capitalist economic and social system. Tawney believed that acquisitiveness, that capitalism is rooted in, is morally wrong, and as such has a harmful effect on society. It creates, among others, inequality, which contradicts Christian ethics.

Tawney proposed in Equality a theory, often regarded as utopian, on how to establish a just society, where economic inequalities would be eliminated. He believed that solution for inequality lays in spreading of wealth evenly among social classes. On that way it would be eliminated that only minority elite hold wealth and power, while majority struggles to survive. Tawney suggested for government to bring laws that would impose income limit on all individuals. He also proposed extended government role in providing social services to people.

Capitalism and Protestant Ethics

In his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) Tawney surveyed the relationship between religion and the political and economic developments in the sixteenth and seventeenth century that precipitated the rise of capitalism. Tawney was heavily influences by Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), who saw direct causation between Calvinistic Protestantism and modern capitalism. Although Tawney generally agreed with Weber, he was rather cautious to draw the direct causation between the two. He believed that capitalism emerged long before Protestant Reformation, and that the two developed parallel, albeit interdependent. Since both Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches had tight relationship with higher classes – aristocracy and landlords, protestant theology, as well as capitalist ethics took strong roots in the middle class society. It was in the middle class that both ideologies perfectly took roots in, as they developed propelling each other.

Socialism

Tawney believed that just society could be established in modern world, and he proposed socialism as the base for such society. Combining Christianity with socialism, he claimed that through socialism God's rule on earth could be extended. He was rather skeptical that capitalistic society was capable of creating truly democratic society. He wrote:

“Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favor some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority" (in Keeping Left manifesto, 1950)

Tawney was essentially worried about the loss of social and spiritual purpose in society, saying that capitalist society legalizes inequality and domination of one individual over the other. He proposed society that would be based on more human values. Equality, for example, is one such value, which is rested on three pillars:

1) Brotherhood of all people, with God as a common parent.

2) Society based on optimal use of people’s talents, where education plays important role in establishing those talents.

3) Rewards based on social service and benefit to the community.

Tawney believed that in just society industry and social institutions would be organized around the promotion of human happiness and social good, rather than production and accumulation of goods. Tawney called such society socialism.

Education

Tawney thought that education should be open to all, and that government needs to assist that it becomes reality. He believed that education is a spiritual activity, and as such is of utmost importance for society. He wrote:

”The fundamental obstacle in the way of education in England is simple. It is that education is a spiritual activity, much of which is not commercially profitable, and that the prevailing temper of Englishmen is to regard as most important that which is commercially profitable, and as of only inferior importance that which is not. The task of those who believe in education is correspondingly simple. It is to induce a larger number of their countrymen to believe, and, if they believe it themselves, to believe more intently, that spiritual activity is of primary importance and worth any sacrifice of material goods, and that, in fostering such activity, education, if not the most powerful, is at least the most readily available agency” (A National College of all Souls, 1917).

Tawney advocated for the reform of educational system in Britain. He was an educator himself, and implemented some of his ideas in practice. The most notable was the one of adult education. He worked for years as a tutor, giving lectures to manual workers and all those who were interested in different political and social subjects. The purpose of the classes was not certificate or a degree, but a pure interest in a particular topic. Tawney’s work on adult education became foundation for similar work organized by Workers' Educational Association and other similar organizations in Britain.

Legacy

Tawney’s ideas and work had profound influence on the philosophy of British left. He is sometimes regarded as the patron saint of twentieth-century British socialism. Although for a period of almost thirty years following his retirement his ideas ceased to be influential in Britain, with the formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1981 he again became the center of discussion.

His advocacy for the idea that secondary education needs to be universal came to life in 1944 with the England’s Education Act.

Tawney society at Rugby School is named after him.

Publications

• Tawney, Richard H. 1917. A National College of all Souls. Times Educational Supplement, February 22.

• Tawney, Richard H. 1940. Why the British People Fight. Workers Education Bureau Press

• Tawney, Richard H. 1953. The W.E.A. and adult education. University of London, Athlone Press

• Tawney, Richard H. 1964 (original published in 1931). Equality. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0043230148

• Tawney, Richard H. 1967 (original published in 1912). The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century. Harper & Row. ISBN 0061313157

• Tawney, Richard H. 1971 (original published in 1953). The Attack and other papers. Books for Libraries Press. ISBN 0836923766

• Tawney, Richard H. 1977. Agrarian China Selected Source Materials from Chinese Authors. University Publications of America. ISBN 0890930848

• Tawney, Richard H. 1978. History and society: Essays. Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710089538

• Tawney, Richard H. 1978. Land and Labor in China. M.E.Sharpe. ISBN 0873321065

• Tawney, Richard H. 1978. Social history and literature. Norwood Editions. ISBN 0848227034

• Tawney, Richard H. 1979. The American Labour Movement. St Martins Press. ISBN 0312025033

• Tawney, Richard H. 1998 (original published in 1926). Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765804557

• Tawney, Richard H. 2003 (original published in 1922). Secondary Education for All. Hambledon & London. ISBN 0907628990

• Tawney, Richard H. 2004 (original published in 1920). The Acquisitive Society. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486436292

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Ashton, T. S. 1962. Richard Henry Tawney, 1880-1962. Proceedings

• Elsey, B. 1987. R. H. Tawney – Patron saint of adult education. In Peter Jarvis (ed.) Twentieth Century Thinkers in Adult Education. Routledge Kegan & Paul. ISBN 0709914822

• Terrill, Ross. 1974. R. H. Tawney and his times: Socialism as fellowship. Deutsch. ISBN 0233965610

• Weber, Max. 2001. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (with forward by R.H. Tawney). Routledge. ISBN 0415255597

• Wright, Anthony. 1988. R.H. Tawney. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0719019990

External links

• Richard H. Tawney: fellowship and adult education – Biography on Infed.org

• Economics of R. Tawney - London School of Economics webpage on Tawney

• Richard H. Tawney – Biography on BookRags.com

• The Fabian Socialists – On the intellectual group - the "Fabian Society" - that Tawney belonged to

• Christian Socialism – Information on what is “Christian Socialism”

• Keep the Workers' Children in Their Place – Essay by R.H. Tawney first published in Daily News in 1918

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