R. H. Tawney and His Times: Socialism as Fellowship - Hardcover

Terrill, Ross

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674743768 ISBN 13: 9780674743762

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1973

Synopsis

Economic historian, democratic socialist, educator, and British labor party activist, R. H. Tawney touched many worlds. His life, too, spanned great distance and change. When he was born in Calcutta in 1880, Gladstone, Tennyson, and Queen Victoria were flourishing and the British Empire was approaching its height. By the time of his death in 1962, the Empire had shrunk to a few tourist islands, and socialism, once so shocking, was now commonplace.

Ross Terrill, in this absorbing first study of Tawney’s thought, view his subject within three related contexts. The first is Tawney, the man. Terrill makes skillful use of unpublished material―the early diary, speech and lecture notes, letters, interviews with friends and associates―to tell the story of Tawney’s life in relation to his times. Second is social democracy. Tawney was one of its most influential philosophers and prophets, and this book argues for the continuing validity of his socialism as a path between capitalism and communism. Third is British politics. From Edwardian liberal “consensus” to mid-century collectivist “consensus,” Tawney’s long career, often at odds with prefailing orthodoxies, offers a window on British political culture.

Four key ideas are found in Tawney’s political thought: equality and the dispersion of power―the “shape of socialism”; function and citizenship―the “life of socialism.” These ideas, and indeed the life of the man himself, Terrill believes, are summed up in socialism as fellowship. “As long as men are men,” Tawney said, “a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.”

This book is a blend of biography, history, and the study of political ideas. It provides a striking portrait of a remarkable man and a panorama of changing ideas and situations in the society where he tried to realize his socialist vision. It offers many glimpses of Tawney’s associates, among them Beveridge, the Webbs, Laski, A. P. Wadsworth, Temple, Margaret Cole, and Leonard Woolf; and suprising snippets, like the fact that Tawney used the phrase “private affluence and public squalor” in 1919.

About this title

Review:

Should be the standard work for our generation. (Review of Politics)

Mr. Terrill has written a magnificent book about a man who was larger than life in his influence on people and thought ... I shall not be surprised if it becomes a minor classic. (Irish Times)

This biographical and analytical study of R.H. Tawney has three important merits. It is brief but dense (in the best sense). It is shrewd and reticent in its comments. And it is timely... it is good to be reminded that in Tawney's work we have a rich and permanent body of well-argued propositions, awaiting discovery by the younger generation, and rediscovery by their elders. (New York Times Book Review)

Invaluable both for scholars and for undergraduates who may have a special interest in British socialism, or a general interest in 20th-century intellectual and social history. (Choice)

Terrill has written a fascinating study of Tawney. Opening with an elegant biographical sketch, he moves on to an evaluation of his thought and its importance in the socialist tradition. This section is a well-done and critical reminder that Tawney's humanistic socialism still has validity as a framework for social and political action. (Library Journal)

A valuable study of Tawney's thought, enriched by a picture of the man, much of it based on interviews with those who knew him well. (American Historical Review)

A fine biography of Tawney the man and public figure ... Provides a good window on British political culture, especially that particular variant, humanistic socialism. (Foreign Affairs)

Review:

I have read it, enthralled, at a single sitting. (Professor Maurice Cranston)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0674743768
• ISBN 13: 9780674743762
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384