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The Aquisitive Society
Small Hardcover.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1920
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About the author
R.H. Tawney
106 books40 followersRichard Henry "R. H." Tawney (/ˈtɔːni/; 30 November 1880 – 16 January 1962) was an English economic historian, social critic, ethical socialist, Christian socialist, and an important proponent of adult education.
The Oxford Companion to British History (1997) explained that Tawney made a "significant impact" in all four of these "interrelated roles". A. L. Rowse goes further by insisting that "Tawney exercised the widest influence of any historian of his time, politically, socially and, above all, educationally".
The Oxford Companion to British History (1997) explained that Tawney made a "significant impact" in all four of these "interrelated roles". A. L. Rowse goes further by insisting that "Tawney exercised the widest influence of any historian of his time, politically, socially and, above all, educationally".
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January 8, 2014
The central argument of The Acquisitive Society (1921) is that Britain is infested with a false philosophy that prizes material accumulation over civilised values. This is not merely a modern occurrence, but one that can be traced back to the 17th century, with the gradual displacement of a body of ethics from the economic realm that affirmed our essential humanity by limiting exploitation and preserving communal ties.
Prior to the ascent of capitalism, economical activity was merely one compartment of existence, with its operation regulated, albeit imperfectly, by an overriding moral consensus; the retreat of the Church and the Christian Casuistry, allowed the market to be magnified to generate a monomaniacal society in which all aspects of life are subjugated by economic concerns. This materialism results in an atomised society in which social duties are subsumed by individual rights; where human beings are reduced from the ends of ethical consideration to mere tools of accumulation; where private property is sanctified to ensure that it is preserved to benefit a narrow section of the population, and society is scarred by class resentment and division.
Tawney's solution is for the creation of a Functional Society, which is socialistic in all but name. This new society will be animated by the principle of social purpose, with all actions directed to the fulfilment of obligations to the community, rather than self aggrandisement. Although Tawney is primarily concerned to identify the broad philosophical contours of this society, he does offer practical prescriptions. First, the commanding heights of the economy should be brought into public ownership, with transport, arms production and energy deemed too important to be left to the market. Tawney, as distinct from other notable socialists, cautions against elevating nationalisation to an end in itself; rather it is a means to deliver beneficial social outcomes to be judged according to this criterion. Second, private ownership of productive property is acceptable providing that its meets social objectives and its owners are motivated by the principle of social service. Third, that within public and private organisations, powers are devolved to the workers, primarily through trade unions, to play an active role in running organisations, with parliamentary oversight ensuring that producer power does not encroach on the interests of the consumer.
The Acquisitive Society is remarkably prescient in its principles, whilst being anachronistic in its prescriptions. In the current climate of economic turbulence, free market fundamentalism is under a sustained assault for the very reasons outlined in Tawney's work. There is an emerging consensus that the market has over reached itself, not merely because of its failure to generate sustainable growth, but because it has encouraged forms of human behaviour, like greed and selfishness, that are morally and socially unacceptable. Within this discourse of social and economic decay, Tawney's appeal for a more humane society focussed on collective social concerns does resonant. In terms of his prescriptions, the period since the publication of The Acquisitive Society provides little evidence that public ownership or workers co-operatives have been particularly successful in delivering social objectives, let alone sustaining themselves as efficient economic organisations. Tawney's faith in these socialistic ideas reflects the tenor of the times in which he wrote, when capitalism was perceived to be imperilled and doctrines like guild socialism were flourishing. Although governments are once more employing nationalisation, it is being adopted as an emergency measure, rather than as a long term tool of socialist renewal.
At times of capitalist crisis, it is Marx, with his doctrine of the inevitability of collapse, that marauds round the pages of our newspapers as the Prophet, only to return to the dustbin of history as capitalism re-emerges renewed and reformed. When we emerge from the tumult, rather than substituting one fundamentalism for another, it is to figures like Tawney that we should look to for inspiration in reconstituting our society. In The Acquisitive Society, and the superior Equality, Tawney, does not provide a systematic theory that is devoid of errors and misconceptions, but he does outline a broad philosophical disposition that is striking in its humanity, and salutary in its promotion of social purpose.
Prior to the ascent of capitalism, economical activity was merely one compartment of existence, with its operation regulated, albeit imperfectly, by an overriding moral consensus; the retreat of the Church and the Christian Casuistry, allowed the market to be magnified to generate a monomaniacal society in which all aspects of life are subjugated by economic concerns. This materialism results in an atomised society in which social duties are subsumed by individual rights; where human beings are reduced from the ends of ethical consideration to mere tools of accumulation; where private property is sanctified to ensure that it is preserved to benefit a narrow section of the population, and society is scarred by class resentment and division.
Tawney's solution is for the creation of a Functional Society, which is socialistic in all but name. This new society will be animated by the principle of social purpose, with all actions directed to the fulfilment of obligations to the community, rather than self aggrandisement. Although Tawney is primarily concerned to identify the broad philosophical contours of this society, he does offer practical prescriptions. First, the commanding heights of the economy should be brought into public ownership, with transport, arms production and energy deemed too important to be left to the market. Tawney, as distinct from other notable socialists, cautions against elevating nationalisation to an end in itself; rather it is a means to deliver beneficial social outcomes to be judged according to this criterion. Second, private ownership of productive property is acceptable providing that its meets social objectives and its owners are motivated by the principle of social service. Third, that within public and private organisations, powers are devolved to the workers, primarily through trade unions, to play an active role in running organisations, with parliamentary oversight ensuring that producer power does not encroach on the interests of the consumer.
The Acquisitive Society is remarkably prescient in its principles, whilst being anachronistic in its prescriptions. In the current climate of economic turbulence, free market fundamentalism is under a sustained assault for the very reasons outlined in Tawney's work. There is an emerging consensus that the market has over reached itself, not merely because of its failure to generate sustainable growth, but because it has encouraged forms of human behaviour, like greed and selfishness, that are morally and socially unacceptable. Within this discourse of social and economic decay, Tawney's appeal for a more humane society focussed on collective social concerns does resonant. In terms of his prescriptions, the period since the publication of The Acquisitive Society provides little evidence that public ownership or workers co-operatives have been particularly successful in delivering social objectives, let alone sustaining themselves as efficient economic organisations. Tawney's faith in these socialistic ideas reflects the tenor of the times in which he wrote, when capitalism was perceived to be imperilled and doctrines like guild socialism were flourishing. Although governments are once more employing nationalisation, it is being adopted as an emergency measure, rather than as a long term tool of socialist renewal.
At times of capitalist crisis, it is Marx, with his doctrine of the inevitability of collapse, that marauds round the pages of our newspapers as the Prophet, only to return to the dustbin of history as capitalism re-emerges renewed and reformed. When we emerge from the tumult, rather than substituting one fundamentalism for another, it is to figures like Tawney that we should look to for inspiration in reconstituting our society. In The Acquisitive Society, and the superior Equality, Tawney, does not provide a systematic theory that is devoid of errors and misconceptions, but he does outline a broad philosophical disposition that is striking in its humanity, and salutary in its promotion of social purpose.
December 31, 2020
The Acquisitive Society by Richard Henry Tawney
Overall not grabbed by this – weird that this is more widely read than Equality.
Less vibrant precise energised writing.
-----
When they are touched by social compunction, they can think of nothing more original than the diminution of poverty, because poverty, being the opposite of riches which they value most, seems to them the most terrible of human afflictions. They do not understand that poverty is a symptom and a consequence of social disorder, while the disorder itself is something at more fundamental and more incorrigible, and that the quality in their social life which causes it to demoralize a few by excessive riches, is also the quality which causes it to demoralize many by excessive poverty.
Chapter 2 Rights and Functions
But in England, at least, it was gradual, and the ‘industrial revolution’ through catastrophic in its effect, was only the visible climax of generations of subtle moral change. The rise of modem economic relations, which may be dated in England from the latter half of the seventeenth century, was coincident with the growth of a political theory which replaced the conception of purpose by that of mechanism. During a great part of history men had found the significance of their social order in its relation to the universal purposes of religion. It stood as one rung in a ladder which stretched from hell to paradise, and the classes who composed it were the hands, the feet, the head of a corporate body which was itself a microcosm imperfectly reflecting a larger universe. When the Reformation made the Church a department of the secular government, it undermined the already enfeebled spiritual forces which had erected that sublime, but too much elaborated, synthesis. But its influence remained for nearly a century after the roots which fed it had been severed. It was the atmosphere into which men were born, and from which, however practical, or even Machiavellian, they could not easily disengage their spirits. Nor was it inconvenient for the new statecraft to see the weight of traditional religious sanction added to its own concern in the subordination of all classes and interests to the common end, of which is conceived itself, and during the greater part of the sixteenth century was commonly conceived to be the guardian. The lines of the social structure were no longer supposed to reproduce in miniature the plan of the universal order. But common habits, common traditions and beliefs, common pressure from above gave them a unity of direction, which restrained the forces of individual variation and lateral expansion; and the centre towards they converged, formerly a Church possessing some of the characteristics of the State, was now a State that had clothes itself with many of the attributes of the Church.
Not only the facts, but the minds which appraised them, were profoundly modified. The essence of the change was the disappearance of the idea that social institutions and economic activities were related to common ends, which gave them their significance and which served their criterion. In the eighteenth century both the State and the Church had abdicated that part of the sphere, which had consistent in the maintenance of a common body of social ethics; what was left of it was repression of a class, not the discipline of a nation .Opinion ceased to regard social institutions and economic activity as amenable, like personal conduct, to moral criteria, because it was no longer influenced by the spectacle of institutions which, arbitrary, capricious, and often corrupt in their practical operation, had been the outward symbol and expression of the subordination of life to purposes transcending private interests.
But what was familiar, and human and lovable – what was Christian in Christianity had largely disappeared. God had been thrust into to the frigid altitudes of infinite space.
The natural consequence of the abdication of authorities which had stood, however imperfectly, for a common purpose of social organisation, was the gradual disappearance from social thought of the idea of purpose itself. Its place in the eighteenth century was taken by the idea of mechanism. The conception of men as united to each other, and of all mankind of united to God, by mutual obligations arising from their relation to a common end, which vaguely conceived and imperfectly realised, had been the keystone holding together the social fabric, ceased to be impressed upon men’s mind, when church and State withdrew from the centre of social life to its circumstances. What remained when the keystone of the arch was removed, was private rights and private interests, the materials of society rather than a society itself. These rights and interests were the natural order which had been distorted by the ambitions of kings and priests, and which emerged when the artificial super structure disappeared, because they were the creation not of man, but of Nature herself. They had been regarded in the past as relative not to some public end, whether religion or national welfare. Henceforward they were thought to be absolute and indefeasible, and to stand by their own virtue. They were the ultimate political and social reality; and since they were the ultimate reality, they were not subordinate to other aspects of society, but other aspects of society were subordinate to them.
… the descent from hope to resignation, from the fire and passion of an age of illimitable vistas to the monotonous beat of the factory engine, from Turgot and Condorcet to the melancholy mathematical creed of Bentham and Ricardo and James Mill.
They thought it a monstrous injustice that the citizen should pay one tenth of his income in taxation to an idle Government, but quite reasonable that he should pay one fifth of it in rent to an idle landlord.
Chapter 3 The Acquisitive Society
The enjoyment of property and the direction of industry are considered, in short, to require no social justification, because they are regarded as rights which stand by their own virtue, not functions to be judged by the success with which they contribute to social purpose.
A society which aimed at making the acquisition of wealth contingent upon the discharge of social obligations, which sought to proportion renumeration to the service and denied it to those by whom no service was performed, which inquired first not what men possess but what they can make or create or achieve, might be called a Functional Society, because in such a society the main subject of social emphasis would be the performance of functions. … Modern societies aim at protecting economic rights, while leaving economic functions, except in movements of abnormal emergency, to fulfil themselves. The motive which gives colour and quality to their public institutions, to their policy and political thought, is not the attempt to secure the fulfilment of tasks undertaken in a public service, but to increase the opportunities open to individuals of attaining the objects which they conceive to be advantageous to themselves.
The acquisitive society… makes the individual the centre of his own universe and dissolves moral principles into a choice of expediencies. And it immensely simplifies the problem of social life in complex communities. For it relieves them of the necessity of discriminating between different types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between different types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between enterprise and avarice, energy and unscrupulous greed, property which is legitimate and property which is theft, the just enjoyment of the fruits of labour and the idle parasitism of birth or fortune, because it treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and suggests that it treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and suggests that excess or defeat, waste or superfluity, require no conscious effort of the social will to avert them, but are corrected almost automatically by the mechanical play of economic forces.
Chapter 4 The Nemesis of Industrialism
But if it is single-minded it destroys the moral restraints which ought to condition the pursuit of riches, and therefore also makes the pursuit of riches meaningless.
So wealth becomes the foundation of public esteem, and the mass of men who labour, but who do not aquire wealth, are thought to be vulgar and meaningless and insiginificant compared with the few who acquire wealth by good fortune or by the skillful use of economic opportunities. They come to be regarded, not as the ends for which alone it is worth while to produce wealth at all, but as the instruments of acquisition by a world that declines to be soiled contact with what is thought to be dull and sordid business of labour. They are not happy for the reward of all but the very mean is not merely money, but the esteem of their fellow men, and they know they are not esteemed, as soldiers, for examples, are esteemed, though it is because they give their lives to making civilisation that there is civilisation which is worthwhile for soldiers to defend. They are not esteemed, because the admiration of society is directed towards those who get, not towards those who give; and though workmen give much they get little. And the rentiers whom they support are not happy; for in discarding the idea of function, which sets a limit to the acquisition of riches, they have also discarded the principle that gives their riches meaning. Thence they can persuade themselves that to be rich is in itself meritorious, they may bask in social admiration, but they are unable to esteem themselves. For they have abolished the principle which makes activity significant, and therefore estimable. They are, indeed, more truly pitiable than some of those who envy them. For like the spirits in the Inferno, they are punished by the attainment of their desire.
While the effective demand of the mass of men is small, there is a small class which wears several men’s clothes, eats several men’s dinners, occupies several families’ houses, and lives several men’s lives.
The idea that industrial peace can be secured merely by the exercise of tact and forbearance is based on the idea that there is a fundamental identity of interest between the different groups engaged in it, which is occasionally interrupted by regrettable misunderstandings. Both the one idea and the other are an illusion. The disputes which matter are not caused by a misunderstanding of identity of interests, but by a better understanding of diversity of interests.
The essence of industrialism, in short, is not any particular method of industry, but a particular estimate of the importance of industry, which results in it being thought the only thing that is important at all, so that it is elevated from the subordinate place which it should occupy among human interests and activities into being the standard by which all other interests and activity are judged.
When the press clamours that the one thing that is needed to make this island an Arcadia is productivity, and more productivity, and yet more productivity, that is Industrialism. It is the confusion of means with ends.
They resent any activity which is not coloured by the predominant interest, because it seems a rival to it. So they destroy religion and art and morality, which cannot exist unless they are disinterested; and having destroyed these, which are the end, for the sake of industry, which is a means, they make their industry itself what they make their cities, a desert of unnatural dreariness, which only forgetfulness can make endurable, and which only excitement can enable them to forget.
INDIVIDUALISM AND NATIONALISM.
And, like individualism it [nationalism] if pushed to its logical conclusion, it is self destructive. For as in nationalism, in its brilliant youth, begins a claim that nations, because they are spiritual beings, shall determine themselves, and passes too often into a claim that they dominate others, so individualism begins by asserting the right of men to make their own lives what they can, and ends by condoning the subjection of the majority of men to the few whom good fortune or special opportunity or privilege have enabled most successfully to use their rights.
So the perversion of nationalism is imperialism, as the perversion of individualism is industrialism. And the perversion comes, not through any flaw or vice in human nature, but by the force of an idea, because the principle is defective and reveals its defect as it reveals power.
V. Property and creative work
To those who believe that institutions which repudiate all moral significance must sooner or later collapse, a society which confuses the protection of property with the preservation of its functionless perversions will appear as precarious as that which has left the memorials of its tasteless frivolity and more tasteless ostentation in the gardens of Versailles.
VII. Industry as a profession.
Rights without functions are like the shades in Homer which drank blood but scattered trembling at the voice of a man. To extinguish royalties and urban ground rents is merely to explode superstition. It needs as little – and as much – resolution as to put one’s hand through any other ghosts.
XI. Porro unum necessarium
That obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is repulsive and disturbing. To future generations it will appear as pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears today; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which is it concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames of every would and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant ulcer. Society will not solve the particular problems of industry which afflict it until that poison is expelled, and it has learned to see industry itself in the right perspective. If it is to do that, it must rearrange its scale of values. It must regard economic interests as one element of life, not as the whole life. It must persuade its members to renounce the opportunity of gains to accrue without any corresponding service, because the struggle for them keeps the whole community in fever. It must so organise industry that the instrumental character of economic activity is emphasised by its subordination for the social purpose for which it is carried on.
Overall not grabbed by this – weird that this is more widely read than Equality.
Less vibrant precise energised writing.
-----
When they are touched by social compunction, they can think of nothing more original than the diminution of poverty, because poverty, being the opposite of riches which they value most, seems to them the most terrible of human afflictions. They do not understand that poverty is a symptom and a consequence of social disorder, while the disorder itself is something at more fundamental and more incorrigible, and that the quality in their social life which causes it to demoralize a few by excessive riches, is also the quality which causes it to demoralize many by excessive poverty.
Chapter 2 Rights and Functions
But in England, at least, it was gradual, and the ‘industrial revolution’ through catastrophic in its effect, was only the visible climax of generations of subtle moral change. The rise of modem economic relations, which may be dated in England from the latter half of the seventeenth century, was coincident with the growth of a political theory which replaced the conception of purpose by that of mechanism. During a great part of history men had found the significance of their social order in its relation to the universal purposes of religion. It stood as one rung in a ladder which stretched from hell to paradise, and the classes who composed it were the hands, the feet, the head of a corporate body which was itself a microcosm imperfectly reflecting a larger universe. When the Reformation made the Church a department of the secular government, it undermined the already enfeebled spiritual forces which had erected that sublime, but too much elaborated, synthesis. But its influence remained for nearly a century after the roots which fed it had been severed. It was the atmosphere into which men were born, and from which, however practical, or even Machiavellian, they could not easily disengage their spirits. Nor was it inconvenient for the new statecraft to see the weight of traditional religious sanction added to its own concern in the subordination of all classes and interests to the common end, of which is conceived itself, and during the greater part of the sixteenth century was commonly conceived to be the guardian. The lines of the social structure were no longer supposed to reproduce in miniature the plan of the universal order. But common habits, common traditions and beliefs, common pressure from above gave them a unity of direction, which restrained the forces of individual variation and lateral expansion; and the centre towards they converged, formerly a Church possessing some of the characteristics of the State, was now a State that had clothes itself with many of the attributes of the Church.
Not only the facts, but the minds which appraised them, were profoundly modified. The essence of the change was the disappearance of the idea that social institutions and economic activities were related to common ends, which gave them their significance and which served their criterion. In the eighteenth century both the State and the Church had abdicated that part of the sphere, which had consistent in the maintenance of a common body of social ethics; what was left of it was repression of a class, not the discipline of a nation .Opinion ceased to regard social institutions and economic activity as amenable, like personal conduct, to moral criteria, because it was no longer influenced by the spectacle of institutions which, arbitrary, capricious, and often corrupt in their practical operation, had been the outward symbol and expression of the subordination of life to purposes transcending private interests.
But what was familiar, and human and lovable – what was Christian in Christianity had largely disappeared. God had been thrust into to the frigid altitudes of infinite space.
The natural consequence of the abdication of authorities which had stood, however imperfectly, for a common purpose of social organisation, was the gradual disappearance from social thought of the idea of purpose itself. Its place in the eighteenth century was taken by the idea of mechanism. The conception of men as united to each other, and of all mankind of united to God, by mutual obligations arising from their relation to a common end, which vaguely conceived and imperfectly realised, had been the keystone holding together the social fabric, ceased to be impressed upon men’s mind, when church and State withdrew from the centre of social life to its circumstances. What remained when the keystone of the arch was removed, was private rights and private interests, the materials of society rather than a society itself. These rights and interests were the natural order which had been distorted by the ambitions of kings and priests, and which emerged when the artificial super structure disappeared, because they were the creation not of man, but of Nature herself. They had been regarded in the past as relative not to some public end, whether religion or national welfare. Henceforward they were thought to be absolute and indefeasible, and to stand by their own virtue. They were the ultimate political and social reality; and since they were the ultimate reality, they were not subordinate to other aspects of society, but other aspects of society were subordinate to them.
… the descent from hope to resignation, from the fire and passion of an age of illimitable vistas to the monotonous beat of the factory engine, from Turgot and Condorcet to the melancholy mathematical creed of Bentham and Ricardo and James Mill.
They thought it a monstrous injustice that the citizen should pay one tenth of his income in taxation to an idle Government, but quite reasonable that he should pay one fifth of it in rent to an idle landlord.
Chapter 3 The Acquisitive Society
The enjoyment of property and the direction of industry are considered, in short, to require no social justification, because they are regarded as rights which stand by their own virtue, not functions to be judged by the success with which they contribute to social purpose.
A society which aimed at making the acquisition of wealth contingent upon the discharge of social obligations, which sought to proportion renumeration to the service and denied it to those by whom no service was performed, which inquired first not what men possess but what they can make or create or achieve, might be called a Functional Society, because in such a society the main subject of social emphasis would be the performance of functions. … Modern societies aim at protecting economic rights, while leaving economic functions, except in movements of abnormal emergency, to fulfil themselves. The motive which gives colour and quality to their public institutions, to their policy and political thought, is not the attempt to secure the fulfilment of tasks undertaken in a public service, but to increase the opportunities open to individuals of attaining the objects which they conceive to be advantageous to themselves.
The acquisitive society… makes the individual the centre of his own universe and dissolves moral principles into a choice of expediencies. And it immensely simplifies the problem of social life in complex communities. For it relieves them of the necessity of discriminating between different types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between different types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between enterprise and avarice, energy and unscrupulous greed, property which is legitimate and property which is theft, the just enjoyment of the fruits of labour and the idle parasitism of birth or fortune, because it treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and suggests that it treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and suggests that excess or defeat, waste or superfluity, require no conscious effort of the social will to avert them, but are corrected almost automatically by the mechanical play of economic forces.
Chapter 4 The Nemesis of Industrialism
But if it is single-minded it destroys the moral restraints which ought to condition the pursuit of riches, and therefore also makes the pursuit of riches meaningless.
So wealth becomes the foundation of public esteem, and the mass of men who labour, but who do not aquire wealth, are thought to be vulgar and meaningless and insiginificant compared with the few who acquire wealth by good fortune or by the skillful use of economic opportunities. They come to be regarded, not as the ends for which alone it is worth while to produce wealth at all, but as the instruments of acquisition by a world that declines to be soiled contact with what is thought to be dull and sordid business of labour. They are not happy for the reward of all but the very mean is not merely money, but the esteem of their fellow men, and they know they are not esteemed, as soldiers, for examples, are esteemed, though it is because they give their lives to making civilisation that there is civilisation which is worthwhile for soldiers to defend. They are not esteemed, because the admiration of society is directed towards those who get, not towards those who give; and though workmen give much they get little. And the rentiers whom they support are not happy; for in discarding the idea of function, which sets a limit to the acquisition of riches, they have also discarded the principle that gives their riches meaning. Thence they can persuade themselves that to be rich is in itself meritorious, they may bask in social admiration, but they are unable to esteem themselves. For they have abolished the principle which makes activity significant, and therefore estimable. They are, indeed, more truly pitiable than some of those who envy them. For like the spirits in the Inferno, they are punished by the attainment of their desire.
While the effective demand of the mass of men is small, there is a small class which wears several men’s clothes, eats several men’s dinners, occupies several families’ houses, and lives several men’s lives.
The idea that industrial peace can be secured merely by the exercise of tact and forbearance is based on the idea that there is a fundamental identity of interest between the different groups engaged in it, which is occasionally interrupted by regrettable misunderstandings. Both the one idea and the other are an illusion. The disputes which matter are not caused by a misunderstanding of identity of interests, but by a better understanding of diversity of interests.
The essence of industrialism, in short, is not any particular method of industry, but a particular estimate of the importance of industry, which results in it being thought the only thing that is important at all, so that it is elevated from the subordinate place which it should occupy among human interests and activities into being the standard by which all other interests and activity are judged.
When the press clamours that the one thing that is needed to make this island an Arcadia is productivity, and more productivity, and yet more productivity, that is Industrialism. It is the confusion of means with ends.
They resent any activity which is not coloured by the predominant interest, because it seems a rival to it. So they destroy religion and art and morality, which cannot exist unless they are disinterested; and having destroyed these, which are the end, for the sake of industry, which is a means, they make their industry itself what they make their cities, a desert of unnatural dreariness, which only forgetfulness can make endurable, and which only excitement can enable them to forget.
INDIVIDUALISM AND NATIONALISM.
And, like individualism it [nationalism] if pushed to its logical conclusion, it is self destructive. For as in nationalism, in its brilliant youth, begins a claim that nations, because they are spiritual beings, shall determine themselves, and passes too often into a claim that they dominate others, so individualism begins by asserting the right of men to make their own lives what they can, and ends by condoning the subjection of the majority of men to the few whom good fortune or special opportunity or privilege have enabled most successfully to use their rights.
So the perversion of nationalism is imperialism, as the perversion of individualism is industrialism. And the perversion comes, not through any flaw or vice in human nature, but by the force of an idea, because the principle is defective and reveals its defect as it reveals power.
V. Property and creative work
To those who believe that institutions which repudiate all moral significance must sooner or later collapse, a society which confuses the protection of property with the preservation of its functionless perversions will appear as precarious as that which has left the memorials of its tasteless frivolity and more tasteless ostentation in the gardens of Versailles.
VII. Industry as a profession.
Rights without functions are like the shades in Homer which drank blood but scattered trembling at the voice of a man. To extinguish royalties and urban ground rents is merely to explode superstition. It needs as little – and as much – resolution as to put one’s hand through any other ghosts.
XI. Porro unum necessarium
That obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is repulsive and disturbing. To future generations it will appear as pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears today; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which is it concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames of every would and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant ulcer. Society will not solve the particular problems of industry which afflict it until that poison is expelled, and it has learned to see industry itself in the right perspective. If it is to do that, it must rearrange its scale of values. It must regard economic interests as one element of life, not as the whole life. It must persuade its members to renounce the opportunity of gains to accrue without any corresponding service, because the struggle for them keeps the whole community in fever. It must so organise industry that the instrumental character of economic activity is emphasised by its subordination for the social purpose for which it is carried on.
January 1, 2025
It is New Year’s Eve, and it seems fitting to be writing a review on Tawny’s The Acquisitive Society. Though published over a hundred years ago, in the aftermath of WWI, Tawny was looking to the future. He saw the rapacious economic system of his time and sought something better for society. Though a socialist, he was not writing this as a comparative analysis of economic systems. Instead, he approached it as a moral analysis.
Discussing morality for a society is a quagmire. Competing values abound and those who assert their moral stance oftentimes find themselves awash in moral relativism. However, Tawny ventures gracefully into that territory. Though a Christian, he does not fall upon any particular religious doctrine to make his claim. Instead, he lays out a few values that he believes may garner substantial agreement regardless of religion or creed. Of course, there will always be those who disagree, but he steers clear of radical approaches.
His end goal is “the Functional Society” upon which wealth is obtained through creativity and achievement rather than simply what can be accrued. This requires a fundamental shift in thinking in capitalist systems. He disdains the idea of passive income (which is touted as a financial goal in today’s world) because it leads to wealth acquisition with minimal contribution to society. He repeatedly aims his ire at landlords for their ability to make a necessity a commodity that can then be overpriced. I’m sure there are many renters today who feel the same given the increasing lack of affordable housing in so many areas.
Unfortunately, many may quickly disregard Tawny as naïve and touting a brand of socialism that has been tried and failed. However, seeking moderation in capitalism is not the equivalent of a Bolshevik Revolution. A healthy society cannot be built on the value that the highest profit for the shareholders is the supreme good. Greed is not good. Avarice is not a virtue. There is no “each according to his needs” economic argument here. But he does suggest that “[i]f a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.” Pg. 124.
Discussing morality for a society is a quagmire. Competing values abound and those who assert their moral stance oftentimes find themselves awash in moral relativism. However, Tawny ventures gracefully into that territory. Though a Christian, he does not fall upon any particular religious doctrine to make his claim. Instead, he lays out a few values that he believes may garner substantial agreement regardless of religion or creed. Of course, there will always be those who disagree, but he steers clear of radical approaches.
His end goal is “the Functional Society” upon which wealth is obtained through creativity and achievement rather than simply what can be accrued. This requires a fundamental shift in thinking in capitalist systems. He disdains the idea of passive income (which is touted as a financial goal in today’s world) because it leads to wealth acquisition with minimal contribution to society. He repeatedly aims his ire at landlords for their ability to make a necessity a commodity that can then be overpriced. I’m sure there are many renters today who feel the same given the increasing lack of affordable housing in so many areas.
Unfortunately, many may quickly disregard Tawny as naïve and touting a brand of socialism that has been tried and failed. However, seeking moderation in capitalism is not the equivalent of a Bolshevik Revolution. A healthy society cannot be built on the value that the highest profit for the shareholders is the supreme good. Greed is not good. Avarice is not a virtue. There is no “each according to his needs” economic argument here. But he does suggest that “[i]f a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.” Pg. 124.
May 31, 2016
The title alone simply foretold the society of instant-gratification accelerated by capitalism. Most quotable, nuanced critique of capitalism out there and it's without all the butchering communist getting in the way of seriously needed reflection on the currently unstoppable/irreversible pace of capitalism.
January 3, 2024
Tawney’s book describes an alternative method of organizing human societies. He sees labour as both noble and beneficial to the overall good if it is productive. He sees ownership of property, especially in excess, and also ownership of ground rents and dividends as counter-productive and therefore fuelling consumption for consumption’s sake. In a passage reminiscent of Veblen, he writes “the classes who own little or no property may reverence it, because it is security. But the classes who own much prize it for quite different reasons, and laugh in their sleeve at the innocence which supposes that anything as vulgar as the savings of the petite bourgeoisie have, except at elections, any interest for them. they prize it because it is the order which quarters them on the community and which provides for the maintenance of a leisure class at the public expense.”
Tawney proposes a structure of ownership and management of enterprises that stresses activity for public good rather than private profit. He especially criticises those capital owning interests who do not participate in the activity at all, while extracting profit from it. He calls for a fundamentally different style of operation and management which is neither capitalist nor socialist. The dichotomy of capital on the one side and labour on the other is a delusion which masks the true need for human activity, which is the betterment of life experience for all. He writes “revolutions, as a long and bitter experience reveals, are apt to take their colour from the regime which they overthrow. Is it any wonder that the creed which affirms the absolute rights of property, should sometimes be met with a counter affirmation of the absolute rights of labour, less anti-social, indeed, and inhuman, but almost as dogmatic, almost as intolerant and thoughtless as itself?”
He decries individualism and nationalism in the same breath. “…nationalism is, in fact, the counterpart among nations of what individualism is within them. It has similar origins and tendencies, similar triumphs, and defects. For nationalism, like individualism, lays its emphasis on the rights of separate units, not on their subordination to common obligations, though its units are races or nations, not individual men. Like individualism it appeals to the self-assertive instincts, to which it promises opportunities of unlimited expansion.”
Individualism gives rise to the kind of conspicuous consumption criticized by Veblen. Though not going as far as Proudhon, the spirit of that writer looms large in the passage. “…property is not theft, but a good deal of theft becomes property.” And Tawney regularly reminds us that adequacy is what is desired, never the conspicuous. “…if a man has important work, and enough, leisure and income, to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness, as is good for any of the children of Adam.” The implication is clear, that to own or to consume to excess is antisocial but also, by implication, also sinful.
At the very start of The Acquisitive Society, Tawney humorously describes what it is to be English. He tells us that Englishmen “are in curious as to theory, take fundamentals for granted, and are more interested in the state of the roads than in their place on the map.” He describes an approach to life where “the blinkers, worn by Englishmen enable them to trot, all the more steadily along the beaten road, without being disturbed by curiosity as to the destination.” A bumbling but always occupied people.
If RH Tawney’s book had addressed environmental and conservation issues as well as purely economic or social, it would really have been way ahead of its time. It was, however, written in 1920 and it would ask too much of an author to be a full century ahead of his time. But overall the work offers ideas that are based on rationality and analysis. It criticisms capitalism but sees socialism not as an answer but as an equally objectionable reaction. There is another way, says Tawney, and the human race has yet to recognize it.
Tawney proposes a structure of ownership and management of enterprises that stresses activity for public good rather than private profit. He especially criticises those capital owning interests who do not participate in the activity at all, while extracting profit from it. He calls for a fundamentally different style of operation and management which is neither capitalist nor socialist. The dichotomy of capital on the one side and labour on the other is a delusion which masks the true need for human activity, which is the betterment of life experience for all. He writes “revolutions, as a long and bitter experience reveals, are apt to take their colour from the regime which they overthrow. Is it any wonder that the creed which affirms the absolute rights of property, should sometimes be met with a counter affirmation of the absolute rights of labour, less anti-social, indeed, and inhuman, but almost as dogmatic, almost as intolerant and thoughtless as itself?”
He decries individualism and nationalism in the same breath. “…nationalism is, in fact, the counterpart among nations of what individualism is within them. It has similar origins and tendencies, similar triumphs, and defects. For nationalism, like individualism, lays its emphasis on the rights of separate units, not on their subordination to common obligations, though its units are races or nations, not individual men. Like individualism it appeals to the self-assertive instincts, to which it promises opportunities of unlimited expansion.”
Individualism gives rise to the kind of conspicuous consumption criticized by Veblen. Though not going as far as Proudhon, the spirit of that writer looms large in the passage. “…property is not theft, but a good deal of theft becomes property.” And Tawney regularly reminds us that adequacy is what is desired, never the conspicuous. “…if a man has important work, and enough, leisure and income, to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness, as is good for any of the children of Adam.” The implication is clear, that to own or to consume to excess is antisocial but also, by implication, also sinful.
At the very start of The Acquisitive Society, Tawney humorously describes what it is to be English. He tells us that Englishmen “are in curious as to theory, take fundamentals for granted, and are more interested in the state of the roads than in their place on the map.” He describes an approach to life where “the blinkers, worn by Englishmen enable them to trot, all the more steadily along the beaten road, without being disturbed by curiosity as to the destination.” A bumbling but always occupied people.
If RH Tawney’s book had addressed environmental and conservation issues as well as purely economic or social, it would really have been way ahead of its time. It was, however, written in 1920 and it would ask too much of an author to be a full century ahead of his time. But overall the work offers ideas that are based on rationality and analysis. It criticisms capitalism but sees socialism not as an answer but as an equally objectionable reaction. There is another way, says Tawney, and the human race has yet to recognize it.
November 21, 2024
There is no way around the fact that this is a very dry academic text. It is only 100 pages long, but it is an exceptionally hard read. If it takes all that effort to read, is it worth it? Yes, it is worth it because it has something important to say. No, it isn't worth it because what is said is covered in more accessible form elsewhere. I guess that the reader has to make up their own mind about value.
The key message of the book is the distinction between functional and non-functional capital. Functional capital is that which provides 'the tools of the trade' - capital that is used in providing goods and services that generate an income. The capital needed to work. Non-functional capital simply provides a return, often in the form of economic rent, that is merely extracted without any further growth in incomes. It is the non-functional capital that permits the growth of the acquisitive society, which is typified through the accumulation of economic rents.
This resonates with where we are today. Much 'wealth' in the economy consists of pools of relatively idle capital, from which economic rents are extracted. Of course, this has social consequences, many of which we now find undesirable. For example, the growth of capital accumulations has led to growing levels of inequality, which dampens investment and future growth prospects. The author points to a moral dimension here. If society is a collective endeavour from which we all benefit, then we all should participate in that society. If we don't, then we are likely to see growing levels of alienation, which makes that society vulnerable to external shocks. This is a very contemporary message.
I'm not sure about the remedy, though. The author advocates a more managerial form of society. He doesn't fully account for the behaviour of bureaucracies and the gaming behaviour of actors within a managerial society. His proposals work because he assumes all actors to be saintly, as opposed to the economic man that most economists recognise. I'm not sure how this contradiction could be resolved. All that I know is that it isn't in the book.
As I said, this is a hard academic read. It is not an enjoyable book. It is read for instruction and would take much longer to read than a novel of the same length. I am glad to have read the book, but I won't freely recommend it without pointing out that it is hard work.
The key message of the book is the distinction between functional and non-functional capital. Functional capital is that which provides 'the tools of the trade' - capital that is used in providing goods and services that generate an income. The capital needed to work. Non-functional capital simply provides a return, often in the form of economic rent, that is merely extracted without any further growth in incomes. It is the non-functional capital that permits the growth of the acquisitive society, which is typified through the accumulation of economic rents.
This resonates with where we are today. Much 'wealth' in the economy consists of pools of relatively idle capital, from which economic rents are extracted. Of course, this has social consequences, many of which we now find undesirable. For example, the growth of capital accumulations has led to growing levels of inequality, which dampens investment and future growth prospects. The author points to a moral dimension here. If society is a collective endeavour from which we all benefit, then we all should participate in that society. If we don't, then we are likely to see growing levels of alienation, which makes that society vulnerable to external shocks. This is a very contemporary message.
I'm not sure about the remedy, though. The author advocates a more managerial form of society. He doesn't fully account for the behaviour of bureaucracies and the gaming behaviour of actors within a managerial society. His proposals work because he assumes all actors to be saintly, as opposed to the economic man that most economists recognise. I'm not sure how this contradiction could be resolved. All that I know is that it isn't in the book.
As I said, this is a hard academic read. It is not an enjoyable book. It is read for instruction and would take much longer to read than a novel of the same length. I am glad to have read the book, but I won't freely recommend it without pointing out that it is hard work.
July 29, 2025
A great book on the essence of economy, especially as understood from the late 1800s. It is a good reference book, but it is more of a reference book. Tawney is more descriptive of how possessions, government regulation, and economic systems work than anything else. He does not give much commentary or provides a lot of insight on them. I would have appreciated more done by him (since he obviously knew what he was writing about very well) on what should be done to mold the economy and humanity's perspective on possessions to create a good and functioning system.
July 3, 2017
Kind of dry and intellectual, but I think I was still able to grasp Tawney's point. Essentially, he's saying that money and property are means to an end, rather than ends in themselves. Society ought be organized on the basis of function, rather than on privilege.
May 24, 2013
R. H. Tawney taught at the London School of Economics. He was the son of the Sanskrit scholar Charles Henry Tawney, who translated The Ocean of Story into English.
He finds fault with incomes that are excessive or that result from little effort, and he proposes that workers should instead be paid according to the moral and social value of their work. In The Acquisitive Society (1920), he advocates a “functional society” that would compensate labor based on upon some “moral” assessment of its value, instead of merely in terms of how much money could conceivably be made off of it. Exactly how this society is to be achieved is rather unclear.
He declares that “poverty is a symptom and a consequence of social disorder” and that “hundred-family salaries” - that is, one-person salaries that could feed a hundred families - “are ungentlemanly.” The tone of the quasi-Marxist rhetoric generally rings clear as a bell, somehow emerging from tangled sentences like: “What form of management should replace the administration of industry by the agents of shareholders? What is most likely to hold it to its main purpose, and to be least at the mercy of predatory interests and functionless supernumeraries, and of the alternations of sullen dissatisfaction and spasmodic revolt which at present distract it?”
These claims are not supported by much data or history, so anyone who wants to read this while learning about the context of turn-of-the-century England would need to acquire a companion history book.
There are a handful of interesting passages about the philosophical concept of rights. He argues that the formation of the concept of absolute individual rights was a rebellion against absolute state power, and that individual rights aren’t really absolute. Rights, rather, “are derived from the end or purpose of the society in which they exist.”
His underwhelmingly successful prediction about England:
He finds fault with incomes that are excessive or that result from little effort, and he proposes that workers should instead be paid according to the moral and social value of their work. In The Acquisitive Society (1920), he advocates a “functional society” that would compensate labor based on upon some “moral” assessment of its value, instead of merely in terms of how much money could conceivably be made off of it. Exactly how this society is to be achieved is rather unclear.
“No one has any business to expect to be paid ‘what he is worth,’ for what he is worth is a matter between his own soul and God. What he has a right to demand, and what it concerns his fellow-men to see that he gets, is enough to enable him to perform his work. When industry is organized on a basis of function, that, and no more than that, is what he will be paid.”
He declares that “poverty is a symptom and a consequence of social disorder” and that “hundred-family salaries” - that is, one-person salaries that could feed a hundred families - “are ungentlemanly.” The tone of the quasi-Marxist rhetoric generally rings clear as a bell, somehow emerging from tangled sentences like: “What form of management should replace the administration of industry by the agents of shareholders? What is most likely to hold it to its main purpose, and to be least at the mercy of predatory interests and functionless supernumeraries, and of the alternations of sullen dissatisfaction and spasmodic revolt which at present distract it?”
These claims are not supported by much data or history, so anyone who wants to read this while learning about the context of turn-of-the-century England would need to acquire a companion history book.
There are a handful of interesting passages about the philosophical concept of rights. He argues that the formation of the concept of absolute individual rights was a rebellion against absolute state power, and that individual rights aren’t really absolute. Rights, rather, “are derived from the end or purpose of the society in which they exist.”
His underwhelmingly successful prediction about England:
“The national output of wealth per head of population is estimated to have been approximately $200 in 1914. Unless mankind chooses to continue the sacrifice of prosperity to the ambitions and terrors of nationalism, it is possible that by the year 2000 it may be doubled.”
May 8, 2010
"[Society:] must regard economic interests as one element in life, not as whole of life. [...:] It must so organize its industry that the instrumental character of economic activity is emphasized by its subordination to the social purpose for which it is carried on".
"The Acquisitive Society" by R.H. Tawney is a great volume on that mainly proposes one thing: To subordinate economic activity to social purpose. In order to achieve this aim he wants society to (a) abolish all proprietary rights that are not accompanied by the performance of service, (b) make sure that producers stand in a direct relation to the community for whom production is carried on and (c) give the responsibility for the maintenance of the service to professional organizations of those who perform it.
Tawney discusses the negative connotations of the word "nationalization", stating his opinion that it really is nothing more than a buzz word, as it does not define by what rules and regulations such a "nationalization" should take place. He illustrates why ownership which is not based on the fulfillment of social obligations should be considered bad from his point of view.
The opinion stated in this book really is not very complicated, but my problem with the book is that it overcomplicates the whole concept of basing the economy on the fulfillment of social obligations. The sentences are unnecessarily long, the concepts and illustrations more complicated than needed. Quite probably the essence of this book could be condensed into 20 or so pages of easy English. That would be a great thing as the idea is really worth all the publicity.
Another problem I have with Tawney is the idea that he states in the last chapter, namely to introduce his concept to society by the means of a moral standard judged by the church. He argues that the church needs the power to sanction its members. I don't see why Tawney needs the church to be a part of his equation.
But still: All in all this is a great book, definitely worth the effort the reader will have to put into reading it and understanding the concepts presented!
"The Acquisitive Society" by R.H. Tawney is a great volume on that mainly proposes one thing: To subordinate economic activity to social purpose. In order to achieve this aim he wants society to (a) abolish all proprietary rights that are not accompanied by the performance of service, (b) make sure that producers stand in a direct relation to the community for whom production is carried on and (c) give the responsibility for the maintenance of the service to professional organizations of those who perform it.
Tawney discusses the negative connotations of the word "nationalization", stating his opinion that it really is nothing more than a buzz word, as it does not define by what rules and regulations such a "nationalization" should take place. He illustrates why ownership which is not based on the fulfillment of social obligations should be considered bad from his point of view.
The opinion stated in this book really is not very complicated, but my problem with the book is that it overcomplicates the whole concept of basing the economy on the fulfillment of social obligations. The sentences are unnecessarily long, the concepts and illustrations more complicated than needed. Quite probably the essence of this book could be condensed into 20 or so pages of easy English. That would be a great thing as the idea is really worth all the publicity.
Another problem I have with Tawney is the idea that he states in the last chapter, namely to introduce his concept to society by the means of a moral standard judged by the church. He argues that the church needs the power to sanction its members. I don't see why Tawney needs the church to be a part of his equation.
But still: All in all this is a great book, definitely worth the effort the reader will have to put into reading it and understanding the concepts presented!
June 13, 2016
Es mucho más fácil oponerse al capitalismo con barricadas que elaborando un discurso contundente, pero sólo este último método puede ser tomado en serio y sentar bases perdurables. Tawney habla con propiedad -fue profesor de Historia Económica, no un simple agitador o activista- y plantea una crítica verdaderamente persuasiva sobre las deficiencias de un sistema económico dominado por individuos que no aportan a la producción pero exigen derechos (accionistas), o defienden la propiedad privada pasiva (el autor tiene cuidado de distinguir esta de la propiedad privada bien merecida, sutileza que no advierten los partidarios de izquierda dura), constituyéndose en el principal escollo no solo para la justicia social sino para la propia eficiencia productiva.
Se diría que una tesis tan bien articulada puede ser peligrosamente efectiva en las manos adecuadas (de algún caudillo socialista), pero tampoco puede sustraerse a aquello contra lo que advierte («…Era su pretensión -por mucho que haya sido degradada por intrigas y ambiciones políticas-…con una confianza noble, aunque quizá demasiado optimista») y es que el s. XX fue generoso en pruebas que desmienten o moderan la postura a veces voluntarista de Tawney respecto a los beneficios de la administración estatal, el control obrero de la producción y un sistema no capitalista, todo lo cual ha anclado su libro a 1921.
A pesar de todo sería injusto y miope considerarlo obsoleto, porque los efectos colaterales del sistema financiero imperante hoy son evidencia de que aun no podemos evadir estas preguntas punzantes.
Se diría que una tesis tan bien articulada puede ser peligrosamente efectiva en las manos adecuadas (de algún caudillo socialista), pero tampoco puede sustraerse a aquello contra lo que advierte («…Era su pretensión -por mucho que haya sido degradada por intrigas y ambiciones políticas-…con una confianza noble, aunque quizá demasiado optimista») y es que el s. XX fue generoso en pruebas que desmienten o moderan la postura a veces voluntarista de Tawney respecto a los beneficios de la administración estatal, el control obrero de la producción y un sistema no capitalista, todo lo cual ha anclado su libro a 1921.
A pesar de todo sería injusto y miope considerarlo obsoleto, porque los efectos colaterales del sistema financiero imperante hoy son evidencia de que aun no podemos evadir estas preguntas punzantes.
August 30, 2016
Tawney is not the only 1920's economic writer who was not only dead right but from whom we do not seem to have learnt from. Beautifully written in the style of the day (I have an old yellow-paged fraying edition which adds something) I would recommend this to anyone who thinks that consumerism is a modern phenomenon. Not sure I would recommend it on Kindle though. It would seem like a museum piece whereas it is as relevant today as ever.
December 23, 2019
The critique of capitalism reminds me of Thorstein Veblen but less sophisticated... the alternative offered of everyone functionally integrating themselves and finding a new respect for virtue/honour is beyond naive.
November 7, 2007
A classic. Presents the case for basing our economy on a different distribution of property rights based on fulfilment of social obligations. Good food for thought.
May 31, 2015
I read this in college.
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