EQUALITY ... WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD M. TITMUSS

by R.H. Tawney

"This book deserves a wide and thoughtful reading not only for the practicability and flexibility of the specific programs which it recommends but for the sane spirit in which it advocates them and the broad humanitarianism which furnishes the motive." --Christian Century

Genres: Economics, Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Richard 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".

Reviews

[Gary Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Equality, Tawney lampoons one of Capitalism's main props - it fosters an equality of opportunity that allows all to rise according to their ability. Tawney did not believe that the principle of equality of opportunity was inherently wrong; on the contrary, societies only maintained their vitality by drawing on a fresh stream of talent, and exceptional contributions should receive their due. However, the concept had been contaminated by capitalism, transformed from a liberating idea that removed the dead hand of the feudal aristocracy to a justificatory platitude to maintain the predominance of the industrial plutocracy. This ideological support, or in Tawney's more elegant expression the "decorous drapery" which hid the brute reality of Capitalism, was reinforced by the prevalence of the Tadpole philosophy.

"It is possible that intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves to the inconveniences of their position, by reflecting that, though most of them will live and die as tadpoles and nothing more, the more fortunate of the species will one day shed their tails, distend their mouths and stomachs, hop nimbly on to dry land, and croak addresses to their former friends on the virtues by means of which tadpoles of character and capacity can rise to be frogs."

A meritocratic gloss was put on the system because certain individuals had managed to ascend the social scale from modest backgrounds demonstrating that capitalism rewarded those who possessed talent, and were prepared to expend effort. Such exceptions should not disguise the fact that social outcomes are conditioned by circumstances. The massive inequalities that characterised the capitalism, with the working classes denied an adequate education, unable to access effective health care and housed in slums meant that equality of opportunity was nothing more than a cruel jest, the "impertinent courtesy of an invitation offered to unwelcome guests, in the certainty that circumstances will prevent them from accepting it". What was required was not merely "an open road, but...an equal start". To those who protested that the efforts to establish an equal start would compromise liberty, Tawney responded that real freedom required social justice. To be accorded rights in a constitution is one thing, to be able to exercise them is quite another. Without an active programme to improve the conditions of the working classes, liberty was nothing more than an abstraction, a constitutional platitude to be admired but not actualised. To make freedom effective, the social segregation that was a hallmark of the Capitalist system had to be tackled. Crucially, Tawney did not merely see social exclusion as a problem of the poor; it applied to the rich whose lofty position allowed them to opt out of social intercourse. This estrangement was not purely a product of wealth disparities, but also educational apartheid - the fact that British schools were arranged along class lines, with the upper classes cosseted in private educational establishments and the working class confined to underfunded schools, ensured that British society's most impressionable members were corrupted by the class mentality in their formative years. This early initiation foreshadowed the inequalities of adult existence, with classes living separate lives, only meeting in the context of the cash nexus - the arena of exploitation. This material and psychological gulf between rich and poor was souring social relations, with servility and resentment on one hand and patronage and arrogance on the other.

As well as the social consequences of inequality, the politico-economic dimension needed to be understood. Tawney objected that power was almost exclusively analysed as a political concept - there was another locus of power that was increasingly impinging on our existence: the economy. The predatory nature of capitalism, which distributed power not on the basis of a democratic mandate but through the possession of wealth, meant that the concerns of the private sector were privileged over the public interest. For Tawney, such an exercise of economic power was arbitrary, imperilling the democratic basis of the country, and consigning the great mass of the population to the precarious position of dependence on the self- serving decisions of capitalist enterprises. Power, whether it be political or economic, should be wielded on the basis of consent, be fully accountable to the People and exercised in terms of common interests - on all counts capitalism stood condemned.

Tawney's strategy for equality was expansive and redistributive. The gap between rich and poor needed to be closed from both directions: alleviating the poverty of the working class; and limiting the capacity of the middle and upper classes to opt out of social intercourse. Tawney argued large incomes should be subjected to progressive taxation, and substantial death duties, and redistributed, not through a direct financial transfer, but through a social surplus that invested in public services. This closure of the gap was not merely a recognition of the need for economic justice, but also an attempt to end divisions by bring classes within reach each other to produce a cohesive society in which all were judged in terms of their individual merit, not their class location.

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 a strong case to be made 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 suspect. Within this discourse of social and economic decay, Tawney's appeal for a more humane society focussed on collective social concerns does resonant.

[Marty · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1931 "Equality" is a political treatise based on the series of lectures by Professor Tawney in 1929. The "Tawney Society" has been an influential social democratic group within the Labour and the co-operative movement and represents the broad values outlined in this and other books by Prof. Tawney. "Equality" starts by discussing the iniquities of the "religion of inequality" that had prevailed in England's entrenched class and commercial structures. It considers the concepts associated with "equality of opportunity" and makes the analogy of the economy being a horse and rider, with everyone having an equal chance of being trampled to death!! He rejects this as being inadequate and favours growth in communal provision to promote greater actual equality and human dignity within society. The book's conclusion is that material wealth "is not the greatest of man's treasures" and that society would be happier and better served when rewards "are less greedily grasped and more freely shared." Of course, society has moved on since this book was written; the welfare state, state education and social housing have all been greatly strengthened and the NHS formed for instance. Tawney, along with the economist John Maynard Keynes, were leading architects of these fundamental social improvements. We have since suffered the disasters of the greedy, vile Thatcher years when so much was done to "sell off the silver" overturn social progress and bring back victorian values. So while life is undoubtedly more complex than ever, we still have need to remember the lessons of the past; greater equality is just as necessary today both in Britain and indeed the world. "Equality" does have an unfortunate and unnecessary religious element to it which irritates but this can safely be ignored. I first read this book about 25 years ago and it was a major influence on my own political views and activity as a social democrat in the war against Thatcherism.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inequality... causes them, in short, to apply different standards to different sections of the community, as if it were uncertain whether all of them are human in the same sense as themselves.

He is oppressed by the weight of all this unintelligible world.

Mill on Equality: he did not intend to convey that it should suppress varieties of individual genius and character, but that it was only in a society marked by a large measure of economic equality that such varieties were likely to find their full expression and due mead of appreciation.

Jeremy Taylor meant, when he wrote, in a book today too little read, that ‘if any man be exalted by reason of nay excellence in his soul, he may please to remember that all souls are equal, and their differing operations are because their instrument is in better tune, their body is more healthful or better tempered; which is no more praise to him than it is that he was born in Italy.’

What matters to a society is less what it owns than what it is and how it uses its possessions. It is civilised in so far as its conduct is guided by a just appreciation of spiritual ends, in so far as it uses its material resources to promote the dignity and refinement of the individual human beings who compose it. Violent contrasts of wealth and power, and an indiscriminating devotion to institutions by which such contrasts are maintained and heightened, do not promote the attainment of such ends, but thwart it. They are therefore a mark, not of civilisation, but of barbarism

If the Kingdom of Heaven is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace, neither is civilisation the multiplication of motorcars and cinemas, or of any other of the innumerable devices by which men accumulate means of ever-increasing intricacy to the attainment of ends which are not worth attaining.

A cloistered and secluded refinement, intolerant of the heat and dust of creative effort, is the note, not of civilisation, but of the epochs which have despaired of it.

Clever men, it has been remarked, are impressed by their difference from their fellows; wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

[Capitalism/inequality] perverts the sense of values. It is to cause men, in the language of the Old Testament, to ‘go a-whoring after strange gods.’

Where the treasure is, there the heart will be also, and if men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.

Culture is not an assortment of aesthetic sugar plums for fastidious palates, but an energy of the soul.

On Culture: . When it feeds on itself, instead of drawing nourishment from the common life of mankind, it ceases to grow, and, when it ceases to grow, it ceases to live. In order that it my not be, merely an interesting museum specimen, but an active principle of intelligence and refinement, by which vulgarities are checked and crudities corrected, it is necessary, not only to preserve intact existing standards of excellence, and to diffuse their influence, but to broaden and enrich them by contact with an ever widening range of emotional experiences and intellectual interests.

A civilised community… will insist that one condition, at least, of it deserving its name is that its members shall treat each other, not as means, but as ends, and that institutions which stunt the faculties of some among them for the advantage of others shall be generally recognised to be barbarous and odious.

On social mobility – as though the noblest use of exceptional powers were to scramble to shore, undeterred by the thoughts of drowning companions.

But opportunities to ‘rise’ are not a substitute for a large measure of practical equality, nor do they make immaterial the existence of sharp disparities of income and social condition. On the contrary, it is only the presence of a high degree of practical equality which can diffuse and generalise opportunities to rise. It is precisely, of course, when capacity is aided by a high level of general wellbeing in the milieu surrounding it, that its ascent is most likely to be regular and rapid, rather than fitful and intermittent.

Social wellbeing does not only depend upon intelligent leadership; it also depends on cohesion and solidarity. It implies the existence, not only of opportunities to ascend, but of a high level of general culture, and a strong sense of common interests, and the diffusion throughout society of a conviction that civilisation is not the business of an elite alone, but a common enterprise which is the concern of all. And individual happiness does not only require that men should be free to rise to new positions of comfort and distinction; it also requires that they should be able to lead a life of dignity and culture, whether they rise or not, and that, whatever their position on the economic scale might be, it shall be such as is fit to be occupied by men.

Rightly interpreted, it means, not only that what are commonly regarded as the prizes of life should be open to all, but that none should be subjected to arbitrary penalties; not only that exceptional men should be free to exercise their exceptional powers, but that common men should be free to make the most of their common humanity. Of a community which is indifferent to the need of facilitating the upward movement of ability becomes torpid and inert, a community which is indifferent to all else but that movement becomes hardened and materialised, and is in the end disillusioned with the idol that it itself has created. It sacrifices the cultivation of spiritual excellences, which is possible for all, to the acquisition of riches, which is possible, happily, only for the few. It lives in an indeterminable series of glittering tomorrows, which it discovers to be tinsel when they become today.

Economic realities make short work of legal abstractions, except when they find them a convenient masks to conceal their own features. The character of society is determined less by abstract rights than by practical powers. It depends, not upon what is members MAY do, if they can, but what they CAN do, if they will.

It is that some classes should be excluded from the heritage of civilisation that others enjoy, and that the fact of human fellowship, which is ultimate and profound, should be obscured by economic contrasts, which are trivial and superficial. What is important is not that all men should receive the same pecuniary income. It is that the surplus resources of society should be so husbanded and applied that it is a matter of minor significance whether they receive it or not.

The English educational system will never be worthy of a civilised society until the children of all classes in the nation attend the same schools.

Rightly regarded, the preparation of the young life is obviously the greatest of common interests.

The goal is to be aimed at simplicity itself. The idea that differences of educational opportunity among children should depend upon differences of wealth among parents is a barbarity. It is as grotesque and repulsive as to suppose the latter should result, as once they did in differences of personal and legal status.

On Private schools: . It is once an educational monstrosity and a grave national misfortune. It is educationally vicious, since to mix with companions from homes of different types is an important part of the education of the young. It is socially disastrous, for it does not than any other single cause, except capitalism itself, to perpetuate the division of the nation into classes which one is almost unintelligible to the other.

As society sows, so in the long term it reps. If its schools are sordid, will its life be generous? ...
If it sacrifices its children to its social conventions and its economic convenience, is it probable that, when men, they will regard it with affection? Apart from such considerations, the mere economic loss involved in withholding from four fifths of British children the educational opportunities required to develop their powers is extremely serious. The nation has not such a plethora of ability in its command that it can afford to leave uncultivated, or under cultivated, the larger proportion of that which it possesses. … it is to be achieved in school, as it is achieved in the home, by recognising that there are diversities of gift, which require for their development diversities of treatment. Its aim will be to do justice at all, by providing facilities which are at once various in type and equal in quality.

The psychological reactions of such a change, if more gradual than its immediate economic effects, would be even more profound… as, with the extension of the services of health and education, the majority of the population cease to be familiarised with squalor in infancy, and to be broken in to the machine while still docile and malleable, and to be taught to know their place before they are given a chance of knowing anything else, the sense of inferiority which has paralysed them in the past will increasingly be dissipated. Having seen inequalities, long declared unalterable, yield to social intervention, they will be less indulgent in the future to those which remain, and less easily duped, it may be reasonably hoped, by the technique which defends them.

The psychological limits of taxation are much more elastic than is commonly supposed.

For freedom is always relative to power, and the kind of freedom which at any moment is most urgent to affirm depends on the nature of the power which is prevalent and established.

The truth of the matter is put by Professor Pollard 'Men vary in physical strength; but so far as their social relations go that inequality has been abolished… Yet there must have been a period in social evolution when this refusal to permit the strong man to do what he liked with his own physical strength seemed, at least to the strong, as an outrageous interference with personal liberty… There is, in fact, no more reason why a man should be allowed to use his wealth or his brain than his physical strength as he likes…

On the Labour Party. The most important fact about British socialism is so obvious a platitude, that no one with a reputation for brilliance to keep up will venture to state it. It is that the matters on which nine-tenths of socialists are agreed are more numerous, and much more important, than those on which they differ. It is a universal experience, however, that they acceptance of a common goal does little to diminish the acrimony of disputes as to the best route towards it. British socialists frequently conduct themselves as though the most certain method of persuading the public to feel complete confidence in their case is that they feel no confidence in each other. They draw their controversial knives at the first crossroads they encounter, which, if suicide is the objects of their remonstrations - it is often the effevt – is undoubtedly the right place to choose for the purpose. Crossroads have occurred at somewhat short intervals in the alst seven years. The dialecticians, therefore, have had the time of their lives. It has all been very clever and ingenious; for those with a taste for exhibitions of that kind, it has even been amusing. The only people who have got nothing out of it whatever are the obscure rank and file, who created the Labour movement, and for whom it exists.

But a socialism which is to exercise a wide appeal must be adapted to the psychology, not of men in general, nor of workers in general, but to the workers of a particular country of a particular period. It must wear a local garb. It must be related, not only to the practical needs, but to the mental and moral traditions fo plain men and women, as history has fixed them. It must dogmatize or brow-beat, but argue and persuade.

Labour vs Tory
In the sphere of social policy prompt and resolute action is equally indispensable. The characteristic failing of Labour governments is an exaggerated discretion. The impression made by them on an observer recalls the picture of the young person portrayed by Jane Austen, of whom nothing could be said but that ‘his countenance was pleasing and very gentleman like’ A KEIR STARMER PROPHECY?. They walk as delicately as Agag, like cats on ice. They behave like men afraid to exercise power which they have struggled for generations to win. They are less anxious to satisfy their friends than to placate their enemies. They are portentous over trifles, scrutinize farthings under the microcope, and baulk and hedges which their opponents would take in their stride, with a laugh or a curse. The latter have been brought up to believe that they are the elect, and are not troubled by the thought that they may possibly be mistaken. If they decide to throw money away, they throw it away with a hearty gesture; if they think its advantageous to pass an unworkable act, they pass it, and damn the consequences.

On Democracy
Democracy ought not to be regarded merely as a political mechanismIt ought to be envisaged as a force to be released. The Labour party in particular should think of it, not merely as ballot boxes and majorities, but as a vast reservoir of latent energies – a body of men and women who, when inert, are a clog, but m, but may become, once stirred into action, a dynamic of incalculable power. Its function is not merely to win votes; it is to wake the sleeping demon. It is to arouse democracy to a sense both of the possibilities within its reach and of the dangers which menace it; to put it on its mettle; to make militant and formidable. In attacking the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world, Labour is undertaking on any showing, a pretty desperate business. It needs behind it the temper, not of a mob, but of an army.

IF EVERYONE WOULD READ TAWNEY, IF EVERYONE COULD READ TAWNEY THEY WOULD BE AWAKE. BUT NO ONE CAN AND NO ONE DOES AND SO THEY STAY ASLEEP.
If it is to create that temper, it must not prophecy smooth things; support won by such methods is a reed shaken by every wind. It must treat its electors not as voting fodder, to be shepherded to the polling station, and then allowed to resume their slumbers, but as a party in a common enterprise, in which the party, indeed, will play its part, but the issue of which depends ultimately on themselves.

Matthew Arnold
“Change once more, then, and be dumb,
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall.”

A society is free in so far, and only in so far as, within the limits set by nature, knowledge and resources, its institutions and policies are such as to enable all its members to grow into their full stature, to do their duty as they see it. In so far as the opportunity to lead a life worthy of human beings is needlessly confined to a minority...

[Leonardo]

As Tawney said in his essay Equality, “while in equality is easy, since it demands no more than to float with the current, equality is difficult, for it involves swimming against it . . . it has its price and its burdens.”

Inequality Pág.271-272

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is worth a read, especially in historical context as it covers the ideas and beliefs that generated the welfare state.