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The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism Hardcover – 26 February 2018
by Tim Rogan (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars (25)
A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lens What's wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted in utilitarian terms, the critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century is primarily concerned with disparities in income and wealth. It was not always so. The Moral Economists reconstructs another critical tradition, developed across the twentieth century in Britain, in which material deprivation was less important than moral or spiritual desolation. Tim Rogan focuses on three of the twentieth century's most influential critics of capitalism--R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. Making arguments about the relationships between economics and ethics in modernity, their works commanded wide readerships, shaped research agendas, and influenced public opinion. Rejecting the social philosophy of laissez-faire but fearing authoritarianism, these writers sought out forms of social solidarity closer than individualism admitted but freer than collectivism allowed.They discovered such solidarities while teaching economics, history, and literature to workers in the north of England and elsewhere. They wrote histories of capitalism to make these solidarities articulate. They used makeshift languages of "tradition" and "custom" to describe them until Thompson patented the idea of the "moral economy." Their program began as a way of theorizing everything economics left out, but in challenging utilitarian orthodoxy in economics from the outside, they anticipated the work of later innovators inside economics. Examining the moral cornerstones of a twentieth-century critique of capitalism, The Moral Economists explains why this critique fell into disuse, and how it might be reformulated for the twenty-first century.
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"The Moral Economists is part historiographical exegesis, part subtle polemic about the limitations of contemporary critiques of capitalism. . . . Rogan looks to history for help in understanding capitalism, its works and its empty promises."---Katrina Navickas, London Review of Books
"A timely, vivid and attractive book, vindicating on every page Rogan's choice of three musketeers, handing on their flame to their noble heirs."---Fred Inglis, Times Higher Education
"Rogan brings the authors and their perspectives closer to the reader not only by presenting their opus and their thoughts but also by contextualizing them . . . thoroughly and deeply researched."---Christian Leitner, Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie
"Rogan's captivating work of intellectual history demonstrates that utilitarianism shaped much of the Left, as well as the Right's thinking on social questions."---Patrick Diamond, Times Literary Supplement
"Rogan's reintroduction of Tawney, Polanyi, and Thompson to modern readers is a valuable endeavor."---Joseph Coletti, Journal of Markets & Morality
"Tim Rogan's book is a fine example of intellectual history and will appeal to historically inclined humanists and social scientists at large, as well as to political activists, career politicians, and interested readers of all stripes, who, for one reason or another, may wish to ruminate on twentieth-century British experiences in civilising capitalism."---Giorgio Baruchello, European Legacy
"Tim Rogan's book, The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism (2017), ably reconstructs the first extensive crisis of liberalism."---Pankaj Mishra, New Yorker
From the Back Cover
"In a marriage of historical imagination and brilliant timing, Tim Rogan offers a marvelous survey of ethical critics of capitalism in twentieth-century England. From R. H. Tawney to Amartya Sen, these intellectuals appealed to hidden solidarities to contrast with market values. Rogan participates in their task by concisely and insightfully excavating the context, meaning, and significance of their pioneering contributions, successfully linking their causes to our contemporary quandaries."--Samuel Moyn, Yale University
"This remarkable book tells the story of a British socialism connecting the work of 'moral economists' R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. In the twentieth century, the 'moral economy' sought to navigate a path between neoliberal individualism and authoritarian collectivism. Tim Rogan impressively charts the difficulties attending this attempt to move from an argument for progressive politics derived from Christianity to one based on modern social science."--Gareth Stedman Jones, Queen Mary University of London
"At a time when the absence of a moral economy is the fundamental shortcoming in politics, Tim Rogan's exploration of the three most important moral economists of the Left is extremely important. This book frames the debate about what a critique of capitalism should look like and Rogan has done us all a great service by writing it."--Maurice Glasman, author of Unnecessary Suffering: Managing Market Utopia
"This important book examines the origins, content, development, and eclipse of the 'moral economy' in twentieth-century British thought. Richly contextualizing a tradition that sought to critique capitalism in moral terms, The Moral Economists should command attention from intellectual historians, historians of capitalism, and anyone interested in thinking outside the terms of economic discourse today."--Guy Ortolano, New York University
"The Moral Economists provides an original and provocative interpretation of the political thought of R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. Rogan gives a close and illuminating reading of key texts by these authors, uncovers forgotten intellectual connections that link them together, and reveals a distinctive lineage of social criticism that deserves to be widely discussed. This is a highly impressive, thought-provoking, and timely work."--Ben Jackson, University of Oxford
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Product details
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Publication date : 26 February 2018
Language : English
Print length : 280 pages
Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
FSV
5.0 out of 5 stars Buen libroReviewed in Spain on 1 July 2020
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Buen libro. Muy interesante.
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jerry kendall
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential to following "the moral economy" debatesReviewed in the United States on 27 October 2018
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Brilliant. Helpful in understanding what each economist was saying, how they complement each other, and perceived limitations of their arguments.
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Arthur John
4.0 out of 5 stars An Insightful BookReviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2019
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The book is undoubtedly an academic book and anyone expecting something other than that will be disappointed. However, I happen to like academic history!
For me, it had a good number of 'gosh' moments. First, the idea that there is something called 'moral economy' which emerges as solidarities within commercial societies is an important one. The author traces this idea through Tawney, Polanyi and Thompson, praising the latter for his 'ground up' use of social data.
Second, the author's suggestion that the solidarities studied by his three chosen authors now seem out of date and provincial (e.g. workers in the potteries) in a world dominated by globalist conceptions of society is fascinating. More could perhaps be made of this, but the take-away point that solidarities arise in capitalism is striking. I wonder - will one perhaps emerge amongst gig economy workers?
One thing that the author might consider is whether neoliberalism is just too sophisticated an individualistic system for solidarities to emerge. That is, whether or not the utilitarians have learnt a thing or two about how to run the show, and whether or not utilitarians have a social technology which really does defeat moral economy.
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Susan Saegert
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting topic disappointing bookReviewed in the United States on 20 October 2018
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The topic sounds more interesting than the book turned out to be. The author got so caught up in the inside game of who said what about whom and what was the pedigree of each. The book spent too little time on the ideas the main economists who seemed the focus of the book.
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Mike D
3.0 out of 5 stars Putting humanity at the centre of a moral economyReviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 September 2018
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This is both a very insightful book and highly frustrating. The insights are about each of the thinkers mentioned and the basis of their critique of capitalism, either a theological or humanist idea of humanity. The conclusion takes off into a different realm of modern authors like Sen. The frustration is that the chapters about Tawney, Polanyi and Thompson have so much contextual detail that it is hard to find the key points. I might have expected a life summary of each of them at the beginning of each Chapter to set the context and then widen the historical account.
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Jeff D. S.
1.0 out of 5 stars Nearly impossible to read
Reviewed in the United States on 20 January 2019
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"The Moral Economists' is a dreadful slog, unnecessarily dense because of its lack of competent editing, as well as the author's apparent reluctance to assert his own ideas or his need to prove that he has read everything ever already written on his subjects and thus avoid claiming some thought as his own.
This is a academic research, not a book to be read for learning about its purported subjects, and certainly not for pleasure. I was eager to find, purchase and read this book after seeing it referred to in an article that included discussion of economics from a perspective other than that which dominates modern capitalist-based (utilitarian) thought.
My criticism as 'academic research' is that the author's intent is painfully obviously to prove to others in his field of research that he has done his research of what has come before him. 'The Moral Economists' is a short book, with four relatively short chapters, but at least two of the chapters have well over 200 chapter notes, which have to be turned to at the back of the book (a terrible convention in academics, requiring the reader to flip back and forth ad search for the note, and then back to the text, etc.). There are paragraphs here in which every sentence has an chapter notation. The problem with this for those of us not obsessed with proven that we're equal to other academics who want/need to prove that they're fully aware of and account for others' work, is that the author of this book (and similar writing) are thus constrained in their content AND in how they write. There is virtually no flow of ideas or thoughts or narrative.
Additionally, I was disappointed and then very annoyed to find that the author has a TERRIBLE habit of squeezing 6 pages of information into 30. He consistently repeats himself, taking at least three consecutive paragraphs to state information or, upon the rare occasion in which he expresses an original thought, make an assertion.
I waded through the first chapter and into the second, having put on my chest-high waders and arming myself with two machetes to carve a path through the muck and jungle. But, there was no let-up. The author may be a good or very good academic. But this book make a very bright shining case for Amazon to create a category of 'Books' that clearly labels academic research.
It's too bad that this subject was not better explored, or - my responsibility - that I didn't find a book that does a better job of introducing and informing on the topic of economics from a perspective that challenged (and maybe still does) assumptions that underlie utilitarian capitalism.
Fortunately, I was within the window for returning the book, losing only the cost of shipping for the experience of reading a couple chapters of 'The Moral Economists'.
5 people found this helpful
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The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism
Tim Rogan
3.60
40 ratings7 reviews
A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lens
What's wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted in utilitarian terms, the critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century is primarily concerned with disparities in income and wealth. It was not always so. The Moral Economists reconstructs another critical tradition, developed across the twentieth century in Britain, in which material deprivation was less important than moral or spiritual desolation.
Tim Rogan focuses on three of the twentieth century's most influential critics of capitalism--R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. Making arguments about the relationships between economics and ethics in modernity, their works commanded wide readerships, shaped research agendas, and influenced public opinion. Rejecting the social philosophy of laissez-faire but fearing authoritarianism, these writers sought out forms of social solidarity closer than individualism admitted but freer than collectivism allowed. They discovered such solidarities while teaching economics, history, and literature to workers in the north of England and elsewhere. They wrote histories of capitalism to make these solidarities articulate. They used makeshift languages of "tradition" and "custom" to describe them until Thompson patented the idea of the "moral economy." Their program began as a way of theorizing everything economics left out, but in challenging utilitarian orthodoxy in economics from the outside, they anticipated the work of later innovators inside economics.
Examining the moral cornerstones of a twentieth-century critique of capitalism, The Moral Economists explains why this critique fell into disuse, and how it might be reformulated for the twenty-first century.
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Bertrand
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June 22, 2020
Rogan offers a fine piece of intellectual history, unearthing the obscure (to me!) genealogy of E.P. Thompson's humanist marxism, traced through Polanyi's substantivism back to Tawney, with roots in guild socialism and an ethical reaction against Fabian utilitarianism.
Despite covering more than sixty years of British economic thought, the book is I think quite accessible: first of all because Rogan restate his analysis every twenty pages, and regularly recapitulate his argument, doing so each time with enough elegance to make this leitmotiv agreeable. Secondly also perhaps because ethical, humanist and substantivist economics were precisely a reaction against the dry formalisation which mainstream economics achieved by actively removing all human interest.
With a cast of supporting characters which range from Mannheim or Michael Polanyi to Amartya Sen, Rogan paints an interesting picture of an intellectual 'third way', which at first does share some features with Catholic social thought, corporatism and thus with fascism, but which comes to integrate Marx's 1844 manuscripts, and throughout retains a British defiance of the state, with a romantic or utopian tinge.
There are some roads which Rogan chose not to take, which I feel would have deserved attention (i.e. Polanyi's influence on anthropology or British marxists more sympathetic to Thompson than Anderson). However the resulting book is of commendably manageable size though very thoroughly researched: on the whole I recommend to anyone doubting that morality is only ever an ornate penis-sheath for naked self-interest, as well as to lovers of quirky dons, adult education and the last vestiges of British romantic leftism.
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Barry Magid
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January 19, 2019
These names are now obscure to most of us, yet in the first half of the 20th century they very well known for their attempts to chart a middle way between utilitarian, laissez faire capitalism and Marxist collectivism. Each in their own way challenged the classical economists model of society as built up of individual maximizers of their own personal wealth. Each looked to English history for models of social solidarity and the collective action. Whereas Margaret Thatcher would famously declare, "There is no such thing as society," these historians asserted (much like Winnicott on babies) that there is no such thing as the individual. Yet they all feared collectivism as it manifested in Stalinism. Seeking a middle way, Tawney, earliest in the century, sought a Christian socialism that balanced collective social welfare reform with affirmation of the "infinite value" of each individual. Thompson argued for a Marxist humanism, foregrounding agency, morality and social responsibility as opposed to the historically deterministic "scientific Marxism" that would be espoused by Althusser. Alas, (for me at least) when Perry Anderson took over The New Left Review, Althusser was promoted as representative of the new progressive Continental philosophy and Thompson derided as parochially English. Rogan, however, sees a revival of these moral economists' approach in the work of Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen , who insists that we choose not simply as rational maximizers of personal gain, but also in order "to become person A in social state x rather than person B in social state y." in other words, our choices involve value judgments (not just calculations) about what kind of person we want to be in what kind of world. Rogan cites Kenneth Arrow's Impossibility theory as showing how we cannot rationally go in a linear way from individual preference to social choice.
Neither the free market nor the ballot box can produce a rational ordering of preferences. ( Suppose Bob prefers A to B and B to C. Jane prefers B to C and C to A. Mary prefers C to A and A to B. The majority prefers A to B and B to C -which would logically imply A is preferred to C. Yet in fact the majority prefers C to A. Head scratching ensues. )
Sen is going against the tide of the prevailing attempt to make economics an mathematically predictive science, returning us to the questions these three raised about what kind of world we want to live in.
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Andrew Figueiredo
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August 30, 2022
"The Moral Economists" resurrects the thinking of three (plus a few others to a lesser degree) left-wing economists who criticized capitalism on moral grounds. This book focuses on figures who believed that "economics and ethics had to be reconciled immediately", even as economics became more complex, mathematical, and utilitarian (133). Throughout, he traces a mainly British (other countries like Italy had their own moral anti-capitalisms) moral critique of capitalism from Tawney to Polanyi to EP Thompson, three men of the left who spurned both capitalism and collectivism. In their search for a third way, they all rejected reductive and utilitarian approaches to economics, approaches which ignore the unique value of people as such. Each of them looked towards "certain solidarities [that] loomed unarticulated under capitalism" (198) and provided a glimpse of what that third way might look like. By nature, these solidarities were particular as opposed to universal, which made it more challenging to adequately describe them.
Rogan's argument is complex at times and the book addresses an academic audience. There were tons of names, movements, and theorists referenced that were not explained, with Rogan assuming readers knew who he was referencing. This makes it a more challenging read than its manageable length first suggested. For that reason though, Rogan also provides many directions for future reading and research, which I do appreciate.
Rogan begins by analyzing approaches to late 19th century economic issues such as guild socialism and pluralism, both of which had some influences on these economists. Tawney's vision was primarily based on a theological view of human dignity. Thus, he rejected individualism as stemming from the reformation and causing religion to fall away, leaving cold capitalist analyses. Tawney saw different solidarities still alive and looked to tradition as a way to push back against utilitarianism. Polanyi further developed the moral critique, looking to Marx's ideas on the human person at first (each person contains unity as opposed to alienation from unjust systems imposed on them) and then Smith's instead of religious ones. Rogan argues that Polanyi more ably connected tradition with future directions, explaining how Polanyi arrived at notions of a "double movement", which is still useful today. Polanyi placed the point of error a little later, into the 19th century. One of his important contributions was unearthing the moral points made by Adam Smith and pointing out that economics could be redeemed from within. Polanyi explains why certain forms of solidarity survive amidst the encroachment of utilitarian market-first ideology.
Following the section on Polanyi, Rogan discusses attempts to transcend capitalism in the post-war era. Although it took me a second to figure out how the book flowed in this direction, he does pull it together towards the end of this chapter. The author summarizes disagreements between Mannheim and TS Eliot over the approach to be taken towards tacit norms and traditions, including those solidarities unearthed by Tawney and Polanyi. Following this, EP Thompson is the next major figure analyzed. Thompson was probably the most left-wing of the bunch, having been an outright Communist, and found new ways to describe surviving solidarities (134). Thompson believed that capitalism could co-exist with developing socialism, which was often to be found in pre-existing relationships of cooperation and solidarity. This is a somewhat hopeful take because it provides a starting point. Thompson's histories of the working class in England dove headfirst into oft-forgotten movements because Thompson saw them as examples of longstanding solidaristic traditions, ones that survived in coalfields and factories.
Despite its cogency, this moral critique lost its momentum as the 1960s and postmodern thought brought about a time of questioning truth claims or arguments appealing to a moral consensus (173). Humanism and metaphysics were both undermined in that time. I found Rogan's explanation of this idea's decline to be highly persuasive. My main issue with his argument here is that Rogan fails to explain why we can't rely on religious terms like Tawney did in his critique; Rogan brushes the religious angle away somewhat but a framework that has a metaphysical vision of the human gives the moral critique of capitalism a much stronger base than other subsequent attempts have. Sure, secularism makes things harder, but the other forms of humanism fall short.
Finally, Rogan ends by mentioning EF Schumacher and later Social Choice theory. He claims that Schumacher ended up with "intellectual confusion" by trying to blend too much together. On the other hand, social choice theory foregrounded some of the dynamics missing from individualistic economics, a hopeful sign. Social choice theory dealt in particular with collective action problems, seeking to describe why peoples' individual preferences might not determine the group preference. There had to be something else at work besides 'rational' self-interest. Amartya Sen developed this argument further, "making political economy sensitive to ... sentiments and solidarities" (195) and allowing values to once again enter the arena of political economy.
That said, the modern/future section could have used more discussion on Sen's notions of human flourishing. As a whole, newer figures seen as continuing this tradition today don't receive much detail. Instead of simply saying that Schumacher failed in his attempts to bring together various religious traditions to criticize capitalism, perhaps an examination of the growing environmental-moral critique of capitalism espoused by people like Bill McKibben and Kate Raworth would be worthwhile.
I personally enjoyed this book because I find that the most trenchant criticisms of capitalism are morally-based. As a Catholic who follows CST, cold economism doesn't speak to me. Perhaps the decline of the moral critique and the rise of utilitarian economics helps explain the left's predicament today. There's something to be said about the fact that each of the socialist thinkers identified in the book was a conservative in "a certain sense" (131). The left at its best takes seriously arguments about tradition and community, arguments that each of the thinkers Rogan discusses put forth.
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November 16, 2018
A thoughtful - even inspiring - look at the work of Tawny, Polanyi, and Thompson and, to a lesser extent, William Arrow and Amartya Sen. (I would note as well that the brief discussion of Perry Anderson's clash with E.P. Thompson was extremely helpful to me in understanding how the understanding of 'moral economy' was re-contextualized after Fanon, Althusser, etc.) In these days when 'the market' is worshipped as something so divine that governments (and the people whom they represent) must always be barred from the Holy of Holies so that the Invisible Hand can perform its near-sacred work, Rogan and the economists he considers do much to remind us that to view humans primarily, if not solely, as 'economic actors' is a barren and heartless abstraction. 'But the moral economists were not wrong to believe that political economy in a certain iteration had reconstructed human persons "solely as beings who desire to possess wealth," an outcome achieved (in the words of the young J.S.Mill) by the "entire abstraction of every other human passion or motive."' (Rogan, page 4).
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Tara Brabazon
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March 18, 2024
A solid and well written book that explores the writers who offer a wider critique of capitalism beyond the stark and horrific issue of inequality. What are the moral concerns with capitalism? Carrying this question through Tawney, Polanyi and Thompson, alternative histories and trajectories are offered. The considered engagement between nationalism and internationalism is welcome.
It is also bloody magnificent to see and read intricate and delicate explanatory footnotes.
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July 18, 2024
A model work of intellectual history--unbloated, sympathetic, relevant. Not for the uninitiated, unfortunately. It really is an academic book. But it's a worthy one.
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Cameron
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December 21, 2023
The story it tells was interesting and I found the writing very enjoyable.
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