About 10 years ago I wrote the blog post below but didn't publish it, just held onto it as an idea I never used. Here it is –
The Acquisitive Society
I am not a socialist. I “did” socialism decades ago, but never subscribed to any political label. However, a few weeks ago I wandered into a charity shop and came out with a rather battered old copy of R H Tawney’s “The Acquisitive Society.” A quick browse showed it to be pleasantly fluent and it only cost me £1.50.
The book was published in 1920, shortly after the end of the First World War, amid a widespread feeling that there had to be a better future and that future had to be open to all, not just the elite and the middle classes. So I’ll read it and write a number of posts as I go.
The basic idea is to explore influences, how we reach conclusions and what it says about our preconceptions. How we might even change our minds if we risk delving into what has become mildly unfamiliar territory from an age where perhaps moral principles were less overtly political than they are today.
Most generations, it might be said, walk in a path which they neither make, nor discover, but accept; the main thing is that they should march.
R H Tawney – The Acquisitive Society (1920)
I don’t know how many posts this will amount to. If I sling the book in the charity bag, then not many, but at least I’ll explain why.
I am not a socialist. I “did” socialism decades ago, but never subscribed to any political label. However, a few weeks ago I wandered into a charity shop and came out with a rather battered old copy of R H Tawney’s “The Acquisitive Society.” A quick browse showed it to be pleasantly fluent and it only cost me £1.50.
The book was published in 1920, shortly after the end of the First World War, amid a widespread feeling that there had to be a better future and that future had to be open to all, not just the elite and the middle classes. So I’ll read it and write a number of posts as I go.
The basic idea is to explore influences, how we reach conclusions and what it says about our preconceptions. How we might even change our minds if we risk delving into what has become mildly unfamiliar territory from an age where perhaps moral principles were less overtly political than they are today.
Most generations, it might be said, walk in a path which they neither make, nor discover, but accept; the main thing is that they should march.
R H Tawney – The Acquisitive Society (1920)
I don’t know how many posts this will amount to. If I sling the book in the charity bag, then not many, but at least I’ll explain why.
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Ironically, ten years ago I did sling the book into the charity bag after a chapter or so. Not worth the effort I decided at the time. Why post now though? Because we move on and the lesson of Tawney’s book still stands - influential academic meddlers often do more harm than the social and economic world they disparage. It's yet another lesson about the corrupting nature of manipulative political idealism.
To learn from the past there has to be something of lasting value, something which still applies today, at least as a contrast between then and now. From what little I read of it, R H Tawney’s book has that, but it isn’t the message he thought we should listen to.
To learn from the past there has to be something of lasting value, something which still applies today, at least as a contrast between then and now. From what little I read of it, R H Tawney’s book has that, but it isn’t the message he thought we should listen to.
4 comments:
I bet you know more about fly fishing now, than you did then...
I can't remember where I read it, but someone said that revolutions and social movements are not started by great and original thinkers, but by later second-rate followers of those thinkers. I've always thought of Tawney as being in that league, although I can't remember anything he wrote. He has an air of tweedy pipe-smoking tortoiseshell-bespectacled dullness that I can't be bothered to verify or disprove.
Scrobs - I know about the really big wellies.
Sam - "He has an air of tweedy pipe-smoking tortoiseshell-bespectacled dullness that I can't be bothered to verify or disprove."
That was my impression and reaction from his book. His Wikipedia entry creates the same effect. He seems to have been meticulously dull and tenaciously misguided.
You could simplify a lot of political ideology into two contrasting themes:
"This time it will be different" vs "This time it will stay the same".
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