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The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism
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.
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.
280 pages, Paperback
Published March 19, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 21, 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.
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.
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.
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.
August 29, 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.
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 15, 2018A 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).
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.
It is also bloody magnificent to see and read intricate and delicate explanatory footnotes.
July 17, 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.
December 21, 2023
The story it tells was interesting and I found the writing very enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews