R. H. Tawney

R. H. Tawney was an economic historian at the London School of Economics, a Christian socialist, a sergeant wounded on the Somme who refused a commission, and the moral conscience of the British Labour movement for half a century. The Acquisitive Society of 1920 argued that an economy organised around rights without functions is unjust and unstable, and proposed one in which industry is a profession; Religion and the Rise of Capitalism answered Weber; Equality made the case that fraternity requires it. He taught in the Workers’ Educational Association, refused a peerage, and was buried in Highgate.