Volume 2, Number 12 · July 30, 1964
The Socialism of R. H. Tawney
By Alasdair MacIntyre
The Radical Tradition
by R.H. Tawney, edited by Rita Hinden
Pantheon, 214 pp., $4.95
The deaths of R. H. Tawney and Hugh Gaitskell occurred so close together that they provide an apt symbol for the end of a period in the history of the British Labour Movement. It was a period in which the Right wing of the Labour Party was hard put to it to provide a rationale for its policies, which would both justify its opposition to Marxism and yet enable it to escape from the platitudes of merely Liberal good will. The number of those who might have provided such a rationale were surprisingly few. The Webbs defected to Stalinism from the Fabian Society (consistent elitists who believed throughout their career in socialism imposed from above, they merely changed in their choice of elite); John Strachey only defected to the Fabian Society from Stalinism at the end of the Thirties; and G.D.H. Cole was always too much of a Marxist to work within the limitations that the Labour Right imposed upon itself. Tawney therefore stood almost alone.
Review, 1594 words
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