3 Quotes & Sayings By Rh Tawney

R.H. Tawney was an English historian and socialist statesman, who with Sidney and Beatrice Webb formed the Fabian Society in 1884. He later became a leading figure in British Socialism (he once called himself a Socialist of the old school), and was known as "the prophet of the New Jerusalem". He is best remembered for his book Equality: A Study in Social History (1922) Read more

Tawney was born in Sheffield and lived there until he was six, when his family moved to Nottinghamshire. After attending Nottingham High School and Lincoln College, Oxford, he became a teacher at King Edward's School, Birmingham.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows.
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Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows. R.H. Tawney
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So the organisation of society on the basis of functions, instead of on the basis of rights, implies three things. It means, first, that proprietary rights shall be maintained when they are accompanied by the performance of service and abolished when they are not. It means, second, that the producers shall stand in a direct relation to the community for whom production is carried on, so that their responsibility to it may be obvious and unmistakable, not lost, as at present, through their immediate subordination to shareholders whose interest is not service but gain. It means, in the third place, that the obligation for the maintenance of the service shall rest upon the professional organisations of those who perform it, and that, subject to the supervision and criticism of the consumer, those organisations shall exercise so much voice in the government of industry as may be needed to secure that the obligation is discharged. . R.H. Tawney