We have recently read R. H. Tawney's, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. (London: John Murray, 1923). Being published in the period historian, Richard Overy has called the Twilight Years [The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009)]), Tawney's work is significant in that it cannot help but reflect the radical, revolutionary changes taking place in the intellectual and spiritual history of Britain and the West at that time. (For a summary and interaction with Overy's Twilight Years, readers can refer to a series of eight pieces, published in Contra Celsum in early 2010, the first of which can be found here.)
Tawney was both a professing Christian and an ardent socialist. In these days, when socialism has become thoroughly secular, racked with the deadly sins of avarice, envy, and covetousness, "Christian socialism" ranks amongst the seven most infamous oxymorons of the modern world, along with "Christian capitalism".
But there it was. Tawney is not insignificant. He has been rated (by Marxist orientated historian, Christopher Hill) as amongst the greatest English historians of the previous century's first half.
Alasdair MacIntyre gives us a picture of what Tawney represented to those Twilight Years.
The present collection of essays written at various dates between 1914 and 1953 reiterates themes from all Tawney’s major work. In The Acquisitive Society he criticized capitalism because it encouraged economic power without social responsibility. The right to property had become separated from any obligation to discharge a useful social function. In Equality he attacked the view that the natural inequality of man in respect of ability justified inequalities of wealth and status; rather, so he argued, it would be in an egalitarian society that diversity of abilities would flourish most for the common good. In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism he studied the origins of acquisitive individualism. . . .One of the great ironies of the modern secular age is the emergence of the thesis that Christian people should stand for socialism. Tawneys' arguments and propositions, summarised above, explain how this came to be. Capitalism, he thought, was an idolatry, pure and simple. It exploited and used people. It had no ethics apart from profit. Therefore, he believed, there was an implacable and perpetual war between the Church and capitalism.
The heart of the matter for Tawney is the moral deficiency of capitalism. “The revolt of ordinary men against Capitalism has had its source neither in its obvious deficiencies as an economic engine, nor in the conviction that it represents a stage in social evolution now outgrown, but in the straight-forward hatred of a system which stunts personality and corrupts human relations by permitting the use of man by man as an instrument of pecuniary gain.” “It is this demon—the idolatry of money and success—with whom, not in one sphere alone but in all, including our own hearts and minds, Socialists have to grapple.” Sentences like these from the present book are scattered throughout Tawney’s writings. One need not be a cynic nor an immoralist to find so much cliché-ridden high-mindedness suspect.
Compromise is as impossible between the Church of Christ and the idolatry of wealth, which is the practical religion of capitalist societies, as it was between the Church and the State idolatry of the Roman Empire. (R. H. Tawney, Capitalism, op cit., p. 286.)Consequently, Tawney argued for an egalitarian society, created, enforced, ruled, regulated, moderated, and perpetuated by the state. Whilst acknowledging that in former times the Church fulfilled many functions constraining greed and acquisitiveness, the rise of the secular society dismissed that possibility for the modern world. The secular state alone survived, meaning that it alone could bring human covetousness to heel. Tawney was a powerful influence upon the established Anglican Church in England, which, to this day, remains profoundly infiltrated by socialist ideals and dogmas (which, thankfully, the evangelical "wing" appears to be expunging within its own spheres of purview).
But, as always is the case with "Christian socialism", Tawney overlooked the obvious flaw. Covetousness and envy is not the preserve of a class nor race. It is native to the sinful heart of all human beings. The state is nothing more than the machinery of some human beings exercising rule over others. The unchecked depravity of socialist rulers' hearts is every bit as subborned to the idolatry of wealth as any other human heart. Hence, we have been treated ad nauseum to the spectacle of grandiose socialist rulers grinding down their subjects into an egalitarian poverty, whilst they employ the tyranny and corruption of political power to amass vast fortunes, along with opulent dachas on the shores of the Black Sea, for themselves and their coterie. Think Jezebel and Ahab, Stalin and Kruschev.
Wherever socialism has reigned, covetousness, envy, acquisitiveness, and corruption has flowered spectacularly. It has had at least one unintended consequence. "Christian socialism" has become as absurd a concept as "Christian capitalism". There is only one Redeemer of the human race, and He does not share His glory with another. The Christian faith calls for both redeemed and unredeemed to live by God's law: not to steal, not to lie, not to cheat, not to deceive, but to keep obligations, contracts, agreements, and covenants. The Lord of the Church requires that the Church be subject to precisely the same obligations. Along with the State. And civil society. And families, both nuclear and extended. And business enterprises in which owners and managers and employees all labour.
Within that moral and ethical framework, the acquisition of sustenance and capital by free men--without theft, lying, cheating, etc--is holy, just, and good. But such things can only come into existence and be maintained by the redeeming work of Christ within heart, soul, mind, as well as household, and community. In this light, the concepts "Christian socialism" or "Christian capitalism" become ideologies which both baptize and facilitate human idolatry and depravity in their own way. They help produce a barren and weary land, devoid of both water and life.
Even so, maranatha--come quickly--Lord Jesus, lest we perish in the way.
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