>>2813498>>2815854Next, we can move into Tawney, who in his Acquisitive Society, criticises the constitution of private property:
<The industrial problem, in fact, is a problem of righthttps://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmTawney speaks upon the radical changes following the late 17th century in England:
<The difference between the England of Shakespeare, still visited by the ghosts of the Middle Ages, and the England which merged in 1700 from the fierce polemics of the last two generations, was a difference of social and political theory even more than of constitutional and political arrangements. Not only the facts, but the minds which appraised them, were profoundly modified. The essence of the change was the disappearance of the idea that social institutions and economic activities were related to common ends, which gave them their significance and which served as their criterion. In the eighteenth century both the State and the Church had abdicated that part of the sphere which had consisted in the maintenance of a common body of social ethics; what was left of it was repression of a class, not the discipline of a nation.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmHere, he clearly applies a romantic view; that before the rise of capitalist relations, there was something "more" underlying the bonds of society, rather than pure profit. This is only presuming "society" and "Nation" to be reliable abstractions, of course. The Nationalists of the French Revolution had to convert the French peasantry to a common language, so the Nation is not an object, it is a subject, which has its particular class character. Indeed, the idea of national sovereignty or independence was strange, before the Protestant Reformation, since all kings were supposed to be regulated by the Pope. Indeed, the Pope was a mediator in the disputes over Magna Carta (1215), and Boniface declared the political supremacy of the Church over all states in "Unam Sanctam" (1302). The Church was above state, so this talk of "nation" by Tawney is a phantom, obscuring class interests, unless specified. Tawney continues:
<Philanthropy abounded; but religion, once the greatest social force, had become a thing as private and individual as the estate of the squire or the working clothes of the laborer. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmThe privacy of religion is attested to, such as George Fox (1624-91) who in the revolutionary period, invented Quakerism, which is the ultimate individualist and revealed religion, which has had its part in various liberal movements ever since (such as being a leading force in abolitionism; surpassing the puritans before them, such as in Milton - the later poet, Blake, was a Quaker). Fox was a Puritan originally, himself, so we can see this as an "internal" development of the original revolutionary spirit, unleashed by Luther (1517). Here, Tawney again holds to the false abstraction of "institution" (e.g. the Catholic "corporation", or integral body). What the protestants liberate is the individual, and the individual is seen to constitute the basis of social relations. So, this bourgeois movement is not anti-social, it is pro-social, in determining the very substance of society. If the quaker thus contends to an absolutely individualist revelation, yet still outpours compassion, what is the error in this? Tawney continues in speaking of sacred bonds of obligation and so on, but we already perceive the cynicism of prayer and ritual, in both Homer and Plato, as an appeasement and reciprocal exchange. In Pseudo-Aristotle (320 BCE), we see the raising of children rationalised as a long-term investment by parents for their future security, and so the family is in turn already "abolished" in accounting for its essence, as an economic mechanism. The bonds of child to parent are also fiercely competitive, where like today, the ancients would kill their unborn children, and children would kill their parents, like Oedipus. By the words of Euthyphro, Zeus betrayed his own father, yet is glorified for it. We see the voluntarism of these bonds in Homer's Iliad, where Agamemnon recounts the betrayal of his mother against his father, leading to Agamemnon's betrayal, and the father's curse put upon him, which disallows him from bearing sons; and so Agamemnon pleads with Achilles to let him adopt him as his own son (Achilles was obviously a grown man at this point). All marriages and families are inherently dysfunctional, and nothing new can be done, under the sun. We see this very plainly in the Book of Genesis, that the first murder was not between strangers, but brothers. It is also the philosophical perspective that the greatest love is not between family, but friends, which are voluntary relationships. I like to say of my own family, that they may love me, but they do not like me, and this matters, since in the former, there is the burden of obligation, but in the latter, there is the joy of fellowship. The conservative attitude is to take obligatory relationships for granted, but we see in the Enlightenment, such as in Kant, that a traditional honour of "duty" was justified, only insofar as one had moral imperative to its order, and not to the call of duty itself (e.g. as prescribed). Socrates in his theory of social contract (t. Crito) thus remains a conservative, since he regards reciprocity in the State (as compared to child and parent) necessary, and thus, one is commanded by honour to loyalty in the State (it should be noted that Plato as a Statist, also thought that a "noble lie" was necessary to bind the public into a common morality - and so, he exposes the tenuous and artificial contraction of society within its very justification). The larger complaint of Tawney is in this context, that when "society" is mediated by formally selfish actors, you lose the social essence, but I would claim contrarywise, that you simply reveal the social essence. Thatcher, following Rothbard, exclaimed that there is "no such thing as society", which is part of this general idea. The vulgar plea of a return to "society" is reactionary hogwash (whether anticapitalist or not), which ignores Marx's own critical insights (indeed, Marx identified Christian Socialism as distorting of real criticism). The other side of the social abstraction is the racial essentialism of the fascist milieu, in the illusions that race, before class, structures society, and that the social essence thereof is racial in character (such as we see in The Old Testament, which affirms the idea of a racial or collective soul, and so the whole is presumed to exist before its parts are constructed). Both are conservative, in that they regard "society" as primary to the internal relations which make up its parts. Aristotle says that the oikos precedes the polis, yet sees how individuals are proceeded from political existence. I would criticise Aristotle in this estimation, in that there have always been outcastes, and thus, those whose individuality is defined by their ejection from the polis; Nietzsche calls these men "philosophers", but the prehistoric regarded them as shamans. So, is individuality invented or discovered? That is the question. Tawney describes liberal society:
<The result of such ideas in the world of practice was a society which was ruled by law, not by the caprice of Governments, but which recognized no moral limitation on the pursuit by individuals of their economic self-interest.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmHere of course, all law is flattened as property law, with man himself considered his own self-owned property. This has its ancient constitution, as in Cicero (44 BCE):
<For the chief purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Officiis/2B*.htmlAnd so, all rights are property rights, as it has been discoursed upon, since ancient times. Tawney's befuddlement upon historical particularity takes away the universal character of this human reason;
<The first famous exponent of this philosophy was Locke, in whom the dominant conception is the indefeasibility of private rights, not the pre-ordained harmony between private rights and public welfare.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmBut as we see, Cicero held the same position, and even before Locke was Hobbes, who similarly regarded society as a voluntary union of individuals. Tawney develops his criticism of property relations by the hypocrisy of the marketplace, which is sound:
<They thought it a monstrous injustice that the citizen should pay one-tenth of his income in taxation to an idle Government, but quite reasonable that he should pay one-fifth of it in rent to an idle landlord.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmWe see something similar in the US versus the UK, where private healthcare is not just more exclusive, it is also more expensive, and so the cost of "freedom" is really the cost of unfreedom. Liberty then, must be given against all idleness and irresponsibility, public or private. Tawney continues his rightful criticism of the liberals in regard to the inequality prescribed in their property, and it mirrors what Marx writes, that capitalism is not the affirmation of private property, but its erasure. Tawney elaborates on the formal structure of the politics:
<What it implies is, that the foundation of society is found, not in functions, but in rights; that rights are not deducible from the discharge of functions […] the struggle between humanitarian sentiment and the theory of property […] against the possibility that their private rights may be subordinated to the public interesthttps://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmHere, his concern is once more, the abandonment of common good, or utility. Indeed, as the division of labour increases, production becomes more useless, and exclusive to the purchase of luxuries. What he should stress however, is that this public interest is itself only justified upon the rights of property, elsewise it is a nebulous slogan; the "public good" in that case only has the same meaning as "national wealth", which is measured according to class. Tawney elaborates:
<property is not an absolute right, but that it may properly be accompanied by special obligations, a doctrine which, if carried to its logical conclusion, would destroy its sanctity by making ownership no longer absolute but conditional.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmBut again, what are these obligations? Concretely, they are a redistribution of wealth. And so, right is measured in this case by the relative inequality of wealth; if wealth is too unequal, it forfeits its right of possession, and so we introduce quantity. Indeed, Tawney discusses this in the context of taxation, which is a quantity - so how much ought people be taxed? That is a question of right, not merely an appeal to traditional social bonds or a mystical racial loyalty. Tawney continues:
<The enjoyment of property and the direction of industry are considered, in short, to require no social justification, because they are regarded as rights which stand by their own virtue, not functions to be judged by the success with which they contribute to a social purpose.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmThis is not quite true; the capitalist has always regarded himself as a martyr who by his abstinance, expands the capacity of production, and so increases the wealth of society. The capitalist sees himself as an altruist, and this is what justifies his property. Tawney then gives a dichotomy between a Functional Society and the Acquisitive Society:
<A society which aimed at making the acquisition of wealth contingent upon the discharge of social obligations […] might be called a Functional Society […] to make happiness the object of society is to resolve society itself into the ambitions of numberless individuals […] Such societies may be called Acquisitive Societies, because their whole tendency and interest and preoccupation is to promote the acquisition of wealth.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmWe may then regard these as collectivist and individualist, respectively. Tawney continues his description of the Functional Society:
<It is foolish to maintain property rights for which no service is performed, for payment without service is waste; […] [the Functional Society] would aim at abolishing those forms of property in which ownership is divorced from obligations.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmTawney also gives this socialist insight:
<it would seek to encourage those forms of economic organization under which the worker, whether owner or not, is free to carry on his work without sharing its control or its profits with the mere rentier. Thus, if in certain spheres it involved an extension of public ownership, it would in others foster an extension of private property. For it is not private ownership, but private ownership divorced from work, which is corrupting to the principle of industry […] Provided that the State retains its eminent domain, and controls alienation, as it does under the Homestead laws of the Dominions, with sufficient stringency to prevent the creation of a class of functionless property-owners, there is no inconsistency between encouraging simultaneously a multiplication of peasant farmers and small masters who own their own farms or shops, and the abolition of private ownership in those industries, unfortunately to-day the most conspicuous, in which the private owner is an absentee shareholder.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmAs I have previously expressed it, the issue in so much of political thought is the problem of land, even to free market theorists, such as Von Thünen and Gossen, of whom, Gossen suggests the government leaseholding of land, and its conditional borrowing by enterprise. Such is the same in what Tawney suggests; that it is the unproductive, absentee and rentier character of the property owner which leads to corruption, such as his earlier notion upon the state versus the landlord. Here then, Tawney offers positive solution. Tawney thus resolves that the issue with private property can only be its functionlessness. He thus affirms property likewise:
<if by "Property" is meant the personal possessions which the word suggests to nine-tenths of the population, the object of socialists is not to undermine property but to protect and increase it.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33741/33741-h/33741-h.htmThus, Tawney undertakes the Marxian insight, that capitalism erases property, while the socialist must affirm property, by expropriating the expropriators.
So then, we can see that Tawney's idea of Socialism is the supplication of the Acquisitive Society for the Functional Society, by the condition that property is held for the sake of social utility rather than uselessly given.