page_title: Liberal socialism
section_title: Ethical socialism
hierarchical_section_title: Liberal socialism / History / Britain / Ethical socialism
caption_attribution_description: Richard Henry Tawney Professor of Economic History Extracts from ‘Portraits from the past: Richard Henry Tawney 1881-1962,’ by Richard M. Titmuss in LSE Magazine, November 1971, No42, p.6 'The School was only a part of Tawney’s life as a writer and as a teacher. Despite all the legends of ‘the Squire of Houghton Street’ which accumulated between 1920 and 1949 he was not content to be the conventional academic in universities where many (as he once wrote) ‘make a darkness and call it research, while shrinking from the light of general ideas.’ After leaving Oxford with a Second in Greats (he wrote too slowly for exams; ‘I’m on the floor chewing the doormat’) he found many ways of linking life and learning; to him this was the meaning of education. He found some of these links at Toynbee Hall, as Secretary of the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, learning ‘shovehalfpenny’ at a Workman’s Club, studying poverty at the School on a grant from the Ratan Tata Foundation (which helped to bring into being the Social Administration Department in 1912-3), attending meetings at the ward level of his local Labour Party, consorting with miners and lecturing mine-owners as a member of the Royal Commission on the Coal Mines, serving on the Cotton Trade Conciliation Committee and the Education Committee of the London County Council, and above all, in his work for the W.E.A. which stretched over half a century. Tawney once told me that the fellowship of the W.E.A. has meant more to him than his connections with Labour Party, the School and the Church… He was appointed as a teacher at the School in 1920… and when appointed Professor in 1931 he was given the title but not the salary as part of his time was left free for activities outside the school… ‘Three things,’ he said, ‘have caused me to love the LSE.’ One was the intellectual dynamism. A second was its informal, egalitarian school atmosphere. The last was its sense, derived from Sidney Webb and many others, that the purpose of learning is ultimately to make a juster society –‘the School exists not for itself but for the public.’ Though he retired from the School in 1950 he went on teaching. More than ever it was accompanied by his beloved Coltsfoot tobacco, a mosaic of pipe-ash on the carpet, and much talk about how to reconcile and sustain visionary power and practical action, personal conduct and involvement in social reform.’… IMAGELIBRARY/1105 Persistent URL: archives.lse.ac.uk/dserve.exe?dsqServer=lib-4.lse.ac.uk&amp;a...
context_page_description: Liberal socialism is a political philosophy that incorporates liberal principles to socialism. Liberal socialism has been compared to post-war social democracy as it supports a mixed economy that includes both private property and social ownership in capital goods. While social democracy is anti-capitalist insofar as criticism of capitalism is linked to the private ownership of the means of production, liberal socialism identifies artificial and legalistic monopolies to be the fault of capitalism and opposes an entirely unregulated market economy. It considers both liberty and equality to be compatible and mutually dependent on each other. Liberal socialism is a type of socialism that has been most prominent in the post-war period. For Ian Adams, post-war social democracy and socialist New Labour are examples of liberal socialism, in contrast to classical socialism. However, those two forms of liberal socialism are based on two different economic theories, namely Keynesianism and supply side, respectively. According to Christopher Pierson, "actually existing liberal democracy is, in substantial part, a product of socialist forces".
context_section_description: Liberal socialism has exercised influence in British politics, especially in the variant known as ethical socialism. A key component of ethical socialism is in its emphasis on moral and ethical critiques of capitalism and building a case for socialism on moral or spiritual grounds as opposed to rationalist and materialist grounds. Ethical socialists advocated a mixed economy that involves an acceptance of a role of both public enterprise as well as socially responsible private enterprise. Ethical socialism was founded by Christian socialist R. H. Tawney and its ideals were also connected to Fabian and guild-socialist values.
  It emphasises the need for a morally conscious economy based upon the principles of service, cooperation and social justice while opposing possessive individualism. Ethical socialism is distinct in its focus on criticism of the ethics of capitalism and not merely criticism of material issues of capitalism. Tawney denounced the self-seeking amoral and immoral behaviour that he claimed is supported by capitalism. He opposed what he called the "acquisitive society" that causes private property to be used to transfer surplus profit to "functionless owners"—capitalist rentiers. However, Tawney did not denounce managers as a whole, believing that management and employees could join together in a political alliance for reform. He supported the pooling of surplus profit through means of progressive taxation to redistribute these funds to provide social welfare, including public health care, public education and public housing.
  Tawney advocated nationalisation of strategic industries and services. He also advocated worker participation in the business of management in the economy as well as consumer, employee, employer and state cooperation in the economy. Though he supported a substantial role for public enterprise in the economy, Tawney stated that where private enterprise provided a service that was commensurate with its rewards that was functioning private property, then a business could be usefully and legitimately be left in private hands. Ethical socialist Thomas Hill Green supported the right of equal opportunity for all individuals to be able freely appropriate property, but he claimed that acquisition of wealth did not imply that an individual could do whatever they wanted to once that wealth was in their possession. Green opposed "property rights of the few" that were preventing the ownership of property by the many.
  Ethical socialism is an important ideology of the British Labour Party. Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee supported the ideology, which played a large role in his party's policies during the postwar 1940s. Half a century after Attlee's tenure, Tony Blair, another Labour Prime Minister, also described himself as an adherent of ethical socialism, which for him embodies the values of "social justice, the equal worth of each citizen, equality of opportunity, community". Influenced by Attlee and John Macmurray (who himself was influenced by Green), Blair has defined the ideology in similar terms as earlier adherents—with an  emphasis on the common good, rights and responsibilities as well as support of an organic society in which individuals flourish through cooperation. Blair argued that Labour ran into problems in the 1960s and 1970s when it abandoned ethical socialism and that its recovery required a return to the values promoted by the Attlee government. However, Blair's critics (both inside and outside Labour) have accused him of completely abandoning socialism in favour of capitalism.
caption: R. H. Tawney, founder of ethical socialism
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