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Tawney on the Working Classes
Feb. 28th, 2017 08:17 pmHow things have not changed:
R.H. Tawney, writing of the English working class in 1929 (in Equality):
"They still often accept quite tamely an organization of industry under which half a dozen gentlemen, who are not always conspicuously wiser than their neighbours, determine the conditions of life and work for several thousand families, and an organization of finance which enables a handful of bankers to raise and lower the economic temperature of a whole community, and an organization of justice which makes it difficult, as Sir Edward Parry has shown, for a poor man to face the cost of obtaining it, and an organization of education which still makes higher education inaccessible to the great majority of working-class children…"
There have been some few adjustments in the U.K. since 1929, but looking instead at the United States as it is today, this seems like a fair description, not only of where things stand, but of the direction in which things are going.
R.H. Tawney, writing of the English working class in 1929 (in Equality):
"They still often accept quite tamely an organization of industry under which half a dozen gentlemen, who are not always conspicuously wiser than their neighbours, determine the conditions of life and work for several thousand families, and an organization of finance which enables a handful of bankers to raise and lower the economic temperature of a whole community, and an organization of justice which makes it difficult, as Sir Edward Parry has shown, for a poor man to face the cost of obtaining it, and an organization of education which still makes higher education inaccessible to the great majority of working-class children…"
There have been some few adjustments in the U.K. since 1929, but looking instead at the United States as it is today, this seems like a fair description, not only of where things stand, but of the direction in which things are going.
