Superare il conflitto. Il socialismo di Richard H. Tawney e la crisi tra le due guerre mondiali

Richard H. Tawney is one of the most consecrated figures in the history of British socialism. He defined his mature political thought over the years between the two world wars. This article investigates the steps that led Tawney from the mystical radicalism of the Commomplace Book (1912-14) to the more conventional vision of socialism in the years of the foundation of the Welfare State. The thread that links the analysis of this path is the idea that Tawney never deviated from a vision of socialism as a recomposition of the society, which does not pass through the class struggle in the Marxist sense. In the hard years around the First World War, the moral critique of Tawney against injustices produced by capitalism was very bitter and its pluralistic vision assumed positions close to gildism. Later, he got closer to the Fabian reformism, although maintaining an intransigent moral attitude within the Labour movement. Anyway, in both phases Tawney remained faithful to an organicistic idea of society, focused on the key concept of fellowship.