ABSTRACT
R. H. Tawney's early political thought was a profound critique of the Webbs' ideas and of the Fabian tradition in British socialist thought. The Webbs could take exception to none of these points, but Tawney still believed that their institutional socialism was an inadequate and insufficient challenge to the assumptions which underlay capitalism. Political organizations alone, without an intellectual base in the popular ideas which inform political behaviour, could not effect significant social change. The political implications which followed were far less clear to Tawney than to Sidney Webb. The primary point of departure for his pre-war thought was, as in the case of the Webbs, the 'labour unrest'. Tawney gave evidence to the Poor Law Commission in which he advanced his interpretation of the relationship between adolescent labour and chronic unemployment. The primary ideological basis for Tawney's political theory was his belief in equality.
