"Focused on three British thinkers, Rogan begins with the Christian socialist R.H. Tawney in the early 1900s, particularly his book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and ends in the late twentieth century with the New Left historian E.P. Thompson and his celebrated tome, The Making of the English Working Class. Along the way, Rogan introduces Karl Polanyi, the Hungarian economic historian, and shows how his book The Great Transformation was a kind of intermediary between the work of Tawney and Thompson. The moral critique is a twofold project. Despite their differences, all three men were deeply committed to writing histories of capitalism that showed the transition to a capitalist economy and specifically how this attenuated the structures of social solidarity in the English context. [...] Their critique of capitalism relied on a normative understanding of human personality that was originally robustly Christian and that countered the conventional economists' view of what it meant to be human."

"Rogan’s emblematic trio – R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi and E.P. Thompson – are backed up by two mightier subalterns, Amartya Sen and Kenneth Arrow. Together they are enlisted as earnest opponents of sanctimonious capitalism and advocates of a separate intellectual profession headed 'moral economy'. It insisted that the capitalism which emerged victorious from the Cold War was circumscribed by the theoretical exclusion of all that made production, circulation and profit amenable to whole societies and relevant to the common good. [...] this is a timely, vivid and attractive book, vindicating on every page Rogan’s choice of three musketeers, handing on their flame to their noble heirs."

"I would commend you to read this knowledgeable and challenging book, with its hope of restoring the 'moral economy' that was the dream of Tawney, with his Christian socialism, Polanyi and Thompson, with their more secular ethical socialism. [...] Rogan reconstructs the phenomenon of 'the moral economy': its origins, history, personalities, contexts, networks of dense intellectual connections and influences. After its decline and fall, are there any signs of hope for us? Rogan thinks we can navigate the obstacles that wrecked the old structure, such as the pervasive secularisation of modern life that sabotaged Tawney’s Christian foundations, and post-modernism that scorned any concept of unique human dignity. Rogan finds a possible remedy in the social choice theory of people like Kenneth Arrow and Amartya Sen."

"as Tim Rogan points out in The Moral Economists, it is remarkable how unmoral the left’s critique of capitalism has become. Across the developed world the dysfunctions of free-market economics are seen as negative material outcomes [...] Surveying the work of Tawney, Polanyi and Thompson, Rogan shows how the 20th-century moral critique of capitalism was rooted in humanism, in part derived from the Judeo-Christian religions, and in part from their last prophet – the early Marx. [...] Each of the theorists Rogan surveys studied the transition from late feudalism to early capitalism, observing the death of a pre-capitalist moral universe as industrialisation and commerce introduced utilitarian ethics to the masses. Each also observed among the 20th-century working class a surviving moral critique of capitalism and an alternative moral practice: Tawney found it in the everyday solidarity of his contemporaries in the Potteries; Thompson in the literate and cultured lives of the 19th-century pioneers of labour he studied [...] Each, in turn, tried to ground this plebeian moral alternative in something theoretical: for Tawney it was Christian socialism, for Polanyi a rereading of Adam Smith and for Thompson the early Marx. Ultimately, Rogan shows, they were all unsuccessful, leaving the ethical framework for 21st-century capitalism open to the forces Collier derides [in The Future of Capitalism]: utilitarianism and Rawlsian justice theory."

"As Rogan (p. 7) points out, these ‘moral economists’ were not economists in a technical sense, but ‘They were theorists of everything economics left out.’ [...] Rogan sets out to describe the evolution of the moral critique of capitalism in twentieth century Britain by comparing and synthesizing the work of these three intellectuals, and also argues that the current debate over how to address income and wealth inequality could be enriched by refocusing on the ethical and spiritual consequences of capitalism. The Moral Economists is organized around the major work of each [...] emphasizing how the personal experiences of each writer shaped his thinking. Rogan's significant contribution is his uncovering of the connections and synergies that bind together these works [...] the moral economists were concerned about the effects of unbridled capitalism on community stability. Thus, to appropriately gauge the welfare impact of these outcomes, it is necessary to develop a meaningful concept of personhood. For this reason, Rogan places significant emphasis on the process undertaken by each author to develop a theory of personality. All of them settle on a form of personalism that centers on the uniqueness and dignity of each person. [...] Next, Rogan provides detailed accounts of how each of the authors formulated their notions of civil society that structurally lies between the individual and an authoritarian state. What is fascinating is the experiences and research strategies they shared, and how these influenced their works [...] Overall, Rogan’s research is first-rate [...] What I find most valuable is his account of the evolution of ideas, and how they are influenced by advances in philosophy and political theory, social movements such as fascism, changes in economic conditions [...] and the process by which they may or may not be translated into action through public policy. An important lesson is that scholarly work on the economy should differ from what Albert O. Hirschman (1998, p. 110) calls ‘monoeconomics,’ which is the tendency to generalize economic theory to all places and times. [...] Rogan describes several scholars whose work on social choice bridges neoclassical theory and moral economics: E.F. Schumacher, Kenneth Arrow, and Amartya Sen. [...] the inclusion of Schumacher is puzzling since few would associate him with mainstream economics. In fact, this raises the question of why Rogan did not discuss two related, longstanding heterodox schools of thought – social and original institutional economics (OIE) – that both emphasize the moral dimensions of economic life in their theories of value and choice. [...] Thus, I conclude that Rogan’s observation that moral economics has fallen out of favor and should be revived to address some of today’s economic issues and problems is based on a limited perception of what constitutes moral economics. Moreover, he also fails to recognize recent growth in the popularity of heterodox economics"