I would guess that, in using this quotation, Howard had a more dispersed community in mind that the sort of formal, high-level political community of something like the House of Lords. I think the point was more to highlight the way in which ideas seem persuasive to people – any people – when those ideas conform to those people’s everyday practices. So, people will tend to embrace ideas compatible with their practices, largely in spite of the evidence for or against those ideas.

Then, as practices change, the reverse can happen – people become more sensitive to evidence against ideas that no longer correpond so closely to practices and, conversely, more insensitive to evidence in favour of those ideas.

Or maybe I’m just projecting my own views into the quotation… ;-P

But Howard was interested in trying to bring a new, more just form of society into being. I think this quotation interested him in that it suggested:

(1) that he shouldn’t propose ideas that were wildly out of synch with people’s current practices – so, for example, he spends a great deal of time in his proposals on the basic economics of how the community will borrow money, charge rents, etc. – it reads as much like a business plan as a utopian proposal.

This has caused Howard a bit of historical grief from more “radical” commentators – I remember someone accusing him of trying to create socialism with a five percent return on investment. But these reactions, I think, are missing his social theoretic point: Howard doesn’t talk about why his projects are economically viable because he’s too conventional to seek something more bold. He’s talking about these things because he believes they are the sorts of ideas that, because they are consonant with the practices of his contemporaries, need to be addressed to mobilise the project at the time.

(2) that the best way to change people’s ideas is to change their everyday practices – and, therefore, if Howard wants to bring a decentralised socialist society into being, the best way to do this is by bringing new kinds of practical relationships into being.

Again, I think this is sometimes misunderstood by commentators, who focus on Howard’s plans for the physical community, and conclude that he’s some kind of physical determinist. I won’t contest that there are some physical deterministic elements in Howard’s proposals (then again, had I lived at the time, I probably also would have thought that you were unlikely to achieve more just outcomes for the poor without fundamentally transforming their physical living environments…). But I don’t think this is his main intention – although, unfortunately, the physical elements of Howard’s plans were the primary elements that actually spread through the planning movement…

But I don’t claim to be a real expert on Howard – my previous supervisor is a bit of a specialist, but my experience is just impressions based on my personal readings…