Fabianism

GREAT BRITAIN, with its high level of industrialization, commerce, and colonization, had become the world's political superpower in the 19th century. Although the country was home to some of the richest sociopolitical doctrines, including Thomas Hobbes's totalitarianism, John Locke and Adam Smith's liberalism, Edmund Burke's conservatism, and Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism, the monumental societal changes in the British Empire were creating new intellectual challenges in this period.

As a consequence, at least four influential sociopolitical approaches flourished on British soil almost simultaneously: communism as theorized by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, utilitarian liberalism as reinterpreted by John Stuart Mill, social Darwinism as proposed by Herbert Spencer, and finally Fabianism—a brand new and eclectic political program—promoted by a diverse group of British intellectuals. This last philosophy would remain the most “local” of the new sociopolitical approaches. It would not, in any significant way, find a place for itself beyond Britain. Furthermore, while doctrine preceded organization in the other three cases, Fabianism emerged as the attitude developed by a prior organization, namely the Fabian Society.

The Fabian Society was founded in 1883 by a group of concerned intellectuals, including Frank Podmore and Edward Pease, who were influenced by utopian thinking and found it necessary to explore possibilities for ethical reform in Britain. The society's rise to prominence came with the membership of writer George Bernard Shaw in 1884, followed by Sidney Webb in 1885 and such influential names as Emmeline Pankhurst, H.G. Wells, Beatrice Potter (later Webb), Graham Wallas, Annie Besant, and Leonard Woolf at around the same time. The name Fabian was derived from Quintus Fabius Maximus, the notable Roman general of the Second Punic War. Fabius was famous for avoiding full engagement with Carthaginians, preferring to weaken them by harassing operations. In a similar vein, the Fabian Society believed that success required a piecemeal approach, social appeal, and patience. These ideas were systematically elaborated in the famous Fabian Essays of 1889 and later popularized in more than 200 Fabian Tracts.

Fabians were professed socialists and the society was clearly placed on a socialist basis in their policy statement in 1887. However, not only did early Fabianism stand in sharp contrast with Marxism, but also it had little to do with revisionist versions of the Marxian movement, namely variants of continental social democracy. Fabianism completely refused the Marxist idea that the transformation of society could be achieved by revolution. Instead, the idea of evolution was promoted. Socialism, Fabians believed, would [Page 158]come as the natural sequel to the full realization of universal suffrage and representative government. Sidney Webb, their main theorist of the “inevitability of gradualness,” for instance, regarded the social reforms of the 19th century (for example, factory, mines, housing, and education laws) as the beginnings of socialism.

George Bernard Shaw brought notoriety to the socialist intellectuals of the United KIngdom–s Fabian Society in 1844.

Equally fundamental was the society's rejection of the Marxian theory of value in favor of David Ricardo's law of rent and other views on utility. On the other hand, Fabianism, especially in its early years, did not identify itself with the working class the way continental social democracy did. Yet, the help of the Fabian Society in the creation and development of the British Labour Party is undeniable; the Society saw no inconsistency in having members associated with diverse political organizations. By the same token, while several European socialists opposed their government's involvement in the World War I, the majority of the Fabians gave explicit support to British participation in the war.

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