This is a French view. Germany is naturally the stronghold of Marxism, and the country where it has proved, up to a point, an unqualified success. Although the Social Democratic Party was founded as an alliance between the followers of Marx and of Lassalle, on terms to which Marx himself violently objected, none the less the leadership of the party fell to those who accepted the teaching of Marx, and on that basis by far the greatest Socialist Party of the world has been built up. Nowhere else did the ideas of Marx hold such unquestioned supremacy: nowhere else had they such a body of loyal adherents, such a host of teachers and interpreters. Only on the question of agricultural land in the freer political atmosphere of South Germany was there even a breath of dissent. The revolt came from England in the person of Edward Bernstein, who, exiled by Bismarck, took refuge in London, and was for years intimately acquainted with the Fabian Society and its leaders. Soon after his return to Germany he published in 1899 a volume criticising Marxism,[45] and thence grew up the Revisionist movement for free thought in Socialism which has attracted all the younger men, and before the war had virtually, if not actually, obtained control over the Social Democratic Party.
In England, and in Germany through Bernstein, I think the Fabian Society may claim to have led the revolt. Elsewhere the revolt has come rather in deeds than in words. In France, in Italy, and in Belgium and in other European countries, a Socialist Party has grown up which amid greater political opportunities has had to face the actual problems of modern politics. These could not be solved by quotations from a German philosopher, and liberty has been gained by force of circumstances. Nevertheless in many countries, such as Russia and the United States, even now, or at any rate until very recent years, the freedom of action of Socialist parties has been impeded by excessive respect for the opinions of the Founder, and Socialist thought has been sterilised, because it was assumed that Marx had completed the philosophy of Socialism, and the business of Socialists was not to think for themselves, but merely to work for the realisation of his ideas.
But mere freedom was not enough. Something must be put in the place of Marx. His English followers did not notice that he had indicated no method, and devised no political machinery for the transition; or if they noticed it they passed over the omission as a negligible detail. If German Socialism would not suit, English Socialism had to be formulated to take its place. This has been the life-work of the Fabian Society, the working out of the application of the broad principles of Socialism to the industrial and political environment of England. I say England advisedly, because the industrial and political conditions of Scotland are in some degree different, and the application of the principles of Socialism to Ireland has not yet been seriously attempted. But for England "Fabian Essays" and the Fabian Tracts are by general consent the best expositions of the meaning and working of Socialism in the English language.
Marxian Socialism regarded itself as a thing apart. Marx had discovered a panacea for the ills of society: the old was to be cleared away and all things were to become new. In Marx's own thought evolution and revolution were tangled and alternated. The evolutionary side was essential to it; the idea of revolutionary catastrophe is almost an excrescence. But to the Marxians (of whom Marx once observed that he was not one) this excrescence became the whole thing. People were divided into those who advocated the revolution and those who did not. The business of propaganda was to increase the number of adherents of the new at the expense of the supporters of the old.
The Fabians regarded Socialism as a principle already in part embodied in the constitution of society, gradually extending its influence because it harmonised with the needs and desires of men in countries where the large industry prevails.
Fabian Socialism is in fact an interpretation of the spirit of the times. I have pointed out already that the municipalisation of monopolies, a typically Fabian process, had its origin decades before the Society was founded, and all that the Fabian Society did was to explain its social implications and advocate its wider extension. The same is true of the whole Fabian political policy. Socialism in English politics grew up because of the necessity for State intervention in the complex industrial and social organisation of a Great State. Almost before the evil results of Laissez Faire had culminated Robert Owen was pointing the way to factory legislation, popular education, and the communal care of children. The Ten Hours Act of 1847 was described by Marx himself as "the victory of a principle," that is, of "the political economy of the working class."[46] That victory was frequently repeated in the next thirty years, and collective protection of Labour in the form of Factory Acts, Sanitary Acts, Truck Acts, Employers' Liability Acts, and Trade Board Acts became a recognised part of the policy of both political parties.
Fabian teaching has had more direct influence in promoting the administrative protection of Labour. The Fair Wages policy, now everywhere prevalent in State and Municipal employment, was, as has been already described, if not actually invented, at any rate largely popularised by the Society. It was a working-class demand, and it has been everywhere put forward by organised labour, but its success would have been slower had the manual workers been left to fight their own battle.
I have said that the work of the Society was the interpretation of an existing movement, the explanation and justification of tendencies which originated in Society at large, and not in societies, Fabian or other. That work is only less valuable than the formulation of new ideas. None of the Fabians would claim to rank beside the great promulgators of new ideas, such as Owen and Marx. But the interpretation of tendencies is necessary if progress is to be sustained and if it is to be unbroken by casual reaction. In an old country like ours, with vast forces of inertia built up by ages of precedents, by a class system which forms a part of the life of the nation, by a distribution of wealth which even yet scarcely yields to the pressure of graduated taxation, legislation is always in arrear of the needs of the times; the social structure is always old-fashioned and out of date, and reform always tends to be late, and even too late, unless there are agitators with the ability to attract public attention calling on the men in power to take action.