Fabian Essays in Socialism

by Unknown

And now what has in the main been the sort of work the society has done? At first the idea of its members was rather to discuss among themselves and teach themselves than to teach others. This was the initial or self-forming stage. Then came the educational stage, and, third, the political or active stage, though even in this, its third stage, education is still the main object of the society. Fortnightly discussions have been kept up continuously, save for a two months’ summer recess, for years. At these members of the society read papers, or outsiders, and notably opponents, were invited. The late Charles Bradlaugh came to oppose, and was very promptly demolished; while, on the other hand, Oscar Wilde has spoken with eloquence and power on the relation of art and Socialism. The society tried to get Mr. A. J. Balfour, the Conservative leader, and Mr. W. H. Mallock, as the ablest literary opponent of Socialism, to come and argue seriously, but neither of them would do so. Mr. Haldene, the translator of Schopenhauer and cultured philosophic member of Parliament, came to oppose, was handled rather vigorously, and has now been largely converted to collectivism. Mr. David F. Schloss, whom the British Government recently sent over to the United States to inquire into labor matters, has spoken sympathetically; and Mr. Donisthorpe, the clever, cynical, superficial English individualist, has spoken and has been mercilessly handled. The result of all this debating is that the Fabian Society has now some of the best debaters in England. It has also some of the best lecturers, for it is in lectures that its work has largely consisted. The society now gives something over one thousand lectures a year, all free, the lecturers being all unpaid. Indeed, excepting the secretary’s office, the whole of the society’s work is voluntary, unpaid work. The majority of these lectures are given in workmen’s clubs, of which there are some hundreds in London alone. I take at random from the 1891 list of lectures sample subjects:—

The Socialism of John Ruskin; The Eight Hours’ Bill; Railway Reform; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; Methods of Social Evolution; Adam, the first and last Individualist; Why we want a Labor Party; The Gospel of getting on; What the Farm Laborers want; The Social Hell and its Sources; Experiments in Housing the People; Socialism and Individual Liberty; the Church’s Message to Men of Wealth; Free Comments on the Population Question; The Worker’s Share of Wealth; The Programme of Social Democracy; John Lilburne and the Levellers; The Chartist Movement; The Religion of Socialism; the Industrial History of England; Gospel of Bread and Butter; Workingmen and their Difficulties; Co-operative Production and Socialism; Wealth and the Commonwealth; The French Revolution; The Right to Live; What Socialists Propose to Do; Twenty Years of the Labor Movement.

From these it will be seen what extensive ground is covered. These lectures are for the most part delivered to workingmen, but sometimes there are middle-class audiences, and I have heard of Fabian lecturers talking to people in aristocratic drawing-rooms. From the first, the society has done some publishing, and the last list gives no fewer than forty-five pamphlets or tracts issued by the society. The first of these, “Why are the Many Poor?” was a crude one, but good for rousing attention, which is always the first thing to be done, and quite justifying some curious Socialistic vagaries. The most valuable of these pamphlets are “Facts for Socialists,” a really crushing answer to those whom Matthew Arnold calls the “self-complacent moles,” all based on the best available statistics; “Facts for Londoners,” an appalling generalization of the economic condition of London; “What to Read,” a most admirable and impartially selected list of books for social reformers, which might with advantage be reprinted in America; “The Reform of the Poor Law”; and “The Impossibilities of Anarchism,” a searching criticism of the Anarchist position by George Bernard Shaw. Remember that the preparation of these has all been voluntary, unpaid labor, and has involved an immense amount of toil.

In 1888 the society determined to give a course of lectures by those of its members who were supposed to be best fitted for the purpose, setting forth the general principles of Socialism as they understood them. The lectures were eight in number, and were delivered to densely packed audiences, making such an impression that it was decided to publish them in a volume; and in the next year they appeared, under the title of “Fabian Essays in Socialism.” As it is a case of quorum pars magna fui, I am precluded from giving my estimate of a volume in which I had a share; but I may say that this work has had a very great sale—thirty thousand copies, the largest sale of any purely economic work I know of excepting “Progress and Poverty,”—and that its respectful and even cordial welcome by the English press was a surprise. The fact shows that the public mind is being prepared for great social changes. The ruling idea of the book is that of inevitable political and industrial evolution,—nothing in the least degree merely utopian, but an attempted generalization on the lines of modern scientific ideas. The publication of this book first gave to the Fabian Society a national instead of a merely local reputation; and I believe the book has now been widely read in America and Germany, while it was introduced to France by the Revue Socialiste. Several courses of lectures have since been given by the society, but none of them have been afterwards published.

The third phase of the society’s activity is, as I have said, in practical politics. This was not undertaken without some misgivings. On the principle that you cannot touch pitch without being defiled, I confess I doubted whether, until the people had been far more educated in these ideas, it was wise to enter the somewhat dirty political arena. But the intense desire to be doing something, to translate ideas into facts, to organize the people, to help in shaping the actual progressive movement in England, and above all, perhaps, to weaken and destroy the individualist wing of the Liberal party,—these and other motives acted with cumulative force, especially as members of the society began to find that they had acquired influence over little groups of workmen here and there. There were great dangers and difficulties. There was the danger of falling into mere wire-pulling and making of political “deals,”—a subject about which people in America know so much that it is not necessary to enlarge upon it; and then there was the practical difficulty of differences of opinion in the society, which might cause wreck if political action were indulged in. I may say at once that these difficulties remain and will continue to do so, though they have not led to disruption yet. There are inveterate wire-pullers in the society, and there are those who favor an independent labor party, those who want to permeate the Radicals and gradually gain them over; and there are even a few who, as between the two parties, prefer Tories to Radicals. The first political chance for the Fabian Society came at the London county council election in 1889, when the advanced party in London paid the society the compliment of appropriating its entire pamphlet, “The London Programme,” and making of it the Progressive platform of the campaign. The Progressives carried that election, and they carried it on “The London Programme.” Still more striking was the Progressive victory in 1892, when the Moderate or Conservative party was almost annihilated at the polls. The Fabian Society has supplied London with its programme of reforms; and the reforms were in the direction of what it is now the fashion to call municipal Socialism. At the second county council election, several Fabians were candidates, and four of them were actually elected; while a fifth, Ben Tillett, the labor leader, was afterwards made an alderman. Three members of the society proved formidable though unsuccessful candidates at the Parliamentary election two years ago. A considerable number of members are on local municipal councils and school boards, and another fought a very remarkable Parliamentary fight during the last year. So it is clear that the society is largely en evidence.

As to the general programme of work in which the members are supposed more or less to take part, I may quote from the printed advice given to members as to what they can do. First of all, “the need of study” is insisted on. It is assumed that the member will read all the society’s publications; and his next duty, it is urged, should be to read the criticisms on the other side, after the manner of Cicero, who was always careful to get up his opponent’s case. If a member cannot read or study alone, he is recommended to set on foot a local reading circle, and apply to the secretary for literature for the circle. No public work should be done until this self-education has been accomplished, and the member is really able to speak with authority and to deal effectively with an opponent. The opponents of Socialism in England are usually persons sent out by a body called the Liberty and Property Defence League, of which the American millionnaire, Mr. Astor, now a London Tory newspaper proprietor, is a member. These persons have, as a rule, a remarkable capacity for making fools of themselves; nevertheless, it is always a tactical blunder to underestimate the ability of your opponent, and Fabian lecturers are advised to assume that these Liberty and Property defenders are acquainted with economics, even though there is good reason to suspect they are not. There is nothing that kills like ridicule; to gibbet an ignorant and presumptuous debater, and make him look like a fool before a large audience, is a source of pleasure to every rightly constituted mind. Members of the society are also urged to correspond with their Parliamentary or municipal representative on all vital points, to worry his life out of him if he is obstinate or wrong-headed or dishonest, and to make him yearn like the poet for a lodge in some vast wilderness where he might never receive another letter or vote of censure as long as he lived. This is a good way to combat what Walt Whitman calls “the never-ending audacity of elected persons.” The member should always attend the local caucus meeting, and do what he can there; and if he has the time to spare, he should be a candidate for any public post, such as member of Parliament, of county or municipal council, of school board, guardian of the poor, or member of the parish council yet to be constituted. The great difficulty in the way of this is that these public persons are not paid in England, and few of the busy and impecunious members of the Fabian Society can afford the time for these things.

Having thus described the constitution, work, and general character of the Fabian Society, let me speak on the general intellectual forces which have been operating in England to bring about this new political growth among active young men; for it is quite new. My first acquaintance with anything that could properly be called Socialism in England was in London in 1879, when I went one evening to hear a young Jewish gentleman, since deceased, Mr. Montefiore, read a paper on German Socialism, before the London Dialectical Society. Mr. Montefiore had but a slender knowledge of his subject, and we had to wait for speeches by a German friend of Marx, resident in London, and from a young, dreamy-looking man with long, thick, tousled hair, whom I learned was Mr. Ernest Belfort Bax, since better known as a prolific writer on Socialism from the revolutionary, Marxite point of view. At that time there was not a single young man in London interested in or in favor of anything like Socialism, excepting Mr. Bax. Now there are hundreds. What are the reasons for the change?

(1) The exhaustion of the older Liberalism and the obviously unsatisfactory character of mere republicanism. And here American readers must permit me to be plain by saying that the United States seemed to furnish an object lesson to the world as to the failure of mere republicanism to solve a single one of our social questions. A quarter of a century ago the American Republic was the guiding star of advanced English political thought. It is not so now: candor compels me to say that. It is not merely a question of machine politics, of political corruption, of the omnipotent party boss; though supine Americans who do nothing to overthrow those purely political evils should be reminded that Europe as well as America is involved in and has to pay for their cowardice and indifference. But over and beyond this is the great fact of the division between rich and poor, millionnaires at one end, tramps at the other, a growth of monopolies unparalleled, crises producing abject poverty just as in Europe. These facts proved to men clearly that new institutions were of no use along with the old forms of property; that a mere theoretic democracy, unaccompanied by any social changes, was a delusion and a snare. The result of this is that the old enthusiasm for mere republicanism has died away, and that, though twenty-five years ago there was a good sprinkling of republican clubs in England, there is not a single one of them left now.

(2) The second cause I take to be a new spirit in literature. The genteel, the conventional, the thinner kind of romantic literature began to die out; and the powerful realistic school began to attract men’s minds. There was a desire to know things as they are, to sound the plummet in the sea of social misery, to have done with make-believe and get at realities. The Russian writers, with their intense Socialistic feeling, attracted great numbers of readers, who seemed to find in them something entirely new and immensely powerful. I should name among individual writers who have powerfully aided the growth, I do not say of Socialism itself, but of the feeling in the soil of which Socialism is easily developed, Dickens, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Whitman, Ruskin, Tolstoi, Zola and Arnold. A curious and medley list, you may say, and so it is; but I am certain that each of these great writers has contributed a distinct element to the expansion and liberation of the minds that have been formed, say, during the last twenty years. For among all these writers, varied as they are, it is the social feeling which is the most powerful impulse.

(3) Along with the new literature has grown a new art feeling, an intense hatred of the smug and respectable, and a love to be surrounded by attractive objects. Ruskin, Morris, and Walter Crane have shown why it is that the true artist is at war with commercialism, with the notion that things are to be produced for a profit, no matter what abominations you may turn out. The conception that no person has any right to inflict an ugly object of any sort on the world, especially for the sake of making gain out of it, has taken hold on the imaginative mind of the younger people of our cultivated classes.