Fabians
The Fabians were a small but influential group of British social theorists in the 20th century who espoused their own form of Socialism and had a major influence on the UK Labour Party and British social and economic policies. The loosely organized 'Fabian Society included numerous prominent intellectuals. The founders of the Fabian Society named it after the Roman general Fabius, known as "the delayer," because he used delaying tactics and attrition rather than direct battles to wear down the stronger forces of Hannibal during the Second Punic War. The founders wished to make the approach to socialism gradual and constitutional. The Fabian Society was formally founded on Jan. 4, 1884, with R. Pease as secretary. Sidney Webb joined in 1885, and became the leading Fabian theorist and expositor. Other early and influential members include George Bernard Shaw; Annie Besant; Keir Hardie, the founder of the Independent Labour Party and the first Labour member of Parliament; Ramsay MacDonald, later prime minister; Graham Wallas, writer of books on political theory; author H. G. Wells; and Beatrice Potter, who married Sidney Webb.
Doctrines
The essence of Fabian doctrine lay in Sidney Webb's theory of the continuity of development from capitalism to socialism. Webb argued that the economic position of the workers had improved in the nineteenth century, was still improving and might be expected to continue to improve. Fabians literature seems to ignore class distinctions and shows no belief at all in a class struggle as the instrument of change. [1]
The "Fabians" avoided the revolutionary tactics of more orthodox Marxians. The middle-class Fabians were more directly involved with politics and practical gains - through contacts not only in the "International Labor Party", trade unions and cooperative movements but also throughout the entire British political apparatus (Liberals and Tories included).
Fabians were the British counterpart of the German Marxian revisionists and influenced by the English Historical school. The Fabian Society became well known through Sidney Webb's Facts for Socialists (1884) and especially through through the famous Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889).
Although Fabians plunged into the most complex economic problems of their time, they did so while having a target in mind: to find a foudantion for their revolutionary economic aims without destroying democratic political ideals. They were ecletics; they accepted what seemed to be reasonable and their writings bear the marks of all schools of economic theory. [2]
Sidney J. Webb and his wife, Beatrice Potter Webb (married 1892) stood at the core of the Fabian Society. They wrote numerous studies of industrial Britain, alternative economic arrangements (especially cooperatives) and pamphlets for political reform. Their system was based on the Ricardian theory of rent which they applied to capital as well as land (and labor as well - their opposition to high labor incomes was also an issue). Their conclusion was that it was "the state's responsibility to acquire this rent". They were known "to combine an ounce of theory with a ton of practice".
The political strategy of the Fabians was to influence public opinion in the direction of their ideal. This was to be accomplished not through mass organization but rather by the selective education of the powerful "few". The "London School of Economics" (L.S.E.) [3] was founded in 1895 by the Webbs [4].
The Fabians importance faded in the 1930s for several of reasons. Among them the Webbs' admiration of Soviet Russia; it displeased too many in their group. The ascendancy of the British Labour Party on the back of trade union activism had rendered the Fabians superfluous, they lost control of the L.S.E. when Cannan and Robbins turned it on a decidedly Jevonian track and finally their intellectual influence during the 1930s was overshadowed by that of Keynes. But a smaller group of enthusiastic fabians still keep the fabianism flag tremulating [5].
External links
The Fabian Socialists Page at The History of the Economic Thought Website</ref> is the doctrine of the Fabian Society [6],
Bibliography
- Cole, G.D.H. Fabianism, in: the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R. A. Seligman, 1932. [online version
- Fox, Paul W. and H. Scott Gordon. The Early Fabians-Economists and Reformers. The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/ Revue canadienne d'Economique et de Science politique, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Aug., 1951), pp. 307-319. online version
- Hobsbawm, Eric J. "The Fabians Reconsidered" in Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour, (1964)
Primary sources
- Shaw, G. Bernard, ed. Fabian Essays in Socialism (1891)
- Webb, Sidney. Facts for socialists from the political economists and statisticians, Vol. 5, Fabian Tract, (1884)
- Webb, Sidney. Fabian Essays in Socialism. (1889)