The History of the
Fabian Society
By
Edward R. Pease
Secretary for Twenty-five Years
With Twelve Illustrations
NEW YORK
E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Preface
The History of the Fabian Society will perhaps chiefly interest the
members, present and past, of the Society. But in so far as this book
describes the growth of Socialist theory in England, and the influence
of Socialism on the political thought of the last thirty years, I hope
it will appeal to a wider circle.
I have described in my book the care with which the Fabian Tracts have
been revised and edited by members of the Executive Committee. Two of my
colleagues, Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, have been good enough to
revise this volume in like manner, and I have to thank them for
innumerable corrections in style, countless suggestions of better words
and phrases, and a number of amplifications and additions, some of which
I have accepted without specific acknowledgment, whilst others for one
reason or another are to be found in notes; and I am particularly
grateful to Bernard Shaw for two valuable memoranda on the history of
Fabian Economics, and on Guild Socialism, which are printed as an
appendix.
The MS. or proofs have also been read by Mrs. Sidney Webb, Mrs. Bernard
Shaw, Sir Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, W. Stephen Sanders, and R.C.K.
Ensor, to each of whom my cordial thanks are due for suggestions,
additions, and corrections.
To Miss Bertha Newcombe I am obliged for permission to reproduce the
interesting sketch which forms the frontispiece.
E.R.P.
THE PENDICLE,
LIMPSFIELD,
SURREY,
_January_, 1916.
Contents
Chapter I
The Sources of Fabian Socialism
The ideas of the early eighties--The epoch of Evolution--Sources of
Fabian ideas--Positivism--Henry George--John Stuart Mill--Robert
Owen--Karl Marx--The Democratic Federation--"The Christian
Socialist"--Thomas Davidson
Chapter II
The Foundations of the Society: 1883-4
Frank Podmore and Ghost-hunting--Thomas Davidson and his circle--The
preliminary meetings--The Fellowship of the New Life--Formation of
the Society--The career of the New Fellowship
Chapter III
The Early Days: 1884-6
The use of the word Socialism--Approval of the Democratic
Federation--Tract No. I--The Fabian Motto--Bernard Shaw joins--His
first Tract--The Industrial Remuneration Conference--Sidney Webb and
Sydney Olivier become members--Mrs. Annie Besant--Shaw's second
Tract--The Tory Gold controversy--"What Socialism Is"--The Fabian
Conference of 1886--Sidney Webb's first contribution, "The
Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour"
Chapter IV
The Formation of Fabian Policy: 1886-9
The factors of success; priority of date; the men who made it--The
controversy over policy--The Fabian Parliamentary League--"Facts for
Socialists"--The adoption of the Basis--The seven Essayists in
command--Lord Haldane--The "Essays" as Lectures--How to train for
Public Life--Fabians on the London School Board--"Facts for
Londoners"--Municipal Socialism--"The Eight Hours Bill"
Chapter V
"Fabian Essays" and the Lancashire Campaign: 1890-3
"Fabian Essays" published--Astonishing success--A new presentation
of Socialism--Reviewed after twenty-five years--Henry
Hutchinson--The Lancashire Campaign--Mrs. Besant withdraws--"Fabian
News"
Chapter VI
"To your tents, O Israel": 1894-1900
Progress of the Society--The Independent Labour Party--Local Fabian
Societies--University Fabian Societies--London Groups and Samuel
Butler--The first Fabian Conference--Tracts and Lectures--The 1892
Election Manifesto--The Newcastle Program--The Fair Wages
Policy--The "Fortnightly" article--The Intercepted Letter of 1906
Chapter VII
"Fabianism and the Empire": 1900-1
The Library and Book Boxes--Parish Councils--The Workmen's
Compensation Act--The Hutchinson Trust--The London School of
Economics--Educational Lectures--Electoral Policy--The controversy
over the South African War--The publication of "Fabianism and the
Empire"
Chapter VIII
Education: 1902-5, and the Labour Party: 1900-15
Housing--"The Education muddle and the way out"--Supporting the
Conservatives--The Education Acts of 1902 and 1903--Feeding School
Children--The Labour Representation Committee formed--The Fabian
Election Fund--Will Crooks elected in 1910--A Fabian Cabinet
Minister--Resignation of Graham Wallas--The younger generation: H.W.
Macrosty, J.F. Oakeshott, John W. Martin--Municipal Drink
Trade--Tariff Reform--The Decline of the Birth-rate
Chapter IX
The Episode of Mr. Wells: 1906-8
His lecture on administrative areas--"Faults of the Fabian"--The
Enquiry Committee--The Report, and the Reply--The real issue, Wells
_v_. Shaw--The women intervene--The Basis altered--The new
Executive--Mr. Wells withdraws--His work for Socialism--The writing
of Fabian Tracts
Chapter X
The Policy of Expansion: 1907-12
Statistics of growth--The psychology of the Recruit--Famous
Fabians--The Arts Group--The Nursery--The Women's Group--Provincial
Fabian Societies--University Fabian Societies--London Groups
revived--Annual Conferences--The Summer School--The story of
"Socialist Unity"--The Local Government Information Bureau--The
Joint Standing Committee--Intervention of the International
Socialist Bureau
Chapter XI
The Minority Report, Syndicalism and Research:
1909-15
The emergence of Mrs. Sidney Webb--The Poor Law Commission--The
Minority Report--Unemployment--The National Committee for the
Prevention of Destitution--"Vote against the House of
Lords"--Bernard Shaw retires--Death of Hubert Bland--Opposition to
the National Insurance Bill--The Fabian Reform Committee--The "New
Statesman"--The Research Department--"The Rural Problem"--"The
Control of Industry"--Syndicalism--The Guildsmen--Final
Statistics--The War
Chapter XII
The Lessons of Thirty Years
Breaking the spell of Marxism--A French verdict--Origin of
Revisionism in Germany--The British School of Socialism--Mr. Ernest
Barker's summary--Mill _versus_ Marx--The Fabian Method--Making
Socialists or making Socialism--The life of propagandist
societies--The prospects of Socialist Unity--The future of Fabian
ideas--The test of Fabian success
Appendix I
A. On the History of Fabian Economics. By Bernard Shaw
B. On Guild Socialism. By Bernard Shaw
Appendix II
The Basis of the Fabian Society
Appendix III
List of the names and the years of office of the ninety-six
members of the Executive Committee, 1884-1915
Appendix IV
Complete List of Fabian publications, 1884-1915, with
names of authors
Index
Illustrations
_Frontispiece, from a drawing by Miss Bertha Newcombe in 1895_
The Seven Essayists
Mrs. Annie Besant, _From a photograph_
Hubert Bland, _From a photograph_
William Clarke _From a photograph_
(Sir) Sydney Olivier, _From a photograph_
G. Bernard Shaw, _From a photograph_
Graham Wallas, _From a photograph_
Sidney Webb, _From a drawing_
* * * * *
Edward R. Pease, _From a photograph_
Frank Podmore, _From a photograph_
Mrs. Sidney Webb, _From a photograph_
H.G. Wells, _From a photograph_
The History of the Fabian Society
Chapter I
The Sources of Fabian Socialism
The ideas of the early eighties--The epoch of Evolution--Sources of
Fabian ideas--Positivism--Henry George--John Stuart Mill--Robert
Owen--Karl Marx--The Democratic Federation--"The Christian
Socialist"--Thomas Davidson.
"Britain as a whole never was more tranquil and happy," said the
"Spectator," then the organ of sedate Liberalism and enlightened
Progress, in the summer of 1882. "No class is at war with society or the
government: there is no disaffection anywhere, the Treasury is fairly
full, the accumulations of capital are vast"; and then the writer goes
on to compare Great Britain with Ireland, at that time under the iron
heel of coercion, with Parnell and hundreds of his followers in jail,
whilst outrages and murders, like those of Maamtrasma, were almost
everyday occurrences.
Some of the problems of the early eighties are with us yet. Ireland is
still a bone of contention between political parties: the Channel tunnel
is no nearer completion: and then as now, when other topics are
exhausted, the "Spectator" can fill up its columns with Thought
Transference and Psychical Research.
But other problems which then were vital, are now almost forgotten.
Electric lighting was a doubtful novelty: Mr. Bradlaugh's refusal to
take the oath excited a controversy which now seems incredible. Robert
Louis Stevenson can no longer be adequately described as an
"accomplished writer," and the introduction of female clerks into the
postal service by Mr. Fawcett has ceased to raise alarm lest the
courteous practice of always allowing ladies to be victors in an
argument should perforce be abandoned.
But in September of the same year we find a cloud on the horizon, the
prelude of a coming storm. The Trade Union Congress had just been held
and the leaders of the working classes, with apparently but little
discussion, had passed a resolution asking the Government to institute
an enquiry with a view to relaxing the stringency of Poor Law
administration. This, said the "Spectator," is beginning "to tamper with
natural conditions," "There is no logical halting-place between the
theory that it is the duty of the State to make the poor comfortable,
and socialism."
Another factor in the thought of those days attracted but little
attention in the Press, though there is a long article in the
"Spectator" at the beginning of 1882 on "the ever-increasing wonder" of
that strange faith, "Positivism." It is difficult for the present
generation to realise how large a space in the minds of the young men of
the eighties was occupied by the religion invented by Auguste Comte. Of
this however more must be said on a later page.
But perhaps the most significant feature in the periodical literature of
the time is what it omits. April, 1882, is memorable for the death of
Charles Darwin, incomparably the greatest of nineteenth-century
Englishmen, if greatness be measured by the effects of his work on the
thought of the world. The "Spectator" printed a secondary article which
showed some appreciation of the event. But in the monthly reviews it
passed practically unnoticed. It is true that Darwin was buried in
Westminster Abbey, but even in 1882, twenty-three years after the
publication of the "Origin of Species," evolution was regarded as a
somewhat dubious theorem which respectable people were wise to ignore.
In the monthly reviews we find the same odd mixture of articles apposite
to present problems, and articles utterly out of date. The organisation
of agriculture is a perennial, and Lady Verney's "Peasant Proprietorship
in France" ("Contemporary," January, 1882), Mr. John Rae's "Co-operative
Agriculture in Germany" ("Contemporary," March, 1882), and Professor
Sedley Taylor's "Profit-Sharing in Agriculture" ("Nineteenth Century,"
October, 1882) show that change in the methods of exploiting the soil is
leaden-footed and lagging.
Problems of another class, centring round "the Family," present much the
same aspect now as they did thirty years ago. In his "Infant Mortality
and Married Women in Factories," Professor Stanley Jevons
("Contemporary," January, 1882) proposes that mothers of children under
three years of age should be excluded from factories, and we are at
present perhaps even farther from general agreement whether any measure
on these lines ought to be adopted.
But when we read the articles on Socialism--more numerous than might be
expected at that early date--we are in another world. Mr. Samuel Smith,
M.P., writing on "Social Reform" in the "Nineteenth Century" for May,
1883, says that: "Our country is still comparatively free from
Communism and Nihilism and similar destructive movements, but who can
tell how long this will continue? We have a festering mass of human
wretchedness in all our great towns, which is the natural hotbed of such
anarchical movements: all the great continental countries are full of
this explosive material. Can we depend on our country keeping free from
the infection when we have far more poverty in our midst than the
neighbouring European States?" Emigration and temperance reform, he
thinks, may avert the danger.
The Rev. Samuel (later Canon) Barnett in the same review a month earlier
advocated Free Libraries and graduated taxation to pay for free
education, under the title of "Practicable Socialism." In April, 1883,
Emile de Lavelaye described with alarm the "Progress of Socialism." "On
the Continent," he wrote, "Socialism is said to be everywhere." To it he
attributed with remarkable inaccuracy, the agrarian movement in Ireland,
and with it he connected the fact that Henry George's new book,
"Progress and Poverty," was selling by thousands "in an ultra popular
form" in the back streets and alleys of England. And then he goes on to
allude to Prince Bismarck's "abominable proposition to create a fund for
pensioning invalid workmen by a monopoly of tobacco"!
Thirty years ago politics were only intermittently concerned with social
problems. On the whole the view prevailed, at any rate amongst the
leaders, that Government should interfere in such matters as little as
possible. Pauperism was still to be stamped out by ruthless deterrence:
education had been only recently and reluctantly taken in hand: factory
inspection alone was an accepted State function. Lord Beaconsfield was
dead and he had forgotten his zeal for social justice long before he
attained power. Gladstone, then in the zenith of his fame, never took
any real interest in social questions as we now understand them. Lord
Salisbury was an aristocrat and thought as an aristocrat. John Bright
viewed industrial life from the standpoint of a Lancashire mill-owner.
William Edward Forster, the creator of national education, a Chartist in
his youth, had become the gaoler of Parnell and the protagonist of
coercion in Ireland. Joseph Chamberlain alone seemed to realise the
significance of the social problem, and unhappily political events were
soon to deflect his career from what then seemed to be its appointed
course.
The political parties therefore offered very little attraction to the
young men of the early eighties, who, viewing our social system with the
fresh eyes of youth, saw its cruelties and its absurdities and judged
them, not as older men, by comparison with the worse cruelties and
greater absurdities of earlier days, but by the standard of common
fairness and common sense, as set out in the lessons they had learned in
their schools, their universities, and their churches.
It is nowadays not easy to recollect how wide was the intellectual gulf
which separated the young generation of that period from their parents.
"The Origin of Species," published in 1859, inaugurated an intellectual
revolution such as the world had not known since Luther nailed his
Theses to the door of All Saints' Church at Wittenberg. The older folk
as a rule refused to accept or to consider the new doctrine. I recollect
a botanical Fellow of the Royal Society who, in 1875, told me that he
had no opinions on Darwin's hypothesis. The young men of the time I am
describing grew up with the new ideas and accepted them as a matter of
course. Herbert Spencer, then deemed the greatest of English thinkers,
was pointing out in portentous phraseology the enormous significance of
Evolution. Professor Huxley, in brilliant essays, was turning to
ridicule the simple-minded credulity of Gladstone and his
contemporaries. Our parents, who read neither Spencer nor Huxley, lived
in an intellectual world which bore no relation to our own; and cut
adrift as we were from the intellectual moorings of our upbringings,
recognising, as we did, that the older men were useless as guides in
religion, in science, in philosophy because they knew not evolution, we
also felt instinctively that we could accept nothing on trust from those
who still believed that the early chapters of Genesis accurately
described the origin of the universe, and that we had to discover
somewhere for ourselves what were the true principles of the then
recently invented science of sociology.
One man there was who professed to offer us an answer, Auguste Comte. He
too was pre-Darwinian, but his philosophy accepted science, future as
well as past. John Stuart Mill, whose word on his own subjects was then
almost law, wrote of him with respectful admiration. His followers were
known to number amongst them some of the ablest thinkers of the day. The
"Religion of Humanity" offered solutions for all the problems that faced
us. It suggested a new heaven, of a sort, and it proposed a new earth,
free from all the inequalities of wealth, the preventable suffering, the
reckless waste of effort, which we saw around us. At any rate, it was
worth examination; and most of the free-thinking men of that period read
the "Positive Polity" and the other writings of the founder, and spent
some Sunday mornings at the little conventicle in Lamb's Conduit Street,
or attended on Sunday evenings the Newton Hall lectures of Frederic
Harrison.
Few could long endure the absurdities of a made-up theology and a
make-believe religion: and the Utopia designed by Comte was as
impracticable and unattractive as Utopias generally are. But the
critical and destructive part of the case was sound enough. Here was a
man who challenged the existing order of society and pronounced it
wrong. It was in his view based on conventions, on superstitions, on
regulations which were all out of date; society should be reorganised in
the light of pure reason; the anarchy of competition must be brought to
an end; mankind should recognise that order, good sense, science, and,
he added, religion freed from superstition, could turn the world into a
place where all might live together in comfort and happiness.
Positivism proposed to attain its Utopia by moralising the capitalists,
and herein it showed no advance on Christianity, which for nineteen
centuries had in vain preached social obligation to the rich. The new
creed could not succeed where the old, with all its tremendous
sanctions, had completely failed. We wanted something fresh, some new
method of dealing with the inequalities of wealth.
Emile de Lavelaye was quite correct in attributing significance to the
publication of "Progress and Poverty," though the seed sown by Henry
George took root, not in the slums and alleys of our cities--no
intellectual seed of any sort can germinate in the sickly, sunless
atmosphere of slums--but in the minds of people who had sufficient
leisure and education to think of other things than breadwinning. Henry
George proposed to abolish poverty by political action: that was the new
gospel which came from San Francisco in the early eighties. "Progress
and Poverty" was published in America in 1879, and its author visited
England at the end of 1881. Socialism hardly existed at that time in
English-speaking countries, but the early advocates of land taxation
were not then, as they usually are now, uncompromising individualists.
"Progress and Poverty" gave an extraordinary impetus to the political
thought of the time. It proposed to redress the wrongs suffered by the
working classes as a whole: the poverty it considered was the poverty of
the wage workers as a class, not the destitution of the unfortunate and
downtrodden individuals. It did not merely propose, like philanthropy
and the Poor Law, to relieve the acute suffering of the outcasts of
civilisation, those condemned to wretchedness by the incapacity, the
vice, the folly, or the sheer misfortune of themselves or their
relations. It suggested a method by which wealth would correspond
approximately with worth; by which the reward of labour would go to
those that laboured; the idleness alike of rich and poor would cease;
the abundant wealth created by modern industry would be distributed with
something like fairness and even equality, amongst those who contributed
to its production. Above all, this tremendous revolution was to be
accomplished by a political method, applicable by a majority of the
voters, and capable of being drafted as an Act of Parliament by any
competent lawyer.
To George belongs the extraordinary merit of recognising the right way
of social salvation. The Socialists of earlier days had proposed
segregated communities; the Co-operators had tried voluntary
associations; the Positivists advocated moral suasion; the Chartists
favoured force, physical or political; the Marxists talked revolution
and remembered the Paris Commune. George wrote in a land where the
people ruled themselves, not only in fact but also in name. The United
States in the seventies was not yet dominated by trusts and controlled
by millionaires. Indeed even now that domination and control, dangerous
and disastrous as it often is, could not withstand for a moment any
widespread uprising of the popular will. Anyway, George recognised that
in the Western States political institutions could be moulded to suit
the will of the electorate; he believed that the majority desired to
seek their own well-being and this could not fail to be also the
well-being of the community as a whole. From Henry George I think it may
be taken that the early Fabians learned to associate the new gospel with
the old political method.
But when we came to consider the plan proposed by George we quickly saw
that it would not carry us far. Land may be the source of all wealth to
the mind of a settler in a new country. To those whose working day was
passed in Threadneedle Street and Lombard Street, on the floor of the
Stock Exchange, and in the Bank of England, land appears to bear no
relation at all to wealth, and the allegation that the whole surplus of
production goes automatically to the landowners is obviously untrue.
George's political economy was old-fashioned or absurd; and his solution
of the problem of poverty could not withstand the simplest criticism.
Taxation to extinction of the rent of English land would only affect a
small fraction of England's wealth.
There was another remedy in the field. Socialism was talked about in the
reviews: some of us knew that an obscure Socialist movement was stirring
into life in London. And above all John Stuart Mill had spoken very
respectfully of Socialism in his "Political Economy," which then held
unchallenged supremacy as an exposition of the science. If, he wrote,
"the choice were to be made between Communism[1] with all its chances,
and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices,
if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a
consequence that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now
see it almost in inverse proportion to labour, the largest portions to
those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work
is almost nominal, and so in descending scale, the remuneration
dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable until the most
fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on
being able to earn even the necessities of life; if this or Communism
were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism
would be but as dust in the balance."[2] And again in the next
paragraph: "We are too ignorant, either of what individual agency in its
best form or Socialism in its best form can accomplish, to be qualified
to decide which of the two will be the ultimate form of human society."
More than thirty years had passed since this had been written, and
whilst the evils of private property, so vividly depicted by Mill,
showed no signs of mitigation, the remedies he anticipated had made no
substantial progress. The co-operation of the Rochdale Pioneers had
proved a magnificent success, but its sphere of operations was now
clearly seen to be confined within narrow limits. Profit-sharing then as
now was a sickly plant barely kept alive by the laborious efforts of
benevolent professors. Mill's indictment of the capitalist system, in
regard to its effects on social life, was so powerful, his treatment of
the primitive socialism and communism of his day so sympathetic, that it
is surprising how little it prepared the way for the reception of the
new ideas. But to some of his readers, at any rate, it suggested that
there was an alternative to the capitalistic system, and that Socialism
or Communism was worthy of examination.[3]
The Socialism of Robert Owen had made a profound impression on the
working people of England half a century earlier, but the tradition of
it was confined to those who had heard its prophet. Owen, one of the
greatest men of his age, had no sense of art; his innumerable writings
are unreadable; and both his later excursions into spiritualism, and the
failure of his communities and co-operative enterprises, had clouded his
reputation amongst those outside the range of his personality. In later
years we often came across old men who had sat at his feet, and who
rejoiced to hear once more something resembling his teachings: but I do
not think that, at the beginning, the Owenite tradition had any
influence upon us.
Karl Marx died in London on the 14th March, 1883, but nobody in England
was then aware that the greatest figure in international politics had
passed away. It is true that Marx had taken a prominent part in founding
the International at that historic meeting in St. Martin's Town Hall on
September 28th, 1864. The real significance of that episode was
over-rated at the time, and when the International disappeared from
European politics in 1872 the whole thing was forgotten.
In Germany Marxian Socialism was already a force, and it was attracting
attention in England, as we have seen. But the personality of Marx must
have been antipathetic to the English workmen whom he knew, or else he
failed to make them understand his ideas: at any rate, his socialism
fell on deaf ears, and it may be said to have made no lasting impression
on the leaders of English working-class thought. Though he was resident
in England for thirty-four years, Marx remained a German to the last.
His writings were not translated into English at this period, and Mr.
Hyndman's "England for All," published in 1881, which was the first
presentation of his ideas in English, did not even mention his name.
This book was in fact an extremely moderate proposal to remedy
"something seriously amiss in the conditions of our everyday life," and
the immediate programme was no more than an eight hours working day,
free and compulsory education, compulsory construction of working-class
dwellings, and cheap "transport" for working-class passengers. It was
the unauthorised programme of the Democratic Federation which had been
founded by Mr. Hyndman in 1881. "Socialism Made Plain," the social and
political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation (undated, but
apparently issued in 1883), is a much stronger document. It deals with
the distribution of the National Income, giving the workers' share as
300 out of 1300 millions sterling, and demands that the workers should
"educate, agitate, organise" in order to get their own. Evidently it
attracted some attention, since we find that the second edition of a
pamphlet "Reply" by Samuel Smith, M.P., then a person of substantial
importance, was issued in January, 1884.
At the end of 1883 Mr. Hyndman published his "Historical Basis of
Socialism in England," which for some time was the text-book of the
Democratic Federation, but this, of course, was too late to influence
the founders of the Fabian Society.
We were however aware of Marx, and I find that my copy of the French
edition of "Das Kapital" is dated 8th October, 1883; but I do not think
that any of the original Fabians had read the book or had assimilated
its ideas at the time the Society was founded.
To some of those who joined the Society in its early days Christian
Socialism opened the way of salvation. The "Christian Socialist"[4] was
established by a band of persons some of whom were not Socialist and
others not Christian. It claimed to be the spiritual child of the
Christian Socialist movement of 1848-52, which again was Socialist only
on its critical side, and constructively was merely Co-operative
Production by voluntary associations of workmen. Under the guidance of
the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam[5] its policy of the revived movement was
Land Reform, particularly on the lines of the Single Tax. The
introductory article boldly claims the name of Socialist, as used by
Maurice and Kingsley: the July number contains a long article by Henry
George. In September a formal report is given of the work of the
Democratic Federation. In November Christianity and Socialism are said
to be convertible terms, and in January, 1884, the clerical view of
usury is set forth in an article on the morality of interest. In March
Mr. H.H. Champion explains "surplus value," and in April we find a
sympathetic review of the "Historic Basis of Socialism." In April, 1885,
appears a long and full report of a lecture by Bernard Shaw to the
Liberal and Social Union. The greater part of the paper is filled with
Land Nationalisation, Irish affairs--the land agitation in Ireland was
then at its height--and the propaganda of Henry George: whilst much
space is devoted to the religious aspect of the social problem. Sydney
Olivier, before he joined the Fabian Society, was one of the managing
group, and amongst others concerned in it were the Rev. C.L. Marson and
the Rev. W.E. Moll. At a later period a Christian Socialist Society was
formed; but our concern here is with the factors which contributed to
the Fabian Society at its start, and it is not necessary to touch on
other periods of the movement.
Thomas Davidson[6] was the occasion rather than the cause of the
founding of the Fabian Society. His socialism was ethical and individual
rather than economic and political. He was spiritually a descendant of
the Utopians of Brook Farm and the Phalanstery, and what he yearned for
was something in the nature of a community of superior people withdrawn
from the world because of its wickedness, and showing by example how a
higher life might be led. Probably his Scotch common sense recoiled from
definitely taking the plunge: I am not aware that he ever actually
proposed that his disciples should form a self-contained community. In a
lecture to the New York Fellowship of the New Life, he said, "I shall
set out with two assumptions, first, that human life does not consist in
material possession; and second, that it does consist in free spiritual
activity, of which in this life at least material possession is an
essential condition." There is nothing new in this: it is the common
basis of all religions and ethical systems. But it needs to be
re-stated for each generation, and so stated as to suit each
environment. At the time that I am describing Davidson's re-statement
appealed to the small circle of his adherents, though the movement which
he started had results that he neither expected nor approved.
I have now indicated the currents of thought which contributed to the
formation of the Fabian Society, so far as I can recover them from
memory and a survey of the periodical literature of the period. I have
not included the writings of Ruskin, Socialist in outlook as some of
them undoubtedly are, because I think that the value of his social
teachings was concealed from most of us at that time by reaction against
his religious mediævalism, and indifference to his gospel of art. Books
so eminently adapted for young ladies at mid-Victorian schools did not
appeal to modernists educated by Comte and Spencer.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The words Communism and Socialism were interchangeable at that
period, e.g. the "Manifesto of the Communist Party," by Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, 1848.
[2] "Political Economy," Book II, Chap. i, Sec. 3.
[3] William Morris attributed to Mill his conversion to Socialism. See
J.W. Mackail's "Life," Vol. II, p. 79.
[4] No. 1, June, 1883, monthly, 1d.; continued until 1891.
[5] Born 1847. Founded the Guild of St. Matthew 1877 and edited its
organ, the "Church Reformer," till 1895. Member of the English Land
Restoration League, originally the Land Reform Union, from 1883. Member
of the London School Board 1888-1904; of the London County Council since
1907.
[6] See "Memorials of Thomas Davidson: the wandering scholar." Edited by
William Knight. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907. Thomas Davidson was born
in Aberdeenshire in 1840 of a peasant family; after a brilliant career
at Aberdeen University he settled in America, but travelled much in
Europe. His magnetic personality inspired attachment and admiration in
all he came across. He lectured and wrote incessantly, founded Ethical
Societies and Schools, and published several volumes on philosophical
subjects, but his achievements were scarcely commensurate with his
abilities. He died in 1900.