Everything about Fabian Socialism totally explained
The
Fabian Society is a
British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of
Social democracy via
gradualist and
reformist, rather than
revolutionary means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the nineteenth century and continuing up to
World War I. The society laid many of the foundations of the
Labour Party and subsequently affected the policies of states emerging from the
decolonisation of the
British Empire, especially
India. The society is still in existence today and forms a vanguard "
think tank" of the
centre-left New Labour movement. It is one of fifteen
socialist societies affiliated to the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in
Australia (the
Australian Fabian Society),
Canada (the
Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and in past the
League for Social Reconstruction) in
New Zealand.
History
The society was founded on
4 January 1884 in
London as an offshoot of a society founded in 1883 called
The Fellowship of the New Life. Fellowship members included poets
Edward Carpenter and
John Davidson,
sexologist Havelock Ellis, and future Fabian secretary,
Edward R. Pease. They wanted to transform society by setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow. But when some members also wanted to become politically involved to aid society's transformation, it was decided that a separate society, The Fabian Society, also be set up. All members were free to attend both societies. The Fabian Society additionally advocated renewal of Western European
Renaissance ideas.
The Fellowship of the New Life was dissolved in 1898, but the Fabian Society grew to become the preeminent academic society in the United Kingdom in the
Edwardian era, typified by the members of its vanguard
Coefficients club.
Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including
George Bernard Shaw,
H. G. Wells,
Annie Besant,
Graham Wallas,
Hubert Bland,
Edith Nesbit,
Sydney Olivier,
Oliver Lodge,
Leonard Woolf and
Virginia Woolf,
Ramsay MacDonald and
Emmeline Pankhurst. Even
Bertrand Russell later became a member. The two members
John Maynard Keynes and
Harry Dexter White were delegates at 1944's
United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as the Bretton Woods Conference.
At the core of the Fabian Society were
Sidney and
Beatrice Webb. Together, they wrote numerous studies of industrial Britain, including alternative
co-operative economics that applied to ownership of
capital as well as land.
The group, which favoured gradual incremental change rather than
revolutionary change, was named — at the suggestion of
Frank Podmore — in honour of the
Roman general
Quintus Fabius Maximus (nicknamed "Cunctator", meaning "the Delayer"). His
Fabian strategy advocated tactics of harassment and
attrition rather than head-on battles against the
Carthaginian army under the renowned general
Hannibal Barca.
The first Fabian Society pamphlets advocating tenets of
Social justice coincided with the zeitgeist of
Liberal reforms during the early 1900's. The Fabian proposals however were considerably more progressive than those that were enacted in the Liberal reform legislation. The Fabians lobbied for the introduction of a
minimum wage in 1906, for the creation of a
Socialised healthcare system in 1911, and for the abolition of
hereditary peerages in 1917.
Fabian socialists were in favour of an
imperialist foreign policy as a conduit for
internationalist reform and a welfare state modelled on the
Bismarckian German model; they criticised
Gladstonian liberalism both for its individualism at home and its internationalism abroad. They favoured a national
minimum wage in order to stop British industries compensating for their inefficiency by lowering wages instead of investing in capital equipment; slum clearances and a health service in order for "the breeding of even a moderately Imperial race" which would be more productive and better militarily than the "stunted, anaemic, demoralised denizens...of our great cities"; and a national education system because "it is in the class-rooms that the future battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity are already being lost".
The Fabians also favoured the nationalization of land, believing that rents collected by landowners were unearned, an idea which drew heavily from the work of American economist
Henry George.
Many Fabians participated in the formation of the
Labour Party in 1900, and the group's
constitution, written by Sidney Webb, borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society. At the
Labour Party Foundation Conference in 1900, the Fabian Society claimed 861 members and sent one delegate.
In the period between the two World Wars, the "Second Generation" Fabians, including the writers
R. H. Tawney,
G. D. H. Cole, and
Harold Laski, continued to be a major influence on
social-democratic thought.
It was at this time that many of the future leaders of the Third World were exposed to Fabian thought, most notably India's
Jawaharlal Nehru, who subsequently framed economic policy for one-fifth of humanity on Fabian social-democratic lines.
Obafemi Awolowo who later became the premier of Nigeria's defunct Western Region was also a Fabian member in the late 1940's. It was the Fabian ideology that Awolowo used to run the Western Region but was prevented from using it on a national level in Nigeria. It is a little-known fact that the founder of
Pakistan, Barrister Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, was an avid member of the Fabian Society in the early 1930s.
Lee Kuan Yew, the first
Prime Minister of
Singapore, stated in his memoirs that his initial political philosophy was strongly influenced by the Fabian Society. However, he later altered his views, believing the Fabian ideal of socialism to be too impractical.
Legacy
Through the course of the 20th century the group has always been influential in Labour Party circles, with members including
Ramsay MacDonald,
Clement Attlee,
Anthony Crosland,
Richard Crossman,
Tony Benn,
Harold Wilson, and more recently
Tony Blair and
Gordon Brown. The late
Ben Pimlott served as its Chairman in the 1990s. (A Pimlott Prize for Political Writing was organized in his memory by the Fabian Society and
The Guardian in 2005, and continues annually). The Society is affiliated to the Party as a
socialist society. In recent years the
Young Fabian group, founded in 1960, has become an important networking and discussion organisation for younger (under 31)
Labour Party activists and played a role in the 1994 election of
Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Following a period of inactivity, the Scottish Young Fabians were reformed in 2005.
The ideology of the Fabians can be encompassed in the famous quote, " Fabianism feeds on Capitalism, but excretes Communism ".
The society's 2004 annual report showed that there were 5,810 individual members (down 70 from the previous year), of whom 1,010 were
Young Fabians, and 294 institutional subscribers, of which 31 were
Constituency Labour Parties,
co-operative societies, or
trade unions, 190 were
libraries, 58 corporate, and 15 other—making 6,104 members in total. The society's net assets were £86,057, its total income £486,456, and its total expenditure £475,425. There was an overall
surplus for the year of £1,031.
The latest edition of the
Dictionary of National Biography (a reference work listing details of famous or significant
Britons throughout history) includes 174 Fabians.
Four Fabians,
Beatrice and
Sidney Webb,
Graham Wallas, and
George Bernard Shaw founded the
London School of Economics with the money left to the Fabian Society by
Henry Hutchinson. Supposedly the decision was made at a breakfast party on
4 August 1894. The founders are depicted in the
Fabian Window
designed by
George Bernard Shaw. The window was stolen in 1978 and reappeared at Sotheby's in 2005. It was restored to display in the Shaw Library at the
London School of Economics in 2006 at a ceremony over which
Tony Blair presided.
Young Fabians
Members aged under 31 years of age are also members of the
Young Fabians. This group has its own elected Chair and executive and organizes conferences and events. It also publishes the quarterly magazine
Anticipations. The Scottish Young Fabians, a Scottish branch of the group, reformed in 2005.
Influence on Labour government
Since Labour came to office in 1997, the Fabian Society has been a forum for New Labour ideas and for critical approaches from across the party. The most significant Fabian contribution to Labour's policy agenda in government was
Ed Balls' 1992 pamphlet, advocating
Bank of England independence. Balls had been a
Financial Times journalist when he wrote this Fabian pamphlet, before going to work for Gordon Brown. BBC Business Editor
Robert Peston, in his book Brown's Britain, calls this an "essential tract" and concludes that Balls "deserves as much credit – probably more – than anyone else for the creation of the modern Bank of England"; William Keegan offers a similar analysis of Balls' Fabian pamphlet in his book on Labour's economic policy, which traces in detail the path leading up to this dramatic policy change after Labour's first week in office.
The Fabian Society Tax Commission of 2000 was widely credited with influencing the Labour government's policy and political strategy for its one significant public tax increase: the
National Insurance rise to raise £8 billion for
National Health Service spending. (The Fabian Commission had in fact called for a directly hypothecated "NHS tax" to cover the full cost of NHS spending, arguing that linking taxation more directly to spending was essential to make tax rise publicly acceptable. The 2001 National Insurance rise wasn't formally
hypothecated, but the government committed itself to using the additional funds for health spending.) Several other recommendations, including a new top rate of income tax, were to the left of government policy and not accepted, though this comprehensive review of
UK taxation was influential in economic policy and political circles.
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