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.

The Fabian Society was founded for the purpose of reconstructing Society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities.  This is still the most accurate and compendious description of its object and the nature of its work.  But the stage of idealism at which more than a very modest instalment of this cosmic process seemed possible within the lifetime of a single institution had passed before the chief Essayists became members, and indeed I cannot recollect that the founders themselves ever imagined that it lay within their own power to reconstruct Society; none of them was really so sanguine or so self-confident as to anticipate so great a result from their efforts, and it will be remembered that the original phrase was altered by the insertion of the words “to help on” when the constitution was actually formulated.  Society has not yet been reconstructed, but the Fabians have done something towards its reconstruction, and my history will be incomplete without an attempt to indicate what the Society has already accomplished and what may be the future of its work.

Its first achievement, as already mentioned, was to break the spell of Marxism in England.  Public opinion altogether failed to recognise the greatness of Marx during his lifetime, but every year that passes adds strength to the conviction that the broad principles he promulgated will guide the evolution of society during the present century.  Marx demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of commercialism and formulated the demand for the communal ownership and organisation of industry; and it is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this service to humanity.  But no man is great enough to be made into a god; no man, however wise, can see far into the future.  Neither Marx himself nor his immediate followers recognised the real basis of his future fame; they thought he was a brilliant and original economist, and a profound student of history.  His Theory of Value, his Economic Interpretation of History, seemed to them the incontestible premises which necessarily led to his political conclusions.  This misapprehension would not have much mattered had they allowed themselves freedom of thought.  Socialism, as first preached to the English people by the Social Democrats, was as narrow, as bigoted, as exclusive as the strictest of Scotch religious sects.  “Das Kapital,” Vol.  I, was its bible; and the thoughts and schemes of English Socialists were to be approved or condemned according as they could or could not be justified by a quoted text.

The Fabian Society freed English Socialism from this intellectual bondage, and freed it sooner and more completely than “Revisionists” have succeeded in doing anywhere else.