The influence of the Fabian Society on political thought is already the theme of doctoral theses by graduates, especially in American universities, but it has not yet found much place in weightier compilation.  Indeed so far as I know the only serious attempts in this country to describe its character and estimate its proportions is to be found in an admirable little book by Mr. Ernest Barker of New College, Oxford, entitled “Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the Present Day."[47] The author, dealing with the early Fabians, points out that “Mill rather than Marx was their starting point,” but he infers from this that “they start along the line suggested by Mill with an attack on rent as the ‘unearned increment’ of land,” a curious inaccuracy since our earliest contribution to the theory of Socialism, Tract No. 7, “Capital and Land,” was expressly directed to emphasising the comparative unimportance of Land Nationalisation, and nothing in the later work of the Society has been inconsistent with this attitude.  Then Mr. Barker goes on:  “Fabianism began after 1884 to supply a new philosophy in place of Benthamite Individualism.  Of the new gospel of collectivism a German writer[48] has said Webb was the Bentham and Shaw the Mill.[49] Without assigning roles we may fairly say there is some resemblance between the influence of Benthamism on legislation after 1830 and the influence of Fabianism on legislation since, at any rate, 1906.[50] In either case we have a small circle of thinkers and investigators in quiet touch with politicians:  in either case we have a ‘permeation’ of general opinion by the ideas of these thinkers and investigators....  It is probable that the historian of the future will emphasise Fabianism in much the same way as the historian of to-day emphasises Benthamism."[51]

Mr. Barker next explains that “Fabianism has its own political creed, if it is a political creed consequential upon an economic doctrine.  That economic doctrine advocates the socialisation of rent.  But the rents which the Fabians would socialise are not only rents from land.  Rent in the sense of unearned increments may be drawn, and is drawn, from other sources.  The successful entrepreneur for instance draws a rent of ability from his superior equipment and education.  The socialisation of every kind of rent will necessarily arm the State with great funds which it must use....  Shaw can define the two interconnected aims of Fabianism as ’the gradual extension of the franchise and the transfer of rent and interest to the State.’”

As Mr. Barker may not be alone in a slight misinterpretation of Fabian doctrine it may be well to take this opportunity of refuting the error.  He says that Fabianism advocates the socialisation of rent, and in confirmation quotes Shaw’s words “rent and interest”!  That makes all the difference.  If the term rent is widened to include all differential unearned incomes, from land, from ability, from opportunity (i.e. special