The future success of the Society was dependent in the main on two factors then already in existence.  The first was its foundation before there was any other definitely Socialist body in England.  The Social Democratic Federation did not adopt that name until August, 1884; the Fabian Society can therefore claim technical priority, and consequently it has never had to seek acceptance by the rest of the Socialist movement.  At any later date it would have been impossible for a relatively small middle-class society to obtain recognition as an acknowledged member of the Socialist confraternity.  We were thus in a position to welcome the formation of working-class Socialist societies, but it is certain that in the early days they would never have welcomed us.

Regret has been sometimes expressed, chiefly by foreign observers, that the Society has maintained its separate identity.  Why, it has been asked, did not the middle-class leaders of the Society devote their abilities directly to aiding the popular organisations, instead of “keeping themselves to themselves” like ultra-respectable suburbans?

If this had been possible I am convinced that the loss would have exceeded the gain, but in the early years it was not possible.  The Social Democrats of those days asserted that unquestioning belief in every dogma attributed to Marx was essential to social salvation, and that its only way was revolution, by which they meant, not the complete transformation of society, but its transformation by means of rifles and barricades; they were convinced that a successful repetition of the Commune of Paris was the only method by which their policy could prevail.  The Fabians realised from the first that no such revolution was likely to take place, and that constant talk about it was the worst possible way to commend Socialism to the British working class.  And indeed a few years later it was necessary to establish a new working-class Socialist Society, the Independent Labour Party, in order to get clear both of the tradition of revolutionary violence and of the vain repetition of Marxian formulas.  If the smaller society had merged itself in the popular movement, its criticism, necessary, as it proved to be, to the success of Socialism in England, would have been voted down, and its critics either silenced or expelled.  Of this criticism I shall have more to say in another place.[16]

But there was another reason why this course would have been impracticable.  The Fabians were not suited either by ability, temperament, or conditions to be leaders of a popular revolutionary party.  Mrs. Besant with her gift of splendid oratory and her long experience of agitation was an exception, but her connection with the movement lasted no more than five years.  Of the others Shaw did not and does not now possess that unquestioning faith in recognised principles which is the stock-in-trade of political leadership:[17] and whilst Webb might have been a first-class minister at the head of a department, his abilities would have been wasted as a leader in a minority.  But there was a more practical bar.  The Fabians were mostly civil servants or clerks in private employ.  The methods of agitation congenial to them were compatible with their occupations:  those of the Social Democrats were not.  Indeed in those days no question of amalgamation was ever mooted.