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Fabianism has been one of the most discussed and controversial issues in political theory and practice in the later half of the nineteenth century and twentieth century. In England, the Fabian socialists, such as Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. D. H. Cole, William Clarke, and Annie Besant, realized the importance of the working class and visualized the possibilities of establishing socialism through a gradual process by increasing public ownership in industry and more representation of labor in the legislature, trade unions, and cooperatives. Whereas Eduard Bernstein’s revisionism, influenced by the ethical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, was a direct attack on Marxism, Fabianism attacked Marxism indirectly. Fabian socialists believed in a gradual approach toward socialism through democratic means instead of revolutionary socialism. They were guided by the philosophy of the Roman general Q. Fabius Maximus, surnamed Cunctator, which means “delayer.” Fabians believed in the philosophy, “For the right moment, you must wait as Fabius did most patiently when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless” (see Mehrotra 1984, 246).

Fabianism Versus Marxism

The Fabians eschewed the revolutionary spirit of Marxism without ever adopting a doctrinaire attitude toward it. Unlike the Marxists, the Fabianists did not have any coherent philosophy. Nor did the Fabian Society have any authoritative spokesperson or a president. It was essentially a middle-class movement that Thomas Rush (1955–1956) noted was “free from any infusion of those of whose wrongs they were lecturing to set right” (p. 151). In Bernard Shaw’s (1908) view, it was unreasonable to expect a society so constituted to be “ardent class strugglers” and “revolutionaries.”

As intellectuals, the Fabians were more concerned with those values that suited their respective societies. They modified Marxism considerably. While retaining the revolutionary zeal of Marxism, they rejected its basic tenets, such as class struggle, economic determinism, theory of surplus value, dictatorship of the proletariat, and inevitability of revolution. Although Fabianism was based on the socialist creed of the Marxist traditional, historical, and economic foundation, they were poles apart from Marxism. For instance, whereas Marx found in history a continuous struggle between the haves and have-nots, Sidney Webb, one of the early Fabianists, observed that history constantly reveals both the “irresistible progress of democracy” and almost continuous progress of socialism. They did not consider socialism antithetical to democracy. Webb pointed out the fact that in England, middle-class suffrage superseded aristocratic suffrage in the early nineteenth century.

Fabianism emerged essentially as an English school of thought. Although Karl Marx spent the last thirty years of his life in England, Marxism never found a fertile ground. England being the mother of parliamentary democracy, the Fabians held deeply the view that transformation in the society could be brought by persuasion and flexible means. They did not believe in propagating socialists’ ideas to achieve their desired goals. Rather, they sought elections to the local bodies, corporations, and Parliament with the aim of reforming the structure and working of the Parliament.

An Evaluation

The Fabians forgot the hard fact that the masses do not live on ideology alone, however sound or logical it might be. They also failed to realize that the parliamentary method is not “a way of confrontation” but of constant “adjustment, compromise and tactics” (see Dwivedy 1984, 348).The Fabians proved to be more ideological than pragmatic. They were generally criticized for their reformist attitude. J. Ellis Barker criticized Fabianism for being the least clear of a definite type of social order, and Friedrich Engels criticized the Fabians for their “tactics to fight the liberals not as decided opponents but to drive them onto socialistic consequences” (Mehrotra 1984, 253).

The Fabians were essentially reformers who believed in reforms without resentment and social reconstruction without dogma or fanaticism. Their socialism was the socialism of the simple minded; it signified indefinite extension of state activity. For most of the Fabians, it was “a journey with no assigned destination,” wrote Alexander Gray (1946, 349). The Fabians played a significant role in practical politics by putting forward many workable schemes, such as social legislation, public ownership of basic industries, radical taxation, and welfare state.

Bibliography:

Coker, Francis W. Recent Political Thought. London: Appleton-Century, 1934.
Dwivedy, Surendra Nath. Quest for Socialism: Fifty Years of Struggle. New Delhi, India: Radiant, 1984.
Gay, Peter. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: E. Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.
Gray, Alexander. The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin. London: Longmans, Green, 1946.
Gupta, Asha. “Fabianism and Indian Socialism.” In Essays on Fabian Socialism, edited by M. M. Sankhdher and Subrata Mukherjee, 50–65. New Delhi, India: Deep and Deep, 1991.
Mehrotra, Nanak Chand. Today’s Isms. Delhi, India: Atma Ram and Sons, 1984.
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