Fabianism

Fabianism Fabianism describes a broad central tendency in English collectivist thinking about social policy which is essentially non-revolutionary, pragmatic, rational, with a belief in government intervention and the perfectibility of the welfare state; it is strongly associated with the English tradition of empirical research. The Fabian Society, founded in 1884 by (among others) Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw, took its name from a Roman general whose motto was ‘slow but sure’. Avoiding both revolutionary Marxism and Owenite utopianism, the early Fabians embraced a programme of ‘municipal socialism’ and state control of the conditions of labour, to be achieved by the Labour Party with trade-union backing. Political influence was mainly exerted indirectly through marshalling facts in policy-related publications and journalism. Nevertheless, in 1945 over half the members of parliament for the Labour Party were Fabians. Although always concerned with socialist ideals of equality, freedom, and fellowship, Fabian writings have ranged from Richard H. Tawney's egalitarianism, in the 1920s, to the revisionism of Anthony Crosland in the 1950s. Fabianism, when wrongly bracketed with social administration, is sometimes criticized as untheoretical, nationalistic, incremental, bureaucratic, and élitist, being addressed mainly to British politicians and civil servants rather than wider issues, grass-roots politics, and the common people. However this criticism seriously underrates the historical influence and continuing strength of the left-wing empirical tradition in the Fabian Society. See also COLLECTIVISM; SOCIALISM.