Fabian Socialism

One of the bourgeois reformist political ideological systems prevalent in England at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It was labeled “socialism”, but was in fact a bourgeois socialist current opposed to scientific socialism.

In 1884, the famous scholars Beatrice and Sidney Webb and the writer George Bernard Shaw founded the Fabian Society, whose members were almost all intellectuals. They advocated that social transformation should proceed gradually. They chose the name “Fabian” because Fabius Maximus, a Roman commander in the 3rd century B.C., shunned a decisive battle and adopted a wait-and-see strategy that was consistent with their reformist beliefs. Fabianism is also known as “municipal socialism”. Its ideological system is an amalgam of the philosophy and sociology of Herbert Spencer, the vulgar theory of evolution, the theories of bourgeois socialism and state socialism, the bourgeois “orthodox” political economy, the capitalist supra-class conception of the state as well as “constitutionalism” and “international nationalism”. Economically, the Fabians strongly opposed all the fundamental principles of Marxist political economy, advocated bourgeois political economy, used the so-called theory of “economic rent” to oppose Marxist theory of surplus-value, and employed the so-called “nationalization” theory to oppose Marxist theory of abolition of private property. Nevertheless, in their words, they were very fond of “socialism”. They advocated abandoning the path of proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and gradually “sliding into” socialism with “local community socialism” or “municipal socialism”. In essence, it was to reform certain details of the urban economy without touching the foundations of bourgeois rule, which was in fact only a patching up of the capitalist system. This idea became the ideological source of Bernstein’s revisionism later on. Politically, they were opposed to class struggle and violent revolution, although they also recognized that, because of the existence of private property in the means of production, the society was divided into “classic proletarians” and “classic bourgeoisie”. But they believed that the unhealthiness of the “social organism” of British capitalism was due to the unchecked struggles within its members, and that only by eliminating all struggles could capitalist society survive as a healthy and eternal social organism. For the Fabians, socialism could only be built on “humanity” and “humanity as a whole”. In this regard, Engels pointed out: “Fear of the revolution is their fundamental principle.” On the question of the State, the Fabians denied that the State is an instrument of class domination, denied that the bourgeois state is an organ of violence for the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat, and endeavored to propagate the reactionary supra-class conception of the State. They upheld the opportunist “theory” of replacing class struggle with class reconciliation and social revolution with social reform. These views are anathema to Marxism. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels clearly pointed out: “As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.”