from the consequences of industrial chaos and individual avarice, the movement emerged from the Utopian stage only to fall a victim to a false view of the State, extolling its omnipotence and preaching the need for capture of its machinery. The result was disastrous. Emancipation-it was implied, if not openly proclaimed-was not to proceed from the independence and vision of those who felt themselves enslaved; it was to be conceded by a public power which had to be cajoled and conciliated by the exhibition of sweet reasonableness and a statesmanlike " moderation. moderation. The Socialist movement was stampeded by the Collectivists. It is they who have created the traditions of English Socialism, and it is against them chiefly that our accusations lie.

It is not against them only, however, that the charge must be laid of having presented Socialism rather as a "movement" for cranks than as a challenging appeal to all men of common honesty and a sane outlook on society. Socialism has become in the eyes of the ordinary man simply one of the "Causes"; the man at the street corner has appealed to everyone but the man in the street. The fundamental propositions of the Socialist creed -that, for the workers, production for profit means not only a captivity, but a swindle, and that "the social problem" created by Capitalism is not really a problem at all, but rather a crime-these plain challenges have become overlaid with sentimentalism, entangled with a dozen irrelevant fads, stripped of reality by becoming associated with mere catchwords, and presented in such a way as to appear to the vast majority a foolish and mechanical abstrac

tion, involving not the liberty and equality of all men, but only the victory of a clique. To the bourgeois cant of "citizenship" the Socialist has replied with the cant of the "comrade"; but the self-conscious "comrade," no less than the selfrighteous "citizen," is at heart a snob. The British worker is not to be won by the artificialities of a smug vocabulary, or the fads and poses of Progressivism. The people of England "have not spoken yet," nor will they speak till those who really seek their emancipation appeal to them in a manner which will kindle their idealism without at the same time doing violence to their common sense.

The rigid Collectivists have, for the most part, avoided the pitfalls of sentimentalism, but only at the cost of eliminating idealism from their presentation of Socialism altogether and founding it explicitly upon a “business basis." Of such were the Fabians, who, according to their secretary and historian, based their Socialism "on that obvious evolution of society as we see it around us," and

proved that Socialism was but the next step in the development of society, rendered inevitable by the changes which followed from the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century."1 Far from Fabian Socialism being a challenge to the prevailing creed of Capitalism, it "is in fact an interpretation of the spirit of the times." In short, the Fabians sought to make Capitalism a State monopoly; but the State interference which they demanded to cure poverty came naturally to be exercised over those

The quotations here are from The History of the Fabian Society (published 1916), by E. R. Pease.

persons whom poverty immediately concerns-that is, the poor. That most typical offspring of the marriage of Progressivism and Capitalism, the National Committee for the Prevention of Destitution, assumed a revolutionary tone, preaching "red ruin and the breaking up of Poor Laws," diagnosed destitution as a "disease," and then proposed to treat the destitute not as victims for whom justice must be secured, but as criminals fit only to be locked up in compounds. No wonder that, as Mr. Pease naïvely puts it, "people who would not dream of calling themselves Socialists . . . become enthusiastically interested in separate parts of its programme as soon as it has a programme.' Hence also a Fabian Committee, with a title that would serve very well as an alias for the Society itself, set out to reassure the many who regard Socialism as a menace to society " that there is really no harm in it for "the conscientious rich, with a compunction that no special pleading by armchair economists can allay," and that the poor, though not superficially interesting, might form the material of many most absorbing" social experiments." In short, that

"

The world is so full of a number of plebs

That I'm sure we should all be as happy as Webbs.

The spirit of Collectivism has been exactly expressed by one of its own writers: its ideal is "a discreetly regulated freedom." Discretion has always been the better part of Fabian valour; it would certainly prove to be the larger part of Fabian liberty. Indeed, it is not the liberty of the worker but his "efficiency" of which these people are

C

thinking, and it is the poverty and not the slavery to which he is condemned by Capitalism which excites their indignation. It is a "National Minimum of Civilised Life" on which their hearts are set. The State of their Utopia would be an association of consumers satisfying their needs by enlisting the activities of hired servants, a nation of workers living on "standard rates" determined by some external authority (presumably a cross between the House of Commons and the London School of Economics!), and in no sense masters of their own industrial life. Hence the Collectivist has never appealed to the independence of the worker as a worker, but only as a voter; he has sought his compliance in a bureaucratic experiment, not his victory in an industrial crusade. The first condition of any movement towards emancipation is that the initiative of the dispossessed shall have been stirred; but the Fabian sought to "raise" the poor rather than to rouse them. The worker was to reach Socialism-if ever-after he had been brought, blindfold and bound, through the dreary vista of the Servile State. The only message of Fabianism to the masses was, "Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what the fairies will bring you." But, if the achievement of freedom is to be the burden of our appeal to the workers, we must speak not of what we expect for them, but of what we expect from them. It is of the essence of the Guild idea that it is emancipatory in method as well as in aim. In setting themselves the task of establishing their Trade Unions as permanent and responsible associations in the social order, the workers will gain

freedom as they go forward; they will not merely find it waiting for them, as it were, "round the corner." The ideal of National Guilds not only opens up a prospect to which the worker can reasonably look forward, but it insists that by his own efforts he should hasten its advent. It gives him something to work for, whereas the Collectivist only offered him someone to vote for. The worker who is a Guildsman will seek to inspire his Trade Union to play an active part in industry; but the Collectivist sought to "capture" the Trade Unions only in order that their members might be induced to play a passive rôle in politics.

Emancipation by capture, indeed, was the contribution of Fabianism to the problem of Socialist policy-capture of the machinery of the State by the enlightened bureaucrat, capture of the Trade Unions by the progressive politician. The Labour Party was formed to rivet the gaze of the workers upon Westminster, while the Fabians themselves concentrated the attention of the middle-class reformer upon Whitehall. While the politician parleyed at the gate of the capitalist citadel, the bureaucrat set himself to undermine its foundations. The rank and file were left alone to look on, helpless to criticise and free only to applaud. All vitality and independence were drained out of the Trade Unions, which were diverted from their true function in the industrial field to become the passive agents of a futile political experiment—“ mere electioneering devices for making the working classes seem more Collectivist than they are." Indeed, the The World of Labour, by G. D. H. Cole, p. 8.