Part 17 (2/2)

Of this principle the public is already convinced: it is merely a question of working out the details. But order and forethought is wanted for industry as well as for human life. Compet.i.tion is bad, and in most respects private monopoly is worse. No one now seriously defends the system of rival traders with their crowds of commercial travellers: of rival tradesmen with their innumerable deliveries in each street; and yet no one advocates the capitalist alternative, the great trust, often concealed and insidious, which monopolises oil or tobacco or diamonds, and makes huge profits for a fortunate; few out of the helplessness of the unorganised consumers.

But neither the idle rich cla.s.s nor the anarchy of compet.i.tion is so outstanding an evil as the poverty of the poor. We aim at making the rich poorer chiefly in order to make the poor richer. Our first tract, ”Why are the Many Poor?” struck the keynote. In a century of abounding wealth England still has in its midst a hideous ma.s.s of poverty which is too appalling to think of. That poverty, we say, is preventible. That poverty was the background of our thoughts when the Society was founded.

Perhaps we have done a little to mitigate it: we believe we have done something to make clear the way by which it may ultimately be abolished.

We do not constantly talk of it. We write of the advantages of Munic.i.p.al Electricity, of the powers of Parish Councils, of the objections to the Referendum; but all the while it is that great evil which chiefly moves us, and by our success or our failure in helping on the reconstruction of society for the purpose of abolis.h.i.+ng poverty, the work of the Fabian Society must ultimately be judged.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] ”La Societe Fabienne et le Mouvement socialiste anglais contemporain.” By edouard Pfeiffer, Paris, F. Giard and E. Briere, 1911; an excellent volume but full of errors.

[44] ”The Fabians were the first amongst Socialists to start the movement of anti-Marxist criticism. At a period when the dogmas of the Master were regarded as sacred, the Fabians ventured to a.s.sert that it was possible to call oneself a Socialist without ever having read 'Das Kapital,' or without accepting its doctrine. In opposition to Marx, they have revived the spirit of J.S. Mill, and they have attacked Marx all along the line--the cla.s.s war, the economic interpretation of history, the catastrophic method, and above all the theory of value.”

[45] Published in English by the Independent Labour Party in 1909 as ”Evolutionary Socialism.”

[46] Address to the International, 1862, quoted from Spargo's ”Karl Marx,” p. 266.

[47] Home University Library, Williams and Norgate, 1915, 1s.

[48] M. Beer, ”Geschichte des Socialismus in England” (Stuttgart, 1913), p. 462. Mr. Beer devotes seven pages to the Society, which he describes with accuracy, and interprets much as Mr. Barker has done. The book was written at the request of the German Social Democratic Party.

[49] I quote, but do not endorse the opinion that G.B.S. markedly resembles James Mill (Mr. Barker confuses the two Mills). Beer adds ”Webb was the thinker, Shaw the fighter.” This ant.i.thesis is scarcely happy. The collaboration of the two is much too complicated to be summed up in a phrase.

[50] But see chapter VIII for its influence before 1906; and see Appendix 1. A. for a much fuller discussion of this subject.

[51] The same idea is expressed by a Canadian Professor:--

”It is necessary to go back to the Philosophical Radicals to find a small group of men who have exercised such a profound influence over English political thought as the little band of social investigators who organised the Fabian Society.”

”Socialism: a critical a.n.a.lysis.” By O.D. Skelton, Ph.D., Professor of Economic Science, Kingston, Canada. (Constable, 1911.) p. 288.

[52] Mr. Barker erroneously uses the word ”increment” for ”income” in several places. Unearned increment is quite another thing.

[53] See ”Socialism and Superior Brains: a reply to Mr. Mallock,” by G.B. Shaw. Fabian Tract 146.

[54] Mr. Barker emphasises the ”discrimination advocated by the Fabians”

in favour of profits in a later pa.s.sage (p. 224) not here quoted.

[55] This should read ”incomes.”

[56] ”Faults of the Fabian,” p. 9.

[57] See Appendix I. B.

Appendix I

Memoranda by Bernard Shaw

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