THE FABIAN SOCIETY

The Fabian Society might well have succeeded in implementing its political, economic and social agenda better than any other movement in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Whether they deserve that acclaim or not, they have achieved remarkable success, while remaining largely unknown. It is difficult to cite any other movement which stealthily implemented its goals under the radar for detection of its goals or identity.

They took their name from Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who accepted the challenge of saving the Roman Empire from Hannibal and his multi cultural army, which fought in behalf of the North African state of Carthage. In that stage of the Second Punic War each state desired to annihilate the other. Simple victory was unacceptable. The Roman forces were less able and committed to Rome than earlier Roman armies had been. Hannibal enjoyed a well deserved reputation as a master strategist and tactician with the additional ability to utilize psychological methods to deflate his opponents’ morale. His use of elephants in this prolonged campaign was his most noted innovation.

The bravest Roman officers and soldiers had never seen anything like the heavy pachyaderm cavalry Hannibal possessed. Hannibal’s force was stronger than the Romans even after the elephants died primarily from exposure to cold while crossing the Alps.

Fabius Maximus acknowledged Carthaginian superiority and devised a strategy that avoided frontal engagements with the invading enemy. Under his command the Romans carefully chose time and place to hit their foe and inflict some level of damage. They attacked scouting and foraging parties to impair Carthaginian effectiveness. In time Hannibal determined victory was impossible and returned to North Africa. Roman infliction of many small wounds succeeded.

The Fabian Society adopted a similar approach in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Capitalism was the enemy they desired to kill in the course of time through a concerted effort of virtually imperceptible attacks. They chose the fairly new device of the ballot box and public opinion to achieve their goal. Their approach was perfectly legal, non-violent and even admirable, especially since advocacy of change through bloody revolution had prevailed among leftist for more than half a century.

Few could take their optimistic approach seriously because of Marx’s call for violence, while he derided the gentler socialist thinkers who preceded him as unrealistic Utopian dreamers. The Fabians were intellectuals like H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Like responsible political thinkers such as the Classical Liberals before them, they intended to change society through education or re-education of voters. The Classical Liberals and the Classical Economists assumed that capitalism would prevail in their society of the accelerated industrial revolution.

The German socialist, Eduard Bernstein also advocated change through the electoral process because an ever increasing number of Germans and other Europeans had the right to vote by the late nineteenth century. He did not, however, define a method for accelerating the transition from capitalism to socialism.

The Fabian approach was simple, legal and essentially unobtrusive. They proposed to construct a new society by creating a continuous supply of politicians, teachers, artists, poets, playwrights, writers, journalists, cinematographers and all other people in positions to shape public opinion. Their creation of the London School of Economics was the cornerstone of their scheme.

There is little doubt that all of the fields they targeted have become increasingly compliant with the Fabian approach, although only a small percentage of contemporary opinion makers have any idea there was ever a Fabian movement. The secret of their success was their ability to employ their approach to willing, apparently unproselytized people in the entire spectrum of public relations. Being leftist in those fields currently seems as natural as breathing. This did not happen accidentally, as an apostolic succession of individuals with similar views have implemented the plan of the Fabian founders.