§ 2
Every movement has the defects of its virtues, and it is not, perhaps, very remarkable that the Fabian Society of the eighties and nineties, having introduced the conception of the historical continuity of institutions into the Propaganda of Socialism, did certainly for a time greatly over-accentuate that conception and draw away attention from aspects that may be ultimately more essential.
Beginning with the proposition that the institutions and formulæ of the future must necessarily be developed from those of the present, that one cannot start de novo even after a revolution; one may easily end in an attitude of excessive conservatism towards existing machinery. In spite of the presence of such fine and original intelligences as Mr. (now Sir) Sydney Olivier and Mr. Graham Wallas in the Fabian counsels, there can be no denial that for the first twenty years of its career, Mr. Webb was the prevailing Fabian. Now his is a mind legal as well as creative, and at times his legal side quite overcomes his constructive element; he is extraordinarily fertile in expedients and skilful in adaptation, and with a real horror of open destruction. This statement by no means exhausts him, but it does to a large extent convey the qualities that were uppermost in the earlier years, at any rate, of his influence. His insistence upon continuity pervaded the Society, was re-echoed and intensified by others, and developed into something like a mania for achieving Socialism without the overt change of any existing ruling body. His impetus carried this reaction against the crude democratic idea to its extremest opposite. Then arose Webbites to caricature Webb. From saying that the unorganized people cannot achieve Socialism, they passed to the implication that organization alone, without popular support, might achieve Socialism. Socialism was to arrive as it were insidiously.
To some minds this new proposal had the charm of a school-boy’s first dark-lantern. Socialism ceased to be an open revolution, and became a plot. Functions were to be shifted, quietly, unostentatiously, from the representative to the official he appointed; a bureaucracy was to slip into power through the mechanical difficulties of an administration by debating representatives; and since these officials would by the nature of their positions constitute a scientific bureaucracy, and since Socialism is essentially scientific government as distinguished from haphazard government, they would necessarily run the country on the lines of a pretty distinctly undemocratic Socialism.
The process went even further than secretiveness in its reaction from the large rhetorical forms of revolutionary Socialism. There arose even a repudiation of “principles” of action, and a type of worker which proclaimed itself “Opportunist-Socialist.” It was another instance of Socialism losing sight of itself, it was a process quite parallel at the other extreme with the self-contradiction of the Anarchist-Socialist. Socialism as distinguished from mere Liberalism, for example, is an organized plan for social reconstruction, while Liberalism relies upon certain vague “principles”; Socialism declares that good intentions and doing what comes first to hand will not suffice. Now Opportunism is essentially benevolent adventure and the doing of first-hand things.
This conception of indifference to the forms of government, of accepting whatever governing bodies existed and using them to create officials and “get something done,” was at once immediately fruitful in many directions, and presently productive of many very grave difficulties in the path of advancing Socialism. Webb himself devoted immense industry and capacity to the London County Council—it is impossible to measure the share he has had in securing such great public utilities as water supply, traction and electric supply, for example, from complete exploitation by private profit seekers, but certainly it is a huge one—and throughout England and presently in America, there went on a collateral activity of Fabian Socialists. They worked like a ferment in municipal politics, encouraging and developing local pride and local enterprise in public works. In the case of large public bodies, working in suitable areas and commanding the services of men of high quality, striking advances in Social organization were made, but in the case of smaller bodies in unsuitable districts and with no attractions for people of gifts and training, the influence of Fabianism did on the whole produce effects that have tended to discredit Socialism. Aggressive, ignorant and untrained men and women, usually neither inspired by Socialist faith nor clearly defining themselves as Socialists, persons too often of wavering purpose and doubtful honesty, got themselves elected in a state of enthusiasm to undertake public functions and challenge private enterprise under conditions that doomed them to waste and failure. This was the case in endless parish councils and urban districts; it was also the case in many London boroughs. It has to be admitted by Socialists with infinite regret that the common borough-council Socialist is too often a lamentable misrepresentative of the Socialist idea.
The creation of the London Borough Councils found English Socialism unprepared. They were bodies doomed by their nature to incapacity and waste. They represented neither natural communities nor any practicable administrative unit of area. Their creation was the result of quite silly political considerations. The slowness with which Socialists have realized that for the larger duties that they wish to have done collectively, a new scheme of administration is necessary; that bodies created to sweep the streets and admirably adapted to that duty may be conspicuously not adapted to supply electric power or interfere with transit, is accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and a very poor tool….
In all these matters the real question at issue is one between the emergency and the implement. One may illustrate by a simple comparison. Suppose there is a need to dig a hole and that there is no spade available, a Fabian with Mr. Webb’s gifts becomes invaluable. He seizes upon a broken old cricket-bat, let us say, uses it with admirable wit and skill, and presto! there is the hole made and the moral taught that one need not always wait for spades before digging holes. It is a lesson that Socialism stood in need of, and which henceforth it will always bear in mind. But suppose we want to dig a dozen holes, it may be worth while to spend a little time in going to beg, borrow or buy a spade. If we have to dig holes indefinitely, day after day, it will be sheer foolishness sticking to the bat. It will be worth while then not simply to get a spade, but to get just the right sort of spade in size and form that the soil requires, to get the proper means of sharpening and repairing the spade, to insure a proper supply. Or to point the comparison, the reconstruction of our legislative and local government machinery is a necessary preliminary to Socialization in many directions. Mr. Webb has very effectually admitted that, is in fact himself leading us away from that by taking up the study of local government as his principal occupation, but the typical “Webbite” of the Fabian Society, who is very much to Webb what the Marxist is to Marx, entranced by his leader’s skill, still clings to a caricature distortion of this earlier Fabian ideal. He dreams of the most foxy and wonderful digging by means of box-lids, table-spoons, dish-covers—anything but spades designed and made for the job in hand—just as he dreams of an extensive expropriation of landlords by a legislature that includes the present unreformed House of Lords….