A News and Opinion Journal ~ Published in Erie County, Pennsylvania
The Fabians and the Communists By John A. Stormer
Following Marx's death in 1883, his theories were made a world force by two developments. They were the rise of the Fabian Society in England and Lenin's Bolshevik movement.
In 884, a small group of English intellectuals formed the Fabian Society. It was their goal to establish the same classless, godless, socialistic one-world society envisioned by Marx. Leadership of the group was assumed by Beatrice and Sidney Webb and the Irish author and playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Shaw described himself as a "communist" but differed with Marx over how the revolution would be accomplished and by whom.
...Shaw and the Fabians worked for world revolution not through an uprising of the workers but through indoctrination of young scholars. The Fabians believed that eventually these intellectual revolutionaries would acquire power and influence in the official and unofficial opinion-making and power-wielding agencies of the world. Then, they could quietly establish a socialistic, one-world order.
Webb formulated the highly successful method these future rulers would use to change the world. He called it the "doctrine of the inevitability of gradualness." In practice, it has meant slow, piecemeal changes in existing concepts of law, morality, government, economics, and education. Each change is so gradual that the masses never awaken in time to stop the "inevitable."
Shaw, in the preface to the 1908 edition of Fabian Essays stated the goal, which was...
...to make it as easy and matter-of-course for the ordinary Englishman to be a socialist as to be Liberal or Conservative.
Shaw, in his Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, explained what life would be like once the new order was established:
I also made it clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.
The Fabian Socialists rejected all suggestions that they form a political movement of their own. They planned to spread their influence by penetrating existing educational institutions, political parties, the civil service, etc.
