FABIANISM. - A movement of English theorists belonging to the middle class, whose leading exponents are Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, who sought to give a new formula of socialism inspired by the most recent evolution of economic science.
The Fabian Society, founded in 1884, takes its name from the Roman dictator Fabius Cunctator and is inspired by the prudent policy he symbolized. Like that of Marx, the doctrine of the Fabians has a theoretical side and a historical side, but in the study they made of the existing economic society they managed to avoid the error into which Marx had fallen; they rejected Ricardo's law of value, making instead extensive use of his law of rent, and succeeded in demonstrating convincingly that a large part of the national wealth was consumed by the idle classes in the forms of rent and interest. Economic analysis provided the Fabians with the means to criticize the existing system, and historical investigation suggested to them the adequate solution. During the last part of the 19th century, social evolution had certainly tended toward State control; the economically weaker classes had been granted legal protections in the form of industrial and sanitary regulations, etc., while important branches of economic activity, such as postal services, tramway operations and the supply of gas and water, had been taken over by public bodies. With the same certainty as Marx, but for different reasons, the Fabians therefore announced that socialism was inevitable, and declared that all the economic activities of society would one day be controlled by public bodies. These hopes were disappointed. State and municipal enterprises have not ceased to develop, but have remained almost exclusively limited to certain services of a monopolistic character; they have not invaded the fields where competition is most active, and it seems that this tendency stops before reaching the point at which it would provoke a social revolution.