The full title of the tract was "Facts for Socialists from the
Political Economists and Statisticians," and the theme of it was to
prove that every charge made by Socialism against the capitalist system
could be justified by the writings of the foremost professors of
economic science. It embodied another Fabian characteristic of
considerable importance. Other Socialists then, and many Socialists now,
endeavoured by all means to accentuate their differences from other
people. Not content with forming societies to advocate their policy,
they insisted that it was based on a science peculiar to themselves, the
Marxian analysis of value, and the economic interpretation of history:
they strove too to dissociate themselves from others by the adoption of
peculiar modes of address--such as the use of the words "comrade" and
"fraternal"--and they were so convinced that no good thing could come
out of the Galilee of capitalism that any countenance of capitalist
parties or of the capitalist press was deemed an act of treachery.
The Fabians, on the other hand, tended to the view that "we are all
Socialists now." They held that the pronouncements of economic science
must be either right or wrong, and in any case science was not a matter
of party; they endeavoured to show that on their opponents' own
principles they were logically compelled to be Socialists and must
necessarily adopt Fabian solutions of social problems.
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