M. Wibaut was published in 1891; in 1806 the Essays, translated into
Norwegian by Francis Wolff, appeared as a series of small books; and in
1897 a German translation by Dora Lande was issued by G.H. Wigand of
Leipzig.
The effect of "Fabian Essays" arose as much from what it left out as
from what it contained. Only the fast-dwindling band of pioneer
Socialists, who lived through the movement in its earliest days, can
fully realise the environment of ideas from which "Fabian Essays" showed
a way of escape.
The Socialism of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist
League, the two societies which had hitherto represented Socialism to
the general public, was altogether revolutionary. Socialism was to be
the result of an outbreak of violence, engineered by a great popular
organisation like that of the Chartists or the Anti-Corn Law League, and
the Commune of Paris in 1871 was regarded as a premature attempt which
pointed the way to future success. The Socialist Government thus
established was to reconstruct the social and industrial life of the
nation according to a plan supposed to be outlined by Karl Marx. "On the
morrow of the revolution" all things would be new, and at a bound the
nation was expected to reach something very like the millennium.
The case for this project was based, strange to say, not on any history
but on the Marxian analysis of the origin of the value of commodities,
and no man who did not understand this analysis, or pretend to
understand it, was fit to be called a "comrade.
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