"Das Kapital," Vol. I, was its bible; and the thoughts and schemes of
English Socialists were to be approved or condemned according as they
could or could not be justified by a quoted text.
The Fabian Society freed English Socialism from this intellectual
bondage, and freed it sooner and more completely than "Revisionists"
have succeeded in doing anywhere else.
Accepting the great principle that the reconstruction of society to be
worked for is the ownership and control of industry by the community,
the Fabians refused to regard as articles of faith either the economic
and historic analyses which Marx made use of or the political evolution
which he predicted.
Socialism in England remained the fantastic creed of a group of fanatics
until "Fabian Essays" and the Lancashire Campaign taught the working
classes of England, or at any rate their leaders, that Socialism was a
living principle which could be applied to existing social and political
conditions without a cataclysm either insurrectionary or even political.
Revolutionary phraseology, the language of violence, survived, and still
survives, just as in ordinary politics we use the metaphors of warfare
and pretend that the peaceful polling booth is a battlefield and that
our political opponents are hostile armies. But we only wave the red
flag in our songs, and we recognise nowadays that the real battles of
Socialism are fought in committee rooms at Westminster and in the
council chambers of Town Halls.
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