It may be doubted whether a society for
the propagation of ideas has the power to long outlive the inspiration
of its founder, unless indeed he is a man of such outstanding
personality that his followers treat him as a god. The religions of the
world have been maintained by worshippers, and even in our own day the
followers of Marx have held together partly because they regard his
teachings with the uncritical reverence usually accorded to the prophets
of new faiths. But Marxism has survived in Germany chiefly because it
has created and inspired a political party, and political parties are of
a different order from propagandist societies. Socialism in England has
not yet created a political party; for the Labour Party, though entirely
Socialist in policy, is not so in name or in creed, and in this matter
the form counts rather than the fact.
Europe, as I write in the early days of 1916, is in the melting-pot, and
it would be foolish to prophesy either the fate of the nations now at
war or, in particular, the future of political parties in Great Britain,
and especially of the Labour Party.
But so far as concerns the Fabian Society and the two other Socialist
Societies, this much may be said: three factors in the past have kept
them apart: differences of temperament; differences of policy;
differences of leadership. In fact perhaps the last was the strongest.
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