The
elderly are incompetent judges of new ideas. Fabian doctrine is not
stereotyped: the Society consists in the main of young people. The
Essayists and their contemporaries have said their say: it remains for
the younger people to accept what they choose, and to add whatever is
necessary. Those who repudiated the infallibility of Marx will be the
last to claim infallibility for themselves. I can only express the hope
that as long as the Fabian Society lasts it will be ever open to new
ideas, ever conscious that nothing is final, ever aware that the world
is enormously complex, and that no single formula will summarise or
circumscribe its infinite variety.[57]
* * * * *
The work of the Fabian Society has been not to make Socialists, but to
make Socialism. I think it may be said that the dominant opinion in the
Society--at any rate it is my opinion--is that great social changes can
only come by consent. The Capitalist system cannot be overthrown by a
revolution or by a parliamentary majority. Wage slavery will disappear,
as serfdom disappeared, not indeed imperceptibly, for the world is now
self-conscious, not even so gradually, for the pace of progress is
faster than it was in the Middle Ages, but by a change of heart of the
community, by a general recognition, already half realised, that
whatever makes for the more equitable distribution of wealth is good;
that whatever benefits the working class benefits the nation; that the
rich exist only on sufferance, and deserve no more than painless
extinction; that the capitalist is a servant of the public, and too
often over-paid for the services that he renders.
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