But this was an
essay in applied economics. It may be impossible to draw a line between
the old abstract deductive economics and the modern historical concrete
economics; but the fact remains that though the water may be the same,
the tide has turned. A comparison of my exposition of the law of rent in
my first Fabian Essay and in my Impossibilities of Anarchism with the
Webbs' great Histories of Trade Unionism and of Industrial Democracy
will illustrate the difference between the two schools.
The departure was made by Graham Wallas, who, abandoning the deductive
construction of intellectual theorems, made an exhaustive study of the
Chartist movement. It is greatly to be regretted that these lectures
were not effectively published. Their delivery wrought a tremendous
disillusion as to the novelty of our ideas and methods of propaganda;
much new gospel suddenly appeared to us as stale failure; and we
recognized that there had been weak men before Agamemnon, even as far
back as in Cromwell's army. The necessity for mastering the history of
our own movement and falling into our ordered place in it became
apparent; and it was in this new frame of mind that the monumental
series of works by the Webbs came into existence. Wallas's Life of
Francis Place shows his power of reconstructing a popular agitation with
a realism which leaves the conventional imaginary version of it
punctured and flaccid; and it was by doing the same for the Chartist
movement that he left his mark on us.
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