Fabian Essays in Socialism

THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL REVOLT; AND ITS POLITICAL OUTCOME. The Poets, Communists, Philosophers, Christian Socialists, and Evolutionists.--The Extension of State Activity.--Ex...

Still, we do not affect to underrate the huge public danger of a press which is necessarily in the hands of the very people whose idleness and extravagance keep the nation poor...

Or take the amusing, cynical, remarkable George Bernard Shaw, whose Irish humor and brilliant gifts have partly helped, partly hindered, the society’s popularity. This man will...

(6) There is another cause which cannot be ignored, though I speak upon it with some hesitation, as I purposely avoid, as far as possible, the difficult questions of religion an...

But in the course of this inundation the caprices of Nature begin to operate. That specially fertile region upon which Adam pitched is sooner or later all pre-empted; and there...

These, then, are the conditions which confront man as a producer and exchanger. If he produces a useless thing, his labor will be wholly in vain: he will get nothing for it. If...

On Socialism the analysis of the economic action of Individualism bears as a discovery, in the private appropriation of land, of the source of those unjust privileges against wh...

The economic organization was of a similar character. Two-thirds of the population tilled the soil, and dwelt in lonely hamlets scattered about the still sparsely inhabited coun...

Meanwhile, caring for none of these things, the practical man had been irresistibly driven in the same direction. In the teeth of the current Political Economy, and in spite of...

Brain culture accordingly developed apace; but we do not yet thoroughly realize that this has itself been superseded as the “selected” attribute, by social organization. The cul...

Progress by differentiation, however, heeded not the second sight of Lancashire workers. In 1769, Arkwright contrived the spinning frame, and obtained his patent for spinning wi...

It was evident that capitalist monopoly must be restrained, reluctant as English statesmen brought up under the commercial system were to interfere. The zenith of _laisser faire...

“It is important, on moral no less than on economic grounds, to insist upon this, that no public benefit of any kind arises from the existence of an idle rich class. The wealth...

The Standard Oil Trust is probably the largest single business monopoly in the world, the value of all its included interests being estimated, according to the evidence submitte...

Socialism appears as the offspring of Individualism, as the outcome of individualist struggle, and as the necessary condition for the approach to the individualist ideal. The op...

But that element in our private property system which is at present the main object of the Socialist attack, the individual ownership of the instruments of production, land and...

Socialists would realize the idea of the Poor Law, regarding that society as deadly sick in which the individual cannot find subsistence by industry, in the only way in which it...

To whatever extent private property is permitted, to that same extent the private taking of Rent and Interest must be also permitted. If you allow a selfish man to own a picture...

There are two ways in which a scheme for a future organisation of industry may be constructed. Of these, by far the easier and less useful is the sketching of Utopia, an intelle...

This, however, hardly solves the general question as to the apportioning of laborers to the various forms of labor. But a solution has been found by the ingenious author of “Loo...

Briefly, then, let us commence by glancing at the Middle Ages. There you find, theoretically, a much more orderly England than the England of to-day. Agriculture is organised on...

What then does a gradual transition to Social Democracy mean specifically? It means the gradual extension of the franchise; and the transfer of rent and interest to the State, n...

The ordinary ratepayer, however, will not remain unaffected for long. At the very outset of the new extension of municipal industries, the question of wage will arise. A minimum...

The outlook then from the point of view of this paper is a political one--one in which we should expect to see the world political gradually becoming a reflex of the world econo...

Now it seems to me that these hopefuls allow their desires to distort their reason. The personal equation plays too large a part in the prophecy. They are generally either not y...

Individualism: Outbreak of, 37 Abandonment of, 54 The change to Socialism from, 137 Confusedly opposed to Socialism, 96 Its moralization, 97, 102 Anti-Social manifestation, 104...