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Fabianism and Guild Socialism: Two Views of Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Anthony W. Wright
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In this century British socialism has rarely engaged in serious internal debate about the fundamental concepts of its political vocabulary. In this respect, as in others, British socialism has been true to the wider traditions of British political life. There has, of course, been much vigorous controversy on policy and programme, but also a remarkable absence of genuine doctrinal debate, certainly as compared with continental socialisms. A major exception to this, however, is to be found in the decade which has the First World War at its centre. Indeed, this may be regarded as the most creative period in British socialist thought in the twentieth century (notwithstanding the superficially more turbulent 1930's); and it is a period which ends, interestingly, in the early 1920's, when Labour becomes securely established in the world of parliamentary politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 1978 , pp. 224 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1978

References

1 Barker, E.. Political Thought in England 1848 to 1914, revised ed. (London, 1928). p. 223.Google Scholar

2 B. Webb's diary, 31 July 1914, Passfield Papers, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

3 A few years earlier the Webbs had made just this point: “in this making of plans for reform, we are apt, in the twentieth century, when no change seems out of the question, to be a little misled by our speculative freedom.” What Syndicalism Means (supplement to The Crusade, 1912), p. 17.

4 Cole to Beatrice Webb, 14 March 1917, Passfield Papers.

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7 “Nationalisation and the Guilds ”, in: The New Age, 10 September 1914.

8 Cole, , Self-Government in Industry (London, 1917), p. 139.Google Scholar

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10 S., and Webb, B., A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London, 1920), p. xiv.Google Scholar

11 S., and Webb, B., Industrial Democracy (London, 1897), p. 56.Google Scholar

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23 Ibid., p. 112.

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25 According to Schumpeter, a person's judgement will be best in relation to “the things which are familiar to him independently of what his newspaper tells him, which he can directly influence or manage and for which he develops the kind of responsibility that is induced by a direct relation to the favourable or unfavourable effects of a course of action”. However, lest this should be construed as an argument favourable to radical democracy, Schumpeter later declares: “No responsible person can view with equanimity the consequences of extending the democratic method, that is to say the sphere of ‘politics’, to all economic affairs. ” Schumpeter, J., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London, 1942), pp. 259, 299.Google Scholar

26 S., and Webb, B., Industrial Democracy, p. 844.Google Scholar

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31 Cf. “Why the Self-Governing Workshop has Failed”, Appendix E to My Apprenticeship, pp. 446–53. The Webbs also produced a New Statesman supplement on “Cooperative Production and Profit-sharing” (14 February 1914), which critically surveyed the history of this type of experiment.

32 S. and B. Webb, The Consumers' Co-operative Movement, op. cit., p. 471.

33 Ibid., p. 472.

34 Cole, “Freedom in the Guild”, ibid., 12 November.

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36 Useful approaches along these lines are to be found in Pateman, C., Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Blumberg, P., Industrial Democracy: The Sociology of Participation (London, 1968).Google Scholar

37 S., and Webb, B., The History of Trade Unionism, revised ed. (London, 1920), p. 711.Google Scholar

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40 S., and Webb, B., A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth, p. xii.Google Scholar Pease, the official Fabian historian, identified poverty and its elimination as the key Fabian objective (The History of the Fabian Society, p. 257). Now, however, the Webbs seem closer to Cole's view that “Socialists have all too often fixed their eyes upon the material misery of the poor without realising that it rests upon the spiritual degradation of the slave ” (Self Government in Industry, p. 35).

41 S. and B. Webb, ibid., p. 100.

42 S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism, op. cit., p. 760 (appendix on “The Relationship of Trade Unionism to the Government of Industry”).

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44 Ibid.

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