FABIAN SOCIETY, a Socialist society founded in the winter of 1883-4 by a few obscure young people in London with the ambitious object of "reconstructing society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities." They named themselves after Fabius Cunctator because they realized that "long taking of counsel" was necessary before they could decide how to do it. During the next two or three years the society was joined by four men who have since become eminent, George Bernard Shaw (q.v.), Sidney Webb (q.v.), Sydney Olivier (later Lord Olivier) and Graham Wallas, and by Mrs. Annie Besant (q.v.). In 1889 the society published a volume of essays by these five, with two others, entitled Fabian Essays in Socialism which made a consid erable stir in Radical circles. The revolutionary Socialism of that period was Marxian and the followers of H. M. Hyndman and even of William Morris based their propaganda on the Marxian law of value. The Fabians rejected the Marxian doctrine both in eco nomics and in politics, holding that Socialism was not a scheme to be adopted on the morrow of the revolution, but a principle al ready partially embodied in municipal as well as central govern ment and capable of further extension by the action of existing political parties. The publication of Fabian Essays explaining these ideas led to the foundation of Fabian societies throughout England, which, however, a few years later were mostly turned into branches of the new Independent Labour Party, a Socialist society which was Fabian except in its political method. Fabian policy explained by numerous Fabian Tracts and expounded every where by Fabian lecturers exercised much influence both on the Liberal Party and on the Progressive Party which controlled the London County Council from 1889 to 1906.
Although the Fabians always rejected the idea of making a political party out of the adherents to Socialism, they had long urged the trade unions to form a party of their own, and conse quently they co-operated with the unions in founding the British Labour Party in 1900. The success of this new party in the General Election of 1906 startled the country into realizing that Socialism was a coming factor in politics, and at the same time Mr. H. G. Wells (q.v.) attempted to hasten its coming by re organizing the Fabian Society. His controversy with Mr. Bernard Shaw over this scheme attracted much public attention to the society.
The Fabian Society has never had as many as 4,000 members at once, but partly through affiliated societies at the chief univer sities, many people who have subsequently become influential have passed through its ranks and the plays and writings of its leading members have brought its doctrines before a wide public. Nearly all the leading Socialists and many of the foremost trade unionists have at one time or another become members. Since the War the importance of the Labour Party has somewhat overshad owed that of its constituent elements.
See The History of the Fabian Society, by Edward R. Pease (2nd ed., 1925). (E. R. P.)