What is the Fabian Society? What is their beliefs? Who were their famous members?

Question

and why must Yahoo penalize you 5 pts to ask a question?

Answer 1

The UK’s leading centre-left think-tank the Fabian Society has been recommending and researching policy for more than 100 years.

Answer 2

The Fabian Society is the British socialist movement that began round the turn of the Century (20th Century that is).  It was a purely intellectually, anti-revolutionary, reformist movement. The founding members were Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw. Shaw was the only openly communists members in the leadership. Although Sir John Maynard Keynes was not a devout socialists, he did provide the economic power behind many of their ideas. Rejecting the more radical forms of socialism such as practiced in France and other parts of Europe, the Fabians chose to be “puppeteers” in essence pulling the strings of society along the lines of socialism. While openly controlling the Labour Party and other Socialist parties in the UK, they also worked closely with Tories, Conservatives and Liberals to ensure that legislative gains made by the Socialists were not thwarted or reversed when the Labours lost legislative power.

Some of Fabianism lasting legacies were the resurrection of Mercantilism which had been successfully rebuffed by the liberal economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo together with notables of the Austrian School and French Phisiocratic School, and deficit spending which was the brainchild of Keynes.

Fabianism got its name from Roman General Fabius Maximus of Punic War fame. Fabius was noted for his fear of challenging Hannibal directly and in open battle. Rather he opted for surprise guerrilla warfare to gradually weaken the Carthagians along their march towards Rome. The idea being that incremental attacks would weaken and demoralize the Carthagians and make the easier to defeat once they reached Rome. He was fired for cowardice and replaced by Scipio whom history has credited for the defeat of Hannibal.

The concept of Fabianism is incremental socialism or a more crude phraseology “slippery slope”. They correctly concluded that Britons and Americans were not ready for a radical transformation of society but would easily succumb to a gradual movement towards socialism. History has show them to be right.

Answer 3

A British socialist society, advocating among other things a minimum wage, and nationalisation of the land, in the early 1900s!

Famous members include George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit, Sydney Olivier, Oliver Lodge, Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, Ramsay MacDonald and Emmeline Pankhurst, Bertrand Russell.

I suppose they deduct points to make people post more answers to regain the points. You really only loose 2 points, since you get 3 back when you choose a best answer.

Answer 4

The Fabians started over 100 years ago as a group of socilaist who advocated broadly gradualist (as opposed to revolutionary) policies to achieve socialist outcomes.Flightleader's Anwser is the best.All I will add is that the Fabians were named after a Roman general in the Punic Wars who believed in wearing your enemy down rather than convincing him/her you were more right than he was.Perhaps a bit of a Freudian slip but that's socilaism for you.