lly formulated. Society has not yet been
reconstructed, but the Fabians have done something towards its
reconstruction, and my history will be incomplete without an attempt to
indicate what the Society has already accomplished and what may be the
future of its work.

Its first achievement, as already mentioned, was to break the spell of
Marxism in England. Public opinion altogether failed to recognise the
greatness of Marx during his lifetime, but every year that passes adds
strength to the conviction that the broad principles he promulgated will
guide the evolution of society during the present century. Marx
demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of commercialism and formulated the
demand for the communal ownership and organisation of industry; and it
is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this service to humanity.
But no man is great enough to be made into a god; no man, however wise,
can see far into the future. Neither Marx himself nor his immediate
followers recognised the real basis of his future fame; they thought he
was a brilliant and original economist, and a profound student of
history. His Theory of Value, his Economic Interpretation of History,
seemed to them the incontestible premises which necessarily led to his
political conclusions. This misapprehension would not have much mattered
had they allowed themselves freedom of thought. Socialism, as first
preached to the English people by the Social Democrats, was as narrow,
as bigoted, as exclusive as the strictest of Scotch religious sects.
"Das Kapital," Vol. I, was its bible; and the thoughts and schemes of
English Socialists were to be approved or condemned according as they
could or could not be justified by a quoted text.

The Fabian Society freed English Socialism from this intellectual
bondage, and freed it sooner and more completely than "Revisionists"
have succeeded in doing anywhere else.

Accepting the great principle that the reconstruction of society to be
worked for is the ownership and control of industry by the community,
the Fabians refused to regard as articles of faith either the economic
and historic analyses which Marx made use of or the political evolution
which he predicted.

Socialism in England remained the fantastic creed of a group of fanatics
until "Fabian Essays" and the Lancashire Campaign taught the working
classes of England, or at any rate their leaders, that Socialism was a
living principle which could be applied to ex