e working out of the application of the broad principles of Socialism
to the industrial and political environment of England. I say England
advisedly, because the industrial and political conditions of Scotland
are in some degree different, and the application of the principles of
Socialism to Ireland has not yet been seriously attempted. But for
England "Fabian Essays" and the Fabian Tracts are by general consent the
best expositions of the meaning and working of Socialism in the English
language.

Marxian Socialism regarded itself as a thing apart. Marx had discovered
a panacea for the ills of society: the old was to be cleared away and
all things were to become new. In Marx's own thought evolution and
revolution were tangled and alternated. The evolutionary side was
essential to it; the idea of revolutionary catastrophe is almost an
excrescence. But to the Marxians (of whom Marx once observed that he was
not one) this excrescence became the whole thing. People were divided
into those who advocated the revolution and those who did not. The
business of propaganda was to increase the number of adherents of the
new at the expense of the supporters of the old.

The Fabians regarded Socialism as a principle already in part embodied
in the constitution of society, gradually extending its influence
because it harmonised with the needs and desires of men in countries
where the large industry prevails.

Fabian Socialism is in fact an interpretation of the spirit of the
times. I have pointed out already that the municipalisation of
monopolies, a typically Fabian process, had its origin decades before
the Society was founded, and all that the Fabian Society did was to
explain its social implications and advocate its wider extension. The
same is true of the whole Fabian political policy. Socialism in English
politics grew up because of the necessity for State intervention in the
complex industrial and social organisation of a Great State. Almost
before the evil results of Laissez Faire had culminated Robert Owen was
pointing the way to factory legislation, popular education, and the
communal care of children. The Ten Hours Act of 1847 was described by
Marx himself as "the victory of a principle," that is, of "the political
economy of the working class."[46] That victory was frequently repeated
in the next thirty years, and collective protection of Labour in the
form of Factory Acts, Sanitary Acts, Truck Acts, Employers' Liabili