FABIAN FREEWAY: The Who and How British Socialism Came to America

FABIAN FREEWAY: The Who and How British Socialism Came to America

High Road to Socialism in the USA 

Publication Information

[excerpt]

Over the years the Fabian turtle has won a series of gradual victories that could hardly been predicted in 1920 when the possibility of socialist control in England and the US seemed remote to its own leaders.

 

In England the Fabian Society has succeeded in penetrating and permeating organizations, social movements, political parties until today its influence pervades the whole fabric of daily life. After WWII, Fabians presided over the liquidation of nation’s colonial empire and today [1966] through their control of opinion-forming groups at the highest levels, they play a powerful role in formulating foreign policy on both sides of the Atlantic.

By 1961, at least 36 high officials of the New Frontier Admin were found to be past or present members of an Anglo-Fabian-inspired organization calling itself Americans for Democratic Action. 

In the past 30 years a whole series of loaded epithets has been invented for the purpose—beginning with “reactionary” in the early 1930s and proceeding through “fascist” and “McCarthyite” to “Birchite”. At the present “Right Wing extremist” is the automatic catchword applied to any person who seeks to expose or oppose the Socialist advance.

Arthur Schlesinger, jr. from Harvard wrote in the Parisian Review, “There seems to be no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of Socialism in the US through a series of ‘New Deals’”. Elsewhere he describes the New Deal as “a process of backing into Socialism.”

In 1949 Schlesinger was advocating “liberal Socialism” and cling on power states to ‘expand its main strength in determining the broad levels and conditions of economic activity.” From 1961 to 1964, Schlesinger was Administrative Assistant to the President of the US.

In 1962, Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S. told students at the University of California in an off-campus address, that the U.S. is “towards Socialism, Not like in other countries but based on America’s background, and still Socialism.” He predicted that the “US will move gradually from Socialism to the higher state of Communism.”

Seen in the light, the value of the Socialist International to the communist International becomes plain. Popular confusion on the subject has given rise to a dangerous myth, namely, that a basic and irreconcilable enmity exists between Socialists and communists. This is by no means true.

On the same October evening in 1883 that Karl Marx died, 16 young Britishers met to hear Thomas Davidson, a Scottish-born American give a talk on “The New Life.” From that meeting, the Fabian Society of London was born. The nine who remained in the Fabian Society wanted to change the world through a species of propaganda termed “education,” which would lead to political action. This group is now the most prominent and important Socialist organization in England. Without advertising the fact, it has also assumed leadership of a world-wide Socialist movement and is the dominant influence in the Socialist International. Read more>>