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Fabianism: practical, constitutional, evolutionary Socialism
PGA Weblog ^

Posted on 03/23/2012 8:09:03 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica

At the beginning of the year I wrote about revisionist history, and quoted an author's description which sounded to me strikingly like Fabian Socialists. According to a professor named Samuel Peter Orth - without going through and reading 3-5 books, I cannot determine who Orth was. His books are written for places like Cornell and Yale, so my gut tells me he was a fellow traveller of the progressives, but again, I cannot determine for sure. In any case, here is what he wrote quoting one of the founders of the British Fabian Society, Edward R Pease:(Page 248)

So we see Socialism and Liberalism united in accomplishing changes in legislation and ancient institutions - changes that are revolutionary in character and will be far-reaching in results. It is not the red revolutionary Socialism of Marx; it is the practical British Socialism of amelioration. "This practical, constitutional, evolutionary Socialism," a chronicler of the Fabians calls it. It would have to be practical to appeal to the British voter, constitutional to lure the British statesman, and evolutionary to satisfy the British philosopher

Now, while I cannot for sure determine Orth's position and where he is coming from, here is what Edward R Pease wrote by his own hand in "The History of the Fabian Society":

The revolt came from England in the person of Edward Bernstein, who, exiled by Bismarck, took refuge in London, and was for years intimately acquainted with the Fabian Society and its leaders. Soon after his return to Germany he published in 1899 a volume criticising Marxism,[45] and thence grew up the Revisionist movement for free thought in Socialism which has attracted all the younger men, and before the war had virtually, if not actually, obtained control over the Social Democratic Party.

Footnote 45 is the key here. After spending all those years with the Fabians, Bernstein then published "Evolutionary Socialism". So in this regard Orth's quoting of Pease is entirely in context. Here is footnote 45:

[45] Published in English by the Independent Labour Party in 1909 as "Evolutionary Socialism."

So then that's how it shall be. They are evolutionary socialists, not revolutionary socialists. This is an important distinction to make and knowledge to grasp. The first thing that pops into my head is the words of James Madison:

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

So then it's settled. Progressives and Fabians - the evolutionaries - are a greater threat to liberty than are communists - the revolutionaries. I know Madison has my complete trust. How about you?


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: progressingamerica

1 posted on 03/23/2012 8:09:13 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
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To: right way right; Tahoe3002; libertarian27; Noumenon; JDoutrider; OneLoyalAmerican; unkus; ...
If anybody wants on/off the revolutionary progressivism ping list, send me a message

Summary: evolutionaries are more dangerous than revolutionaries

2 posted on 03/23/2012 8:11:15 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (What's the best way to reach a you tube generation? Put it on you tube!)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

I think I would trust Madison.


3 posted on 03/23/2012 8:21:11 AM PDT by vanilla swirl (We are the Patrick Henry we have been waiting for!)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

“The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label… Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to “End Poverty in California” I got 879,000… There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.” ~ Upton Sinclair


4 posted on 03/23/2012 8:29:27 AM PDT by MichaelNewton
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Ping

I would go with Madison.
Wasn’t 0 aligned with the Socialist Democratic Party in Chicago?


5 posted on 03/23/2012 8:30:36 AM PDT by eagles_rest (The truth will set you free. Amen)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qacdlN7UqWs&feature=related

sorry....had to do it


6 posted on 03/23/2012 8:52:03 AM PDT by nuconvert ( Khomeini promised change too // Hail, Chairman O)
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To: ProgressingAmerica
The anti-religion of Marxism has numerous and various sacred texts, schisms, doctrines, pseudo-scientific theories, and ways of killing its victims. The most widely used method of silencing those who dare disagree with Marxism has been to starve them to death.

I don't care whether they call themselves evolutionists or revolutionists or advocates of imaginary "social justice." All they've ever worked for is the raw power to turn most people into serfs of the state and murder the rest.

7 posted on 03/23/2012 9:04:46 AM PDT by Standing Wolf
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To: ProgressingAmerica
Interesting related link

summary of Breitbarts book -Righteous Indignation, chapters that dicuss our enemies and the history.

8 posted on 03/23/2012 9:11:03 AM PDT by opentalk
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To: Standing Wolf
You should care, the details matter.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle - Sun Tzu (Chapter 3)

9 posted on 03/23/2012 9:11:14 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (What's the best way to reach a you tube generation? Put it on you tube!)
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To: ProgressingAmerica
Madison, and the other Founders as well, understood that, as Washington called them, "cunning men" might find ways to gradually, like termites, undermine the structure of America's Constitution. That is why much of their emphasis was on educating youth as to the principles underlying their liberty.

The "progressive" attack and takeover of the education of children and subsequent censorship of America's founding ideas from the schools' curriculum has prepared the way for 2012.

Not only the words of Madison, but Washington's Farewell Address, in this excerpt, contains a warning for all who love liberty:

"This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

"All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community, and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests.

"However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

"Toward the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown." (End of excerpt)

Visit Wallbuilders.com to read the full text of this remarkable historial document.

10 posted on 03/23/2012 9:19:08 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Your Sun Tzu quotation highlights points I have been making on other threads regarding the degree of understanding necessary for a 2012 GOP presidential candidate—if our goal is to “proclaim liberty throughout the land” and expose, rebut, and rebuke the totalitarian ideas which are in place in the White House.


11 posted on 03/23/2012 9:52:34 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Any form of collectivism - ANY - is exactly like bleeding the patient.

Arguing about collectivist forms is like arguing about how fast to bleed the patient, or whether the cuts should be left to get infected, or whether the sick patient should be made to exercise or sleep, etc.

It’s murder. Murder of civilization. And the ONLY reason Leftists discuss it, is to try to find a way to describe it and implement it that people will accept. To find the lie-of-the-day that will work with whatever social group they have to convince to go along with their own destruction.

That’s it. That’s all of it - every shred.


12 posted on 03/23/2012 9:55:32 AM PDT by Talisker (He who commands, must obey.)
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To: Talisker
It’s murder. Murder of civilization.

Precisely. What remains will be convergence of The Pakistani-Peruvian axis and the Scandinavian-Slavonic axes - with everything that implies.

Mark my words - the monsters in the White House will turn this country into an abattoir. They will will do it with energy and enthusiasm. There is only one way to stop them.

13 posted on 03/23/2012 10:56:18 AM PDT by Noumenon ("I tell you, gentlemen, we have a problem on our hands." Col. Nicholson-The Bridge on the River Qwai)
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To: ProgressingAmerica
I'll stand corrected, ProgressingAmerica.

I despise and loathe every flavor of Marxist I've ever so much as heard of, but will concede some are worse than others, and ought to be more knowledgeable than I am.

14 posted on 03/23/2012 3:56:32 PM PDT by Standing Wolf
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To: ProgressingAmerica
Since the days of Edward Bernstein the left seems to have made its peace with a market system for running most private enterprises.

So technically they have given up on the ultimate goal of creating truly socialist societies where all of the means of production are run directly by the government.

What the left wants to do is to so heavily tax and regulate businesses that for all intents and purposes they are being run as government bureaucracies.

Meanwhile large corporations have become so large and so wedded to the government that they are organizing themselves to become more like the bureaucracies they claim to hate. This was predicted by Schumpeter.

So the enemy is no longer a socialist "paradise", but a highly taxed and regulated market. The goal should be to try and reconquer the ground gained by the taxers and regulators acre by acre, and not ranting against socialism or Gramsci or Marx or Engels, etc.

We will be most successful if we can get a large majority in favor of hacking away government regulation, bureaucracy, and taxation. Large corporations will by and large not be on our side in such a fight.

Right now it seems as if the majority of Americans are sliding toward being more accepting of the nanny state as well.

It's going to be a tough fight that right now looks close to impossible to win. But then there was the American Revolution...

15 posted on 03/23/2012 5:15:29 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: Noumenon

Greetings Noumenon:

Thinking the Progressive 5th columns muster as we write; Operation Recreate ‘68 marching orders.

Exploiting a race bating situation in Florida, all the race baiting poverty pimps are gathering, the Fabian-Marxism indoctrination facilitators AKA “educators,” organizing high school student walkouts.

0bama chums the water in Chicago with G8 & NATO. Then removes G8 after all of the leftist-anarchist groups made plans to attend. Now Raum nudges, purposefully obstructing free exercise of free assembly and free speech. Began “detaining” MSM reporters as a show of force.

This spring will be very ugly.

Pray for our nation,
OLA


16 posted on 03/23/2012 7:00:34 PM PDT by OneLoyalAmerican (In God I trust, all others provide citations.)
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