In a nutshell, this was the Fabian plan or “conspiracy”: to systematically, and in their own words “stealthily”, take over education and, through education, also culture, politics and governance. And, as explained by R. Martin, they replicated this in America and throughout the British Empire. In other words, these are the practical details to Wells' more general outlines. — Apollodorus
In any case, it is clear that Fabianism is not a democratic enterprise. The people have absolutely no say in it. If we want to change culture we need to change education. But we can't do that when education is in someone else's hands. — Apollodorus
If Fabians found enough interested people to be effective, more power to them. Did they perhaps have an exclusive society that prevented people from getting involved? — Athena
Well, philosophy does include logic. Plus, a philosopher king or whatever we choose to call a ruler would have economic advisers, exactly as existing heads of state do. — Apollodorus
I also fault economists who ignore our finite reality and create notions of economics that are not well-founded in reality. — Athena
People got involved in voting for Trump only to regret it afterward. That happens all the time. Politicians are good at manipulating public opinion. That's what they do for a living. — Apollodorus
I just think that, if we're going to establish a rule by the wise, it ought to be the case that everyone can come to be considered so. — thewonder
I just think that if we're going to establish a rule by the wise, it ought to be the case that everyone can come to be considered so. — thewonder
Have you sat on committees that were developing policy or gotten involved with political activist work? When you think something needs to change, how do you go about getting that change? If you are not a good leader capable of uniting followers, you will not succeed and if our leaders do not succeed, we do not succeed.
Why did anyone regret the efforts of the Fabian Society? I am pushing the point because you are right about some movements going sour. Perhaps understanding why this happens could lead to avoiding the problem and succeeding instead of failing? — Athena
That's exactly my point. Economics isn't an exact science. It can be interpreted and applied in many different ways. So, ultimately, what matters is what you aim to achieve, a truly just society or promote certain business interests that paid for your election campaign? — Apollodorus
Yes, I have and I know exactly what it is like. It's a never-ending struggle that most of the time leads either to no results or to the wrong results. That's why Karl Marx gave up on politics and took up economics.
I doubt very much that people regret the efforts of the Fabian Society when the vast majority of people haven't even heard of its existence except perhaps small political circles like within the British Labour Party.
At the end of the day, if people are happy with the education and culture we have at the moment, then there is nothing to worry about. But if not, then something needs to be done. And to do something we need to know who the key players are in education, culture, politics, etc. — Apollodorus
People got involved in the hope of building a better society but came to regret it. — Apollodorus
People got involved in voting for Trump only to regret it afterward. That happens all the time. Politicians are good at manipulating public opinion. That's what they do for a living. You've got to do that because otherwise you don't get elected.
Hitler was elected democratically. Does that mean that Hitlerism was good? The point is not how you get to power but what you do with that power once you get it. — Apollodorus
That is not how I understanding economics. We can measure everything, and with the right measurements, we can predict the future.
Let me explain myself. I knew a geologist who after years of working in the field became a professor, and he wrote books. It was an academic publisher who published his books and they were used in colleges. The publisher did not market the book in book stores such as Barnes and Noble, so I attempted to persuade economic professors to look at the book and they refused. They had no understanding of what finite reality has to do with economics, not even oil! Their heads were up in the clouds somewhere with economic theories. Like hello, the gold rush led to boom towns, and the boom towns became ghost towns, and that is a complete failure of economic planning. Oil-rich nations tend to be one resource economies and when the oil is gone, they are back to riding camels. They know this and are investing much of their wealth in military power, and they will not sink into poverty passively.
The US would be so screwed if it had not been for fracking ending our dependency on foreign oil. Isreal could not take more and more land from Palestinians without the protection of a large nation and its military build-up. The US needs to secure its access to oil and chose to do so militarily and that makes Israel essential to the US, the economic fallout of all this is huge and I highly doubt there is one economic professor explaining it. Now, what are the philosopher-kings going to do with this information? Which philosophy course explains these concerns are vital to keeping people fed? — Athena
You said
People got involved in the hope of building a better society but came to regret it.
— Apollodorus
Why did they regret it? — Athena
For a good 30 years, I have been trying to make people aware of this change in education and it is futile because people are clueless about what culture has to do with being a democracy, and they are convinced education for technology is essential to our wealth. When Eisenhower put that into place, he warned of the dangers and no one pays attention to the warning, nor do they accept the science of global warming, nor do they know what have is temporary and will come to a terrible end unless there are a few miracles. — Athena
Why, when the fundamental qualms that I have with society already are not resolved, should I go for another way of organizing it? — thewonder
I don't see how either genuine representative or participatory democracy are akin to either of those things, but, whatever. — thewonder
"Economics is generally regarded as a social science, although some critics of the field argue that economics falls short of the definition of a science for a number of reasons, including a lack of testable hypotheses, lack of consensus, and inherent political overtones." — Apollodorus
Secondly, even if it was an exact science, it is still interpreted and applied differently by different political factions. Otherwise, all governing political parties would have an identical economic program. But they don't. Different parties stress different sectors of the economy or employ different methods to pursue their policies. — Apollodorus
In Soviet Russia there was an overproduction of bricks for the building industry but there was a shortage of shoes, etc. How do we explain that, in a political system following the economics of Marx who was supposed to be an economic genius? — Apollodorus
As for philosophy, Pythagoras, Plato and other famous Greek philosophers all believed that it should have a practical application in public life. Roman emperors often agreed and tried to style themselves philosophers. If we deny this, then what good is philosophy? — Apollodorus
What I'm saying is that people can get involved politically without knowing what the end result will be. — Apollodorus
If we look at it from that perspective, then nothing can be done, there is no hope, and no point discussing anything.
Personally, I think we can learn from the Fabians. Take their slogan "Educate, Agitate, Organize", and start educating, organizing, and mobilizing the people. But we can't do that if we can't agree what to educate them about or what we want to achieve. — Apollodorus
I don't see how my assumption that there ought to be a somewhat equitable access to education is somehow indicative of that I advance some form of extreme egalitarianism.
It's been over one-hundred years since the era of industrialization. I'm still just some down and out Catholic school kid from a working class neighborhood who never can seem to get past kind of a lot of wealthy and abusive middle-aged men. As much as I don't harbor any animosity towards people with wealth or the lucky few who are let to become successful within academia, classism just isn't charming and mentalism really is a form of prejudice.
They don't like anyone with a fair amount of intelligence and common sense. They never have and never will. They're right not to. What often happens is that people like me get everyone else to understand that they're just kind of using them, as, if we don't, we will be marginalized and isolated from society. On some level, they're right to claim that we're just trying to remove them from their positions of authority. Clearly, we have good reason to. They could always just give up on their boarding school habits, though. There came a time in my life where I thought that I should consider as to why it is that Jason Pierce has developed the band, Spiritualized, and let go of what I thought about Spacemen 3. It takes half of them until around sixty-five to gain even the semblance of maturity, though.
This is just a personal gripe and nothing to anyone here, really. I can appreciate Classical music. I'm glad that there's a world outside of it, too, though.
A joke that I have added to this comment:
I grew up in an actual split-level house next to an actual sewer in an actual post-industrial working class neighborhood with a proverbial "other side of town" across the bridge and over the rain tracks that also happens to be kind of a mob retirement community and went to an actual Catholic school where there were actual informally organized boxing matches in the parking lot where we had our recess. It's a good thing that I am a Pacifist and don't have any friends because we otherwise probably would have started the American equivalent of the Provisional Irish Republican Army by now.
A closing remark:
As much as I, too, am a great fan of his work, I do kind of lament that the creative oeuvre of Wes Anderson has had the effect of, again, convincing the global populace that what isn't really, but people generally term "racketeering" is fun. I just want to be let to like Bottle Rocket again. Alas, though, I should stop going on like this, and, so, will give the original poster their thread back. — thewonder
think a major point that has been missed here is the ultimate objective of Fabianism. When I ask people what current political system they think Fabianism most resembles, they tend to say “America” or “England”. This immediately tells me that they have failed to process and assimilate what Fabianism is about, because the answer is China (though it used to be the Soviet Union).
Shocking as this may sound, this is the reality of Fabianism if we carefully read Fabian documents. As I said before, the original Fabians were radical members of the British Liberal Party and that means Marxists.
G B Shaw openly (and proudly) admitted that he discovered his political career by reading Marx. Now, at that time “Marxist” or “socialist” was a dirty word in polite society. There was no way middle-class Liberals could have promoted Marxism openly. So, these “Liberal” Marxists decided to slightly modify Marxism to make it palatable to wider sections of society. So they used more indirect and suggestive language that still preserved the Marxist essence of Fabianism.
“The object of the Fabian Society is to persuade the English people to make their political constitution thoroughly democratic and so to socialize their industries as to make the livelihood of the people entirely independent of private Capitalism” - Fabian Tract No. 70, 3
The original agenda of the Labour Party which the Fabians founded in 1900 was to enforce socialism through nationalization, state control and abolition of private property.
Common ownership of the means of production, state administration and control of all industries and services (1918 Constitution).
Land nationalisation (1918 Manifesto, Labour and New social order, etc.).
That was exactly what the Fabians and Labour tried to enforce when they came to power in 1945 but failed to win support for all the Marxist policies they would have liked to implement.
But there is much more to it. Leading Fabians like H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw were great admirers of totalitarian regimes such as Communist Russia to which they maintained close links.
The Webbs knew Lenin personally from before the 1917 Revolution (remember they were in contact with Marxist revolutionaries through the Socialist International and other organizations) and had a portrait of Lenin at their private home. They made several trips to Russia as did Shaw and wrote “Soviet Communism: A New Civilization” in praise of the regime which they believed should be copied by England and the whole world.
The Fabians regarded Bolshevism as “applied Fabianism”. They called the Soviet Union “Union of Fabian Republics”. Lenin was “the greatest statesman of Europe”. Stalin was a “good man” and a “good Fabian”, etc., etc.
So, basically, as many historians have pointed out, the Fabians were promoting Communism under the guise of “democratic socialism”. This is exactly what earned them the label of “Fabian Conspiracy” in addition to their well-documented policy of stealth.
IMO pretending to promote a democratic system when in fact you are promoting a totalitarian one is not only disingenuous but also undemocratic - by definition. — Apollodorus
For example, in the Russian Revolution people got involved in overthrowing the imperial system. But what they got was a new emperor called Stalin who murdered or starved to death millions of innocent people.
What I'm saying is that people can get involved politically without knowing what the end result will be. — Apollodorus
Where do you stand on all of that? I thought we agreed private property is a good thing? However, workers need affordable housing and that requires government to step in because privately there is no affordable, decent housing for low paid workers. Because of population growth land needs to be set aside for low income housing and it needs to be spread about the incorporated area. — Athena
One of my favorite books is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, maybe he was writing in response to Fabians? George Orwell's 1984 is also a warning against totarianism. We speak of democracy and say too little of liberty. I do not want to live in a country without liberty — Athena
choice do youth have? They do not know enough about life to make well informed decisions.
For give me, this thread seems to be making me aware of how different my thinking is! :chin: I so remember rushing out into life eager to get my peice of the pie, and to my horror finding my life was totally different than what I expected and realizing how much I did not know! — Athena
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.