‘Modern Socialism’ had it’s birth in 1920s London, when the Fabian Society helped answer the question of why World War I did not cause communism to emerge in the west, in spite of the fact that according to Das Kapital (and The Communist Manifesto), World War One should have caused the Workers of the (Industrial) World to Unite. The Fabians came up with the same answer their German contemporaries in the Frankfurt School did – the Western Powers were too rich for communism to emerge, and Western Culture was too steeped in individualism for a collectivist vision to take hold.
The Frankfurt School created Cultural Marxism to bring communism to the Western Powers, but the Fabians took a different route, seeking to confuse the public on what socialism actually was, while implementing it in slow, gradual steps.
The Fabians, incidentally, named themselves after the Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who fought delaying actions against General Hannibal of Carthage during the Second Punic War. Just as Fabius took a slow path to victory over Hannibal, so too the Fabians would take a slow path to victory over Western Society.
Medical care is a big part of any modern economy, and this was as true in 1920s England as it is today, so the Fabians started by calling ‘healthcare’ a ‘human right,’ and demanding that government provide it ‘for free’. After World War II, the Fabians got their wish and began moving on to other industries, like energy.
In addition to calling for the government take-over of entire industries, the Fabians also called for radical expansions in government assistance programs, under the guise of ‘equity’. ‘Income Inequality’ became a disease to cure, and the modern Welfare State emerged.
Fabianism has spread to other countries, including the United States. Fabians call things like food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare, ‘Human Rights’, and promise to provide things ‘for free.’ The government, then, steps in to provide all of these ‘free’ things, making government the source of food, clothing, water, shelter, education, retirement, medical care, energy, etc., etc., etc..
Nothing is truly ‘free’, so whatever one group gets without earning must be taken from another group. The inherent dark side of Fabianism is the need to take.
There are two groups Fabians can take from: those within a nation’s borders, and those outside of a nation’s borders.
Margaret Thatcher flipped Fabianism on it’s head by exclaiming, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money” and she was exactly correct – in order to give things ‘for free’ to those who do not earn them, those who do earn must be taxed at rates that discourage people from producing. Some workers invariably decide that the marginal benefit of working is not worth the effort, and less is produced. Less production means a smaller tax base, requiring higher taxes on those still working, discouraging more production and requiring another tax increase. This creates a spiral effect, with each tax increase reducing production further, until not enough is produced to feed and clothe the people.
The fact that production follows a pareto distribution exasperates this effect.
Fabians don’t mind the downward spiral, as once a people are starving in the streets, there will be a need for government to round the people up and send them to the farms and factories by force. At this point, socialism becomes full-blown communism, and that has been the aim of the Fabians all along. When we see things like what is happening today in Venezuela – that is exactly what the Fabians planned.
Cultural Marxism, in the meantime, is alive and well too, fracturing Western societies into balkanized groups. The Cultural Marxists believed that the balkanization of a population would lead to rioting of all kinds, until totalitarianism was needed to restore order – and a communist state could emerge.
Cultural Marxists and Fabians both have the same end-goal, so the two groups seem to get along pretty well, and, in fact, when you mix Fabianism with Cultural Marxism, all of the balkanized groups begin to believe they have the right to take from the other groups, and particularly from the group perceived to be ‘in power’.
Enter Russia.
According to the Democrats, Trump won the 2016 election because of Russian efforts to sow discourse in the American political spectrum. The Democrats have used this belief to sow discourse throughout the American political spectrum – exactly what both the Fabians, and Cultural Marxists, want.
If the Fabians and Cultural Marxists get their way, the only possible outcome will be civil war – to be suppressed, according to both Fabians and Cultural Marxists – by the emergence of a communist state.
The United States, however, is somewhat unique, in that we have an option most nations lack. Once we “run out of other people’s money” within our own borders, we have a military that is more than capable of taking “other people’s money” from outside our borders.
Many on the left believe we already do use our military to take from other countries…
Fabianism, in Venezuela, may well lead to communism, but there is a good chance that Fabianism in the United States will first lead to war.
