Hi Pericles.

Aaaah....Singapore...you have aroused memories of Orchard road and the Ngee Ann centre... basement 2 for the best jolly tucker in the whole place...affordable too!

But Singapore and the LSE? well...I wouldn't attribute too much of it's success to the LSE education of just one minister. But if you spend some time there, you will quickly (or.. perhaps slowly :) realize that it IS a place of almost 'total control', albeit in a manner which enshrines the position and wealth of a relatively small number of families. It is not your classic 'socialist' country, and anything of the Fabian vision about the "well-being of all" seems to have been filtered out if Goh is supposed to be the lynch pin of the economic miracle. As I've previously related, there is very little social welfare/safety net other than your family there.. you have to prove you have NO-ONE to look after you and..that you do need looking after, b4 you can get a cent from the public purse. I saw a 70 yr old bloke clearing tables in a resturant...just to survive.

You'll have to help me with the LSE "position". I looked, but found not.

I did however look closely at the basis on which it was founded and presumably reflects the mentality which is passed to the Students.

According to Shaw, in an Essay "Basis for Socialism-Economic" he simply re-states Marxist Theory in slightly mellower tones.

To think that the London School of Economics was NOT founded to pursue and promote such ideas is absurd. The 'effectiveness' of that task, is debatable. Let History decide.

....cont/

THE BASIS FOR SOCIALISM-ECONOMIC (G.B. Shaw)

since inequality is bitter to all except the highest, and miserably
lonely for him, men come greatly to desire that these capricious
gifts of Nature might be intercepted by some agency having
the power and the goodwill to distribute them justly according
to the labor done by each in the collective search for them.
This desire is Socialism ; and, as a means to its fulfilment,
Socialists have devised communes, kingdoms, principalities,
churches, manors, and finally, when all these had succumbed
to the old gambling spirit, the Social Democratic State, which
yet remains to be tried.

NOTE THESE WORDS "Some 'agency' having the POWER and 'goodwill' (?) to distribute them......justly"

Does ANYone know of a time in history when 'people' at the top of a 'State' did that ? "distribute Justly"?

In the communist state it has always mean't 'PARTY MEMBERS' first and especially those party members CLOSEst to the top.

It became "State Capitalism" which is in fact National Socialism.

The primary problem with this utopian idea is the fact that it relies on HUMANS to fulfill it.

I'll be 'dogmatic' here and simply quote Romans 3:23

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,"

Paul spent 3 chapters developing the argument which culminates with that short sentence.

History.....appears to be on my side in offering this Biblical evaluation of mankind.

ALGORE, I think you've misconstrued Pericles'
point completely. You are suggesting that students
of the LSE are indoctrinated into Fabian socialism
because its founders were Fabian socialists. Pericles
has nominated Goh Keng Swee and Mick Jagger as alumni
of that institution who demonstrably have not gone on
to engage in Fabian gradualism.

You seem to agree that Singapore is hardly a model
of a socialist society, yet paradoxically you're
sticking to your conspiracy theory about the LSE.

Your argument makes no sense.

Thanks for the observation, talisman.

>>ALGORE, I think you've misconstrued Pericles' point completely.<<

You are absolutely right, of course.

I was trying to get Boaz to understand that the LSE does not simply churn out Fabians, gradually imposing Socialism on the world, but can also produce "instant-pudding" authoritarian capitalists.

Back to you, Boaz.

As I mentioned earlier, you are omitting from your assessment of Fabianism, its historical context.

The passage you quoted was from Fabian Essays in Socialism, published in 1889. At the beginning of that year there were only 38 States in the United States. It was also before the (major, second) Boer War, WWI or the Russian Revolution.

So you should not take him to task for his lack of perception, as to what perversions of his ideals man will later bring about.

>>In the communist state it has always mean't 'PARTY MEMBERS' first and especially those party members CLOSEst to the top.<<

Yes, hindsight is a wonderful gift, is it not. One that you exercise so often.

Did you read all of the essays, I wonder?

Because if you had, you would have seen GBS (who was Irish, by the way, not English) takes this somewhat... Boazian swipe at the landed gentry.

"Nevertheless, since they still depend on their tenants' labor for their subsistence, they continue to pay Labor, with a capital L, a certain meed of mouth honor; and the resultant association of prosperity with idleness, and praise with industry, practically destroys morality by setting up that incompatibility between conduct and principle which is the secret of the ingrained cynicism of our own time, and which produces the curious Ricardian phenomenon of the man of business who goes on Sunday to the church with the regularity of the village blacksmith, there to renounce and abjure before his God the line of conduct which he intends to pursue with all his might during the following week."

This should tell you that we are looking here at an idealist, not someone who was bent on establishing a Communist State.

Context, Boaz. Context.

Always useful.

Magnificent debate here!

Talisman, let's go back to basics and argue the facts.
I enjoy some banter with a disagreer like yourself and Pericles, because disagreement gives opportunity for a dialectical synthesis :)

Does anyone disagree with a fundamental point, that the Fabians were begun with a view of disseminating Socialist Idealism and optimism into academic and social life in the UK and the world?

If you disagree...then please justify that.

Ok..that's our starting point.

Shaw wrote, as many do.. with the view that a 'new system' will save the planet and mankind. He and his ilk were completely incorrect, as history has shown.

So... perhaps we might legitimately ask "Has the Fabian Socialist Agenda CHANGED since those days? and if so...'how' and more importantly.. I hope you who seem to be of this view will say "Here...in this essay/book/page/link" etc and provide supporting evidence.

I suppose it's possible that as time has gone by, people like Julia Gillard, a Fabian, might see it just as a 'think tank'....but improbable given that Politicians look rather closely at which groups they align themselves to.

The connection between Fabian Education and Barney Rosset is very well established. Did he 'act' contrary to Fabian socialist teaching?

Remember Socialism is about 'tolerance' and ridding society of capitalist oppression. How was 'capitalist oppression' perceived in the 50s by people like Rosset? "Intolerance of pornography and wild sex, the straight and homo kind"

Did the likes of Rosset and similarly trained/educated "progressive/Communists" succeed in changing the world?" They sure DID! and we are all just a few clicks away from seeing it in living color.

In order to defeat capitalism, you must undermine it at the economic, cultural and spiritual levels. This they have done...and done well.

Please respond to the 'Starting Point' in replies.

ALGORE, at the risk of pointing out the obvious,
Julia Gillard may have been a Fabian socialist
in her callow youth, but she certainly isn't
acting like one now. Indeed, the entire ALP
seems at pains to relegate its socialist foundations
to a kind of embarrassed ideological past.

Socialism undoubtedly seemed a great idea in the late
19th century when the Fabians were established,
but times have indeed changed. As I said, about the
only people talking about socialism these days are naïve
students and lunar Right American rabble rousers. Even
the unions have given up on it as an ideology.

You need to move with the times, mate.