Posted on 12/20/2012 7:21:15 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In the "Intercollegiate Socialist", Volume 7, the following is written:
Cooperation, according to Stuart Chase, founder of the Fabian Club of Chicago, must depend on the future radicalism of the labor parties.All those groups in society which lose rather than gain from the present economic system must amalgamate their sooner or later - if the present economic system is really to be modified. I think the Socialists and other articulate radicals would do well to hold off, without gratuitous criticism, and give the Labor Party a chance to see what it can do, and how far to the left it is prepared to go. If results are in any way encouraging, and a real class consciousness is developed, the radicals should come in to the Labor Party - as in England. Socialism under any other name would smell as sweet.
The "Intercollegiate Socialist" was the publication of the ISS, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which would go on to rename itself LID, the League for Industrial Democracy. (The student wing of the LID renamed itself again, to SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society.)
Chase (if you recall) was a member of FDR's Brain's trust. Note Chase's words above. What the Fabians were trying to do with the ISS and the LID was re-create what they did in England. It didn't quite go according to plan considering the differences between Progressivism and Fabianism, but it was successful enough. The other thing of note is his advice to slow down and hold off. Give things a chance to work - don't push for revolution, support the evolution. That's classic Fabianism - "Make haste, slowly". It's also in line with Progressivism and 'making progress'.
In quoting the publication "Intercollegiate Socialist", I am quoting a 'friendly' publication, in that Chase was a member of the ISS.(and when they changed into LID, Chase was their treasurer.) And as to 'friendly' publications, that's not the only one. Another group that Chase was involved with was the Consumer's Cooperative League. They helped to publish at least one of his books. (The Story of Toad Lane)
In one of the publications for the Cooperative League, we find some very useful information:
STUART CHASE received his degree as C.P.A. (certified public accountant) in 1915. His accounting practice has taken him into all phases of industry and government, and he has had an unusual opportunity to see how modern business is carried on. He was for a time employed by President Taft's Commission on Economy and Efficiency. He has specialized particularly in accounting systems and in chart work.Mr Chase was born in Somersworth NH in 1888. He graduated from Harvard in 1910. "A year or so after graduating from college," he writes: "I happened, quite by accident, to meet Henry George's "Progress and Poverty," which formed the basis of my social awakening. No inkling of real economics had ever penetrated to me during my college days, although I specialized on economics at Harvard."
Then in July 1914, Mr Chase married Margaret Hatfield, whose social ideas were parallel to his own, and they devoted their honeymoon to a sociological experiment in Rochester, N.Y., where they presented themselves as a homeless jobless couple looking for work. This experiment resulted in a widely read book, "A Honeymoon Experiment."
Mr Chase has been active in various progressive movements, and is connected as an officer with the Massachusetts' Birth Control League, the Massachusetts Single Tax League, and the Fabian Club of Boston. He is the author of a number of articles.
Today, the society functions primarily as a think tank and is one of 15 socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australian Fabian Society), Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and the now disbanded League for Social Reconstruction) and in New Zealand.
The Fabian Society was founded on 4 January 1884 in London as an offshoot of a society founded in 1883 called The Fellowship of the New Life.
Fellowship members included poets Edward Carpenter and John Davidson, sexologist Havelock Ellis and the future Fabian secretary Edward R. Pease. They wanted to transform society by setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow, but when some members also wanted to become politically involved to aid society's transformation, it was decided that a separate society, the Fabian Society, also be set up. All members were free to attend both societies. The Fabian Society additionally advocated renewal of Western European Renaissance ideas and their promulgation throughout the rest of the world.
The Fellowship of New Life (though sounding religious, really wasn't .. at least not as a main stream denominational doctrine ), drew up and adopted a "constitution" so to speak called;
Vita Nuova
Object. The cultivation of a perfect character in each and all.
Principle. The subordination of material things to spiritual things.
Fellowship. The sole and essential condition of fellowship shall be a single-minded, sincere, and strenuous devotion to the object and principle.
Intercourse. It is intended in the first instance to hold frequent gatherings for intimate social intercourse, as a step towards the establishment of a community among the members.
Designs. The promotion, by both practice and precept, of the following methods of contributing toward the attainment of the end :
(1) The supplanting of the spirit of competition and self-seeking by that of unselfish regard for the general good ;
(2) simplicity of living;
(3) the highest and completest education of the young;
(4) the introduction, as far as possible, of manual labor in conjunction with intellectual pursuits ;
(5) the organization, within and without the Fellowship, of meetings for religious communion, and of lectures, addresses, classes, and conferences for general culture, and for the furtherance of the aims of the Fellowship.
The Fellowship of the New Life was dissolved in 1898, but the Fabian Society grew to become a preeminent academic society in the United Kingdom. Another group organized the name of Fabian society by the center of the founder Sidney and Beatrice Webb. After that, many of Fabians participated in the formation of England's Labour Party in 1900. The party's constitution, written by Sidney Webb, borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society. As seen in the Labour Party Foundation Conference in 1900, the Fabian Society claimed 861 members and sent one delegate.
The Fabian society grew throughout 1930-1940 over many countries under the British rule, and many future leaders of these countries were influenced by the Fabians during their struggles for independence from the British. These leaders included India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Obafemi Awolowo, who later became the premier of Nigeria's defunct Western Region, and the founder of Pakistan, Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, had a political philosophy strongly influenced by the Fabian Society. Even in the 21st century, the Fabian Society's influence is felt through Labour Party leaders such as and former prime ministers of Great Britain, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
(The above was collected and synopsised, GREATLY abridged, from several sources ... I'm not smart enough to know all that and compose it so well)
Isn't Soros a modern day member of this "fan" club?
Chase also was (if you recall) the author of The Tyranny of Words, published in the exact middle of FDR’s endless Presidency, which is a book I have heard (obviously, cluelessly) referred to by more than one Conservative over the last 20 years,as a great book. Perhaps they didn’t know much about the background of this man.
“Intercourse. It is intended in the first instance to hold frequent gatherings for intimate social intercourse, as a step towards the establishment of a community among the members.”
Well, I guess if one goes to frequent gatherings for intimimate social intercourse, you would eventually end up was the establishment of a rather large community of members, if you know what I mean, ... heh, heh.
was = with, above. Typo.
intimimate = intimate above. Another typo. Time to hang it up when fingers start tripping over one another on the keyboard.
How’s that saying go? Oh yeah..
“Bedfellows make strange politics.”
Cancerous Old World Ideas File.
Bravo...consistently one of the best thread series on FR.
They were founded in Britain, but they had profound influence here in the States.
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