Fabian democracy
Democracy, as understood by the Fabian Society, means simply the control of the administration by freely elected representatives of the people.
The Fabian Society energetically repudiates all conceptions of Democracy as a system by which the technical work of government, such as legislation, administration, and the appointment of public officials, shall be carried on by referendum or any other form of direct popular decision. Such arrangements may be practical in a Russian village ; but in the complicated industrial civilisations which are ripening for Social Democracy, they would be childish. When the House of Commons is thrown open to candidates from all classes by an effective system of Payment of Representatives, and freed from the veto of the House of Lords, the British parliamentary system will be, in the opinion of the Fabian Society, a first-rate practical instrument of democratic government.
Democracy, as understood by the Fabian Society, makes no political distinction between men and women.
The Fabian Society having discovered by experience that Socialists cannot have their own way in everything any more than other people, recognises that in a Democratic community Compromise is the first condition of political progress.
Recent Entries
- British section
- The split in the feench section
- Parliamentary Socialist and Bourgeois Radical Congress
- German Social Democratic Reichstag fraction
- Dutch report, socialist league
- United States of America
- Switzerland
- Report on Fabian Policy
- Fabian democracy
- Fabian constitutionalism