CONCEPT
Fabianism
The gradualist, reformist socialism of the Fabian Society — founded in 1884 and shaped decisively by the Webbs — that sought the transformation of capitalism through patient institutional construction rather than revolution.
Fabianism is the distinctive political tradition associated with the Fabian Society, founded in London in 1884 and named for the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, whose strategy of delay and attrition eventually wore down Hannibal. The Fabians believed that socialism would arrive not through revolutionary rupture but through the gradual accumulation of reforms, each of which extended public provision, regulated markets, or expanded democratic participation. Beatrice and Sidney Webb were the Society's dominant intellectual figures for four decades, shaping its characteristic combination of empirical investigation, expert policy design, and patient advocacy. The tradition produced the London School of Economics, the New Statesman, the Labour Party's policy architecture, and much of the intellectual substance of the twentieth-century British welfare state.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The core Fabian conviction was that capitalism could be transformed from within through institutional means: trade boards, social insurance, public ownership of utilities, progressive taxation, universal education. Each reform was small in isolation; cumulatively, they would produce a