Socialism found a seminal and powerful voice on English soil in
the early twentieth century through a group of young intellectuals who
called themselves “Fabians.” The Fabian Society included famous personalities
such as founder George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Sydney and
Beatrice Webb, and even Bertrand Russell for a time. These figures served as
the main voices of Socialism in both England and the United States, and a relic
they left behind gives a startling window into the Socialist soul.
The Fabians took their name from
Quintus Fabius Maximus, a Roman general famous for his tactics of delay and
guerilla-style attacks designed to wear the enemy down over time. The Fabian
socialists agreed to work for a socialist future covertly, gradually, without
direct confrontation or call for revolution. As such, they used the turtle as a
symbol of their movement: slow and steady, “Make haste, slowly!”1
With the exception of officially
shunning noisy or violent revolution, the Fabians adopted basic Marxist ideas
including the inevitability of socialism in the future. This involved the
rejection of the Christian doctrine of private property and ownership as well
as the overturning of the social order in most other areas: finance, education,
politics, family, sex, etc. The Fabians, however, endeavored to advance this
agenda without appearing to oppose the traditional system; they hoped to
advance something like Marxism without being detected as Marxists. Call it
stealth Socialism.
The amount of deceit involved in this
endeavor defies all comprehension. Two of the founding members, Sidney and
Beatrice Webb, provide a great example of wolves spinning lies in sheep’s wool.
During their 1932 visit to Soviet Russia, Stalin had waged war against
Ukrainian farmers who refused to collectivize. The dictator closed railways,
roads, and blocked all shipments of food, stock, fuel, and seed. In a short
time, anywhere from two to ten million people starved to death (estimates
vary). The Webbs crossed Ukraine through the worst of this slaughter, but
denied seeing anything. Worse yet, in 1935 the couple published Soviet
Socialism—A New Civilization?, in which they denied that any famine had
occurred period.2 The question mark disappeared from the
title in later editions. They approved of the Bolshevik Revolution, and vaunted
Soviet Russia as a model. Later it turned out that Soviet army officials had
written much of the text themselves, and that “The entire text of the Webbs’
book had been prepared in the Soviet foreign office.”3 Propaganda
about their “humane” prison camps and denials of atrocities filled the whole
work.
Their willingness to spin lies in
defense of socialism extended into every sphere of their activity. As they
attempted to mold the world toward their own hearts’ desires, they
purposefully adopted another symbol: a wolf in sheep’s clothing (see the crest
between the two hammering men in the picture below). The emblem appears in a
stained-glass window (that once adorned their headquarters) picturing the
worldview of these socialists. Designed by G. B. Shaw himself in 1910, it now
resides at the London School of Economics for which it seems to have been
originally intended as a gift. Nevertheless, the content of the stained-glass
spectacle concerns us, for it displays the dark mission and methods of
Socialism.
Despite the fact that most of the
Fabians (like Marx and the later Bolsheviks) promoted atheism or at least
agnosticism, they had no problem employing religious language or even overtly
tagging the name “Christian” on their devices. They disguised their wolf’s-head
atheistic system under the white-as-snow wool of Christian faith in such an “impudent
contrivance,” as Martin calls it, as the “Christian Book Club.”4 For
a grand opening in this disguise, they offered Christians the Webb’s Soviet
Socialism—A New Civilization. Martin comments:
The inference seemed to be that,
since Christians were not overly bright, they could easily be led down the
garden path to Socialism by a false appeal to ideals of brotherhood and social
justice. . . . To churchgoers among the voting population, Sidney Webb had
reasoned shrewdly, Socialist goals must be presented cautiously—in terms that
did not appear to conflict with their religious beliefs. . . . For the
most part its spokesmen prudently avoided outraging the beliefs of religious
minded persons, while soliciting their support for Socialist candidates and
persons.5
The faux-religiosity of the socialist
program extended well beyond the mere presentation of the message. The whole
system intended to replace Christianity from Marx onward, only while Marx
favored open confrontation and conquest, the Fabians promoted subversion and
gradualism. Either way, Socialism was a new messianism, a humanistic,
God-replacing messianism. Martin again:
In the Fabian Socialist movement, as
in Soviet Marxism, there was always a strong element of political messianism,
diametrically opposed to the religious messianism of One who proclaimed: “My
Kingdom is not of this world.” Both Socialist and Communist literature stressed
the supposedly communal character of early Christianity, undetectable to anyone
familiar with the Epistles of St. Paul. Revolutionary Marxism, open or
disguised, was presented as being the “Christianity of today.” Voluntary
charity and renunciation of one’s own goods were confused with the forcible
confiscation of other people’s property, as illustrated in the famous phrase of
John Maynard Keynes, “the euthanasia of the rentier,” that is, the
mercy-killing or painless extinction of those who live on income from invested
capital.6
Nowhere does the messianic worldview
of the socialists find a better visual expression than in the aforementioned
window. All the major themes shine through: while founding member Edward Pease
mans the bellows, fanning the flames of a smith’s furnace, fellow founders G.
B. Shaw and Sidney Webb place the globe—heated like iron to an orange glow—upon
an anvil and hammer away to the caption “REMOULD IT NEARER TO THE HEARTS
DESIRE.” Between the hammering atheists and above the globe stands a crest
displaying a wolf in sheep’s clothing with the initials “F.S.”—“Fabian
Socialists.” Below this grizzly vision of Socialist “remoulding” of the world,
ten more of the original members kneel with hands folded in prayer towards a
stack of their holy scriptures: the works of G. B. Shaw, the writings of the
Webbs, and the Fabian Society Tracts and Essays. The group of disciples even
has a “Judas,” H. G. Wells, who later left the group in disillusionment. He
kneels on the left end while thumbing his nose at the rest of the group and
their devotion.
Nevertheless, the overall picture is
clear, and it comports with the thesis of this book: the God of Holy Scripture
stands in total contrast to Socialism. The two are irreconcilable and must
necessarily wage war until one lay vanquished. This window into the socialist
soul reveals an attempt at a complete replacement of Christianity. Instead of
God’s will they follow their own “heart’s desire.” In place of dominion under
God, we have man-directed dominion and refashioning of the world in man’s
image. Instead of the heart-refining fire of the Holy Spirit, we have man
generating the flames of passion and ambition. Instead of Christ’s disciples,
we get twelve apostles of socialism (minus Wells) “praying” and “hammering”—a
theft of St. Benedict’s rule ora et labora, “pray and work.” Above
all we see the central object of their obeisance: the words of Shaw, Webb, and
their Society. That is, above all they have replaced God’s word with man’s.
To intensify the insult, they openly
declare that they will engage in trickery and deception—as wolves in sheep’s
clothing—to carry out their ends. They will attempt to deceive Christians,
feeding them their atheistic agenda in the name of Christianity, all the while
denying the Christian faith as ardently as Marx, Lenin, or Stalin themselves.
In continuance of such mockery-disguised-as-agreement, the Socialist-dominated
government at the time interred the ashes of the two atheists, Beatrice and
Sidney Webb, within the grounds of Westminster Abbey.7 This
should not surprise us, as they had buried Charles Darwin there over a
generation earlier, thanks to the urging of fellow agnostics Francis Galton and
Thomas Huxley.
But while Darwin denied God and
appealed to natural selection for evolutionary change, the Fabian atheists
created a belief system in which man (they themselves at the head, of course) direct
the evolutionary change, including the evolution of mankind (meaning, “other
men”). This is a new providence—the providence of man. This apostate
providence justifies the forced redistribution of wealth, erosion of
personal freedom, and other measures of violence that have accompanied
socialism throughout its history. There is no safeguard from this tyranny
except for the doctrines of private property, privacy, individual liberty, and
personal accountability taught by God in the Bible.
God and socialism stand in complete
contradiction and eternal conflict. We must choose one, and cannot choose
neither. Without God, mankind is doomed to the judgment of mankind, including
his political contrivances leading to theft. Christians must recognize this
antithesis and choose the good. We must stand and defend private property and
individual freedom. Thankfully, we have the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, and
the mandates and the will of God behind us in history, in order to combat the
idolatrous man-contrived Socialism that confronts us in so many forms today.
Let us use the forces in favor to discern.
[From the author’s God versus Socialism: A Biblical Critique of the New
Social Gospel.]
