Building the Fabian Church of the Future
Early English Debates in Marxist Value Theory
Vulgar
Socialism under construction: Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw hammer
Africa and Asia.
[The Fabian
Stained-Glass Window, designed by Shaw, 1910. London School
of Economics.]
In his Preface to Volume III of Capital, Engels publically remarked that "Mr. George Bernard Shaw" was building "the Fabian Church of the Future" on "the foundation of Jevons’s and Menger’s theory of use-value and marginal utility". Indeed, the Fabians saw themselves, quite consciously, as building a socialism not just different from Marxism but in opposition to it: ''there are at the present moment four people in London, calling themselves 'Socialists', who claim to have refuted our author [i.e. Marx] completely by opposing to his theory that of - Stanley Jevons! ...'', Engels told Danielson in 1888. He was almost certainly referring to the participants in the Fabian sponsored value debate whose contributions we reproduce below, together with Shaw's memorandum on 'Fabian Economics'. This is the first time all these articles have been brought together and published in any media.
The Debate:
| Shaw | - 'Who is the Thief?' - Justice - March 15, 1884 |
| Wicksteed | - 'Das Kapital: a criticism' - Today - October 1884 |
| Shaw | - 'The Jevonian Criticism of Marx' - Today - January 1885 |
| Wicksteed | - 'The Jevonian Criticism of Marx (A Rejoinder)' - Today - April 1885 |
| Foxwell | - 'The Textbook of
Modern Socialism' - Pall Mall Gazette, May 6th
1887 |
| Shaw | - 'Marx and Modern Socialism' - Pall Mall Gazette, May 7th, 1887 |
| Hyndman | - 'Reply' - Pall Mall Gazette, May 11th, 1887 |
| Shaw | - 'Rejoinder' - Pall Mall Gazette, May 12th, 1887 |
| Hyndman | - 'Rejoinder' - Pall Mall Gazette, May 16th, 1887 |
| Mrs Besant | - 'Marx's Theory of Value' - Pall Mall Gazette, May 24th, 1887 |
| Shaw | - 'Karl Marx and Das Kapital I' - The National Reformer, August 7th, 1887 |
| Shaw | - 'Karl Marx and Das Kapital II' - The National Reformer, August 14th, 1887 |
| Shaw | - 'Karl Marx and Das Kapital III' - The National Reformer, August 21st, 1887 |
| Engels | - Letter to Danielson - January 5th, 1888 |
| Engels | - Letter to Danielson - October 15th 1888 |
| Wallas | - 'An Economic Eirenicon' - Today - March 1889 |
| Hyndman | - 'Marx's Theory of Value' - Today, April 1889 |
| Shaw | - 'Bluffing the Value Theory' - Today, May 1889 |
| Carpenter | - 'The Value of Value Theory' - Today, June 1889 |
| Engels | - Letter to Schmidt - September 12th, 1892 |
| Hyndman | - 'The Final Futility of Final Utility' - 1894 |
| Engels | - 'Preface to Volume III of Capital' - October 4th 1894 |
| Belfort Bax | - 'The Economic Conception of Value' - 1895 |
| Belfort Bax | - 'Our Fabian Philosopher' - Justice, November 28th 1896 |
| Appendices | |
| Shaw | - The Unsocial Socialist, Chapter 5. - 1883 [Published 1887] |
| Shaw | - Memorandum - The History of Fabian Economics - 1915 |