Fabian Modernism

Abstract

We have looked at a number of versions of socialist modernism in this book up to now. It remains to consider one other version, one very different in content, scope and purpose to the other varieties of socialist modernism we have observed in the socialist project of the late Victorian and Edwardian decades. This alternative version of socialist modernism was not concerned with the notion of an inward spiritual experience, utopian millenarian fantasies, eschatological visions of a coming Kingdom of socialism or romantic myths concerning a retrievable ‘Golden Age’. Rather, it was a species of modernism informed by what Roger Griffin has called ‘scientistic’ currents of thought within contemporary culture, politics and society.1 In harbouring its own particular vision of future socialism and strategy as to how to arrive there, we need to see this scientistic variant of modernism as similar in kind to the ‘heroic modernism’ that became quite popular in a later period of modernism, just before and after the Great War.KeywordsUrban PoorBiological HealthSocialist RevivalSocialist ModernismSocial OrganismThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.