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William Clarke: The Making and Unmaking of a Fabian Socialist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Peter Weiler
Peter Weiler*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Extract

None of the early Fabians remains more obscure today than William Clarke (1852-1901 ). Although his contribution to the Fabian Essays ranks as perhaps the most interesting and perceptive essay in that volume, histories of the Fabian Society pass over Clarke with a line or two of praise. Nevertheless, Clarke's socialism deserves more attention. It is interesting in itself as an early English analysis of monopoly capitalism and as another example of the relationship between the growth of radical politics and the Victorian loss of faith. At the same time, of course, Clarke's intellectual history also contributes to an increased understanding of the early evolution of the Fabian society.

At the time Clarke wrote “The Industrial Basis of Socialism” for the Fabian Essays he had been a socialist for only a few years. And in spite of this promising beginning as a socialist theorist, he abandoned socialism in the late 1890's, reverting to a more youthful political individualism. Why Clarke remained a socialist for only a decade is, then, the central question raised by his career. Not surprisingly, the answer is complex, dependent in part on accidental personal factors. Clarke approached socialism from two different directions. Politically, it was a logical extension of his radicalism, a necessary corrective to the limitations placed on political democracy by uncontrolled private wealth. At the same time, Clarke came to see socialism as a kind of religious activity, the means to realize a spiritual ideal. In both cases socialism held out a promise of the imminent realization of these concerns.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , November 1974 , pp. 77 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1974

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References

1. For works about the Fabian Society, see the bibliography in McBriar, A. M., Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884-1918 (Cambridge, Eng., 1962)Google Scholar.

2. In part, this has resulted from lack of information. Clarke left few papers. Much of his work has been lost in the anonymity of daily journalism, and almost all the known biographical information about him is contained in a brief memoir by Burrows, Herbert in William Clarke, A Collection of His Essays eds. Burrows, Herbert and Hobson, J. A. (London, 1908)Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Clarke.

Asa Briggs has written that Clarke's essay “has more point and power” from a contemporary standpoint than even Sidney Webb's. Clarke, he wrote, “is now known, I believe quite unjustly, only to a small number of people, chiefly inside universities.” Briggs, Asa, “Introduction,” Fabian Essays (London, 1962), pp. 19Google Scholar, 16.

3. The information for this paragraph comes from Burrows's memoir. See Clarke, pp. xi-xxix.

4. Ibid., p. xx.

5. Ibid., p. xiv.

6. “It was just three years after the University had been so thrown open to students, to some of whom the system appealed, because, as they were past the usual undergraduate age, they preferred not to be bound down by college rules, to others — the majority — because their purses were not long enough to pay college bills. William Clarke was among the latter … Ibid., p. xiv.

7. William Clarke to Thomas Davidson, January 22, 1883. Thomas Davidson Papers, Yale University library. Hereafter cited as Davidson Papers.

8. For example, he wrote to Henry Demarest Lloyd: “I cannot get a living by my pen: I know no trade or profession & I am too old to learn. My situation is much more serious than you think. I have tried for 13 weary years & I have had enough of it, far too much. At 36 when I ought to be in a good position in life I am next door to being a pauper & I have no prospect of anything else.” November 23, 1888. Henry Demarest Lloyd Papers microfilm edition, [State Historical Society of Wisconsin,] (Madison, 1970.) “Poverty so cripples my productive powers that I can never hope to do anything of any importance.” Ibid., December 30, 1889. “It looks like beggary for me in the future.” Ibid., June 28, 1890. Hereafter, cited as Lloyd Papers.

9. “The Future of the Canadian Dominion,” Contemporary Review, XXXVIII (November, 1880), 819Google Scholar.

10. “Richard Cobden,” British Quarterly Review, LXXV (January 1, 1882), 159Google Scholar.

11. Ibid., p. 178.

12. Clarke, William, “The ‘Spoils’ System in American Politics,” Contemporary Review, XL (October 1881), 649Google Scholar. “If popular government fails in America, it can be established in no other country; the future of the whole world is bound up in the future of the American union.” (Ibid., p. 634.) See also his unsigned article “The American Centennial,” British Quarterly Review, LXIV (October, 1876), 356–79Google Scholar.

13. “Richard Cobden,” British Quarterly Review, LXXV, 165Google Scholar. In arguing for the union of the U.S.A. with Canada he wrote, “The happiest, brightest guarantee for the future of the world would be the progressive, peaceful development of an united American people. The reflex influence of such a people on Europe would be incalculable. It would be the pacific conquest of torn, distracted, bleeding Europe by the mighty union of free peoples, the force of whose example it would be impossible to resist.” “Future of the Canadian Dominion,” Contemporary Review, XXXVIII, 823Google Scholar.

14. At Cambridge, Clarke had become friends with Edwin Mead, who later became editor of the New England Magazine. Mead arranged a number of lectures for Clarke who spent most of his time in the East but ranged as far West as Chicago. Clarke visited the U.S.A. only one other time. In 1893 he followed the same route from New England to Chicago where he represented the Fabian Society at the International Labour Congress organized by Henry Demarest Lloyd at the time of the Chicago Exhibition.

15. “‘Spoils’ System,” Contemporary Review, XL, 635–36Google Scholar.

16. See, for example, Lynd, Helen Merrell, England in the Eighteen Eighties (Oxford, 1945)Google Scholar. Saville, John, “The Background to the Revival of Socialism in England,” Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No. 11 (Autumn, 1965), 13–17Google Scholar.

17. Clarke, William, Walt Whitman (London, 1892), p. 34Google Scholar.

18. Clarke wrote, “The thorough discussion of the Irish land question prepared the way for the discussion of the far vaster question of the relations of capital and labour …. What had been in Ireland a paltry question of rent reduction and secure tenure became in England a question reaching down to the fundamental bases of society.” “Charles Stewart Parnell,” New England Magazine, I (October, 1889), 199Google Scholar.

19. Clarke to Lloyd, January 8, 1884, Lloyd Papers.

20. He wrote to Lloyd on May 23, 1883: “One of the chief features in English affairs just now is the undoubted spread of socialist ideas …. The old political economy of Ricardo is gone to the wall, and Henry George's book has had a most enormous sale.” Lloyd Papers. See also Ibid., October 22, 1884.

21. Ibid., January 8, 1884. By socialism, Clarke meant simply state interference. “I think the truth is,” he wrote to Lloyd, “we are inevitably going on the path opened up by the factory legislation and by the Irish land legislation, viz, of interference by the State with the greed of private capital.” Ibid., October 22, 1884.

22. It was particularly the writings of his friend Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847-1903) that caused Clarke to revise his judgments. Lloyd was a progressive journalist whose article, “The Lords of Industry,” (North American Review, CXXXVIII June, 1884, 535–53)Google Scholar was the first major criticism of monopolies like the Standard Oil Co. He later expanded this attack in his well known Wealth Against Commonwealth (New York, 1894.)Google Scholar

23. Clarke to Lloyd, October 22, 1884, Lloyd Papers. “The Election all round has been a disgrace to the American people,” he wrote to Davidson on December 12, 1884. Davidson Papers. See also Pelling, Henry, America and the British Left (London, 1956), p. 59Google Scholar.

24. Clarke, William, “The Fabian Society,” New England Magazine, X (March, 1894), 95Google Scholar. See also Pelling, , America, p. 65Google Scholar. He wrote to William Salter: “I hold that you must go for socialism or else give up Democracy: The one involves the other. Either the people must own and control for their own benefit the instruments of production or they must be mere serfs.” December 1, 1887, Lloyd Papers. Criticizing the shortcomings of Mazzini's democratic radicalism, Clarke wrote, “he [MazziniJ did not fully perceive how these very economic conditions force on a class struggle even in republican communities like the United States.” Essays: Selected from the Writings, Literary, Political and Religious of Joseph Mazzini, ed. Clarke, William, (London, 1887), p. xxivGoogle Scholar.

25. Walt Whitman, p. 30. Compare his youthful optimistic analysis of American society with the following: “It cannot be averred that America has more decisively solved the political problem than most of the Western European nations have …. America shares the worm-eaten social order of Europe, and … she reveals it in a more naked form, unrelieved by the picturesque relics of an earlier form of civilisation.” Ibid., pp. 29-30, 32.

26. Clarke to Davidson, December 12, 1884, Davidson Papers. “I do not see how the other section of the S.D.F. who are interested in the spiritual development of mankind and who would consider that as superior to fine clothing & good dinners can work with those who would as a critic of a paper of mine coarsely said, ‘organize the selfishness of the masses.’” Ibid., January 13, 1884.

27. Burrows wrote: “William Clarke was essentially a religious man.” He believed in “a spiritual life which in the ordinary sense is neither atheistic or pantheistic, which is incapable of expression or definition, but which is to be found and appreciated by man in exact proportion as his inner life is attuned to the highest forces which he sees working for good in the universe at large.” Clarke, p. xxvii.

28. Burrows is vague about the precise date when Clarke adopted an Emersonian creed. Probably it had occurred before 1881, since Clarke felt that the “crowning-point of his tour” of America had been his visit to the aged Emerson. His letters to Davidson also indicate he had adopted an Emersonian faith by this date. For example, he wrote to Davidson that Wordsworth and other poets “give one greater faith and insight, and are, after all, as Emerson says the true spiritual teachers …. O! What a huge barrier of materialism we have to overthrow in this country.” December 12, 1884, Davidson Papers.

Clarke later wrote of Emerson in a passage which Burrows cites as also reflecting “the thought of William Clarke”: “His [Emerson's] Soul is the Universal Soul, the Eternal Spirit that men have named God. That Soul stands in living relation to our personality, its life overflows into our own. Or rather, it is our life, and without it we have no real life at all …. We are organs of that Soul, and we only live insofar as we are …. It is a power making for righteousness, but it knows if we obey its laws …. Emerson enjoins sympathetic co-operation with a living pure, rational purpose, and he may be said to find in that co-operation, the whole duty of man — no, not duty, so much as bent, tendency, inevitable purpose.” “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in Clarke, pp. 195–96Google Scholar.

29. “Max Nordau: The Man and His Message,” in Clarke, p. 295Google Scholar. “Our First duty, then is to make the law of the world our own law, so that we feel we are co-operating with an irresistible and universal tendency towards supreme and perfect good.” “Emerson,” in ibid., p. 197.

30. Ibid., p. xxvii. He later wrote strongly against the “otherworldliness” of this orthodoxy which has men keep “their eyes fixed and their minds engaged on a hypothetical future world while neglecting the actual life and the individual and social duties around them.” “Carlyle and Ruskin and Their Influence on English Social Thought,” New England Magazine, IX (December, 1893), 474Google Scholar.

31. Clarke, p. xxvii.

32. “He [Clarke] was a frequenter of Stopford Brooke's select circle of disciples.” Rhys, Ernest, Everyman Remembers (New York, 1931), p. 28Google Scholar. Brooke was an Anglican clergyman who left the Church on theological grounds, because he ceased to believe in miracles, and on social grounds, because he believed that the Church was “the subservient tool of the upper classes … the church of the plutocracy.” “Stopford A. Brooke,” in Clarke, pp. 247, 249Google Scholar. Brooke's views seem to have served Clarke as a transition from Unitarianism to Emersonianism. For an example of his ideas, see Brooke, Stopford, Christ in Modern Life (New York, 1879)Google Scholar. For his life, see Jacks, L. P., Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke (New York, 1917)Google Scholar.

33. See note 28.

34. “I feel that a modified agnosticism is for me the only possible mental attitude towards the great questions. I can't answer them, and in the limited time at my disposal, I can't find any answer that satisfies me.” Clarke to Davidson, January 4, 1883, Davidson Papers.

35. Ibid., June 12, 1882.

36. Ibid., June 12, 1882. “I can't get to any definite solid philosophy of things … I have some faith … in men, … faith in truth and in reason and in the power of goodness; but it is on the whole feeble compared with what it ought to be especially for an apostle of human regeneration. I am glad to say that I am, I think, pretty free from all scorn and cynicism; and if I once get an object to work for, I can work for it. Only it must be absorbing, dominant, really great. As it is I find nothing of the kind either inside or outside myself, and so I drift and drift.” Ibid., January 4, 1883.

37. Its “object” was “the cultivation of a perfect character in each and all”; its “principle, the subordination of material things to spiritual.” Knight, William (ed.), Memorials of Thomas Davidson, (London, 1907), p. 19Google Scholar. The Fellowship was one of many societies with such aims. Clarke, for example, was already a member of the Progressive Association, founded in 1882 “to bring about that moral awakening which is itself the occasion of all social and political improvement.” Goldberg, Isaac, Havelock Ellis (New York, 1926), p. 97Google Scholar.

38. “Protestanism and the New Ethics,” The Open Court, I (June 9, 1887), 235Google Scholar.

39. Clarke seemed to acknowledge this in his last preserved letter to Davidson: “I shall always gratefully acknowledge your services in helping to open my eyes, and to give me new aims and a way out from the gloomy and ignoble condition in which I was plunged.” December 12, 1884, Davidson Papers. He had written to Davidson earlier. “I have derived much good from your suggestions on social reform, and shall try to elaborate them and work them out. I find the best minds tending in the same direction.” Ibid., May 12 1883.

“The old theological heaven having lost its attractions and the old theological hell its terrors, and both having become as unreal to all intelligent people as Tartarus or the Elysian Fields; it follows necessarily that for any true teacher of men nothing is left but the dealing with the evils of actual life, the preaching of a higher social ideal, and the imperious command to men to leave all and follow that ideal.” “The Ethical Movement in England,” The Open Court, I (September 15, 1887), 444Google Scholar.

See also Richter, Melvin, “T. H. Green and His Audience: Liberalism as a Surrogate Faith,” Review of Politics, XVII (October, 1956), 444–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Graham Wallas had a similar political development. See Wiener, Martin, Between Two Worlds: The Political Thought of Graham Wallas (London, 1971), pp. 4-5, 20Google Scholar.

40. “Whatever else may or may not be, it is certain that reason is in the world, that it has a telos which must partake of its own nature; else why concern ourselves with rational action at all?” Anyone who lacked this faith in a “higher” purpose “would agree with Schopenhauer that social reform was a mad delusion, and would logically take to quietism as every true pessimist does.” Whitman, pp. 107, 108.

41. It is surely more than coincidence that Clarke in these years took Mazzini as a model of a man who found a religious purpose in social reform. Clarke wrote: “When we clearly perceive that our action is in accord with the highest commands, and is dedicated to universal aims, the inevitable strife … does not disturb our inward calm. We are the soldiers of an Idea, and that is the warrant of our action …. Mazzini, therefore, perceiving the purpose of our life, and conscious of the grandeur and unselfishness of his aims, found peace, and the black clouds of doubt fled away.” Essays: Selected from the Writings, Literary, Political and Religious, of Joseph Mazzini, ed. Clarke, William (London, 1887), p. xviGoogle Scholar. Political activity is thus a kind of cooperation with “the development of the eternal law of progress. This law is regarded as the unfolding of the Divine will in which, as Mazzini's countryman Dante said, is man's peace.” Ibid., p. xxii. At least as Clarke presented it, Mazzini's ideal was a kind of reformist Emersonianism. “We cannot relate ourselves to the Divine,” says Mazzini, “but through collective humanity. It is not by isolated duty … nor by contemplation of mere Power as displayed in the material world, that we can develop our nature. It is rather by mingling with the universal life, and by carrying on the evolution of the neverending work.” Ibid., p. xvii.

42. Clarke to Lloyd, November 23, 1888, Lloyd Papers. “Observe, I don't deny: I simply feel I cannot affirm: it is all a dark, blank, mystery of which we know nothing and about which we cannot compel ourselves to believe one way or the other. I turn from this hopeless problem to the problems of actual life: I find men, women & children around me who are despairing now, right here: about whose condition there is no doubt, and I do what I can for them” Ibid.

Most of the evidence about these religious changes dates from 1887-88. I am assuming, however, that this occurred after his letter to Davidson in December, 1884, but before his joining of the Fabians in 1886.

43. The exact relationship of the Fellowship to the Fabian Society is unclear. According to Pease, Edward, The History of the Fabian Society, (London, 1963), pp. 25–35Google Scholar, the Fabian Society developed after Thomas Davidson came to London in Autumn, 1883, and related his ideas about a Utopian community to a group of friends. This group discussed his ideas and then divided. One section rejected the Utopian ethical approach and early in 1884 founded the Fabians. The remainder later founded the Fellowship of the New Life. Margaret Cole, in The Story of Fabian Socialism, follows Pease.

Knight, William (Memorials, pp. 16–25)Google Scholar, however, gives a different account. He claims that Davidson came to London in 1882. He implies that the Fellowship, while not formally constituted, enjoyed a de facto existence by 1883. He published a copy of Davidson's rules which state, “the society shall date from January 1, 1883, but shall not be organized until a meeting of members can take place.” He implies that the founders of the Fabian society broke away from this original group, not, as Pease has it, that both the Fabians and the Fellowship came from an original discussion group. He wrote of a “breach in the society,” for example when the Fabians were organized. McBriar follows Knight: “The Fabian Society came into existence when the members who disagreed with Davidson separated to form a new group. The fission was decided upon at a meeting of the original body held on 4 January, 1884. The old group continued on the lines approved by Dr. Davidson and retained the name of the Fellowship of the New Life.” Fabian Socialism, p. 3.

Clarke's letters make clear that Davidson was organizing a group by 1882, but not whether the group had an organized existence. On the whole, Knight's and McBriar's accounts seem more convincing and have been followed here.

44. The club met for several years, starting in 1885. See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 30–36Google Scholar; Pease, Edward, The History of the Fabian Society, p. 65Google Scholar.

45. The tangible expression of this change was Clarke's involvement after 1886 with the English ethical movement. See Spiller, G., The Ethical Movement in Great Britain (London, n.d.)Google Scholar. Unlike the members of most ethical societies, who sought a non-socialist answer to the social problem, Clarke sought to convince the ethical movement to adopt an activist stance. They “must put an end forever to the fatal divorce between thought and action which is the great cause of our weakness …,” he argued. “These ideas are either meant to be carried out, or they are merely so much verbiage.” (“The Ethical Movement in England,” p. 445.) For Clarke's revolutionary moralist position see below and particularly note 47.

Given his religious inclinations, Clarke might seem a likely candidate for Christian Socialism. In fact, although he had some friends who were Christian Socialists, such as Percy Alden, Clarke did not join the Christian Socialist movement because he had rejected organized religion on both theological and social grounds. See Jones, Peter d'A., The Christian Socialist Revival (Princeton, 1968)Google Scholar. “Our English churches,” he wrote, “are as truly a bulwark of bourgeois society as is parliamentary government or the Bank of England.” “Ethical Societies and the Labor Question,” The Ethical Record, III (July, 1890), 92Google Scholar.

46. William Clarke, ibid., p. 103. “I am convinced by experience no less than by abstract reasoning that nothing less than a revolution in the physical condition of the ‘masses’ of our people … is the necessary antecedent of all mental and spiritual progress.” Clarke, William, “Toynbee Hall,” The Christian Register, LXVI (September 8, 1887), 565Google Scholar.

47. “Instead of mending and patching a hopeless rotten social order,” he wrote, “it [a “real Ethical Society”] must teach men that it is necessary and possible to bring in a new and better order.” “Ethical Societies and the Labor Question,” The Ethical Record, III, 92Google Scholar. It is notable that Clarke here rejected as futile any attempt to “moralize individuals” but stressed the need to “moralize and rationalize our system of industrial relations.” Ibid., p. 101. Similarly, he rejected the efforts of Toynbee Hall as “rosewater for the plague.” “Toynbee Hall,” The Christian Register, LXVI, 564Google Scholar. “The success of the ethical reformer,” he wrote in contrast, “will be exactly in proportion as he helps to transform the state.” “Ethical Societies and the Labor Question,” p. 105.

48. Pelling, Henry, in America and the British Left, p. 60Google Scholar, implies that Clarke's political changes were solely the product of his observation of the United States. Felling's analysis omits Clarke's religious evolution as well as his study of Marx.

49. Clarke to Lloyd, November 23, 1888, Lloyd Papers. See Yeo, Stephen, “A Phase in the Social History of Socialism, c. 1885-1895,” Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No. 22 (Spring, 1971), 6–7Google Scholar.

50. “Bax and Co …. are actively irreligious, and seem to me to desire revolution quite as much for the sake of overthrowing ethics and the spiritual side of things as for the sake of improving the material condition of the people.” Clarke to Davidson, January 13, 1884, Davidson Papers.

51. The extent of the difference between the Fabians and the Followship can be exaggerated. Clarke, of course, is himself an example. Sidney Olivier, originally a Christian Socialist, is another. Several prominent Christian Socialists belonged to the Fabians: Stewart Headlam and Percy Alden, as well as Clarke's former mentor, Stopford Brooke. Occasionally, Fabians lectured at the Fellowship. Sidney Ball was a member of an ethical society, like Clarke. Some Fabians, at least, had similar ethical concerns. See, for example, Pease, E. R., “Ethics and Socialism,” The Practical Socialist, I (January, 1896), 16–19Google Scholar; and Ball, Sidney, “The Moral Basis of Socialism” in Fabian EssaysGoogle Scholar.

52. Clarke, William, “The Fabian Society,” The New England Magazine, X, 99Google Scholar. “On the principle that you cannot touch pitch without being defiled, I confess I doubted whether, until the people had been far more educated in these ideas, it was wise to enter the somewhat dirty political arena.” Ibid., p. 93.

53. Noted by Hobsbawm, Eric, “The Fabians Reconsidered,” Labouring Men, (Paperback ed., New York, 1967), p. 304Google Scholar.

54. Clarke's letters are full of complaints about his job difficulties, indicating that he felt himself to be part of an “intellectual” or “professional proletariat.” See Hobsbawm, ibid., p. 304. For example: “I cannot get a living by my pen: I know no trade or profession & I am too old to learn. My situation is much more serious than you think. I have tried for 13 weary years & I have had enough of it, far too much. At 36 when I ought to be in a good position in life I am next door to being a pauper & I have no prospect of anything else.” Clarke to Lloyd, December 12, 1888, Lloyd Papers. In “The Fabian Society”, pp. 97-98, he describes with feeling how lack of suitable employment was “forcing young men of education and good breeding into the ranks of the Socialists.”

Graham Wallas is another example of this thesis. See Wiener, , Wallas, p. 14Google Scholar.

55. For Henry Pelling's interpretation of Clarke's politics see note 48. A. M. McBriar mentions Clarke's knowledge of Marx but does not appreciate the extent of Clarke's intellectual debt. McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

56. “I do not intend to subscribe to the whole of Marx, but I do contend that his general analysis of value and his explanation of the economic development are true in general.” Clarke to Salter, December 1, 1887, Lloyd Papers.

57. “In Paris at the Centennial of the French Revolution,” New England Magazine, I (September, 1889), 100Google Scholar. “The true history of mankind can … never be adequately written until we know clearly what the economic evolution of mankind has been.” “Edward Augustus Freeman,” New England Magazine, VI (July, 1892), 612Google Scholar.

58. Clarke called Hegel “the greatest of modern philosophers.” “The Limits of Collectivism,” Contemporary Review, LXIII (February, 1893), 267Google Scholar. In “The Industrial Basis of Socialism”, Fabian Essays (London, n.d.), p. 83Google Scholar, he wrote, “It is a leading thought in modern philosophy that in its process of development each institution tends to cancel itself. Its special function is born out of social necessity; its progress is determined by attractions or repulsions which arise in society, producing a certain effect which tends to negate the original function.”

59. Clarke to Salter, November 3, 1887, Lloyd Papers. See also “The Life of the London Working Classes,” New England Magazine, X (July, 1894), 576Google Scholar.

As part of this analysis, Clarke accepted Marx's theory of value and the complementary analysis of exploitation. “We say that there is robbery by the capitalist of the produce of the workmans [sic] labor, and that this is the cause of poverty.” Clarke to Salter, December 1, 1887, Lloyd Papers. See “London Working Classes,” New England Magazine, X, 576Google Scholar.

60. December 1, 1887, Lloyd Papers. From his own radical background Clarke already had a concept of economic classes.

61. Clarke to Salter, November 3, 1887, Lloyd Papers. “What then is likely to take place when these swarming masses of unemployed, whose numbers are increasing every day, desperate and determined, and led by able and determined men, hurl themselves on the government and the ruling classes? Why there will be war, there will be bloodshed.” Ibid.

62. Clarke to Lloyd, November 1, 1894, Lloyd Papers.

63. “London Working Classes,” New England Magazine, X, 578Google Scholar.

Clarke's radicalism easily extended to become a socialist analysis of imperialism. Radical criticism of the aristocracy was broadened to include “greedy commercial magnates.” Clarke to Lloyd, October 22, 1884, Lloyd Papers. Clarke was a firm internationalist and paid careful attention to the progress of social reform in other countries, unlike most other Fabians. He wanted a world revolution. “Peace will not be brought about by mere moralizing, but by placing the State in the hands of the people and rendering the interests of the democracies of the world solid. This obviously involves some kind of international Socialist regime.” “Centennial of the Revolution,” p. 106.

64. “Carlyle and Ruskin,” New England Magazine, IX, 473Google Scholar.

65. Ibid., p. 480. See also Clarke, William, “Liberalism and Social Reform” in The Encyclopedia of Social Reform, ed. Bliss, W. D. P. (New York, 1898), pp. 10–12Google Scholar.

66. Clarke, William, “The Influence of Socialism on English Politics,” Political Science Quarterly, III (December, 1888), 556Google Scholar.

67. Ibid., p. 556.

68. Clarke, William, “Political Defects of the Old Radicalism,” Political Science Quarterly, XIV (March, 1899), 82Google Scholar.

69. When Clarke presented “The Industrial Basis” as a lecture, it included a number of quotations from the Communist Manifesto which were not included in the published edition. McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

70. “Industrial Basis of Socialism,” p. 71.

71. Ibid., p. 78.

72. The capitalist, he argued, is “fast becoming absolutely useless.” Ibid., p. 84.

73. Ibid., p. 62.

74. Ibid., p. 67.

75. Ibid., pp. 82, 83.

76. Ibid., p. 87. “Capitalism when it is finished brings forth monopoly.” Ibid., p. 94. Clarke had the American economy in mind here, using examples from the works of H. D. Lloyd.

77. Ibid., p. 98.

78. Ibid., p. 99. Clarke argued that utility was to be the criterion for the state control of industry. In general, he felt that those industries which were most automated, where production was most mechanical, should be nationalized. In this view he reflected his older individualist ideals, for his argument assumed that the state could run only “routine” industries and should leave other, less mechanized production for individual effort. See “The Limits of Collectivism,” Contemporary Review, LXIII (February, 1893), 263–78Google Scholar.

79. See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, p. 43Google Scholar.

80. In addition to being in the mainstream of Marxist economic analysis, it anticipates contemporary liberal economic thinking. See for example, Galbraith, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State (Boston, 1967)Google Scholar.

81. Clarke, for example, had no appreciation of the significance of trades unions. In 1888 he wrote: “The English trades unions have done a useful work for a section of the English working classes; but their task is now mainly accomplished.” “Influence of Socialism,” Political Science Quarterly, III, 558Google Scholar. He distrusted ideas of workers' control as coercive of the community; he called the holders of such ideas “an effete group of economic cranks.” “Limits of Collectivism,” Contemporary Review, LXIII, 265Google Scholar. In part, Clarke here shared a general Fabian bias, as Sidney Webb later pointed out in his “Preface” to the 1920 ed. of the Fabian Essays (London, 1962), p. 272Google Scholar.

82. “The conclusion I have come to is that pure Anarchism is nothing but a beautiful dream which may be realized with almost perfect individuals, but that the next great step must be some form of State socialism.” Clarke to Lloyd, March 8, 1888. Lloyd Papers “Cooperation is valuable as a discipline to workingmen, useless as an economic solution.” Clarke to Lloyd, November 23, 1888. Ibid. See also McBriar, Fabian Socialism, pp. 99–103.

Clarke's views of the state were contradictory. His published writings emphasize the neutrality of the state, an institution balancing competing interests on behalf of the public good. See “Limits of Collectivism,” p. 270. In contrast, his letters to Salter and Lloyd present the state as an agency of class oppression. “Every Government in the World is in the hands of the former [capitalist] class.” Clarke to Salter, December 1, 1887, Lloyd Papers.

83. “Nearly every remedy that is being proposed by all parties … is more or less socialistic, showing that society can't escape from socialism.” Ibid. “That the socialist solution will prevail through the vote of the working classes there is no more doubt than there is of the dawn of another day.” “London Working Classes,” New England Magazine, X, 584Google Scholar.

84. The proposals included increased progressive taxation, shorter hours, and extension of the factory acts. See, for example, “Limits of Collectivism,” Contemporary Review, LXIII, 34Google Scholar. See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 107–18Google Scholar.

85. “Fabian Society,” New England Magazine, X, 93Google Scholar. In particular, Clarke felt that England, as the most advanced industrial country in the world, would move “most rapidly and more certainly in the socialist direction.” “Influence of Socialism”, Political Science Quarterly, III, 569Google Scholar. See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, p. 178Google Scholar, on Fabian optimism. McBriar is wrong to state (p. 6) that Clarke did not share this optimism at this date.

86. The Fabians had read Marx and originally had revolutionary aims, which they abandoned during the years 1886-87. See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 11, 16Google Scholar. Unlike most Fabians, Clarke saw socialism developing “dialectically” out of the “contradictions” of capitalism. (See Note 58). He also paid little attention to Fabian rent theory emphasizing a Marxist theory of value and exploitation (See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 15, 30-35, 47–49Google Scholar. Ricci, David, “Fabian Socialism: A theory of Rent as Exploitation,” J.B.S., IX (November, 1969), 105–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87. Fabian, A, “Individualism in Masquerade,” Seed-time, No. 6 (October, 1890), 13Google Scholar. I have attributed this article to Clarke, because the criticisms in it of Shaw are similar to those Clarke made elsewhere. See Clarke, , “Max Nordau,” in Clarke, pp. 289–90Google Scholar; Henderson, Archibald, George Bernard Shaw, His Life and Work (London, 1911), p. 101Google Scholar. In addition, Clarke published in December, 1890, what Shaw called a “bitter portrait.” When Shaw objected, Clarke replied to complain about “his [own] isolation among men who have no ‘ultimate aims,’ or whose ultimate aims differ from his.” Shaw, Bernard, Collected Letters, ed. Laurence, Dan (New York, 1965), p. 275Google Scholar.

88. “Industrial Basis,” p. 101; “The Limits of Collectivism,” Contemporary Review, LXIII, 272Google Scholar.

89. Ibid., p. 273.

90. “Ethical Societies and the Labor Question,” The Ethical Record, III, 106Google Scholar. We should “sympathize with the great revolutionary movements of our time,” he wrote, “and … see in them the working of the vast human soul ever ascending in its aspiration to a larger, freer, and more organic life.” Ibid., p. 95.

91. “The Limits of Collectivism,” Contemporary Review, LXIII, 273–74Google Scholar.

92. This element in his politics is seen in his conclusion to “The Industrial Basis of Socialism,” p. 101: “The real reformer will rather prepare the people, educated and organized as a true industrial democracy, to take up the threads when they fall from the weak hands of a useless possessing class. By this means will the class struggle with its greed, hate, and waste, be ended and the life hinted by Whitman in his ‘Song of Exposition’ be attained:

“Practical, peaceful life, the people's life, The People themselves, Lifted, illumined, bathed in peace—elate, secure in peace.”

Note the millennial assumption that this ideal society will appear when “the threads … fall from the weak hands of a useless possessing class.”

Clarke's utopianism contrasts with the general Fabian rejection of it. See McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 98–99Google Scholar. This utopianism, as well as his radicalism and religious concerns, helped to make Clarke what Pease called “just a little of an outsider.” Pease, , Fabian Society, p. 64Google Scholar.

93. Clarke to Lloyd, July 18, 1895, Lloyd Papers. Clarke's view about the Liberal party was a general one. For example, Pease, in his Fabian Society, p. 117Google Scholar, wrote, “In one respect it must be confessed we shared an almost universal delusion. When the Liberal party was crushed at the election of 1895 we thought that its end had come in England as it has in other countries.”

94. Clarke particularly disliked Rosebery's imperialist policies. He referred to him in a letter to Lloyd as “our Jingo premier Rosebery and his damned fatherin-law Rothschild.” November 1, 1894, Lloyd Papers.

95. Clarke's views about an independent Labour party were shared by other Fabians. See Cole, Margaret, The Story of Fabian Socialism (Stanford, 1961), pp. 91–93Google Scholar. For his views on the I.L.P., see Clarke to Lloyd, April 20, 1895, Lloyd Papers.

96. For other schemes to remold the Liberal party see Webb, Beatrice, Our Partnership (London, 1948), p. 127Google Scholar; Reid, A., (ed.), The New Party (London, 1895)Google Scholar. For the “Progressive” alliance, see Thompson, Paul, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885-1914 (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Emy, H. V., Liberals, Radicals and Social Politics, 1892-1914 (Cambridge, 1973), PP. 64–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. Second Chambers in Practice, preface by Parsons, Ambrose (London, 1911), p. viGoogle Scholar. For the Rainbow Circle see Hobson, J. A., Confessions of an Economic Heretic (London, 1938), pp. 94–95Google Scholar. Samuel, Herbert, Memoirs (London, 1945), p. 24Google Scholar.

98. The review will attempt “to do for the public generally what the circle discussions are intended to do for the members …. Generally, the idea would be to afford to the progressive movement in all its aspects … a medium of expression such as the Whig movement had in the Edinburgh Review, and the later Radical and Positivist movements found in the original Fortnightly ….” Ramsay MacDonald to the Rainbow Circle, February 27, 1895. House of Lords Record Office, Samuel Papers, A/10.

99. The circular for the Review spelled out this aim clearly. “The promoters feel that the inadequacy of the support given at present to movements aiming at social and political reform is largely due to the fact that these movements, owing to the rise of new problems in politics and economics, are but imperfectly explained and understood ….” Ibid. See also Emy, , Liberals, pp. 104–06Google Scholar; Porter, Bernard, Critics of Empire (London, 1968), 163–67Google Scholar.

100. “Industrial Basis,” p. 62. Clarke had been moving in this direction since the early 1890s. (See for example, his Walt Whitman or “Carlyle and Ruskin.”). But it was only after 1895 that idealism became predominant in his thought again.

101. “Introductory,” Progressive Review, I (October, 1896), 1Google Scholar. Parsons, , in Second Chambers, p. viGoogle Scholar., identifies Clarke as the author.

102. Ibid., p. 3.

103. “The Outlook for the Session,” Commonwealth, II (February, 1897), 43Google Scholar.

104. See “Introductory,” Progressive Review, I, 9Google Scholar.

105. From their correspondence in the Samuel and MacDonald papers it is difficult to ascertain the rights and wrongs of this basically trivial quarrel. No doubt Clarke's personality—moody, highstrung, irascible—was an important contributing factor.

106. Clarke to Ramsey MacDonald, MacDonald Papers (in the possession of David Marquand), February 2, 1896. For Clarke's anti-imperialism see note 63. Imperialism was not yet an issue in the Fabian Society. McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 119–20Google Scholar. Clarke's quarrel about this point was mainly with the Liberal-imperialists, but clearly Clarke had already moved away from the Fabians. “The Haldane—Webb—Buxton—Burns gang is played out as a political force & its ideas are dead or else all wrong. Dull essays on piddling points of factory legislation & municipal socialism will not keep a review going: we need large & far-reaching ideas rather than pattering over little facts & figures after the feeble style of played-out university men like Wallas ….” Clarke to MacDonald, MacDonald Papers, February 16, 1896. See also Porter, , Critics, p. 166Google Scholar, n.1.

107. May 8, 1896, Lloyd Papers. “I do believe if we could start the thing [Progressive Review] (making it an international organ for both the U.S. & Great Britain) it would succeed and be even a paying concern.” Ibid., April 20, 1895.

108. Ibid., May 8, 1896. He was referring to “this scoundrel Rhodes and the game he has been playing.”

109. Ibid., December, 1896.

110. Ibid., February 19, 1897.

111. Ibid., August 26, 1897.

112. “The Death of William Clarke,” Fabian News, XI (June, 1901), 15Google Scholar. Clarke had been drifting away from the Fabian Society since the early 1890s, but it was only after 1895 that he seems to have ceased all active involvement in its affairs.

113. Clarke to Lloyd, March 28, 1898, Lloyd Papers.

114. Clarke to Salter, November 3, 1887, Lloyd Papers; Clarke, William, “Stopford A. Brooke,” in Clarke, p. 250Google Scholar. “It is nothing less than revolution in some shape which is at hand … the greatest social transformation the world has ever known.” “The Ethical Movement in England”. The Open Court, I, 444Google Scholar.

115. November 1, 1894, Lloyd Papers.

116. Ibid., March 28, 1898.

117. Ibid., January 25, 1898.

118. Ibid., January 25, 1898. Whereas previously he had seen England, as an advanced industrial nation, in the vanguard of socialist forces, now he was “more and more persuaded that England has little more to give the world in the way of progressive leadership.” Ibid., November 17, 1897. See also “The Social Future of England,” Contemporary Review, LXXVIII (December, 1900)Google Scholar, in which Clarke discusses England's “decline.”

119. “Are such pitiful creatures as the masses of men capable of any good?” he asked Lloyd. November 23, 1888, Lloyd Papers. The working classes, he wrote, are “sadly lacking” in the “higher regions of intelligence.” “London Working Classes,” New England Magazine, X, 577Google Scholar. They had to be taught to “subordinate their passions to the demands of reason.” “Industrial Basis,” 99.

120. “Introductory,” Progressive Review, I, 9Google Scholar.

121. Clarke to Lloyd, May 7, 1897, Lloyd Papers. “England is a fossilized country, the people are not accessible to ideas ….” Ibid., November 17, 1897. “The English people are the least democratic in the civilised world ….” Ibid., January 25, 1898. “So long as the English workman is fairly well off, he is content & nothing can arouse him. He cares for beer, gambling, & sport, & for nothing else in the world.” Ibid., August 26, 1897. See also “The House of Lords,” in Clarke, p. 91Google Scholar.

122. Ibid., March 28, 1898 “Recent events … have proved to me that the average man is not fit to be entrusted with any extra political powers.” Ibid., December 18, 1900.

“The idyllic state dreamed of by some of our good Socialist friends is a very different thing from any actual Socialist State that could be framed now, with men as they are. The latter would be a State armed with vast military power, able to crush all opposition to its will, and, above all, ‘run’ in the interest and modelled after the ideals of the average sensual man—not a very attractive picture to those who think our existing States of Europe far too strong already, and who would be glad to see a rehabilitation of the individual.” Clarke, William, “The Rt. Hon. Leonard Courtney” in Clarke, p. 275Google Scholar. This article was published originally in 1900.

123. Pease, , Fabian Society, p. 64Google Scholar.

124. Draft letter to Herbert Samuel, July 12, 1897, MacDonald Papers.

125. Clarke to Lloyd, January 25, 1894, Lloyd Papers. “These dreary dark days with their filthy weather & dreary sordid pursuit of petty things fill me with depression. I never felt so melancholy.” Ibid., November 26, 1891. “I am going home today—not to return for some time. Anxiety has preyed down upon me and broken me quite down.” Ibid., December 27, 1888.

126. The loss, writes Burrows, “was a terrible blow to him, for it put off his dream of retirement to an almost indefinite future” Clarke, pp. xx-xxi.

127. “The chief trouble with me is that I have no home and no possibility of one, no one to look after or care for me. Now that my mother is gone I feel this so terribly that all the springs of life & action are destroyed.” Clarke to Lloyd, January 25, 1894, Lloyd Papers.

128. Ibid., May 8, 1896.

129. Ibid., December 12, 1884.

130. Ibid., November 21, 1900.

131. “The Present Mood of England,” New England Magazine, XVI (August, 1897) 693Google Scholar. “The domination of material interests is the cause, the one cause, of the reaction which reigns supreme in the world to-day.” Ibid., p. 694. “Our one duty now, whether we live in the Old England or the New, is to preach, in season and out of season, the truth that man does not and never will live by bread alone. Ibid., 696. “It seems to me more and more that the one thing needful is the prevalence among men of what I will venture to call a reasonable spiritual communism.” “The Tragedy of a Millionaire,” in Clarke, p. 331Google Scholar. See also “The Social Future of England,” Contemporary Review, LXXVIII, 859Google Scholar.

132. Clarke's writings do contain scattered references to his earlier views of the causes of imperialism. For example, “The Social Future of England,” Contemporary Review, LXXVIII, 869Google Scholar. “The Genesis of Jingoism,” in Clarke, pp. 111–13Google Scholar. Also, Porter, Bernard, in Critics, pp. 191–93Google Scholar, attributes to Clarke several unsigned articles in The Progressive Review linking capitalism and government policy. My impression is that this radical interpretation of imperialism had assumed a secondary place in his thought.

Ironically, Clarke also continued to entertain illusions about the United States. He wrote to Lloyd that, “So far as Cuba is concerned, it seems to me to stand on a different footing from the scramble for Asia & Africa.” March 28, 1898, Lloyd Papers. And he still hoped the U.S.A. would “give the lead needed now.” Clarke to Lloyd, July 26, 1897, ibid. See also, Clarice to Lloyd, August 26, 1897, ibid.

133. Clarke to Sidney Webb, November 21, 1899, Passfield Papers, II.4.a.106. Webb, in the “Preface” to the 1920 edition of the Fabian Essays (London, 1962), pp. 269–70Google Scholar, wrote that Clarke “remained in the Fabian Society until [his] death.” Clarke's obituary in the Fabian News contradicts this statement. In this letter Clarke was responding to a letter from Webb describing the activity of the Hutchinson trust. Clarke was a trustee, but it is clear from his response that he had had no contact with Webb for some time.

In his last preserved letter he wrote to Lloyd (February 27, 1901): “I live a quiet life in the country, & do not intend ever to take any part in these things [politics] again.” Lloyd Papers.

134. Clarke, p. xix.