ABSTRACT
MacDonald joined the Fabian Society in 1886 and the ILP shortly after its foundation in 1894. He became secretary to the Labour Representation Committee when it was established in 1900, was elected to Parliament in 1906 and shortly after, in 1911, became leader of the Labour Party, a post that he held until the outbreak of war in 1914 and then again from 1922 until the break-up of the Labour government in 1931. He wrote a number of works in the prewar and immediate postwar period; works distinguished by a fascinating, if sometimes incoherent, blend of the disparate intellectual currents that characterized British socialism in these decades. Four in particular are worthy of note and will be used here to illustrate the salient characteristics of his thought in the pre-and post-First World War periods – Socialism and society (1905), which went through no fewer than six editions by 1908, Socialism (1907), Socialism after the war (1918) and Socialism, critical and constructive (1921).
