ABSTRACT
For though it may be admitted that the present distribution of wealth, involving extremes of riches and poverty, is an evil of the first magnitude, such maldistribution is yet only the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disease. Any political activity which would treat the social problem as a purely materialist issue is doomed from its first inception. The issue which brought that struggle to a head was whether or no the movement should organize itself for political action. Morris and his supporters opposed this new development, insisting that, for some time to come, not politics but education should be the order of the day. Among the ideas the suppression of which has led to the present intellectual sterility of the movement is the doctrine of catastrophism. It is easy to understand why the Fabian Society sought to discredit it. If the Socialist movement was to enter the political arena.
