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→Permeation: Details
===Permeation===
===Permeation===
Permeation is another ideological trait of Fabianism.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a56hc3uASjoC&pg=PA114|last1=Miller|first1=Elizabeth|title=Slow Print: Literary Radicalism and Late Victorian Print Culture|date=2013|publisher=[[Stanford University]] Press|pages=113–115}}</ref>
Permeation is another ideological trait of Fabianism.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a56hc3uASjoC&pg=PA114|last1=Miller|first1=Elizabeth|title=Slow Print: Literary Radicalism and Late Victorian Print Culture|date=2013|publisher=[[Stanford University]] Press|pages=113–115}}</ref> Margaret Cole, one of the Society's historians, referred to this as "honeycombing".<ref>The Story of Fabian Socialism, p. 85</ref> Cole explains that a combination of tracts, lectures, key groups and persons, who can be set in a position to either take direct action or directly influence others, is key to the success of the group's ideals. Key persons do not need to be Fabians themselves, and many times it is preferred that they are not members. Just so long as the sought after prize is attained. In this way, the person who represents the center of the honeycomb is surrounded by only the ideals that the Fabian want them to be surrounded with, which ensures the desired outcome.
The Society's first historian, E. R. Pease explained permeation by quoting Ernest Barker's book "''Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the Present Day''"
<blockquote>The policy of Fabianism has thus been somewhat as follows. An intellectual circle has sought to permeate all classes, from the top to the bottom, with a common opinion in favour of social control of socially created values. Resolved to permeate all classes, it has not preached class-consciousness; it has worked as much with and through Liberal 'capitalists' as with and through Labour representatives. Resolved gradually to permeate, it has not been revolutionary: it has relied on the slow growth of opinion. Reformist rather than revolutionary, it has explained the impossibility of the sudden 'revolution' of the working classes against capital: it has urged the necessity of a gradual amelioration of social conditions by a gradual assertion of social control over unearned increment.</blockquote>
In addition to explaining the Society's views on permeation, the historian Barker also highlights the Society's high-brow, intellectual nature. Pease concludes the quoting of Barker this way: "'I have ventured to quote from Mr. Barker at some length because his summary of Fabian doctrine seems to me .... to be both correct and excellent.'".<ref>Pease, The History of the Fabian Society</ref>
Bernard Shaw, one of the most important and readily identifiable members, was proud of how the Society used permeation to achieve its objectives. In Fabian Tract 41 "The Fabian Society: What it has done; and how it has done it." Shaw highlights how the Society's first major target for permeation, the Liberal Party, did not stand a chance. "We permeated the party organizations and pulled all the wires we could lay our hands on with our utmost adroitness and energy; and we succeeded so far that in 1888 we gained the solid advantage of a Progressive majority, full of ideas that would never have come into their heads had not the Fabian put them there"
==="Privileged few" membership===
==="Privileged few" membership===