Webbs and Soviet Communism

Nobody now thinks the Webbs' Soviet Communism a 'great book' - as Harold Laski hailed it after its publication in 1935. Closer to the mark seems A.J.P. Taylor's verdict - 'the most preposterous book ever written about Soviet Russia'. Some ascribe its apologia for Stalinism to the couple's old age and deteriorating judgement. Others, more influentially, note the affinities it reveals between the Webbs' Fabian philosophy and the bureaucratic dystopia of Stalinism. In this meticulous reconstruction of the Webbs' thinking, Kevin Morgan offers a challenging reassessment of accepted stereotypes. Through their diaries, papers and published writings, he assesses the couple's complex political evolution over some four decades, as Victorian certainties gave way to an age of social and political upheaval. He also shows how much more significant were their individual responses than the cliche of 'two typewriters beating as one' would suggest. While Sidney upheld the statist and technocratic perspectives synonymous with 'Webbism', Beatrice also contributed concerns with associationism and the search for a higher social morality.Their love affair with Soviet communism, which seemed to represent both synthesis and transcendence of these different strands of their thought, was far less idiosyncratic than is sometimes thought. Here it is discussed in a broader context, with separate chapters devoted to the 'roads to Russia' of technocrats and co-operators, debates with guild socialists, and an exploration of the neglected contradictions of the Webbs' own social philosophy. Through this wider cast of characters, from Margaret Llewellyn Davies to G.D.H. Cole, the paradox which emerges is that it was precisely those who had been most suspicious of state socialism who proved most susceptible to its Soviet apotheosis.