Fabian commitment to openness let a reactionary economics take root at the LSE

Evidence

The LSE’s emergence as an institutional home for a reactionary economics struck many observers as a peculiar development. The university had been founded by members of the Fabian Society less than forty years before, under the theory that a thorough education in economics and politi cal science would serve to further the spread of socialism. Its structure manifested a set of commitments that made the Fabians unusual among their socialist peers. As George Bernard Shaw wrote in a retrospective on the group, they were unabashedly elitist, perceiving themselves as “a minority of cultural snobs and genuinely scientifi c Socialist tacticians” who had “no time to spend on the conversion and elementary Socialist education of illiterates and po liti cal novices.” They were committed to a policy of intellectual openness, believing that their ideas would achieve “Permeation” if they were shared with unwelcoming audiences rather than just the converted. And they eschewed the language of revolution, preferring to pursue social change through, in the words of Sidney Webb, “the inevitability of gradualness.” Thus the LSE focused on advanced training in the social sciences rather than elementary education for workers and the masses; it welcomed a faculty and student body that represented a broad range of views rather than demanding adherence to a par tic u lar ideological perspective; and it sought to cultivate a capacity for critical reasoning rather than radical action. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 52

Categorization

• SHARE: Someone interested in intellectual history or the LSE’s origins would appreciate the irony that its Fabian founders built an institution that would host Hayek.
• XREF: Connects to how ideological institutions deliberately sustain pluralism to permit later capture — resonates with the broader literature on think tanks and institutional permeability. — connects to: Robbins recruited Hayek to the LSE as an ally against interventionist economics — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 68; Hayek’s LSE critiques made him Keynes’s leading rival by 1932 — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 70; LSE’s pedagogic reach made its simple economic principles influential across Britain — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 402 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The LSE and Chicago economics departments formed a prewar axis of free-market allies #expands (0.80) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 87
• LSE’s pedagogic reach made its simple economic principles influential across Britain #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 402
• Austrian economics constituted the original reactionary rejection of state-managed liberalism #expands (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 315
• Hayek deliberately copied Fabian gradualism to advance free-market ideas #expands (0.72) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 261
• Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to convert his Fabian colleagues at the LSE #expands (0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 239
• Hayek’s 1931 LSE lectures were poorly understood yet intellectually exciting #expands (0.70) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 66