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Topher Field took on the Fabians in his latest yarn with Karl Stefanovic, and it’s worth summarising.

Field, who just returned from a few months doing the conference circuit in the United States, explained that Fabians came from an era “where a lot of different people wanted to see socialism in one form or another win.”

Back then, “socialism was defined as the public ownership of the means of production.”

“It doesn’t.”

Communist Objective by a Different Route

When you look at the Fabians, “they disagreed with the Marxists on basically everything except the objective.”

“The objective was public ownership of the means of production. Which we go, ‘Well, that’s Communism 101.’”

Fabians, though, go, “No, this is socialism. We’re not like them.”

“The Marxists wanted to accomplish that with revolution,” Field said.

“And if you didn’t have a utopia yet, it’s because you hadn’t killed enough people.”

The bloodshed was too blatant for the Fabians, and so, Field explained, they wanted revolution, but it needed to be gradual.

Revolution would be achieved “one piece at a time by essentially co-opting the existing structures.”

In other words, a long march through the institutions.

“By that,” Field said, Fabians “meant the bureaucracies, the three-letter agencies, and the public service.”

“They weren’t in a hurry to accomplish” their revolution.

“Their particular objective was to be quite subtle about it. So, whilst Fabians are not secretive, they are subtle.”

Better Branding with Worse Accountability

“The original motif was two of the founders hammering on an anvil and sort of reshaping the world. And above them was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Unpacking the motif, Field noted that “the wolf in sheep’s clothing is very simply changing the incentives amongst the bureaucrats, among the permanent public service.”

“Forget the elected class. They’re disposable. They’re interchangeable.”

Big bureaucracy, he argued, makes it easier for the Fabians to get the public service “to operate in a way that leads inevitably towards their objective.”

This blob of bureaucrats becomes part of the point.

Field told Stefanovic that Fabians had a “four-step process to every problem the government has to solve.”

By getting the government on board with their solution, Fabians could direct the government to do their bidding.

Think of the movement, Field remarked, “not as a secret society that’s trying to put its members in positions of power.”

“Think of them as a think tank that has managed to convince the government to operate in a way that leads inevitably to bigger government.”

That approach includes “more welfare, and ultimately less individual action,” which moves society towards the Fabians’ public ownership objective.

He then stated that this isn’t “uniquely evil.” As a think tank, the Fabians have been around about as long as the conservative Institute of Public Affairs has.

“These are people who have a worldview, and they want to change the world.”

Topher Field then clarified, “I think the Fabians are completely wrong about their worldview.”

It’s “dangerous and destructive, and we’re suffering because they’ve been so successful.”

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Talking with Stefanovic about how this works, the Victorian-based Libertarian political commentator warned, first, they apply the “rule of experts.”

“You can’t have politicians deciding things.”

“You need experts. You need advisory bodies. You need reports coming out from universities.”

As a result, “by the time it gets to the politicians, it’s kind of already been pre-framed.”

They’re handed the problem and its solution, then just “asked to rubber stamp it.”

In Australia, think eSafety, NDIS, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and Net Zero.

Under Fabianism, elected representatives really don’t mean much, Field asserted.

“If you want evidence of that, you can see it in [the TV series] ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ or ‘Yes, Minister,’ from decades ago.”

Put simply, unelected bureaucrats are the ones who really run the show.

This is the “method the Fabians use to achieve their worldview objective.”

“The reason they’ve been so successful,” Field stated, “is because they’re telling politicians and bureaucrats what they want to hear.”

Their process involves vague laws like the under-16s social media ban, which allows for “scope creep.”

The entire approach results in a “death by a thousand cuts.”

Appearing to equate Fabianism’s effect on society with a frog slowly being boiled in a pot, Field said, “we get this sort of slice-by-slice process.”

This is done to ensure that “each individual slice they try and take, whether that’s expanding the NDIS or increasing the rate of superannuation, doesn’t cause a big pushback.”

“Make each slice small enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the trouble.”

Fabianism isn’t successful because they’re “some dark club,” he asserted.

These are people “who figured out how to align the incentives of bureaucrats and politicians with their worldview.”

The Fabian Society’s Success

High-profile members include Labor Party elites, policy advisors, and even some former Prime Ministers.

Field also claimed that Fabians have been “just as successful with the Liberal Party.”

Offering examples, he singled out Malcolm Turnbull, the LNP legislating the eSafety bureaucracy, and the Liberal Party’s current quest to rediscover who they once were.

The future is written by those who show up, and the Fabians have done just that, Field concluded.

How to unravel the Fabian technocratic revolution, he said, comes down to the will of the people.

“Do we have the will to reassert our independence to say no? To take action where it is appropriate to do so, so that the digital prison can’t be completed?”

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Image via screenshot of YouTube and Wikimedia Commons.