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A justification is offered for approaching classic works of political theory as relevant to problems that concern us. Perennial problems are shown to exist in three increasingly controversial senses. First, past authors addressed a problem which we can ponder. Second, past authors addressed a problem which authors who wrote on these authors also addressed and which we can ponder. Third, numerous authors expressed beliefs relevant to a problem which we can ponder. The errors identified by opponents of perennial problems arise from empirical misjudgements concerning the ways that different authors addressed such problems, not from the assumption that such problems exist.

This article justifies approaching classic works of political theory as relevant to problems that concern us. Perennial problems are shown to exist in three increasingly controversial senses. First, past authors addressed a problem which we can ponder. Second, past authors addressed a problem which authors who wrote on these authors also addressed and which we can ponder. Third, numerous authors expressed beliefs relevant to a problem which we can ponder. The errors identified by opponents of perennial problems arise from empirical misjudgments concerning the ways that different authors addressed such problems, not from the assumption that such problems exist.

Bax was the leading philosopher of the socialist revival in Britain during the 1880s. He saw Marxism as an economic and historical science that lacked a philosophical and ethical basis. Consequently, he tried to justify the Marxian dialectic by using a philosophy indebted to German idealism to show that the dialectic was a fact about reality itself, and he also tried to provide an ethical defence of Marxism in terms of a positivist ethic enshrining the goals of the French Revolution. Such an understanding of Bax's philosophy makes his political activities appear more rational than historians have previously thought.

Scholars often link the emergence of welfarism and socialism to a loss of religious faith. Yet an examination of the beliefs of secularists who had lost their faith suggests that the loss of faith did not result in an emotional need that social reformism sometimes met. Nonetheless, an examination of welfarists and ethical socialists such as T. H. Green suggests that there was an intellectual or rational link between faith and social reformism. Here many Victorians and Edwardians responded to the dilemmas then besetting faith by adopting immanentist theologies, and this immanentism often sustained a moral idealism that inspired various social reformers.

SummaryA number of Bronterre O'Brien's disciples were the leading lights of London clubs that provided the silent majority to the Social Democratic Federation (S.D.F.). Even after the O'Brienites came to accept the need for collective ownership of the means of production, their political strategy remained that of O'Brien. An understanding of the role played by the O'Brienites helps to explain various problems in the history of the S.D.F. such as why most members remained with Hyndman rather than follow Morris into the Socialist League and why the S.D.F. adopted an ambiguous attitude to trade unions and to palliatives.

Although Shaw's biographers always acknowledge his debt to Marx, intellectual historians always seem to belittle this debt. This gap can be closed by placing Shaw's Marxism in its contemporary context - Shaw shared most of the Marxist beliefs of the members of the Social Democratic Federation. A study of Shaw's Marxism shows that he was not an anarchist, that secularism played an important role in his thought, and that George's intellectual influence was not as great as is normally thought. Shaw rejected Marxism when he turned to Jevonian economics but even then much of his Marxism remained in tact and divided him from other leading Fabians.

A number of Bronterre O'Brien's disciples were the leading lights of the London clubs that provided the silent majority to the Social Democratic Federation (S.D.F.). Even after the O'Brienites came to accept the need for collective ownership of the means of production, their political strategy remained that of O'Brien. An understanding of the role played by the O'Brienites helps to explain various problems in the history of the S.D.F. such as why most members remained with Hyndman rather than follow Morris into the Socialist League and why the S.D.F. adopted an ambiguous attitude to trade unions and to palliatives.

IN THIS ARTICLE THE AUTHOR CENTENDS FIRST THAT THE LEADING FABIANS HAD DIFFERENT THEORIES OF RENT. SECOND THATTHESE DIFFERENT THEORIES ARE LINKED TO DIFFERENT REASONS FOR BEING PARLIAMENTARY GRADUALISTS, DIFFERENT VIEWS OF HOW TO SECURE PARLIAMENTARY POWER AND DIFFERENT VISIONS OFA SOCIALIST SOCIETY. THUS, IF THERE IS A DISTINCTIVE FABIAN SOCIALISM IT DOES NOT REST ON A SHARED THEORY OF RENT. ITS SOPHISTICATION AND HOW IT FORMED THE BASIS FOR S