The Spiritual and Epiphanic Modernism of British Socialism

Abstract

Late Victorian British socialists felt that their age was one of change and transition and that they were living on the threshold of a new, truly modern era. Though sharper during the 1880s and particularly the 1890s, this mood of heady expectancy had hardly lessened during the Edwardian years. The modern era that beckoned on the horizon promised much. It would bring social and economic justice but also an enlargement of the human self. The ‘new’ socialist man and woman that would emerge once freed from the exploitations and spiritual constraints of Victorianism would be persons of a new type equipped with enhanced capacities for human ‘fellowship’. This desire to attain for the individual a higher state of spiritual ‘Being’ with greater capacities for human fellowship was an intrinsic feature of the socialist revival. Indeed, British socialism was one of the principal ‘revitalisation’ movements of the fin de siècle which addressed the deep crisis in spiritual and cultural values thought to be afflicting Victorian Britain as it edged towards the century’s close. Many socialist activists believed that they were engaged in a mission to achieve a break with the decadent old world of Victorian materialism, positivism and possessive individualism.