The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow.

The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection.

After reading a tract, Why Are The Many Poor?, issued by the recently formed Fabian Society, Shaw went to the society's next advertised meeting, on 16 May 1884. He became a member in September, and before the year's end had provided the society with its first manifesto, published as Fabian Tract No. 2.

Definitions of Fabianism. socialism to be established by gradual reforms within the law. type of: socialism. a political theory advocating state ownership of industry.