When Shaw first burst into London, a young, red-haired Irishman, he announced himself as an atheist, an anarchist, and a vegetarian, these heresies being arranged in crescendo fashion, putting last what was most calculated to shock the British public. Now when we look back over his career we find that he has not been any more successful in sticking to his youthful heresy than others are in sticking to their youthful orthodoxy. Whether he has ever violated his vegetarian faith by eating a beefsteak on the sly I do not know, but he has drifted far from orthodox anarchism, for Socialism is, in theory at least, at the opposite pole from anarchy. Once when Shaw was talking Socialism in Hyde Park, he was much annoyed by the anarchists who circulated through the crowd, selling copies of an early pamphlet of his on "The Illusions of Socialism." As for his atheism he seems to have left that still farther behind, for his present theological views, if expressed in less provocative language, would pass muster in many a pulpit to-day. In fact, they have as it is.
In a recent letter to me, Mr. Shaw refers to the cordial reception he always received when Reverend Reginald Campbell invited him to occupy the pulpit of City Temple,[3] and adds:
My greatest and surest successes as a public speaker have been on religious subjects to religious audiences; but this is the common experience of all speakers. People are still more concerned about religion than anything else, and any reasonably good preacher can easily leave the best political spellbinder behind.
Shaw as a Socialist differs from others who bear that name. He is too intense an individualist to be a good party man. He puts no faith in Marx as the prophet of the millennium, and he has no Utopian vision of his own. But what chiefly distinguishes him as a reformer is his power of penetrating through shams to fundamental realities and his ability to do original constructive thinking.[4] All of us can find fault with the existing order of things, and most of us do. But to point out just "what's wrong with the world" and to suggest a practical line of improvement is not so easy. The Fabian Society has done more than set off fireworks and stir up mud. The Minority Report on the reform of the Poor Law is a fine piece of constructive statesmanship. This Minority Report was largely the work of the Fabian Society, though how much Shaw had to do with it personally I do not know. We now know, however, that he was the author of Fabian Tract Number 2 of 1884 that startled the conservative classes of England, including the orthodox Marxians. Here are a few of the "Opinions Held by the Fabians" set forth in this famous tract:
That since competition among producers admittedly secures to the public the most satisfactory products, the state should compete with all its might in every department of production.
That no branch of industry should be carried on at a profit by the central administration.
That men no longer need special political privileges to protect them against women, and that the sexes should henceforth enjoy equal political rights.
That the established government has no more right to call itself the State than the smoke of London has to call itself the weather.
Shaw also wrote Fabian Tract Number 45 on "The Impossibilities of Anarchism", in which he pointed out what was not so clear in 1888 as it is to-day, that society was rapidly becoming communistic through the efforts of those who were most opposed to communism as a theory:
Most people will tell you that communism is known in this country only as a visionary project advocated by a handful of amiable cranks. Then they will stroll across a common bridge, along the common embankment, by the light of the common street lamp shining alike on the just and the unjust, up the common street and into the common Trafalgar Square where on the smallest hint that communism is to be tolerated for an instant in a civilized country, they will be handily bludgeoned by a common policeman and hauled off to the common gaol.
Shaw's latest contribution to Fabian literature, the appendix to Pease's "History of the Fabian Society", seems to me one of the most important, for in the final paragraphs he points out clearly a defect in our democracy that is rarely recognized and altogether unremedied:
Another subject which has hardly yet been touched, and which also must begin with deductive treatment, is what may be called the democratization of democracy, and its extension from mere negative and very uncertain check on tyranny to a positive organizing force. No experienced Fabian believes that society can be reconstructed (or rather constructed, for the difficulty is that society is as yet only half removed from chaos) by men of the type produced by popular election under existing circumstances likely to be achieved before the reconstruction. The fact that a hawker cannot ply his trade without a license whilst a man may sit in Parliament without any relevant qualifications is a typical and significant anomaly which will certainly not be removed by allowing everybody to be a hawker at will. Sooner or later, unless democracy is to be discarded in a reaction of disgust such as killed it in ancient Athens, democracy will demand that only such men should be presented to its choice as have proved themselves qualified for more serious and disinterested work than "stoking up" election meetings to momentary and foolish excitement. Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible; and it must not be forgotten (though the reminder is as old as Plato) that the qualified men may be very reluctant men instead of very ambitious ones.
It is this doubt, more or less clearly felt, lest a genuinely democratic society will fail to secure able and qualified leaders, that lies at the bottom of the prevalent distrust of popular government and causes many persons to cling to antiquated and irrational institutions like aristocracy and even monarchy.