Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Major Barbara 141
(this is explicit in the original manuscript) (3: 162–63). There is plenty of
hierarchy and inequality at Perivale St. Andrew, but none of it originates
from Undershaft, save that which is a spontaneous reaction to his personality.
It is created and enforced by the workers themselves, although the
inequality in income that justifies the hierarchy and is justified by it
merely augments the profits of the owner, as Undershaft wryly notes.
Shaw is making the same point Gunnar Myrdal made the foundation of
his 1944 study of American race relations:
Our hypothesis is that in a society where there are broad social
classes and, in addition, more minute distinctions and splits in the
lower strata, the lower class groups will, to a great extent, take care of
keeping each other subdued, thus relieving, to that extent, the higher
classes of this otherwise painful task necessary to the monopolization
of the power and the advantages. (68) (Emphasis in original)
Cusins, like most of the critics, sees nothing but cynicism in Undershaft’s
recognition of this truth, but Shaw’s point is that this attitude among the
exploited perpetuates their exploitation regardless of the wishes of the
upper-classes. Most liberals and socialists come from the comfortable
classes. The irony is not, as Cusins believes, that the workers are Undershaft’s
willing accomplices in his gulling of them; it is that no one can be
forced to accept the responsibility of freedom who prefers the comfort and
safety of slavery. If men are docile and acquiescent when forced into brutal
and degrading circumstances, should we expect them to accept painful responsibility
when they are well-fed and self-satisfied? Shaw believed that
one of the worst effects of poverty was to maim souls beyond redemption,
but nourished bodies do not necessarily produce flourishing souls. In the
Derry manuscript, Undershaft tells Barbara that she is proof of the “principle
that if you take care of people’s bodies their souls will take care of
themselves,” but he also accepts Cusins’s description of his workers as
slaves: “To those who are worth their salt as slaves, I give the means of life.
But to those who will not or cannot sell their manhood . . . I give the means
of death” (200–06). In the revised version, he merely challenges Barbara to
“Try your hand on my men: their souls are hungry because their bodies
are full” (3: 173). Some hearty souls, like Barbara’s, will thrive untended if
they have good soil, but most others require more careful attention. That is
Barbara’s job.
The unity that binds Undershaft and his daughter together is the unity
in which they both believe. Neither is afraid of evil because neither be-