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

148 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
tion of anarchism he found that he wanted the same freedom from want
for all others. Accomplishing that goal necessitated cooperation, organization,
and laws to enforce them. His social odyssey parallels Shaw’s intellectual
journey from moral anarchism (he would call it “Protestantism”) to a
faith in pervasive government so strong as to see fascism, however flawed,
as an advance over liberal democracy. The link between the two extremes is
economic reality. The production of wealth in our society, Shaw realized, is
socialistic. It is the product of the social organism, not of individuals acting
individually. We cooperate in the creation of wealth, then fight like jackals
over the product. The result is a shocking waste of goods, resources, and
human spirit: the poverty, degradation, misery, and destructive competition
that characterize modern capitalism. The solution, for Shaw, was a
regulated economy run by the state for the benefit of all.
Shaw did not simply abandon his anarchistic moral concepts when he
converted to socialism; his ideas about economics and government grew
from the seed of his faith in the individual will in the harsh soil of economic
and political reality. For Shaw, an ethics based in the satisfaction of
the will led to cooperation and harmony, and love of freedom demanded
law and government. The liberty demanded by the economic anarchists
confers irresponsible freedom on the few by destroying freedom for the
many. It violates J. S. Mill’s famous principle that the individual’s perfect
right to freedom ends when he proposes to do harm to others.
Relativism and Subjectivism
Shaw rarely lost an opportunity to declare himself an enemy of morality.
What he really meant was that his faith was in conscience rather than
codes. Put that way, it seems rather harmless, but the realist view, honestly
followed, provides disturbing surprises to those who protect their consciences
with ideals—that is, to most of us. Shavian ethics are frightening
because they are relativistic and subjectivistic. Those terms are sometimes
confused because both suggest the abandonment of absolute moral truth,
but they describe two distinct aspects of moral thought. Each also includes
a broad range of ideas, while Shaw’s view of both is original.
In the simplest sense we are all—whatever we might protest—moral
relativists. We daily, even hourly, make choices between relative good and
ill. We may forgo a lesser good for the sake of a greater or accept a minor
evil to avoid a major one. Shaw insists only that we be consistent and honest
about this even in the most trying of circumstances and faced with the
most painful decisions. That is the realist stance. For an idealist some deci-