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

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160 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion utility, that is, in this example, if there are between one hundred and two hundred umbrellas available, the price would be one dollar. He called this the “law of indifference”: no one will pay more for an item than the lowest price in the market. In his words, “in the same open market, at any one moment, there cannot be two prices for the same kind of article” (91). So, as the economists put it, the Exchange Value is determined by the force of demand at the margin of utility (sometimes they say “margin of supply” because the price is where the level of supply meets the final Utility). Another way of putting it is to say that price is determined by the Utility of the last item consumed (“Final Utility”). This is one of the foundations of Shaw’s economic ideas; let us put it into the perspective of the Shavian religion. The Life Force must take command of the facts of its existence, which includes the facts of political economy. The concept of Utility is, to some degree, an attempt to express in economic terms the needs of the Life Force. It is so only to a degree because Utility is a measure, strictly, not of how much one desires something but of how much one is willing to pay, which in turn is controlled by how much one has. Equal incomes, Shaw realized, would allow the operation of economic law to reflect human need more closely. The other important point for Shaw is that the notion of Marginal Utility makes glaringly clear how arbitrary exchange value really is. Utility merely sets an upper limit on the exchange value of an item; it can drop from that point all the way to zero as the supply grows and finally exceeds the demand. Conservative commentators, who ignore Utility, like to pretend that exchange value, particularly in the case of labor, is an indication of intrinsic worth. They imagine that there is natural justice in the difference between the income of a janitor and that of a physician. But if the supply of physicians expanded beyond the demand, their incomes would also drop to subsistence. And if the talent for janitorial work were rare, we would doubtless pay our custodial staffs far more than we do. Shaw, like the capitalists, was interested in the laws governing supply and demand, but for Shaw that meant mastering economics so as to serve the Life Force better, while for the capitalists it means using economic theory fallaciously to support their Social Darwinist metaphysics and justify their predations. Understanding Utility means understanding that competition in the marketplace, the virtues of which the capitalists are forever praising, could work as it should only if incomes were equal.
Ethics, Economics, and Government 161 Economic Rent Even if the market were competitive in the way imagined by free market theorists, things would not be so simple, for Supply, like Utility, has its margins. Just as Utility varies with individuals and with circumstances, the efficiency of production varies. In many cases, as supply increases, efficiency drops. Nineteenth-century thinkers, including Shaw, assumed that this was virtually always true. Their reasoning was simple: imagine an uninhabited fertile valley; the first settlers will take the best, most productive land, and as others move in they will be forced to occupy increasingly less productive land. In competitive circumstances, demand tends to drive prices down to the level at which the producers no longer regard it worthwhile to produce. If the land were all equally productive, that would be essentially subsistence level (assuming the farmers had no other employment opportunities). But in this case the price is driven down to the subsistence level at the least productive farms. By superimposing a graph of price and supply (margin of utility) on one showing cost and production (margin of supply) we determine the actual exchange value in a particular market: the point where marginal utility meets the margin of supply. price cost price/supply cost/production production/supply The unbroken line, showing the price (the vertical dimension) at a given level of supply (determined by the Final Utility and represented by the horizontal dimension) tells us that the price will come down gradually until the market becomes glutted, when it begins to drop precipitously. For the broken line the vertical represents the cost of production at the least efficient sites and the horizontal the level of production. It tells us that (in this case) inefficiency rises more or less geometrically as more land is brought into production. As production and supply are commensurate, a horizontal line drawn on the graph anywhere to the left of the point at
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Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religio
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Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religio
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For Jalma, who made it possible.
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Contents Foreword by R. F. Dietrich
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Foreword “I believe because it is
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Preface Foreword xi The seed of thi
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Preface xiii hope to reach some of
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Introduction Preface xv Here we hav
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Introduction xvii the facts asked i
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o I Foundations of Faith
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Unity 1 A Creed for Living A Faith
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A Creed for Living 5 ticism toward
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A Creed for Living 7 posed to the i
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A Creed for Living 9 ally—at the
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A Creed for Living 11 tions of deat
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A Creed for Living 13 For many the
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A Creed for Living 15 fying faith.
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A Creed for Living 17 We have inesc
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Realism 19 Thus, I blush to add, yo
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Realism 21 evenhanded. Tyndall pres
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Realism 23 no scoundrels. A similar
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Realism 25 sage and confuse and dis
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Realism 27 tific materialism is utt
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Realism 29 of his fellows) is natur
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Realism 31 to be tied down to textb
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Realism 33 as they do not denote an
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Realism 35 women who disparage home
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Realism 37 woven out of words and i
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Consistency 3 The Will and Its Resp
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The Will and Its Responsibilities 4
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II o A Guide to Art and Life
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Dramatic Realism 4 A Playwright’s
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Illusionism Is Not Realism A Playwr
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Contradictions in Scientific Realis
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A Playwright’s Progress 79 view,
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A Playwright’s Progress 81 horror
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A Playwright’s Progress 83 My pla
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A Playwright’s Progress 85 disast
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A Playwright’s Progress 87 Shaw i
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A Playwright’s Progress 89 jectiv
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A Playwright’s Progress 91 suprem
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A Playwright’s Progress 93 certai
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A Playwright’s Progress 95 In cal
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A Playwright’s Progress 97 pishly
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A Playwright’s Progress 99 too
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A Playwright’s Progress 101 woman
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A Playwright’s Progress 103 focus
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A Playwright’s Progress 105 Candi
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A Playwright’s Progress 107 Shaw
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Page 137 and 138: A Playwright’s Progress 119 culti
Page 139 and 140: A Playwright’s Progress 121 ing t
Page 141 and 142: The Organic and the Didactic 5 Majo
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Page 161 and 162: Major Barbara 143 eryone else in th
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Page 165 and 166: Ethics 6 Ethics, Economics, and Gov
Page 167 and 168: Ethics, Economics, and Government 1
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Page 201 and 202: III o God and Science The Marriage
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The Marriage of Science and Religio
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IV o A Peroration
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8 Catching Up with Shaw Shaw procla
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Catching Up with Shaw 237 would pre
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Catching Up with Shaw 239 to variou
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Catching Up with Shaw 241 rialists
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Catching Up with Shaw 243 Such goal
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Notes Chapter 1. A Creed for Living
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Notes 247 difficult to obtain, but
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Notes 249 turbing, these attitudes
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Works by Shaw Works Cited Notes 251
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Works Cited 253 Shaw and Ibsen: Ber
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Works Cited 255 ———. Introduc
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Works Cited 257 McRory, Desmond J.
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Works Cited 259 Weismann, August. E
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Aquinas, Thomas, 52 Archer, William
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Saussure, Ferdinand de, 74 Schopenh
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Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

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