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

172 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
characterized the temperament opposed to socialism as the gambling temperament
(“Economic Basis” 3–4). As long as eminence is identified with
wealth and capitalism holds out a gambler’s chance that anyone might become
wealthy, people will prefer the remote possibility of artificial distinction
to the certainty of natural mediocrity. Shaw knew that although capitalism
glorifies the rich and debases the poor, “it gives to every poor man a
gambling chance, at odds of a million to one or thereabouts, of becoming a
rich one,” which gives a reason to hope (Practical Politics 169).
Government
Salvation Through Government Organization
Another obstacle to equality and the establishment of Shaw’s natural aristocracy
of service is intense fear of government involvement in our individual
lives. Shaw did not share this fear. His attitude toward government
has provoked heavy criticism, even from his supporters. The political tumult
of the latter half of Shaw’s life has left scars on our collective psyche
that are still so sensitive that we cannot, even now, bear to have them
touched. Shaw’s reactions to those events continue to probe those old
wounds, and we still wince. Shaw was seriously wrong about many of the
people and events of that period, but our sensitivity to the evils of that
time have led us to profoundly misunderstand the nature of, and reasons
for, his mistakes. Because his mistakes involved Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini,
and the Holocaust, which have become icons of evil to our age, it is necessary
to make careful distinctions. I am not concerned with Shaw’s personality
or psyche but merely with the relevance of his philosophy. Arnold
Silver, for example, is convinced that Shaw harbored hidden homicidal tendencies.
He may well be right, but whether he is right or wrong is irrelevant
to my concerns here. Or it can be argued that Shaw’s political mistakes
of the period between the world wars were a direct consequence of
his philosophical premises, that his conviction that there are no good men
or scoundrels blinded him to the real evil of Stalin and Hitler. If true, that
would constitute a fatal flaw in Shaw’s religion of moral equality. It is thus
an issue that must be addressed.
Most of the casual judgments about Shaw’s mistakes are themselves
mistaken. Shaw, it is said, was seduced by his fascination with great men
into believing them the salvation of the world. He was an elitist. He was an
authoritarian. He was an enemy of democracy. All of these charges are
flatly false. When it is pointed out that Shaw vigorously attacked each of