Political Thinking In G.B. Shaw’s Plays And Prefaces
Asist. Cristina DIMULESCU
Universitatea ,,Transilvania” din Braşov
A prophet due to his extraordinary insight in political matters, G.B. Shaw defends
democracy and at the same time discusses the risks it implies; he finds fault in the British
parliamentary system and deplores the plight of the Irish. This article attempts at demonstrating
Shaw’s visionary power on the basis of such plays as “Man and Superman”, “Major Barbara”,
“Heartbreak House”, “The Apple Cart” or “John Bull’s Other Island”. Although he has an
important political career, Shaw’s irrepresibly satiric spirit and wilful free – thinking prevent his
access in political life.
Although he never entered the political life of his country as a statesman, G. B. Shaw had an
important political career, which he valued much more than the artistic one. In a speech delivered
on his seventieth birthday, he declared that he did not care a snap of his finger for his literary
eminence in comparison with his pioneering and constructive work as one of the founders of the
Labour Party (2, p. 248). But his irrepressibly satiric spirit and wilful free-thinking always
prevented his access in political life, for the Fabians admired and imitated him, but trusted and
elected Webb.
Shaw is a prophet due to his extraordinary insight in political matters; nevertheless, he remains an
actor whose mask never comes off. Archibald Henderson, in his book "Bernard Shaw. Playboy and
Prophet", forwards the opinion that Shaw would have been a dangerous adviser to a king or cabinet
because of his receptiveness to original and ingenious ideas, however fantastic and utopian they
might have been. When he has to make a choice between a practical and a utopian proposal, he
strives to demonstrate that the practical is in fact complicated and impossible, and the impossible
not only simple, but well-established in everyday practice. For him, the equality of income is not an
innovation, but an inevitable extension to the whole society, while Capitalism is a paper Utopia,
which has never passed the test of practice (p. 227-229).
During the 1890's, the slight results of the Fabian and Socialist policies, the disillusionment of
democracy lead G. B. Shaw to the bitterest pessimism. So far a defendant of democracy, Shaw now
sees the two risks it implies: the corruption which capitalism makes possible and the incompetence
of the representatives of the masses. Shaw does not trust the proletariat for the advent of socialism;
the uninformed masses will never be able to elect the best leader:"Democracy substitutes election
by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few [... ]. Government presents only one
problem: the discovery of a trustworthy anthropometric method" (3, p.732), says the hero of "Man
and Superman". We might think at first sight that we have to deal with an exaggeration of Tanner,
the presumed author of the "Maxims", unless we encountered the same ideas in the "Epistle
Dedicatory to A. B. Walkley", where Shaw proclaims his disillusionment with progress and
education; the burning problem is nevertheless the creation of voters capable of mature political
judgement. “We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy. [...] Democracy
[...] requires a whole population of capable voters: that is political critics who [...] can at least
recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others” (4, p. 503).
The entire guilt for the present state of affairs is, in Shaw's opinion, the British parliamentary
system which favourizes hypocrisy and demagogy. "John Bull's Other Island" is so thoroughly
exploited for the purpose of expressing this situation, that the relevant passages occupy almost more
room than the Irish problem itself. Broadbent is a caricature of the English politician and Shaw
happily vignettes him as "a robust, full-blooded, energetic man in the prime of life, sometimes eager
and credulous, sometimes shrewd and roguish, sometimes portentously solemn, sometimes jolly and
impetuous, always buoyant and irresistible, mostly likable, and enormously absurd in his most
earnest moments." (6, act I, p. 504) His idiotic Liberalism, his incurable inclination to senseless
phrases and his instinctive dishonesty in electioneering make of him a ruthless satire of the English
party system. With perfect ignorance of Ireland's plight, he strongly believes that the panacea for all
Ireland's ills is to be found in the "great principles of the great Liberal party". His policy is an
infinite garrulousness about his being a Home Ruler, a Nationalist and Ireland's truest friend and
supporter. He is the politician who accedes to power by means of advocating ideas he doesn't
believe in, by means of words which have no real sense for him. Blind to the surrounding reality
which good father Keegan bitterly perceives, Broadbent proclaims: “I see no evils in the world except, of course, natural evils - that cannot be remedied by freedom, self-government and English
institutions. I think so, not because I am an Englishman, but as a matter of common sense” (6, act
IV, p.583). For Shaw, the British politician, the one who should represent the key to the tremendous
problems of the day is nothing but a caricature whose solutions to the evils of the world are the
phosphorous pills.
Attacks on parliamentary democracy are less frequent but even more stinging in "Major Barbara".
A bitter, though not necessarily untrue irony is Undershaft's eulogy on alcohol which "enables
Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning" (7,
act II, p. 399). Further on, the weapon manufacturer is again the author of an uncompromising
attack on the pretexts of parliamentarism: “The Government of your country! I am the Government
of your country, I and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting
in a row in the foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do
what pays us... Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and
historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to
my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune” (7, act III, p. 416).
There are again a few passages of this kind in "Misalliance". But this play is remarkable through the
introduction of a new and interesting political character, the British empire builder, in the person of
Lord Summerhays - the colonizer of Jinghiskahn. A similar character is frequently hinted at, though
never seen, in "Heartbreak House", where he is to some extent the real antagonist of Captain
Shotover.
In "Heartbreak House" and "Back to Methuselah" - plays which are not principally political in
intention - Shaw is content with ridiculing the moral and intellectual levels of democratic
governments. Mangan, in "Heartbreak House", the meanest and most contemptible of his capitalists
reveals in the course of the conversation that he has been asked by the Prime Minister "to join the
Government without even going through the nonsense of an election, as the dictator of a great
public department" (5, act III, p. 582), not as a Conservative or as a Liberal, but "as a practical
business man". The English politician, Shaw bitterly acknowledges, is an unscrupulous profiteer
who extorts money from people and who resorts to menaces towards the others, conscious of his
power: "very well then, as you're in a world where I'm appreciated and you're not, you'd best be
civil to me, hadn't you? Who else is there but me?" (5, act III, p. 583). The tragedy is that there is no
one else to replace them and to set things straight. Shaw goes on with his contemptuous satire in the
second part of "Back to Methuselah". "The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas" acquaints us with the
two politicians, Joyce Burge and Lubin, whose stupidity, demagogy, ignorance and opportunism are
set in sharp contrast with the high seriousness of the prophets of Creative Evolution. E. Strauss
thinks that Shaw's politicians have correspondent in real life, and of the two politicians of the
Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas, Joyce Burge is a caricature of Mr. Lloyd George, while Lubin
reunites features of Lord Balfour and Lord Oxford. Shaw uses the political discussion in order to
amplify his disgust with the men in power and with the system of parliamentary democracy.
Franklyn Barnabas unreservedly declares that "an election is a moral horror, as bad a battle except
for the blood; and a mud bath for every soul concerned in it" (10, p. 51) Even in his vision of the
England of A. D. 2170, Shaw cannot refrain himself from explaining, through the character of
Confucius, that "the English people always did elect parliaments of lunatics" (11, p. 95), and his
wrath follows the British politician as far as the year A. D. 3000. The British Envoy of that distant
day "looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal disguised by a good tailor" (12, act II, p. 182), and
behaves like a perfect idiot.
Later on, in 1929, "The Apple Cart" is much more violent in its attacks on the political system.
Again we are treated to a utopia of the kind of "Back to Methuselah" where the action is supposed
to take place around A. D. 1980 and, in the guise of a picture of his time, Shaw has many shrewd
things to say about the social and political tendencies of the late nineteen - twenties. He exposes the
dangers of democracy as it is envisaged by his contemporaries and shows the necessity of effective
safeguards against a degenerative system. The two inseparable main problems are in Shaw's
opinion: “the economic problem of how to produce and distribute our subsistence, and the political
problem of how to select our rulers and prevent them from abusing their authority in their own
interests or those of their class or religion” (13, p. 211).
After 1884, Shaw was outraged by the paradoxical effects of the extension of the franchise to the
rural working classes. The dramatist has a keen sense of political reality and cannot believe in the
political abilities of the masses who are too stupid to understand their own interests. He sees that
real democracy is impossible, and that the so - called democratic systems are nothing but a sham
permitting a handful of clever demagogues to cheat on the masses in their own interests and
enabling some capitalists to exploit them under the pretence of their own consent. Shaw invites the
reader to see democracy as it is: “a big balloon, filled with gas or hot air, and sent up so that you
shall be kept looking up at the sky whilst other people are picking your pockets. When the balloon
comes down to earth every five years or so you are invited to get into the basket if you can throw
out one of the people who are sitting tightly in it; but as you can afford neither the time nor the
money, and there are forty millions of you and hardly room for six hundred in the basket, the
balloon goes up again with much the same lot in it and leaves you where you were before” (13, p.
215).
Shaw is a democrat with respect to a government of the people for the people, but he rejects the
poetic conception of Democracy as government of the people by the people (13, p. 215). His
demonstration is simple: "A nation of prime ministers or dictators is as absurd as an army of field
marshals" (13, p. 216). Shaw's conclusion is that the democratic system does not work because of
the imperfection of human nature and of the social institutions. Following Plato's contempt for the
masses, Shaw reaches the strong belief that "the system is not a democratic reality: it is a
democratic illusion" (13, p. 223). For him, real government is possible only if its members have
expert knowledge of everything on which they have to decide; otherwise it is a tool in the hands of
irresponsible persons who have such expert knowledge: "The person who is elected to do the work
is not really doing it: he is a popular humbug who is merely doing what a permanent official tells
him to do" (13, p. 224).
Shaw's criticism is directed towards a money - dominated society where the democratic politician
has the task of getting the support of the majority for a policy which is in the interest of a small
minority, of giving the English people a "sensation of self - government" while big business rules:
“Money talks, money prints, money broadcasts, money reigns; and kings and labor leaders alike
have to register its decrees, and even, by a staggering paradox, to finance its enterprises and
guarantee its profits. Democracy is no longer bought, it is bilked. Ministers who are Socialists to the
backbone are as helpless in the grip of Breakages Limited as its acknowledged henchmen: from the
moment when they attain to what is with unintentional irony called power (meaning drudgery of
carrying on for the plutocrats) they no longer dare even to talk of nationalizing and industry,
however socially vital, that has a farthing of profit for plutocracy still left in it, or that can be made
to yield a farthing for it by subsidies” (13, p. 210). The existence of this small minority of rich
capitalists is the cause of the failure of Democracy. Equality in political matters is matched by crass
inequality in economic resources and social status.
E. Strauss, in his book "Bernard Shaw: Art and Socialism", forwards the opinion that in "The Apple
Cart" Shaw envisages the solution of the dictatorial leader, of the great personality as a genuine
alternative to the intolerable domination of society by greed and corruption. King Magnus' easy
superiority takes in Boanerges, the caricature of the Labour movement, who possesses neither
courage, principle, nor intellect. Boanerges' opinions are in fact the reduction to absurdity of
democracy both in general and within the Labour movement in particular, while King Magnus' are
the sanest reactions to a sham system. The latter asserts that "democracy is humbug, and that
instead of establishing responsible government it has abolished it" (13, p. 266). Magnus is right and
even if he intends to resign from his position and go to the democratic poll, he is nevertheless the
representative of a totalitarian system.
Strauss may be only partly right when considering Shaw a supporter of dictatorial systems, when
ascribing to him the "incredibly superficial and very damaging attitude towards Mussolini and
Fascism" (p.101). Shaw is only a hypercritical spirit who sees the state of the world with ruthless
eyes. He never rigorously sticks to a doctrine, but he always criticizes what he believes is wrong;
his protest goes beyond the social and political systems and touches the root of all evils: "Man, the
inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, the electric chair; of sword and gun and poison gas:
above all of justice, duty, patriotism, and all the other isms by which even those who are clever
enough to be humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most destructive of all the destroyers"
(8, act III, p. 261). If Shaw was ever inclined to side with totalitarianism, he did it because of his
idealist nature, because, in his position as a playwright and philosopher he could not have the
knowledge and most important, the practical experience of a system which held good in theory but
became totally abhorrent in practice. In Lenin, Shaw probably admired the formulator of Marxism Leninism, the leader of the only group with strict discipline and definite purpose which emerged
after 1917 from the chaos of wartime Russia and channeled the leaderless masses into revolutionary
action.
Tired of the result of the European Labour movement, Shaw manifested interest in Fascism and
Mussolini. The Italian dictator, the one who would express pride in his humble origins and speak of
himself as a "man of the people", was at first welcomed by the people who were tired of strikes and
riots, ready to submit to dictatorship, provided the national economy was stabilized and their
country restored to its dignity. Nevertheless, the theory failed when applied in practice: “They
[Mussolini and Hitler] were finally scrapped as failures and nuisances, though they all began by
effecting some reforms over which party parliaments had been boggling for centuries” (17, p. 642).
Since Shaw is outraged by the atrocities of a "mad Messiah" who wanted "a German kingdom of a
German God - by military conquest of the rest of the mankind" and of a "devil" - like Mussolini
who "was neither a Caesar nor a Mahomet" (17, p. 641-642), he cannot be blamed of siding with
tyrants. He knows that: “if we entrust the immense powers and revenues which are necessary in an
effective modern Government to an absolute monarch or dictator, he goes more or less mad unless
he is a quite extraordinary and therefore very seldom obtainable person” (16, p. 704).
Dissatisfied with both democracy and totalitarianism, Shaw resorts in the end to the philosophical
solution of the Superman. If people prove to be incapable of governing themselves we must
favourize - by means of eugenics and socialism - the birth of the superman who will be able to lead
us to progress: “the need for the Superman is, in its most imperative aspect, a political one [..]. The
only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in
other terms, of human evolution” (16, p. 704). But by advocating the Superman, Shaw does not
demand the despotic rule by a single individual, on the contrary, a Democracy of Supermen; and the
production of such a Democracy is the only change that is now hopeful enough to nerve us to the
effort that Revolution demands (16, p. 705).
At the time of the preface to "Geneva", one of his last plays, G. B. Shaw goes back to the idealist
philosophy of "Back to Methuselah". Since our statesmen, says the playwright, concern themselves
with such child's plays as "golf and tennis and bridge, smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol as part
of their daily diet, hunting, shooting, coursing, reading tales of murder and adultery and police
news" (17, p. 645), our countries cannot be properly ruled. If we are to have real statesmen and real
policy, the extension of life span is absolutely compulsory: "a century of childhood and
adolescence, a century of administration, and a century of oracular senatorism." (17, p. 705). His
criticism of the social abuse and his strong wish for reform revolve about two poles: the satire of the
consequences and the condemnation of the profound causes. Shaw strives towards the abolition of
the social evils and towards the establishment of a new society whose basis resides in Fabian
socialism. As a debunker, he exposes the corruption at the level of internal and external policy at a
time when history has no replacement for the unscrupulous profiteers who call themselves
statesmen.
In 1932, Archibald Henderson names Shaw a "playboy and prophet". The artist's liberating laugh is
closely related to the thinker's severe will directed towards the moral and intellectual progress of the
human being. Shaw seems to be a clown and a prophet at the same time. A clown he is by his
mocking tone, which brings about protest against the establishment and perception of the absurd. It
is laughter which serves as a vehicle for revolutionary ideas, it is laughter which shows how much a
society, be it Victorian or Edwardian, is unreasonable. His prodigious comic power and his
dramatic gift are given the sole task of expressing the problems of the people of his time; this is
how the intellectual laughter of the buffoon has made the spectator and the reader think about the
situation revealed and see the figure of a prophet behind the mask of a clown. Like father Keegan in
"John Bull's Other Island", Shaw believes that "every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time" (6, act
III, p. 570) and that we can find the truth at the bottom of laughter.
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