Table Of ContentCOPYRIGHTED
By
Edwin Burr' Pettet
1952
Sponsoring Committee: Professor Dorothy Mulgrave,
Professor Alonso Myers and Associate
Professor Fred C. Blanchard
SHAVIAN SOCIALISM AND THE SHAVIAN LIFE FORCE
An Analysis of the Relationship Between
the Philosophic and Economic Systems
of George Eernard Snaw
EDWIN BURE PETTET
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in the School of Education of
New York University
I hereby guarantee th; t no part of the dissertation or docu
ment which I have submitted for publication has been heretofore
published end (or) copyrighted in the United St. tes of America,
except in the case of passages quoted from other published sources;
thr-t I am the sole author 'nd proprietor ox said dissertation or
document; that the dissertation or document contains no matter which,
if published, will be libelous or otherwise injurious, or infringe
in any way the copyright of any other party; and th: t I will defend,
indemnify and hold harmless New York University against all suits
and proceedings which may be brought and against all claims which
may be made against New York University by reason of the publication
of said dissertation or document.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface • • • ■ • • « « • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • » i
Part One t Philosophy
Introduction • < • • • • • « • • • • • « • • • • • • • • • » 1
Chapter One * Shavian History of Evolution ............. 6
The Roots of Darwinism • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • * 6
Lamarck and Darwin • • • • • • • • • • « • • • • • • • 11
Butler and Shaw • 15
Summarizing Statement • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2-
Chapter Two* Shaw's Philosophy of the Life Foree • • • • • 25
Life and Its Purpose • • « • • • • • • • • « • • • • • 25
Min's Moral Responsibility • • • • • • » • • • • • • • 33
Urn's Sexual Responsibility • • « • • • • « • • • • • 39
Man's Aesthetic Responsibility • • • • • • • • • • • • 47
Summarizing Statement 55
Chapter Threes Shavian Souroes for the Life Foroe
Philosophy • • • • • • • • • • • • • 67
W i l l .................................................. 57
Women • * • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ^2
Art • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 67
Summarizing Statement • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 72
ftirt Twot Sooialism
Introduction 75
Chapter Fours Shavian Analysis of Capitalist Eoonomios • • 79
TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)
The Roots of Capitalism • • • • • . • • » . • • . • • « 79
Effects of Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Summarizing Statement . . . * . .................. 96
Chapter Five* Shavian Socialism • • • • .......... . . . . . 9 8
Section 1. Transition . . . . . . . ............... ..98
Marxian Flan • • • • • • • • • . • • . . • • 9 9
Shavian Plan 103
Section Z% Socialism ................ .110
Rationale .116
Summarizing Statement .125
Part Three* The Philosophy of Socialism
Chapter Six* Socialism and the Life Force • • • • • • • • • .126
Socialism and the natural l a w s .................. .I2 3
Socialism and the evolutionary process • .............. 113
Socialism and the will • • • • • • • • . . . .146
Summarizing Statement « . . . • • • • • • • • . . .130
Chapter Seven; The Life Foroe and Democracy • • • . • • • .151
Definition of Democracy .151
Political basis for Democracy • • • • • • « • • • • • • .154
Religious basis for Democraoy • • . . • • « • • • • • • .159
Summarizing Statement.................... . . .
Bibliography ........ ............• • • • . ................
PREFACE
Few areas of recent political and sooial history have not experienced
the critical presence of Bernard Shaw. He has had something to say upon as
disparate subjects as viviseotionl and phonetics,2 and frequently that
something has been of considerable importance to those professionally
*
concerned. In the sense that all criticism is creative, Shaw may be
judged to have contributed to the development and progress of more aspects
of human aspiration than one man is generally privileged to accomplish in
a lifetime.
But Shaw is more than an iconoclast. Much of the vehement opposition
to established order by which he has achieved popular notoriety has been
by way of brush-clearing for distinctly positive affirmation of principles.
As he interprets his work as drama critic of the Saturday Review for
instance, his critical criteria were formed to the measure of the kind of
1. Seethe preface to The Doctor's Dilemma and "The Science of Imbeciles,"
an article in TheHSunday Express, London, August 7, 1927.
2. See Pygmalion and “A Plea for Speech Nationalization,11 In The Morning
Leader, August 16, 1901. Also "Phonetic Spellings A fteply to
Some Eritioiam," in The Morning Leader, August 22, 1901.
3. For example, J. D. Bernal, F.R.S. opens his article on "Shaw as Scientist*
In 0. B. S. 90tedited by S. Winstenjin which Bernal evaluates
Shawls contribution to medicine and general scientific progress^
with these wordai "We are all of us Shaw's pupils, no less the
scientist than the playwright and the politician."
ii
play he himself intended to write in the years to come.^- Perhaps the plays
that Shaw produced in the six decades that followed will one day be con
sidered his most original contribution to the history of Humanism.** The
perspective is too narrow to judge them now with any finality.
But upon two of the more vexing areas of human questioning, philosophy
and political science, Shaw has already left his mark as an original thinker.
In both instances, the stimulus for the creative concept was a revolt from
conventional belief and its mechanistic counter-belief whichywhile sub
stituting order for chaos, and logio for accident, submerged the importance
of human will* first, the principle of natural selection fathered by Darwin,
and second, the Marxian interpretation of economic history. From the revolt
against traditional religion and the Darwinian counter-religion has emerged
a philosophy of creative evolution called the philosophy of the Life Force
1. In "The Author*s Apology" for his Dramatic Opinions and Essays Shaw
confesses* "I must therefore warn the reader that what he is about
to study is not a series of judgments aiming at impartiality, but
a siege laid to the theatre of the XlXth Century by an author who
had to cut his own way into it at the point of the pen, and throw
some of its defenders into the moat • .all through I was acousing
my opponents of failure because they were not doing what I wanted,
whereas they were often succeeding very brilliantly in doing what
they themselves wanted. I postulated as desirable a certain kind
of play in which I was destined ten years later to make my mark as
a playwright (as I very well foreknew in the depth of my own uncon
sciousness) * and I brought everybody, authors, actors, managers,
to the one test*: were they coming my way or staying in the old
groves?" p. xxi.
2. In his recent book, The Idea of a Theatre, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1949, Francis F'ergus'son oonsiders Shaw among the great
playwrights he chooses to mark the history of theatrioal develop
ment. (Chapter VI.) Maxwell Anderson in a collection of essays
titled Off Broadway, William Sloane Associates, New York, 1947,
oalls Shaw a "more considerable figure than MoliWe or Schiller
or Chekhov or Strindberg or Ibsen, or any Irishman or Amerioan so
far.* p. 13.
iii
since its dramatization in Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah,^ From
the revolt against capitalist-imperialism and its deterministic antidote,
Marxism, has grown the special brand of Fabianism, perhaps more accurately
described as Shavian Socialism*^
Shaw's influence upon contemporary attitudes would be difficult to
measure. According to his own estimate, he has made no impact upon them
whatsoever*^ As early as 1909 an editorial in the Nation reported that
1* C. E* M* Joad, noted English philosopher, has called Shaw "part originator
of the philosophic doctrine called Creative Evolution*1* ("Shaw's
Philosophy" in G* B* S. 90, edited by S. Winsten, p. 69*) By "part
originator" Joad is undoubtedly recognizing Lamarck’ and Butler's
importance to the theory as finally described by Shaw, the fuller
dootrine of the Life Force* It is interesting in this connection to
note the date of Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution, 1901* Shaw's
Man and Superman was conceived in 1902. Although both men were part
of the revolt against Darwin, no evidenoe points to their influence
upon each other*
2* Archibald Henderson uses the phrase for the heading of division V of his
Biography, Bernard Shawi Playboy and Prophet* Although, as will be
noted later, it is difficult io separatetke various brands of
socialism or to credit any person or persons with its original de
velopment from Marxism, it nay be safely maintained that the Fabians
have evolved the most complete of the socialist programs and that
Shaw has been the determining imagination of that Society* Henderson
in his biography (p. 166) reports Sidney Webb as having said to him
that the Fabian Society after Shaw joined it "took on the color of
Shaw’s mordantly oritioal temperament and bore the stamp of his
personality*" Henderson adds that "He swung the Society from its
initial, vague purpose of the 'prompt reconstruction of society in
accordance with the highest moral possibilities' into the economic
channel of practical Socialism*" It must be remembered, moreover,
that Shaw drafted the Fabian lAmifesto in 1884, with its demand,
for every oitizen, of a birthright "life interest in the land and
capital of the nation" and an "equal share in the National Industry."
(planks 2 and 14 in Fabian Tract #2)
3* Shaw has repeatedly made statements belittling his importance in world
affairs* As they all bear a striking resemblance in phraseology, it
is doubtful how much significance should be attached to them* Shaw
is as notorious for exaggerated modesty as for outrageous personal
drum-beating* (see Eric Bentley's Bernard Shaw, p* xviii), In 1932,
addressing the Fabian Sooiety, Shaw said* "For 48 years I have been
addressing speeches to the Fabian Society and to other assemblies
in this country* So far as I can make out, those speeches have not
produced any effect whatsoever," ("In Praise of Guy Fawkes" in
Where Socialism Stands Today), Archibald Henderson in his 1911
blograpny, Ueirge kernaTcTShaw, His Life and Works, p. 202, reports
iv
“The youthful Athenians who darted most impetuously after his novelties are
already hankering after some new thing. The deep young souls who looked at
him as an evangelist are "beginning to see through him and despair.”^ Eric
Bentley, describing Shaw's influence in his later years, has pointed out
that those who revered him, "revered him as a patriarch or senile prodigy —
have not bothered to imbibe any of his teaching."**
The importance of Shaw's Life Force philosophy upon contemporary
scientific and religious attitudes is doubtful. It seems likely that what
influence it has exerted has been felt more strongly in England than in
«Z
America.0 His theory has had the distinction, however, of thorough inves
tigation and formalization by at least one prominent contemporary philosopher,
C. E* M. Joad, whose own most significant work has developed from Shaw's
philosophy.^
While Shaw's influence upon the Fabian Sooiety has been recorded,®
\
.
there appears to be no material available by which to judge the significance
(continued from page ii 1)
Shaw as saying t “I have produced no permanent impression beoause
nobody has ever believed me." Again in 1932, Hesketh Pearson
reports a conversation with Shaw (G. B. S., A Full Length Portrait,
p. 359) in which Shaw saidj “Now here in fengTand i have to give my
advice unsought, and no one pays the smallest attention to it.“
1. S. P. Shurman, “Shaw and Chesterton," Nation, New York, October, 1909.
2. Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw, p. 192.
3. In a letter to the writer, November, 1949, Dr. Cyril Joad deplored the
lack of his (referring to Ifctter Life and Value and his recently
published Shaw) and Shaw's"Influence irT'lmerica. “Amerioan6 do not
read my b o o k s h e wrote.
4. C. E. M. Joad*s Matter Life and Value is a full length exposition of
Shaw * s Creat i ve Evolution.
5. See chapters X and XII in Hesketh Pearson's G. B. S., A Full Length Por-
trait and sections IV and V in Henderson's Bernard Shawi Playboy
and Prophet. Shaw's contributions to the Fabian Tracts reoord his
influence upon the political temper of that Sooiety. See for
example. Tracts #2 , 3 , 6, 13 , 40, 41, 43 , 93, 142 , 226, and 233.
The last two contain his enoyolopedla articles on "Sooialism" and
"Fabianism."
V
either of the Fabians or more directly of Shaw to the English Labor Party and
its recent socialist program.^ Although Shaw’s long and constant association
with Labor Party leaders and with government officials, particularly with
those of socialist inclinations undoubtedly has had an effect, just Viow
determining this effect has been upon present socialist ideology may wait
2
some years to be described.
1, While Mr, Sidney H* Wood of the British Ministry of Education was visiting
America in 1949, the writer questioned him on the importance of Shaw
to the present Labor Party's socialist program, Mr, Wood replied
that to his knowledge Shaw’s contribution was negligible. He was
quick to point out, however, that he was a civil servant and as such
was not likely to be close to the formulators of party policies, nor
likely to be aware of intellectual influences upon party leaders.
In a recent correspondence with Mr. Dennis Plimmer, for several
years London representative of the Overseas New3 Agency, the writer
asked if the Fabians assume any of the credit for the rise of
British Socialism. Mr, Plimmer replied* "indeed they do, and the
party gives them credit freely. It is party doctrine that the whole
movement rests stoolwise on three legs i the trade unions, the big
widespread and powerful cooperative movement, and the political
socialists who comprise the Labor Party itself. Of that latter
category, there are two wings which are inclined to blend or over
lap — the pragmatic socialist politicians and the theoretical
empiricists. The latter, while often dopes in the political arena
and goddamned embarrassing guys trying to make bricks without
straws, are none-the-less a fountainhe^d of ideas and doctrine.
Once in a while they find themselves behind the march of events
but they always hurry and catch up again. Classic oases would be
Cripps ft Strachey* This leftwing theoretical bunoh are the 'only
begettors* of the Fabians who still assist actively and turn out
good useful research pamphlets. Gods of the party are the Webbs
whose somewhat bloodless urgenoy still informs such publications
as New Statesman, Nation ft Tribune, the weekly mouthpiece of the
socialist' extremists' Whom Shaw has long since thrown over, inci
dentally. For full details, vide Fifty Years March, a book by
Franois Williams published in London last' year by Oxham’s Press."
(Fifty Years Maroh was not available to the writer in the course of
preparing the present work.)
2. In this connection, it is interesting to compare the present English
Labor Party's proposals with Shaw’s Intelligent Woman's Guide to
Sooialism and Capitalism,
