Everybody’s Political What’s What? By George Bernard Shaw
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IS HUMAN NATURE INCURABLY DEPRAVED?
THE LAND QUESTION
THE BRITISH PARTY SYSTEM
THE PARLIAMENTS OF THE POOR
DEMOCRACY; THE NEXT STEP
KNOWING OUR PLACES
EQUALITY
THE PROPOSED ABOLITION OF CLASSES
THE STATE AND THE CHILDREN
SCHOOLMADE MONSTERS
FINANCIAL MYSTERIES; BANKING
ILLUSIONS OF THE MONEY MARKET
SENSE AND NONSENSE ABOUT COMPENSATION
THE VICE OF GAMBLING ANO THE VIRTUE OF INSURANCE
THE ILLUSIONS OF WAR FINANCE
ON WAR AND ITS GREAT MEN
THE MILITARY MAN
THE ECONOMIC MAN
THE EDUCATED
THE HALF EDUCATED
THE CORRUPTLY EDUCATED
THE AESTHETIC MAN
THE MAN OF SCIENCE
THE MEDICAL MAN
ARCHITECTURE A WORLD POWER
THE THEOCRATIC MAN
THE COLLECTIVE BIOLOGIST
THE COLLECTIVE STATISTICIAN
THE GENETIC STATE
STATE CORRUPTION
MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
COERCIONS AND SANCTIONS
LAW AND TYRANNY
JURIES AND MINISTERS OF GRACE DEFEND US!
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION VERSUS GENERAL STRIKE
OUR ATTEMPTS AT ANTHROPOMETRY
CREED AND CONDUCT
COLLECTIVE SCOUNDRELISM
GOVERNMENT BY GREAT MEN, SO-CALLED
FOR THE REVlEWERS
ECONOMIC SUMMARY
POLITICAL SUMMARY
RELIGIOUS SUMMARY
ENVOY
Confronted with these facts our sentimental hearthstone vaporing about parental care and me sacredness of the family as the inviolable unit of human society is only an excuse for doing nothing. ElementÂary civilization is impossible without a moral code like the Ten Commandments, a technique of language, writing, and arithmetic, and a legal code of compulsory behavior completely abolishing individual liberty and free will within its scope. Unless people can be depended on to behave in an expected manner they cannot live in society, and must be either corrected or, if incorrigible, killed. Their life must be mostly dictated and institutional, and mere activities determined and predicable. And somebody must teach me codes to the children. They must be imposed on the child dogmaticÂally until it is old enough to understand them.
They can be imposed in various ways, by merciless whippings of children and cruel punishments of adults as well as by less savage and mischievous methods ; but they must be imposed somehow, or me human world will be an Alsatian madhouse. The necessity is fundamental; and the statesman who imagines that a formula of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, will solve all his problems will discover, if he is capable of learning from experience, that liberty must give way to equality and that fraternity may mean either the fraternity of Cain and Abel or the friendship of David and Jonathan. Children, if they are to grow up as citizens, must learn a good deal that their parents could not teach them even if they had the necessary time. The statesman must make provision for this teaching or he will presently find himself faced with the impossible task of maintaining civilization witl1 savages instead of citizens.
So without law and order, convention and etiquette, there can be no
civilization; yet when these are established there must be privilege
for sedition, blasphemy, heresy, eccentricity, innovation, variety and
change, or civilization will crash again by failing to adapt itself to
scientific discovery and mental growth. Governments have to persecute
and tolerate simultaneously: they have to determine continually
what and when to persecute and what and when to tolerate. They
must never make either persecution or toleration a principle. British
mistrust of principle and logic is rooted in the wisdom of this rule
