GBS, Beatrice Webb, Poverty & Equality

THIS IS an important book—and a timely one. Recently a number of contemporary writers, including philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, have been taking a fresh look at what "equality" means in the context of economics, politics, and human rights. As so often happens, Bernard Shaw was there first, placing equality of income at the center of his role as a "world-betterer." Shaw believed that equality would alleviate suffering, abolish class barriers, expand marital choices, and ultimately create a superior human being—the "superman."

Peter Gahan's well-researched book focuses on Shaw's early years with the Fabians—the British socialist organization that laid the foundation for many progressive policies in the twentieth century. Shaw enthusiasts will already know that GBS was both a political activist and a playwright. What Gahan has brilliantly demonstrated, however, is that there is no "and." Shaw's Fabian activities (and there were many of them) helped shape the plays. At the same time, the plays provided an opportunity for Shaw to reflect more deeply on Fabian issues.

Surprisingly, the Fabians never adopted Shaw's ideas about equality of income. Accordingly, Gahan's account of Shaw's years with the Fabians is often as tumultuous and unpredictable as a Shavian play. Themes include an almost-love-triangle (Shaw-Beatrice Webb-Sidney Webb), a long struggle for dominance between the Old Gang and the younger generation (complicated by the fact that the Old Gang really did want to empower the younger generation—most of the time), and the chaos that erupted when a loose cannon named H. G. Wells attracted enthusiastic young followers and inspired them with exciting new ideas, all the while undermining Fabian attempts to move forward with their political agenda.

Gahan's book departs from other studies of Shaw's Fabian activities by putting the relationship with Beatrice Webb at the center. Beatrice's husband Sidney was a brilliant Fabian with a pragmatic outlook and an intense interest in data. Beatrice and GBS, on the other hand, inhabited two realms, the practical and the metaphysical. It was Beatrice who first stimulated Shaw's interest in equality of income and encouraged him to look beyond the issues of eugenics and economics. Her influence is especially apparent in Shaw's appreciation for the dignity of every human life. In his 1913 lecture "Christianity and Equality," Shaw urged his audience to recognize that men and women are much more than mere units of supply and demand. "The good of the community," Shaw declared, "requires that everybody shall be not only a worker to the full extent of his capacity for work, but also a thinker to the full extent of his capacity for thought. And this means he must have leisure for culture."

Beatrice's central role in the Fabian Society was an amazing achievement in the early part of the twentieth century, when British women were still denied the right to vote. Gahan notes, for example, that many of the ideas in Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism can be traced to Beatrice Webb's campaign against poverty.

Near the end of his book, there's a moving account of Beatrice's final days (she died in 1943), when she summed up her long collaboration with Shaw: "we all thought that we were creating a better world for the mass of men and women to live in." The outbreak of World War II darkened that optimism, and Beatrice confessed that she sometimes wondered "how one can go on, eating and drinking, walking and sleeping, reading and dictating, apparently unmoved by the world's misery." It is a sad but realistic commentary on the gap between the dream of universal equality and the realities of human existence.

Poverty and Equality in the Modern World explores Shaw's ideas about equality from three vantage points. One is...