ipl-logo

What Are Bernard Shaw's Social Religious And Political Ideas

929 Words4 Pages

Social, Religious and Political ideas
Shaw emphasized that each social class struggled to serve its own ends, and that the rich and middle classes succeeded in the fight while the working class defeated. He damned the autonomous system of his time, saying that workers, brutally oppressed by voracious employers, lived in miserable poverty and were too unaware and unconcerned to vote wisely. He thought this insufficiency would finally be acceptable by the coming out of long-lived Supermen with familiarity and cleverness enough to preside over properly. He called the developmental process selective reproduction but it is sometimes suggests to as Shavian eugenics, largely because he considered it was driven by a "Life Force" that led women subconsciously …show more content…

Shaw supposed that income for individuals should come exclusively from the sale of their own manual labor and that poverty could be abolished by giving equal wages to everyone. These perceptions led Shaw to join for membership of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), managed by H. M. Hyndman who launched him to the works of Karl Marx. Shaw never joined the SDF, which privileged compulsory improvement. Instead, in 1884, he attached with the newly formed Fabian Society, which was close with his conviction that reform should be steady and tempted by passive means rather than by complete revolution. Shaw was an active and effective Fabian. He wrote many of their pamphlets for betterment, lectured untiringly on behalf of their grounds and provided finance to set up The New Age, an independent socialist journal. As a Fabian, he contributed in the formation of the Labor Party. The Intelligent Woman 's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism provides a clear ideologies and set of belief of his socialistic views. As evinced in plays like Major Barbara and Pygmalion, class struggle and social status is a motif in much of Shaw 's writing.
Oscar Wilde was …show more content…

After a tour at the USSR in 1931 and get-together Joseph Stalin, Shaw became a follower of the Stalinist USSR. On 11 October 1931 he televise a lecture on American national radio telling his viewers that any capable workman ... of appropriate age and good temperament would be greeted and would be given job in the Soviet Union. Tim Tzouliadis emphasized that some hundred Americans answered to his submission and left for the USSR.
Shaw sustained this opinion for Stalin 's system in the preface to his play On the Rocks (1933) writing:
“But the most elaborate code of this sort would still have left unspecified a hundred ways in which wreckers of Communism could have sidetracked it without ever having to face the essential questions: are you pulling your weight in the social boat? Are you giving more trouble than you are worth? Have you earned the privilege of living in a civilized community? That is why the Russians were forced to set up an Inquisition or Star Chamber, called at first the Cheka and now the Gay Pay Oo (Ogpu), to go into these questions and "liquidate" persons who could not answer them satisfactorily”. (SHAW,

Show More
Related

  • Analysis: The Red Scare

    643 Words  | 3 Pages

    In a news article published during the Red Scare, the author describes the Communist red flag as symbolizing “defiance of law, order, and constitutional government. It is an insult to the stars and stripes.” It also states, “There is no room in this country for any flag but our own.” (source) The article goes on to say that the federal government must do whatever it takes to eradicate any forms of communism.

    Read More

  • Why Did Joseph Stalin Rise To Power

    476 Words  | 2 Pages

    Stalin Primary ambition was to turn what he believed to be the industrial backwater that was the Soviet Union into an economic a world superpower. His goal was to make up decades or even years of time in just a single decade. By the definition of his goal he succeed he had turned a mostly agricultural country into an industrial super power, but it did not come without a cost. Those cost fell on the soviet working class in two ways the first was their atrocious living conditions and the second was their personal freedoms.

    Read More

  • Effects Of The Gilded Age

    943 Words  | 4 Pages

    This concept is based on Darwin’s “survival of the fittest,” but applied to the human constructs of Capitalism. The theory of social darwinism is that “certain people can become powerful in society because they are innately better.” This theory was fueled by the idea that you need to have money to make money, which meant that because some people were already supplied with their own sum of money, it meant that the rich would get richer, and the poor would get poorer. The group that most commonly benefitted from this concept were men, usually white, wealthy men, and would leave lower class white workers, farmers, women, and minorities to be all placed below those up at the top. All of these groups had different experiences as to how the theory affected them; Lower Class workers were working very hard at lower wages, and responded in outrage when they received a ten percent decrease in wages, which created the need for unions and labor parties to help meet their needs.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx

    390 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution caused a massive economic spike from small-scale production to large factories and mass production. Capitalism became the prevalent mode of the economy, which put all means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or the upper class. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue that capitalism centralizes all the wealth and power in the bourgeoisie, despite the proletariat, or the working class, being the overwhelming majority of the population. The manufacturers would exploit the common proletariat and force them to would work in abysmal conditions and receive low wages, furthering the working class poverty. “The Communist Manifesto” predicts that as a result of the mistreatment

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Society And Class In The Outsiders

    707 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the novel, it is shown that humans can be looked at differently because of their society and class. The fact that Socs have a very big advantage over the

    Read More

  • Anna Howard Shaw's Speech

    420 Words  | 2 Pages

    She does not find it fair that only men are given the right opportunity to vote. Shaw’s tone is persuasive when she gives the definition of a republic to prove

    Read More

  • Feminist Lens In The Hunger Games

    754 Words  | 4 Pages

    When using a Marxist lens the viewer must focus on social classes and how power is distributed throughout these classes, including who holds the power and who is inferior to that power in the society. One question that might come about when viewing the

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Andrew Jackson

    1269 Words  | 6 Pages

    The debate over the expansion of suffrage had supporters, the common people, who wanted to expand voting rights to them, and the opposers, the rich, who wanted to keep voting as a privilege for themselves. The working class took the pro side of the debate over expanding suffrage because they wanted the ability to vote and believed that balloting should be established on people’s thoughts rather than social status. For example, according to Nathan Stanford, a chairman of a committee that revised the state constitution, “the only qualifications [to vote] seem to be the virtue and morality of the people . . .those who contribute to the public support we consider as entitled to a share of the election of rulers”

    Read More

  • Marxism In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    1639 Words  | 7 Pages

    Marxism is the idea of social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. Social processes are the way individuals and groups interact, adjust and reject and start relationships based on behavior which is modified through social interactions. Overall marxism analyzes how societies progress and how and society ceases to progress, or regress because of their local or regional economy , or global economy. In this case, Marxism’s theory applies to the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, where a society where mass satisfaction is the instrument utilized by places of power known as the Alphas in order to control the oppressed by keeping the Epsilons numb, at the cost of their opportunity to choose their own way of life. Marx thinks that an individual had a specific job to do in order to contribute to their community and that is the only way to do so; There is no escaping your contribution either.

    Read More

  • Life's Inequality In Life In The Iron Mills

    666 Words  | 3 Pages

    The difference in social classes shows how the Marxist analysis approach can be applied to Life in the Iron Mills. Social structure wasn’t always present in society, in fact towards the start of the human race, everyone was actually equal. Sure, there were the hunters and there were the gathers, but they realized they

    Read More

  • Steinbeck The Lower Class Analysis

    748 Words  | 3 Pages

    These emotions provide further reasoning for such poor economic conditions, as those with money were using it to prevent others from economic prosperity. Rather, the upper class were labeling those in need as “Okies”, and attempting to drive them out of “their” land. Steinbeck illustrates the lower class’ reception of this treatment, and their disgust with the upper class for treating them this way. The lower class believe that their ardent work ethic has incited fear in the upper class and caused them to try to eradicate any possibility for the lower class to succeed by reducing their opportunities. By demonstrating the upper class’ perception of the lower class and the response of the lower class to those perceptions, Steinbeck captures the many emotions present during the Great

    Read More

  • Theme Of Inequality In The Great Gatsby

    2097 Words  | 9 Pages

    For example in the book, *The Great Gatsby, by *Scott Fitzgerald, depicts how these inequalities happen through its main character Gatsby. Throughout the 1920's people focused on getting rich instead of striving for equality as shown in The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald shows that people are yet not treated fairly and that social discrimination still exists. For example, in Chapter 2, Tom goes to see Wilson, a poor mechanic worker. He tells him he is going to sell him his old car, but his purpose is to distract Wilson so he can have an affair with his(wilson's) wife, Myrtle.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Social Class In 1984 By George Orwell

    1073 Words  | 5 Pages

    One form of control is keeping people in the poor and working classes. The book reinforces how all the citizens are in the same social class, “ ‘I wanted to ask you whether you’d got any razor blades,’ he said... Everyone kept asking you for razor blades” (Orwell 63). This quote shows how the working class has equal opportunity and all has the same products. The upper class or the government has more opportunity to get the products since they are more available to them than to the working class.

    Read More

  • Marx And Weber's Theories On Social Change

    1091 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marx believed that the class struggle forced social change. Marx’s theory is based on a class system

    Read More

  • Karl Marx And Class Conflict

    1486 Words  | 6 Pages

    Class conflict, Marx believed, was what encouraged the evolution of society. To quote Marx himself, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one

    Read More

More about What Are Bernard Shaw's Social Religious And Political Ideas

Open Document