From Essays in Socialism New & Old (1907), pp.43-51.
Superstitions die hard. Even among Social-democrats we sometimes hear echoes of the peasantly and small middle-class denunciation of luxury as though it were the most heinous crime of the possessing classes – the implication being, of course, that asceticism is the ideal of human life. The stump-oratorical criticism of the corpulency of the man of wealth, depreciatory allusions to champagne, turtle-soup, and other evil things of this nature, still sometimes heard at Socialist meetings, are legacies from this order of ideas. Such sentiments never fail of a certain effect in “fetching” a popular audience by their familiar tinkle and by the appeal they make to the small-tradesman element it comprises. The notion that the luxury attendant on the institution of private property is its worst feature is a very old one, and its economic basis is very easily traceable. Its raison d’être, however, in so far as it has ever had one, has disappeared almost completely since the era of Bourgeois ascendancy, as I shall endeavour to explain presently. The poor peasant, the handicraftsman, and the beggar or vagabond, has always and naturally viewed with envy, hatred, and perhaps excusable malice, the sight of the enjoyment of good things from which his own economic position debars him. On the principle of the fox and the grapes, these things being unattainable by him, his tendency is to regard them as evil. Such is the economical basis of asceticism put in a sentence. [1]
The hatred of the sight of luxury has always been particularly strong among a class whose economic foundation was slipping from under it. This powerfully contributed to the success of Ebionite Christianity, that form of Christianity which laid special emphasis on poverty, and which, perhaps, was the earliest form of primitive Christianity. The small cultivators and handicraftsmen of and around the Roman provincial cities, were the first to embrace a faith which among other things proclaimed the righteousness of misery and the wickedness of luxury.
This we find drastically expressed in the parable, obviously emanating from an Ebionite source, of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The Rich Man “gets it hot,” not because he has done anything particularly wicked, but because he has been “clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.” Lazarus on the other hand is comforted with the blessings of Abraham’s bosom. – as a reward for any good useful work done in his lifetime or on any theological ground but on that of his rags, which, it appears, were of themselves a sufficient passport at the gate of Paradise. As far as appears, both the Rich Man and Lazarus for that matter belonged to the idle class at opposite ends of the scale: the one to the idle rich, the other to the Lumpenproletariat of the period. We find the hatred of luxury and of the wealthy not on the ground of their exploitation so much as on that of their wearing fine clothes, feeding well, and living in well-furnished houses as a charateristic of all the popular reform movement of the Middle Ages, not to mention peasant insurrections. That this was so is explained by the fact that in former ages, with their more obvious and direct motives of conduct, the “rich man” consumed, i.e., spent, in personal adornment and luxury, the wealth he possessed. He was emphatically not a business man. He liked being rich not for the sake of acquisitiveness per se, but because he could dress in damask, silk and velvet of splendid dyes, could purchase costly perfumes and spices, could drink exotic wines, and also on occasion enjoy exotic women.
Such was the ancient and mediaeval “rich man.” The lust of the eye and the pride of life, whether gross and sensual or artistic and intellectual, as the case might be, was for him the end of the possession of wealth. The acquisition itself and the process of the acquisition were merely Means to this one end – the palpable enjoyments of life. He hoarded his cash and his gold and silver treasures against emergencies, but he only in exceptional cases thought of investing his money if he did so at all. He was, moreover, for the most part prodigal in his generosity with all and sundry, for without investment there is little temptation to parsimony. The modern rich man, the Capitalist, is a totally different being. He dresses like everybody else with the dowdy ugliness that Bourgeois civilisation exacts of all classes which it compels to don its machine-made uniform. He takes his pleasures sadly, as if something almost to be ashamed of. His one serious aim and interest in life is “business” and sound investments. Likely enough he is personally abstemious; he may be, perhaps, a social-purity man, a teetotaler, a non-smoker, member of the anti-gambling league. He does not exact unseasonable delicacies at his table, but does not disdain the mutton-chop, the beef-steak, or the cut off the joint. All of us know this particular type of exploiting scoundrel, of virtuous private life, whose soul is in his business, who is absorbed perpetually in the problem of how to cut down wages, who tries to break up unions, to minimise expense by not safe-guarding machinery, and other methods, and who generally exhibits all the steady, plodding habits and business-capacity so much esteemed by the small middle-class mind. He despises the man devoted to pleasure – does this plain-living and hardworking man of business.
This class of man who has his prototype in the English Puritan of the seventeenth century has practically accepted the Ebionitic ideal of the mediaeval sectary in so far as the condemnation of pleasure and luxury is concerned. The “poor man” of old, living in much closer contact with his rich neighbour than is the case nowadays, was made wild by the contrast between the silk, velvet, and cloth of gold of the latter and his own humble homespun; between that neighbour’s peacocks’ heads, well-spiced dishes, and wines flavoured with the essences of Araby and Ind, and his own plain and (possibly, though not necessarily) scanty fare; between the patrician’s palace or the noble’s castle and the peasant’s homestead or the craftsman’s dwelling. Now we have changed all that. The modern Bourgeois has gone far towards realising on one of its sides the ideal of the early Christian and of the mediaeval Christian-Communist sectary, in the dethronement of pleasure and beauty as the end of life. But he has done so in favour of “business” and bald “utility,” and the reduction of all things to a dead level of sordidness. In the matter of clothing the only difference between the rich and poor consists in the snobbery of the top hat, and a more fashionable but not more beautiful cut coat. No one new dresses in richly coloured silks and velvets or in cloth of gold. The modern bourgeois, even if he wanted to, could not. He is himself under the thumb of a public opinion, the creation of his class, which rigorously enacts thaet every one shall dress like everyone else – which ordains that we shall all dress in shoddy uniform of hideous pattern. Bourgeois fashion strains to maintain the ideal of cheap ugliness as far as possible in ordinary life; and on festive occasions, to make quite sure that no chance ray of taste shall creep in, it exacts a special uniform – otherwise the peculiar badge of the waiter and the undertaker. For the rest, while shoddy broadcloth is so cheap, even the beggar need not dress in picturesque rags.
Again, in the matter of architecture, the model lodging-house and the West-end mansion or the suburban villa are about equally ugly. Not only does the modern Bourgeois, unlike the ancient “rich man,” not “clothe himself in purple” or even always in specially fine linen, but he does not necessarily fare sumptuously every day, for if “business” requires it, he is quite prepared to satisfy himself with a hastily-swallowed “stand up” luncheon and a half a pint of “bitter.” He grudges the time if not the money spent in pleasure. His one passion in life, I repeat, is just “business,” which means the extraction of surplus-value from labour in one or other of the varied forms of that art, or the acquisition of profit from one or other of the multi-form operations connected with the shifting of the realised surplus value after extraction, between sections and individuals of the middle and upper classes. He, it is likely enough, will join with you or any one else in aspersions on the scanty survivals of the old life of the “rich man,” on Lord Mayor’s banquets and such like frivolities.
Was it not the Times, the organ of the “City,” of the great gamblers (i.e., business gamblers) of the stock-exchange and high finance, which in lofty moral tone lectured the present King when Prince of Wales on the wickedness of playing Baccarat? This Baccarat business may be regarded as the survival of a time when “dicing” was the daily amusement of the “rich man” and hence when there was no opportunity of covering gambling up under the mantle of “business,” when that “blessed word” itself even had not yet acquired its mystic flavour – hence Baccarat seems unspeakably shocking to an age in which all are turned Puritans because their only serious pleasures in life are the modern forms of profit-grinding. The absurdity of Socialists making a fuss about Baccarat among the haute volée in manifest when we consider that it merely means the shifting about of already extracted and realised surplus-labour among individuals of a wealthy class, and hence is of no conceivable moment to anyone except those immediately concerned in it. [2]
No, it is not the occasional idleness or “pleasures” of the modern capitalist that specially deserve our invective, it’s the daily round of his accursed “industry.” This it is which is the mainstay of the misery in modern society. “It ain’t the ’untin’ as ’torts the ’orse’s ’oofs, it’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer, on the ’ard ’igh road.” The character of the polemic must of necessity logically change with the character of its object. The modern Socialist, unlike the ancient and mediaeval communist, has for his aim the communisation not directly of the product, i.e., of articles of consumption (the latter is of no importance, and will come of itself in good time), but the communisation of the means of production. The ancient and mediaeval communist, who only knew the small handicraft and petite culture modes of producing wealth, naturally did not conceive of the communisation of the means of production, which could not, such as they were in his state of society, be effectively communised. All he thought of, therefore, was the more obvious communisation of the products designed for consumption, hence his particular bête noire was that luxury and idleness on the part of the few which he imagined would be impossible for any were these products equally at the disposal of all.
Now, in the present day with the means at the command of an organised commonwealth for the indefinite production of luxuries (if desired), and the indefinite reduction of the arduousness and duration of daily labour, there is no particular sense in a polemic against ease or luxury as such, neither is there any special point in attacking the capitalist on the ground of his sometimes indulging in leisure and luxuries. He is a fool if he does not. Moreover, as I have just shown, these things are with the modern capitalist not as with the “rich man” of old, the dominating object of his life, but are, as a rule, quite a subordinate matter with him. His main interest centres not so much in the enjoyment of wealth already obtained, as in the processes and methods by which he obtains it, and which constitute his “business.” For example, it is related of the deceased Jay Gould, that when on a holiday tour in Europe, he spent his whole time in the Bourses of the various capitals, pulling off odd twenty thousands at the game of bulls and bears, disdaining altogether the “lust of the eye and the pride of life.” How commonly do we see the spectacle of a man, the manufacturer, the merchant, or the banker, who having made his pile wants to retire, but finds he is miserable and has to go back to business again, because, forsooth, he knows no pleasure like it. This is a phenomenon which may be looked for in vain in any previous state of society.
Talk of vice, forsooth! Why, the present age isn’t in it. Consult a mediaeval menu of the fifteenth century, or read your Petronius for a description of a Roman “rich man” banquet, and say if the city corporation dinner (which we suppose may be taken as the high water-mark of modern gluttony) is a patch upon it! Then as to drinking, what have we to show nowadays in the way of “cups” to compare even with the after-dinner orgies of the Squire Westerns of the eighteenth century, not to go farther back. Take adultery again. All the adultery and sexual vice of the wealthy classes to day are summed up in a few miserable aristocratic divorce suits which swell to the proportions of causes célèbres because they are the best things of the kind modern society has to offer! But for real sexual vice in cultivated luxuriance commend us to the noble palaces of Renaissance Italy, to the court of Alexander of the Borgias, the Sforzas, and the Medicis, or at the very least to the entourage of Charles II. Once more, in place of the perennial “dicing” of the “rich man” of old we have nowadays to make as much as possible out of a paltry Tranby Croft scandal. And so on with the rest of the “deadly” seven which went to make the staple of the life-interest of men of wealth in earlier ages. No, we must admit that though they undoubtedly exist still, the deadly sins are in a parlous way, viewed in comparison with former times.
The vices of the noble and ecclesiastic contributed to the fall of the feudal system; it will be the virtues of the bourgeois which will contribute to the fall of the Capitalist system. It’s not his idleness, it’s his industry, it’s not his “pleasure” for which probably he cares very little; it’s his business, for which he undoubtedly cares very much. This is the thing that defiles the modern man. Out of “business” come Panama scandals, Liberator swindles, Southern Railway conventions, and not out of pleasure. The pride of the “rich man” of old was in being a “gentleman,” i.e., in having no occupation and living for amusement on money he had not himself made; the pride of the rich man of to-day shows itself in pretending to be living for business and on his earnings, or on wealth which he has himself acquired even when he has not done so. Thus the supremacy of the Bourgeois has insensibly and gradually but materially modified our whole views of life. The “backwash” of the old aristocratic “gentleman-at-large” sentiment extended even some way into the nineteenth century, and I believe even still lingers on in Ireland and other industrially-backward countries.
To me it seems inexpressibly feeble to hear a man ranting against the poor survivals into modern times of the luxury and even vices of the “rich man” of old, which no class or body of persons is concerned seriously to defend nowadays – when the real enemy lies in quite another direction. “It ain’t the ’untin’” It’s not in a high life adultery. It’s not in an occasional orgy. It’s not in Tranby Croft and Baccarat that the real class-vileness of the Bourgeois lies. “It’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer.” It’s in the factory office, it’s in the counting-house, it’s on the Stock Exchange that we have to seek it. The very qualities which gave the Bourgeois his strength in his fight with Feudalism, absolutist Monarchy, and the old Clericalism, will doubtless in time work out the contradiction of their own results, and prove themselves the instruments of his downfall. They have helped him to develop modern industry and commerce to a point at which he can no longer control them. The cant and hypocrisy this small-middle-class morality engendered having been made the nominal standard for all human life will help the destruction of the society of which it is the outcome.
I have endeavoured to show the inappropriateness of the class of polemic which attacks aldermen or others for eating turtle-soup or drinking champagne, or doing other things of this nature, without formulating some theory as to why they should not. To my thinking, as already said, if these good things are within his reach, the man, whoever he be, is a fool who doesn’t consume them. It may fairly be doubted if many of those who in popular harangues deprecate the practice, would, if it came to the point, themselves be such fools. In fact, it seems to me that the Bourgeois who devotes himself to pleasure and consuming wealth nowadays is often less objectionable and certainly more rational than the one whose whole soul, from youthful manhood to the grave, from early morn to dewy eve, is wrapt up in profit-grinding or what he calls “business.” The way I should put the matter from a Socialist point of view would be thus: – Ye Bourgeois (i.e. some of you), eat turtle-soup and drink champagne, ye do well, and what we propose to do is to educate the proletariat into such a taste for turtle-soup and champagne or other things equally commendable, that they shall find life intolerable until they are in a position to do the same! As it is, they are for the most part well content to eat inferior “cagmag” and to drink cheap and nasty beer and spirits, or, if teetotalers, London water or some other vile temperance decoction. Should they once acquire the taste for refinement in eating, drinking and amusement, the present system of society will very soon go by the board.
The foolish because inaccurate attacks on the modern wealthy classes as specially vicious (in the conventional sense) are also to be deprecated. In the first place it might be difficult to prove that mutatis mutandis the “seven deadlies” were better represented among them than among the working classes. But, even if this were the case, the fact remains as already shown, that as against the wealthy classes of former times, the modern capitalist is in the conventional petit bourgeois sense, a moral being. It is by the Puritanical standard the Bourgeois has himself set up, in some things doubtless justly, in others with as little doubt unjustly, and outward conformity to which he enacts as the condition of his respectability, that the lapses which sometimes come to light are judged – and judged by all classes. The question Socialists have to ask the defenders of the present system is: What has all this increased sobriety of life, whether it takes the unimpeachable form of aversion to conventional vice, or the less unimpeachable one of the denunciation of pleasure and luxury and the cultivation of sordidness in general – what has it all done for mankind? Is the Bourgeois world, in which we are all “puritans,” despising pleasure as frivolous and waste of time, all thrifty and industrious or pretending to be so, is it intrinsically better and happier than (say) the Classical world, the Feudal world, or the Renaissance world? Can any one assert in view of the modern factory hell, the East end slum, the struggle at the Dockyard gates, the yearly increasing army of the starving unemployed, that there is less human misery in our world than in its predecessors. The sordid, industrious, profit-grinding shopkeeper, merchant, manufacturer, financier, who “scorns delights and lives laborious days,” is he really a more estimable man than the gay Florentine of the fifteenth century? If so I fail to see why, though we have been taught to believe so.
The Socialist who wastes his powder and shot on unessential survivals reminds me of the virulence of that distinguished novelist, Mr. Hall Caine, against those relics of the past, the Sultan and the Paellas of Morocco. Mr. Hall Caine, in his novel The Scapegoat, in which he declaims against the surviving old-world oppression of the Pachas or local Governors of Morocco, speaks complacently of a plot to get the late Sultan Abd-erRahman and his Pachas into a palace to a banquet and afterwards on a given signal to lock the doors and fire the building, so that they all might be roasted alive. To attack a more than half-dead system surviving in an obscure country, which no one cares to defend, is cheap but scarcely heroic. What would Mr. Hall Caine say to a proposal – not treacherously to burn alive, we set aside such horrors as that – but painlessly to blow up or electrocute some of the bulwarks of modern aggressive Capitalism, say, for instance Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the Directors of the British South Africa Company? [3] Would the bare suggestion not evoke in him a shudder of horror throughout his whole frame? It is easy to win the applause of the modern market-hunter by scathing attacks on an old-fashioned despotism which stands in his way. But it is not so pleasant to court unpopularity with the same person by denouncing in similar terms unprovoked and cowardly raids on Matabeleland and elsewhere, with their accompanying treachery, slaughter and misery; by attacking, in other word, the real living, visible evils of the present day, by which the very man who is loudest in howling at the decayed despotisms of Morocco hopes to make money and strengthen his class-position. Now I maintain that the Socialist who devotes energy to blazing away at the perfectly immaterial practices of some rich man, even though vicious in themselves, is doing much the same thing unconsciously and without ulterior object (beyond perhaps that of winning a momentary cheer from his audience) as Mr. Hall Caine has done in his novel, though in his case it may be with the definite intention of currying favour with those to whom the existence of the ancient system of government in Morocco is inconvenient. No man wants to defend the crimes of oppressive Pachas; and no one wants to defend the evil vices of the wealthy. But to dissipate your onslaught on vital ills by fulminating against mere survivals or symptoms, is at least tantamount to drawing a red-herring across the track of the quarry of progress.
It remains to say a few words on the probable future of leisure, ease, luxury, and finally what is conventionally tensed “vice” under Socialism. The attack upon luxury as such even at present I hold to be pointless unless it can be shown that luxury among the well-to-do classes directly enhances the misery of the working classes. In a Socialistic state, the question of luxury is one of degree merely and not of kind. When all will equally participate in the advantages gained by social labour it is for society collectively to decide the amount of labour to be expended in the production of luxuries after having defined what may be deemed to constitute luxuries. Assuredly much that to the Proletarian of today would be the most extravagant luxury will under a reasonable state of society be viewed as necessary to a decent life. As to undoubted luxuries (e.g., champagne and turtle-soup), Whether they will be freely produced or eschewed altogether, it is impossible to say. Probably in a matter of this kind different Socialised communities will hold different views, and act accordingly. In the present day when a limited portion of the population has the monopoly of the means of production and distribution, and when the whole social system is based upon this monopoly, whether the well-to-do classes spend their unearned increment on luxuries, or whether they “invest” it, is a matter of indifference, speaking. economically, to the working classes. Whether the “surplus value” goes in payment of wages for the production of champagne and turtle or of railways that are not wanted, must be a matter of absolute economic indifference to the wage-earners collectively.
There is no special virtue, as such, in converting money into constant capital or directly even into variable capital (i.e., the payment of wages), rather than into articles of consumption, since the consumption itself, it cannot be denied, has indirectly the effect of employing labour. This I know is an old saying, but it is none the less true in spite of the Manchester economists. I am now speaking, of course, solely from the standpoint of Capitalist society. In a Socialist society the matter would be very simple, the question being decided in each particular case as it arose. The basis of the decision must be whether the strength of the social desire for the particular luxury outweighed the expenditure of time and social labour in its production. There are many things an average well-to-do man has now, and is glad enough to have since they are there, but which, nevertheless, he would not sacrifice the time or labour necessary to their production to obtain if they were not there, in other words, which he could easily do without. And although under a properly-organised system of social production, the time and labour required for the creation of all forms of wealth would be reduced to a minimum, yet the principle of measurement of the relative amount of time and labour as against the amount of the enjoyment derived from the consumption of its product, would, I take it, have to be applied in some form or shape, in order to determine the reasonable limits of the production of luxuries. It is, in fact, the only rational standard that can be applied at all. There is no intrinsic virtue in abstinence from the consumption of champagne and turtle, and under Socialism it will be for the majority, either simple or proportional, of the community, to decide whether it prefers to set aside a certain amount of time and labour for their production rather than not have them, or to set aside the turtle and champagne rather than not have the time and labour for other purposes. Probably, as above said, the decision would not be uniform throughout the Socialised world.
Now as to actual vice. Will vice disappear under Socialism or will it be modified? It depends, I take it, on what we mean by vice. By vice I understand the indulgence in excess of the average man of any natural appetite or its indulgence in bizarre forms. If we mean sensuality, drunkenness, and gambling, for example, in the forms in which we see them to-day and know them in the past, then decidedly vice must disappear under altered conditions. But for all this I see no reason why we should all turn social purists, teetotalers, or even necessarily forswear the amusement of gambling altogether. Under Socialism the mercenary element in sexual relations must necessarily disappear, and with it the essential degradation connected therewith. All else resolves itself into a matter of individual taste. That the consumption of alcohol even in excess of the average would be less harmful both to the individual and less of a social nuisance in a society where all alcoholic beverages like everything else were not produced for profit but for use, is obvious. One chief cause of the present injurious effects of alcohol is admittedly its inferior quality, and the poisonous ingredients of its adulteration. Moreover with a fair average of mental culture throughout society, the effect of alcohol on the brain will be so modified that at least its socially unpleasant results will disappear. How often do we not see a rough, ignorant labourer get noisy, and even “drunk and disorderly” on a dram of whisky that would scarce warm the inside of a reasonably cultured man. Want of cerebral development often has quite as much to do with liquor “getting into the head” as the amount consumed. Again, as to gambling. The passion for watching the play of chances is a very ancient quasi-animal appetite, and most of us have it in one or other of its forms. As exhibited in the form of gambling, when it is connected with the idea of gain it might be supposed it would be impossible in a communistic society. Yet even here there are circumstances in which such a thing is conceivable. For instance, in case of a scarcity-supply of any article (say of a rare vintage wine), it would be surely possible that an allotment might be staked on an even chance against another similar allotment (on the principle of double or nothing) or against some other scarcity-value.
Taking the question of vice in general, i.e., of the excess of some special appetite or aberration in its manifestation, it is noteworthy that most men of strong character have been possessed of some vice, and that where they have had no vice, in the conventional sense, an unscrupulous greed or ambition has taken its place. Dehumanised monsters, such as Calvin, Robespierre, or Torquemada, can scarcely develop out of men who have a safety-valve in some reasonable human vice. The advantage in strongly-marked individualities of a dash or seasoning of vice (in the conventional sense) has not been the subject of sufficient study. It seldom seems to occur to any one that the enforcement of a dead uniformity in the measure of indulgence of the animal and quasi-animal appetites is as absurd as it is in other things.
The upshot and true explanation of the current opprobrium attaching to ease, luxury, and even some manifestations of vice, is this:- It is the offspring of the reaction of Capitalism against Feudalism, i.e., not necessarily against the aristocratic life in particular, but against the whole life created by feudal or non-capitalistic society. Ease, luxury, and vice, which were pre-eminently the offspring either of an ancient tax-gathering, slave-holding, and non-industrial state, or of a developed mediaeval community, were abhorrent to the rising middle-classes. The embryonic proletariat, still umbilically attached to the Bourgeoisie, especially the small Bourgeoisie, shared the same antipathies and aspirations as the latter – and even after having, at least in a measure, attained to an independent class-consciousness of its own, the old leaven still clings to it and it applauds the moral catch-words of the class which on other issues it combats. Of one thing we may be perfectly certain. The Bourgeois will never place on his moral “index” any pursuit or course of action which is in any way essential to the system by which he profits. Before he condemns anything as immoral he will take good care that in so doing he is not helping to impede the working of that Capitalist system in which he lives and moves and has his being.
Those who remember the American Civil War will recall how divided was Bourgeois public opinion on the subject of slavery, for the most part siding with the Southern State slave-owners. At that time it was not quite clear that slavery was not merely non-essential to the cotton interest, but was actually a stumbling block in the way of an industrial and commercial expansion in general. Now with one consent middle-class public opinion from top to bottom of the scale fulminates against the bare suggestion of slavery under that name and in its old forms, even in communities like those of Central Africa, where it is undoubtedly less hurtful to the natives than the (so-called) “free” competition of Capitalism would be. Again, the Bourgeoisie is all agog for abolishing public gambling tables, lotteries, and even horse-racing, but no one has yet proposed the closing of the Stock Exchange. The whole system of Capitalism is one great gamble in which oftentimes a man’s whole existence is metaphorically placed upon the tables. What business, what investment is there nowadays to be found not involving that element of risk which is of the essence of gambling? That is all right and as it should be. This is business. To make up for it, your smug Bourgeois piously denounces all gambling that takes the form of a mere occasional pastime, the latter of course, in no way affecting the working of the capitalist system as such. This is pleasure and vicious, or at least frivolous, only good for men who have nothing better to do, just as if the Bourgeois who says so were himself doing anything intrinsically better.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” I say, beware of the Bourgeois when with the severe countenance and mien of righteous indignation he preaches morality to you! Turn your back on his preachings. Follow the advice of Pilate’s wife, O Socialists, and “have naught to do with this just man,” even when he seems to make for your side, since you may be sure there is something in him more than meets the eye or ear! But look at the question (whatever it may be) fairly and squarely in the face and decide it on its merits, unswayed by middle class public opinion and its press, and uninfluenced, as far as possible, by your own prepossessions, derived as they are from dead or dying social conditions.
1. It is true that asceticism has also a speculative or metaphysical basis with which I have elsewhere dealt, i.e., one founded on a particular theory of the universe, and the two have worked into each other’s hands. But we are here concerned with the one mentioned in the text, which is the sole explanation of its attraction for the down-trodden and oppressed among mankind.
2. Our Fabian friends in a manifesto (issued by them the same year as the Baccarat scandal), whose stock of wits was apparently running low at the time, had to fall back upon some cheap conventicle moralising on the subject, in the course of which they perpetrated in their eagerness an economical lapsus. They spoke of the shuffling of money in gambling as the way in which the upper classes “spend their money” forgetting that “spending” means the exchange of money for articles of consumption. Shaw’s name was appended to this production, which surprised me as I should never have thought him capable of such very cheap playing to the gallery, and the chapel gallery too!
3. Written in 1896.
Last updated on 13.1.2006