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Socialism and international relations: Bernard Shaw's reflections on war and peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Gareth Griffith
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Extract

Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) is usually thought of as a playwright: author of such works as St. Joan and Major Barbara; winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. What is often overlooked is that he first achieved prominence in public life as a leading member of the Fabian Society, advocating a piecemeal, reformist, evolutionary brand of socialism which he considered more appropriate to the British political tradition than revolutionary Marxism. The Fabian Society—largely through the work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb—is often credited with having played a crucial part in the formation of the welfare state, and more generally it is looked upon as the major source of new ideas and policies in the British Labour Movement. Shaw served on the Society's executive committee for over two decades, acting as resident propagandist and original thinker, often tackling neglected themes. It was in this way that he developed an interest in international relations. He eventually resigned from the executive in 1911, seeking inter alia greater freedom to express his views on world events. His thoughts on the Great War, therefore, cannot be read as statements of Fabian doctrine in any strict sense. Nevertheless, his association with the Society remained close enough for those thoughts to be seen as belonging to the broadly Fabian school of social democracy. This, in essence, was the intellectual context within which he operated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 253 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1984

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References

1. ‘Common Sense About the War’ was first published as a special supplement to The New Statesman on 14 November 1914.Google Scholar

2. Shaw, G. B., What I Really Wrote About the War (London, 1931), pp. 1–7.Google Scholar

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6. Nairn, T., The Left Against Europe? (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 49.Google Scholar Nairn argues that the Labour Party always tried to nationalize class politics, and that ‘Labourism is really the history of this ambiguity’—the attempt to mediate between class and nation.

7. For an exposition of Wight's views see Bull, H., ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’, British Journal of International Studies, ii (1976).Google Scholar

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10. Laurence, Dan H. (ed.), Platform and Pulpit (London, 1962), p. 100.Google Scholar

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12. Ibid., p. 23.

14. Swartz, M., The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics During the First World War. (Oxford, 1971), p. 148.Google Scholar This is not to over-simplify working class reaction to the war, and certainly not to underestimate the deepening divisions within popular opinion in the light of the massive casualties suffered after 1916, as well as in relation to the upheavals in Russia in 1917. But such developments neither affected the validity of Shaw's argument at the outbreak of war, nor the reality of widespread opposition to the anti–war dissenters. Recurring mob violence at pacifist meetings is clear evidence of such opposition. Indeed, despite the horror of modern warfare, pacifism remained a minority viewpoint characteristic of middle class idealism.

14. Shaw, G. B., Draft Manifesto, submitted to the International Socialist Bureau, 3 September 1915, p. 5.Google Scholar

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21. Ibid., p. 374.

22. Ibid., p. 94.

23. Ibid., p. 307.

24. Osgood and Tucker, Force, Order, and Justice, op. cit., p. 88.

25. Shaw, G. B., ‘More Common Sense About the War’, Shaw Papers, B.M. 50669B, ff. 114.Google Scholar This document, written in 1915, was originally intended as a supplement to The New Statesman, but was considered by the editors to be too extreme and controversial.

26. Shaw, G. B., ‘The Perils of Potsdam’, The Daily News and Leader, 11 August 1914, p. 4.Google Scholar

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30. Waltz, K. N., Man, the State and War (New York, 1951), p. 10.Google Scholar

31. Winter, J. M., Socialism and the Challenge of War (London, 1974), pp. 184–233.Google Scholar Winter notes Webb's propensity to turn essentially moral questions into purely technical ones.

32. Shaw, G. B., ‘Discipline in the Services’, The Saturday Review, 2 October 1897, p. 369.Google Scholar

33. Shaw quoted in Russell, B., The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London, 1975), p. 289.Google Scholar

34. Shaw, , Heartbreak House, op. cit., p. 193.Google Scholar He described the play as ‘a recruiting poster in disguise’, although it was never employed as such by the War Office.

35. Shaw, ‘Fabianism and the War’, Al/1, ff.57.

36. Laurence, , Platform and Pulpit, op. cit., p. 109.Google Scholar

37. Shaw, G. B., Irish Nationalism and Labour Internationalism (London, 1920), p. 6.Google Scholar

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41. Laurence, , Platform and Pulpit, op. cit., p. 107.Google Scholar Significantly, no mention was made of the African or Arab worlds.

42. There was much confusion on this point in Shaw's work. At times, in his writings on political economy for example, he suggested that the self-sufficient state was the ideal unit in world politics, stating that ‘foreign trade is an evil thing in itself.’ Elsewhere, however, as in ‘The Last Spring of the Old Lion’ (The War, pp. 114–19), he seemed convinced that the nation state was outmoded, due to be replaced by a broader association founded on the recognition of our common humanity.

43. Shaw was slow to respond to the implications of the Bolshevik Revolution for internationa l politics. Only in the 1930s and in relation to his personal regard for Stalin did he begin to write of the Soviet Union as ‘the mainstay of peace in Europe’, although even then he retained considerable faith in the abilities of fascist and capitalist statesmen to avoid war. His declining powers are evident in ‘Uncommon Sense About the War’, The New Statesman, 7 October 1939.Google Scholar

44. Shaw, G. B., Are We Heading for War? (London, 1934).Google Scholar

45. In 1935 he supported Fascist Italy's war in Abyssinia on this basis.

46. Thomas Nagel quoted in Walzer, M., Just and Unjust Wars (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 326.Google Scholar