Shaw, G B on Socialism for upper classes, Dec 23, 8:7;
12/23/4 The ancient Greeks had an excellent saying: ‘First acquire an independent income and then practice virtue.’ They thought that you could not be virtuous or an honest man unless one belonged to the upper classes. Virtue, honest, honor, health, happiness all required the possession of money before one could practice them. (The audience laughed) I don’t see why that perfectly true statement should be regarded as the subject for laughter. I should think the fact that most people have not got money enough to enable them to practice these virtues ought to be a matter rather for wailing and gnashing of teeth.
With some persons it is only necessary that I open my mouth in order to make them laugh. There is nothing I dislike more than being laughed at, and as I am serious in all I say I appeal to you not to laugh at me anymore.
Character is not a thing independent of money. Of course, people are extremely happy and honest on small incomes, but its perfectly true, all things being equal, a person cannot e as happy and as honest without a sufficient income as he could be with it. To prove that possession of money is of no use at all: the first thing a rich man discovers on coming into the possession of his money is that one half of the population is organized in a tremendous conspiracy to get as much as possible of it out of him, done chiefly by compelling him, at the dictates of fashion, to buy things which he didn’t want. Its useless for the individual possessor of wealth to attempt by ignoring fashion to lead a simple life. Nothing really complicates life so much as to do things which other people do not do.
The simplest life that could be lived is precisely the sort of life that is lived by people around him. To attempt to assert individuality by refusing to eat what they eat and wear would land him in a life far more cumbersome and expensive. The moral: if they thought each could get into his own corner and save his soul by his own exertion they would soon find they were greatly mistaken.
The reason why Socialists had been compelled to set themselves against Christianity, although the professed aims of both were the same, was that they had discovered that each individual could not work out his or her salvation, as Christianity declared, by personal righteousness. No one could do any good in this world unless he did it socially with his fellows and on a large scale. For instance, if they wanted to be clean in London there was no use simply soaping themselves, for they would be dirty again in five minutes; they could only be clean by making London clean and London could be clean only by common social action.
The only remedy for social evils was the crude and simple one of equality. Some people argue that it is impossible for men to be equal, as some were five feet and other six feet. Such people should not be argued with; they should be taken out into the back garden and buried. That’s the only way to treat people who thought the mental and physical equality was the same thing as legal, political, and economic equality. There were an immense number of people livening in the West End of London who ought to be guillotined. There should be a board like the IRS before which rich people should be compelled to appear to prove that they earned their incomes, and if it could be proved against anyone that he took money he didn’t earn he would be killed.
The thing to do was to establish a minimum of income, and compel everyone to work for it. That minimum income should be sufficient to make a man a decent member of society and once it was established, it would be quite right to regard it as a crime for a man not to be a decent member of society. If anyone wanted an income above the fixed minimum there would be no harm in letting him have it provided he worked hard for it. But the minimum income in the thing and I believe it is going to play a great part in the economic movement of the future.