Sometime during
the evening of a long day late in the summer of 1923, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950),
renowned wit and agent provocateur for Fabian socialism, had almost finished
entertaining himself and other members of a party assembled at a house in
Chelsea. Having been there for about an
hour, Shaw was preparing to take his leave when the arrival of Gilbert Keith
Chesterton (1874-1936) was announced.
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| Hesketh Pearson |
Whether
Chesterton was expected is a question probably no one (least of all Chesterton)
was prepared to answer. It made no
difference. At the prospect of a clash
between England’s most famous — or at least most popular — literary figures,
the group gathered ’round like idlers in the street anticipating a cat and dog
fight, as actor, director, and writer Edward Hesketh Gibbons Pearson (1887-1964), who was present, described
it.
Pearson,
realizing what he later called his “wildest dream” was about to be fulfilled,
took out a notebook and pencil, and almost without thinking recorded the entire
ten-minute conversation. From the first
words out of Shaw’s mouth what followed was quintessential Chesterton and Shaw
—
“Have you any
adequate excuse to make us for not being drunk?” (Louis Biancolli, ed., The Book of
Great Conversations. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1948, 501.)
Despite Shaw’s
opening salvo and although the informal debate was published in the September
1923 issue of The Adelphi magazine of
London (1923-1955) as “breaking a lance over the absorption of alcohol,” the
talk really had nothing to do with imbibing intoxicants. That was just Shaw’s way of trying to throw
Chesterton off-balance and seize the high ground to defend himself against an
opponent who consistently frustrated him by refusing to attack.
 |
| Fabius the Delayer |
A master of
paradox in thought, word, and deed, Chesterton’s refusal to be drawn into any
fight over questionable specifics when he knew himself to be armed only with
irrefutable generalities deftly turned the tables on Shaw. The Fabian Society, of which Shaw was the
principal spokesman, took its name from Quintus
Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator, “the Delayer,” a Roman general
during the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) who by avoiding battle nearly
defeated the Carthaginian Hannibal Barca.
Consistent with
their emblem of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the strategy of the Fabian
Society is to duplicate the Delayer’s tactics, work slowly, and avoid open
action until success is clearly within their grasp. Their stated goal is to infiltrate
organizations and turn them socialist without (if possible) using the term
socialism or letting people realize that what they have been led to accept and
even champion is socialist.
 |
| G.K. Chesterton |
That evening,
however, it quickly became evident, whatever verbal lures he tossed out in his
efforts to bring Chesterton to ground, Shaw was concerned with one thing. That was to force Chesterton either to accept
socialism openly or admit that he had always done so secretly; that what
Chesterton called “distributism” was simply a form of Fabian socialism. Why continue to deny reality when everyone
who was anyone had already agreed that socialism is the wave of the future, and
the only way civilization could go?
This was not
because Shaw believed that socialism or anything else is true. No, it was because Shaw thought socialism is a
practical means to achieve what he believed both men desired: the material
uplift of society, with special emphasis on the betterment of the poor.
In Shaw’s opinion,
distributism was much too vague and romantic to compete with socialism. A policy of widely distributed private
property was simply inadequate to meet the needs of a modern economy,
especially when one added in the preference for small, family-owned farms and
artisan businesses.
 |
| G.B. Shaw |
Of course, part
of Shaw’s difficulty might have been that he did not understand property, of
which there are two essential aspects.
There is the right to be an owner inherent in human nature itself and
that in part defines what it means to be human, the right to property. This necessarily
includes the power to control what is owned and to “enjoy the fruits” (use or
usufruct), e.g., the right to use
one’s things (capital) to produce marketable goods and services and receive the
income generated. This right is absolute
and inalienable.
Then there are
the rights of ownership, the rights of
property. These are necessarily limited,
being socially defined and delineating specifically how an owner may use what
is owned and even in some circumstances what may be owned. In general, no one may exercise ownership in
any way that harms the owner, other people or groups, or the common good as a
whole.
Added to Shaw’s
urgency that evening was something he seemed to take as a personal insult:
Chesterton’s recent conversion to Catholicism.
This was intolerable — to Shaw — as the Catholic Church was the only
institution of which either Shaw or Chesterton were aware that was managing to
hold out against both capitalism and socialism and stand up for reason and
common sense in the world.
 |
| Pondering whiskey. |
Not receiving an
answer that satisfied him, i.e., something
that he could twist into an admission of guilt from which to launch an attack
to promote socialism, Shaw repeated his demand:
“You will please
tell us why you are sober.” (Ibid.)
Using alcohol as
a metaphor that the nondrinking Shaw failed to grasp, Chesterton replied that
it was impossible for him to answer Shaw’s question. Shaw the disciplined and abstemious teetotaler
had no common ground with Chesterton the self-indulgent and dissipated toper.
In Chesterton’s
opinion, Shaw was locked into a deep-worn rut of atheism, vegetarianism,
abstinence, and socialism, what Chesterton, to Shaw’s irritation, insisted on
calling Puritan prudery. As a result,
Shaw — according to Chesterton — was “constitutionally incapable of
understanding the Catholic standpoint” (ibid., 504), which was, so
Chesterton declared, his own standpoint.
 |
| Last official debate. |
To Shaw,
Catholicism was narrow and bigoted because it refused to admit socialism not
merely as a viable alternative, but as the only possible way to meet people’s
material needs. To Chesterton, it was
Shaw and the socialists who were narrow and bigoted because they could see
nothing beyond socialism.
Failing in his
initial attempt to get under Chesterton’s skin, Shaw launched into a disjointed
speech. He hurled one increasingly
ridiculous accusation after another in Chesterton’s face in an effort to goad
him into responding with something specific that he could attack. Thwarted, Shaw finally took refuge in the most
ludicrous charge of all, that Chesterton was a liar and a fraud —
I asked you just now why you
weren’t drunk. The reason I did this was
because in all your writings you glorify inebriation to such an extent that
anyone who doesn’t know you must assume that you spend the whole of your time
in staggering from pub to pub and scribbling your books and articles against
the various lamp-posts en route. I, of
course, know it’s all bunkum. I know
that everything you say is bunkum, though a fair amount of it is inspired
bunkum. I realize that the only reason
you ever go near a pub is to placate your own admirers, who may have come from
Kamchatka in order to see you and who would be scandalized almost to the point
of suicide if you didn’t stand up and soak your quart like a man. (Ibid.,
503.)
At this point
Chesterton may have smiled infuriatingly at Shaw, for he realized he had won
the debate — or, rather, that Shaw had lost it.
Chesterton knew the utter futility of trying to argue with someone who
either disagrees on basic principles or simply rejects absolutes altogether.
That, however,
was not the end of the matter, as we will see in the next posting on this
subject . . .
#30#