Once upon a time
there were two people who liked to argue with each other. There is nothing wrong with that, except one
of them was a socialist and inclined to take any unfair advantage to win an
argument. The other (who was not a
socialist) didn’t care about winning the argument as long as he persuaded
others of the truth or reasonableness of his position. Naturally enough, the two managed to argue
for nearly twenty years without the one actually winning the argument, or the
other persuading him of anything.
 |
| G.K. Chesterton |
We refer, of course,
to George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the two “metaphysical
jesters,” as one biographer termed them.
Shaw, known for his espousal of socialism (the abolition of private
property), took every opportunity to tilt at the presumed windmill of Chesterton’s
distributism (a policy of small distributed property).
What seems to
have been the first debate between the two on the subject took place on November
18, 1908. G.K.’s brother Cecil Edward Chesterton
was a co-panelist and Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was in the chair, by
coincidence the same place he held in the final debate between the two in
1927. During the debate Chesterton declared,
Socialists do propose, however
moderate and however gentle their measures, to abolish any direct ownership of
land. But owning land is an idea of
exactly the same sort to my mind as the idea of a religious symbol. . . . You
cannot find any poem, tradition, legend, or fairy tale that does not assume it
as natural that a man should own a piece of land. That particular thing I ask you to assume for
the sake of argument — the sense of owning your back garden, of actually owning
it. That thing is, it is fairly true to
say, general in the literature and in the tradition of mankind.
 |
| G.B. Shaw |
At this point we should note that we took
this from an incomplete record of the debate of November 18, 1908, published in
the “Christian socialist” magazine, The
New Age of March 18, 1909. It was
quoted in Daniel H. Strait, “‘Fighting Friends’: The Chesterton-Shaw Debates,” Shaw, Vol. 23 (2003), 50, where we came
across it.
Unfortunately,
having stated a specific application (ownership of a back garden) of a
principle (the natural right to be an owner), Chesterton was now at the mercy
of the sort of tactic at which Shaw excelled, viz., drawing attention away from the fact that he himself had made
no reasoned defense of socialism. The
best way to do this was to point out any flaws, real or imagined, in the
particular application cited by his opponent, and completely ignore the
principle behind the application.
Little
intelligence and minimal cunning are needed to identify flaws and make the imperfect
applications of principles, not the perfect principles behind the imperfect applications,
the point of contention. Realizing this,
even if only unconsciously, socialists like Shaw carefully avoid discussion of
fundamental principles and insist on mistaking applications of principles for
the principles themselves.
 |
| Hilaire Belloc |
As a side note (and
possibly with Shaw in mind), what Chesterton later characterized as unfair
argument involves searching for flaws in some application of a principle
espoused by the opponents, however immaterial or irrelevant, and then sneering
at it. “[I]t is generally the man who is
not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.
That is why, in recent literature, there has been so little argument and
so much sneering.” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox”. New
York: Images Books, 1956, 126.)
Nor did Shaw
waste any time in doing so. As he more
or less cleverly twisted Chesterton’s words,
With reference to Mr.
Chesterton’s remarks re [sic] a man
not possessing a back garden under Socialism, I contend that if Socialism is
established in this country he will have a back garden. I will pledge my honour that in the coming
Socialist State Mr. Chesterton shall have his own garden. Personally, I own six back gardens, but
prefer to live where there is only an area. (Strait, “Fighting Friends,” op. cit., 51.)
Shaw’s dishonesty
is readily apparent. He took
Chesterton’s example, viz., owning a
“back garden,” and instantly declared it to be the principle with which
Chesterton was concerned. Chesterton,
however, had clearly framed owning a back garden as a symbol of land ownership, not the principle itself.
 |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
Shaw’s response
avoided the real issue, the natural right to own land (or anything else) and to
control it and enjoy the income thereof within the parameters of the common
good. Instead, Shaw reassured Chesterton
that under socialism he would have the back garden Shaw implied Chesterton had
elevated to the status of absolute principle.
Despite the
obvious nature of Shaw’s rather shabby debating trick, he had come out the
winner in the eyes of the audience. He
had redirected a debate on the importance of private property per se, to a condescending reassurance
that no one would interfere with Chesterton’s selfish desire to have a back
garden. The point that Chesterton had
tried to make regarding the personal empowerment that necessarily accompanies
direct ownership had been completely nullified.
After being
bested (or so popular opinion supposed) by Shaw a couple of times in this way,
Chesterton figured out how to deal with the Irascible One. He would state his principle(s) in terms as
broad as possible, leaving Shaw with nothing specific to attack except
Chesterton himself.
 |
| Hesketh Pearson |
Chesterton being
congenitally jovial and refusing to quarrel, this left Shaw with nothing with
which to attack, except to complain that Chesterton was avoiding quarreling and
was therefore a liar and a coward. Typically,
Shaw would make a few more sallies in as insulting a manner as possible,
Chesterton would refuse to rise to the bait, and Shaw would become enraged to
the point of incoherence.
For example, take
the ending to an informal debate that took place in the summer of 1923 soon
after Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism (which enraged Shaw, as most
everything tended to do. . . .). As
recorded by Hesketh Pearson who was by chance present (published in the
September 1923 issue of The Adelphi
magazine of London (1923-1955), and later in Louis Biancolli, ed., The Book of
Great Conversations. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1948), Shaw accused Chesterton of contradicting himself,
of trying to be two halves of a whole at one and the same time —
You are just like Don Quixote;
and though your lunacy on some occasions makes his seem pale by comparison, you
yet contrive in some mysterious manner to be your own Sancho Panza.
Chesterton
amiably agreed, treating it as a compliment.
As he responded, further infuriating Shaw,
 |
| "Chesterton gives me a headache and he won't fight!" |
Exactly; and anybody but you
could see that the combination of these two extremes forms the Catholic
standpoint. You might almost have been
quoting me when you said that the Catholic standpoint is that there is no
standpoint. . . . The Catholic is not so pragmatical as the atheist or the
Puritan. His Faith is built on Belief,
not on Knowledge — falsely so-called. He
is consequently able to appreciate and sympathize with every form of human
activity. He takes the whole world to
his heart.
Having brought
Shaw very nicely to the boil, Chesterton emphasized that unlike socialists and
other fantastic creatures, “We Catholics do not pretend to a knowledge we have
not got. . . . [Y]ou can hardly expect us to accept your verdict . . . that man
was not made to enjoy himself but to read Fabian tracts and listen to
University Extension lectures.”
Shaw, however,
refused to see the point, or at least pretended he did not — although the
latter is unlikely. Having Shaw hooked
and landed, Chesterton triumphantly proceeded to gaff him (those are fishing metaphors,
if you care). He agreed with Shaw that
he was not making sense, knowing full well he was making perfect sense if Shaw
could only have dropped his prejudices and looked beyond his limited, materialistic
worldview.
Having been tried
past endurance, Shaw accused Chesterton of wanting to have his cake and eat it,
too, attacking an opponent and running away from him at the same time. As he fulminated, “I see. Heads you win, tails he loses, all the way.”
Chesterton: Precisely.
Shaw: Thank you. I am wasting my time. Good evening.
(Rapid exit of Shaw.)
#30#
