In the
previous posting on this subject, we left G.K. Chesterton smiling benignly
down on an infuriated George Bernard Shaw.
Clearly Chesterton knew exactly what buttons to push to bring Shaw to a
rapid boil in the shortest period of time.
The fact was that Chesterton had figured out how to handle an argument
with Shaw: refuse to argue except on principle.
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| G.K. Chesterton |
Had Chesterton
allowed Shaw to draw him into a discussion on any specific point before having
agreed on fundamental principles (the one thing Shaw refused to do), he would
have fallen into the trap Shaw laid for him with his demand to know why
Chesterton was not drunk. Having
experienced Shaw’s tactics early in their acquaintance, Chesterton knew what to
expect. He easily sidestepped it,
putting Shaw on the defensive.
For this, Shaw
had only himself to blame. He had tipped
his hand to Chesterton from the very beginning of their relationship. Shaw never varied his tactics, even after his
opponents had figured them out.
Two years before
the ideas that became known as distributism began to coalesce, Chesterton had
already begun insisting on widespread capital ownership, that is, ownership of
anything other than one’s labor by means of which marketable goods and services
can be produced. In a debate with Shaw on
socialism held November 18, 1908, with his brother Cecil Edward Chesterton as
co-panelist and Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc in the chair, Chesterton had
declared,
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| G.B. Shaw |
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. (Incomplete
record of the debate of November 18, 1908, published in The New Age of March 18, 1909; quoted in Daniel H. Strait,
“‘Fighting Friends’: The Chesterton-Shaw Debates,” Shaw, Vol. 23 (2003), 50.)
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.
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| God looks exactly like this. |
Nor is this
difficult to do once attention is diverted away from the absolutes of the
natural law such as the rights to
life, liberty, and private property.
Absolutes of the natural law are perfect and cannot be changed because
they are not merely based on God’s Nature but are God.
Applications of
the natural law, on the other hand, such as the socially determined and
necessarily limited rights of life,
liberty, and private property, are based on human reason and experience. Since no human being can know God and thus
the natural law perfectly, any and all human applications of the principles of
the natural law are necessarily flawed to some extent.
Little
intelligence and minimal cunning are therefore 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, modernists, and others such as adherents of New Age thought
carefully avoid discussion of fundamental principles and insist on mistaking
applications of principles for the principles themselves.
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| Too much sneering, people. |
Thus, 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 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 possibly
unconscious 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 — he had stated
so, explicitly!
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| An English back garden |
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.
Chesterton, of
course, came back and managed to point out a real rather than imagined flaw in
Shaw’s rebuttal. He also attempted to
redirect the debate back to the principle of private property instead of scoring
off one’s opponent with an underhanded debating trick. As the somewhat stilted transcript of the
debate has it,
Bernard Shaw had declared in the
coming Socialist State he would pledge his honour that he (Mr. Chesterton)
should have his own back garden. Well,
once Mr. Shaw told him privately that he would do anything, provided you did
not put him on his honour. His theory of
property was that if a man owned two back gardens or six back gardens, he
didn’t own one. He could not experience
that sense of possession that the ownership of one back garden gave. (Ibid., 52.)
The damage,
however, had been done. In the eyes of
the audience Shaw had come out the winner.
He had redirected a debate on the importance of private property per se, to a condescending reassurance
that no one would interfere with G.K. 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.
#30#
