George Bernard Shaw: Life
G. B. Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. His father was a small landowner in Ireland, and his mother was a daughter of country gentleman. At the age of 15, Shaw started working in a Dublin estate agent’s office and soon got promoted from rent collector to cashier. He left this job after 4 years and struggled to be a writer in London.
In London, he tried initially as journalist. But for next 10 years he earned only £6 by writing. During this time his inner confidence sustained him through those hard years. However, after some years writing started to bring him some money.
G. B. Shaw started his writing career by writing few novels and short stories, however, he is renowned as a dramatist. He wrote more than sixty plays with the themes of social and economic importance.
In 1982, he went to a meeting addressed by Henry George. Shaw said that his speech “changed the whole current of my life” and Shaw became the member of Fabian Society. Shaw then started to study socialism (economic and political theories advocating collective/government ownership of the means of production and distribution). He read Marx’s Das Capital in British Museum.
His well known plays include Arms and the Man (1894), Man and Superman (1901), Major Barbara (1905), Pygmalion (1913), Saint Joan (1923), Apple Cart (1929). Shaw received Noble Prize for literature in 1925 and Academy Award in 1938.
INTRODUCTION
“How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” is an essay by G. B. Shaw, which was published as a chapter in his book Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism written in 1928. Shaw wrote this book for his sister-in-law, Lady Mary Steward, who had asked Shaw to explain the Socialism.
In this book Shaw explains in detail various ideas regarding socialism; like private property, means of production and distribution of products, and unequal distribution of wealth. Shaw criticizes capitalism which accumulates wealth only for few people who own ‘means of production’ (factories) or ‘distribution of products’ (marketing companies) rest of the people are left with mere wages, a small amount to keep them alive.
The title “How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” is taken from a couplet:
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
in the poem The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith written in 1770. The poem praises rural way of life which is being destroyed by industrialization.
SUMMARY
We have become helpless before the present system of production (capitalism) which has grown beyond our knowledge and control. Take the example of pins and pinmakers, there was a time when these pinmakers used to buy material, make a pin and sell it in market. They were perfectly skillful, they knew three trades: buying, making and selling. These handmade pins were pretty costly.
In eighteenth century, Adam Smith praised that it takes eighteen men to make a pin; everyone doing a little bit and passing on to next one. Neither of them knew how to make a whole pin, buy material or sell pins in market. However, all of them had some idea how a pin is made.
Adam Smith’s eighteen men were less capable than the previous pinmakers, then why he had praise for them? Only because when you make a man do smaller thing again and again, he becomes faster at it. In this way the production of pins was increased by thousands but men were turned less capable and more like a machine to produce pins at a faster speed.
Now-a-days, Adam Smith’s eighteen men have disappeared and replaced by steel machines that are producing pins by millions, and even packing them in paper. And pins have become so cheap that a single pin has no value. But the men working on these machines do not know how a pin is made. They have become unintelligent and unskillful.
John Ruskin, William Morris, Goldsmith, all were troubled by this issue of advancement in wealth and decline in intelligence and skill. Everyone has become ignorant, nobody knows how to buy, make or sell, but only pay to make these machines set to work and produce.
Same is the true of clothes. In the past, shearing the sheep, spinning the threat and turning it into a garment was done by men and women in the village. Now-a-days, nothing is left of it. A modern woman cannot make a connection between sheep and clothes, she simply goes to a shop and pays for clothes. Seller as well as buyer is ignorant of making of clothes.
Capitalism has produced universal ignorance about how things are made or done. We buy books to know about things we do on daily basis, ironically those who write these books get that information from other books. In this way, the information we get is twenty to fifty years old. Even, we are always too tired to read so we need cinema to feed our imagination. In this way, capitalism has spread ignorance while it claims to spread education and enlightenment. Now-a-days nobody knows how to do things but pays to have them from shops. Surprisingly, savages, Esquimaux and villagers make everything for themselves so they are more intelligent. Our mental faculty remains disused but we fill our minds with romantic nonsense, newspapers, novels, plays and films. Such stuff keeps us alive but falsifies reality and leaves us dangerously mad in real world.
ANALYSIS
G. B. Shaw in his essay “How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” highlights the negative aspects of capitalism. Undoubtedly, capitalism made mass production of things possible but at the same time it degenerated the men and their skill and intelligence. Now-a-days, everything is made by machines which minimized human intervention in the process of production.
In the past people/workers were more skillful, efficient and intelligent. They not only knew their work but they know where to buy raw material, how to mold it into a finished product, and how to sell it to the customers. So they were completely trained in all the three processes of the life of a product from raw material to when it reaches a consumer.
Industrial Revolution changed this mechanism of production. Skilled worker was replaced by semi-skilled workers. During the eighteenth century Adam Smith praised workers and the process of making pins because it involved eighteen men to make a pin. However, everyone worked his bit of work so efficiently that they made thousands of pins daily.
Now, even these eighteen men are replaced by steel machines which produce the pins in millions and even packing them in paper. So the human role in modern production system has very less, even some automatic machine do not need humans at all. Undoubtedly, the products have got cheaper but humans have forgot how to make things.
Many scholars have been troubled by this condition in the past but advancement of wealth and loss of skill seems confusing scenario. Modern machinery has made it possible to save time but there is neither equal distribution of wealth nor leisure. Had leisure equally been distributed among us, it would have helped us greatly to do many great things in our free time.
We have become such parasites on capitalist market that we want everything readymade. And we never care how this thing that I bought is made. We even don’t know how clothes that we wear are made or what they are made of. We have grown completely ignorant.
So, capitalist system has turned us all into ignorant masses. If we want to know how things are made we need to read books and most of us are always tired with work and cannot read and instead turn to movies to feed our imagination. Shaw calls capitalism a funny place because it has spread ignorance and claims to spread education and enlightenment. Instead of learning about the things, we fill our mind with romantic nonsense, newspapers, novels, plays and films. Such stuff makes us alive but it falsifies reality of this world.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q1. Explain what Shaw means when he says that capitalism has spread ignorance and helplessness.
Ans. In his essay “How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay”, Shaw criticizes the effects of capitalism on modern man. The increased role of machines in the production of goods has minimized human intervention in this process. Therefore, people are growing less and less dexterous.
There was a time when people were so skillful that they knew everything about their trade. They would buy raw material, make a product, and sell it in the market. Now, skilled labour has been replaced by machines which produce these products in millions. As a result, nobody knows how a product is made other than few people who design the machines.
Shaw cites pinmakers and cloth weavers who used to do everything in their trade. They knew how to buy or prepare the raw material, they had perfect skill to produce a finished product, and they had knowledge of market and selling process. Modern day workers have none of these skills or knowledge.
Since, capitalism has degenerated skills and people do not know how things are done or made. Our ignorance encourages only helplessness in us to buy whatever is offered in market. Neither the assistant at the shop nor the buyer is any wise to know how or what the product is made of.
Q2. At present the value of a pin has become to almost nothing, says Shaw. Discuss how and why this has come about?
Ans. G. B. Shaw in the essay “How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” explains the shift from handmade or manual production to machine made or automatic production of goods. The increase in the production naturally brought down the cost of goods that too to a surprising proportion. Likewise, some products like pins are valueless regarding its price.
There was a time when pins were made by hand. The pinmakers would buy the raw material; shape it, make the head and the point, ornament it, take it to the market and sell it. The making of a pin was a tiresome process involving several operations. Therefore, the pins were pretty costly.
At present, machines have completely replaced the pinmakers and these machines produce pins by millions. Even, the men are not needed to pack these pins that too is done automatically. Since the worker in modern pin manufacture does not need to be intelligent, skilful and accomplished the pins have become much cheaper.
Therefore, capitalism has increased the production of certain things to such proportion that they have become valueless. However, it still makes a big profit on cost-price.
Q3. Discuss the changes that have taken place over time in the manufacture of clothes.
Ans. G. B. Shaw substantiates in his essay “How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” that industrial revolution changed the ways things were made. Machines replaced the skilled workers in every field including clothe manufacture; traditional handlooms were replaced with huge automatic machines.
Previously, the whole work of making clothes was done at home. People used to shear the sheep, spin it, make the thread and weave it on handlooms to make clothe. Therefore, producing finished and washed garment ready to put on. It was all done in the countryside by men and women at home. Today nothing has remained of this process, machines have replaced whole process.
Today, people fail to make a connection between the sheep and the woollen dress. When a dress is bought from the shop, customer hardly knows how it is made or what it is made of. In addition to that people have very less choice of material when they buy their clothes.
Q4. Discuss how machines have impacted life of modern man.
Ans. G. B. Shaw makes it very clear in his essay “How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” that life of modern man has changed from self-dependent to machine-dependent. His lack of knowledge and control over the capitalist system, modern man has been stricken with helplessness. His skills have degenerated into ignorance, he hardly knows how things are made or what they are made of.
In the past, man produced all the things of his necessity. It is not the story of ancient times but just a couple of centuries back, man used to prepare raw material, put it through required process and produce the product of his need. Most of this molding and melding took place at home involving both men and women, like turning fleece into woollen cloth.
Most prominent impact of machines is ignorance and helplessness. People working on these machines do not know how things are made, neither they know how those machines work, even they cannot lift their finger unless all the work is arranged for them. Furthermore, ignorance has grown to such proportion that those who buy these machines do not understand how they work, and pay other people to make these machines work.
