I want to stress this personal helplessness we are all stricken with in
the face of a system that has passed beyond our knowledge and
control. To bring it nearer home, I propose that we switch off from the
big things like empires and their wars to more familiar little things.
Take pins for example! I do not know why it is that I so seldom use a
pin when my wife cannot get on without boxes of them at hand; but
it is so; and I will therefore take pins as being for some reason specially
important to women.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Stricken: Seriously affected by an undesirable condition or unpleasant feeling.
2. Propose: Suggest or put forward for consideration.
3. Switch off: Change focus or shift attention from one thing to another.
Passage Explanation
George Bernard Shaw begins by emphasizing the sense of helplessness we all feel when confronting a system that has grown beyond our understanding and control. He points out that these complex systems leave us feeling powerless. To make his point more relatable, he suggests moving from discussing grand, abstract concepts like empires and wars to examining simpler, everyday items.
He chooses pins as an example, noting a personal observation: while he rarely uses pins, his wife relies on having boxes of them readily available. This difference leads him to select pins as a particularly significant example for women.
Through this choice, Shaw aims to highlight how even such a small, mundane object can reveal larger truths about our society and the division of labor. By focusing on pins, he intends to show how everyday items can serve as a microcosm for understanding broader societal issues.
Passage:
There was a time when pinmakers would buy the material; shape it;
make the head and the point; ornament it; and take it to the market,
and sell it and the making required skill in several operations. They not
only knew how the thing was done from beginning to end, but could
do it all by themselves. But they could not afford to sell you a paper of
pins for the farthing. Pins cost so much that a woman’s dress
allowance was calling pin money.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Ornament: Decorate or add details to make something more attractive.
2. Farthing: An old British coin worth one-quarter of a penny.
3. Dress allowance: A budget or amount of money allocated for purchasing clothing.
4. Pin money: Originally, an allowance given to women for small personal expenses, derived from the high cost of pins in the past.
Passage Explanation
Shaw describes a time when pinmakers were highly skilled artisans who handled every step of pin production. They would:
– Buy the material: Acquire the raw materials needed for making pins.
– Shape it: Form the metal into the body of a pin.
– Make the head and the point: Craft the two crucial parts of a pin.
– Ornament it: Decorate the pin, adding any necessary aesthetic details.
– Take it to the market and sell it: Personally bring their finished products to market for sale.
These pinmakers had comprehensive knowledge of the entire production process and could complete all steps independently. However, due to the labor-intensive nature of their work, pins were expensive. They couldn’t sell a packet of pins for the low price of a farthing because the cost of making them was too high. Consequently, pins were so costly that a significant portion of a woman’s clothing budget was often referred to as “pin money,” indicating how valuable and expensive pins were.
Passage:
By the end of the 18th century Adam Smith boasted that it took 18
men to make a pin, each man doing a little bit of the job and passing
the pin on to the next, and none of them being able to make a whole
pin or to buy the materials or to sell it when it was made. The most
you could say for them was that at least they had some idea of how it
was made, though they could not make it. Now as this meant that they
were clearly less capable and knowledgeable men than the old pinmakers, you may ask why Adam Smith boasted of it as a triumph of
civilisation when its effect had so clearly a degrading effect. The
reason was that by setting each man to do just one little bit of the
work and nothing but that, over and over again, he became very quick
at it. The men, it is said, could turn out nearly 5000 pins a day each;
and thus pins became plentiful and cheap. The country was supposed
to be richer because it had more pins, though it had turned capable
men into mere machines doing their work without intelligence and
being fed by the spare food of the capitalist just as an engine is fed
with coals and oil. That was why the poet Goldsmith, who was a
farsighted economist as well as a poet, complained that ‘wealth
accumulates, and men decay’.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Boasted: Talked with excessive pride about an achievement or possession.
2. Triumph of civilization: A significant achievement or advancement in society.
3. Degrading effect: Diminishing or reducing the quality, status, or dignity of someone or something.
4. Capable: Having the ability, competence, or skill to do something.
5. Plentiful: Existing in large quantities; abundant.
6. Spare food of the capitalist: The minimal sustenance provided by the capitalist, akin to the fuel given to a machine to keep it running.
Passage Explanation
By the end of the 18th century, economist Adam Smith highlighted a new method of pin production as a significant societal advancement. In this method, 18 men each performed a specific, repetitive task in the pin-making process, passing the pin from one worker to the next. Unlike the old pinmakers who were skilled in every aspect of pin production, these workers could not make an entire pin on their own, nor could they handle the materials or sell the final product.
Despite this reduction in individual skill and knowledge, Smith considered it a “triumph of civilization” because of the efficiency it brought. Each man became very quick and specialized in his task, allowing for the production of nearly 5000 pins per day per worker. This specialization made pins more abundant and cheap, leading to the perception that the country was richer due to the increased availability of pins.
However, this system turned skilled craftsmen into mere machines, doing repetitive work without much thought or intelligence. The workers were sustained by minimal resources provided by the capitalists, akin to how machines are maintained with fuel. The poet and economist Oliver Goldsmith lamented this situation, observing that while wealth accumulated due to increased production, the quality and dignity of human labor decayed.
Passage:
Nowadays Adam Smith’s 18 men are as extinct as the diplodocus. The
18 flesh-and-blood men have been replaced by machines of steel
which spout out pins by the hundred million. Even sticking them into
pink papers is done by machinery. The result is that with the exception
of a few people who design the machines, nobody knows how to make
a pin or how a pin is made: that is to say, the modern worker in pin
manufacture need not be one-tenth so intelligent, skilful and
accomplished as the old pinmaker; and the only compensation we
have for this deterioration is that pins are so cheap that a single pin
has no expressible value at all. Even with a big profit stuck on to the
cost-price you can buy dozens for a farthing; and pins are so recklessly
thrown away and wasted that verses have to be written to persuade
children (without success) that it is a sin to steal, if even it’s a pin.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Extinct: No longer in existence.
2. Diplodocus: A type of long-necked dinosaur that lived millions of years ago.
3. Spout out: To produce or emit something rapidly and in large quantities.
4. Exception: A person or thing that is excluded from a general statement or does not follow a rule.
5. Deterioration: The process of becoming progressively worse.
6. Expressible: Able to be expressed or measured.
7. Recklessly: Without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.
8. Verses: Lines of poetry.
Passage Explanation
Shaw continues his critique by explaining that the pin-making process has evolved even further since Adam Smith’s time. The 18 specialized workers Smith described are now as obsolete as the diplodocus, a long-extinct dinosaur. Modern pin manufacturing is done entirely by machines, which produce pins by the hundred million and even package them automatically.
This mechanization means that apart from a few individuals who design these machines, almost no one knows how to make a pin or understands the pin-making process. The modern worker in pin manufacturing does not need to be nearly as intelligent, skilled, or accomplished as the old pinmakers were.
The trade-off for this loss of skill and knowledge is the extremely low cost of pins. They are so cheap that a single pin has virtually no value. Despite significant profit margins added to their cost, you can buy dozens of pins for a farthing. Pins are now so plentiful and inexpensive that people throw them away without a second thought. Efforts to instill the idea that even stealing a pin is wrong are futile, as evidenced by the need to write verses to persuade children, which are largely ignored.
Passage:
Many serious thinkers, like John Ruskin and William Morris, have been
greatly troubled by this, just as Goldsmith was, and have asked
whether we really believe that it is an advance in wealth to lose our
skill and degrade our workers for the sake of being able to waste pins
by the ton. We shall see later on, when we come to consider the
Distribution of Leisure, that the cure for this is not to go back to the
old free for higher work than pin-making or the like. But in the
meantime the fact remains that the workers are now not able to make
anything themselves even in little bits. They are ignorant and helpless,
and cannot lift their finger to begin their day’s work until it has all been
arranged for them by their employer’s who themselves do not
understand the machines they buy, and simply pay other people to set
them going by carrying out the machine maker’s directions.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Troubled: Distressed or concerned.
2. Degrade: To reduce in quality, status, or dignity.
3. Distribution of Leisure: A concept referring to how free time and relaxation are allocated among people in a society.
4. Ignorant: Lacking knowledge or awareness.
5. Helpless: Unable to take action or find solutions.
Passage Explanation
Shaw points out that serious thinkers like John Ruskin and William Morris, as well as Goldsmith, have been deeply concerned about the loss of skills and the degradation of workers caused by industrialization. They question whether the increase in wealth, measured by the ability to produce and waste large quantities of pins, is truly an advancement if it comes at the cost of human skill and dignity.
Shaw hints at a future discussion on the “Distribution of Leisure,” suggesting that the solution lies not in reverting to old ways but in finding higher forms of work and a better balance of free time. However, he emphasizes that currently, workers are unable to make anything independently, even in small parts. They are left ignorant and helpless, unable to begin their workday without detailed instructions from their employers. These employers, in turn, do not understand the machines they own and rely on others to operate them according to the manufacturers’ guidelines.
In essence, Shaw critiques the industrial system for creating a workforce that is dependent, unskilled, and disconnected from the processes they are involved in, ultimately leading to a loss of individual capability and autonomy.
Passage:
The same is true for clothes. Earlier the whole work of making clothes,
from the shearing of the sheep to the turning out of the finished and
washed garment ready to put on, had to be done in the country by the
men and women of the household, especially the women; so that to
this day an unmarried woman is called a spinster. Nowadays nothing
is left of all this but the sheep shearing; and even that, like the milking
of cows, is being done by machinery, as the sewing is. Give a woman
a sheep today and ask her to produce a woollen dress for you; and not
only will she be quite unable to do it, but you are likely to find that she
is not even aware of any connection between sheep and clothes.
When she gets her clothes, which she does by buying them at the
shop, she knows that there is a difference between wool and cotton
and silk, between flannel and merino, perhaps even between
stockinet and other wefts; but as to how they are made, or what they
are made of, or how they came to be in the shop ready for her to buy,
she knows hardly anything. And the shop assistant from whom she
buys is no wiser. The people engaged in the making of them know
even less; for many of them are too poor to have much choice of
materials when they buy their own clothes.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Shearing: Cutting the wool off a sheep.
2. Spinster: Historically, an unmarried woman, derived from the occupation of spinning wool.
3. Machinery: Machines collectively, or the mechanical devices used in manufacturing.
4. Woollen: Made of wool.
5. Flannel: A soft woven fabric, typically made of wool or cotton.
6. Merino: Wool from a breed of sheep known for its fine, soft wool.
7. Stockinet: A type of stretchy, knit fabric.
Passage Explanation
Shaw compares the modern process of clothing production with that of the past to highlight the loss of individual skill and knowledge in contemporary society.
In earlier times, making clothes was a comprehensive process that involved many steps, all performed by people in the household, especially women. These steps included:
– Shearing the sheep: Cutting the wool off the sheep.
– Turning out the finished garment: Transforming the wool into a ready-to-wear piece of clothing through spinning, weaving, and sewing.
Because this work was integral to women’s roles, the term “spinster” (a woman who spins wool) came to denote an unmarried woman.
Today, almost all of these tasks are performed by machines. Even sheep shearing and cow milking have become mechanized. If you were to give a woman a sheep today and ask her to make a woollen dress, she would be unable to do it. Furthermore, she might not even recognize the connection between the sheep and the dress.
When she buys her clothes from a shop, she can distinguish between different fabrics like wool, cotton, silk, flannel, and merino, and perhaps even between different types of knit fabrics like stockinet. However, she likely has little understanding of how these materials are made, where they come from, or the processes involved in transforming them into clothing.
Moreover, the shop assistant from whom she buys the clothes is equally uninformed. The people involved in making the clothes also lack this knowledge, as many of them are too impoverished to have much choice when buying their own clothing materials.
Shaw uses this example to underscore the broader theme of how industrialization has disconnected people from the production processes of everyday items, resulting in a general ignorance and loss of skill.
Passage:
Thus the capitalist system has produced an almost universal ignorance
of how things are made and done, whilst at the same time it has
caused them to be made and done on a gigantic scale. We have to buy
books and encyclopaedias to find out what it is we are doing all day;
and as the books are written by people who are not doing it, and who
get their information from other books, what they tell us is twenty to
fifty years out of date knowledge and almost impractical today. And
of course most of us are too tired of our work when we come home
to want to read about it; what we need is cinema to take our minds
off it and feel our imagination.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Universal: Affecting or involving everyone or everything.
2. Gigantic: Extremely large or huge.
3. Encyclopaedias: Comprehensive reference works containing articles on a wide range of subjects.
4. Impractical: Not suitable for or appropriate to the situation.
5. Cinema: Referring to movies or the film industry.
Passage Explanation
Shaw concludes by highlighting the paradoxical effects of the capitalist system on society. On one hand, it has led to a widespread ignorance about how things are made and done, as people become increasingly disconnected from the production processes of everyday items. However, simultaneously, these items are produced on a massive scale due to the efficiencies of industrialization.
He notes that people now need to rely on books and encyclopedias to learn about the processes they are involved in all day. However, these sources of information often provide outdated knowledge, as they are written by authors who are not actively engaged in the work and who rely on outdated sources themselves. This outdated information may be impractical or irrelevant to modern practices.
Moreover, Shaw observes that many people are too exhausted from their work to engage in reading about it when they come home. Instead, they turn to cinema as a form of entertainment to distract themselves and stimulate their imagination.
Through this observation, Shaw underscores how the capitalist system has created a society where people are alienated from the production processes that sustain their daily lives, leading to a reliance on external sources of information and entertainment to navigate their existence.
Passage:
It is a funny place, this word of capitalism, with its astonishing spread
of education and enlightenment. There stand the thousands of
property owners and the millions of wage workers, none of them able
to make anything, none of them knowing what to do until somebody
tells them, none of them having the least notion of how it is made that
they find people paying them money, and things in the shops to buy
with it. And when they travel they are surprised to find that savages
and Esquimaux and villagers who have to make everything for
themselves are more intelligent and resourceful! The wonder would
be if they were anything else. We should die of idiocy through disuse
of our mental faculties if we did not fill our heads with romantic
nonsense out of illustrated newspapers and novels and plays and
films. Such stuff keeps us alive, but it falsifies everything for us so
absurdly that it leaves us more or less dangerous lunatics in the real
world.
Difficult Word Meanings
1. Astonishing: Extremely surprising or impressive.
2. Enlightenment: The state of having knowledge or understanding, especially about important issues or subjects.
3. Notion: An idea or belief about something.
4. Savages: A derogatory term historically used to refer to indigenous peoples or those perceived as uncivilized.
5. Esquimaux: An outdated term for the indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions, now considered derogatory.
6. Villagers: Residents of rural communities.
7. Idiocy: Extreme foolishness or stupidity.
8. Disuse: The state of not being used or employed.
9. Faculties: Mental or physical abilities or powers.
Passage Explanation
Shaw concludes with a reflection on the state of capitalism, characterizing it as a peculiar and somewhat amusing place. Despite the astonishing spread of education and enlightenment, he observes a paradoxical situation where both property owners and wage workers are largely ignorant about the production processes that sustain their livelihoods.
He describes a scenario where individuals lack the ability to create anything on their own or understand how the products they use are made. Instead, they rely on being told what to do and how to do it. This lack of understanding extends even to the point of receiving payment for their work and using that money to buy goods from shops without comprehending the processes behind their production.
Shaw contrasts this with the perceived intelligence and resourcefulness of people in indigenous or rural communities who must make everything for themselves. He suggests that if people were not constantly inundated with romanticized narratives from media sources like newspapers, novels, plays, and films, they would risk losing their mental faculties due to disuse. However, he criticizes these narratives for falsifying reality in such an absurd manner that they leave people ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of the real world, potentially leading to dangerous consequences.
In essence, Shaw highlights the irony of a capitalist society where widespread education and enlightenment coexist with widespread ignorance and reliance on external narratives, ultimately questioning the true nature of progress and intelligence in such a system.
Passage:
Excuse my going on like this; but as I am a writer of books and plays
myself, I know the folly and peril of it better than you do. And when I
see that this moment of our utmost ignorance and helplessness,
delusion and folly, has been stumbled on by the blind forces of
capitalism as the moment for giving votes to everybody, so that the
few wise women are hopelessly overruled by the thousands whose
political minds, as far as they can be said to have any political minds
at all, have been formed in the cinema, I realise that I had better stop
writing plays for a while to discuss political and social realities in this
book with those who are intelligent enough to listen to me.
Explanation:
Shaw concludes his critique by acknowledging his own role as a writer of books and plays, which gives him insight into the dangers and pitfalls of relying solely on entertainment and romanticized narratives. He expresses concern that in a society marked by widespread ignorance and helplessness, the blind forces of capitalism have led to a situation where political decisions are made by the masses, many of whom lack a deep understanding of political matters.
He highlights the irony that while a few wise women may exist, their voices are often drowned out by the uninformed opinions of the masses, whose political beliefs may have been shaped more by cinematic portrayals than by critical thought or education.
In light of these observations, Shaw suggests that it might be prudent for him to temporarily set aside his work as a playwright to engage in discussions about political and social realities with those who are receptive and intelligent enough to understand his perspectives. This reflects his belief in the importance of fostering critical thinking and informed discourse in society, especially in the face of widespread ignorance and manipulation.
