Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905-1914

This book investigates how, alongside Beatrice Webb'sground-breakingpre-World War One anti-poverty campaigns, George Bernard Shaw helped launch the public debate about the relationship between equality, redistribution and democracy in a developed economy. The ten years following his great 1905 play on povertyMajor Barbarapresent a puzzle to Shaw scholars, who have hitherto failed to appreciate both the centrality of the idea of equality in major plays likeGettingMarried,Misalliance, andPygmalion,and to understand that his major political work, 1928'sThe Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalismhad its roots in this periodbefore the Great War.As both the era's leading dramatist and leader of the Fabian Society, Shawproposedhis radical postulate of equal incomes as a solution to those twin scourges ofamodern industrial society: poverty and inequality.Set against the backdrop ofBeatrice Webb's famousMinority Reportof the Royal Commission on the Poor Law 1905-1909- a publication whichled to grass-roots campaigns against destitution and eventually the Welfare State-this book considers how Shaw worked with Fabian colleagues, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and H. G. Wells to explorethrough a series of major lectures, prefaces and plays,the social, economic, political, and even religious implications of human equalityas the basis for modern democracy.