Henry George and George Bernard Shaw: Comparison and Contrast

Jack Schwartzman

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1990, vol. 49, issue 1, 113-127

Abstract: Abstract. Henry George, the American economist and social philosopher, and George Bernard Shaw, the British playwright and social reformer, were two famous personalities of the last quarter of the 19th century, each a prophet in his own way. The two men probably never met, though Shaw credited George's oratory as well as his classic. Progress and Poverty, with awakening his interest in economic issues, and to his last days acknowledged his debt to George. Both were deeply committed to ending poverty. But there the similarity ended—George was devoted to ethical democracy, Shaw to socialist dictatorship. George saw cooperative individualism as the goal of social reconstruction; Shaw dreamed of a Superman, and fancied himself a supporter of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, and of Soviet Russian‘communism.’Shaw saw the purpose of life as “being used for a (mighty) purpose;” George saw it as blazing a trail for‘progressive humanity,’cooperating with the Creator in creating a moral world.

Date: 1990
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