Produced by Russell Bell
The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion
by
George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
Writing as: JOHN TANNER, M.I.R.C. (Member of the Idle Rich Class).
"No one can contemplate the present condition of the masses of thepeople without desiring something like a revolution for the better."Sir Robert Giffen. Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 393.
A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social orderand try another.
The constitution of England is revolutionary. To a Russian orAnglo-Indian bureaucrat, a general election is as much a revolution as areferendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of voting.The French Revolution overthrew one set of rulers and substitutedanother with different interests and different views. That is what ageneral election enables the people to do in England every seven yearsif they choose. Revolution is therefore a national institution inEngland; and its advocacy by an Englishman needs no apology.
Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. Forexample, every person who has mastered a profession is a scepticconcerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.
Every genuine religious person is a heretic and therefore arevolutionist.
All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. Themost distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older,though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing totheir loss of faith in conventional methods of reform.
Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of theexisting social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have onlyshifted it to another shoulder.
If there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would benecessary to invent Him. Now this XVIII century god was deus exmachina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the godof the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that there isindeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the work that heused to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect, change himselfinto the political Providence which he formerly conceived as god; andsuch change is not only possible, but the only sort of change that isreal. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military andpriestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance, fromcommercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from slavery to serfdom,from serfdom to capitalism, from monarchy to republicanism, frompolytheism to monotheism, from monotheism to atheism, from atheism topantheistic humanitarianism, from general illiteracy to generalliteracy, from romance to realism, from realism to mysticism, frommetaphysics to physics, are all but changes from Tweedledum toTweedledee: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. But the changesfrom the crab apple to the pippin, from the wolf and fox to the housedog, from the charger of Henry V to the brewer's draught horse and therace-horse, are real; for here Man has played the god, subduing Natureto his intention, and ennobling or debasing Life for a set purpose. Andwhat can be done with a wolf can be done with