Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

'Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.' Georg Lukács

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

George Bernard Shaw on Communism and 'the common'

’Most people will tell you that Communism is known in this country [Britain] only as a visionary project advocated by a handful of admirable cranks. Then they will stroll off across the common bridge, across the common embankment, by the light of the common street lamp shining alike on the just and the unjust, up the common street, and into the common Trafalgar Square, where on the smallest hint on their part that Communism is to be tolerated for an instant in a civilized country, they will be handily bludgeoned by the common policeman, and hauled off to the common gaol.’

George Bernard Shaw, "The Impossibility of Anarchism", a talk from 1891, published in Socialism and Individualism, 1911, p.42 - quoted here

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2 Comments:

At 1:40 am, Blogger Philip said...

Ah, but in 1891 all that stuff hadn't been privatised, had it?

 
At 2:12 pm, Blogger Snowball said...

Actually, remarkably, most of the stuff he lists remain under some sort of democratic control throuhg local councils as of 2010 (the streets, the street lamps, Trafalgar Square, the police) - I think (am not a Londoner though so might be wrong about some of this). However, there is part-privatisation in the prison system, true...

 

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