The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, by G.B Shaw

[prof_pangaea]

Everybody knows now that Socialism is a proposal to divide-up the income of the country in a new way. What you perhaps have not noticed is that the income of the country is being divided up every day and even every minute at present, and must continue too to be divided up every day as long as there are two people left on earth to divide it. The only possible difference of opinion is not as to whether it shall be divided or not, but as to how much each person should have, and on what conditions he should be allowed to have it. St. Paul said "He that will not work, neither shall he eat"; but as he was only a man with a low opinion of women, he forgot the babies. Babies cannot work, and are shockingly greedy; but if they were not fed there would soon be nobody alive left in the world. So that will not do.

....

It is no excuse for such a state of things [i.e. the rich using money for motorboats and diamonds rather than bread and houses] that the rich give employment. There is no merit in giving employment: a murderer gives employment to the hangman; and a motorist who runs over a child gives employment to an ambulance porter, a doctor, an undertaker, a clergyman, a mourning-dressmaker, a hearse-driver, a gravedigger: in short, to so many worthy people that when he ends by killing himself it seems ungrateful not to erect a statue to him as a public benefactor.

Comments

[kels.livejournal.com]

That does sound like an interesting book, though I suspect that come tomorrow, I will be too mired in books for class to be able to read for pleasure (grr...).