George Bernard Shaw & the Fabian Society

George Bernard Shaw & the Fabian Society

George Bernard Shaw and the Fabian Society
Carl Johnson

Having been raised in the 1980's, during the reign of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, I was indoctrinated with strong pro-democracy and anti-communist sentiments. The cold war was a poorly-explained concept that simply meant one of us was wrong, and it most likely was not the United States of America. The television, radio, and newsprint all hailed democracy as the wave of freedom, the absence of oppression. They simply showed massive bread lines and dirty faces, strict policemen and military marches when stock footage of Soviet life was required. Democracy was supposed to be a system where capitalism ruled, and the government’s job was simply to keep people safe, and to keep the money flowing. Communism, on the other hand, was supposed to be the only bastion of socialism in the modern world. The government would be oppressive, squashing the tiniest bit of individualism and fostering mediocrity as an ideal toward which to be striven.
Then, the walls fell and Soviet communism met its demise. With the end of the Soviet Union, confidence in democratic principles dropped dramatically. A new wave of neo-communists appeared, holding the crippled ideals of Marx high once again. The press held democracy as "pretty good," a hero without a villain to fight. Communism showed a bit of resurgence in the eyes of the public, due to lack of anti-communist propaganda. There was a bit more explanation of the differences between democracy and communism, but much of it was slanted to favor the communist arguments.
And even now, neo-Marxists show their faces bravely and proudly, forwarding their goals in the aftermath of the fall of the giant. The Maoist International Movement, with whom I have held extensive correspondence (Maoist International Movement. "MIM," etc. (9/28/97 - 11/4/97).), is one of the many groups that claims communism is for the best, but Marx had the wrong way of going about it. Other factions...