Evening star., 1925-12-27
Believes Socialism Will
Loosen Tie of
Marriage.
Holds Great Advance Will
Be i'm Leisure for
Freedom.
BY HAYDEN CHURCH.

pilIipStpuN pl SOcld llSln. SnaW =
socialism is of a peculiarly intellectual
variety. but annually he contrives to
bring ii back TO public attention in
some vivid way.
This year his lecture before his IA
vorite Fabian Society was "a picture
of modern Utopia. He promised a
working day of only four hours for
all mankind, and he outlined his lat
est ideas on marriage and religion,
embodytng what he called a new
freedom"
day under this ideal State?" Mr..
Shaw asked himself, and forthwith
replied:
Il take it that the economies which
will be effected by socialism, and the
tremendous impulse given to produc.
ton, and the stoppage of all the ter
rifle waste of all our working class
energies by unproductive or actually
mischieveous labor will mean, at the
very least, that every day will be
what we should call half holiday.
Division of Day.
Al any rate, for the purpose of
argument, l take 1t that the standard
day will be this: Four hours work,
eight hours sleep and. say, four for
eating, drinking, dressing, undressing.
a little resting that is not included
in your sleep, and a certain amount
Of time for getting about.
Therefore what we may look for
ward to is that socialism will give
every one of us eight hours a day of
leisure-a word which has fallen
great deal too much out of use. 1t is
d better word really than freedom. be-
cause people may employ their leisure
to destroy their freedom. But, never
thelesS. as far as socialism is con-
cerned, it may confidently offer to the
community the prospect of having
eight hours leisure every day.
"Of course. you could not carry out
an arrangement such as that in the
case of every individual. There are
certain kinds of work, and very i'm
portant work, too, which cannot be
arranged in that way. | could give
you many instances of the sort of
work which you cannot knock off at a
particular hour; the nature of the
work does not admit of il. But still,
if you have your standard day, that
standard day comes to this, that a
man gets one-third of his whole time,
of his whole life, as his leisure time;
people who cannot divide their work
III the year, or one year in three; YOU
may work it out any way you like.
Judging by Results.
There are also certain people
whose work will have to be judged
more or less by results; you will get
to a point at which il is almost i'm
possible to calculate in terms of leis-
ure at all, and you have to let a
man or woman do exactly what they
like, provided they are producing some
of Les,
exceptional cases.
Let your mind play over the sort
of future which comes with eight
hours of leisure q day. Think of
everything it would encourage in the
way of initiation and invention, the
tremendous fruits of leisure. That
leisure, | think, might become by far
the busiest and the most fruitful
part of the days that we should live.
Il believe that we should probably
do with less bread and butter. / am
certain We should do with less
clothes; / am not at all certain Mr..
Wells is not right in looking forward
to the time when. at least in the mid
die of the Summer, we might do al
most without them. There is already
Il large movement that way among
women.
"Our leisure will become an eX-
the freedom which will transform the
world far more than the mere eco
nomic side of socialism.
Eight Hours of Leisure.
"rhe only thing / want to insist
upon is that the adjustment has al
ways got to be made in terms of
leisure, because you cannot make it
in terms of money, as we do it today,
by paying one person more and an
other person less. The very first
postulate of socialism, the thing with
out which there is no socialism, is
that every person shall have an ex-
actly and precisely equal income 50
far as it is possible to bring that
about. However, you may be tempted
10 alter that, that is fundamental in
the whole business; the moment you
depart from that, your socialism will
come to pieces at once. All the ad-
justments have to be made in terms
of leisure. or possibly in terms of
other amenities which people may de-
sire. One of the things people must
count upon in socialism is that they
will never be allowed to get one
penny ahead of their neighbors in
point of money, or, for the matter of
that. penny behind; it is just as
great a crime in one way as the
other.
The socialist may say to the man
who is anxious about his freedom in
the future: Socialism offers you what
you really cannot get, what certainly
everybody cannot possibly get, under
the existing system, and that is eight
hours leisure, eight hours freedom a
day. If he says, Yes, eight hours
freedom a day, but will ! be reli-
giously and politically free during
that time?' the first impulse of the
socialist is to say, What is that to
US? See thou to that
Possibility of Freedom.
"As far as socialism goes it will
give people the possibility of being
free during that time, and it would
seem that, having shown how that
may be secured, the socialist has
nothing more to say on the subject
of freedom than anybody else has. He
may say: Having gained this lei
sure, which we never had before, if
you like to use it to enslave Your
selves, which would be very likely
what you would do, judging by what
you do at the present time, well, that
is not the fault of socialism. All we
can say is that we offer you larger
opportunities for freedom than the
present system or any other imagina-
BILE system can possibly offer you, at
least as far as the human brain can
work out systems at present
But | do not myself dismiss the
matter quite so summarily as that,
because socialism will undoubtedly
alter social pressures very consider
ably, and when you alter social pres
sures YOU produce conditions which
make it very difficult to imagine what
might or might not happen
Marriage Old and New.