The Project Gutenberg EBook of Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket
Companion, by George Bernard Shaw

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Title: Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion

Author: George Bernard Shaw

Release Date: July 22, 2008 [EBook #26108]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK ***

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).

PREFACE TO THE REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK

"No one can contemplate the present condition of the masses of the
people without desiring something like a revolution for the better."
Sir Robert Giffen. Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 393.

FOREWORD

A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order
and try another.

The constitution of England is revolutionary. To a Russian or
Anglo-Indian bureaucrat, a general election is as much a revolution as a
referendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of voting.
The French Revolution overthrew one set of rulers and substituted
another with different interests and different views. That is what a
general election enables the people to do in England every seven years
if they choose. Revolution is therefore a national institution in
England; and its advocacy by an Englishman needs no apology.

Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For
example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic
concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.

Every genuine religious person is a heretic and therefore a
revolutionist.

All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. The
most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older,
though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to
their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform.

Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the
existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.

AND YET

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: