The Impossibilities of Anarchism

In this sharp, polemical essay from 1893, the young George Bernard Shaw turns his considerable intellect against the anarchist movement sweeping through European radical circles. Written for the Fabian Society, the piece is less a calm philosophical treatise than a devastating demolition job: Shaw follows anarchist premises to their logical conclusions and watches them collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. He argues that anarchism fatally underestimates how deeply economic competition and social hierarchy are embedded in human behavior, and that its faith in pure individual liberty ignores the very inequalities it claims to oppose. For Shaw, the real progressive path isn't the romantic chaos of anarchism but democratic socialism, which honestly acknowledges that collective action and organized authority are necessary for genuine social change. Clocking in at just over 30 pages, this is a blast of Victorian intellectual energy: witty, acerbic, and startlingly prescient about debates that still rage today.