英文演講在七十壽辰宴會上的講話

1、英文演講:在七十壽辰宴會上的講話    英文演講:on his seventith birtdayGeorge Bernard ShawJuly 26, 1926Of late years the public have been trying to tackle me in every way they possibly can, and failing to make anything of it they have turned to treating me Bs a great  man. This is a dreadful fate

2、 to over- take anybody. There has been a distinct attempt to do it again now, and for that reason I absolutely decline to say anything about the celebration of my seventieth birthday. But when the Labor Party, my old friends the Labor Party, invited me here I knew that l should be all right.Now, how

3、ever, we have built up a constitutional Party. We have built it up on a socialistic basis. My friend, Mr. Sidney Webb, Mr. Macdonald and myself said definitely at the beginning that what we had got to do was to make the Socialist Party a constitutional party to which any respectable God-fearing man

4、could belong without the slightest compromise of his respectability. We got rid of all those traditional that is why Governments in the present day are more afraid of us than they were of any of the Radical people.Our position is a perfectly simple one and we have the great advantage of understandin

5、g our position. We oppose socialism to capitalism.According to the capitalists, there will be a guara11tee to the world that every man in tile country would get a job. They didnt contend it would be a well-paid job, because if it was well paid a man would save up enough one week to stop working the

6、next week, and they were determined to keep a man working the whole time on a bare subsistence wage - and, on the other hand, divide an accumulation of capita1.They said capita1ism not only secured this for the working man, but, by insuring fabulous wealth in the hands of a small class of people, th

7、ey would save money whether they liked it or not and would have to invest it. That is capitalism, and this Government is always interfering with capitalism. Instead of giving a man a job or letting him starve they are giving him doles - after making sure he has paid for them first. They are giving c

8、apitalists subsidies and making all sorts of regulations that are breaking up their own system. All the time they are doing it, and we are telling them it is breaking up, they dont understand.We say in criticism of capitalism: Your system has never kept its promises for one single day since it was p

9、romulgated. Our production is ridiculous. We are producing eighty horsepower motor cars when many more houses should be built. We are producing most extravagant luxuries while children starve. You have stood production on its head. Instead of beginning with the things the nation needs most, you are

10、beginning at just the opposite end. We say distribution has become so glaringly ridiculous that there are only two people out of the 47,000,000 people in this country who approve of the present system of distribution-one is the Duke of Northumberland and the other is Lord Banbury.We are opposed to t

11、hat theory. Socialism, which is perfectly clear and unmistakable, says the thing you have got to take care of is your distribution. We have to begin with that, and private property, if it stands in the way of good distribution, has got to go.A man who holds public property must hold it on the pub1ic

12、 condition on which, for instance, I carry my walking stick. I am not al1owed to do what I like with it. I must not knock you on the head with it. We say that if distribution goes wrong, everything else goes wrong-religion, morals - government. And we say, therefore (this is the whole meaning of our

13、 socialism, we must begin with distribution and take all the necessary steps.I think we are keeping it in our minds because our business is to take care of the distribution of wealth in the worId1 and I tell you, as I have told you be fore, that I dont think there are two men, or perhaps one man, in

14、 our 47,000,000 who approves of the existing distribution of wealth. I will go even further and say that you will not find a single person in the whole of the civilized world who agrees with the existing system of the distribution of wealth. It has been reduced to a blank absurdity.I think the day w

15、ill come when we will be able to make the distinction between us and the capitalists. We must get certain leading ideas before the people. We should announce that we are not going in for what was the old-fashioned idea of redistribution, but the redistribution of income. Let it always be a question

16、of income.I have been very happy here to night. I entirely understand the distinction made by our Chairman to night when he said you hold me in social esteem and a certain amount of personal affection. I am not a sentimental man, but l am not 1nsensible to all that. I know the value of all tl1at, an

17、d it gives me, now that 1 have come to the age of seventy (it will not occur again and I am saying it for the first time), a great fee1ing of pleasure that l can say what a good many people cant say.譯文：在七十壽辰宴會上的講話喬治·蕭伯納1926年7月26日近幾年來，公眾輿論想方設法對我發(fā)難，在一無所獲之后，又轉(zhuǎn)而把我捧為偉人。不管誰碰上這種事都是可怕的災難。現(xiàn)在，顯然又有人想故伎重演。

18、因此，對于慶祝我70壽辰的活動，我完全拒絕發(fā)表任何意見。不過，當我的工黨老朋友們請我到這里來時，我知道不會有麻煩。不管怎樣，我們現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)建立了一個立憲黨，我們已經(jīng)把它建立在社會主義的基礎(chǔ)之上。我和我的朋友西德尼·韋布先生及麥克唐納先生一開始就明確說過，我們必須做的就是把社會黨變成一個擁護憲法的黨，使任何可敬的、虔誠的人都能在個人尊嚴絲毫不受侵犯的情況下加入這個黨。我們革除了陳規(guī)陋習，這就是為什么比起任何持激進觀點的人來，政府目前更怕我們。我們的立場是非常簡單明確的，我們的極大優(yōu)勢在于理解自己的立場。我們用社會主義來反對資本主義。 按照資本家的觀點，完全可以保證這個國家人人都能得到一份

19、職業(yè)。他們不主張那份職業(yè)工資很高，因為如果工資很高，一個星期就可以攢下足夠的錢，下個星期就不必工作了。他們決心以僅能糊口的工資使人們始終不停地工作，而他們自己則分享著一份資本增益。他們說，資本主義不僅為工人提供了上述保證，而且，由于確保巨額財富掌握在一個人數(shù)很少的階級手中，這些人不論愿意與否都會把錢積攢下來，并且不得不用于投資。這就是資本主義，而我們的政府卻總是妨礙資本主義。政府既不為一個人提供工作，又不讓他挨餓，而是在肯定他已經(jīng)為得到救濟而先付過錢之后，給他一點救濟金。政府給資本家補助金，卻又制訂出各種破壞自己的制度的規(guī)定。政府一直在干這樣的事。我們告訴政府這是破壞，政府卻不懂。我們在批評資本主義時說：你們的制度自公布以來，從未有哪一天信守過自己的諾言。我們的生產(chǎn)是荒唐的。需要建造更多的房屋時，我們卻在生產(chǎn)80馬力的汽車。孩子們正在挨餓時，我們卻在生產(chǎn)最豪華的奢侈品。你們把生產(chǎn)顛倒了。你們不先生產(chǎn)國民最需要的東西，卻反其道而行之。我們說分配已經(jīng)變得絕頂荒謬，以致在我國四