Shaw was a proponent of a position now known as "Shavian
eugenics", after himself, believing that human beings would naturally tend toward biological improvement, without the need for political intervention.
[68][69] He wrote that "the only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man"; the selection of partners "without consideration of rank or wealth" would come about when personal incomes were made equal.
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He was a critic of the use of force for eugenic purposes, and especially of the racist employment of eugenic logic.
[65] At a meeting of the
Eugenics Education Society of 3 March 1910 he lampooned parts of the eugenics movement by mockingly suggesting the need to use a "lethal chamber" to solve the problem. Shaw said: "We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment …" This was an example of Shaw satirically employing the
reductio ad absurdum argument against the eugenicists' wilder dreams, although many in the press took his words out of their satirical context. Dan Stone wrote: "Either the press believed Shaw to be serious, and vilified him, or recognised the tongue-in-cheek nature of his lecture."
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