The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism As a lifelong socialist, Shaw believed that economic inequality was a poison destroying every aspect of human life, perverting family affections and the relations between the sexes. According to him, all British institutions were "corrupted at the root by pecuniary interest" - and idealism, integrity and any piecemeal attempts at political reform were futile in the face of the gross injustice built into the Empire's economic system. Begun in 1924 - the year of the British Labour Party's first period of office under Ramsay MacDonald (who hailed it as "the world's most important book since the Bible") - and first published in 1928, The Intelligent Woman's Guide draws on Shaw's decades of activism and remains a brilliant, thoughtprovoking classic of political propaganda.