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Discuss An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley as a socialist play.
J.B. Priestley wrote An Inspector Calls in 1945, immediately following World War II, but set it in 1912. He uses this dramatic irony to construct a powerful socialist critique of the capitalist society that led to two world wars and the Great Depression. The play is a polemic that contrasts the ideology of rugged individualism with the socialist ideal of collective responsibility.
Priestley uses Arthur Birling to personify the flaws of capitalism. Birling is a “hard-headed practical man of business” who believes that society’s primary purpose is the protection of capital and the maximisation of profit. In Act 1, Birling explicitly mocks the socialist concept of community. He lectures the younger generation that “a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own.” He dismisses the idea that people should care for one another as “community and all that nonsense,” likening it to being “mixed up together like bees in a hive”.
Birling views his workers not as human beings but as “labour costs” to be minimised. He admits he fired Eva Smith for organising a strike for higher wages (25 shillings instead of 22 and sixpence). He defends his action as his “duty to keep labour costs down”. He envisions a future not of social progress, but one where his company works with its rivals for “lower costs and higher prices”.
Inspector Goole is the dramatic antithesis to Birling. He arrives immediately after Birling’s speech against community, signalling that he is there to challenge that specific worldview. He is the mouthpiece for Priestley’s socialist principles. The inspector’s central message is that “We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other”. He rejects the separation of classes and interests that Birling defends.
When Birling defends his refusal to raise wages by claiming the workers would soon ask for the earth, the inspector retorts, “it’s better to ask for the earth than to take it”. This line hints at the potential for revolutionary action if the working class is denied fair treatment. He reminds the characters that wealth and status carry obligations to the wider society. When Birling haughtily states he is a “public man,” the inspector cuts in massively: “Public men, Mr. Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges”.
In the same vein, there is Eva Smith who represents the exploited working class. She is voiceless throughout the play, defined entirely by how the wealthy characters use and abuse her. Her tragedy tracks the failure of the capitalist safety net. She is fired for asking for a living wage (Birling), fired again for offending the vanity of a wealthy customer (Sheila), sexually exploited by wealthy men (Gerald and Eric), and finally denied charity by the aristocratic Mrs. Birling because she didn’t show enough “humility”.
The play concludes with a dire warning that serves as the core of its socialist argument. The inspector warns that if men do not learn the lesson of their interdependence, they will be taught it in “fire and blood and anguish”. This prophecy alludes to the suffering of World War I (which would begin two years after the play’s setting) and the subsequent global conflicts. Priestley argues that the selfish pursuit of capitalist interests and the refusal to acknowledge a shared humanity inevitably lead to destruction and war.
An Inspector Calls is therefore a didactic socialist play that aims to convert the audience. The play exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty of the Birling family’s capitalist individualism and contrasts it with the inspector’s moral authority. It argues that a just society must be founded on the socialist principles of community, compassion, and collective responsibility.
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