Morris and the Problem of Reform or Revolution (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now generally accepted that William Morris, the Victorian poet and designer, was for the last thirteen years of his life (he died in 1896 at the age of 62) an active propagandist for “Revolutionary International Socialism”. It is not so well known that for a part of this period his attitude to socialist tactic—summed up in the phrases “Education for Revolution” and “Make Socialists—was in many respects similar to that adopted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed only eight years after his death.

When Morris became convinced that socialism was the only solution to the problems facing society—and particularly, as far as he was concerned, to the disappearance of enjoyable work or “popular art” as he called it—he joined the Democratic Federation which H.M. Hyndman had formed from various radical groups and clubs in London. In 1883, the year Morris joined, the Democratic Federation proclaimed Socialism as its aim and changed its name to Social Democratic Federation. It maintained its programme of immediate demands (public housing, free education, eight-hour day, public works, nationalisation of the land) but labelled them “stepping stones” to socialism.

Education for Revolution
Hyndman was a former Tory and carried over his arrogant and jingoist attitudes into the SDF with the result that conflict developed within the organisation and, at the very end of 1884, a split. Morris found himself a leading light in the new organisation, the Socialist League. Unlike the SDF, the Socialist League had no programme of “stepping stones” but concentrated, by means of lectures, street-corner meetings and sales of its journal Commonweal, on propagating socialism (even if the understanding of some of its members was not always that clear).

The Socialist League’s Manifesto, drafted by Morris, began:

  Fellow Citizens, We come before you as a body advocating the principles of Revolutionary International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society—a change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities. As the civilised world is at present constituted, there are two classes of Society—the one possessing wealth and the instruments of production, the other producing wealth by means of those instruments but only by leave and for the use of the possessing classes. These two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one another.

It went on to reject state capitalism as a solution to working class problems:

  No better solution would be that State Socialism, by whatever name it may be called, whose aim it would be to make concessions to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages still in operation: no number of merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of all political power, would make any real approach to Socialism.

And said of socialism:

  To the realisation of this change the Socialist League addresses itself with all earnestness. As a means thereto it will do all in its power towards the education of the people in the principles of this great cause, and will strive to organise those who will accept this education, so that when the crisis comes, which the march of events is preparing there may be a body of men ready to step into their due places and deal with and direct the irresistible movement.

There are one or two confusions in the statement, not least in the inclusion of “banking” among “all means of production and distribution” which “must be declared and treated as the common property of all” (this is a confusion since Morris was well aware that there would be no banks in socialism), but otherwise is an admirable document considering the early stage of the development of socialist ideas in Britain that it was issued (the Manifesto in full is published as an appendix to E.P. Thompson’s William Morris Romantic to Revolutionary).

This same insistence on “education for revolution” had already been made in a statement issued in January 1885 by the 10 members of the Council of the SDF, including Morris, who had just resigned:

  Our view is that such a body in the present state of things has no function but to educate the people in the principles of socialism, and to organise such as it can get hold of to take their due places, when the crisis shall come which will force action on us. We believe that to hold out as baits hopes of amelioration of the condition of the workers, to be wrung out of the necessities of the rival factions of our privileged rulers, is delusive and mischievous.

In his private letters too Morris made clear this policy of the Socialist League. The League, he wrote in January 1885, “begins at all events with the distinct aim of making Socialists by educating them, and of organizing them to deal with politics in the end” (P. Henderson, The Letters of William Morris to his Family and Friends, 1950, p.229) and in December 1888 he wrote that his Branch, Hammersmith, “tacitly and instinctively tries to keep up the first idea of the League, the making of genuine convinced Socialists without reference to passing exigencies of tactics” (p.304).

In the last article he wrote in Commonweal on 15 November 1890, Morris again defended the policy of making socialists, against both those who wanted a reform programme and the anarchists:

  This time when people are excited about Socialism, and when many who know nothing about it think themselves Socialists, is the time of all others to put forward the simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the passing hour. I say for us to make Socialists is the business at present, and at present I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not really Socialists—who are Trade Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what no—will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the right way. Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, i.e. convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles into practice. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible. Have we that body of opinion? Surely not. . .
  Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful, and preaching and teaching is not out of date for that purpose; but rather for those who, like myself, do not believe in State Socialism, it is the only rational means of attaining to the new Order of Things” (Morris’ emphasis).

So, Morris was quite clear: a socialist organisation should not campaign for reforms or “palliatives” but should concentrate exclusively on socialist propaganda and education. In the beginning, in 1885 and 1886, this was based on a belief that capitalism was soon going to collapse (“when the crisis comes”) and the consequent urgent need to have a strong body of socialists to ensure that socialism would be the outcome. But by 1890 this had developed to a full and clear understanding that the establishment of socialism was impossible without there first being a mass of opinion in favour of it. Morris was later to change his policy on campaigning for reforms, but he never wavered on this point.

The Policy of Abstention
Morris tended to identify campaigning for reforms with campaigning to get elected to Parliament. This was understandable enough since those who were advocating parliamentary action at that time did envisage getting elected on a reform programme which they would then try to get Parliament to implement. Thus Morris’s opposition to campaigning for reforms also took the form of opposition to parliamentary action. It would however be inaccurate to describe him as a pure and simple “anti-Parliamentarist”, and certainly not as an anarchist, since he did not absolutely rule out the use of Parliament by socialists in the course of the socialist revolution.

Among those who left the SDF to found the Socialist League were a group who favoured parliamentary action. These included Marx’s daughter, Eleanor Marx-Aveling, and had the patronage of Engels. When, early in 1885, the Socialist League was discussing its new constitution, a draft had been rejected which had sought to commit it to “striving to conquer political power by promoting the election of Socialists to Local Governments, School Boards, and other administrative bodies”. The “parliamentarists” (as Morris called them), however, continued to press the issue at the League’s Annual Conferences in 1886 and 1887. On both occasions they were defeated and when they persisted in their views, even going so far as to support SDF candidates in elections to a local Board of Guardians, they had finally to be suspended in 1888 and resigned. It was to Morris that the task of presenting the case against parliamentary action fell. It was he who drafted an official statement issued by the Council of the League in 1888 on the subject (in Commonweal, 9 June 1888). But his views are more fully expressed in a lecture he gave in 1887 entitled “The Policy of Abstention”.

Morris’ arguments against parliamentary action can be summed up as (1) that Parliament was a capitalist institution; (2) that reforms obtained through Parliament would strengthen capitalism and would only be passed with this end in view; and (3) that campaigning for reforms would corrupt a socialist party.

In The Policy of Abstention Morris declared:

  The Communists believe that it would be a waste of time for Socialists to expend their energy in furthering reforms which so far from bringing us nearer to Socialism would rather serve to bolster up the present state of things.

The workers, he went on,

  are asked to vote and send representatives to Parliament (if ‘working men’ so much the better) that they may point out what concessions may be necessary for the ruling class to make in order that the slavery of the workers may last on: in a word that to vote for the continuance of their own slavery is all the parliamentary action they will be allowed to take under the present regime: Liberal Associations, Radical Clubs, working men members are at present, and Socialist members will be in the future, looked on with complacency by the governing classes as serving towards the end of propping up the stability of robber society in the safest and least troublesome manner by beguiling them to take part in their own government.

And, in an excellent statement of the case against socialists seeking to get elected to Parliament on a programme of reforms, Morris wrote referring to those he called “the parliamentary socialists”:

  Starting from the same point as the abstentionists they have to preach an electioneering campaign as an absolute necessity, and to set about it as soon as possible: they will then have to put forward a programme of reforms deduced from the principles of Socialism, which we will admit they will always keep to the front as much as possible; they will necessarily have to appeal for support (i.e. votes) to a great number of people who are not convinced Socialists, and their programme of reforms will be the bait to catch these votes: and to the ordinary voter it will be this bait which will be the matter of interest, and not the principle for whose furtherance they will be intended to act as an instrument: when the voting recruit reads the manifesto of a parliamentary body, he will scarcely notice the statement of principles which heads it, but he will eagerly criticise the proposals of measures to be carried which he finds below it: and yet if he is to be honestly dealt with, he will have to be told that these measures are not put forward as a solution to the social question, but are—in short, ground bait for him so that he may be led at last to search into and accept the real principles of Socialism. So that it will be impossible to deal with him honestly, and the Socialist members when they get into Parliament will represent a heterogeneous body of opinion, ultra-radical, democratic, discontented non-politicals, rather than a body of Socialists; and it will be their opinions and prejudices that will sway the action of the members in Parliament. With these fetters on them the Socialist members will have to be a mere instrument of compromise (May Morris, William Morris, Artist, Writer, Socialist, Supplementary Volume II, 1936).

The 1888 League statement which Morris had drafted also opposed reform-mongering:

  The Socialist League has declared over and over again its sense of the futility of Socialists wasting their time in getting such palliative measures passed, which, if desirable to be passed as temporarily useful, will be passed much more readily if they do not mix themselves up in the matter, and which are at least intended by our masters to hinder Socialism and not to further it. Over and over again it has deprecated Socialists mixing themselves up in political intrigues, and it believes no useful purpose can be served by their running after the votes of those who do not understand the principles of Socialism, and who therefore must be attracted by promises which could not be fulfilled by the candidates if by any chance such candidates were returned to Parliament.

These are clearly arguments against the policy of using Parliament to try to get reforms rather than against socialist parliamentary action as such and in fact, even during his “anti-parliamentary” period, Morris was not opposed to socialists entering Parliament in the course of the socialist revolution, on condition that they went there not to try to get reforms but ”as rebels”.

Thus he wrote to J. Bruce Glasier in December 1886:

 I did not mean that at some time or other it might not be necessary for Socialists to go into Parliament in order to break it up; but again, that could only be when we are very much more advanced than we are now; in short, on the verge of a revolution; so that we might either capture the army, or shake their confidence in the legality of their position (Henderson, The Letters of William Morris to his Family and Friends, p.263).

And in two letters in 1887 to Dr. J. Glasse:

 I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so: in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels, and not as members of the governing body prepared by passing palliative measures to keep ‘Society’ alive. But I fear that many of them will be drawn into error by the corrupting influence of a body professedly hostile to Socialism (May 23). 

  Of course, it’s clearly no use talking of parliamentary action now. I admit, and always have admitted, that at some future period it may be necessary to use parliament mechanically: what I object to is depending on parliamentary agitation. There must be a great party, a great organisation outside parliament actively engaged in reconstructing society and learning administration whatever goes on in parliament itself. This is in direct opposition to the view of the regular parliamentary section as represented by Shaw, who look upon Parliament as the means; and it seems to me will fall into the error of moving earth and sea to fill the ballot boxes with Socialist votes which will not represent Socialist men (September 23)

(R. Page Arnot, Unpublished Letters of William Morris, 1951, p.5 and p.8).

In his lecture on “The Policy of Abstention” Morris elaborated on this “great organisation outside parliament actively engaged in reconstructing society and learning administration”:

  The organisation I am thinking of would have a serious point of difference from any that could be formed as a part of a parliamentary plan of action; its aim would be to act directly, whatever was done in it would be done by the people themselves: there would consequently be no possibility of compromise, of the association becoming anything else than it was intended to be; nothing could take its place: before all its members would be put one alternative to complete success, complete failure, namely.
  The workers can form an organisation which without heeding Parliament can force from the ruler what concessions may be necessary in the present and whose aim would be the total abolition of the monopolist classes and rule. The action such an organisation would be compelled to take would educate its members in administration, so that on the morrow of the revolution they would be able, from a thorough knowledge of the wants and capacities of the workers, to carry on affairs with the least possible amount of blunders, and would do almost nothing that would have to be undone, and thereby offer no opportunity to the counter-revolution.

and, in a letter in May 1887 to J .L. Mahon, he wrote that “our work” was:

  getting the workmen to organise genuine revolutionary labour bodies not looking to Parliament at all but to their own pressure (legal or illegal as the times may go) on their employers while the latter lasted (R. Page Arnot, William Morris: The Man and the Myth, 1964, p.66).

In the picture of the socialist revolution painted in Chapter XVII “How the Change Came” of his utopian communist novel News From Nowhere (originally published in serial form in Commonweal in 1890) Morris has these “revolutionary labour bodies” come to clash more and more with the government; eventually, after a short civil war involving a general strike and some violence, capitalist rule is overthrown.

This clearly underestimates the power and solidity of the capitalist state and, if tried, would have led to unnecessary bloodshed. Morris was overlooking the vital necessity for the socialist majority to first gain control of the state machine before trying to establish socialism, but he had been greatly influenced by the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871 and did not expect the capitalist class to surrender peaceably even if socialists were to win a parliamentary majority. Morris was later to see the validity of this criticism but unfortunately tied this, as we shall see, to a withdrawal of his opposition to campaigning for reforms.

The Use of the Vote
Morris’s allies in the struggle against the “parliamentarists” were for the most part out-and-out anarchists who were opposed to all parliamentary action on principle (even to going there ”as rebels”). These anarchists eventually came to dominate the Socialist League and abandoned its policy of patiently making socialists for appeals to individual acts of violence against the state and its representatives. At the end of 1890 Morris and the branch to which he belonged, Hammersmith, left and, as the Hammersmith Socialist Society, continued the original League policy.

But, after a while, Morris came to question whether his opposition to campaigning for reforms (and campaigning to get elected to Parliament and local bodies on a programme of reforms) was justified. Even during his period of activity in the Socialist League he had continued to regard the Social Democratic Federation and even the Fabians as socialists, even though they were certainly pursuing mistaken policies. With the organisation of the unskilled workers in the 1890s and the formation of the ILP in 1892, it seemed to Morris that the working class had definitely opted for the tactics of the “parliamentary socialists”. He knew that the bulk of the workers involved in this agitation were not conscious socialists but merely wanted some improvement of their condition within capitalism. He interpreted this as meaning that it was all the more important that the socialist case be presented to them and that therefore all those who were “socialists” should unite to do this.

Thus Morris was instrumental in getting the Fabians, the SDF and others to issue a joint Manifesto of English Socialists on May Day 1893. Parts of this were not too bad:

  Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, means of manufacture, the mines, and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever to the wage-system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish national and international communism.

The Manifesto, however, also contained a list of immediate demands (an Eight Hour Law, Prohibition of all Child Labour, Equal Pay for Equal Work, a Minimum Wage in State Services, Universal Male and Female Suffrage).

In signing this Manifesto Morris supported campaigning for reforms. Thus, interviewed in the SDF journal Justice in January 1894, he repudiated his previous policy:

  Present circumstances go to prove the wisdom of the SDF in drawing up palliative measures. . . Mean and paltry as it seemed to me—and does still as compared with the whole thing—something of the kind is absolutely necessary.

In this same interview he recognised the necessity for socialists to gain control of political power before trying to establish socialism:

  We must try. . . and get at the butt end of the machine gun and rifle, and then force is much less likely to be necessary and much more sure to be successful.

The way to “get at the butt end” was through the ballot box, Morris argued in an unpublished lecture on “Communism”:

  I confess I am no great lover of political tactics, the sordid squabble of an election is unpleasant enough for a straight-forward man to deal in: yet I cannot fail to see that it is necessary somehow to get hold of the machine which has at its back the executive power of the country, however that may be done and that by means of the ballot-box will, to say the least of it, be little indeed compared with what would be necessary to effect it by open revolt; besides that the change effected by peaceful means would be done more completely and with little chance, indeed with no chance of counter-revolution. On the other hand I feel sure that some action is even now demanded by the growth of Socialism, and will be more and more imperatively demanded as time goes on. In short I do not believe in the possible success of revolt until the Socialist party has grown so powerful in numbers that it can gain its end by peaceful means, and that therefore what is called violence will never be needed, unless indeed the reactionaries were to refuse the decision of the ballot-box and try the matter by arms; which after all I am pretty sure they could not attempt by the time things had gone as far as that. As to the attempt of a small minority to terrify a vast majority into accepting something which they do not understand, by spasmodic acts of violence, mostly involving the death or mutilation of non-combatants, I can call that nothing else than sheer madness (May Morris, Supplementary Volume II, pp.350-1).

And, in an article in Labour Prophet in January 1894, Morris commented:

 The workers have started to claim new conditions of life which they can only obtain at the expense of the possessing classes; and they must therefore force their claims on the latter. The means by which they will attempt this are not doubtful. To speak plainly, there are only two methods of bringing the necessary force to bear; open armed insurrection on the one hand; the use of the vote, to get hold of the executive on the other. Of the first method they are not even thinking; but the second they are growing more determined to use day by day; and it is practically the only direct means. And it must be said that, if they are defeated in their attempt, it means the present defeat of Socialism, though its ultimate defeat is impossible.

In a lecture “What we have to look for” given in the spring of 1895 Morris explained his earlier attitude:

  It must be admitted that behind this propaganda of preaching lay the thought that the change we advocated would be brought about by insurrection; and this was supposed even by those who were most averse to violence; no other means seemed conceivable for lifting the intolerable load which lay upon us. We thought that every step towards Socialism would be resisted by the reactionaries who would use against it the legal executive force which was, and is, let me say, wholly in the power of the possessing classes, that the wider the movement grew the more rigorously the authorities would repress it.
  Almost everyone has ceased to believe in the change coming by catastrophe. To state the position shortly, as a means to the realization of the new society Socialists hope so far as to conquer public opinion, that at last a majority of the Parliament shall be sent to sit in the house as avowed Socialists and the delegates of Socialists, and on that should follow what legislation might be necessary; and moreover, though the time for this may be very far ahead, yet most people would now think that the hope of doing it is by no means unreasonable.

And, in the same lecture, returning to his theme of the need for a single, united socialist party, he declared that until such a party is formed:

  We had better confine ourselves to the old teaching and preaching of Socialism pure and simple, which is I fear more or less neglected amidst the said futile attempt to act as a party when we have no party (May Morris, Volume II).

Thus to the end Morris insisted on the need for socialist propaganda to help achieve the socialist majority necessary before socialism could be established but he now believed this should be combined with campaigning for reforms. In other words, he had reached the position held by European Social Democracy, represented in Britain by the SDF. Although he never rejoined the SDF he co-operated closely with it. It is significant that he chose to identify himself with the SDF rather than the Fabians or the ILP, for the SDF proclaimed itself Marxist and was thus nearer to Morris’s general theoretical position as an advocate of “Revolutionary International Socialism”. The SDF, despite its many shortcomings, was at this time the nearest thing in Britain to a Marxian organisation and it was from its ranks that in 1904 was to emerge the Socialist Party of Great Britain whose founding members, like those of the Socialist League twenty years previously, fed up with its opportunism and Hyndman’s authoritarianism, left to found a genuine Socialist Party on sound principles, committed to “making Socialists” rather than campaigning for reforms.

Morris’s Dilemma Solved
The problem which Morris had been grappling with was the problem of reform and revolution. In his Socialist League days he had clearly seen the futility—and dangers—of  campaigning for reforms, but had linked this with a virtual rejection of parliamentary action. This was because in his mind parliamentary action and campaigning for reforms were virtually inseparable. Thus, later, when he came to recognise the need to gain control of political power through the ballot box and Parliament before trying to establish socialism, this was coupled with an acceptance of the policy of campaigning for reforms.

It was left to the Socialist Party of Great Britain to end this dilemma. Our founding members in 1904 agreed both with Morris’s later insistence that “it is necessary somehow to get hold of the machine which has at its back the executive power of the country” (or, more dramatically, to “get at the butt end of the machine gun and rifle”) and that the only sure way to do this was through the ballot box and with his earlier rejection of campaigning for reforms. They adopted the policy of trying to gain control of the machinery of government through the ballot box by campaigning on an exclusively socialist programme without seeking support on a policy of reforms; while supporting parliamentary action they refused to advocate reforms. This has remained our policy to this day and, as the solution to the problem of reform and revolution, represents our specific contribution to socialist theory.

Morris grappled with this problem, but failed to solve it. In the beginning he veered towards anti-parliamentarism and in the end towards reformism, but he can nevertheless be said to have made one original contribution to the discussion (even though he later came to abandon it): the danger for a socialist party of seeking to get elected to Parliament on a programme of reforms. As he explained in the passage we quoted form his 1887 lecture “The Policy of Abstention”, socialists elected to Parliament on such a programme of reforms would be prisoners of the reform-minded non-socialists who had elected them and would inevitably have to compromise any socialist principles they might once have had. The subsequent evolution of the European Social Democratic parties into mere instruments of capitalist administration and reform showed how correct Morris was on this point. It is a pity that he himself did not remember his words of 1887 when, in the 1896 General Election (held the year he died), he helped try to get Hyndman, the SDF leader, elected to Parliament for Burnley on a programme of reforms.

Adam Buick

The Practical Socialism of William Morris (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Useful Work versus Useless Toil (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We reproduce below an extract from Morris's 1885 pamphlet Useful Work versus Useless Toil which summarises his general position rather well as well as illustrating his style of writing.

There is a certain amount of natural material and of natural forces in the world, and a certain amount of labour-power inherent in the persons of the men that inhabit it. Men urged by their necessities and desires have laboured for many thousands of years at the task of subjugating the forces of Nature and of making the natural material useful to them. To our eyes, since we cannot see into the future, that struggle with Nature seems nearly over, and the victory of the human race over her nearly complete. And, looking backwards to the time when history first began, we note that the progress of that victory has been far swifter and more startling within the last two hundred years than ever before. Surely, therefore, we moderns ought to be in all ways vastly better off than any who have gone before us. Surely we ought, one and all of us, to be wealthy, to be well furnished with the good things which our victory over Nature has won for us.

But what is the real fact? Who will dare to deny that the great mass of civilized men are poor? So poor are they that it is mere childishness troubling ourselves to discuss whether perhaps they are in some ways a little better off than their forefathers. They are poor; nor can their poverty be measured by the poverty of a resourceless savage, for he knows of nothing else than his poverty; that he should be cold, hungry, houseless, dirty, ignorant, all that is to him as natural as that he should have a skin. But for us. for the most of us, civilization has bred desires which she forbids us to satisfy, and so is not merely a niggard but a torturer also.

Thus then have the fruits of our victory over Nature been stolen from us, thus has compulsion by Nature to labour in hope of rest, gain, and pleasure been turned into compulsion by man to labour in hope — of living to labour!

What shall we do then, can we mend it?

Well, remember once more that it is not our remote ancestors who achieved the victory over Nature, but our fathers, nay, our very selves. For us to sit hopeless and helpless then would be a strange folly indeed: be sure that we can amend it. What, then, is the first thing to be done?

We have seen that modern society is divided into two classes, one of which is privileged to be kept by the labour of the other — that is, it forces the other to work for it and takes from this inferior class everything that it can take from it, and uses the wealth so taken to keep its own members in a superior position, to make them beings of a higher order than the others: longer lived, more beautiful, more honoured, more refined than those of the other class. I do not say that it troubles itself about its members being positively long lived, beautiful or refined, but merely insists that they shall be so relatively to the inferior class. As also it cannot use the labour-power of the inferior class fairly in producing real wealth, it wastes it wholesale in the production of rubbish.

It is this robbery and waste on the part of the minority which keeps the majority poor; if it could be shown that it is necessary for the preservation of society that this should be submitted to, little more could be said on the matter, save that the despair of the oppressed majority would probably at some time or other destroy Society. But it has been shown, on the contrary, even by such incomplete experiments, for instance, as Co-operation (so called) that the existence of a privileged class is by no means necessary for the production of wealth, but rather for the ‘government’ of the producers of wealth, or, in other words, for the upholding of privilege.

The first step to be taken then is to abolish a class of men privileged to shirk their duties as men. thus forcing others to do the work which they refuse to do. All must work according to their ability, and so produce what they consume — that is, each man should work as well as he can for his own livelihood, and his livelihood should be assured to him: that is to say, all the advantages which society would provide for each and all of its members.

Thus, at last, would true Society be founded. It would rest on equality of condition. No man would be tormented for the benefit of another — nay, no one man would be tormented for the benefit of Society. Nor, indeed, can that order be called Society which is not upheld for the benefit of every one of its members

But since men live now, badly as they live, when so many people do not produce at all, and when so much work is wasted, it is clear that under conditions where all produced and no work was wasted, not only would everyone work with the certain hope of gaining a due share of wealth by his work, but also he could not miss his due share of rest. Here, then, are two out of the three kinds of hope mentioned above as an essential part of worthy work assured to the worker. When class robbery is abolished, every man will reap the fruits of his labour, every man will have due rest — leisure, that is. Some Socialists might say we need not go any further than this; it is enough that the worker should get the full produce of his work, and that his rest should be abundant. But though the compulsion of man’s tyranny is thus abolished, I yet demand compensation for the compulsion of Nature’s necessity. As long as the work is repulsive it will still be a burden which must be taken up daily, and even so would mar our life, even though the hours of labour were short. What we want to do is to add to our wealth without diminishing our pleasure. Nature will not be finally conquered till our work becomes a part of the pleasure of our lives.

Morris’s vision of socialism (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Yes, we agree that capitalism stinks; but what are we going to put in its place?" It is a question which socialists have heard often and, if our revolution is to amount to more than a grand act of demolition, we who want to create a new system of society must have our answers. Of course, only the majority who create the new social order will be able to decide what sort of a society socialism will be and even then, such decisions will be determined largely by the restraints of historical continuity and material necessity. Those who are lucky enough to live in socialist society will have recognised from the start that socialism will not be an ideal world, freed entirely from all problems. Unlike under capitalism, however, the inhabitants of socialist society will not allow themselves to be obstructed in the task of solving social problems by the artificial, historically obsolete features of the capitalist system.

William Morris well understood that the poverty and ugliness of what is called “civilisation" will not be eradicated until the whole “commercial”, or capitalist, system is destroyed. Unlike many of the self-styled socialists of his day — and the many more who advocate the propaganda of class confusion today — Morris was not interested in “socialistic” measures within capitalism, which amounted to no more than the robbers throwing crumbs to the robbed from the loaves that they have accumulated. Morris stood not for vaguely defined “socialist change" but for a new' social order which was the sole end of socialist activity. It was because Morris stood for socialism that his speeches and writings were filled with a sense of urgency about that alternative. For him, socialism was not some millenium; neither was it a pious ideal, to which occasional lip-service could be paid. What is to come after the revolution was, for Morris, at least as important, if not more so, than the propaganda against the system of the present. It was this awareness of the question posed at the beginning of this article — “What are we going to put in its place?” that led Morris to speak and write in ways which surpassed both the imaginary and historically predictive skills of most others in the movement, both before his day and since.

There are three main sources from which an insight into Morris’s vision of socialism can be gained. Firstly, and perhaps most popularly, there is his literary masterpiece, News from Nowhere, described by its author as "a utopian romance" and. published originally in serial form, between January and October 1890, in the Socialist League's journal, The Commonweal. The story is about a man who returns one night, tired after a heated discussion at the Socialist League about "the future of the fully-developed new society". He falls asleep and wakes up in the midst of a “fully-developed new society” - socialism. In the course of thirty-two fascinating chapters the reader observes this “guest” in a socialist society; he asks the questions which might be asked by one who wants to know more about socialism, and so Morris uses what is on the surface a futuristic fiction (written in the nineteenth century and set in the twenty-first) as a speculative socialist vision.

Secondly, there are the published speeches and writings of William Morris, most of which have been described as “political” works and which are stimulating in theme and embracing in style. Morris's “political" works are not about matters of factional intrigue or theoretical jargon, but present arguments for revolution which touch the feelings and class experiences of ordinary men and women who, without pretensions to scholarship, are sickened by the squalid lifestyle which the market system imposes on them. Thirdly, there is A Dream of John Ball, written in 1886: a visionary story about the desire for common ownership which pre-dates capitalism.

To begin, let us quickly explode the myths which those who have not taken the bother to understand Morris’s outlook have concocted about his conception of socialism. As an affluent poet and artist — a man who was much admired for his creative genius and was even offered the Poet Laureateship when Tennyson died in 1892 — Morris was highly vulnerable to accusations that his socialist ideas were merely quaint ideals — a poet’s fad, the dreams of a political utopian. Such labels were stuck on Morris, despite his well-formulated and practicable ideas. Repeatedly it has been asserted, more often than not by "scholars" who prefer to comment on what Morris almost said than on what he actually did say, that Morris was an opponent of modern machinery. Indeed, so often is the myth recited that when one reads the contrary in Morris’s writings one is almost tempted to chastise Morris for contradicting his interpreters! Morris made clear that his opposition was not to machinery, which he thought could be used in a socialist society to do some of the work which capitalism finds it more profitable to have done manually; his opposition was to the social nature of industrial mass production under capitalism:

  I do not mean . . . that we should aim at abolishing all machinery: I would do some things by machinery that are now done by hand, and many other things by hand which are now done by machinery: in short, we should be the masters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this or that tangible steel and brass machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us. (Art And Its Producers)

In A Factory as It Might Be Morris points out that socialism will put an end to "the manufacture of useless goods, whether harmful luxuries for the rich or disgraceful makeshifts for the poor". Only then will the community as a whole be “. . . in possession of the machines once used for mere profit-grinding, but now used for saving human labour”. Again, in As to Bribing Excellence, written a year before his death. Morris wrote:

 What are the said machines about now that the mass of the people should toil and toil without pleasure? They are making profits for their owners, and have no time to save the people from drudgery. When the people are the owners — then we shall see.

In short, Morris's objection was not to development in the productive forces. He realised that machinery will liberate human energies from many wasteful labours once machinery is used for need and not profit. Under capitalism the wage slave becomes the appendage of the machine, the impotent victim of a production line which travels to the uncompromising rhythm of profitability. Socialism with its crucial transformation in the objective of production from profit to use, will turn machinery into a useful device for saving labour. In a socialist society we could well imagine printers, who now fear automation as a threat to their highly-priced labour power, welcoming such machinery as a means of freeing them from needless toil. But — and this was Morris’s point — once production is for use and human beings are in control of their own labour, perhaps people will decide that the pleasure of creative work will be preferable to industrialised mass production. In some cases this will probably be so; maybe the skilled printers will prefer to print using methods which take longer, but provide greater creative enjoyment. In News from Nowhere Morris writes of farmers who, having done away with much of the big machinery of agriculture, enjoy working on the land. Of course, material conditions will determine the choices which will be made in socialist society: perhaps Morris’s agricultural picture would not be fitting if a massive increase in agricultural productivity was needed. As socialism develops production priorities will change and Morris is right to point out that once an abundance of wealth has been produced there will be every opportunity to experiment with human lifestyles.

Central to Morris’s conception of socialism is the theme of work. Under capitalism most people are slaves to the commercial interests of a small minority. Morris draws the all-important distinction between employment, which is life-destroying, and work. In a socialist society men and women would have more than what is now called “the right to work’’:

  It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which is worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious. (Art and Socialism)

In short, the present barrier between work (what you do for Them) and leisure (being creative) will be broken down in a society where working is both creative and serving your own interests. Of course, there will be unpleasant tasks to be carried out by people in a socialist society but, unlike now, the incentive to do them will be the common understanding that all physical and mental contributions to society will be for the benefit of all members of society.

In News From Nowhere the guest asks Old Hammond “how you get people to work when there is no reward for labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously”. Old Hammond replied that there is a “reward for labour", although wages and salaries have been abolished. So. what will the “reward” be in a socialist society? Work, says Old Hammond, has become "a pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain". Work as pleasure; let Old Hammond explain:

  . . . all work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not pleasant; or else because it has grown into a pleasurable habit, as in the case with what you may call mechanical work; and lastly, and most of our work is of this kind, because there is conscious. sensuous pleasure in the work itself; it is done, that is, by artists.

The pleasure of work, according to Morris, arises out of the transformation of work from useless toil and drudgery to creative art. How different this is from the nature of work and art under capitalism. Wage slaves alienated from social power over the produce of their own labour, are far from being artists, not because they are talentless, but because capitalist production stifles the creativity of the class which exists only to create surplus value.

Morris’s critique of art under capitalism was not an incidental feature of his conception of socialism; it was crucial to it. Before Morris there were others who despised the ugliness of the ever-expanding capitalist edifice, with its blinkered regard for profit at the expense of happiness and beauty. In 1860 John Ruskin declared that:

  Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels instead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold; our harbours are a forest of merchant ships, and the people die of hunger. 

Ruskin, Rossetti and the other Romantics dreamed of a return to an idealised natural past, uncontaminated by the filth of industrialism. It is an understandable misreading of Morris — and one which has been repeated often by the scholarly distorters — to assume that he too sought a Utopia by means of returning to the past. Indeed. Morris did write that:

  Anyone who wants beauty to be produced at the present day in any branch of the fine arts, I care not what, must be always crying out "Look back! Look back!"

But, as the scholars choose not to see, Morris was a materialist in his understanding of history, and thus it was not backwards that he wanted to go. Morris knew that:

  We cannot turn our people back into Catholic English peasants and Guild craftsmen, or into heathen Norse bonders, much as may be said for such conditions of life. (Morris’s letters, p.206)

And again:

  It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to an original fullness as it is to believe that with this present emptiness history has come to a standstill.

This was the crucial point, which made Morris a revolutionary as well as a dreamer: his vision was to be realised within real material conditions.

Chapter VI of News From Nowhere describes “shopping” in a socialist society: goods are available freely; there is no money. In this propertyless society of which Morris writes (and for which socialists aim) there can be no exchange, for that which is owned in common cannot be bought or sold. The stranger in Morris’s imagined land feels the urge to put his hand in his pocket and pay for goods and services — but, to the people of socialism, this seems as curious as it would be under capitalism for a homeless family to demand a suite in the Ritz. Need it be asked which system has the more humane priorities?

On meeting a group of children the “stranger" in socialism is surprised to learn that they are not forced to go to school. Why should they be, asks his guide Dick, when learning is a natural human process and the children will come to it soon enough? Marriage, we are told, is not a legal contract, but a mutually entered bond of love. There are no laws or prisons, for the causes of most anti-social behaviour, which are to be found in property relationships. do not exist in Morris's socialism. That is not to say that there are never acts of violence arising out of anger, and Morris is wise enough to include a reference to a case of homicide in News from Nowhere showing how, in a co-operative society, such problems would be likely to be dealt with. News From Nowhere is a novel which any student of socialist ideas should not be without, and there is no doubt that its image of the socialist future played a major part in influencing the thought of subsequent socialists, particularly in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The portrait of a moneyless, stateless, classless society based on production for use is of immense importance to those who want not only to destroy capitalism, but to create socialism. But News From Nowhere is not — and was not intended to be — a blueprint for socialism, or anything like one, Marx, in his day, refused to “write recipes for the cook books of the future" and Morris was not attempting to impose his conception of socialism, but to offer it to the working class as a vision of what might be.

  I want to tell you what it is I desire of the Society of the Future, just as if I were going to be reborn into it; I daresay that you will find some of my visions strange enough. (The Society Of The Future)

Of course, it will be up to those who establish the new system (ourselves, if we establish it soon) to decide democratically how we are going to use the material resources which are owned and controlled in common for our greatest mutual benefit. To move beyond capitalism — to remove the social features which seem today to be eternal. but are not any less transitory than any earlier social relation — is not a fantasy. If Morris could envisage such as change, as have many socialists since, there is no reason why our fellow workers cannot see beyond the narrow walls of the capitalist present. As Morris rightly concluded. “If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream”.

Steve Coleman

Bad Night for Olga (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lady Olga Maitland, who is famed as an Express gossip columnist, did not gild her reputation when she came to Islington last month to debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the question: Is Britain Worth Dying For? Her supporters came too; they gathered in a tight knot and clapped loudly when she was introduced from the platform. By the end of the evening, with some help from socialist speaker Steve Coleman, she had reduced them to a demoralised silence.

She had, let us be fair, a pretty difficult job with the Orwellian logic that workers should be ready to die to protect their masters’ fortunes, that bombs are needed for peace, that social problems may be eased by squandering vast resources on war machines. As a diversion she proclaimed a ringing pride in her British passport although she confessed to being an impure specimen of British womanhood because her mother came from Yugoslavia. Being British means having something called Tommy grit, otherwise known as moral fibre, which is just the stuff to beat the Russians with. It may just be that the evil men in the Kremlin are not deterred by Tommy grit, even supposing that they have ever heard of it. So to make sure we must have armed forces, guns and shells and bombers and nuclear weapons.

If anyone gets killed as a result, well Olga is very sympathetic. Should we have felt better, knowing that last November she was at the cenotaph for the annual outpouring of cant about the workers who were misguided enough to die for capitalism? Well, we didn’t; someone was unkind enough to ask about the people who had not yet managed to die for Britain and who are now being denied the chance to work for it. This was Olga's chance to show off her knowledge of economics but the best she could manage was to wonder about the true level of unemployment, based on a little difficulty she is having in finding a skivvy to clean her windows.

Not a wet eye in the place and a restless, bewildered audience of more than three hundred wondered if this was the best the defenders of patriotism could do. Well yes, actually it is. Olga Maitland sounded silly and empty because she was trying to put a silly, empty argument. It was as well that it was so clearly exposed.

From the opposite end of the table Steve Coleman pointed out that workers have no country to die for; it all belongs to their masters, in whose interests wars are fought. Patriotism is a garbage reserved for the working class, for capitalism’s trade is not allowed to be hampered by any such ideological nonsense. We should not fall into the trap of supporting one lot of bandits against the other; workers everywhere have an interest in common against capitalists everywhere.

Olga's arguments were in tatters. There was little for her to smile about but bravely she managed it. A living example of Tommy grit.

Election Fund (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Autumn Delegate Meeting last year a resolution was passed recommending the establishment of an Election Fund. The object of the Fund is to build up financial resources to help the Party to contest elections — local, national and European. Support for the Fund is now being sought from all members of the Party and also from others who recognise and value the Party's work. We particularly appeal to those who understand the necessity for the Socialist Party to undertake electoral activity and are willing to contribute on a regular, committed basis.

The cost of contesting the one seat where we stood in the UK Parliamentary Election last June was around £1,200. and our campaign was conducted responsibly and prudently. Taking into account the prospect of a substantial increase in the deposit called for, and the hope that at the next General Election we shall be strong and confident enough to put forward perhaps more candidates, the Party needs to be thinking in terms of having several thousands of pounds in hand when the opportunity comes. This may well be the European Election in June, 1984. The next UK General Election may be as far off as 1988, within the next few weeks, or at any time between; so, the sooner we start saving and planning, the better.

The Fund will be controlled by the Executive Committee, subject to Party Rules on Electoral Activity and to Conference and Delegate Meeting Resolutions. Contributions will be acknowledged, if requested, and regular contributors will be kept informed of the Fund's progress. We have available Bankers’ Standing Order Forms in the hope that as many as possible will use this method. Please write or telephone Head Office if you would like us to send one. We realise not everyone operates a bank account, either on principle or for other reasons, and we have prepared a similar form of commitment for those members who wish to make a regular contribution through their Branch Treasurer. Of course, many members and sympathisers will wish to make an occasional contribution to the Fund as and when they are able, rather than undertake a regular commitment, and all such contributions will be equally welcome.

We ask you to reflect seriously on how best you can respond to this call, and then let us know what you intend to do. We have already had an encouraging response.

Parliamentary Committee

50 Years Ago: Collapse of the Opposition to Hitler (1984)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian contributed two articles recently (Jan. 12th and 13th) on the collapse of the opposition to the Nazis and on the prospects of a new opposition. His estimate, based on a detailed knowledge of the facts, fully bears out our criticisms of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party.

"Nothing is now left." he says, "of the apparently big and powerful Social Democratic and Communist parties, and the Hitlerite government is more solidly established than ever. It has gained many voluntary supporters among the urban working class, particularly among the younger generation."

Of the Social Democrats he says:

  Although they professed Marxist principles. they were not Marxist. . . They were essentially conservative.

He thinks that the old party is discredited beyond recovery, but this, even if true, does not mean that the old illusions cannot be taken up by new organisations.

The views he holds about the Communists in Germany are particularly deserving of notice:

  The German Communist Party has always been over-rated, chiefly because of its great numerical strength, which was always out of proportion to its real strength. Indeed, so great was this disproportion that the German Communist movement came perilously near to being a colossal piece of bluff. There is not. and there never was. a “Communist danger” in Germany. . .
  The German Communists never fought a single successful action, they never even began an action that could conceivably be successful . They were never able to call a general strike, or even any partial strike beyond ineffectual, desultory, local stoppages. .
  Although full of revolutionary dogma, they were not revolutionaries, and never had the slightest conception of what a revolution is. . . Each of the so-called “revolutionary risings” (such as the central German insurrection of 1921 and the Hamburg insurrection of 1923) was a cruel farce from beginning to end.

The correspondent rightly points out that the German Communists, like the German Social Democrats, talked about "Marxist logic." but were "neither Marxist nor logical". They were "for illegality above everything, and preferred illegal defeat to legal victory”.

Although their membership at the time of the collapse was probably about 100,000, and they had had five or six million votes cast for them not long before, "they collapsed without resistance” and "just as ingloriously" as the Social Democrats.

The correspondent is right when he says: "it is probable that Marx would have repudiated Social Democrats and Communists with equal indignation”. 

(From an editorial "The German Situation", Socialist Standard, February 1934)

From William Morris (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a letter of October 1883

Among the discontented, discontent unlighted by hope is in many places taking the form of a passionate desire for mere anarchy, so that it becomes a pressing duty for those who, not believing in the stability of the present system, have any hopes for the future, to lay before the world those hopes founded on constructive revolution.

From “Four Letters on Socialism" (1894) 

This claim for the abolition of the monopoly in the means of production is made by all socialists of every shade; it forms the political platform of the party, and nothing short of this is a definite socialist claim. It is true that some of us (myself amongst others) look further than this, as the first part of my paper indicates; but we are all prepared to accept whatever consequences may follow the realisation of this claim; and for my part I believe that whatever struggle or violence there may be in the realisation of socialism will all take place in the carrying out of this initial step.

From “How we live and how we might live" 

The word Revolution, which we socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people’s cars, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment.

We can clear our eyes to the signs of the times, and we shall then see that the attainment of a good condition of life is being made possible for us, and that it is now our business to stretch out our hands to take it.

And how? chiefly, I think, by educating people to a sense of their real capacities as men. so that they may be able to use to their own good the political power which is rapidly being thrust upon them; to get them to see that the old system of organising labour for industrial profit is becoming unmanageable, and that the whole people have now got to choose between the confusion resulting from the break-up of that system and the determination to take in hand the labour now organised for profit, and use its organisation for the livelihood of the community.

Funds Appeal (1984)

Party News from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even with our very moderate programme, expenditure last year exceeded income by more than £15,000. Unless we drastically curtail spending we will run out of money within the next twelve months. To help us carry on propaganda for socialism, please send a donation NOW to: The Treasurer, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

Capitalist Labour and Socialist Work (1984)

From the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism means far more than the mere satisfaction of material needs; creative, emotional and intellectual life will also be given full expression. It is for this aspect of the socialist case that the subject of work has particular relevance. William Morris said in one of his lectures, "if pleasure in labour be generally possible, what a strange folly it must be for men to consent to labour without pleasure, and what a hideous injustice it must be for society to compel most men to labour without pleasure.” (Art under Plutocracy, reprinted by us as Art, Labour and Socialism) The fact is, most workers do consent to labour without pleasure, in so far as they continue to give their support to capitalism which is the cause of all the problems surrounding work — the boredom, the pressures, the insecurity.

In all forms of society the requirements of life must be produced; work therefore is a nature-imposed necessity. The kind of work, the techniques and conditions under which it is done, depend on the stage of development society has reached. For example, capitalism requires arms production, with armed forces, a legal system with a police force, commerce, banking, buying and selling, but none of these activities would have any place in socialism. It is necessary that we study work in relation to society for only then will we understand how socialism will change our whole conception of work and what it will mean.

Capitalism has certain unalterable basic conditions of work that will remain until the system is abolished. Those conditions are — that work takes the form of employment requiring workers to sell their mental and physical energies — their ability to work — to an employer. In doing so, they surrender themselves to the direction and control of others. They work from economic necessity, not for pleasure, nor to express themselves. Workers do not own the tools and instruments with which they produce; they are owned by the capitalist class, and may only be used, with the consent of the capitalists, when they think it is profitable to do so. Workers have no say in the matter. Consequently, in the face of modern technology workers feel threatened by mechanisation and automation. and by the over-organisation of their lives and the dull conformism that it demands. The very thing workers produce is not for their use and satisfaction; it is for selling with a view to realising profit. It is a commodity which faces workers in the market as a force obeying only economic laws, with no concern for their wellbeing.

These basic conditions of work under capitalism ensure that workers have little or no control over their working activity, yet control is of the very essence of work satisfaction. Most writers on the subject, whatever their other disagreements, stress the need for autonomy in work. Under capitalism, therefore, workers produce only as a means to an end — to earn their living, to reproduce themselves as workers. They do not produce for the intrinsic nature of the work, to develop freely their mental and physical energies. Workers are alienated not only from the means of production and the product, but also from the very act of working.

The economic base of socialism will be the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole of society, not a privileged section of it. The wage-labour and capital relation will no longer exist, therefore work would not take the form of employment. In dealing with socialism we can no longer speak of workers, only of freely associated people who own the social means of production in common, who produce for use and satisfaction. Production would no longer control the producers: at last they would be in control.

Capitalism has developed co-operation of labour, but only in the individual place of work, not in society at large. Socialism will be the highest state in co-operation and organisation of social labour. The lone individual can accomplish little; only in co-operation with others will individuals fully realise themselves.

Work will be an end in itself, done with the decision and inclination of the individual, not from external pressure. No longer will the same task have to be performed for a life-time through economic necessity. There will be great variety in occupation, which is important for work satisfaction, and greater efficiency.

Modern technology demands for its most efficient use interchange of activity, yet capitalism confines workers to small details of production, leaving them ignorant of other aspects, unable to adapt to the constantly changing needs of technology, as acquired skills are made redundant. When people spend their lives engaged only in fragments of production, they can only develop as a fragment, not as whole people. Thus capitalism cannot make full use of the technology it has created.

Socialism will be very different. The means of production will be used to the best advantage of all members of society. The productive process will present a whole variety of occupations, allowing people to move from one activity to another. Everyone will have opportunity to develop a range of skills and knowledge; thereby people will gain an insight into the productive process as a whole, instead of only tiny fragments of it. Society and individuals will work in direct relation to human needs; this is what having control over production means. Work will take on a completely different meaning; it will contribute to enriching the experience of life. No longer will it be a drudgery.

The objection may be raised that this all sounds fine, but even in socialism much unpleasant and boring work will still need to be done. Who would do the dirty and dangerous work? Well, most of it would be done with the aid of machinery, as Oscar Wilde said in The Soul of Man Under Socialism:

 All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things and involves unpleasant conditions. must be done by machinery.

Or more recently Lisl Klein in The Meaning of Work:

Technically there is probably very little which could not be done in the way of reorganising work so as to abolish those aspects of work which it might be demonstrated are harmful to the people doing them.

If there still should be awful work to do, we can only echo some more words of William Morris “. . . if there be any work which cannot be but a torment to the worker what then? Well then, let us see if the heavens will fall on us if we leave it undone” (Useful Work versus Useless Toil).

Handicraft is stressed throughout Morris's writing as a means of achieving happiness and satisfaction in work. He writes in an article, the Revival of Handicraft:

We do most certainly need happiness in our daily work, content in our daily rest, and all this cannot be if we hand over the whole responsibility for the details of our daily life to machines and their drivers. We are right to long for intelligent handicraft to come back to the world which it once made tolerable. 

But Morris was not against machinery, only against how it is used under capitalism. In speaking of unpleasant labour he writes: "If machinery had been used for minimising such labour, the utmost ingenuity would scarcely have been wasted on it" (Art under Plutocracy). Indeed, socialism is possible because the forces of production are developed to the point of potential abundance, which implies a high degree of technology. But socialism will have handicraft production as well. Some things that are now made by machines may be made by hand and vice versa.

Work involving the production of food, clothing and shelter is necessary whatever form society takes. Other kinds of work, such as composing music, painting, scientific research, may be done for its own sake. It is sometimes argued that if the necessary work could be limited to as short a time a possible, there would be more time to pursue the more satisfying. However in terms of fulfilment the distinction could not exist. For example designing and building a house is very necessary; we must have houses, but it can also be a very creative form of work in itself. Also, producing something we know to be useful is itself a contributing factor to work satisfaction. Again, painting serves no vitally useful purpose in that it does not feed, clothe or shelter us. But as long as people desire works of art, are they not also useful?

William Morris gave the following definition of art: "The thing I understand by real art is the expression by man of his pleasure in labour” (Hopes and Fears for Art). One thing is certain: if we are to gain real pleasure in our labour we must be in control of our productive activity, but since this is an impossibility within the framework of capitalism, the only possible way to achieve this is through socialism.

P. B. Young

Running Commentary: On their bikes (1984)

The Running Commentary column from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

On their bikes

The Norman Tebbit theory of unemployment, that people who are out of work are really too lazy to get on their bikes and ride out looking for a job, is by no means unpopular with the working class. There was. after all, little sign at the last election that any substantial numbers of voters thought that Tebbit is wholly mad or bad.

There was a similar feeling in the thirties, when the government refused to pay unemployment benefit to anyone who was not immediately available for work. Hunger marchers, who were tramping the long road because they were desperate for employment, were caught out by this; while on the road they lost their dole because they were not available for the jobs which did not exist. The government got away electorally with this outrageous turn of the screw, perhaps because so many workers thought that if anyone was out of a job it must be through choice.

Of course no one could explain why laziness should so abruptly grip millions of people simultaneously all over the world and why it should decline in the same way and why the ups and downs in sloth should coincide with slumps and booms in capitalism's economy. Neither could they explain why people should choose to slowly starve themselves in preference to working, when they could have brought about their end quickly and neatly by jumping out of a window or under a train.

A strange exception to the present pattern of international laziness is to be found in the West Midlands, where clearly they have not heard of Norman Tebbit and his dad. Unemployment in the area is nearly 17 per cent, with almost half the unemployed males having been out of work for a year or more.

Recently, a rumour spread that the Austin Rover factory at Longbridge had some vacancies. The plant was swamped with work-hungry applicants; at the local Job Centre dozens queued in the snow and rain before the building was open; by early afternoon over 400 enquiries had been received. The manageress reported that some people travelled almost 30 miles: “It shows how eager people are to get work” she commented.

Workers need to be eager for — or at least resigned to — employment because that is the only way to get a living. Unless they are able to sell their working abilities to an employer they descend from the customary level of poverty into destitution. Their desire to avoid that is natural.

The theories that unemployed workers are lazy is a customarily convenient explanation for the fact that, in this as in all other ways, capitalism cannot meet the needs of the majority. That fact should be pondered by all workers, whether in work or out of it, whether in the factory or on their bikes.

The other Dockers

What memories were summoned up by the news, last December, that Lady Nora Docker was dead!

In the 1950s she and her husband, Bernard Docker, who died in 1978. were hardly ever out of the gossip columns. They travelled in a gold-plated car, they disported themselves at Monte Carlo in the fabulous yacht Shemara. She was famous for her clothes and her addiction to the high life.

Bernard Docker was chairman of the Birmingham Small Arms Company which manufactured bicycles and was especially famous for its motor cycles. In the boom of the immediate post-war years BSA prospered along with the rest, but as foreign competition began to bite the company was first exposed as very vulnerable and then finished off. The motor cycle market is now dominated by imported models, notably from Japan, and any BSAs still on the road are merely vintage models for the connoisseur of the outdated.

Bernard Docker was sacked in 1956, after a boardroom upheaval largely masterminded by the big institutional shareholders who thought that under his management BSA was not as profitable as it might be. When he fought back against his dismissal the new board spelled out the charges against him, making play on the Dockers' well publicised, vulgar and costly life style, implying that without this the company would have been more prosperous. It was all rather unfair, since high living is what is expected of — and applauded in — the ruling class. The morals of capitalism are clear that riches are not a cause for shame; they are a badge of a privileged social standing. The Dockers’ populist attitude to their riches made good advertising copy for capitalism, for it encouraged workers to believe that the system of class conflict and exploitation was really a bit of rollicking fun.

In the event. Docker’s dismissal did not save BSA. In the early 1950s the company, as any capitalist concern would, was preoccupied with making the most of the boom. The new management brought little change and was particularly at risk when conditions altered and life in the capitalist jungle became a lot harsher and less certain. BSA was among the first of the big, famous firms to go under.

The boom-slump cycle is endemic to capitalism. Its effects may be delayed, or perhaps quickened or accentuated, by a particular style of management but they cannot be avoided. The Dockers epitomised the heady delusions of the capitalism of the fifties, when industrialists and politicians and economists assured us that they had solved capitalism's problems for all time. There was some irony in the fact that of all people the Dockers should pay the price for this; when they died they were no longer glamorous trend-setters but social clowns, both comic and tragic.

Well meant

The Marriage Guidance Council is one of many well-meaning organisations which exist in the unreal world of attempting the impossible. Its counsellors are usually well- preserved people who enjoy a little emotional rag-pulling with married couples whom they describe as motivated, which means that they are articulate as well as confused anti unhappy. Analysis is the name of this game and a gruelling, futile game it can be, played out in ignorance of the fact that human relationships are at present distorted by the demands of a social system which discourages us from cooperative. tolerant behaviour.

Aside from that, the monogamous family of capitalism is not in tune with any human needs or drives. That is why something like a third of marriages collapse into divorce, while a lot of those which hang together do so through shame or inertia or fear or financial necessity.

An inkling of that particular reality may be getting through to the MGC, who have suddenly awoken to the fact that, as unemployment persists, marriages are being put under increasing strain. Last year 38,000 new cases came onto the pretty selective books of the MGC.

Their response to this has been disappointing. if predictable. They have not commenced any analysis of the social system which makes human relationships so difficult but have increased the therapy. Backed up by a grant from the Manpower Services Commission, the MGC has launched a campaign to recruit voluntary counsellors among the unemployed.

The plan is that the voluntary counsellors will free the permanent workers to run extra group therapy sessions in which clients will be encouraged to express their frustrations, perhaps by screaming and shouting, on the group rather than at home. Of course when this first aid is finished and the cracks in the marriage have been papered over the couples can go back to being unhappy, frustrated, perhaps unemployed and penniless — but quietly.

Capitalism, which causes the problems of modern society, is by no means threatened by such analgesic exercises, which leave the seat of social pain undisturbed. Better by far to turn such efforts towards analysing this social system which, when we need to act like human beings, presses us to behave like beasts.

February horrorscope (1984)

A Short Story from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good news and bad news. First the bad news. You are diagnosed as having a serious illness which will kill you in six months unless you are prepared to sell your house and car, your home computer, and all your furniture in order to pay for an expensive operation in a Swiss clinic. Now the good news. A team of British surgeons have just perfected this operation which can be obtained on the National Health Service.

P.S. There is a seven month waiting list.

A tall stranger appears on your doorstep today, but don't rush into something you might regret. Be ruled by your head rather than your heart. Before opening up to him ask yourself these relevant questions: have I paid the television licence? Did I reconnect the gas-meter?

You will have trouble at work today. It is discovered that you have sent a letter to a local paper complaining about the fact that the management have nice soft toilet paper while you grubbers on the shop floor have to make do with torn up pieces of the Sun. You are immediately branded as a red mole and suspended. The media has a field day. You are denigrated, castigated, and generally regarded as a not nice person. (You should be grateful that hanging wasn’t re-introduced.) After all. what better use could you find for the Sun?

Turmoil in the home. You are visited by a burglar who contrives to separate you from the rent money secreted behind the biscuit tin, along with the twenty-pence pieces nestling in the coffee-jar. He also takes some of the family heirlooms, including the picture of the green Chinese lady, and the three plaster ducks.

A letter bearing bad news arrives today. Don’t even open it and you’ll feel all the better for it. Throw caution to the wind and tear it up. (You can always get reconnected when you pay the bill.)

A slight bit of bad luck. You arrive back at work after your winter holiday week only to discover that the owners have dismantled the factory and scarpered. (Who says that you can’t take it with you?) This means that not only do you no longer have a job, but you don't get any redundancy money either, in spite of your twenty-eight years' service. Ah well, it never rains but it pours. Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and for you this comes in the form of a consolation prize in a corn-flakes competition: a bike. Unfortunately, while out foraging for a job you fall off and break your ankle. Stay in bed.

You receive a summons to appear in court as a witness at the trial of six policemen accused of attempting to murder an innocent bystander by filling him full of holes. You tell the court how you saw the policemen sneak up on the victim who was bending down to tie his shoelace, and empty their guns into him. The judge remarks that anyone can make a mistake and commends the officers for remaining cool while reloading for a second volley, in spite of the potentially threatening gesture the suspect made by twitching his left ankle. He also recommends the policemen for bravery citations. You get six months for perjury.

A marvellous time for you, the very pinnacle of your life. Your child is one of the seven and a half thousand children whose stories have been selected to be published in a bedtime book of fairy-tales to be presented to Prince William. (And with a bit of luck your husband could be one of the lucky handful of unemployed hired to lift the bloody thing.)

You are in a spending mood and Asda are doing a real bargain basement in collapsible nuclear fallout shelters at the amazing knockdown price of £39.50. This gets you the nuclear family (no pun intended) size shelter which can be assembled in forty-five seconds flat. (It can be de-assembled even quicker.) It comes complete without groundsheet allowing you quick and easy access to the soil enabling you to dig your own private little loo (and also to dispose of anyone foolish enough to stick their face out beyond the mock whitewash sides). There is also a compact little pocket complete with zip, to store all those little necessities that you might require after all the fuss had died down, like money, a first aid kit, or even some cyanide capsules.

You are developing some strange habits. Asking questions and reading papers that don't have page three cuties. No good w ill come of this. Leave the thinking to people who can decide what's good for you. After all, if everybody started to get these ideas into their heads, where would it all end?

Tone.