William Morris: Life and Times (1984)

From the March 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris did not become a committed socialist until the age of fifty, but the early years of his life involved him in a range of experiences which contributed to making his last 13 years a solid commitment to the cause of revolutionary socialism.

Born in 1834 into a family whose father had become wealthy through some copper mining shares, Morris never had to suffer the type of deprivation that 19th century capitalism thrust on the mass of the population. Nevertheless, at an early age he avoided the smug complacency that the landed and industrial capitalists of mid-Victorian England overwhelmingly adopted. While most of the wealthy ignored the squalor brought about by the development of capitalist industry the young Morris became involved with the critics and opponents of the existing society.

At Exeter College, Oxford, where Morris went in the early 1850s he met a group from Birmingham, most of whom—like Edward Burne-Jones—were to be lifelong friends and some of whom—like Charles Faulkner—were to be associated with his later socialist activity. The early aim of this group was to set up a religious brotherhood and they sought to enlist Morris in their “crusade and holy warfare against the age”. Morris soon rejected the religious aspect of this movement. But for many opponents of mid-19th century capitalist society, religion provided a standpoint from which to make critical attacks. Similarly, others looked back to mediaeval society as a basis for criticising the horrors of 19th century capitalism. For writers like Thomas Carlyle the mediaeval church had provided a social bond that had disintegrated with the development of money and market relations. Morris was influenced by some of these ideas although he rejected Carlyle’s solution of creating some type of feudal bond between the aristocracy and the wage worker. Perhaps more influential on Morris at this time was John Ruskin, whose work On The Nature of Gothic, although based on an idealistic view of the mediaeval craftsmen, did express the idea that pleasurable labour was the only foundation on which any real art could flourish. Morris was later to develop this theme in a form central to his arguments for socialism.

Morris was acutely aware of the large scale sufferings at this time and was especially horrified at the reports of human degradation brought about by the Crimean War, but he felt he could not “. . . enter into politico-social subjects with any interest, for on the whole I see that things are in a muddle, and I have no power or vocation to set them right in ever so little a degree”. Such a feeling of powerlessness reflected the weakness of all opposition political movements in the 1850s and the near absence of organised protest in the years after the last great Chartist demonstration of 1848. It also reflected the power of the landed and industrial capitalists in mid-Victorian England.

In 1855, while on a trip to France, Morris decided to dedicate himself to art. He was already writing poetry and continued to do so throughout his life. He then looked to architecture, joining the architect G .S. Street in Oxford, and although he stayed only nine months this had an important influence on him. Street encouraged all his workers to practice a wide range of crafts and Morris, although at the time he had difficulty in applying himself to much of the work, took up many different crafts. He joined a group called the pre-Raphaelites—a group of painters who regarded all art since the Renaissance as in decay, and who also adopted a mediaeval standpoint in their criticism of their society. They blamed the growth of industrial production (or materialism, as they called it) rather than the system of capitalism.

Morris took up painting but, as he had limited abilities, he switched to trying other crafts. He worked at stone carving, stained glass, illustrated manuscripts (on which he became an authority), as well as embroidery for wall hangings. He also designed furniture and, of all things, mediaeval armour. When he decided to marry in 1859 he gained the co-operation of a life long friend and future associate of his socialist activity, Philip Webb, in the design and building of his own house. The variety of craftwork involved led Morris and a number of friends into the foundation of a firm to enable them to spread what Morris hoped would be a revival of art in useful products. At the basis of the project was the belief in the dignity of work, of human labour, and the pleasure that could be derived from producing useful things. The “Firm” ventured into other crafts such as wallpapers and later produced textiles, carpets, tapestries and dyed and printed cotton, and eventually books at the Kelmscott Press. But it was always struggling to remain a viable enterprise.

Morris’s venture into learning and practising this wide range of crafts had been partly inspired by a mediaeval outlook and the realities of running a business based on quality of workmanship under capitalist conditions were constantly to confront him. To get away from the financial problems plaguing the firm he would often withdraw into writing poetry. Consequently much of his poems are escapist in tone and it is not surprising that his most well known poem of the time, The Earthly Paradise, gained its influence precisely because it deliberately sought to evade current problems. In ruling class circles Morris gained the reputation of being a safe, romantic sentimentalist of no real threat to capitalist values and that reputation tended to stay with him even after he became a socialist.

In 1868 Morris began studying and translating Icelandic Sagas and in 1871 he visited Iceland. In the Sagas he saw the vision of a classless tribal society based on kinship social relations—in stark contrast to the world of the alienated worker producing goods for the market and the commercial priorities of British capitalism. The experience of Iceland broadened his ideas on the history of human society and he found it “. . . a good corrective to the maundering side of mediaevalism”. He learned of a pre-capitalist society that was not mediaeval and that “the most grinding poverty is a trifling evil compared with the inequality of classes”.

Soon after Morris’ Icelandic trips and in the same year that he published his own version of an Icelandic Saga (1876) he became involved in direct political activity. In that year he became treasurer of the Eastern Question Association, supporting Gladstone and the Liberals against the Tory government’s policy of support for Turkey in a war with Russia. Morris’s concern had arisen because of his horror at this backing of a state whose rulers had only recently been exposed for atrocities in Bulgaria. He also feared that the war would spread jingoism. But the prime concern of both Disraeli, the Prime Minister, and Gladstone was not with human suffering. Their main interest was to keep Russia away from the Dardanelles and beyond that the Suez Canal and the trade routes to India.

If Morris was still at this time somewhat naive about politics he learned quickly. He addressed his 1877 pamphlet on the war between Russia and Turkey not to the politicians but to “the working-men of England” and named one of the causes of the war as the “gamblers on the Stock Exchange”.

Morris quickly saw that the Liberals were just another Party supporting capitalism and instead he turned to studying socialism. His initial ideas came from Ruskin, J .S. Mill and Fourier, but on joining the Social Democratic Federation in 1883 Morris set about reading Marx. Capital did much to clarify his thinking and provided the foundation for his work and commitment during the remainder of his life. Marx’s materialistic conception of history provided an explanation for Morris’s own experiences of Icelandic, mediaeval and modern capitalist societies. It also made clear what Morris had believed and expressed himself in a lecture on the Lesser Arts given in 1878—that history had meaning in the sense that it held for the future the possibility of a classless society where a popular art could flourish on the basis of pleasurable work. Morris clearly understood that this change in society could only be brought about with a change in the consciousness of the majority of people. “Practical socialism”, as he called revolutionary socialism, was a question of “making socialists” and therefore it was necessary to “educate the people in the principles of socialism”.

Morris remained committed to this view in the years that followed despite the differences that arose within the various organisations advocating socialism. The Social Democratic Federation split in 1884 because Hyndman was an opportunist politician who sought to gain support by advocating reforms and was willing to form alliances with other political parties for that purpose. He also supported nationalism, especially when jingoism could gain popular appeal. Morris despised this opportunism and along with others, such as Marx’s daughter Eleanor, left the SDF and formed the Socialist League.

Morris’s propaganda work for the League dominated his life for the next few years. He gave lectures up and down the country, edited and wrote numerous articles for the League’s paper Commonweal and came up against the law on a number of occasions during his outdoor propaganda activities. In the later 1880s the development of the New Unionism drew a larger number of workers into the unions. It enabled politicians to foist themselves on the backs of the working class by offering palliatives to workers to gain votes (without having to change existing attitudes or propagate socialism). Morris opposed this reformist trend.

When some members of the Socialist League called for participation in parliamentary elections Morris, although not opposed to using Parliament as such, believed that concentrating on these elections would have directed the League away from the essential task of “making socialists” and instead into advocating reforms. The differences led to the Parliamentarists breaking away, leaving Morris and his associates at the mercy of anarchists, who soon dominated the League. When this happened Morris and his socialist friends withdrew to form the Hammersmith Socialist Society.

In the last years of his life Morris sought to bring about some unity among the various people and organisations calling themselves socialists. Although he never abandoned his belief in the necessity of “making socialists” he recognised that the expected growth of support for a socialist revolution was not to take place in his own lifetime. In one of his later writings, News From Nowhere, he portrays the socialist objective of a stateless, moneyless, classless society, and also predicts a long period of struggle with a series of diversions before the working class would consciously decide to bring about socialism.

MD

William Morris 1834-1896 (1934)

From the April 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A life in which every human being should find unrestricted scope for his best powers and faculties.”

When Morris proclaimed this as his hope and ambition for the future he was treated as a silly dreamer; the mere idea was dismissed as puerile fantasy. But there was nothing dream-like about Morris’s sturdy propagandist methods of fighting to achieve this, his strongest desire, and nothing fanciful about his acceptance of the hard fact that its achievement was bound to be a long and often disillusioning process. However, for a persistent stresser of the class issue, as Morris was, misrepresentation is inevitable. What is our view? We know, as he did, that such an extension and encouragement of individuality throughout society is historically possible; we hold, with him, that its attainment is well worth the struggle; he constantly maintained, as we do, that the oppressively different conditions prevalent to-day are the result solely and only of the division of society into classes, exploiting and exploited, and that the one possible means of changing those conditions is to do away with class society.

Who, then, was this William Morris? Contemptuously referred to in his day as the “poet upholsterer” or the “craftsman Socialist”, he presents to our study one of the most admirable personalities and complex intellects of the nineteenth century. Orthodoxy knows him best as artist and craftsman, reviver of dead or dying arts such as tapestry, weaving, dyeing, and the staining of glass, a maker of dignified furniture, rich textiles and fine books. But, alas for orthodoxy, here was an artist who would not conform to artistic tradition and spurn the affairs of this world. He knew, and cried it from the housetops, that art is a social phenomenon, and that for an artist to attempt to divorce himself or his works from society is mere childishness. To Morris art was inseparable from the everyday life of society, or else it was poisoned at the roots; and the underlying cause of the sordid “eyeless vulgarity” of current everyday life was, he saw and insisted, simply the private ownership of the means of life. His art and his Socialism are inseparable. (It must, of course, be understood that, although in many respects his “Socialism” was a good deal nearer to our position than that of most of his contemporaries, he naturally had by no means a complete grasp of the Socialist case as we understand it. In particular he was no student of economics, and admittedly found the subject bewildering apart from broad essentials.)

Born in 1834, two years after the Reform Bill, he grew up in the period of definite capitalist ascendancy and consequent smugness. His family was well-to-do; he had, however, the good fortune to run wild considerably and thus both gathered reserves of vitality and escaped much of the conventional training and discipline. A great deal of his childhood was spent roaming Epping Forest (wilder then than now) where he acquired a deep love of open air and stored up rich memories of the shapes, colours and movements of wild plants, which, years later, were incorporated in his designs and decorations. Early in life, also, he showed a fondness for studying architecture, particularly the simple, massive, spacious Gothic.

He was sent to Oxford to take Holy Orders, but religion seems to have slipped almost unperceived from his life after his early days at college. He found there a group of unconventional friends, and, before long, had decided on architecture as a career. His Oxford friends, the chief of whom was Burne-Jones, were all connected with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in painting, and in revolt against the ugliness of contemporary life. The emotional reaction against drabness and dirt was expressed by means of glowing colours applied to subject-matter deliberately archaic, as far removed as possible from hated industrialism. Morris, on leaving Oxford, worked in London as an architect, living with his friend Burne-Jones, in close association with Rossetti, the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Presently he gave up architecture and began learning to be a painter, writing poetry meanwhile; but his real career started when, after his marriage in 1859, he attempted to furnish a house, but failed to find any goods on the market fine enough either in design, material or workmanship to suit his taste. Characteristically undaunted, he decided to design personally, with the enthusiastic help of a group of friends, not merely the furniture and decorations, but the house itself. So the Red House at Upton was built and furnished. In the course of its building the firm of Morris & Co. was founded. The firm’s history is one of magnificent technical achievement in every branch of decorative art, the details of which are not, however, relevant to our purpose here. Suffice it to say that Morris always resented the fact that the competitive and exploiting social system made it impossible for his beautiful products to reach the mass of the population, although it was not until the firm had been in existence for some fifteen years that he began to realise that, with the Socialist movement, lay the explanation of his difficulties and the solution of his problems.

His first appearance on public platforms was in connection with the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, which he helped to found, and which he facetiously nicknamed the Anti-Scrape. A little later he joined the Eastern Question Association, then the National Liberal League, and, finally, in 1883, the Democratic Federation. There followed a period of strenuous political activity, lecturing, writing and street-corner propaganda. The DF became the SDF and produced a weekly paper, Justice, but it was not long before Morris and Hyndman found themselves unable to agree. Continual dissension as to tactics, principles and authority led to the secession of Morris, at the end of 1884, and the formation of the Socialist League. This body held that the time was not ripe for Parliamentary action, and that the business of the moment, and, indeed, of some time to come, was simply to make Socialists, however slow and unspectacular that task might prove.

When a sufficient number of Socialists had been made, they said it would be time enough to consider taking political action. In 1886 and 18867 a number of “Free Speech” demonstrations, and, in particular, the events of Bloody Sunday, when an unemployed demonstration was broken up by force of arms, helped to make the Socialist League’s name known for its propagandist activities on these occasions, and Morris became a prominent political figure. But opportunism was creeping in; Morris found his policy opposed, he was considered too slow; Anarchist tendencies also began to show themselves. In 1889 he was deposed from the editorship of the Party journal, the Commonweal, and, in the following year, he withdrew from the League, his local branch forming itself into the independent Hammersmith Socialist Society. The League rapidly degenerated into loud-mouthed Anarchism, while the Hammersmith Socialist Society never achieved much more than a local influence except in so far as the lectures delivered there by Morris were subsequently published and had a fair sale.

It must be remembered that, throughout his life, even at the height of his political activities, he continued to make beautiful objects of every kind, to lecture frequently on art, and to write romances, poems and translations from Greek, Latin and Icelandic. All his work is outstanding for its consistent high quality; in nothing is he less than good. He was a man of superb energy, of unconquerable vitality, beset by an ever-present conception of things as they might be, as they some day would be, and yet always able to take a youthful delight in the homely pleasures of cooking, camping or playing hide and seek. “An incorrigible dreamer, if you like, but master of his dreams; not drifting hither and thither on the tide of his emotions, but navigating his imagination with a port in view; no visionary enveloped in an atmosphere of vague idealism, but a sane level-headed man if ever there was one.”

His theories on art have been much discussed of late. His—rather Ruskin’s—definition of art as man’s expression of joy in his labour has been so bandied about and manhandled that it is not easy to strip off all recent associations and discover what Morris was really trying to convey. Art, he declared, cannot be produced by someone who is unhappy in their work, whereas people whose general everyday occupation gives them joy will consciously, or unconsciously, find means of embodying that joy in the products of their labour and attempting to convey it to others. It does not follow, and Morris certainly did not mean, that everything that anyone has found pleasure in making must be a work of art. He applied the definition in a general social sense rather than to each particular product. He always emphasised the social foundations of art, and, by means of this definition, he wished to make it clear that capitalism, by its ruthless exploitation of the mass of mankind, by forcing almost all men to toil at uncongenial occupations, is destroying all possibility of genuine widespread artistic creation.

It must be repeated that, to Morris, art, if confined to a small leisured class, did not deserve the name. He was very much influenced by the art theories of Ruskin, particularly by his conception of the intimate relationship between beauty and utility. Ruskin had declared, in special reference to unnecessary ornamentation in architecture, that a thing that is not useful cannot be beautiful. This is also true in a sense which, perhaps, neither Ruskin nor Morris intended, that is, that beauty—for example, rich and varied colours, rhythmic movements, harmonious sounds, graceful lines, intertwining patterns—is physically useful to us in that it exercises and develops our five senses, our “best faculties”. It gives us “life, and that more abundantly”. But, apart from that, Morris very astutely perceived that this same distinction between beauty and utility has as its basis the class factor; it can only arise in class-divided society. Abolish classes and establish production for use instead of profit, and you destroy for ever this arbitrary distinction between use and beauty.

To assess Morris’s Socialism, taken as a whole, is a confusing task. At first sight his avoidance of any but the most generalised economic problems, and his exuberant claim that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were something of approaching a Golden Age, make him appear no more than a muddled-headed old Utopian with his heart in the right place and his head in the clouds. But go a little deeper and you find that, on many points, he took up a position similar to that of the SPGB. He never ceased to maintain that the fundamental cause of all present social problems was class-divided society, production for profit and not for use. He insisted that the only true practical task for many years to come must be simply, to use his famous slogan, “Education towards Revolution”. He disliked seeing untaught masses rushed hither and thither by hotheads and careerists: “Of course”, he said, “as long as people are ignorant, compromise plus sentiment always looks better to them than the real article.” He early learned, from experience of the slow progress of the one important work of making Socialists, that “Socialism in our time” was a vain hope. Nevertheless, though he gave the social reformers credit for the best of intentions, he steadfastly repeated that no amount of reform could give us Socialism. Neither did he advocate that strange hybrid, “State Socialism”; by Socialism he meant common ownership of the means of life, production not for profit, but for use, and he was not to be put off by any fake or substitute.

To sum up, we may say that William Morris was, indeed, a man of contradictions. He glorified in the past, but dreamed of the future; too energetic to be thoroughly reflective, he was yet too reflective not to see the limitations inflicted on his energies by capitalism; an idealistic view of history and a bourgeois life of honest industry and artistic endeavour led him to Marxist Socialism and soap-box propaganda; he detested capitalism’s “sordid, aimless, ugly confusion”, yet he was fascinated by such things as railway organisation; his personality was assertive, emphatic, virile; none the less, the main bulk of his literary work (The Earthly Paradise, The Life and Death of Jason, and the many prose romances), though its quality is always good and his writing is outstanding for its melodious clarity in a rather pretentious period, is yet inclined to be discursive, lacking in concision, in that terse economy of phrase that gives lasting virility to style. His books always paint a colourful and pleasing picture; his craftsmanship maintains a fine level; yet from a man of his extreme vigour and bluffness this general impression of sunny meadows, serene rivers and calm-browed heroes comes, somehow, incongruously. This is not to dismiss his work as anaemic; and, in short poems here and there, in many descriptive passages in his longer works, his manner is as forthright as anyone’s. The main flavour of his literary work, however, is pleasantly satisfying rather than stimulating, graceful rather than incisive. Similarly, with much of his decorative work, the detail of his designs has a grand robustness, but the total effect is over complicated and inclined to monotony, though this, of course, is more apparent to modern taste than it would be in his own day.

But all these contradictions fail to detract at all from his vivid, simple exuberance; they serve, in fact, to show up the directness and simplicity of his personal relationships as yet another contradiction, for such characteristics seem strange indeed in one who embodied so many conflicting tendencies. The man himself was an unresolved contradiction, personifying the contradictory forces ever present in capitalist society, but only in the 1850-1890 period becoming crystallised and apparent to all careful observers. It has been said that he was born as the tide of bourgeois ascendancy was setting in, but capitalism bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and it is in the time of capitalist expansion and complacency that those seeds begin to take firm root, ready, in course of time, to produce class-conscious Socialists and ultimately a Socialist working class. Just at that epoch of industrial consolidation and political criticism came Morris, in truth, “a wanderer between two worlds”. His life, inasmuch as it condenses within itself innumerable streams of nineteenth century thought and feeling, is an illuminating study. Many of his theories seem strangely remote from us, though it is not yet forty years since his death, but it may be that capitalism has so blunted our senses that we can no longer appreciate his meaning. Most of his Socialist propaganda is clear enough, however, and there is nothing dreamlike or effeminate about this:-

   

“Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working people: and then I say the thing will be done.”

Stella Stewart

Proper Gander: The Hand-Made Tale (2019)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we’re stuck at work, stressed out and fed up with the usual hierarchies and procedures, who hasn’t daydreamed about doing something more imaginative and fulfilling? Days spent not being a small cog in someone else’s machine, but doing what we’re passionate about to make an end product of which we can be proud.

The Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries recognised that work could be more satisfying than what it has become in capitalism. This movement was a reaction to the growth of industrialism, which at that time meant ever-increasing numbers of smoky, dirty mills and factories. Its prominent members were artists and socialists who railed against how industry, and mass production in particular, churned out both dull, impersonal commodities and alienated, exploited workers. It harked back to a romanticised view of mediaeval times, when production meant individually-crafted pottery, furniture and ornaments. Emphasising how making things by hand brings us closer to what we produce, it aimed to encourage people to find pleasure again in being creative. Arts and Crafts designs were simple, light and airy, in contrast to the dominant fashion for wealthier Victorians’ homes to be cluttered, dark and stuffy. Patterns were often inspired by nature, such as in the floral motifs of William Morris’ wallpaper and William De Morgan’s pot and tile designs.

Trying to recreate both the artworks and the working practices of the movement was the premise behind BBC2’s The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts. In this show, six craftsmen and women spend a month living and working together, each week using traditional methods to make Arts and Crafts-inspired items for a particular room of the house.

Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942)

The idea of craftspeople working together as a community comes from The Guild and School of Handicraft, founded by Charles Robert Ashbee in 1888. This was a collective of workshops run with the aim of seeking ‘not only to set a higher standard of craftsmanship, but at the same time, and in so doing, to protect the status of the craftsman’. The programme aims to reconstruct such a place, where artists can bounce ideas off each other, share knowledge and experience, and find ways of working well together. Although they are already skilled in trades such as metalwork, woodwork, pottery and textiles, the show’s six participants will only be using materials, tools and techniques from the 19th century. Through the weeks their tasks include manually printing wallpaper from carved blocks and making a chair by weaving its seat from reeds and using a pole lathe to turn wood for the legs.

As well as using practical methods most of us are unfamiliar with, the Arts and Crafts movement also championed styles of work which differ from that which many of us endure. For example, rest was important to the movement, as it makes work more dignified and allows time for ideas to develop. In capitalist workplaces, where time is money, any breaks we don’t end up working through are usually just long enough to gather up enough energy to last out the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, the programme imposes tight deadlines on the artists to complete their pieces, so they have to work with more intensity and less leisurely enjoyment than the Arts and Crafts ideal. And it predictably uses another TV trope of picking a winner each week, which again seems to go against the movement’s ethos. But despite this, the participants are in the enviable position of being able to sketch their ideas while sitting in the garden before heading to a workshop to make them real. Having the opportunity to collaborate, experiment and be creative is a nourishing experience for them, echoing the movement’s belief in the therapeutic benefits of crafting by hand.

Inevitably, the programme focuses much more on art than on the movement’s political ideas. Rather than just being nostalgic for previous ways of working, the movement aimed for a new society where work could again be personal and satisfying. This doesn’t have to mean only using old techniques. As Charles Robert Ashbee said, ‘We do not reject the machine, we welcome it. But we would desire to see it mastered’. The movement’s political views were shaped particularly by John Ruskin and William Morris. Ruskin criticised the alienating nature of employment during the industrial revolution, but naively believed that society’s ills could be cured by a ‘noble’ class of philanthropic industrialists (see Socialist Standard, June 2000). Morris’ views were more imaginative and perceptive, recognising that the drudgery and exploitation of employment will remain as long as employment itself exists. His vision of the future, detailed in News From Nowhere (1890) is of a world where work is pleasurable and voluntary, as it would be if services and industry were owned and democratically run by the community as a whole. The Arts and Crafts movement remains relevant today, not just for anyone who wants to design and print their own wallpaper, but for anyone who wants a better way of living and working. The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts was a welcome reminder of a movement which isn’t just stuck in the past.

Mike Foster