William Morris as a socialist
'William Morris - The Man and The Myth', by R. Page Arnot
William
Morris, the poet and designer of the Victorian era, is not generally
thought of as a Marxian Socialist. He is either praised for his artistic
contributions or pictured as a Utopian sentimentalist. In fact Morris
was a prominent and active member of one of the pioneer Marxist
organisations in Britain, the Socialist League, which was founded in
1884 by a group of people who broke away from the Social Democratic
Federation because of the dictatorial attitude of its founder, H. M.
Hyndman.
The League, in the words of its manifesto, advocated "the principles
of revolutionary international socialism." This manifesto was written by
Morris. Morris also served on the League's executive committee, edited
its official journal, wrote pamphlets and leaflets, addressed indoor and
street-corner meetings and sold its literature. An examination of his
writings will show that Morris had a clear grasp of the theory of
exploitation and the materialist conception of history.
Economics, and history were not, however, his specialities. Where
Morris can be said to have made a real contribution to socialist theory
is in bringing out the positive side of Socialism. Anyone who regards
his News from Nowhere as mere Utopianism misses the point altogether.
Morris was not painting a detailed picture of the future society rather
was he outlining what he saw as the possibilities of Socialism. He was
attempting to describe what relations between people could be like when
freed from the cash nexus. Other of his writings such as Art, Labour and
Socialism and Useful Work versus Useless Toil explains why is a
drudgery under capitalism and how it can be pleasure under socialism.
William Morris's views are interesting for another reason. The early
Marxian Socialism movement in Britain and North America spent much time
in discussing whether a Socialist party should have a programme of
immediate demands, of parliamentary reforms. This question came up for
discussion at the annual conference of the Socialist League in 1887.
The League contained many diverse elements including out-an-out
anarchists. Some of the branches (supported incidentally by Engels) were
in favour of trying to get into Parliament and drawing up a list of
"palliatives" as a parliamentary programme. The anarchists, naturally,
were opposed to this. So was William Morris, but for different reasons.
While not opposed to parliamentary action altogether, Morris was opposed
to the League acquiring a programme of palliatives or reforms.
In his opinion there was a need of "a body of principle" to abstain
from such opportunism. He suggested that for a Socialist organisation to
contest elections on such a programme would end in the election of
Socialists on non-Socialist votes. Morris was, however, prepared to work
with those who favoured a reform programme and after he had resigned
from the League following its capture by the anarchist section he signed
a manifesto, together with Hyndman and Bernard Shaw, calling for a
united socialist party.
Twenty years after the breakaway of the Socialist League from the
SDF, another break occurred—and for the same reasons, Hyndman's
dictatorial attitude and the organisation's opportunism. Those who broke
away were to form the Socialist Party of Great Britain. From the very
beginning, after the benefit of further discussions of the issue of a
reform programme especially in America, the Socialist Party was—and
still is—uncompromisingly opposed to a programme of immediate demands.
It would be ungenerous of us not to recognise that William Morris
usefully contributed to the discussion among early socialist which led
to the adoption of this principle by our party. Morris was quite
conscious of the fact that his position was a departure from that of
German Social Democracy.
This book contains further information on Morris' position on this
question, with the publication for the first time of some of his letters
to J. L. Mahon, who was for a time the secretary of the League. Page
Arnot has done some useful research but the commentary in this book,
despite the new material, is incredibly bad.
Arnot creates a new myth, one of Morris as a forerunner of the
so-called Communist Party of which he (Arnot) is a member. We are told
that because of his position on reforms Morris was a "leftist" of the
sort attacked by Lenin in his Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
(incidentally a type which has always been given short-shrift by the
Communist Party). Surely the choicest piece of distortion is that which
tells us that the British Road to Socialism, the current programme of
Arnot's party, is a detailed version of News From Nowhere!
Adam Buick
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