ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialism, No. 63, Mid-October 1973, p. 29.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Political Writings of William Morris
Edited with an introduction by A.L. Morton
Lawrence and Wishart, £1
WILLIAM MORRIS was one of the most remarkable men ever to get himself confused by the socialist movement. Outside of what may be labelled ‘politics’ a simple list of his abilities and achievements would fill a column of this page. As artist, designer, pioneer of modern architecture, as interior decorator, town-planner, conservationist, poet and painter, his influence had given shape to the world around us. But more importantly for socialists Morris was the leader of one of the first two Marxist organisations in Britain, a prolific propagandist, and a revolutionary strategist at a time when the working class was re-shaping itself as never before.
During Morris’ active years between 1877 and 1895 (he joined the Democratic Federation in 1883 and founded the Socialist League in 1885), revolutionaries faced the problem of moving their theory from the sterile discussions of political cliques into the more turbulent atmosphere of rising union militancy – a situation close enough to our own to be of immense interest. Unfortunately, little of this can be found in Mr Morton’s selection.
The problem of relating socialist theory to the spontaneous movement of the working class was the central question of Morris’ political life. As a result he was always emphatic about political education, writing clear explanatory articles in the Democratic Federation’s paper, Justice, and in the Socialist League’s Commonwealth, which he edited; and in his lectures he gave a basic introduction to Marxism to many of the young agitators who were to lead the growth of trade unionism of the next decade.
In these writings. Morris developed a theory of alienation and division of labour long before Marx’s works on these themes were published. More than any other socialist of his time he explained the class nature of the state in all its different aspects; and he stood against parliamentary involvement in a way which seemed ultra-left to Engels but in reality was based on the need first to build independent workers’ organisations. When it became clear to him that his own period was moving irretrievably towards reformism he produced an analysis of imperialism to explain the rise of a privileged and easily compromised upper crust of skilled workers. And from this he further predicted that the capitalist economy would have to produce ever more elaborate forms of waste in order to stabilise itself.
The most interesting of Morris’ original contributions however was on the question of the Party. This arose specifically as a way of introducing a socialist content into the various struggles of the 1880s – the marches and riots of the unemployed, the campaign for land nationalisation, the massive working-class protests at the coercion of Ireland. Within his idea of a band of trained working class agitators can be found the first signs of the cadre party. Twenty years before Lenin’s ‘party of a new type’, Morris was trying to build a ‘body of able, high-minded, competent men, who should act as instructors of the masses and as their leaders during the critical periods of the movement’. ‘To forge this head of the spear which is to pierce the armour of capitalism is our business, in which we must not fail.’
As a revolutionary during the heyday of reformism, Morris was able to produce some unique insights into this important period and made some incredible predictions about later developments. It was with disgust that he foresaw the emergence of a semi-demi-socialism and predicted the emergence of a new party which would ‘condescend to socialism and pat it on the back’ but nevertheless would tell the workers that ‘they must work with the capitalists and not against them, so that you may extend markets, contend successfully with other nations, and improve business’.
He was also the first socialist strategist to give serious consideration to many of the issues raised by the next generation – the need for a revolutionary party, the effect of imperialism and working class chauvinism, the relationship of socialists to the state, and the importance of ‘consciousness’ over economic determinism. Sadly, however, whereas Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg were later to develop these points into a radical critique of existing ‘Marxist’ theory of the reformist Social Democrats, Morris remained tied to many of their ideas, which reached him through the overpowering influence of the German Social Democrats, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Kautsky. Unable to deal with it theoretically, Morris was driven to combat it by moving entirely onto the ideological level of propaganda and revolutionary ‘purism’. Inevitably this led to his organisation away from immediate working class struggles. Aware of the limitations of his inherited theory, and aware that it led to the ‘state socialism’ which he detested, Morris could only go beyond it by appealing for the ‘complete’ communism of his Utopian writings, News from Nowhere, The Society of the Future and so on.
There is too much in Morris and his period to be encompassed in a short review but not too much, I’d thought, for a book like Mr Morton’s. Yet incredibly, instead of bringing to life an important piece of working-class history, or drawing invaluable lessons from this mine of past experience, Mr Morton (who is chairman of the Communist Party’s history group) gives us Morris the conservationist! While he couldn’t avoid including some excellent articles (I’d pick out Art Under Plutocracy, Useful Work Versus Useless Toil, The Society of the Future and Communism) his introduction and the general criterion for selection avoid the real issues of the time and can be of little interest either for workers or revolutionaries. Instead, the book gives us further evidence of the Communist Party’s retreat into vague populist phrases and trendy radicalism, which give a gloss to their own reformist politics.
In 1948, with A.L. Morton contributing, the National Cultural Committee of the Communist Party made a ‘special claim of affiliation to William Morris’. Nobody condemns them for that – pointless as it was. Notable Party members of that day like R. Page Arnot and E.P. Thompson did real service to Morris’ memory by distinguishing him from his legend as the cuddly old grandad of the Labour Party. However, it is some kind of gauge of British left wing politics that as soon as a group becomes irretrievably bankrupt they will lay claim to Morris’ paternity. The Fabians, the ILP, Guild Socialists, and the Labour Party, have all tried to adopt Morris by emphasising the worst aspects of his thinking: his ‘moral’ appeal as a separate supplement to political strategy. This is the real purpose of Mr Morton’s book. As Morris himself wrote: for those who lack a revolutionary strategy, ‘compromise plus sentimentality look better than the real thing’.
There is a need for a selection of Morris’ political writings, one which puts him in his context and which provokes neither the adulation nor derision he has so far received. Morris now needs to be criticised; he was a fellow revolutionary and we can learn from his mistakes, but so far none of his disciples has paid him that honour. The occasion of his adoption by the CP was marked by these words:
‘It can be seen with what insight Morris could pierce the veil of the future, with what skill he was able to “state the case” for Communism and also show how the struggle of the working class was the only means to lead the people to that final aim. In different circumstances, but still in the same country, The British Road to Socialism claims to show a later generation not only the way forward but the aim worked out in detail.’ What could be more ironic?
Editor’s note: Pluto Press are publishing a selection of Morris’ political writings in the late autumn; edited with an introduction by David Wilson and Ken Montague; price, about £1.
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 20.9.2013