Source: The Lancaster Gazette,
Saturday, 6th November, 1886, p. 7
Note: This is a delivery of the
lecture Socialism: the End and the Means
Transcription: by Graham Seaman for MIA, January 2023
A lecture under the above title was delivered in the Palatine Hall on Tuesday evening by Mr William Morris, of London, (author of "Tbe Earthly Paradise," &c.) The Rev. E. P. Hall, minister of Nicholas-steet chapel, presided. There was a very good attendance, the audience includlng several ladies.
The Chairman, in opening the meeting, said he was very pleased to see that so
many citizens of Lancaster had shown themselves to belong to that class to
which a certain leaflet bad been distributed rather widely through the
town—those who work; and thoes who think might be added, for those who think
and work had thought proper to respond to the invitation to attend there that
evening and hear his friend Mr. Morris. He heard in going up and down amongst
his fellow townsmen, something said about Socialism, and he found that some
were even indignant at the very word Socialism, and the more dense their
ignorance as to what its objects were, so much the more were they indignant
with it, so much the more did they condemn it, and so much more would they do
all in their power to prevent its advocates from having a hearing. (Hear,
hear.) If it was anything true, they ought to know and possess themselves of the
truth; if there was anything wrong or bad in it, anything that was wrong,
anything that was bad, could not have permanent life in it, because wrong and
injustice carried within themselves the germs of fatal disease in regard to the
question of Socialism. It might be wrong or it might be right; but before any
man or any woman had a right to condemn it or speak in its favour, they had a
previous right and a duty they owed to themselves and the society in which they
lived, to know something about the subject before their opinion for or against
it was worth the snap of their fingers. (Hear. hear.) Amongst Socialists as
amongst ever other body, they would find good, bad, and Indifferent men; and it
was not fair to altogether judge by the indifferent or by the bad. (Hear,
hear.) As one interested in Socialism, he had asked his friend, Mr Morris, to
come to Lancaster and speak to them on the subject; and who was—he would not
say a popular poet, but certainly a well known poet. (Applause.) After
referring to Mr Morris as an artist who had done a great deal to remedy much
that was obtrusively ugly in their homes, the Chairman went on to say that they
were told that the persons generally took up Socialism were men who had nothing
to lose—men who were repeatedly breaking the tenth commandment—men who were
envious of those who had something because they had nothing. Mr Morris was a
large employer of labour, and if England became socialistic to-morrow, he would
gain nothing personally, but they would all have this immense gain, that it
would be happier to live in a world in which they believed there was less
unhappiness and less misery, for it seemed that under the present state of
things there was a great amount of ignorance, and misery, and vice, so that the
chosen few might be happy, and have an opportunity of exercising their
Christian virtues. They found in all ranks—church people, dissenters, infidels,
and even in the Liberal party—(laughter)—those who believed too much, those who
did not believe enough, #and those who did not believe anything. And they found
some Socialists were neither one thing nor the other; it did not touch theology
at all. Mr. Thomas Johnson had told him that it seemed to be inconsistent to
have a lecture on Socialism and charge a shilling for the best seats.
(Laughter) He fully admitted that that was not socialistic, and was a bad thing
indeed, but that was going to be done away with in the happy morning
time—(laughter);—only it was well that they should feel now the horrors of
their present social system, and by using their own weapons make a change for
the better. (Hear, hear.) In introducing Mr Morris to them he wished to say
this. The present state of the world was just about as bad as it could be in
many ways. It was true that they had hospitals for the sick, and churches and
chapels to which people could come in order to be made better; they had
charities of every kind, and a great deal of help in many ways to stem the tide
of misery in the world, but in spite of all that misery and unhappiness seemed
to be on the increase. Socialists were revolutionists, but that did not mean
necessarily blood nor dynamite (Laughter.) Mr Hall then introduced the lecturer
to the audience.
Mr. Morris proceeded first of all to speak of the practical as apart from the ideal. It was indeed, he admitted, of the nature of idealists, and the necessary defect, to be somewhat vague in their views, while on the other hand, "practical" were apt to try to limit the vision, not only of themselves, but also of others, and to see finality in the first short stage before them. Those who wished to further the progress of the race should try both to see as far as they could and also to look to everything that is at hand which might help them to move forward; and meantime the end and the means would always be harmonious, though at first sight they might not seem so, to those who had insight and patience. Though he should have to speak strongly against the conditions of life which surrounded us all today, he would blame no man for the position into which he had been thrust by these conditions; neither to him was any epoch wholly repulsive oor worthless; he only attacked the conscious or semi-conscious or unconscious blindness of the man who would not see that his position was hurtful to others, and therefore to himself. He only wished to see, and to get others to see, that the old order changes, giving place to the new order which the old has long carried in its womb. Only those who were at once well-to-do and perhaps rather stupid were contented. From John Ruskin to the dock-labourer at a meeting of the League or the Federation: ultra-Radical artisan to the last pessimist prig who had written a bad novel to prove that some new and vague form of Toryism were the only thing that could save them—all were discontented, all were discontented, all were taking it for granted that something was going to happen! In short, while constant change was the condition of man's society, there were some periods in which men were conscious of the changes of the world, both those which have lately happened and that that the present pointed to in the future. Such a period was that immediately preceding the French Revolution, and such a period was that in which they lived. For the greater part of this century people had been used to expect periodical crises in commerce about every ten or eleven years, and had so to say underwritten such crises, and averaged them, and been contented that the good years should pay for the bad. But as they stood now, for five or six years at least they had been passing through a depression in trade, and during that time there had been many hopes of recovery, which had all been disappointed one after the other; and if there be to-day, as he was told there was, a fresh hope springing up, he could not find that it was based on anything more reassuring than the vague idea that since things have been bad for so long they must now begin to mend. There was an intellectual movement that preceded this political one, and which would go on working even though the discontent of poverty were lulled by a recovery of commerce. The discontent of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, of the men of the Commune of Paris, and others, was a protest against the whole system of modern Society and manifested itself even amidst the roaring trade of the period of leaps and bounds. Discontent had developed an insight of something which was to take the place of the old order. The feudal period had given place to the commercial period, and now at last this in turn was breaking up. In bygone times men suffered from the scarcity of commodities; they were now suffering from their superabundance. The real prayer uttered now among commercial people was for war and devastation, and not "Give us peace in out time, O Lord!" If it was true that if there was anything in the cry of overproduction now so current—and there was truth in it under the present system of rewarding labour—if the stock of manufactured articles now in English warehouses could be diminished one-half, there would be joy in many a household in Great Britain out of all proportion to the number of the households that would lament it. If an accident occurred in some country which they supplied with tools, and they were all destroyed, many a family who depended on making those tools would be considered happy, And suppose all stocks lowered by war or other calamities, all of which were good for trade, as the phrase went, what happened? All hands would be employed, with good wages and easy livelihood at first; but then more energy produced more wares, the market would again be glutted, and prices would fall; but production was not checked suddenly, because people hoped that the crisis would soon be over. Then it would all come on again, only worse than before, because the market would have been yet more exhausted than before by the last period of roaring trade. When the nations were tired of war with each other—exhausted by the waste and disgusted at the murder—they would be face to face with the great question, "What are we to do with the wealth which we civilized people produce in such huge quantities? it seems we cannot refrain from producing it—shall we waste it or use it?" The time when the answer to that question could no longer be evaded was drawing so near that they should bestir themselves at once to answer it. It was a question which those who did not forget the poor at a time when the prosperity of the rich and well-to-do was not threatened as is was now put to themselves; and it was a question also which the artisan class was now beginning to ask, and which one day they might ask in a very peremptory fashion; nay, it might be that the downright poor would ask the question first in their fashion, and if they did it would make terrible times for the rich and well-to-do. Should they waste their wealth or use it? Why did they waste it now. Because they were cowards, and therefore unjust. Wealth was made for all, and should be used for the benefit of all; but in their fear they had forgotten what was meant by all. As to the meaning of the word property, he did not think he could do better than quote John Ruskin on the point; "property," he said, "was something which was good in itself, which you have acquired justly, and which you use rightly." They might accept that as the communist view of property in its good sense, and they must have worked towards its production, or they would have injured the rest of the community by thrusting on them their share of work as well as their own. Neither could they use it unless they used it personally. A man who owned a hundred acres of land could not possibly use more than a small corner of it himself, but since he had got it, the law supported him in preventing other people from using it, and therefore he used it not as land to raise produce from or build a house upon for himself to live in, but as a means of compulsion for other people to work for him; they could not do without the land, they must have it, and if he were not arbitrarily protected by his monopoly, they would make short work of it by using it in spite of him. But since the State provided him with policemen and soldiers to put them in prison or kill them if they use it against his will, they could not use it unless he gives them leave to do so, and he will not do that unless they give him a part of the results of their labour. Thus it was that the claim to call that property in any good sense was manifestly absurd. Industrial society should take care that the producers should also be the consumers, or there would be waste and wrong. The end in view of those who had not forgotten the poor, even in days of roaring trade,was simply to bring society to a basis of common honesty in the ordinary transactions of life. What were the conditions of our honest society? every member of it should have a chance of a happy life, and in order to have that chance he must be allowed to enjoy the fruits of his own labour. If he be sick, or otherwise incapacitated from work, it would be a sacred duty for his fellow men to sustain him in a ll comfort. The aim was to have a community striving for the happiness of the human race, each man striving for the happiness of the whole, and therefore for his own through the whole. Surely such a community would develop the best qualities of man, and make such a world as it was difficult to conceive of now. Was that a vain ideal? Socialists held that that ideal would certainly be realised—that the foregone ages had been preparing for its realisation—and for his part he believed that the time of its realisation was drawing near. For the production of wealth two things were necessary—raw material and labour. These must be brought together in order that commodities might be made. The raw material was monopolised by the possessors of money who exacted a tax from labour before they would allow the use of them to it, the tax being that the monopolisers should have all the produce of the union of the two things, labour and raw material, over and above what the labourer would put up with in the way of wages without rebelling. The land could not be used by any individuals for their personal service; therefore it was not, and could not be, their property; it was the property of the community. Therefore, the land should be held by the community, and its use granted to those who could use it, who would still have to pay rent for its use, but not to an individual so that he might live by it without working, but to the community at large; so that those who paid it would get it back in other forms. After enlarging on this point, the speaker concluded as follows:-
Now, I have told you that the method of making society honest is for the community to take into its hands the means of production so that they may be used by all for the benefit of all. To many, or perhaps most of you, that will seem like an end in itself rather than a means; and you will ask me by what means we shall bring that about. In answering that question I am afraid that I shall disappoint you, because I find generally that people are much more eager about the immediate steps towards a a change than about the change itself—I suppose because they find it difficult to imagine the new order, whereas they can see the first step that may lead to it. So that mere politicians are generally careless about showing people their end (if they have one), and assiduous to concentrate their attention on the means, or rather on some important detail of them, which of course they call practical politics. I suppose they are wise in their own generation, and know the game they are playing at, but to those who are not playing a game, but are serious in their politics, this course has the disadvantage that the people who are led to follow it get to look upon the means as an end, and, when it is won, will go no further till they are wound up again like a watch for the next spell. The custom, therefore, being to dwell upon means rather than the end, I fear, I say, that I shall not satisfy you. I know, indeed, that the communisation of
is the necessary step to be taken, but when you say "How shall we take the step?" I can only say that at present, and at first, our only business is to get people used to thinking it necessary; other means may be useful—this is indispensable. As we progress in getting our views accepted, as a larger and larger body of consent to them rolls up, it will force us into action of some kind or another. Of another thing, again, I am sure—that though it may be possible at some time or another to use the forms of some of our present institutions to bring a change, the spirit of them is, and must be, hostile to us. The whole of the present authority that governs us is arranged on the assumption of the sacredness of that property which I have called robbery—its business is to see that it is not tampered with. It is true that it is forced to make concessions which seem to be in the direction of socialism; but they are not meant to be so—they are meant to make the basis of our present system more solid by making it wider. I admit that this is a dangerous game to play, because more and more concessions may be made, until at last there remains nothing left except the vital principle itself—the outworks will be gone, and there will be nothing but the citadel to storm. But we socialists, for our part, run a danger if we ware not careful to distinguish
of helping to widen the basis of robbery, and so putting off the birth of the new order of things. Besides, it is bad policy to do other people's work as well as our own. I am sure that, whatever concessions are necessary to prevent the working classes from falling into such a condition that they will be too weak to revolt against their slavery, will be forced out of the governing classes and their instrument, Parliament, the reactionary party is getting stronger and stronger. There was a year or two ago a Liberal party which tended to be Radical; this party has now disappeared and left a disregarded remnant of Liberals only held together by Mr Gladstone's name—a very mixed lot with a good sprinkling of Radicals amongst them. That on one side; on the other, a body of Liberals not tending to be Whigs, but Whigs with a Tory tendency; and a body of professed Tories, who only refrain from belonging to the Whig party from a sort of decent respect to the old names. Now, all this to me is a good sign, for it means that the aim of the popular party is changing, and that the people are beginning to think no longer of a Parliamentary game in which they are to take little or no part, but a great social change in which they will be the chief actors, and the unconscious sense of this is drawing those who were merely playing a game into serious resistance to popular demands. What they are saying to themselves is something like this: we dare no longer play at being Liberals and Radicals—we must look to the
Yes, that is their business; leave them to it, and do not let us play into their hands by helping them to make their government seem tolerable; let them feel that outside Parliament there is a body of discontent ever growing and ever learning, which will indeed accept concessions, but only as instalments of the whole claim for the emancipation of labour. For my part I believe that the more separate the two camps are kept, the plainer the demand is for communisation of the means of production, the less likelihood there will be of inconsequent violence on one side or the other, though the final struggle may be somewhat delayed, because the forces on each side will be more easy to measure. For all those, then, that desire the emancipation of labour there is this word to be said—you have at present just one business on hand, the making of Socialists; by the time you are well forward with that you may be pushed into another as well, but that business will always have to go on till, by one means or another, there are nothing else but Socialists and the haters of the people—between those two the struggle will not be long. Now, I have tried to show you that there is discontent abroad, both deep and widely agreed; that this discontent is caused by the rotting of the commercial system which has supplanted feudalism; that the same rottenness which has bred that discontent is forcing us to look forward to the birth of a new order, and to recognise its nature; that the end which we propose to ourselves is the realisation of the ideal of a society based on honesty and mutual respect; that the means for realising this ideal is the taking over by the community, for the use of the community, of all the means of production, so that cooperation and the organisation of labour may become possible; as for the means towards that end, time will develope some that we cannot now formulate, but, meanwhile, the one that is necessary is to make Socialists by educating the discontent which is now abroad into an intelligent and steady resolution, able to take hold of all Ohs elements of possible reconstruction that may be around us in the struggle, on the verge of which we now are.
I have been speaking throughout as to an audience who, if they are not all convinced Socialists, I believe at any rate to be all on the side of progress according to their lights; so to one and all I will say this; we are going to pass through rough times, I believe, that may try tbe stoutest of us, but we shall at last come out on the other side into days that, whether we Socialists are right or wrong, will be better than any the world has yet seen; and yet. unless we are ail wrong together, one of their characteristics will be that on every individual man will be thrown more responsibility as a citizen; when we have no longer any masters we must be our own masters, or we shall be a sorry crew. Often I think nowadays if those poor fellows loitering about the beerhouses and loafing away their time could only be got to think about their degradation, how soon it would be over! It is our sloth and cowardice in refusing to accept responsibility that keeps us in our present misery; let us shake that off, and face the situation like men, and we shall soon change it, and so educate ourselves to deal with the freedom that we shall at last win.
The lecturer was repeatedly applauded during its delivery.
A few questions were asked at the close, and the meeting terminated about ten o'clock with a vote of thanks to Mr Morris.