Source: The Norfolk News,
Saturday 16 October 1886, p.12
Note: This is a delivery of the
lecture Socialism: the End and the Means
Transcription: by Graham Seaman for MIA, November 2022
Mr. William Morris, author of "The Earthly Paradise” and other poems, lectured on Monday evening in the Victoria Hall, Norwich, on the above subject to a large audience. Mr. Thorne, who occupied the chair, briefly introduced Mr. Morris to the audience, who gave him a hearty welcome.
However much they plumed themselves on their practicality it was, he said, fit and proper to set before themselves the actual end desired. Practical people taunted idealists who, without practical people, would be in a worse plight than they were now. Idealists would make a great mistake if they despised practical people. People of blind sensibilities were perhaps required to carry out progress and political reforms. But to ensure steadiness of purpose was impossible without some ideal to aim at. With such visions, vague and incomplete, they must be content. Practical people would try to limit the vision; those who wished for further progress of the race should try to see as far as possible. In all worthy causes the end and means would be harmonious to those who had insight and patience. Violence, from which they might suffer during the great periods of change, might indicate the freedom and energy of the time to come. He blamed no man for the position he was in; he only blamed him for not seeing that his position was hurtful to himself and others. All thoughtful and many unthoughtful people ware deeply discontented with the condition of life surrounding them at present. Only the well-to-do and thoughtless and stupid were contented. While constant change was the condition of men's life upon earth, there were periods in which men were conscious of the changes. Such a period immediately preceded the great French Revolution; and such a period was the present. They were forced to hope, because they were forced to move forward. He hoped the cause of this stir and aspiration lay deeper than the present condition of trade. Yet that had something to do with the feeling. People had been led to expect periodical crises during the century, and if after five or six years of depression, hope was now springing up, he could not find that it was based on anything more than re-assuring them the vague idea that as things had been bad so long they would mend. This evil had a great deal to do with the present discontent. If things mended, no doubt discontent would be damped down for a time, and probably agitation would be to a certain extent deferred. But apart from the fact that recovery would be but temporary the discontent lay deeper than that. An intellectual movement preceded this political movement. Ruskin and Carlyle were amongst those who protested against the whole system of modern society. The discontent long felt by the lowest workers and the highest thinkers was now enveloping all classes and conditions of men, and was founded on the consciousness of the approaching breakup of the present system which had lasted since the end of the feudal system. With that discontent there had been developed the necessity of something to take the place of the old order. What the commercial period had won could not be taken from them. In bygone times. man suffered from the scarcity of commodities; now they were suffering from the superabundance of commodities. Instead of praying "give us peace in our time, O Lord", many commercial people wished for a bloody war and plenty of destruction. Strange that the bounty of nature and the energetic ingenuity of man must under our system produce famine amongst us, let alone waste; yet it was true, if in the cry of over-production now so current, under the present system of rewarding labour. If half the stock of manufactured articles in English warehouses could be destroyed there would be Joy out of proportion to the sorrow. If there should be a war hands would be employed, wages would rise, more wares would be produced, and the markets would again be glutted, when prices would fall once more, though factories and machinery would go on till the last moment. So in a few years there would again be over-production, only in an increased ratio. Should there be a a great European war the nations when it was over would ask themselves, ”What are we to do with the wealth [of] which we civilized people produce in such huge and ever-increasing quantities? Shall we waste it or shall we use it?" It was wasted now because people were cowards, and therefore unjust. Wealth was made by all, and should be used for the benefit ot all. Under the feudal system man felt themselves to be members of the great corporate body, the church on earth and in heaven. When men freed ourselves from the superstitions of the time, the freedom claimed and obtained was the freedom of each to succeed at the expense of others, if only he were stronger and cleverer then they—in other words, there was gained the freedom to enslave others. In the present state of society, those who made the commodities were not those who got them—they were kept poor by those who had managed to become their masters. One-sided freedom had brought the people to a ridiculous and base position. Since the fill development of the present system the distinction between classes had in the main merged itself into one class owning all the means of the production of wealth, and the other class owning nothing hut the labour inherent to their bodies. Thai the so-called upper class did not produce, or produced scarcely at all; while the non-possessing class worked for it for such wages over and above what was necessary to keep them alive as they could manage to force from their masters by violence, direct or indirect, such as strikes. The difference between the present arrangement and that of the feudal system was not noticed, because the master class was not necessarily hereditary. The main and almost only business of all authority was the protection of privilege and monopoly which was hurtful and poisonous to life. The whole power of the State was put in force to enable anyone who by accident had become possessed of a certain amount of wealth to use it for the purpose of compelling others to yield up to him a portion of what they themselves had produced. Property, according to Ruskin, was something good in itself, to be acquired justly end used rightly. Unless men worked towards the production ot wealth they dil not acquire property rightly, and they could not use it unless they used it personally. The view of property under the present system was that it was something which other people could be prevented from using. A man owning 100 acres of land, who could not use more than a small corner of it, was supported by the law in preventing other people using it; and therefore used the land as a means of compulsion for other people to work for him. After all, the Land was but one instrument of production. There was also a monopoly of past labour, whether embodied in mansions, buildings, or machinery. The claim to all this property in any good sense was manifestly absurd. Land, machinery, and capital were used for exactly the same purpose as the castles on the Rhine were in the middle ages: they were robbers' castles. A thief who was sent to penal servitude lived without producing; the possessing or monopolising class made it their business to live without producing. The thief, according to law, was treated very unjustly since our legal society was founded on legal robbery. The producer should also be the consumer, there would be waste and wrong. The aim of socialism was to bring society to a basis of common honesty in the ordinary daily transactions of life. The meanest and most miserable vices flourished under a society founded on robbery. Each must thrive at its neighbour’s expense. Men might be industrious and develop thought, but it was no use unless there was somebody worse than themselves to conquer, and so in spite of their good qualities they would be deemed to be their slaves. Men lived in daily terror lest they should lose some of their livelihood through others, and so were forced to deal hardly with their fellows lest they should rise above them and take their places. What a changed world it would be if this the basest of passions were absent from daily life. Society would be based on healthful honesty, not wasteful robbery. There could not be such a society without a growing sense of community with all humanity—a community striving for the happiness of the human race. Such a community would develop the best qualities of man and make such a world as it was difficult to conceive. If that was but an empty dream then there was nothing to be looked for on this earth, and the business of each one must be simply to stave off pain and suffering and grasp at passing pleasures without regarding others. Socialists said that their ideal would certainly be realised. Foregone ages had been preparing for its realisation, and he believed the time for it was drawing near. What were the means to the end? For the production of wealth raw materials and labour were necessary. Raw material was at present monopolised by the possessors of money, who exacted a tax from labour. Monopolists had all the produce of the union of labour and raw material over and above what the labourer would put up with in the way of wages without rebellion. The result of the arrangement was constant war between the two parties. The workers could not employ themselves at present because the raw material was not tree for them to use. The raw material of the instrument of the fructification of labour ought to be nationalised or communised—in point of fact they could not at present see clearly any further than that in looking for means to the great end. But, practically, that was no little step to take. Land that could not be used for personal service must be nationalised. Lend should be held by the community, and its use granted to those who could use it on payment of a rent to the community, so that those who paid the rent would have it back again in another form. Rent would paid simply and solely that the lend might be properly distributed. Much the same thing would take place with machinery, factories, and railways. They would be used for the benefit of the whole people, and labour would be set free. The community would make no profit out of these transactions. Rent would be paid tor factories and machinery, but only to supply loss by wear, tear, and accident. Similarly, the community might have to lend the banded workmen money while getting goods toady for market, and that money they would pay back, but without interest. Everyone would produce. There would be no longer any talk about over-production, the producers and consumers would be the same people, who would take care not to overwork themselves in producing goods they could not use. There would then in all probability be abundance of leisure from mere industrial production, which men would employ to developing their highest intellectual faculties. The first step towards this was to make people think it was necessary. The whole of the present governing authority was arranged on the assumption of the sacredness of that property which he had called robbery. Its business was to see that that sacredness was not tampered with. It was forced to make concessions which seemed to be in the direction of Socialism. Mr. Morris here referred to the position of political parties, and the apathy about politics as a good sign, for it meant that the people were thinking no longer of the Parliamentary game in which they take little or no part, but rather of the great social change in which they would be the chief actors. Let those whose business it was to keep law and order feel that outside Parliament there was a body of discontent ever growing and learning which would claim the emancipation of labour, while those who desired that emancipation must go on making socialists.
Mr. Mowbray moved the following resolution, which was adopted:-
"That this meeting having heard Comrade Morris' exposition of the aims and methods of socialism, hereby protests against the recent police interference with the open-air propaganda in London and several provincial towns, and also pledges itself to support the right of free speech everywhere."
A vote of thanks was given to Mr. Morris for his address.