Source: The Sheffield Independent,
29 September 1886, page 2
Note: This is a delivery of the
lecture Socialism: the End and the Means
Transcription: by Graham Seaman for MIA, November 2022
The Socialists of Sheffield, if not numerous, are active and zealous. After several recent meetings in the open air, they last night convened a meeting in the lower room of the Albert Hall, to which a considerable number of persons were attracted, in order to hear a lecture by Mr. Wm. Morris, who is well-known, both as a poet and a socialist, on the subject of "Socialism — the end and the means."
The chair was taken by Mr. Edward Carpenter, who, addressing the audience as "Friends and fellow citizens," was careful in his introduction of the lecturer always to speak of him as "William Morris." He alluded to the flattering reception which Mr. Morris' early poems met with from the literary and fashionable world, contrasting this with the almost savage way in which he was turned upon when he earnestly set himself to think about an "earthly paradise" in the future, wbich would be better than the "earthly paradise" of the dim past, about which he had exercised his imagination as a poet. Mr. Morris, he also said, was no mere dreamer, but had a practical and successful acquaintance with business life under the existing capitalistic system, which he now so vigorously condemned.
Mr. Morris then rose to deliver his lecture. He is a man of powerful build, robust and vigorous in his bearing, though slightly inclined to corpulence; and his fresh and ruddy countenance, surmounted by flowing grey hair, has a look of determination as well as of frankness, as if he would rejoice in, rather than succumb to any opposition. The lecture, which lasted about an hour, was an able and clever exposition of his views, albeit that it -was open to the criticism which he seemed, by his exordium, to anticipate, and which, surely enough, was bestowed upon it at its close. The well balanced sentences and the elegant metaphors were often somewhat vague both as to their signification and application, and his conclusions appeared to be those rather of an idealist than of a practical man, both of whom, as he observed, have their use. He drew attention to the discontent with the present state of things which existed among thoughtful and unthoughtful minds, the cause of which he believed lay deeper than the passing events of surface economics. The present depression of trade doubtless caused the discontent to ba more widespread, being shared by the more prosperous and more powerful working men, who in times of better trade did not feel the inferiority of their position. But there was a permanent discontent in the minds of the lowest workers, who in better times had no power to make their voices heard, and among thinking men like John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, the men of tho Commune of Paris —{cheers)— Karl Marx, Krapotkin, &c. This discontent, he argued, was founded npon a consciousness of the break np of the present system, which had succeeded upon the decrepitude of feudalism, and was in its turn decaying, the vision of a new order. The period of commercialism had blessed the world with wonderful discoveries and inventions, so that where one man once lived hardly a thousand could now live well; but it could do no more. It had fallen into a snare which no one could have foreseen. It had won the treasure, but could not use it. (Hear, hear.) While in bygone days people suffered from a scarcity of commodities, they now suffered from superabundance. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Competition produced such a state of things that war — which was rapine and murder on a national scale — and calamities of every kind were actually good for trade. Every recovery from periodical trade crises, by exciting yet further competition and invention, only brought our civilisation just so much nearer the edge of the pit. Present circumstances, in the opinion of many, were tending towards another European war; if such a war should happen, he could not help thinking it would be the last of such monstrosities. The question was what we should do with the wealth which we could not help producing. Should we waste it or use it? The wealth that was made by all should be used for the benefit of all. Our present system had brought about this result — that the community was divided into classes, one of which had all the means for the production of wealth, and the other nothing but the labour of their bodies, and the former by their monopoly, were able to compel the latter to do a day's labour for less than the result of that labour in order that they might live without producing. The idea of property under our present system had become, not the possession_of something which you could use, but something which you could prevent others from using. A thief was sent to prison because he deprived other people of what belonged to them in order that he might live without producing, and seeing that this was the one business of the monopolist class, their success in which brought them respect and honours, he considered the thief was rather hardly dealt with. (Laughter and cheers.) The thief was treated unjustly, in fact because our legal society was founded on robbery. The end of socialism really was to bring society to a basis of common honesty in the ordinary daily transactions of life — helpful honesty instead of wasteful robbery. Such a society could not exist without bringing about a sense of the community of all humanity. Under such conditions every member of the community would have a chance of a happy life; each man would enjoy the fruits of his own labour, and infancy and old age would be maintained by the community as a sacred duty. The end of socialism wss a community striving for the happiness of the human race, and if this was a vain ideal and an empty dream, there was nothing to be looked for at all on this earth. But as socialists they believed this would be brought about, though men who wished for such a result shrank from the practical steps necessary to bring it about. As to the practical means, Mr. Morris said raw material and labour must be brought together without the intervention of monopoly. The land should be nationalised or communised, and should be granted by the community to those who would use it, the latter paying a rent as a means of securing the just division of the land, but paying it to the community for the benefit of all, and not to an individual for his private benefit. In the same way factories, machinery, and railways must be the property of all, used for the benefit of all. In this way producers and consumers would be the same people. Every one would produce and every one would consume, and there would be abundance of leisure from mere industrial production, which he doubted not men would employ in developing their higher faculties. As to the means for bringing this about, Mr. Morris admitted that for the present their chief work must be to get people to agree in thinking these changes necessary — in fact, to make more Socialists. He admitted that legislative proposals were being made by political parties which were socialistic in their tendencies; but the object of these was to perpetuate the present system by widening its basis, and he advised Socialists rather to keep themselves apart, and lift no finger to help the governing classes or relieve them of responsibility, accepting these concessions as only instalments towards the emancipation of labour.
At the close oi the lecture a number of questions were asked, and, after a brief discussion, the proceedings were closed with a vote of thanks to Mr. Morris.