Workers' Liberty

Morris understood capitalism in Marxist terms, as a class society, but also as a system that prepared the ground for socialism. In another lecture early in his socialist life, Art and Labour (1 April 1884) he paraphrased the Communist Manifesto:

“[Capitalism] has strengthened and solidified the working class, has collected them into factories and great towns, has forced them to act together to a certain extent by the trades unions, and has given them a certain amount of political power: what they need now to enter on the last stage of the modern revolution of labour is that they should understand their true position… when they understand that they themselves can regulate labour, and by being absolute masters of their material, tools, and time they can win for themselves all that is possible to be won from nature without deduction or taxation paid to classes that have no purpose or reason for existence; when this is understood, the workers will find themselves compelled to combine together to change the basis of Society and to realise that Socialism the rumour of whose approach is all about us. (Eugene Lemire, The Unpublished Lectures of William Morris, 1969 pp.117-118)

Morris read Capital and understood its importance of socialists. Looking back in his article, How I Became a Socialist, 16 June 1894, he explained about his own Marxist education. “Well, having joined a Socialist body (for the Federation soon became definitely Socialist), I put some conscience into trying to learn the economical side of Socialism, and even tackled Marx, though I must confess that, whereas I thoroughly enjoyed the historical part of Capital, I suffered agonies of confusion of the brain over reading the pure economics of that great work. Anyhow, I read what I could, and will hope that some information stuck to me from my reading; but more, I must think, from continuous conversation with such friends as Bax and Hyndman and Scheu.” (AL Morton, Political Writings of William Morris, 1973 p.242)

He understood that “the basis on which ‘Society’ is built, to wit, [is] the safe and continuous expansion of the exploitation of Labour by Capital.” (Commonweal, 7 August 1886)

In the Manifesto of the Socialist League (February 1885) he argued that, “the conflict between the two [classes] is ceaseless. Sometimes it takes the form of open rebellion, sometimes of strikes, sometimes of mere widespread mendicancy and crime; but it is always going on in one form or other, though it may not always be obvious to the thoughtless looker-on.” (Salmon 1996 p.3)

From that position, Morris believed that the working class was the central social agent of change and that it was the job of socialists to help raise up the labour movement and make workers self-conscious of their condition and interests.

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