A Review and a Foreword by William Morris
Editorial Note. These two articles, which
should be known to all students of utopian fiction, have to our knowledge never been
reprinted. The first has been transcribed from The Commonweal, June 22, 1889; the second
from Morris's Kelmscott Press edition of Utopia, 1893. We have added a few emendations in
square brackets, and all the italics that appear in the "Foreword."
"Looking Backward"
We often hear it said that the signs of the
spread of Socialism among English-speaking people are both abundant and striking. This is
true; six or seven years ago the word Socialism was known in this country, but few even
among the "educated" classes knew more about its meaning than Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr.
Gladstone, or Admiral Maxse know now--i.e. nothing. Whereas at present it is fashionable
for even West-end dinner-parties to affect an interest in and knowledge of it, which
indicates a wide and deep public interest. This interest is more obvious in literature
perhaps than in anything else, quite outside the propagandist tracts issued by definitely
Socialist societies. A certain tincture of Socialism, for instance (generally very
watery), is almost a necessary ingredient nowadays in a novel which aims at being at once
serious and life-like, while more serious treatment of the subject at the hands of
non-Socialists is common enough. In short the golden haze of self-satisfaction and content
with the best of all possible societies is rolling away before the sun-heat bred of misery
and aspiration, and all people above the lowest level of intelligence (which I take to be
low gambling and statesmanship) are looking towards the new development, some timorously,
some anxiously, some hopefully.
It seems clear to me that [i.e., clear to me
from] the reception which Mr. Bellamy's "Looking Backward" has received that
there are a great many people who are hopeful in regard to Socialism. I am sure that ten
years ago it would have been very little noticed, if at all; whereas now several editions
have been sold in America, and it is attracting general attention in England, and to
anyone not deeply interested in the social question it could not be at all an attractive
book. It is true that it is cast into the form of a romance, but the author states very
frankly in his preface that he has only given it this form as a sugar-coating to the pill,
and the device of making a man wake up in a new world has now grown so common, and has
been done with so much more care and art than Mr. Bellamy has used, that by itself this
would have done little for it: it is the serious essay and not the slight envelope of
romance which people have found interesting to them.
Since, therefore, both Socialists and
non-Socialists have been so much impressed with the book, it seems to me necessary that
the Commonweal should notice it. For it is a "Utopia." It purports to be written
in the year 2000, and to describe the state of society at that period after a gradual and
peaceable revolution has realized the Socialism which to us is but in the beginning of its
militant period. It requires notice all the more because there is a certain danger in such
books as this: a twofold danger; for there will be some temperaments to whom the answer
given to the question "How shall we live then?" will be pleasing and
satisfactory, others to whom it will be displeasing and unsatisfactory. The danger to the
first is that they will accept it with all its necessary errors and fallacies (which such
a book must abound in) as conclusive statements of facts and rules of action, which will
warp their efforts into futile directions. The danger to the second, if they are but
enquirers or very young Socialists, is that they [,] also accepting its speculations as
facts, will be inclined to say, "if that is Socialism, we won't help its advent, as
it holds out no hope to us."
The only safe way of reading a utopia is to
consider it as the expression of the temperament of its author. So looked at, Mr.
Bellamy's utopia must be still called very interesting, as it is constructed with due
economical knowledge, and with much adroitness; and of course his temperament is that of
many thousands of people. This temperament may be called the unmixed, modern one,
unhistoric and unartistic; it makes its owner (if a Socialist) perfectly satisfied with
modem civilization, if only the injustice, misery, and waste of class society could be got
rid of; which half-change seems possible to him. The only ideal of life which such a man
can see is that of the industrious professional middle-class men of to-day purified from
their crime of complicity with the monopolist class, and become independent instead of
being, as they now are, parasitical. It is not to be denied that if such an ideal could be
realised it would be a great improvement on the present society. But can it be realised?
It means in fact the alteration of the machinery of life in such a way that all men shall
be allowed to share in the fulness of that life, for the production and upholding of which
the machinery was instituted. There are clear signs to show us that that very group whose
life is thus put forward as an ideal for the future are condemning it in the present, and
that they also demand a revolution. The pessimistic revolt of the latter end of this
century led by John Ruskin against the Philistinism of the triumphant bourgeois, halting
and stumbling as it necessarily was, shows that the change in the life of civilisation had
begun, before any one seriously believed in the possibility of altering its machinery.
It follows naturally from the author's
satisfaction with the best part of modern life that he conceives of the change to
Socialism as taking place without any breakdown of that life, or indeed disturbance of it,
by means of the final development of the great private monopolies which are such a
noteworthy feature of the present day. He supposes that these must necessarily be absorbed
into one great monopoly which will include the whole people and be worked for its benefit
by the whole people. It may be noted in passing that by this use of the word monopoly he
shows unconsciously that he has his mind fixed firmly on the mere machinery of life: for
clearly the only part of their system which the people would or could take over from the
monopolies would be the machinery of organisation, which monopoly is forced to use, but
which is not an essential part of it. The essential of monopoly is, "I warm myself by
the fire which you have made and you (very much the plural) stay outside in the
cold."
To go on. This hope of the development of the
trusts and rings to which the competition for privilege has driven commerce, especially in
America, is the distinctive part of Mr. Bellamy's book; and it seems to me to be a
somewhat dangerous hope to rest upon, too uncertain to be made a sheet-anchor of. It may
be indeed the logical outcome of the most modern side of commercialism--i.e., the outcome
that ought to be; but then there is its historical outcome to be dealt with--i.e., what
will be; which I cannot help thinking may be after all, as far as this commercial
development is concerned, the recurrence of breaks-up and re-formations of this kind of
monopoly, under the influence of competition for privilege, or war for the division of
plunder, till the flood comes and destroys them all. A far better hope to trust to is that
men having once got it into their heads that true life implies free and equal life, and
that [this] is now possible of attainment, they will consciously strive for its attainment
at any cost. The economical semi-fatalism of some Socialists is a deadening and
discouraging view, and may easily become more so, if events at present unforeseen bring
back the full tide of "commercial prosperity"; which is by no means unlikely to
happen.
The great change having thus peaceably and
fatalistically taken place, the author has to put forward his scheme of the organisation
of life; which is organised with a vengeance. His scheme may be described as State
Communism, worked by the very extreme of national centralisation. The underlying vice in
it is that the author cannot conceive, as aforesaid, of anything else than the machinery
of society, and that, doubtless naturally, he reads in to [sic] the future of a society,
which he tells us is unwastefully conducted, that terror of starvation which is the
necessary accompaniment of a society in which two-thirds or more of its labour power is
wasted: the result is that though he tells us that every man is free to choose his
occupation and that work is no burden to anyone, the impression which he produces is that
of a huge standing army, tightly drilled, compelled by some mysterious fate to unceasing
anxiety for the production of wares to satisfy every caprice, however wasteful and absurd,
that may cast up amongst them.
As an illustration it may be mentioned that
everybody is to begin the serious work of production at the age of twenty-one, work three
years as a labourer, and then choose his skilled occupation and work till he is
forty-five, when he is to knock off his work and amuse himself (improve his mind, if he
has one left him). Heavens! Think of a man of forty-five changing all his habits suddenly
and by compulsion! It is a small matter after this that the said persons past work should
form a kind of aristocracy (how curiously old ideas cling) for the performance of certain
judicial and political functions.
Mr. Bellamy's ideas of life are curiously
limited; he has no idea beyond existence in a great city; his dwelling of man in the
future is Boston (U.S.A.) beautified. In one passage, indeed, he mentions villages, but
with unconscious simplicity shows that they do not come into his scheme of economical
equality, but are mere servants of the great centres of civilisation.
This seems strange to some of us, who cannot help
thinking that our experience ought to have taught us that such aggregations of population
afford the worst possible form of dwelling-place, whatever the second-worst might be.
In short, a machine-life is the best which Mr
Bellamy can imagine for us on all sides; it is not to be wondered at then that his only
idea of making labour tolerable is to decrease the amount of it by means of fresh and ever
fresh developments of machinery. This view I know he will share with many Socialists with
whom I might otherwise agree more than I can with him; but I think a word or two is due to
this important side of the subject. Now surely this ideal of the great reduction of the
hours of labour by the mere means of machinery is a futility. The human race has always
put forth about as much energy as it could in given conditions of climate and the like,
though that energy has had to struggle against the natural laziness of mankind: and the
development of man's resources, which has given him greater power over nature, has driven
him also into fresh desires and fresh demands on nature, and thus made his expenditure of
energy much what it was before. I believe that this will be always so, and the
multiplication of machinery will just--multiply machinery; I believe that the ideal of the
future does riot point to the lessening of men's energy by the reduction of labour to a
minimum, but rather to the reduction of pain in labour to a minimum, so small that it will
cease to be a pain; a gain to humanity which can only be dreamed of till men are even more
completely equal than Mr. Bellamy's utopia would allow them to be, but which will most
assuredly come about when men are really equal in condition; although it is probable that
much of our so-called "refinement," our luxury--in short, our civilisation--will
have to be sacrificed to it. In this part of his scheme, therefore, Mr. Bellamy worries
himself unnecessarily in seeking (with obvious failure) some incentive to labour to
replace the fear of starvation, which is at present our only one, whereas it cannot be too
often repeated that the true incentive to useful and happy labour is and must be pleasure
in the work itself.
I think it necessary to state these objections to
Mr. Bellamy's utopia, not because there is any need to quarrel with a man's vision of the
future of society, which, as above said, must always be more or less personal to himself;
but because this book, having produced a great impression on people who are really
enquiring into Socialism, will be sure to be quoted as an authority for what Socialists
believe, and that, therefore, it is necessary to point out that there are some Socialists
who do not think that the problem of the organisation of life and necessary labour can be
dealt with by a huge national centralisation, working by a kind of magic for which no one
feels himself responsible; that on the contrary it will be necessary for the unit of
administration to be small enough for every citizen to feel himself responsible for its
details, and be interested in them; that individual men cannot shuffle off the business of
life on to the shoulders of an abstraction called the State, but must deal with it in
conscious association with each other. That variety of life is as much an aim of true
Communism as equality of condition, and that nothing but a union of these two will bring
about real freedom. That modern nationalities are mere artificial devices for the
commercial war that we seek to put an end to, and will disappear with it. And, finally,
that art, using that word in its widest and due signification, is not a mere adjunct of
life which free and happy men can do without, but the necessary expression and
indispensable instrument of human happiness.
On the other hand, it must be said that Mr.
Bellamy has faced the difficulty of economical reconstruction with courage, though he does
not see any other sides to the problem, such, e.g., as the future of the family; that at
any rate he sees the necessity for the equality of the reward of labour, which is such a
stumbling block for incomplete Socialists; and his criticism of the present monopolist
system is forcible and fervid. Also up and down his pages there will be found satisfactory
answers to many ordinary objections. The book is one to be read and considered seriously,
but it should not be taken as the Socialist bible of reconstruction; a danger which
perhaps it will not altogether escape, as incomplete systems impossible to be carried out
but plausible on the surface are always attractive to people ripe for change, but not
knowing clearly what their aim is.
Foreword [to Utopia]
Ralph Robinson's translation of More's Utopia
would not need any foreword if it were to be looked upon merely as a beautiful book
embodying the curious fancies of a great writer & thinker of the period of the
Renaissance. No doubt till within the last few years it has been considered by the moderns
as nothing more serious than a charming literary exercise, spiced with the interest given
to it by the allusions to the history of the time, and by our knowledge of the career of
its author.
But the change of ideas concerning "the best
state of a publique weale," which, I will venture to say, is the great event of the
end of this century, has thrown a fresh light upon the book; so that now to some it seems
not so much a regret for days which might have been, as (in its essence) a prediction of a
state of society which will be. In short this work of the scholar and Catholic, of the man
who resisted what has seemed to most the progressive movement of his own time, has in our
days become a Socialist tract familiar to the meetings and debating rooms of the political
party which was but lately like "the cloud as big as a man's hand." Doubtless
the Utopia is a necessary part of a Socialist's library; yet it seems to me that its value
as a book for the study of sociology is rather historic than prophetic, & that we
Socialists should look upon it as a link between the surviving Communism of the Middle
Ages (become hopeless in More's time, & doomed to be soon wholly effaced by the
advancing wave of Commercial Bureaucracy), and the hopeful & practical progressive
movement of today. In fact I think More must be looked upon rather as the last of the old
than the first of the new.
Apart from what was yet alive in him of mediaeval
Communist tradition, the spirit of association, which amongst other things produced the Gilds, and which was strong in the Mediaeval Catholic Church itself, other influences were
at work to make him take up his parable against the new spirit of his Age. The action of
the period of transition from Mediaeval to Commercial Society with all its brutalities,
was before his eyes; and though he was not alone in his time in condemning the injustice
and cruelty of the revolution which destroyed the peasant life of England, & turned it
into a grazing farm for the moneyed gentry; creating withal at one stroke the propertyless
wage-earner, and the masterless vagrant (hodie "pauper") [;] yet he saw deeper
into its root-causes than any other man of his own day, and left us little to add to his
views on this point except a reasonable hope that those "causes" will yield to a
better form of society before long.
Moreover the spirit of the Renaissance, itself
the intellectual side of the very movement which he strove against, was strong in him, and
doubtless helped to create his Utopia, by means of the contrast which it put before his
eyes of the ideal free nations of the ancients, & the sordid welter of the struggle
for power in the days of dying feudalism, of which he himself was a witness. This
Renaissance enthusiasm has supplanted in him the chivalry feeling of the age just passing
away. To him war is no longer a delight of the well born, but rather an ugly necessity, to
be carried on, if so it must be, by ugly means. Hunting and hawking are no longer the
choice pleasures of Knight & Lady, but are jeered at by him as foolish and
unreasonable pieces of butchery: his pleasures are in the main the reasonable ones of
learning & music. With all this, his imaginations of the past he must needs read into
his ideal vision, together with his own experiences of his time & people. Not only are
there bondslaves and a king, & priests almost adored, and cruel punishments for the
breach of the marriage contract, in that happy island, but there is throughout an
atmosphere of asceticism, which has a curiously blended savour of Cato and Censor and a
mediaeval monk.
On the subject of war; on capital punishment; the
responsibility to the public of kings and other official personages, & such-like
matters More speaks words that would not be out of place in the mouth of an eighteenth
century Jacobin; & at first sight this seems rather to show sympathy with what is now
mere Whigism, than with Communism, but it must be remembered that opinions which have
become (in words) the mere commonplace of ordinary bourgeois politicians, were then looked
on as pieces of startlingly new & advanced thought, and do not put him on the same
plane with the mere radical of the last generation.
In More then, are met together the man
instinctively sympathetic with the Communistic side of Mediaeval society; the protester
against the ugly brutality of the earliest period of Commercialism; the enthusiast of the
Renaissance, ever looking toward his idealised ancient society as the type and example of
all really intelligent human fife; the man tinged with the asceticism at once of the
classical philosopher and of the monk; an asceticism indeed which he puts forward not so
much as a duty, but rather as a kind of stern adornment of life.
These are we may say, the moods of the man who
created Utopia for us; & all are tempered and harmonised by a sensitive clearness
& delicate beauty of style, which make the book a living work of art.
But lastly we Socialists cannot forget that these
qualities and excellencies meet to produce a steady expression of the longing for a
society of equality of condition; a society in which the individual man can scarcely
conceive of his existence apart from the Commonwealth of which he forms a portion. This,
which is the essence of his book, is the essence also of the struggle in which we are
engaged. Though doubtless it was the pressure of circumstances in his own days that made
More what he was, yet that pressure forced him to give us, not a vision of the triumph of
the new-born capitalistic society, the element in which lived the new learning & the
new freedom of thought of his epoch; but a picture (his own indeed, not ours) of the real
New Birth which many men before him had desired; and which now indeed we may well hope is
drawing near to realization, though after such a long series of events which at the time
of their happening seemed to nullify his hopes completely.
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