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SIGNS OF CHANGE
SIGNS OF CHANGE WILLIAM MORRIS Contents:
How we Live and How we Might Live
Whigs Democrats and Socialists
Feudal England
The Hopes of Civilization
The Aims of Art
Useful Work versus Useless Toil
Dawn of a New Epoch
HOW WE LIVE AND HOW WE MIGHT LIVE
The word Revolution which we Socialists are so often forced to use
has a terrible sound in most people's ears even when we have
explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change
accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence and cannot mean a
change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of
men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the
moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its
etymological sense and mean by it a change in the basis of society
people are scared at the idea of such a vast change and beg that you
will speak of reform and not revolution. As however we Socialists
do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people
mean by their word reform I can't help thinking that it would be a
mistake to use it whatever projects we might conceal beneath its
harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word which means a
change of the basis of society; it may frighten people but it will
at least warn them that there is something to be frightened about
which will be no less dangerous for being ignored; and also it may
encourage some people and will mean to them at least not a fear but
a hope.
Fear and Hope--those are the names of the two great passions which
rule the race of man and with which revolutionists have to deal; to
give hope to the many oppressed and fear to the few oppressors that
is our business; if we do the first and give hope to the many the
few MUST be frightened by their hope; otherwise we do not want to
frighten them; it is not revenge we want for poor people but
happiness; indeed what revenge can be taken for all the thousands of
years of the sufferings of the poor?
However many of the oppressors of the poor most of them we will
say are not conscious of their being oppressors (we shall see why
presently); they live in an orderly quiet way themselves as far as
possible removed from the feelings of a Roman slave-owner or a
Legree; they know that the poor exist but their sufferings do not
present themselves to them in a trenchant and dramatic way; they
themselves have troubles to bear and they think doubtless that to
bear trouble is the lot of humanity nor have they any means of
comparing the troubles of their lives with those of people lower in
the social scale; and if ever the thought of those heavier troubles
obtrudes itself upon them they console themselves with the maxim
that people do get used to the troubles they have to bear whatever
they may be.
Indeed as far as regards individuals at least that is but too true
so that we have as supporters of the present state of things however
bad it may be first those comfortable unconscious oppressors who
think that they have everything to fear from any change which would
involve more than the softest and most gradual of reforms and
secondly those poor people who living hard and anxiously as they do
can hardly conceive of any change for the better happening to them
and dare not risk one tittle of their poor possessions in taking any
action towards a possible bettering of their condition; so that while
we can do little with the rich save inspire them with fear it is
hard indeed to give the poor any hope. It is then no less than
reasonable that those whom we try to involve in the great struggle
for a better form of life than that which we now lead should call on
us to give them at least some idea of what that life may be like.
A reasonable request but hard to satisfy since we are living under
a system that makes conscious effort towards reconstruction almost
impossible: it is not unreasonable on our part to answer "There are
certain definite obstacles to the real progress of man; we can tell
you what these are; take them away and then you shall see."
However I purpose now to offer myself as a victim for the
satisfaction of those who consider that as things now go we have at
least got something and are terrified at the idea of losing their
hold of that lest they should find they are worse off than before
and have nothing. Yet in the course of my endeavour to show how we
might live I must more or less deal in negatives. I mean to say I
must point out where in my opinion we fall short in our present
attempts at decent life. I must ask the rich and well-to-do what
sort of a position it is which they are so anxious to preserve at any
cost? and if after all it will be such a terrible loss to them to
give it up? and I must point out to the poor that they with
capacities for living a dignified and generous life are in a
position which they cannot endure without continued degradation.
How do we live then under our present system? Let us look at it a
little.
And first please to understand that our present system of Society is
based on a state of perpetual war. Do any of you think that this is
as it should be? I know that you have often been told that the
competition which is at present the rule of all production is a
good thing and stimulates the progress of the race; but the people
who tell you this should call competition by its shorter name of WAR
if they wish to be honest and you would then be free to consider
whether or no war stimulates progress otherwise than as a mad bull
chasing you over your own garden may do. War or competition
whichever you please to call it means at the best pursuing your own
advantage at the cost of some one else's loss and in the process of
it you must not be sparing of destruction even of your own
possessions or you will certainly come by the worse in the struggle.
You understand that perfectly as to the kind of war in which people
go out to kill and be killed; that sort of war in which ships are
commissioned for instance "to sink burn and destroy;" but it
appears that you are not so conscious of this waste of goods when you
are only carrying on that other war called COMMERCE; observe
however that the waste is there all the same.
Now let us look at this kind of war a little closer run through some
of the forms of it that we may see how the "burn sink and destroy"
is carried on in it.
First you have that form of it called national rivalry which in
good truth is nowadays the cause of all gunpowder and bayonet wars
which civilized nations wage. For years past we English have been
rather shy of them except on those happy occasions when we could
carry them on at no sort of risk to ourselves when the killing was
all on one side or at all events when we hoped it would be. We have
been shy of gunpowder war with a respectable enemy for a long while
and I will tell you why: It is because we have had the lion's-share
of the world-market; we didn't want to fight for it as a nation for
we had got it; but now this is changing in a most significant and
to a Socialist a most cheering way; we are losing or have lost that
lion's share; it is now a desperate "competition" between the great
nations of civilization for the world-market and to-morrow it may be
a desperate war for that end. As a result the furthering of war (if
it be not on too large a scale) is no longer confined to the honour-
and-glory kind of old Tories who if they meant anything at all by it
meant that a Tory war would be a good occasion for damping down
democracy; we have changed all that and now it is quite another kind
of politician that is wont to urge us on to "patriotism" as 'tis
called. The leaders of the Progressive Liberals as they would call
themselves long-headed persons who know well enough that social
movements are going on who are not blind to the fact that the world
will move with their help or without it; these have been the Jingoes
of these later days. I don't mean to say they know what they are
doing: politicians as you well know take good care to shut their
eyes to everything that may happen six months ahead; but what is
being done is this: that the present system which always must
include national rivalry is pushing us into a desperate scramble for
the markets on more or less equal terms with other nations because
once more we have lost that command of them which we once had.
Desperate is not too strong a word. We shall let this impulse to
snatch markets carry us whither it will whither it must. To-day it
is successful burglary and disgrace to-morrow it may be mere defeat
and disgrace.
Now this is not a digression although in saying this I am nearer to
what is generally called politics than I shall be again. I only want
to show you what commercial war comes to when it has to do with
foreign nations and that even the dullest can see how mere waste
must go with it. That is how we live now with foreign nations
prepared to ruin them without war if possible with it if necessary
let alone meantime the disgraceful exploiting of savage tribes and
barbarous peoples on whom we force at once our shoddy wares and our
hypocrisy at the cannon's mouth.
Well surely Socialism can offer you something in the place of all
that. It can; it can offer you peace and friendship instead of war.
We might live utterly without national rivalries acknowledging that
while it is best for those who feel that they naturally form a
community under one name to govern themselves yet that no community
in civilization should feel that it had interests opposed any other
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