How Shall We Live Then? (manuscript Notes)
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Author : William Morris

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What I have to say to you relates to matters that may be discussed among
Socialists, mingled or not with their declared opponents, but
is can not be altogether a matter of
controversy among Socialists. I want to give you my personal view
of the Promised Land of Socialism, with the hope of eliciting an account
of the views of several of this audience; and I do not think the hour and
a half so employed ought to be waste time if we tell each other honestly and as
clearly as we can what our ideals are, if we have any, or confess to our having
none if that is the case. We are engaged in a common adventure for the present,
the destruction abolition of the individual
ownership or monopoly of the means of production; the attainment of
that immediate end will bring about such a prodigious and
overwhelming Change in Society, that those of us with a grain of imagination in
them cannot help speculating as to how we shall live then: and the
expression of the results of our speculations, of our hopes and
fears will certainly give our friends and associates some insight into our
characters, and temperaments, will make us know each other better; and that in
turn will save much friction and loss of time, will in short make us better
friends; to come sometimes from out of the hedge of party formulas
and show each other our real desires and hopes ought to be something of a
safeguard against the besetting dangers of
pedantry which besets the intellectual side of the Socialist movement and the
danger of machine politics which besets its practical and work-a-day
side.

 It is true that as some of you may think
that have anticipated my paper must necessarily under these conditions
take a personal character and be somewhat egoistical. I do not offer an apology
for that but I may offer 2 an explanation. I have had some 55 years experience, I
won't say of the world, but of myself; the result of which is that I am almost
prepared to deny that there is such a thing as an individual human being: I
have found out that my valuable skin covers say about a dozen persons, who in
spite of their long alliance do occasionally astonish each other very much by
their strange and unaccountable vagaries; by their profound wisdom, their
extreme folly, their height of elevation, and their depth of baseness. So that
though it may be possible that the complex animal who has now the pleasure of
addressing you has not his double in the world, (though I decline to admit that
also) it is impossible but that some of the men inside my
skin who go to make up that complexity are but types of many others in
the world, and the probably even some of those are in this
room at present. So that when I tell you of my so called personal
desires for and hopes of the future the voice is mine, but the desires and
hopes are not only mine, but are those of, I really think, many others, and you
as practical men, as I hope you are, cannot afford to disregard them.   

 Now I will ask what creates draws men into the Socialist
ranks at this stage of the movement? I mean of course what makes
them genuine socialists. I do
not think it can be any hope of personal advancement; such hopes would be much
too wild to be entertained by anyone who had wits enough to feed himself
with a fork; for the most sanguine of us know that there will be
such heaps of trouble of one kind or another before the first serious blow has
got any reason at all out of the monopolists, that mere trouble is pretty
certain to be part of our reward for daring to hope that society can
be improved. Is it intellectual conviction deduced from the study of philosophy
or from that of politics or economics in the abstract? I suppose that there are
many people who think that this has been the means of their conversion; but on
reflection they will surely find that this was only the its
second stage of their conversion: the first stage must have
been the observation that there is a 3 great deal of suffering in the world that
might be done away with. That is I think the first thing that draws a man
toward the socialists, whether he feels the suffering in his own person, and
becomes conscious of a wrong done to him by what we now call society; a wrong
which is not accidental but can be fixed on a certain set of events; or whether
he himself is unconsciously one of those who do the wrong, but has the ordinary
good-natured wish which any one who is not a mere ill-conditioned blackgard
will have, to see all men as happy as they can be. 

Now in this respect the corporation which I call I is not at all peculiar:
from the earliest time that I can remember catching myself thinking (an
operation which all healthy & happy young people avoid as much as possible)
the thought was from time to time thrust upon me that the greater part of
people were ill-fed ill-clad ill-housed overworked, and as a consequence nasty
and disagreeable. These thoughts made me uncomfortable and discouraged and took
the flavor out of my amusements and my work (there was not much distinction
between the two) so of course I thrust them aside as much as I could. Yet I was
conscious that I was acting a shabby part in doing so, for I was not such a
fool as not to see clearly that these degraded persons that came between me and
my pleasure had not degraded themselves, and that consequently there
was something or other which a strong and honest man could attack. In all this
there was nothing peculiar: you would say that a natural sense of the injustice
of our Society was growing up in me, as it has surely in many others of my
class and condition. But in what followed I was perhaps peculiar. I was
indifferent honest, I was by no means strong; for I must tell you that one of
those persons inside my skin is the peaceablest, and another the
laziest of all persons —  in that again I am not peculiar.
illegible So it is probable that that rising sense of
injustice would have been damped down till I had grown old enough & tough
enough to bear it easily: but something happened to me that prevented
that. Though my work was pretty much my amusement,
thoughyet it was serious enough to me: I daresay
some of you 4 would be astonished if you could understand the pleasure it has
given me; but at last it gave me perhaps as keen a pain. It was a big job that
I had taken in hand; no less than the regeneration of popular art as it used to
be called. I was not fully conscious how big a job it was for a long time;
though I was fully conscious of the complete degradation of the arts in
general. Well the time came when I found out that those unpleasant thoughts
about the greater part of the population were intimately connected with the
very essence of my work, and at last that I had undertaken a
quitejob quite impossible job
under the present conditions of life. You may well think that I did not come to
that conclusion all at once; in fact I tried to wriggle out of it for a long
time till at last I was pinned, and there was the greater part gone of my
pleasure in my work: which indeed was a serious matter for me, since I cared
for it so much and so heartily. Well I cannot tell you whether it was about
this time that I first heard of socialism as a definite movement, but I know
that I had come to these conclusions a good deal through reading
the John Ruskin's works, and that I focused so to say his
views on the matter of my work and my rising sense of injustice, probably more
than he intended, and that the result of all that was that I was quite ready
for Socialism when I came across it in a definite form, as a political party
with distinct aims for the a revolution in society. My
position then which I am sure has been and is the position of many others, was
profound discontent with the whole of modern life, a feeling of the deadly
sickness of the world of civilization, which if I could have found no outlet
for it would have resulted in sheer pessimism, as I think it often does. That
outlet as you know I found, and I was hindered from coming to the
conclusion that the art to which I had devoted myself was a mere idle folly,
that I must go on with partly because I knew no other way of earning my
livelihood, partly because I must have something more or less pleasant to do on
some terms or other. I became a My Socialism began where that
5 of some others ended, with an intense desire for complete equality of condition
for all men; for I saw and am still seeing that without that equality, whatever
else the human race might gain it would at all events have to relinquish art
and imaginative literature, and that to my temperament did and does imply the
real death of mankind —  the second death. Of course with the
longing for equality went the perception of the necessity for the
abolition of private property; so that I became a Communist before I knew
anything about the history of Socialism or its immediate aims. And I had to set
to work to read books decidedly distasteful to me, and to do work which I
thought myself quite unfit for, notin [sic] get myself
into absurd messes and quarrel like a schoolboy with people I liked in
order to become a practical Socialist —  which rank I have no doubt some
of you don't think I have gained yet. But all that did not matter because I had
once again fitted a hope to my work and could take more than all the old
pleasure in it; my bitterness disappeared and —  in short I was born
again.  

Now I repeat that I would not have said a word of all this, but that I know
that what has happened to me has happened to other people though not quite in
the same way. We, (I will say we now) are alive in the world and not in the
least pessimists, but we are most sorely discontented with all things as they
are, except the bare elements of life, and the hope for the future which we
have somehow or other got into our heads. 

We are alive and we can take the keenest pleasure in all those elements of
life which the barbarian has thein full measure
of but which civilization has in a measure
largely deprived us of: the sensuous pleasures of life is the
technical word for them; or shall I say the innocent sensuous pleasures?
E.g. We keep our eyes in our heads and take in impressions through
them; whereas civilization bids us put them in our pockets, and is mostly
obeyed. And it must be said that there is reason in this since Civilization is
such a foul slut, and wherever she can manage it gives us nothing pleasant to
look 6 at, so that we are driven to have to thank her, like my friend Shaw, for
the wreaths of steam which float from the funnel of a locomotive; at all events
when it is they are not defiled by the smoke of the
coal which the Company has no business to burn but which it generally does.
However in from such things
impressions, we take our pleasure as well as our pain; but there is
so much pain in them that on the whole they do but add to our discontent; for
as things go whatever we see almost have has some
share of that sickness in themit, and we long and
long to better themthese things: we cannot look
upon the world merely as if it were an impressionist picture, or be pleasantly
satisfied with some ruinous piece of picturesque which is but the envelope for
dullness and famine. But there again comes in our hope: for if we live in the
present on such crumbs as we can pick up amid the general waste and ruin, we
live generously enough in the future; and one part of our pleasure in the
ordinary life of today, the life of the fieldsthe animal
life I mean and the goings on in field and flood and sky and the rest of
it, comes from the fact that we see in them the elements of which the life of
the future will be built up far more than of the thought of to day,its
literature, its so-called art, its so-called science.  

In sum our hope is so generous that whatever there is which is distinctive
of the sickness of civilization will disappear before our regained
freedom: what we aim at, whatthe purpose for whichwe want to use the
instrument of the transition, ?????? which is what some understand by the word
Socialism is no mere rectification of our present society, but the construction
of a new society in which we shall adore what we used to burn, and burn what we
used to adore. 

How shall we live then?
Whatever system of production and exchange we may come to, however justly we
may arrange the relations of men to one another we shall not be happy unless we
live like good animals, unless we enjoy the exercise of the ordinary functions
of life: eating sleeping loving walking running swimming riding sailing we must
be in the habit offree to enjoying
all these exercises of the body without any sense of shame; without any
7 suspicion that our mental powers are so remarkable and godlike that we are
rather above such common things.  Also I will say in the teeth of the very
natural repulsion to bodily labor that our present conditions force upon us we
must be strong and healthy enough to enjoy bodily labor, a good stout wrestle
with the forces of nature which will make us feel our power. I do e.g. hope
most sincerely that we shall manage not to [be] so driven for the production of
food as not to allow ourselves the pleasure of getting in the harvest by hand,
or, a great many of us, raising our own potherbs, of course with due knowledge
and skill. (Also I should hope that we should not find it necessary to shorten
our lives as we do now by spending a great part of them in the condition of
parcels sent from one place to another. I hold that going from one place to
another (on the surface
of the earth) ismay be made by no means a
waste of time if we don't do it as parcels, especially if one can be
happy enough not to think on the road. Indeed even when I am sent on
as a parcel I do my best to get my eyes out of the brown paper sometimes.) Now
all this would mean that the our views on the subject of
education would have to change somewhat: the equipment for life on the
new terms would not and could not be the same as on the old: it is true that
the capacities for dealing properly with the bodily side of life would grow to
be a kind of habit: still I suppose except among the South-sea islands and such
like places men have to ???? learn swimming, and except in the
Pampas, riding. And I cannot easily conceive a lad knowing how to dig and
plow and reap and sow without learning, although that learning
would not be gained in the technical school method, but as apprentices learn
when it is anybody's business to teach them. Besides I think most people would
want to learn two or three of the elementary crafts whether they intended to
practice them as a main occupation or not, smithying carpentering (not
cabinetmaking) and mason's or bricklayers work, I am thinking about, and that
would need definite instruction, lasting some time. Various minor arts like
8 cooking and sewing would be learned very easily by children when they are very
young; and they again would mean little more than the
experiment gaining of an easily acquired habit.  Here
thenThe education set on foot we should have
first a great body of out-door occupations,dealing with
work necessary to be done in some way or other,
agreeable to healthy & strong persons, and capable of
developing being done excellently, that is of
developing real pleasure in the doing, some of them perhaps to be done by
individual effort work but most by means of cooperative
effort; and all the parts of them in which???? ????? excellence was not possible to be much developed
???? could be done with little effort, almost as a
habit: Add to these occupations a few of what for shortness I would call
indoor work, and you
will havealso (an important addition) what we call art, in
which I would include beside the plastic and decorative arts
imaginative and measured literature and the pursual of knowledge for its own
sake, andwhich I think will give you will have
[sic] allmost of the occupations necessary for a happy
community: and for the life of me I cannot see why we should bother ourselves
with occupations which are unnecessary.  Let me try if I cannot
arrange these necessary occupations in groups a little more
systematically adding some few perhaps doubtful ones.  


1st. The open air arts; (I had better call them arts at once, because to my
mind all work which is done by a man in the course of the due
exercise of his faculties and therefore pleasurably is an art.) 

Agriculture and its kindred arts; Gardening, Fishing, Butchering, Ship
& boat-sailing. Driving carts, trains, omnibuses and the like (a
cross division here with distribution). The habits of swimming, good walking
& running, and riding would be mixed up with these, and also an habitual
knowledge of the ways and manners of non-human beasts.  

Now as we shall live then I declare that anybody who did not take a
pleasurable interest in these some part of these arts and was
not capable of working in them, would have to be considered as a diseased
person --  something less than a man,a burden on the community.* 

2nd. The domestic arts: The arrangement of a housein all its 
details Cleaning Marketing Cooking baking & so on; sewing with its 
necessary concomitant of embroidery and so forth. Once more whoever was 
9 incapable of taking interest and a share in some parts of such work 
would have to be considered diseased; and the existence of many such 
diseased persons would tend to the enslavement of the weaker sex.


3rd. The building arts: Masons, bricklayers, smiths, carpenters
& the like and also the planners of buildings, engineers, and so
forth. Of these arts what we now call art, i.e. decoration, appeals to the
pleasure of the eye intellect through the eyesight,
would form a necessary and integral part; therefore possibilities of excellence
would here run high, and consequently only those would take a part in them who
had some faculty for creation, as I believe most free men have; but doubtless there
would be some lacking this faculty or possessing itself but
little of it, who would prefer the rougher arts above mentioned; but as they
would be doing some their share of the necessary work and with
pleasure, they would not be injuring any one by disease. For the rest it is
clear that these arts are cooperative in the highest degree, no one necessary
person's work being really separable from the whole mass of it.  


4th. The workshop arts weaving, pottery, dyeing, printing
(textiles and book) etc. Into most of these also art would enter and much
the same thing is to be said of these as of the last group. In cases where art
could not be an integral part of the work it would if it
turned out to be necessary work it would have to be done by machines as nearly
automatic as possible; but I should consider it a matter of course that
if those who tended such machines would have
do other work at once more pleasurable and more responsible; and whatever
drudgeryof this sort we could do without we should drop at once.


5th. The disagreeable arts. I will assume that
though I am not sure that it is so, that there are would be
such indispensable arts, and then proceed to divide them into:

a. The rough disagreeable arts.
b. The smooth disagreeable arts.
By the first I mean such matters occupations as mining,
skindressing, scavengering, and so on. By the second I mean --  well
quill-driving of the less amusing kind, clerks work, 10 official sauntering &
so on. Of both these groups I say the same thing; as above, machines where
possible, and the workers to have other occupation: but also strict inquiry as
to whether they are necessary; and if not, abolition.  

6th. The arts concerning the distribution of goods; shipping of
goods shopkeeping and market-managing of all kinds. I daresay it will be
possible to find people who to like such work and let them do
their best at it; but I am sure that they will find digging & reaping, or
even perhaps skinning fill[?] more leather-dressing restful to
them: and such rest they ought to have.


7th. The fineor intellectual arts: i.e. picture
painting, sculpture, and the lesser or reproductive fine arts, such as
engraving.  Also imaginative literature, and the study of history and nature.
Some of these in which a good deal of actual manual labor, is necessary might
be followed exclusively; the others certainly not; and even in the
first, or manual fine arts, rougher manual work would be desirable, unless in
cases, if there be any such, (which again I doubt) where extreme
finesse of hand is so necessary that it would not do to roughen the hand by
harder labor. In any case I feel sure that it would not do for men to be
absorbed entirely in such arts. It would tend to disease, to anti-social habits
which would burden the community with a new set of idlers, and (if the others
were such fools) in the long run to a new set of masters.  

Before I go further I ought to say that though I don't doubt that a due
amount of organization and direction would be required in all
the diverse branches of occupation I am very far from thinking that it would be
either necessary or desirable to prescribe to people what occupation
they should follow; I am assuming only that opportunity will be afforded for
people to do what they can do well, and that the work as far as the relations
of men go will be voluntary; nature will be the compeller, in a sense the only
enemy: yet an enemy that asks to be vanquished.  

Now having given you my ideal as to the occupations of men in a free
community, I have but to add my views as to the possibility of its
com being realized sometime or other: ie. 11 what might be called the political side of the
question.  


Decentralization and equality of condition are the necessary concomitants of
my ideal of occupation: but I am not clear as to whether they should be looked
on as the cause or the effect of the state of things foreshadowed by
that ideal. As to the first But I think, that granted the
second, the first will not be tend to come naturally.
Difficult or if you please impossible, as it may be to conceive of such a
change as will come of the abolition of the great central power of
modern times the  world-market as we know it with all the ingenious and
intricate system which profit hunting Commerce has built up about it, because
of it and by means of it, yet after all it must develop into something else,
and that something else can hardly be a perfecting of its perfection, but
rather its contradiction, which is the conscious mutual exchange of services
between equals. Nay if things now going on can be fairly understood by us who
live among them are there not signs of the coming change already visible to
us? The Republic one and indivisible of 100 years ago is passing through a
phase of bourgeois corruption and the only hope of France is that it will
be able tointo come out at the other end a Federation
of Free Communes. The Unity of Germany has been accomplished but a few years;
yet here are we waiting for but one event, quite certain to happen sooner or
later, the defeat of the German Army, to break it up again into a
federation of Social Republics with socialism as its aim. And
at home the principle of Federation is conceded in the matter of Ireland by all
but the stupidest of the reactionaries; while the Tories themselves, driven
on I believe by a blind fate, have given us in the County Councils
the germs of revolutionary local opposition to centralized reaction. Thus then
before centralization is quite complete even, the change
in the direction of its opposite seems to have begun, and once begun will
surely go on till the necessary practical decentralization has been arrived at.
That decentralization seems to me looking out from our present condition to be
necessary in order to give all men a share in the responsibility of
the administration of things which I hope to
seewill take the place of the government of persons: you
will understand that I admit the possible necessity of a certain
amount of mechanical centralization, such as a central administration of
railways in such and such a geographical district, which after all would not be
centralization but the direct outcome of Federation.

12
I also admit that the form which the decentralization or Federation will
 take is bound to be a matter of experiment and growth: what the 
unit of administration is to be, what the groups of Federation are to 
be; whether or no there will be any cross Federation as e.g. Craft-gilds
 and Cooperative Societies going side by side with the geographical 
division of wards, communes, and the like — all this is a matter for 
speculation, and I don't pretend to prophecy about it.


I may say however in parenthesis that my temperament leads me to believe
that we shall be able to get rid of theone outward
and visible sign of commercial and official centralization; our great cities,
and closely packed manufacturing districts.  

As for the first, the great centers like London, Paris &
Berlin, they are surely the outcome of the desperate struggle for life which
competition under monopoly engenders on both sides the monopolizers and their
slaves. They are counting houses of commerce; the jobbing houses of
officialism; the lairs for the beasts of prey big and little that prey upon the
follies and necessities of a huge mass of people who have no time to find out
what they want; and must have all their wares from the bread they eat down to a
new novel or a play at the theater forced upon them like a sharper forces a
card: lastly they are the sweating dens to which starvation
drives up the reserve army of laborers starvelings of the
rest of the country, so that they may eat a morsel of bread while they cast the
dice desperately for that twenty millionth part of a chance to escape from the
proletariat which is the thin yard of earth between modern
society and the volcano it stands upon. I do not deny lastly that they are the
camps to which the soldiers of revolution must flock if they are impelled to do
anything to further their hope before they die. But granted the change of
conditions which we all hope for, of what use will
be these monstrous aggregations of confusion? ?? ???????
??? No camp will be needed, for militant socialism will be over:
?? ???? ?? no man will hurry up to be sweated, for
his decent livelihood will be assured to him. People will have leisure to think
what they want and resources to have the reality of it; so that the parasites
13 above mentioned will not exist, for there
will be no carrion for them to feed on. Official jobbery will be
dead; and profit-hunting and its ???? will need no counting
house or will have to seek it of the Father of Lies to whom it will have
returned. There will be no use for this monstrous muck heap in which we swelter
to-day. But in case anyone should be inclined to regret what I have heard
called the stir and movement of a big city, I will just say two things: first,
that in those post-monopoly days, when at the very least there will be more of
an approach to equality, there will relatively to men be more intelligent and
thoughtful men: we do everything wastefully now; so if you want a dozen
highly cultivated and thoughtful persons you must have 12000 proletarians at
their back in order to produce the due element of stir and movement for those
12 treasures: as a practical man I cannot approve of the plan. Again you must
remember that the dullness and monotony of country-life at present, of which
many complain (but not I) is the wrong side of the hubbub of town life; since
the town sucks the blood of the country in all things: in postmonopolist days I
hope, as I have already said that we should reform this.  

As for the great factory districts, it seems to me that they also could
disappear: granted that it is possible to produce goods cheaper when you have
labor and material gathered together in the closest space possible; I am sure
that in post monopolist days we should have no when the "sword
of cheapness" is no longer necessary as an offensive weapon against other
nations, we should come to the conclusion that we might buy cheapness too
dear,that hell was altogether too high a price for it and that it
would be worth while to work a little longer in order to live in a pleasant
place. Of course we must all admit that these last centers are centers of
profit-bearing manufacture and huckstering, but of nothing else -- save dirt.
But now I must say that this decentralization with all the decent life and
manly responsibility that will come of it can only be got in any measure
at all as a forecast of advancing equality, and can only be reached
fully when we have attained to practical equality; that Equality is in fact
theour ideal.  

14
In factdeed I can only explain the fact that
some socialists do not put this before them steadily by supposing that their
eager pursuit of the means have somewhat blinded them to the end.  

Surely there are but two theories of society; slavery on the one side; equality on
the other. The first theory supposes that use must be made of the natural
diversity of capacities in men to cultivate a class of superior
beings, who are to live on the lack, the unhappiness in short, of the
other inferior class. The second theory says,  this
cultivation must be unsatisfied affair, because you can by no means be sure
that when you have got hold of the strongest and cultivated him into a stronger, you can by
no means be sure that you have got hold of the best; he is only the strongest under certain artificial
conditions which you yourselves have made; and you can never tell how many far
better than he you have oppressed into nothingness by your masterful folly:
satisfy a man's needs, and what there is in him will come out of him for your
benefit orand his, and you can't get out of him
more than he can do.  That is what communism says, and the only way I can see
to traverse it is to say, I intend to have that man for my property, and all
that he does is mine, whether it is little or much,
andonly if he doesn't make more than enough to keep
himself, he will be of no use to me and I will kill him as I would an old worn
out horse. Any stage between these two theories I can only understand on the
grounds that the antislavery man is bribing the slave owner to keep him quiet
until he becomes too weak to resist having his slave taken from him and made
free. As a transitional step I say nothing about itthis
proceeding, as an ideal I cannot fail to see that it is incomplete &
illogical. No other ideal on this matter of livelihood in a post-monopolist
community appears to me worth considering than the satisfaction of each man's
needs in return for the exercise of his faculties for the benefit of each
and all: to me this seems the only rational society. And this means
practical equality. For when you have satisfied histhe
man's needs what else can you do for him?

15 You will say doubtless what are his
needs? Well of course in such an audience I need not deal with the usual
quibbles of people who think that we socialists have never thought of any of
the difficulties which arise in anyones mind when such questions are started.
But those of you, if there are any here, who think that one useful person
should have (compulsorily) a different scale of livelihood than another useful
person I want to put a point or two to you that have occurred to me (and very
likely to you also). 1st. - Given a poor community which could
satisfy the average elementary needs of each man for food
clothes and shelter, but could do nothing else; would you
think it right (or ideal let us say) for the so called more useful man to have
anything moreextra for his excellence? If he
did so, wouldn't he starve the
others, since they would then have so much less of necessaries as he had so
much more? wouldn't they be his slaves then, whatever the nature of the
compulsion was which he used? for they clearly wouldn't do it without
compulsion. Well carry it further and suppose the community
somewhat wealthier, even quite wealthy. There is
still surely a due standard of livelihood, of leisure and pleasure which can be
upheld for the citizens in general, why should they be deprived, ???
involuntarily against their will of what they can have if
there is a compulsion on them to give up some of the desirable things which
they have helped to make to ??? others who have also helpedand
what they desire, of what they can have if they are not compelled to give it
up. Either they have more than they need, in which case they had better
not produce so much, or they have only as much as they need, and in that case
if they are compelled to give up some of that, they are not free men. Again I
seem to see another draw-back to this new class of ability: I assume that all
men's needs will be satisfied according to the measure of the general wealth:
well the superior man will have his needs satisfied; and once again what more
can you do for him than satisfy his genuine needs. It seems to me that even at
the best what he would do with his extra pay would be to surround himself with
extra luxuries, and that the result of that again would be the creation of a
new parasitical and servile class which could not 16 fail to be an injury to the Community. In short I
can think of no special reward that you can give to a man of special gifts but
license to do harm to his fellow citizens, which is a strange reward for having
been of special service to them. Lastly remember that when a man has special
gifts the exercise of those special gifts are a pleasure to him which he will
not forego if he can help it; therefore while on the one hand it is unjust and
unsocial to compel the citizens to give up their ordinary advantages for the
nourishment of this Queen Bee, so on the other hand nature does not compel
them. Whatever is in him he will give freely if you leave him free and provide
him with due opportunity for the exercise of his faculties. That is if you let
him have due unprecarious livelihood with leisure & pleasure according to
his desires, and the free use of raw material and the instruments of labor.


Other things I can see of the way in which we should live then, which you
can also see I suppose: the splendor of public life and the
quiet dignity of private life, and in general all the real pleasures which
would come of our being wealthy and no longer rich; of all which pleasures
doubtless the greatest would be now seems to be a negative one, the
relief of no longer living in one or the other of two opposed camps of enemies,
which we feel certain must one day fall upon each other ruining many a hope and
many a quiet life in the process; while in the meantime ethics are in hopeless
confusion and pessimism increases in days when we find it hard to weigh
vice and virtues of understand what vices and virtues
???mean since the collective crime of class wrong
is so overshadowing & overwhelming.  and our Of
course I do not pretend to have given anything like an inclusive account in
detail of what our ideal of the new world is ; since I feel I have
been somewhat disjointed in what I have said, I will very briefly run over the
points concerning which I may differ with some here.  

First the change when it comes, and however it comes, from Monopoly to Freedom, when it is complete, will 
make a new world for us, and will be far greater than any change that 
has yet taken 17 place in the world.


2nd. -- We may have in appearance to give up a great deal of what
we have been used to call material progress, in order that we may be freer
and happier and more completely equal.  

3rd. -- This would be compensated (a) by our hav
taking more pleasurable interest in all the details of life,
and (b) by our regaining the pleasure of the eyesight, much of which
we have already lost, and more of which we are losing everyday.  

4th. -- Instead of toiling for some blind force, a mixture of
necessity and nightmare, we should be conscious of
workingdoing useful work for our neighbors who
were doing the like for us. As a result there would be no waste of labor, as
useless occupations would be got rid of speedily.  

5th. -- Work ????thus obviously useful, and also adapted to the capacity of 
the worker would mostly be a pleasant exercise of the faculties; 
necessary work that would otherwise be drudgery would be done by 
machinery or in short spells: no one being condemned to work at 
unpleasant work all his life.


6th. -- As no incentive to work would be needed save its obvious
necessity and the pleasure involved in it; and as the division of labor into
more or less worthy work deserving different standards of livelihood
would create fresh classes, enthralled the ordinary man, and give rise to
parasitical groups, there would be no differentiation of the "reward of
labor". (This last phrase I consider a
badmisleading one, involving a begging of the
question). I am aware that this implies the abolition of private property.


7th. - Nationalities as rival corporations would have ceased to
exist and centralization in our present sense of the word would give place to
Federation for definite purposes of small units of Federation
administration, so that the greatest possible number of persons might be
interested in public affairs.  

Some such ideal as this seems to me to be needed I believe
will be realized, and I earnestly hope it will be. We have been told that the logical sequence of the
development of man's ingenuity will ???? involve the gradual
loss of his bodily faculties, and this seems probable: but the logical 18 sequence of events is sometimes interrupted and
turned aside by the historical; and my hope is, that now we know, or have been
told that we were once have been evolved from unintelligent
germs (or whatever the word is) we shall consciously resist the reversal of the
process, which to some seems inevitable, and do our best to remain men, even if
in the struggle we become barbarians; which latter fate I must confess would
not seem to me a very dreadful one.  


William Morris

Footnote
* Here an extra sentence appears in the transcription by Paul Meier, which is not visible in the online manuscript:

If there were
many such persons it would tend to the creation of a class of slaves,
people doing the rougher work of the world only.


    
      Bibliographical Note
    
    
       Title
    
    
      How Shall We Live Then?
    
    
      Source
    

            How Shall We Live Then? is taken from the manuscript of
            the lecture. The manuscript is available on the website of the
            International Institute for Social History, and was first published
            by Paul Meier as An Unpublished Lecture by William Morris in the Institute's journal, International Review of Social History,
            vol. XVI (1971). In the MIA version, Morris's additions and
            corrections to the text are shown using superscript text and
            strike-throughs.  

    
      Delivery
    
    1st March 1889 at a meeting sponsored by the Fabian Society at Bloomsbury Hall London
            3rd March 1889 at a meeting of the Hammermith Branch of the Socialist League
            22nd January 1890 at a meeting sponsored by the North London Branch of the Socialist League for the Club Autonomie, 6 Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road, London
            2nd February 1890 at a meeting sponsored by the Leicester Radical Club at the Club Rooms, Vine Street, Leicester
            2nd March 1890, North Kensington Branch of the Socialist League, Clarendon Coffeee Tavern
    


     From : Marxists.org

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     How Shall We Live Then? (manuscript Notes) -- Added : February 24, 2021

     How Shall We Live Then? (manuscript Notes) -- Updated : January 08, 2022

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