Introduction
--------------------------------------------------------------------

People :
----------------------------------

Author : William Morris

Text :
----------------------------------



      News from Nowhere was first published as a 
      serial in the Socialist magazine
      Commonweal in 1890. It was republished in book form in a revised edition in
      1892 and went though many reprintings after that. This text is taken from the
      1908 reprinting by Longmans of London.
    
    
      It is a book that is often ignored by Marxists and others who denounce it as
      backward looking and it is indeed true that Morris' utopian vision is that of a
      society which has in some sense reverted to an agricultural and handicraft one
      and seems static. But activists among our readers will be astonished as the
      insight of this middle aged and middle class English poet and artist in 
      chapter 17 or How The Change Came. Morris 
      here foresees the process of a working
      class revolution which includes a period of Dual Power, the creation of a
      fascist movement when the ruling class is threatened, the key role of the media
      (newspapers only in his case) and the overthrow of the original working class
      leadership by a more vigorous and determined one together with the necessity of
      a decentralized but coherent political leadership. Looking at the far cruder
      concepts of revolution by other socialists who were his contemporaries it is a
      startling feat.
    
    
      Few socialists are rash enough to attempt any precision about their desired
      future state but even his romantic view of rural toil and what we might
      consider primitive technology contains an attempt to get to grips with and
      provide an answer to the whole question of alienated labor which again, though
      little considered at the time, has resurfaced as an important component of
      Marx's thought. I think he is far too dismissive of science and technology
      since he sees science and mathematics, like art, as gentlemanly pastimes -
      though in his utopia of course anyone can participate in them. Otherwise he
      suggests that science was becoming a commodity, in his words "an appendage to
      the commercial system". He does not see it as an immensely powerful
      collective enterprise and the only means by which his population will be able
      to be as healthy and long-lived as they are. Other questionable aspects of his
      future society with which he attempts to grapple, including education or
      economic organization will doubtless occur to readers as they study this work.
    
    
      But, whatever the criticisms that we are able to make after another century of
      human experience, this text forces socialists to try to answer deep and
      important questions. And they should so study it.
    
    
      Introduction by Ted Crawford,
      4th November 2000
    
    
      The text of News from Nowhere was checked and 
      corrected by  Ted Crawford
      and turned into XHTML by Chris Croome for the William Morris Internet Archive, a
      subarchive of the Marxists Internet
      Archive, on 4th November 2000.
    


     From : Marxists.org

Events :
----------------------------------

     Introduction -- Added : February 25, 2021

     Introduction -- Updated : February 25, 2021

About This Textfile :
----------------------------------

     Text file generated from : 
http://revoltlib.com/