William Morris

The Policy of Abstention

All Socialists who can be considered to have any claim to that title agree in
putting forward the necessity of transforming the means of production from
individual into common property: that is the least that the party can accept as
terms of peace with the capitalists; and obviously they are hard terms of peace for
the latter, since they mean the destruction of individualist capital. This minimum
which we claim therefore is a very big thing: its realization would bring about
such a revolution as the world has not yet seen, and all minor reforms of
civilization which have been thought of or would be possible to think of would be
included in it: no political party has ever had a programme at once so definite and
so inclusive: many Socialists would be satisfied if the party were to put forward
nothing save this claim; and if there were no party which put forward anything else
I think all Socialists would feel themselves bound to support the party that had
this platform to the utmost: but the shadow of the stupendous revolution which the
abolition of private property in the means of production would bring about is cast
upon our present opinions and policy. We cannot help speculating on what would be
the consequences of the change, and how it would affect what would be left of our
civilization, not only as to the production of wealth, but also as to religion,
morals, the relation between the sexes, the methods of government or
administration, and in short the whole of social life: of most of these matters I
shall say nothing further in this paper, but will only briefly allude to matters
directly connected with industrial production, and the administration of affairs.

Now amongst Socialists there are some who think that the abolition of private
property in the means of production only would bring about a stable condition of
society which would carry out communism no further, that the product of
labour working on raw material and aided by instruments which were common property,
should not be common, but would be the prize of energy, industry, and talent: `to
each one according to his deeds.' In case there are any non-Socialists in the room,
I may point out that this condition of things would be quite different from the
present one, under which people can live idle and force others to work for them if
they chance to be possessed of a share in the monopoly of the means of production,
which is the privilege of their class; if it could be carried out and maintained
without artificial bolstering up, it would be that real `career open to talent'
which Napoleon ignorantly supposed his bourgeois Caesarism was to sustain: but some
of us suppose that without such artificial bolstering up it would lead us back
again into a new form of class society; that those who developed the greatest share
of certain qualities not necessarily the most useful to the community, would gain a
superior position from which they would be able to force the less gifted to serve
them. And in fact those who limit the revolution of Socialism to the abolition of
private property merely in the means of production do contemplate a society in
which production shall be in tutelage to the state; in which the centralized state
would draw arbitrarily the line where public property ends and private property
begins, would interfere with inheritance and with the accumulation of wealth, and
in many ways would act as a master, and take the place of the old masters: acting
with benevolent intention indeed, but with conscious artificiality and by means of
the employment of obvious force which would be felt everywhere and would sometimes
at least be evaded or even resisted, and so at last might even bring on a new
revolution which might lead us backward for a while, or might carry us forward into
a condition of true Communism according to the ripeness or unripeness of the State
Socialist revolution: in short to some of us it seems as if this view of Socialism
simply indicates the crystallization of what can only be a transitional condition
of society, and cannot in itself be stable: we on the other hand consider the aim
of Socialism to be equality of condition: since the production of wares and the
service of the community must always be a matter of co-operation; you cannot, if it
were desirable, find out what each man's `deeds' are; and if you could, we see no
reason for setting up a higher standard of livelihood for A because he can turn out
more work than B, while the needs of the two are just the same: if society is to be
of use to B, it must defend him against the tyranny of nature; and if instead of
defending him against nature it turns round and helps her to punish poor B for not
being born of the same capacity of developing muscle as A, society is a traitor to
B, and if he be a man of any spirit will be rebel against it. We Communists
therefore say that it is not possible really to proportion the reward to the
labour, and that if you were able to do so you would still have to redress by
charity the wrongs of the weak against the strong, you would still not be able to
avoid a poor-law: the due exercise of one's energies for the common good and
capacity for personal use we say form the only claims to the possession of wealth,
and the right of property, the only safeguard against the creation of fresh
privilege, which would have to be abolished like the old privilege. All this is
admitted by many who will not call themselves Communists, because they do not wish
anything to be put before people at present except the transitional state of
things: and many of us Communists for our part are willing to admit that the
communization of the means of production will inevitably lead to the communization
of the products of labour also, and that, as I began by saying, it is a programme
sufficiently big to put before the people of our generation, and the consequences
of its realization can for the present be left to take care of themselves. So you
see there is hardly a question at issue on this point between the Socialists and
Communists. I will therefore assume in this paper that the immediately object of
Socialists is the transformation of the raw material and the instruments of labour
from private into common property, and then go on to inquire what are the means by
which that object can be carried out. I would not have spoken as to the different
opinions about the aims of Socialism if I had not felt that those opinions, as I
have said elsewhere, would be likely to influence people's views as to the means of
realization. The opinions as to the means are not quite conterminous with the two
schools of so-called Socialists and Communists, but they are nearly so, and
naturally, since the former are prepared to accept as a necessity a central
all-powerful authoritative government, a reformed edition, one may say, of the
state government at present existing; whereas the Communists, though they are not
clear as to what will take the place of that in the meanwhile, are at least clear
that when the habit of social life is established, nothing of the kind of
authoritative central government will be needed or endured.

The moderate Socialists or those who can see nothing but the transitional period
therefore, believe in what may be called a system of cumulative reforms as the
means towards the end; which reforms must be carried out by means of Parliament and
a bourgeois executive, the only legal power at present existing, while the
Communists believe that it would be [a] waste of time for the Socialists to expend
their energy in furthering reforms which so far from bringing us nearer to
Socialism would rather serve to bolster up the present state of things; and not
believing in the efficacy of reforms, they can see no reason for attempting to use
Parliament in any way; except perhaps by holding it up as an example to show what a
contemptible thing a body can be which poses as the representative of a whole
nation, and which really represents nothing but the firm determination of the
privileged or monopolist class to stick to their privilege and monopoly till they
are forced to relinquish it.

Well there are, it seems, two policies before us, which, if you will allow me, I
will call for short the Policy of Parliamentary Action, and the Policy of
Abstention. But before I go further I must say that though the question as to which
of the two policies is to be adopted in the long run is doubtless a most
interesting one, yet that at present there is only one policy open to us, that of
preaching Socialism to as many people as we can get at. This no doubt seems to many
a dull job, offering no rewards to any of us in the way of notoriety or position:
but after all it is the way which all new creeds have to go on, and if we neglect
it in our haste or impatience, we shall never come to the point at which more
definite action will be forced upon us.

Now as to these two policies I will not dwell on the first, not because I do not
agree with it, as I do not, but because it has been put before you often enough and
with copious enough arguments and advocacy: to convince the voters that they ought
to send Socialists to Parliament who should try to get measures passed in the
interests of the working-classes, and gradually transform the present Parliament,
which is a mere instrument in the hands of the monopolizers of the means of
production, into a body which should destroy monopoly, and then direct and
administer the freed labour of the community. That is I think a correct statement
of the views of those who further the policy of parliamentary action.

Such a scheme or plan of campaign will sound practical and reasonable to many, or
to most if you will: and although it is right, in considering any scheme, to
consider the drawbacks to it, yet even when we admit that those drawbacks exist, we
do not necessarily condemn the scheme: so I will not at present say anything about
the drawbacks which after all must be patent to those even who think the policy a
good and necessary one. Indeed if no other plan of campaign were possible for the
attack on monopoly, we should have to accept all drawbacks, stifle all doubts and
carry it out with all our might. But there is another plan of campaign possible
which I must lay before you at rather greater length under the nick-name, as I
said, of the Policy of Abstention.

This plan is founded on the necessity of making the class-struggle clear to the
workers, of pointing out to them that while monopoly exists they can only exist as
its slaves: so that the Parliament and all other institutions at present existing
are maintained for the purpose of upholding this slavery; that their wages are but
slaves' rations, and if they were increased tenfold would be nothing more: that
while the bourgeois rule lasts they can indeed take part in it, but only on the
terms that they shall do nothing to attack the grand edifice of which their slavery
is the foundation. Nay more than that: that they are asked to vote and send
representatives to Parliament (if `working-men' so much the better) that they may
point out what concessions may be necessary for the ruling class to make in order
that the slavery of the workers may last on: in a word that to vote for the
continuance of their own slavery is all the parliamentary action that they will be
allowed to take under the present regime: Liberal Associations, Radical clubs,
working men members are at present, and Socialist members will be in the future,
looked on with complacency by the governing classes as serving towards the end of
propping the stability of robber society in the safest and least troublesome manner
by beguiling them to take part in their own government. A great invention, and well
worthy of the reputation of the Briton for practicality - and swindling! How much
better than the coarse old-world iron repression of that blunderer Bismark, which
at once irritates and consolidates the working-men, and depends for its temporary
success even on the absence of such accidents as a sudden commercial crisis or a
defeat of the German army.

The Policy of Abstention then is founded on this view: that the interests of the
two classes, the workers and the capitalists, are irreconcilable, and as long as
the capitalists exist as a class, they have the monopoly of the means of
production, have all the power of ordered and legal society; but on the other hand
that the use of this power to keep down a wronged population, which feels itself
wronged, and is organizing itself for illegal resistance when the opportunity shall
serve, would impose such a burden on the governing classes as they will not be able
to bear; and they must finally break down under it, and take one of two courses,
either of them the birth of fear acting on the instinct to prolong and sustain
their life which is essential in all organisms. One course would be to try the
effect of wholesale concessions, or what seemed to be such in order to diminish the
number of the discontented; and this course would be almost certain to have a
partial success; but I feel sure not so great a success in delaying revolution, as
it would have if taken with the expressed agreement of Socialist representatives in
Parliament: in the latter case the concessions would be looked upon as a victory;
whereas if they were the work of a hated government from which the people were
standing aloof, they would be dreaded as a bait, and scorned as the last resource
of a tyranny growing helpless. The other course which a government recognized as a
mere tyranny would be driven to by a policy of abstention, would be stern
repression of whatever seemed to be dangerous to it; that is to say of the opinions
and aspirations of the working classes as a whole: for in England at least there
would be no attempt to adopt this course until opinion was so grown and so
organized that the danger to monopoly seemed imminent. In short the two courses are
fraud and force, and doubtless in a commercial country like this the resources of
fraud would be exhausted before the ruling class betook itself to open force.

Now I say that either of these courses will indicate a breakdown of the class
government, and in my belief it would be driven to them more speedily by abstaining
from rendering it any help in the form of pushing palliative measures in
parliament, and thereby pointing out to it a way to stave off revolution; but it is
a matter of course that this abstention which we put forward as a weapon to drive
the ruling class to extremities must be backed up by widespread opinion, by the
conviction of a vast number of persons that the basis of society must be changed,
and labour set free by the abolition of monopoly in the means of production, which
monopoly is at present the basis of our society. But of course the necessity for
obtaining this body of opinion is not confined to those Socialists that advocate
abstention from parliamentary action: the making of Socialists must be a
preliminary to the settling of the question, What are Socialists to do? Now it is
clear that the first step towards this end is the putting forward of the principles
of Socialism, preaching them as widely as possible; this is practically all that up
to the present we have been able to do, and whatever success we have had in the
undertaking (people will have different opinions about that) we have worked at it
with very considerable energy. But it has been said that the mere preaching of
principles, however much the acceptance of them may involve definite action in the
future, is not enough; that you must offer your recruits something to do beyond
merely swelling the army of preachers in one way or another. Well I agree with
that, so far as this, that the time comes in such a movement as ours when it is
ready to change from a mere intellectual movement into a movement of action, and
that that time must be taken advantage of, and if there is no good plan of action
ready the movement will certainly take up a bad one in default of none at all. The
plan offered by some of our friends I have stated before as an attempt to get hold
of Parliament by constitutional means in order to use if for unconstitutional
purposes: that plan I think a bad one for reasons that I have hinted at already and
shall try to state more fully and consecutively before I have done. Yet if the plan
has its birth from anything more solid than impatience, and the weariness that is
sure to beset a small minority preaching revolution, it is a hopeful sign that it
should be put forward, and it being put forward in a manner that compels us who do
not agree with it to put forward some alternative to it, even though we think, as I
confess I for one do, that all plans of action are at present premature.

Well, I have put forward one part of our plan, viz. a strict holding aloof from
taking part in a government whose object is the maintenance of monopoly: you will
say of course that is not action: but I say that it is, if combined as it is sure
to be, with the resolute preaching of principles with a view to action when that
becomes possible without sullying it by alliance with the very tyranny which we are
leagued to destroy: it then becomes the foundation of that great instrument of
attack on a majority of brute force known as `the boycott.' For before we can begin
to use that we must be bound together by the full consciousness that we are
oppressed by a class who cannot help oppressing us and whose oppression we cannot
help resisting.

But again you may say before we can begin boycotting we must have numbers; how are
they to be obtained otherwise than by interesting a large body of people in reforms
which will have a plausible look of bettering their position? This is a shrewd
question, but I hope I can answer it satisfactorily. It will be our business to
give a new turn to all the smouldering discontent of the workers and the perpetual
struggle of labour against capital which is now feebly and incompletely organized
by the Trades Unions. Those bodies, which grew into power at a time when the
principle of capitalism was not attacked, can until they are radically altered only
deal with its accidental abuses; and they have also the essential quality of being
benefit societies, which would be all very well if they denied the rights of
capital altogether and were complete fighting bodies; because the benefit society
business would then mean just the army chest; but at present when the rights of
capital are admitted and all that is claimed is a proportional share in the
profits, it means a kind of relief to the employers, an additional poor-rate levied
from the workers. As things now go the position of the Trades Unions, as anything
but benefit societies, has become an impossible one; the long and short of what
they say to the masters is this: We are not going to interfere with your management
of our affairs except so far as we can reduce your salary as our managers. We
acknowledge that we are machines and that you are the hands that guide us; but we
will pay as little as we can help for your guidance and fight you on that point.
Well the masters can and do reply: My friends, you are making an end not of our
profits only but of our function of guidance, and since you are, as you admit, our
machines, when our guidance is gone, gone also is your livelihood. No, we know your
interests better than you do yourselves, and shall resist your feeble attempts to
reduce our salaries; and since we organize your labour and the market of the world
which it supplies, we shall manage your wages amongst other matters.

Now that's the blind alley which the Trades Unions have now got into: I say again
if they are determined to have masters to manage their affairs, they must expect in
turn to pay for that luxury. To go any further they must get out of that blind
alley and into the open highway that leads to Socialism. They must aim at managing
their own business, which is indeed the business of the world: remembering that the
price they pay for their so-called captains of industry is no mere money-payment -
no mere tribute which once paid leaves them free to do as they please, but an
authoritative ordering of the whole tenor of their lives, what they shall eat,
drink, wear, what houses they shall have, books, or newspapers rather, they shall
read, down to the very days on which they shall take their holidays like a drove of
cattle driven out from the stable to grass.

Well, I say that the real business of us propagandists is to instil this aim of the
workers becoming the masters of their own destinies, their own lives, and this can
be effected when a sufficient number of them are convinced of the fact by the
establishment of a vast labour organization - the federation according to their
crafts, if you will, of all the workmen who have awoke to the fact that they are
the slaves of monopoly, and therefore being awaked, its rebels also; men who are
convinced that the raw material and instruments of labour can only belong to those
who can use them: let them announce that transformation of these things into common
property as their programme, and look upon anything else they may have to do before
they have conquered that programme, as so much necessary work by the way to enable
them to live till they have marched to the great battlefield. Let them settle e.g.
what wages are to be paid by their temporary managers, what numbers of hours it may
be expedient to work; let them arrange for the filling of their military chest, the
care of the sick, the unemployed, the dismissed: let them learn also how to
administer their own affairs. Time and also power fails me to give any scheme for
how all this could be done; but granting the formation of such a body I cannot help
thinking that for the two last purposes they might make use of the so-called plan
of co-operation.

Well now, as to this great labour body I expect all Socialists to agree with me in
advocating its formation, and also to admit that the furtherance of such a body is
very great work and worth all our efforts to bring about; where some Socialists
will differ from me will be that they will not be able to see why all this should
not go on pari passu with Parliamentary action.

Well, I also expect them to agree with me in thinking it necessary in pointing out
to the workers the irreconcilability between true free labour and individualist
capitalism; surely in order to drive this fact home, it is necessary to keep the
two camps of labour and monopoly as distinct as possible.

If such a labour organization as I have been putting before you were set on foot,
and it took root and grew, and spread as it would if things were ripe either for
that or another form of preparation for action, what would be the condition of
things in the country? On the one hand the useful classes banded together for the
purpose of a change in the basis of society which would acknowledge their
usefulness and the usefulness of all others; which would abolish classes
altogether; on the other hand a committee of the useless or monopolist class,
authoritative because it holds the sway over the army, navy and police, but with no
power of doing anything but launching that power of destruction at those who make
all that is made, and so destroying their own livelihood along with that of their
enemy; with no power of bribing them by concessions, because the popular party
claim one thing only, the abolition of the class that on its side claims to rule.
What could come out of the opposition of these two forces, the useful working
society, and the useless class that claims nothing but to live on the former? What
could come of this opposition but destruction of the useless? Could armed reaction
triumph? Certainly only for a while; that at the worst; but probably it would not
even appear to conquer: there would be perhaps some feeble attempt at putting down
the popular combination by force; but it would be half-hearted and would soon come
to an end if that party were true to itself and felt its power in combination. What
would be the use of the authoritative government making laws for people who denied
its right, and felt it to be their duty to evade or resist them at every point?
Nothing would come of them, they would simply drop dead. And now mark that this
movement, this force for the revolution that we all call for can only be fully
evolved from this conscious opposition of the two powers, monopolist authority and
free labour: everything that tends to mask that opposition, to confuse it, weakens
the popular force, and gives a new lease of life to the reaction, which can indeed
create nothing, can only hang on a while by favour of such drags on such weaknesses
of the popular force. If our own people are forming part of parliament, the
instruments of the enemy, they are helping to make the very laws we will not obey.
Where is the enemy then? What are we to do to attack him? The enemy is a principle,
you say: true, but the principle must be embodied; and how can it be better
embodied than in that assembly delegated by the owners of monopoly to defend
monopoly at all points? to smooth away the difficulties of the monopolists even at
the expense of apparent sacrifice of their interests `to the amelioration of the
lot of the working classes'? to profess friendship with the so-called moderates (as
if there could be any moderation in dealing with a monopoly, anything but for or
against)? in short to detach a portion of the people from the people's side, to
have it in their midst helpless, dazed, wearied with ceaseless compromise, or
certain defeat, and yet to put it before the world as the advanced guard of the
revolutionary party, the representative of all that is active or practical of the
popular party?

This is the advantage not speculative but certain which sending Socialist members
to Parliament would hand over to the reactionists: let us try rather, I say once
more, to sustain a great body of workers outside Parliament, call it the labour
parliament if you will, and when that is done be sure that its decrees will be
obeyed and not those of the Westminster Committee. And whatever may be said of the
possibility of such a plan in other countries, in Britain it is possible, because
the mere political position of the workers is better here than elsewhere in Europe;
even though there are countries in which the suffrage is more extended: the habit
of democracy has gained sway over those persons and parties even who in feeling and
aspiration are least democratic; and they cannot do what they would, so that any
English government Tory as well as Liberal is hampered in its reactionary attempts
and does not dare to attack the expression of opinion openly unless driven to
despair; the Labour Combination I have been putting before you will not be openly
attacked by its enemy the Parliament till it is too late, till it has done the
first part of its work by instilling hope in the whole of the workers, the hope of
their managing their own affairs and freeing themselves from Monopoly.

Now it will be said and of course truly that the advocates of parliamentary action
amongst us are just as desirous of seeing this great labour organization
established as we are: but in the first place I cannot help thinking that the
scheme of parliament would be found in practice to stand in the way of the
formation of that widespread organization with its singleness of aim and directness
of action which it seems to me is what we want: that the effort towards success in
parliament will swallow up all other effort, that such success in short will come
to be looked upon as the end. However, you may say that this mistake can be guarded
against and avoided; I am far from sure that it can be, but let that pass: the
organization I am thinking of would have a serious point of difference from any
that could be formed as a part of a parliamentary plan of action: its aim would be
to act directly, whatever was done in it would be done by the people themselves;
there would consequently be no possibility of compromise, of the association
becoming anything else than it was intended to be; nothing could take its place:
before all its members would be put but one alternative to complete success,
complete failure, namely. Can as much be said for any plan involving the
representatives of the people forming a part of a body whose purpose is the
continuous enslavement of the people?

I think I can explain better what is in my mind as to these two plans of action if
I give a sketch of what I think would happen if either were adopted: only
understand I don't mean to prophesy, only to try to draw out the logical
consequences of that adoption. Take the policy of abstention first, and start from
where we are now, the Socialist movement still in its intellectual stage: a stage
at which only those who have thought about the matter see the necessity of placing
society on a new basis; a time in which the necessity is not forced upon them by
their immediate needs. While this lasts only those will join the movement with
sincerity who have intelligence enough to accept principles and to forecast events
from them; but they will form a solid body impossible to suppress or to be
discouraged by hope deferred just for that reason; they will teach others, and be
taught by the teaching; and as the approaching break-down of the monopolist system
comes closer conviction will be forced on the minds of more and more people, till
at last the mere necessities of life will force the main part of the workers to
join them; and they will find in them no mere aggregation of discontent, but a body
of persons who can teach the aims of Socialism and consult coolly about its
methods. They will then be grown into that powerful body I have spoken of, the
representative of the society of production, the direct opposition to the society
of exploitation which will be represented by the constitutional government, the
laws it has made and supports and the organized brute force which it wields. The
revolutionary body will find its duties divided into two parts, the maintenance of
its people while things are advancing to the final struggle, and resistance to the
constitutional authority, including the evasion or disregard of the arbitrary laws
of the latter. Its chief weapons during this period will be co-operation and
boycotting, the latter including all strikes that may be necessary: whether it will
be driven to use further weapons depends on the attitude of the Reaction: that
party will probably be paralysed before the steady advance of revolution, and will,
as in France in the earlier revolution, use its mechanical brute-force in a
wavering undecided half-hearted manner: it is by no means certain now, as it was in
the Chartist times, that the threat of the imminence of a general strike would be
the signal for the reaction to launch its army upon the people. Indeed supposing
such a crisis at hand, the revolutionists might forestall the actual battle by
using for once and for a definite purpose its enemy parliament by sending members
to outvote the reactionists on that occasion: by doing which if they did not get
actual command of the army &c. they would at least paralyse its action by
making that action of doubtful legality: for though a revolutionist may fight well
with a rope round his neck, such a necklace is an awkward adornment for your
counter-revolutionist. I have nothing further to say of the revolutionists beyond
this stage except that the long experience they would have had in their earlier
stage of a labour organization, of administering the affairs of the real producers,
and still more the experience of administration they would have spread during that
period would make the Morrow of the Revolution a much easier time to them than it
would be to a party that had not already learned to help itself. For the rest I
should say that our friend Paul Lafargue's late article in Commonweal
points out clearly enough the direction of the steps to be taken in the
re-organization of society.

Now for a brief history of the plan of parliamentary action: Starting from the same
point as the abstentionists they have to preach an electioneering campaign as an
absolute necessity, and to set about it as soon as possible: they will then have to
put forward a programme of reforms deduced from the principles of Socialism, which
we will admit they will always keep to the front as much as possible; they will
necessarily have to appeal for support (i.e. votes) to a great number of people who
are not convinced Socialists, and their programme of reforms will be the bait to
catch these votes: and to the ordinary voter it will be this bait which will be the
matter of interest, and not the principle for whose furtherance they will be
intended to act as an instrument: when the voting recruit reads the manifesto of a
parliamentary body, he will scarcely notice the statement of principles which heads
it, but he will eagerly criticize the proposals of measures to be carried which he
finds below it: and yet if he is to be honestly dealt with, he will have to be told
that these measures are not put forward as a solution of the social question, but
are - in short, groundbait for him so that he may be led at last to search into and
accept the real principles of Socialism. So it will be impossible to deal with him
honestly, and the Socialist members when they get into Parliament will represent a
heterogeneous body of opinion, ultra-radical, democratic, discontented
non-politics, rather than a body of Socialists; and it will be their opinions and
prejudices that will sway the action of the members in Parliament. With these
fetters on them the Socialist members will have to act, and whatever they propose
will have to be a mere matter of compromise: yet even those measures they will not
carry: because long before their party gets powerful enough to form even a
formidable group for alliance with other parties, one section or other of ordinary
politicians will dish them, and will carry measures that will pass current for
being the very thing the Socialists have been asking for; because once get
Socialist M.P.s, and to the ordinary public they will be the representatives of the
only Socialists. Now the result of such a `success' will be the necessity of a new
Socialist programme on the one hand and on the other an accession of strength to
the moderates; and this kind of thing will go on again and again with at least an
appearance of defeat every time; and every time a temporary gain not for the
Socialists but either for the reactionists or at least for the progressive
Democratic party. Which latter (always a weak and inefficient party in this
country) will be to a certain extent permeated with a kind of semi-Socialism, but
will by that very fact lose many of their members to the `moderate' reactionists on
one hand, though on the other they will offer a recruiting ground for the
Socialists. Well so it will go on till either the Socialist party in Parliament
disappears into the advanced Democratic party, or until they look round and find
that they, still Socialists, have done nothing but give various opportunities to
the reactionists for widening the basis of monopoly by creating a fresh
middle-class under the present one, and so staving off the day of the great change.
And when they become conscious of that and parliamentary action has been discovered
to be a failure, what can they do but begin all over again, and try to form the two
camps, each of them conscious of their true position of being the one monopolists,
and the other the slaves of monopoly.

Yet even supposing that they succeed and by means of tormenting the constitutional
Parliament into cumulative reforms manage to bring us to the crisis of revolution,
their difficulties would be far from an end then: for they would then have to
govern a people who had rather been ignorantly betrayed into Socialism than have
learned to accept it as an understood necessity: and in governing such a people
they would have this disadvantage, that they would not have the education which
their helping in the organization of the society of production would have given
them, teaching them as it were by the future and forming the habits of social life
without which any scheme of Socialism is but the mill-wheel without the motive
power. Their very success would lead to counter revolution; because they would have
to repress the ignorance which they had not grappled with in their militant times,
by brute force. Doubtless this counter revolution would lead us in the long run
into a condition of true society again: but need we go through all that trouble,
confusion and misery? let us begin to work against the counter revolution, by being
sure that we who call ourselves Socialists understand what we are aiming at, and
should feel at home in our new country when we get there - we and all that we lead
into the new country.

But I will say no more at present against that parliamentary action, which some of
our friends think the step now necessary to the furtherance of Socialism, but will
rather try to sum up what I have had to say in favour of the plan of abstention
from that action. It is above all things necessary that the working-classes should
feel their present position, that they understand that they are in an inferior
position not accidentally but as a necessary consequence of the position of the
classes that live by monopoly. When they have learnt this lesson they will learn
with it the necessity for a change in the basis of society: they are strong enough
if they combine duly to bring that change about; but their due combination depends
on their knowing that from the present rules of society they will get nothing but
concessions intended to perpetuate their present slavery: they must know they are
invited to vote and take some part in government in order that they may help their
rulers to find out what must be conceded, and what may be refused to the workers;
and to give an appearance of freedom of action to them. But the workers can form an
organization which without heeding Parliament can force from the rulers what
concessions may be necessary in the present and whose aim would be the total
abolition of the monopolist classes and rule. The action such an organization would
be compelled to take would educate its members in administration, so that on the
morrow of the revolution they would be able, from a thorough knowledge of the wants
and capabilities of the workers, to carry on affairs with the least possible amount
of blunders, and would do almost nothing that would have to be undone, and thereby
offer no opportunity to the counter revolution. This seems to me the direct way to
the realization of Socialism, and therefore in the long run the shortest way. I
admit that it will ask for qualities of patience, devotion and forgetfulness of
self in its pioneers, but it is a commonplace to say that impatience, carelessness
and egotism are hindrances to any cause, and have to be fought against; and if
Socialism militant cannot reckon on enlisting persons who are somewhat above the
average, and on staving off others who are a good deal below it, there is nothing
to be done but to sit still and see what will happen. That however we shall not and
cannot do; something we must do however fatalistic we may be: my hope is that what
we shall do will show us to be Socialists in essence and in spirit even now when we
cannot be Socialists economically.

Bibliographical Note

Title

The Policy of Abstentioni from Parliamentary Action

Delivery

30th July 1887 at a meeting of the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League at Kelmscott House

24th August 1887 at a meeting of the Clerkenwell (Central) Branch of the Socialist League at the Socialist League Hall, 13 Farringdon Street