This paper considers the reputation of William Morris's News From Nowhere and its evaluation as a utopia. It argues that there is a discrepancy between scholarly estimations of the book's importance and its treatment as a utopia relevant to socialism. Whilst scholars have for many years almost unanimously praised News From Nowhere as Morris's crowning achievement, most have also attempted to argue that Morris did not intend his work to be used as a serious model for socialism. After reviewing some (...) of the secondary literature and distinguishing between a variety of different interpretations of Morris's work, I suggest that the relevance of News From Nowhere might be assessed by the standards which Morris applied to Thomas More's Utopia. Considering Morris's work in this framework of utopianism, I argue that the relevance of Morris's utopia lies in what Norman Geras has called its ?maximum? vision. (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to the themed section ‘Anarchism and the national question—historical, theoretical and contemporary perspectives.’ We discuss first the long and often overlooked engagement of anarchists with the colonial and national liberation question, particularly—but not exclusively—in the heyday of the movement (from the second half of the 19th to the first decades of the 20th century). We discuss in particular the overlaps and tensions between anarchists and republicans (those who favoured republics as opposed to monarchies) and anti-colonial (...) nationalists (anti-colonialists who defended the right of national self-determination). Then we proceed to discuss the potential for a dialogue between anarchist and nationalism studies based on three interventions. First, to problematise the narrative that conflates nations with state-building processes. Second, to better grasp the emergence of alternatives to the nation–state as a historical construct. Third, to complicate narratives that associate in an unproblematic fashion internationalism and classless society. Finally, the introduction highlights the four questions which lie at the core of the themed section and discuss briefly how the papers relate to these. (shrink)

For many years, William Morris’s utopian novel, _News From Nowhere_, has been considered a socialist classic. In it, he describes a future society in which poverty and hardship have been overcome and where individuals are free to express their creativity. For many readers it has been an inspirational text but, at the same time, scholars have openly admitted that the society it describes is impractical. Indeed, in recent years, writers and politicians sympathetic to Morris’s socialism have tended to defend the (...) relevance of his political thought by passing over the details of his vision and translating his ideas to a set of familiar values or ideas: freedom, equality, fraternity, ecology, environmentalism. In this stimulating study, Ruth Kinna reviews the debates that have surrounded Morris’s work and suggests that the romanticism and utopianism of _News From Nowhere _have been treated wrongly as a weakness of his thought. By analyzing the impact that Morris’s understanding of art had on his political thought, she argues that his socialism was driven by a deeply romantic impulse and that this impulse underpinned his central contribution to socialist thought. In today’s political climate, the assumptions that Morris made about the revolution and his idea about the socialist economy and the role of women appear impractical and outdated. Nevertheless, this study suggests that there is a role for utopian thought in practical politics and that Morris’s image of the good society remains relevant today. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper examines a relationship between heresy and utopianism forged in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist histories to reveal a significant, pervasive fault-line in the ideological construction of anarchism. It first looks at Marxist narratives which trace the lineages of socialism back to medieval religious dissent and argues that a sympathetic assessment of European heretical movements was qualified by a critique of utopianism, understood as the rejection of materialist ‘science’. It then argues that strands of this narrative have been (...) woven into anarchism, looking at three examples: E.V. Zenker’s Anarchism (1897), James Joll’s The Anarchists (1964/1979) and Saul Newman’s From Bakunin to Lacan (2001). The dominant theme is that anarchism promises the transformation of corrupted nature and aims to achieve it though ecstatic violence, cataclysmic revolution and future perfection. Although this Millenarian anarchism is a ‘straw man’, rather than jettison ‘heresy’ as an investigative tool, I prefer an alternative conception of heresy derived from Martin Buber’s analysis of utopianism in Paths in Utopia (1949) and Michael Bakunin’s critique of political theology. I relate utopianism to the rejection of perfection and heresy with faith. By reframing of heresy in this way I seek to correct a long-standing distortion of anarchist ideas. (shrink)

This book provides a re-assessment of Kropotkin's political thought and suggests that the 'classical' tradition which has provided a lens for the discussion of his work has had a distorting effect on the interpretation of his ideas. By setting the analysis of his thought in a number of key historical contexts, Ruth Kinna reveals the enduring significance of his political thought and questions the usefulness of those approaches to the history of ideas that map historical changes to philosophical and theoretical (...) shifts. One of the key arguments of the book is that Kropotkin contributed to the elaboration of an anarchist ideology, which has been badly misunderstood and which today is too often dismissed as outdated. This sympathetic but critical analysis corrects some popular myths about Kropotkin's thought, highlights the important and unique contribution he made to the history of socialist ideas and sheds new light on the nature of anarchist ideology. (shrink)

Successive waves of global protest since 1999 have encouraged leading contemporary political theorists to argue that politics has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years, with a new type of politics gaining momentum over elite, representative institutions. The new politics is frequently described as radical, but what does radicalism mean for the conduct of politics? Capturing the innovative practices of contemporary radicals, Routledge Handbook of Radical Politicsbrings together leading academics and campaigners to answer these questions and explore radicalism's meaning to (...) their practice. In the thirty-five chapters written for this collection, they collectively develop a picture of radicalism by investigating the intersections of activism and contemporary political theory. Across their experiences, the authors articulate radicalism's critical politics and discuss how diverse movements support and sustain each other. Together, they provide a wide-ranging account of the tensions, overlaps and promise of radical politics, while utilising scholarly literatures on grassroots populism to present a novel analysis of the relationship between radicalism and populism. Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics serves as a key reference for students and scholars interested in the politics and ideas of contemporary activist movements. er. Together, they provide a wide-ranging account of the tensions, overlaps and promise of radical politics, while utilising scholarly literatures on grassroots populism to present a novel analysis of the relationship between radicalism and populism. Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics serves as a key reference for students and scholars interested in the politics and ideas of contemporary activist movements. (shrink)

This article examines Ernest Belfort Bax's interpretation of the French Revolution and traces the impact that his idea of the Revolution had on his philosophy and his political thought. The first section considers Bax's understanding of the Revolution in the context of his theory of history and analyses his conception of the Revolution's legacy, drawing particularly on his portraits of Robespierre, Marat and Babeuf. The second section shows how the lessons Bax drew from this history shaped his socialist republicanism and (...) discusses his support for Jacobin methods of revolutionary change. The third section of the article looks at the ways in which Bax's reading of revolutionary history affected his internationalism and shows how his ‘anti-patriotism’ led him to support the Anglo-French campaign in 1914. I argue that the Bax's understanding of the French Revolution gave body to his philosophy and greatly influenced his understanding of the socialist struggle. Bax believed that socialists had history on their side, but was so emboldened by the idea of the Revolution that he was led to advance a view of socialist change that undermined the historic values that socialism was supposed to enshrine. (shrink)

This article examines William Morris’s idea of Englishness, considered through a critique of his concept of fellowship or community. It looks at the charge that Morris wrongly neglected the importance of nationality as a focus for organization in socialism, preferring instead an internationalist ideal, based on an unworkable model of small-scale community. I defend Morris against these claims by arguing that Morris’s socialism was consistent with expressions of nationality and that his communitarianism was grounded on a concept of enjoyable labour, (...) not friendship as is often supposed. (shrink)

This paper presents a different interpretation for Morris's change of mind on the issue of participation in 1890, and offers a new interpretation of his utopian writings in the light of this examination. In the first part it examines Morris's relationship to anarchism and Marxism and his reasons for adopting an anti-parliamentary stance in the period 1884 to 1890. It accepts the Marxist interpretation that Morris was never an anarchist but against it argues that he was serious in his hostility (...) to parliamentary action. The second part looks at Morris's reasons for rejecting anti-parliamentarism after 1890. It accepts that Morris altered his position on parliamentary participation but explains it as a product of the disappointment of his revolutionary hopes and his commitment to an idea of political education. The final section looks at the relationship between Morris's political strategy and his utopian writings and argues that his utopianism was defined not against political reality, but as a response to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 493-512 [Access article in PDF] William Morris: Art, Work, and Leisure Ruth Kinna William Morris's most important contribution to British socialist thought is often said to be his elaboration of a plan for the socialist future. E. P. Thompson, for example, argued that Morris was "a pioneer of constructive thought as to the organization of socialist life within Communist society." 1 (...) His vision of socialism, famously captured in his utopian novel News From Nowhere, was inspired by a number of principles, but perhaps its most notable feature was the demand that labor be made attractive. 2 As John Drinkwater noted shortly after Morris's death, Morris passionately believed that an individual who is "overworked, or employed all the while in degrading work... cannot be himself." The message of his socialism, in Drinkwater's view "one of the profoundest and most inspiriting that it has been given to any man to deliver," was that "in bringing back joy to their daily work [men]... would put their feet on the first step towards... true dignity and pride of life." 3Since Drinkwater's comments, Morris's ideas about the organization of labor in socialism have attracted a considerable amount of attention. Most scholars have argued that his ideas were underpinned by two separate concerns: his hostility to the effects of industrialization and his opposition to the division of labor. As Fiona McCarthy notes, Morris not only protested against the pollution, congestion, and "squalid industrial waste" produced by "uncontrolled factory production," he also spoke out against the "rigid organization of the factory [End Page 493] which keeps the operative virtually chained to a single repetitive task." 4 Though both aspects of Morris's work have generated considerable scholarly interest, the first has attracted more attention than the second. A. L. Morton preferred to examine Morris's attacks on the effects of industrialization in order to counter the impression that his complaints were anti-modern or that his socialism required a return to premechanized methods of production. 5 Others have argued, more positively, that the proposals Morris made for the reorganization and for the improvement of factory production in particular set him apart from his contemporaries. 6 Recently, eco-socialist writers have developed this line of thought and extolled Morris as a precursor of green theory. 7 By contrast, Morris's views about the division of labor have not been seen as either controversial or distinctive. In some accounts his ideas are straightforwardly compared to Marx's. 8 Others suggest that his understanding of the division of labor was hazy. Paul Meier, for example, argues that Morris was unclear about the problems that the division of labor raised and that he only discussed it in a very general way. 9 Both these approaches mistakenly emphasize the separateness of the two elements in Morris's thought, and the relationship between his critique of industrialization and the division of labor has been neglected. I will argue that it is this relationship, and not the two respective parts, which holds the key to his demand for the realization of attractive labor.Morris integrated his ideas about industrialization and the division of labor into a wider analysis of the relationship between work and leisure. He began to think about this relationship before he committed himself to socialism in 1883, but his mature thought was influenced by Fourier as well as Marx. The two led him to conceptualize the relationship in two distinct ways. In the first he contrasted work with leisure and suggested that attractive labor required the reduction of necessary labor time; in the second he identified work with leisure and defined attractive labor as the exercise and expression of human creativity. As will be seen, these two conceptions were not easily reconciled. The first led Morris to argue that the realization of attractive labor was dependent upon the division of labor and the increase in productivity which it fostered; the second convinced him that attractive labor required a change in working practices and [End Page 494] that its realization... (shrink)