In
December, 1884, William Morris, Walter
Crane, Eleanor Marx, Ernest
Belfort Bax and Edward
Aveling left the Social Democratic
Federation and formed the Socialist
League.
Strongly influenced by the ideas of Morris,
the party published a manifesto where it advocated revolutionary
international socialism.
William Morris believed that the main function
of all socialist organisations was to "educate the people".
It was therefore decided that the Socialist
League should publish a journal called Commonweal.
Financed by a £300 loan from Morris, the monthly paper first
appeared in February 1885 declaring that it had "one aim - the
propagation of Socialism". The first edition of Commonweal
had eight 15 by 10 inch pages and sold over 5,000 copies.
The Commonweal remained a monthly paper until it changed to
a weekly in May 1886. Although the journal employed the talents of
writers and illustrators such as William Morris,
Walter Crane, Eleanor
Marx and Edward Aveling, sales were
disappointing. During industrial disputes such as the London
Dockers' Strike, sales increased, but they fell soon afterwards.
The Commonweal, with sales of between 2,000 and 3,000 copies
a week, was costing William Morris about
£500 a year. In 1895 Morris accepted defeat and the Commonweal
ceased publication.
The Commonweal (16th July, 1892)
(1) William
Morris, Commonweal
(30th November 1884)
Take
courage, and believe that we of this age, in spite of all its torment
and disorder, have been born to a wonderful heritage fashioned of
the work of those that have gone before us; and that the day of the
organization of man is dawning. It is not we who can build up the
new social order; the past ages have done the most of that work for
us; but we can clear our eyes to the signs of the times, and we shall
then see that the attainment of a good condition of life is being
made
possible for us, and that it is now our business to stretch out our
hands and take it.
And how? Chiefly, I think,
by educating people to a sense of their real capacities as men, so
that they may be able to use to their own good the political power
which is rapidly being thrust upon them; to get them to see that the
old system of organizing labour for individual profit is becoming
unmanageable, and that the whole people have now got to choose
between the confusion resulting from the breakup of that system and
the determination to take in hand the labour now organized for profit,
and use its organization for the livelihood of the community: to get
people to see that individual profit-makers are not a necessity for
labour but an obstruction to it, and that not only or chiefly because
they are the perpetual pensioners of labour, as they are, but rather
because of the waste which their existence as a class necessitates.
All this we have to teach people, when we have taught ourselves; and
I admit that the work is long and burdensome; as I began by saying,
people have been made so timorous of change by the terror of starvation
that even the unluckiest of them are stolid and hard to move. Hard
as the work is, however, its reward is not doubtful. The mere fact
that a body of men, however small, are banded together as Socialist
missionaries shows that the change is going
on. As the working classes, the real organic part of society, take
in these ideas, hope will arise in them, and they will claim changes
in society, many of which doubtless will not tend directly towards
their emancipation, because they will be claimed without due knowledge
of the one thing necessary to claim, equality of condition; but which
indirectly will help to break up our rotten sham society, while that
claim for equality of condition will be made constantly and with growing
loudness till it must be listened to, and then at last it will only
be a step over the border, and the civilized world will be socialized;
and, looking back on what has been, we shall be astonished to think
of how long we submitted to live as we live now.
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