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Pioneers of Anti-Parlimentarism
by Guy A. Aldred



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ambitions which finally betrayed Social Revolutionary aspiration to parliamentary compromise.

Morris learned to despise palliators and parliamentarism druign his membership of the League. He agreed, in this, with the consistent teaching of Marx from 1848 to 1871 and opposed no less the consistent example of Marx from 1871 to 1883. On his return to the S.D.F., Morris compromised aliek in his contempt for palliators and his opposition to parliamentarism. And so proudn was Justice, the S.D.F. organ, of Morris's revisionism, that in 1913, in repritned form its columns of 1894, "Wat Tyler's" interview with him, affirming this sorry retrogression. At Morris's blessing of its palliatives and eulogy of the ballot-box Justice rejoices! Yet Hyndman would lead his readers to believe that the Socialist League was an Anti-Marxist organisation because it stood for Possiblism. It may have been Anti-Marxist in some sense but it was certainly also an Anti-Possiblist, that is, a true revolutionary Socialist organisation. Hyndman's placing shows how history is written. Well! Well! !

Morris went back to the parliamentary party, a broken propagandist. But he does not live as a parliamentarian. Ramsay MacDonald cannot quote him as a parliamentrism. Morris lives for his revolutionary outlook. He survives for his belief in the social revolution, for his caustic censures of parliamentarism. Remove Morris' opposition to parlimentarism and you kill his work, you stifle his genius, you trample down his vision and his every achievement as a pioneer. Morris lives in Socialist history as an Anti-Parliamentarian.

To-day when certain "Socialist" adventurers are telling us that Socialism is a purely secondary matter; if one can master the message of Morris, it is to realise that Socialism not only does matter, but that is the reality; that our lives are the reality; and that Socialism against the war, Socialism against mere pacifism even, Socialism against capitalism, is the message.

What we need to-day is to be a little more exact, a little more determined. We can be true to Socialism of William Morris only by taking a grand conception of the reality and necessity of the Social Revolution.

Morris died in 1896. A few years have elapsed since that time. But we do not seem to be making much progress. What we want now is not the idealist but the MAN. Morris is dead. Though he does not live, his expression of the tendencies of a certain period of British history, and his bringing together of ideas from different epochs in society, will inspire others to live.

There are those who worship the man, who rave about his poetry. I have spoken of them already. To others I would say: if we must respect the man and mention his name, let us do so truly. Don't let us mention the man and go on serving a prostitute philosophy

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