[back to June-July 2001 front page]
William Morris was an early English socialist who died in 1896. His piece is an eloquent but dated drawing of the contrast between working class life in Victorian England and the socialist society which he advocated. He doesn't show any awareness of the domestic labours or concerns of women. Here is an anticipation of how the lives of working class women could be changed by socialism, with homage to Morris's greater eloquence.
When women organise so that our labour is not wasted, we will be relieved from working the double shift of wage labour and domestic labour. Mothers will be relieved of the triple shift which adds child-rearing as a 24 hour a day demand on our energy and attention, and we will have the freedom and leisure to look around and see what we really do need. What is it that I need then?
First of all I need to be sure that my children are healthy, safe and loved. Many mothers (and fathers) suffer the agony of not being able to adequately feed their children, or to be able to get medical attention when they need it. Others are not sure that their children are well-cared for in schools and nurseries.
Then I need good health, the right to choose parenthood and physical pleasure. If I bear children it will be with joy as a conscious choice, and I need the means to choose not to bear children. I need to appreciate my own body and its strength, on my own terms, free from the images of impossibly manufactured stereotypes of female beauty. I need to be free to enjoy sexual relationships by mutual consent with men or women as I desire, without any shame or loathing. I claim this against the double standard which encourages me to be sexually available as a young women, but condemns me for being a seducer and provoking unwanted sexual approaches and even rape. I claim it against the marketing of lifestyle products as the source of sexual appeal, health and pleasure, but which preys on my insecurities and makes a purchase out of every aspect of life.
I claim the right to education for the fulfilment and enjoyment of having knowledge, skills, an appreciation of and ability to undertake creative endeavours, and critical understanding of social relations and human history. I claim this in the face of the idea that education is for the purpose of separating those who will achieve personal power through economic and social success, from those who will be the failures, the wage slaves, the menial workers, the unemployed, the less worthy. I claim education to offer all the chance to reach their full potential, which will not place different expectations on children according to gender or race. I claim education beyond the boundaries of schools, so children and youth can also learn in adult workplaces, as well as by increasingly acquiring responsibility to run their own lives.
I claim for young adults the democratic rights and obligations to collectively plan and manage their own education and schools, with their teachers and parents. Children will learn how to be citizens of a true democracy from the earliest age. I claim the right of my children to learn this from adults, teachers, who respect the rights of children, as part of a society that respects all individuals and recognises their autonomy. I claim this against schooling's purpose of conditioning children of both classes for a future of obedience to the requirements of production for profit.
When we do not work to make profits for our employers then we will be able to reorganise our own work including our domestic labours. We will all be fed at school and work, and we will pack lunches no more. On every residential block there will be a communal dining hall where we can eat at any time of day. We will only shop, cook and clean kitchens when we want to, or when it is our turn as part of collectively allocated duties to work in a communal dining hall. Well-equipped teams of cleaners will do most of the cleaning as a share of collective duty. We will redesign our dwellings so that it is easy to keep company with others and to have our privacy.
All people who need special care, children, elderly, disabled will not be segregated but integrated into the activity of new collective dwellings, with the chance to make whatever contribution to the community they are able. Meeting their special needs for physical care will be shared amongst the community, and will free individual women and men from the exhaustion of being constant care givers. Young children especially will be treated as apprentices to adult life, and whilst playing they will also begin to learn the skills of adults as they join in with and watch the variety of adult activities that go on around them.
We can also claim a reduction in the labour that is needed to produce goods and other services. When we do not produce for profit, we can use new production techniques to reduce the time we spend at work. We can decide not to produce the vast range of useless and polluting commodities that capitalism makes because it can persuade people to buy them as a counterfeit for personal fulfilment. Useful items will be built for durability, not obsolescence, expansion of public transport will reduce fuel consumption and the number of vehicles to be manufactured. Wasteful activities to support capital's need to realise the surplus value it has appropriated, by promoting exchange and money management will be rationalised and then abolished -banking, insurance, advertising along with super star salaries and luxury consumption. The manufacture of war machines and employment of armed forces will also end and decrease the time for obligatory labour.
We will be able to question what should be produced, what labour is actually required. We will be able to refuse wasteful, trivial labour. As a good citizen, I will be able to make my contribution to society willingly, without feeling that my good will towards others is being taken advantage of, or becomes a burden. I will do the work that I agree to do.
Released from the wastefulness of labouring in isolated homes, and enjoying a much reduced requirement for hours of labour, we women will find ourselves with a new freedom to recreate our lives and our parts in the collective life of our society.
We will have the time and the energy to participate in the running of society, to join in democratic councils which will plan further ways of reducing obligatory labour and maximising individual freedom and creativity. We will have the time to read and talk and heighten our interest in collective decision making. We will also have the chance to develop our own creativity, talents and interests. The separation between socially obligatory labour, and self-directed creative activities will break down, and the time required for the former will be even further reduced. The distinction between obligatory work and voluntary activity would blur. Our contributions to society's needs would be made without stress, in pleasurable companionship or solitude when we prefer, using our skills and knowledge freely, able to be critical of what we do and the way we do it because we have the power to change it.
"Then would come the time for the new birth of art, so much talked of, so long deferred; people could not help showing their mirth and pleasure in their work, and would be always wishing to express it in a tangible and more or less enduring form, and the workshop would once more be a school of art, whose influence no one could escape from." (Morris) We will have the time and freedom to write, to make movies, music, designs, performances, photographs, stories... to realise our creative potential, through growing freedom from necessity.
We will no longer need to face domestic conflict if our partners expect to keep us in the old role of servant to their needs. The role of housewife will vanish. Our economic independence is assured through the recognition of whatever socially useful labour we are able to contribute. We will not fear leaving a home that is no longer home, because there will be homes for all variety of needs, single people, large and small groups of adults, with or without children, and for young adults.
We will be able to form communities of cultures, identities and interests, where we feel the need. Our communities will have the means and freedom to maintain separate traditions and to exchange techniques, customs and ideas with others as they wish. The end of the domination or denigration of oppressed minorities especially indigenous peoples, the end of seizing what remains of their lands and traditions, will mean their freedom to choose their own terms for interacting with other cultures.
Our whole environment should be pleasant and beautiful, our homes should be spacious and light, our workplaces should be clean and quiet, our urban public spaces should be safe and attractive, our open spaces should be cared for. All activities carried on for a profit which create ugly, noisy, dirty factories and cramped offices in sick buildings, which degrade public spaces and which pollute waters and destroy ecosystems, can all be ended. We will have the power in our collective hands to create surroundings that are pleasant, generous, sustainable and beautiful for all.
There is nothing in the world to prevent this being done, except profit and the power of those who live on it. "All this, of course, would mean the people - that is, all society - duly organised, having in its own hands the means of production, to be owned by no individual, but used by all as occasion called for its use." (Morris) When working class women and men see that this is so, that they need not be slaves to the power of private ownership, when they believe in their own collective capacity to create a better world, then we shall stake all these claims and take our world into our own hands, and be free.