News from Nowhere

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work of utopian fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. The remainder of the book explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. The book offers Morris's answers to a number of frequent objections to socialism, and underlines his belief that socialism will entail not only the abolishment of private property but also of the divisions between art, life, and work.

William Morris tackled one of the most common criticisms of Socialism; what incentive is there to work hard in a communist society? Morris's response, best understood by reading News From Nowhere, is that all work should be creative and pleasurable. This differs from the majority of Socialist thinkers, who tend to assume that while work is a necessary evil, a well-planned equal society can reduce the amount of work needed to be done by each worker. News From Nowhere was written as a response to an earlier book called Looking Backward, a book that epitomizes a view of Socialism that Morris abhorred.

News From Nowhere was first published in serial form in the Commonweal journal beginning on January 11, 1890.

Of Morris' other socialist writings, A Dream of John Ball is the best-known.