MIA > Archive > Wilhelm Liebknecht
Publication history: First published, in German, as a foreword to the serialized German translation of William Morris's News from Nowhere (Kunde von Nirgendwo), begun in Neue Zeit in May 1892. Liebknecht combined a slightly shortened version of this Foreword with a biography of Morris to serve as introduction to the monograph version of Kunde von Nirgendwo published by Dietz in 1900.
German Source: Die Neue Zeit, 11. Jahrgang, 1. Band 1892/1893, pp. 29-31, digitized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
English Source: Translated by Graham Seaman for the Marxists Internet Archive in July 2025.
Markup and Notes: Graham Seaman, July 2025.
So where is Nowhere to be found? Well, where should it be? Which Nowhere? Which of the many thousands and hundreds of thousands, millions and billions of Nowheres that have been, are, and will be, as long as man is anything other than a self-acting machine, an automaton of flesh and blood? So every human being has his Nowhere—and most people have not just one, but more than one, many. And the only thing we know about the location of Nowhere is that it is not here where we are.
Nowhere is the world of wishes, dreams, and ideals. The fairy who tells the wide-eyed child the stories of Snow White and Cinderella full of sorrow and full of joy comes from Nowhere; the muses who saddle the hippogryph for the young man to "wing his way, where realms of romance their charms display"[1] come from Nowhere; the demigod the young woman yearns for, the demigoddess—no, the goddess—the youth yearns to be with, they dwell in Nowhere; the peace and freedom from cares that appear to the working man and woman during their never-ending struggle for existence like a mirage, dwell in Nowhere; and the laurel wreath that the dying fencer gazes upon—it beckons from Nowhere.
Nowhere is the land of desires, dreams, ideals, the future. The land of the future – the time to come. The "good time coming"[2] of the worker weary of the present. Wishes flee into the future. Everything beautiful and good, which the present rejects with a harsh hand, flees into the boundless, unlimited, shimmering future that offers space for everything and everyone.
The human spirit continues to advance – it conquers empire after empire – but is never satiated; impatient – no matter how great the empire – it lets its gaze wander beyond the borders, wanting to know what new empires tomorrow will reveal.
But a veil conceals what lies beyond the border. More than a veil—for through a veil one can at least glimpse outlines—it is a curtain, a thick, heavy, iron curtain. To lift it, to peek through some crack, who would not desire that? From the cook who wants to see the future[3] to the politicking Sancho Panza, who is bursting with curiosity as to whether he will get his favourite food in sufficient quantity and quality in the future state[4] — everyone — at least at times, that is, when there is time — has a burning desire to lift the veil of the future, to raise that thick, heavy, iron curtain.
Some have claimed to have succeeded. They called themselves prophets and turned to prophesy. On the whole the prophets and prophesies have had no luck. However, their kind has not yet completely died out, even if the remnants have rather gone to the dogs, like so many old aristocratic families.
The weather prophet and the political prophet, in particular, are in bad repute; but prophethood has a mysterious attraction, so that the number of those who, with heroic courage, accept the martyrdom of ridicule that is inseparable from it is not nil.
To imagine the future – to see the land of the future, the state of the future, the world of marvels of Nowhere – who would not be attracted by that? To read out the future from the past – who has not tried it? And who observes these attempts with indifference, even when they know they are impossible? All descriptions of the world of marvels of Nowhere hidden by the curtain of the future are therefore wonderfully stimulating and always enjoy wide favour and popular appeal. And right now, in this seething, bubbling present day, when one world is on the brink of death in childbirth and a new world is struggling to be born—who isn't eager to know what tomorrow will bring? It is precisely in times of dissolution, change, transformation, and of social and political rebirth that the urge to wander in the land of Nowhere or Utopia is strongest.
And every future state has one advantage – quite apart from the pleasure it gives us – it is our state, it is the way we want and desire it to be; and everyone can say of their future state, with infinite right, like the megalomaniac despot of a contemporary state, "L'État c'est moi", "I am the State", "The State is me", "I am the State of the future" — it is my creation and my Ego.
Since the American Bellamy showed us the year 2000 in his “Looking Backwards”, which is in fact a look forwards, “utopias” – descriptions of the land of Nowhere – have sprouted like mushrooms from the earth. Mostly shallow, talentless imitations. But also some capable ones. And "News from Nowhere" is probably the most capable of all. A poet wrote it, a true poet; and the true poet is proverbially a seer, effectively a prophet by nature and profession. William Morris, the founder of the "Socialist League," to which his poem of the future is linked, is also a social democrat from head to toe. He gives us his "future state," that is, the future state as he, coming from a party meeting, saw it one inspiring winters night with the vision of a poet and a seer.
Today he could write another state of the future for us — and tomorrow yet another. For we all have our state of the future, or rather our states of the future, for one is surely not enough to satisfy us. Most have a score or more. For our part, we have a warehouse full of them, all very pretty, neat and clean future states. We know well enough that it might turn out like that, but we know with more certainty that it will not turn out like that. The life course of the simplest man is not predictable - how could the course of humanity be?
If we give our poet, who knows this as well as we do, the floor for the portrayal of his "vision", that is because he is a poet, and because as a seer he has seen much that the ordinary run of men do not see.
Just two words about the poem itself. It contains its own explanation. The setting is present-day London and its surroundings – and anyone who wants to find their way around the locations is advised to acquire a map of the English metropolis, or rather the metropolis – for there is only one, and it is called London – and its surroundings. That would be an excellent "guide" to the "Nowhere" of our William Morris. And anyone who does not yet know William Morris will get to know him from his home in Nowhere. There he is, in his truest form, with his romantic love of the "Pre-Raphaelite" Middle Ages, with his romantic hatred of machines, and his somewhat "anarchistic" freedom and autonomy of the individual. With regard to this latter, I draw attention in particular to the Manchester organ grinders with the popular melody of the "coercive state."[5] In the Nowhere of our Morris, the most beautiful "individualism" reigns – there everyone can be happy in their own way, and if Morris houses and furnishings do not please, others can be made.
The translation of the first quarter is by Frau Steinitz, the translation of the remainder by my wife, and the whole has been overseen by me.
May 1892. W. Liebknecht
[1] The opening lines of the popular romantic poem Oberon by Cristhoph Martin Wieland, published in 1796. [RETURN]
[2] Chorus from a popular English poem and song by Charles McKay. [RETURN]
[3] A reference to Marx's sarcastic comment on Comteans who wanted to specify the details of future society down to the 'recipes of the cookshops of the future' (Capital, 1873 Afterword to the German edition) [RETURN]
[4] Presumably a reference to Marx's labelling of Stirner as 'Saint Sancho' in the Holy Family due to Stirner's reduction of material interests to the most basic physical questions. [RETURN]
[5] Here and elsewhere Liebknecht assimilated the Manchester free-trade theorists to anarchists, as two varieties of the same system of thought. [RETURN]
Last updated on 28 July 2025