Useful Work versus Useless Toil

Discovered this on King's Parade in Cambridge in September 2010. It appeared to be related to the ideas of ubiquitous social creativity that are so central to the art and cultural movements of the 21st century. And that hunch proved quite, quite correct.

Bibliographic Deets

 * Morris, William 1888 (2008). Useful Work versus Useless Toil. Penguin, London.

Overview
This text is actually a collection of several essays and lectures William Morris presented during his lifetime which espouse his belief that humanity is suffering from an industrial oppression, which unlike conventional Marxist, negates a creativity that informs a soulful human experience. As an artist and publisher and theorist, Morris represents the ultimate embodiment of craft (production as individual expression) and criticism (being the ability to assess and analyze objects and processes intellectually).

In short, this guy is something of an immediate hero of mine. Not just because he mediates his political (highly socialist) beliefs within a matrix of romanticism and pragmatics, but because he believes that the human condition is defined by creation not mere (Marxist) production. And it is the attack on individual creative capacities that most harms contemporary society.

Useful Work v. Useless Toil

 * "Let us grant, first, that the race of man must either labour or perish. Nature does not give us our livelihood gratis; we must win it by toil of some sort of degree." (1)


 * Two kinds of work -> "one not far removed from a blessing, a lightening of life" the other "a mere curse, a burden to life" (2)


 * Motivations to Work
 * 1) Hope of Rest -> Work to complete a task and then be free of it
 * 2) Hope of Product -> "It remains for us to look to it that we do really produce something and not nothing" "If we look to this and use our wills we shall, so far, be better than machines" (3)
 * 3) Hope of Pleasure -> "But a man at work, making something which feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as a part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men and our days will be happy and eventful." (3-4)


 * Morris then takes on class division, arguing that work and consumption are out of whack in society (classic Marxism).


 * What does Morris mean by unequal distribution of wealth? ->
 * "The storing up of Knowledge of all kinds, and the power of disseminating it; means of free communication between man and man; works of art, the beauty which man creates when he is most a man, most aspiring and thoughtful- all things which serve the pleasure of people, free, manly, and uncorrupted. This is wealth." (8)


 * First Step for Reform -> "Abolish a class of men privileged to shirk their duties as men" (11)
 * "Nature will not be finally conquered till our work becomes a part of the pleasure of our lives" (13)


 * "I mean that side of art which is, or ought to be, done by the ordinary workman while he is about his ordinary work, and which has got to be called, very properly, Popular Art. This art, I repeat, no longer exists now, having been killed by commercialism" (21)

>> Lecture originally given to the "Hampstead Liberal Club" London 1884

Gothic Architecture
Apparently Morris got his "love" of Gothic Architecture from a part of John Rushkin's "The Stones of Venice" where Rushkin celebrated the craft of the men involved rather than their negation.


 * "Gothic Architecture is the most completely organic form of art which the world has seen; the break in the thread of tradition could only occur there: all former developments tended thiterward..." (32)


 * "To my mind, organic Architecture, Architecture which must necessarily grow, dates from the habitual use of the arch, which, taking into consideration its combined utility and beauty, must be pronounced the greatest invention of the human race" (36)


 * "The Mediaeval Society of Status was in process of transition into the modern Society of Contract ... the new system of production was at the bottom of this ... the Age of Commercialism was being born" (48)


 * "... unless the building is infected with Gothic common sense, you must pretend that you are living a hot country which needs nothing but an awning, and that it never rains or snows in these island. Whereas in a Gothic building the roof both within and without (especially within as it is most meet) is the crown of its beauties, the abiding place of its brain" (53)

>> Given to Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, London, 1889

The Lesser Arts
It would probably take a complete essay to totally nail down what Morris means by "Lesser" but he explicitly refers to them as "Decorative Arts" (56) and I think this also means "Popular Arts" which he talks about in other essays. The summary is that Morris wants to draw attention to the art processes and products marginalized intellectually by the category of "Fine Art."


 * "You look in your history-books to see who built Westminister Abbey, who built St Sophia at Constantinople, and they tell you Henry III, Justinian the Emperor. Did they? or rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who have left no names behind them, nothing but their work?"


 * Amazing Point. Reminds me of when I was at the British Museum for a Wikipedia conference. One of the Wikipedians stood up to explain himself, his work on Wikipedia, and the root of the passion. He explained that he liked to write on architecture. He then explained he had even helped build and design this room during the British Museums renovation. The MC interrupted him and teased "Sorry we didn't recognize you Sir Norman [Foster]" and the man sheepishly laughed. But the irony was immense. Wikipedia is all about the many workers, and this was the very point of the conference. So why could the wikipedia lesson not be conceded for other types of production? Up in the right corner of the auditorium, opposite me, was Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, laughing hard.


 * "These arts, I have said, are part of a great system invented for the expression of a man's delight in beauty: all peoples and times have used them; they have been the joy of free nations and the solace of oppressed nations; religion has used and elevated them, has abused and degraded them; they are connected with all history, and are clear teachers of it; and, best of all, they are the sweeteners of human labour, both to the handicraftsman, whose life is spent in working in them, and to people in general who are influenced by the sight of them at every turn of the day's work: they make our toil happy, our rest fruitful" (62- 63)


 * "Time was when the mystery and wonder of handicrafts were well acknowledged by the world, when imagination and fancy mingled with all things made by man; and in those days all handicraftsmen were artists, as we should now call them" (63).


 * "A man in his life can see but a little way ahead, and even in min wonderful and unexpected things have come to pass." (65)


 * "... Make men of us all by insisting on this most weighty price of manners; so that we may adorn life with the pleasure of cheerfully buying goods at their due price; with the pleasure of selling goods that we could be proud of both for fair price and fair workmanship: with the pleasure of working soundly and without haste at making goods that we could be proud of?" (81)


 * Critiques anti-environmentalism of Industry and the betrayal of Science on 83 & 84
 * Art must be for everyone -> "it would be a shame to an honest artist to enjoy what he had huddled up to himself of such art, as it would be for a rich man to sit and eat dainty food amongst starving soldiers in a beleaguered fort" (85)


 * He then ends by calling on the dream "That art will make our streets as beautiful as the woods, as elevating as the mountain-sides... every man's house will be fair and decent" " I am here with you tonight to ask you to help me in realizing this dream, this hope" (86, 87)

How I Became a Socialist

 * "What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's men, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers..." ( 88)


 * "To sum up, the study of history and the love and the practice of art forced me into a hatred of the civilization which, if things were to stop as they are, would turn history into inconsequent nonsens, and make art a collection of the curiosities of the past which would have no serious relations to the life of the present" (93)


 * "It is the province of art to set the true ideal of a full and reasonable life before him, a life to which the perception and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread, and that no man, and no set of men, can be deprived of this except by mere opposition, which should be resisted to the utmost" (93-94)

Part of At Cambridge