"Useful Work Versus Useless Toil" by William Morris

I’ve been reading through a collection of essays about the nature of work in a book called Why Work? In this post I’ll summarize a very interesting piece called “Useful Work Versus Useless Toil” by William Morris. It says some really interesting things.

This essay, like so many in this collection, assumes that work in its unexploitive state is pleasurable. The kind of work which is pleasurable offers three kinds of hope: “hope of rest, hope of product, and hope of pleasure in the work itself” (36). The good kind of work offers the promise of a break; even the good kind of work can be painful at times! It also offers a product which the worker has the satisfaction and fulfillment of completing; that is, the worker is not one tiny cog in a vast process of which he or she is not aware and of which he or she never sees the final product. Lastly, the good kind of work is good because it exercises our faculties and complete selves as humans. We are not reduced to machines.

As Morris so succinctly states, “All other work but this is worthless; it is slaves’ work—mere toiling to live, that we may live to toil” (37).

Using these two kinds of work as a value system, Morris levels a critique on our economic system. First of all, it is no surprise that work is unevenly distributed among the classes. The rich (even though they may work hard) produce very little, but they consume very much and are dependent upon the work of those below them. The middle class also produces more than they consume and are comprised of whole sectors of purportedly useful professions which serve “the system of folly, fraud, and tyranny of which they form a part” (38). The middle class, much like the rich, are also invested in acquiring wealth and assets to the effect of not having to work anymore in the future. Work is something for the lower classes. Both the rich and the middle class are supported by the production of the poor who are in an inferior position. The poor produce real wealth but they also produce waste.

As Morris says, “Wealth is what Nature gives us and what a reasonable man can make out of the gifts of Nature for his reasonable use. The sunlight, the fresh air, the unspoiled face of the earth, food, raiment, and housing necessary and decent; 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” (39).

All the rest is waste and is part of a system committed to producing only waste in a circular process which perpetuates the inferiority of those who produce. The poor, in addition to supporting the needs and wants of the upper classes, also produces cheap wares and goods of which the poor itself consumes, but these goods are only “miserable makeshifts” of what the rich and middle classes can afford, “with coarse food that does not nourish, with rotten raiment which does not shelter, with wretched houses which may well make a town-dweller in civilization look back with regret to the tent of the nomad tribe, or the cave of the pre-historic savage” (40). Because of this massive waste of human potential and work, Morris argues that our civilization wastes its own resources.

With the advent of machinery and technology which significantly decreases the amount of labor needed to complete a task, as well as all manner of conveniences, we should all living a lifestyle which is significantly better than all those before us. But it’s obviously not this way. What to do?

Morris’ answer is no less than abolishing the class system which allows for a higher class that doesn’t produce wealth as Morris has defined it. This unleashes a vast potential of human resources to produce REAL wealth. This would result in the creation of more wealth of which more could have a part. Effort could even be made to ensure that the work which is necessary is made to be pleasant.

But here’s the rub: those in power don’t want this to happen and this speaks more directly to the nature of capitalism. What follows is a fairly standard Marxist critique of capitalism. Essentially, the capitalist is not interested in allowing for a “good” kind of work; he wants a profit. Since he is a monopolist and owns the means of production, he can more or less dictate the terms under which he hires labor. He can compel cheap labor out of the working classes because they have no where else to go. All markets have been monopolized. The means of production must be distributed evenly among every man and woman, not to a select few.

The rest of the essay is a very interesting piece of speculation about what a society without class, capitalist monopoly, and exploitation might look like. First of all, the work day would be short. Given the fact that more people would be working, and given the fact that the goal of work would be only to produce wealth, not waste, there wouldn’t be a need for as much work as is demanded by the system now. Second of all, there would be variety of work. Since a man or woman wouldn’t have to devote all of their time to one job, a person could devote a smaller amount of time to a variety of different kinds of work, with the emphasis on developing the WHOLE person. You might vary more sedentary work with more physically active, for example.

Education could be more concerned with drawing out the talents and skills of a person instead of stamping onto a person what the market needs. Doing this would unleash untold creative potential. All men would have time to create and engage intellectually and artistically with the world around them.

Morris believes that we should live and work in surroundings which are pleasant, and in this way he begins to sound like Chesterton, emphasizing the value in beautiful surroundings. The chaos and ugliness of our modern living and work conditions are simply a result of an economic system which values profit: “For all our crowded town and bewildering factories are simply the outcome of the profit system. Capitalistic manufacture, capitalistic land-owning, and capitalistic exchange force men into big cities in order to manipulate them in the interests of capital; the same tyranny contracts the due space of the factory so much that (for instance) the interior of a great weaving-shed is almost as ridiculous a spectacle as it is a horrible one” (48). In many ways the labyrinthine structure to our society and the spaces in which we live are a result and product of an economic system driven by profit. The modern labyrinth is a function and product of capitalism!

Morris’ speculation turns the prison-like factory, devoid of inspiration and creativity, to a center of intellectual and social work where products are created but where also the factory worker would engage in other activities as well such as gardening, or the study of art and science. Workers in this kind of factory are masters of their own time and energies, serving only themselves and their community.

As Morris concludes, “So you see, I claim that work in a duly ordered community should be made attractive by the consciousness of usefulness, by its being carried on with intelligent interest, by variety, and by its being exercised amidst pleasurable surroundings” (49).