1884 · English

Useful Work versus Useless Toil

William Morris

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3 selected passages and classifications

Passage 1

As things are now, between the waste of labour-power in mere idleness and its waste in unproductive work, it is clear that the world of civilization is supported by a small part of its people; when all were working usefully for its support, the share of work which each would have to do would be but small, if our standard of life were about on the footing of what well-to-do and refined people now think desirable. We shall have labour-power to spare, and shall, in short, be as wealthy as we please. It will be easy to live. If we were to wake up some morning now, under our present system, and find it "easy to live," that system would force us to set to work at once and make it hard to live; we should call that "developing our resources," or some such fine name. The multiplication of labour has become a necessity for us, and as long as that goes on no ingenuity in the invention of machines will be of any real use to us. Each new machine will cause a certain amount of misery among the workers whose special industry it may disturb; so many of them will be reduced from skilled to unskilled workmen, and then gradually matters will slip into their due grooves, and all will work apparently smoothly again;

Labour and mechanization human institutions · advances dependence · advances Economic and material power Character and human development Diminishes autonomy

Morris argues that under the present economic system machinery cannot genuinely improve life: the multiplication of labour makes it necessary to work more, while new machines disturb workers' industries and reduce skilled workers to unskilled labour. The loss of control and skill is attributed to the social arrangement of production rather than to machines alone.

Local word range 3551–3975

Passage 2

As to the hope of product, I have said that Nature compels us to work for that. It remains for us to look to it that we do really produce something, and not nothing, or at least nothing that we want or are allowed to use. If we look to this and use our wills we shall, so far, be better than machines. The hope of pleasure in the work itself: how strange that hope must seem to some of my readers — to most of them! Yet I think that to all living things there is a pleasure in the exercise of their energies, and that even beasts rejoice in being lithe and swift and strong. But a man at work, making something which he 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. [...] All other work but this is worthless; it is slaves' work — mere toiling to live, that we may live to toil.

Labour and mechanization Habit and self-command dependence · advances cultivate capacities · advances Character and human development Meaning, experience, and interpretation Enlarges autonomy Individual Institutional Work and economic order Mind and body

Morris treats work as fully human when it is willed, meaningful, imaginative, and creative; merely compelled toil is slave work.

Useful Work versus Useless Toil (1884), opening

Passage 3

[T]his cheapness is necessary to the system of exploiting on which modern manufacture rests. In other words, our society includes a great mass of slaves, who must be fed, clothed, housed and amused as slaves, and that their daily necessity compels them to make the slave-wares whose use is the perpetuation of their slavery. [...] Thus then have the fruits of our victory over Nature been stolen from us, thus has compulsion by Nature to labour in hope of rest, gain, and pleasure been turned into compulsion by man to labour in hope — of living to labour! What shall we do then, can we mend it? Well, remember once more that it is not our remote ancestors who achieved the victory over Nature, but our fathers, nay, our very selves. For us to sit hopeless and helpless then would be a strange folly indeed: be sure that we can amend it.

Labour and mechanization Progress and decline human institutions · advances dependence · advances cultivate capacities · advances Economic and material power Character and human development Consequences and welfare Diminishes autonomy Institutional Civilizational Work and economic order Human future and environment

Morris locates the loss of autonomy in capitalist organization, not machinery alone: class power diverts productive capacity into exploitative, unproductive work.

Useful Work versus Useless Toil (1884), later argument

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