William Morris: Art, Work, and Leisure Author(s): Ruth Kinna Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 61, No. 3, (Jul., 2000), pp. 493-512 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3653925 Accessed: 09/07/2008 07:43

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http://www.jstor.org : Art, Work, and Leisure

Ruth Kinna

WilliamMorris's most importantcontribution to Britishsocialist thoughtis often said to be his elaborationof a plan for the socialist future.E. P.Thompson, for example, arguedthat Morris was "apioneer of constructivethought as to the organizationof socialist life within Communistsociety."' His vision of social- ism, famously capturedin his utopiannovel News FromNowhere, was inspired by a numberof principles,but perhapsits most notablefeature was the demand that laborbe made attractive.2As John Drinkwaternoted shortlyafter Morris's death, Morrispassionately believed that an individualwho is "overworked,or employedall the while in degradingwork ... cannotbe himself."The message of his , in Drinkwater'sview "oneof the profoundestand most inspiriting that it has been given to any man to deliver,"was that "in bringingback joy to their daily work [men] ... would put their feet on the first step towards ... true dignity and pride of life."3 Since Drinkwater'scomments, Morris's ideas aboutthe organizationof la- bor in socialism have attracteda considerableamount of attention.Most schol- ars have arguedthat his ideas were underpinnedby two separateconcerns: his hostility to the effects of industrializationand his opposition to the division of labor.As Fiona McCarthynotes, Morris not only protestedagainst the pollu- tion, congestion, and "squalidindustrial waste" produced by "uncontrolledfac- tory production,"he also spoke out againstthe "rigidorganization of the factory

1 E. P. Thompson, WilliamMorris: Romantic to Revolutionary (New York, 1976), 682. 2 See G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought(5 vols.; London, 1974), II, 414-24; Fiona McCarthy,William Morris: A Life For Our Time(London, 1994), 584-88; Paul Meier, WilliamMorris: The MarxistDreamer, tr. FrankGubb (2 vols.; Sussex, 1978), I, 288-394; A. L. Morton, The English Utopia (London, 1978), 202-24; Thompson, Romanticto Revolution- ary, 682-98. 3 John Drinkwater, WilliamMorris A Critical Study (London, 1912), 198-99; and Paul Bloomfield, WilliamMorris (London, 1934).

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Copyright2000 by Journalof theHistory of Ideas,Inc. 494 Ruth Kinna which keeps the operativevirtually chained to a single repetitivetask."4 Though both aspects of Morris'swork have generatedconsiderable scholarly interest, the first has attractedmore attentionthan the second. A. L. Mortonpreferred to examine Morris'sattacks on the effects of industrializationin orderto counter the impression that his complaintswere anti-modem or that his socialism re- quireda returnto premechanizedmethods of production.5Others have argued, more positively, that the proposalsMorris made for the reorganizationand for the improvementof factoryproduction in particularset him apartfrom his con- temporaries.6Recently, eco-socialist writershave developedthis line of thought and extolled Morrisas a precursorof green theory.7By contrast,Morris's views aboutthe division of laborhave not been seen as eithercontroversial or distinc- tive. In some accounts his ideas are straightforwardlycompared to Marx's.8 Others suggest that his understandingof the division of labor was hazy. Paul Meier, for example, arguesthat Morriswas unclearabout the problemsthat the division of laborraised and that he only discussedit in a very generalway.9 Both these approachesmistakenly emphasize the separatenessof the two elements in Morris'sthought, and the relationshipbetween his critiqueof industrialization and the division of laborhas been neglected. I will arguethat it is this relation- ship, andnot the two respectiveparts, which holds the key to his demandfor the realizationof attractivelabor. Morrisintegrated his ideas aboutindustrialization and the division of labor into a wider analysis of the relationshipbetween work and leisure. He began to think aboutthis relationshipbefore he committedhimself to socialism in 1883, but his maturethought was influencedby Fourieras well as Marx.The two led him to conceptualizethe relationshipin two distinct ways. In the first he con- trastedwork with leisure and suggested thatattractive labor required the reduc- tion of necessary labor time; in the second he identifiedwork with leisure and defined attractivelabor as the exercise and expression of humancreativity. As will be seen, these two conceptions were not easily reconciled. The first led Morristo arguethat the realizationof attractivelabor was dependentupon the division of labor and the increase in productivitywhich it fostered;the second convinced him that attractivelabor required a change in workingpractices and

4 McCarthy,Life For Our Time,356-57. 5 See especially Morton, English Utopia, 217-19. 6 See, for example, RaymondWilliams, Cultureand Society 1780-1950 (Middlesex, 1971), 159. 7 See, for example, Derek Wall, Green History (London, 1994), 10. 8 Jack Lindsay, WilliamMorris: His Life and Work(London, 1975), 348; A. L. Morton, "Morris,Marx and Engels," History of the ImaginationSelected Writingsof A. L. Morton, ed. MargotHeinemann and Willie Thompson (London, 1990), 300-303; Thompson, WilliamMor- ris, 690. 9 Meier, Marxist Dreamer, 357. WilliamMorris 495 that its realizationwas blocked by the conditions which this very division im- posed. Morriswas awareof the tension in his work but was unableto resolve it. Nevertheless, his attemptto do so highlightsthe distinctivenessof contribution to late nineteenthcentury socialist thought. Morrisstarted to write aboutthe relationshipbetween work and leisure and the idea of attractivelabor in the late 1870s and early 1880s, a few years before his turnto socialism. Morris's first considerationsof this question, as of most social issues, was mediatedby his understandingof artand his personalexperi- ence. His art was driven by two forces, a sense of unyielding resolve and a seemingly inexhaustibletalent. His determinationto become a craftsmanfirst became apparentin 1857, when he moved into Red Lion Squarewith Edward Bume-Jones.Since the rentedrooms were unfurnished,Morris set aboutdesign- ing some furnituredeveloping his new interestin parallelwith his literarycareer. In 1860, two years afterthe publicationof TheDefence of Guenevere,he moved into the Red House in Bexley Heath. Discovering that he could not find manu- facturerswho could provide suitablefurnishings, Morris disciplined himself to work in accordancewith his motto "if I can" and provide his own.'? Mocking him, his one time studentDante Gabriel Rossetti suggested that the maximshould be "since I can't."Yet though Morrishad failed in his bid to become a painter, Rossetti'ssuggestion soon proved to be well wide of themark. When Ford Maddox Brown suggested that the friends set up in business together, Morris demon- stratedthat his will to masterthe craftswas matchedby extraordinaryability. In Morris, Marshall,Faulkner, & Co., he embarkedon a career that would lead him to become one of the most versatileand influentialdesigners, dyers, weav- ers, and printersof his age. When Morrisfirst explainedhis ideas aboutwork and leisure, he used his personal insights and motivations as startingpoints for his analysis. In the ar- ticles collected togetherin Hopes and FearsforArt he identifiedtwo sourcesof motivation.The first was materialand correspondedto his sense of purpose- Morrisknew that he needed to make a living. Puttingthe point negatively, he wanted to avoid "the fear of starvationor disgrace."' His second and stronger impulse,which matchedhis talent,was pleasure.Aside fromthe need to support himself and his family, he was, he declared,born to labor in culture.'2Without his work he would "die of despairand weariness.""3 Leisure, Morrissuggested, could also be consideredin two ways. If work was seen as a necessity then leisure could be thought of as non-work or free

'0J. W. Mackail, TheLife of WilliamMorris (2 vols.; London, 1912), I, 148-49; McCarthy, Life For Our Time, 166. 1 "The Prospectsof Architecture,"Collected Worksof WilliamMorris (24 vols.; London, 1992), XXII, 142. 12 "Makingthe Best of It," 82. 13 "Prospectsof Architecture,"142. 496 RuthKinna time.Alternatively, if it was consideredas pleasure,then leisure could be thought of as an extension of work, or voluntarylabor. In both cases leisure was a form of rest, but in the first it impliedinactivity or, moreprecisely, any pastimewhich did not have a manualcomponent. In the second, by contrast,leisure was pro- ductive. Before he declared himself to be a socialist in 1883 Morris clearly preferredthe second, active, formof leisure-voluntary labor-to the first.Free time spent inactively, he claimed, was work's least importantreward. Admit- tedly, his poetry in particularsuggested a differentpriority. The Life and Death of Jason, TheEarthly Paradise, and Sigurdthe Volsungwere full of adventure and excitement,but they also emphasizedthe joy of peaceful reflection.For his own partMorris, too, guiltily confessed to spendingsome of his free time "as a dog does-in contemplation."Nevertheless, he insistedthat he preferredto spend the greaterpart of his leisure time doing work "which ... gives me just as much pleasureas my bread-earningwork."'4 To reinforcethe point he addedthat his friends also believed that the "only idea of happy leisure was otherwork," and he suggested thatthey differedfrom him only because they liked the "dog-like leisure less and the man-like labourmore.""' Morrisextrapolated from his personalmotivations to the populationat large. Workin society, he argued,was drivenby two forces: the first, nature,reflected his concern to make a living; and the second, desire, paralleledhis love of art. Individuals,he argued,worked in orderto live. But even though work was an inescapablefact of life, Morrisargued that it also satisfied a hedonisticimpulse. To make his point he returnedto the dogs, this time using them as exemplarsof purepleasure-seeking. Just as "thedog takepleasure in hunting,and the horse in running,and the bird in flying," so the "naturaland rightful"motive for laborin mankindwas the "desire for pleasure."'6 In a similar vein he arguedthat the majorityof individualspreferred their leisure to be activethan not. Morrisgranted thatsome occupations,for example, ploughing, fishing, and shepherding,were inherently"rough" and workersemployed in these roles might need periods of complete "dog-like"rest in order to recuperatefrom their activities. In these cases Morrisconceded that the hardshipwork involved required"certain condi- tions of leisure, freedom, and due wages being granted."7But in general he arguedthat leisure should be consideredas an extension of work and not a re- lease from it. In his essay "TheArt of the People,"written in 1879, he observed:

[Work]is necessary toil, but shall it be toil only? Shall all we can do with it be to shortenthe hoursof thattoil to the utmost,that the hoursof

14 Ibid. 15Ibid. 16 "The Art and the People," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXII, 42-43. 17Ibid., 45. WilliamMorris 497

leisuremay be long beyond what men used to hope for? And what then shall we do with the leisure, if we say that all toil is irksome?Shall we sleep it away? -Yes, and never wake up again, I should hope, in that case.18

After his turn to socialism Morris continued to argue both that work was necessaryand that it met a humandesire. Individuals,he argued,had to laborin order to live and to ensure that they provided at least the means of their own subsistence. The choice, Morris argued,was to "labouror perish."Nature, he continued,"does not give us our livelihoodgratis; we mustwin it by toil of some sort or degree."'9At the same time workersought to take pleasurein theirlabor. When he looked forwardto the futureorganization of socialism, he anticipated thatfree time would not be a sufficientguarantee for leisure.Writing in 1884, he argued:

When class-robberyis abolished, every man will reap the fruits of his labour,every man will have due rest-leisure, that is. Some Socialists might say we need not go any furtherthan this.... But thoughthe com- pulsion of man's tyrannyis thus abolished,I yet demandcompensation for the compulsionof Nature'snecessity. As long as the work is repul- sive it will still be a burdenwhich must be taken up daily, and even so would marour life.... Naturewill not be finally conqueredtill our work becomes a partof the pleasureof our lives.20

Yet now Morrisbegan to reconsiderthe importanceof leisure.As he did so reevaluatedthe importanceof free time andbegan to concede thatperiods of rest were as necessary to all workers as their labor was. In contrastto his original discussion, he agreedthat one of the rewardsfor laborwas the promise of inac- tivity. Ratherthan always regardingleisure as an extension of work, he now admittedthat all work had "some pain"in it and that one of the compensations for "animalpain" was "animalrest."2' In short, as a socialist Morrisnot only explicitly acknowledgedtwo differentconceptions of the relationshipbetween work and leisure but also defended both of them simultaneously.On the one hand,recognizing the stressfulnessof labor,he contrastedwork with leisureand arguedthat leisure as free time was labor'sreward. On the otherhand, maintain- ing the pleasure to be derived from work, he defined leisure as voluntaryor unforcedproduction, comparable with laborand the fulfillmentof desire.

18 Ibid., 33. 19 "Useful Workversus Useless Toil," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 98. 20 Ibid., 107. 21 Ibid., 99. 498 Ruth Kinna

In the course of the 1880s Morrisfurther developed these ideas aboutwork and leisure under the influence of Marx and Fourier.Morris drew on Marx's work in orderto explore the ways in which the amountof free time could be increased.Even though,as he confessed towardsthe end of his life, he had been unawareof Marx'swork at the time of his turnto socialism, he soon madeup for this gap. Morrisbegan to read Marx sometime in early 1883, startingwith the firstvolume of Capital,which was then availablein Frenchtranslation. Though, to his regret, his Germanwas not good enough to enable him to read all of Marx's publishedwork, with the aid of H. M. Hyndman,Andreas Scheu, and ErnestBelfort Bax, he soon became familiarwith many of those writingswhich had not yet been translated.Like many others,Morris found Marx'swork diffi- cult, but he was immediatelyimpressed by it. In particularMarx's work gave his conception of leisure as free time a firmertheoretical foundation and a clearer direction.Specifically, it convincedhim of two centralpropositions: that the key to the maximizationof free time was the abolitionof capitalistexploitation, and thatthis exploitationwould be broughtto an end by the advancesin productivity which sprangfrom the division of labor. Morrishad moved towardsthese positions even before he read Capital. In the essays in Hopes and Fears for Art, published in 1882, he had consistently arguedthat the commercialsystem was basedon exploitation.Under commerce, work was not drivenby naturalnecessity but by the "fearof deathby starvation" engenderedby humangreed and the profitmotive.22 Workers did not laborsim- ply in orderto provide for their own needs, still less because they wanted to. They were they were drivento labor by capitalists.Morris admitted that com- mercial productionwas based on a contractualarrangement between workers and their employers,but he contestedthe fairnessof the contractsand the free- dom with which they were entered into. Though the workers received "food, clothing, poorish lodgings and a little leisure" in returnfor their labors, their work secured"enormous riches to the capitaliststhat rent them."23 The evident imbalanceof this exchangeconvinced Morristhat the majorityof workerswere "engaged for ... the most part of their lives in work, which ... is mere unmitigated slavish toil, only to be wrung out of them by the sternestcompulsion."24 Morris located the main evil of the commercial system in the "tyrannous Organizationof labour"which had accompaniedits development.25In commer- cial society workerscould not possibly work freely for theiremployers because they hadbecome subjectto a strictdivision of labor.He arguedthat this division operatedin two divergentways. For privilegedworkers like himself it forcedan unnecessarydegree of diversification.Although he derived considerableplea-

22 "Prospectsof Architecture,"141. 23 "MakingThe Best of It," 115. 24 "The Beauty of Life," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXII, 66. 25 "Prospectsof Architecture,"150. WilliamMorris 499 sure from his labor,Morris insisted that he would never have chosen to under- take such a huge range of work had it not been for the division of labor.He had, he said, been "compelled to learn many crafts, and ... forbidden to master any."26 Forthe greatmass of less fortunateworkers, the division led to specialization.In this sense, he argued,the division of laborwas a "technicalphrase for ... always doing one minutepiece of work,and never being allowedto thinkof any other."27 This, Morris argued,was the most importantand iniquitouseffect of the divi- sion of labor.It condemnedthe majorityto pieceworkand deprived him of skilled craftsmento help him in his labors. After reading Marx, Morris refined these ideas. Exploitation,he now ar- gued, had its roots in the patternof propertyownership in society. In any given historical period society was divided into rich and poor. The formernot only possessed moreincome than the latter,they also effectivelycontrolled their lives. Crucially,they controlledthe means of production-the tools, land, and facto- ries-necessary for work. Non-owners,by contrast,controlled only theirlabor- power.Like Hyndman,Morris referred to this situationas monopoly and, draw- ing on his earlier ideas, he argued that it was unjust because it reduced the workersto the level of slaves. In orderto laborusefully, Morrisargued,

two mattersare required: 1 st, The bodily and mentalpowers of a human being, developed by training,habit and tradition;and 2nd, Raw mate- rial on which to exercise those powers, andtools wherewithto aid them. The second mattersare absolutelynecessary to the first;unless the two come together,no commodity can be produced.Those, therefore,that must labourin orderto live, and who have to ask leave of othersfor the use of the instrumentsof their labour,are not free men but the depen- dents [sic] of others, i.e., their slaves.28

With a greaterinterest and awareness of the capitalist class structureand the mode of production,Morris clarified two of his earlierarguments. First, having agreed that all laborwas necessary-or forced-he distinguishedbetween the force exercised by nature and that which sprang from the uneven patternof ownershipin society. Monopoly,he suggested, was drivennot simply by profit but by the capitalists'desire to escape the naturalnecessity of labor.In Morris's view it was not subsistence which forced the majorityof workers to labor- thougha subsistencewage was all they received-it was the necessity of provid- ing the monopolistswith sufficientmeans to allow them to live a life of leisure. Dividing the populationinto threeclasses, Morrisobserved that the rich "do no

26"Making the Best of It," 82. 27Ibid., 115. 28"Monopoly: or, How Labour is Robbed," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 248. 500 Ruth Kinna work, andmake no pretenseof doing any,"the middle classes "workfairly hard, thoughwith abundanteasements and holidays, claimed and allowed," while those of the workingclass "workso hardthat they may be said to do nothingelse than work."29 Morris'ssecond point of clarificationconcerned the division of labor.In a furtherrefinement of his ideas he distinguishedbetween the specializationhe longed to be able to enjoy personallyand the specializationthat he believed the majorityof workerswere forced to endure.The distinctioncorresponded to the differencebetween pre- andpost-capitalist organization. Before the rise of capi- talism,Morris argued, workers had been dividedby their"various crafts." Draw- ing directly on Capital, he arguedthat carriagemakers, for example, had been organized by into particulartrades.30 Each worker-the wheelwright, coach- builder,and upholsterer-worked "at his own occupation"and the labor of the total work-force was "combinedinto one article."Under capitalism, by con- trast,"the employer ... employs the whole...as one machinein the simultaneous productionof one article...."Whereas workers had once perfecteda particular craft,under capitalism each componentof the "workman-machine"was appor- tioned part of the process of production.3'It was this kind of specialization, which forced workers"to do day afterday the same tasks, without any hope of escape or change,"that Morrisdeplored.32 In his most importantrevision of his early work Morrisset his refined un- derstandingof capitalism within a evolutionaryaccount of development. Im- pressed by the historical analysis presented in Capital, Morris credited Marx with the "fulldevelopment of the complete Socialisttheory ...'scientific' Social- ism." Marx, he suggested, had made two particularcontributions to socialist thought:he had recognizedthe importanceof class struggleand the role of con- flict in the process of social change, and he had plottedthe "historicalevolution of industrialism."In Morris'sview, Marx'swork revealed a more general"law of evolution"namely, that "evolutionwas still going on, and that, whether So- cialism be desirableor not, it is at least inevitable."33 Morrisused Marx's science to arguethat capitalismwas heading towards an unavoidable, fatal crisis, which would release the mass of the work-force from the necessity of labor;and following Marx, he anticipatedthat this crisis would be conflictual and violent. He accepted that the tendency of capitalism was toward the increasingmodernization of industryand toward ever greater

29 "Useful Work,"99. 30 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, I, tr. Sam Moore and , Collected Works,ed. FrederickEngels (50 vols.; London, 1995), XXXV, 341. 31 William Morrisand E. Belfort Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, WilliamMorris Politi- cal Writings.Contributions to ""and "Commonweal"1883-1890, ed. Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, 1994), 593-94. 32 "Useful Work," 112. 33 "The Hopes of Civilization,"Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 75. WilliamMorris 501 efficiency in production.On this basis he also believed that the rate of profit would inevitablyfall over time and that capitalwould come to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The situation,Morris argued, was bound to lead to class war, at first within classes but ultimatelybetween them.As growing num- bers of ownersfell into bankruptcyand non-owners were throwninto unemploy- ment, capitalismwas destinedto collapse. He painteda picturewhich was both vivid and apocalyptic:

[W]hatis visible before us in these days is the competitivecommercial systemkilling itself by its own force:profits lessening, businesses growing bigger and bigger, the small employer of labourthrust out of his func- tion, andthe aggregationof capitalincreasing the numbersof the lower middle class from above ratherthan from below, by drivingthe smaller manufacturerinto the position of a mere servantto the bigger.The pro- ductivityof labouralso increasingout of all proportionto the capacity of the capitaliststo manage the marketor deal with the laboursupply: lack of employmenttherefore becoming chronic,and discontentthere- withal.34

Morris'shopes that the collapse of capitalismwould inauguratea new ep- och of rest were groundedon the assumptionshe made about its productive capacity.Like all economic systems, capitalismwas foundedon the "necessity of man conqueringhis subsistence from Nature by labour."35In that sense it representeda stage in the developmentof mankind'sbattle to secure economic well-being. For all practicalpurposes (since Morrisadmitted that socialism de- nied "the finality of human progress")it was the final stage.36Crucially, by constantlymodernizing and subdividingthe workforceinto increasinglyspecial- ized groups, capitalismhad expandedproduction to its greatestpossible level. By the introductionof "fresh machines,"Morris commented, capitalism "in- creases the productivityof skilled labour"and "makesit possible to substitute unskilled in its place." As a result, skilled artisanswere driven from theirposi- tions and forced "to accept that of the unskilled labourer."37Though capitalism could not sustainitself as a system, the productiveforces it had unleashedmeant that, in socialism, it could provide the basis for a new abundance.With the enormousoptimism common to most nineteenth-centurysocialists, Morrisar- gued that, once there was no longer any need to make profit, there would be a "mass of labour-poweravailable" for productionand that the "most obvious

34 Ibid., 79. 35 "Dawn of a New Epoch," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 124. 36 Morris and Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, 622. 37Ibid., 604. 502 Ruth Kinna necessities will be ... easily providedfor."38 In socialism all those workerswho had been made redundantby machineswould be able to work. At the same time the productivecapacity of the machinerywould be released in orderto reduce the total amountof necessary labor.In shortthere would be abundantfree time and rest for all. While Morrisdrew on Marxto show how the furtherdivision of laborcould reduce necessary labor time, he turnedto Fourierfor an insight into how plea- sure of voluntarylabor could be enhanced.In particular,Fourier's work under- pinned the distinction he sought to draw between labor that was free-in the sense that it was only forced by nature-and laborthat was undertakenvolun- tarily or "freely,and for the love of the work and for its results."39 Morris was first introducedto Fourier'swork, shortly before he declared for socialism, by John StuartMill's Chapterson Socialism. In his retrospective accountof his transitionto socialismMorris suggested that Mill hadbeen largely critical of Fourier.In reality Mill was not as harsh as Morris implied. Though Mill rejectedFourier's cure for the social ills, he supportedmuch of his diagno- sis of their cause.40Morris's position was similar. Like Mill, he thought that Fourier'ssocial criticism was "valuable." But Morriscame to this conclusion by a differentroute. Unlike Mill, Morris interpretedFourier's work largely in the light of the criticism Engels had made in Socialism Utopianand Scientific. In line with Engels's categorization of socialist thought Morris argued that Fourier'swork was naive. Admittedly,for a utopianFourier had shown an un- usual "insightinto the historicalgrowth of Society."41But he had failed to capi- talize on this insightand, like most early socialists, had mistakenlybelieved that he could realize his goals by voluntaryagreement and by persuadingothers of the "desireablenessof co-operation."In Morris's view Fourierharbored the equally mistakenbelief thathe could constructa new artificialsociety from the "materialswhich capitalisticsociety offered."42 However, whereasEngels celebratedFourier as a satirist,Morris was most impressed by Fourier's notion of attractivelabor. Aware that Fourier's ideas about work were often ridiculed,43he nonetheless arguedthat his "doctrineof the necessity and possibility of making labourattractive" was one that"Social- ism can by no means do without."44Morris used his notion of attractivelabor very much as he used Marx'stheory of history:in orderto clarify his own idea that the key to unforcedlabor lay in the transformationof work throughart.

38 "Useful Work," 111. 39Ibid., 116. 40 Stephan Collini (ed), J. S. Mill "On Liberty," with "The Subjection of Women"and "Chapterson Socialism" (Cambridge, 1989), xxiv. 41 Morris and Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, 567. 42 "Hopes of Civilization,"74. 43 News From Nowhere, Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XVI, 91. 44 "Hopes of Civilization,"73. WilliamMorris 503

Here too, Morris'sconviction that art held the key to voluntarywork pre- datedhis conversionto socialism. Echoing Ruskin,Morris had arguedas early as 1879 that art was "the expression by man of his pleasure in labour."From this premisehe concludedthat "the chief duty of the civilized world to-day is to set about making labourhappy for all."45In this particularcontext the kind of art that Morris had in mind was craftwork.Elsewhere and in more tortured prose, Morrisasked,

[W]hatis an artistbut a workmanwho is determinedthat, whatever else happens,his work shall be excellent? Or, to put it in anotherway: the decorationof workmanship,what is it but the expressionof man'splea- sure in successful labour?46

At this early stage in his career,Morris had suggested thatthe transformationof labor throughart dependedon the extent to which work could be made intelli- gent. Accordingly,he defined intelligentlabor as thatwhich made the laborer's "work-hourspass pleasantly."More specifically, intelligent labor gave the worker "at least some control"over production.47Morris admittedthat by contrastto imaginativelabor, which grantedthe individualworker unrestricted freedom of expression,intelligent labor was only partlycreative. But it still providedsome scope for the developmentof the worker'screativity. Moreover, like imaginative labor,it demandedthat workers were both educatedand dedicatedto theirwork and that methods of productionwere sufficiently flexible to respond to indi- vidual work patterns. Morris saw one of the principle obstacles to the realizationof intelligent laborin the mechanizationof production(though he also acknowledged,rather unhelpfullythat machine work was enjoyable"if it be not too mechanical").48In spite of his "boundlessfaith in theircapacity," he insistedthat machines "can do everything-except make works of art."49In the workplacemechanization was responsiblefor the "slaveryof mind andbody," and it was inimicalto intelligent labor.50Indeed, it was the instrumentthrough with the division of labor oper- ated. Withoutthis burdenworkers would be set free from the division and the specializationit imposed.Each would become

a handicraftsmanwho shall put his own individualintelligence and en- thusiasm into the goods he fashions. So far from his labor being "di-

45"Art of the People," 42-43. 46 "The Lesser Arts," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXII, 23. 47 "Prospectsof Architecture,"145. 48Ibid., 143. 49 "Art and the Beauty of the Earth,"Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXII, 166. 50"Prospects of Architecture,"149. 504 Ruth Kinna

vided," ... he must know all aboutthe ware he is makingand its relation to similar wares; he must have a naturalaptitude for his work.... He mustbe allowed to thinkof what he is doing, andto varyhis work as the circumstancesof it vary,and his own moods. He must be for ever striv- ing to make the piece he is at work at betterthan the last. He mustrefuse at anybody'sbidding to turnout ... even an indifferentpiece of work.... He must have a voice, and a voice worth listening to in the whole af- fair.51

Morris'sreconsideration of the questionof voluntaryor unforcedlabor may have been affectedby his own manufacturingexperience. In 1881 Morrisestab- lishednew workshopsat MertonAbbey, near London. This move enabledhim to take direct control of the productionof the tapestries, dyes, wallpapers, and fabricshe marketedthrough Morris & Co. It also providedhim with a forumfor the practicalimplementation of his Ruskinianideas. Yet from the startMorris insisted that the workshopsat MertonAbbey could not meet his ideals and that his employees could not work freely, as he wantedthem to do so. It was, he told the Americanpoet and essayist Emma Lazarusin 1884, impossible to produce art"in this profit-grindingSociety."5 Nevertheless, within the limits that capi- talism imposed,he attemptedto make conditionsat MertonAbbey as relaxedas possible. Workerswere allowed to come and go as they pleased. They had ac- cess to a collection of "fine books, finely printedand bound."And "in the sum- mer season the roses noddedin upon them at the open windows."53 In the light of his manufacturingexperience and Fourier'swork Morrissig- nificantlyexpanded the conditionsnecessary for the realizationof voluntaryor unforcedlabor. If workwas to become synonymouswith leisure,four conditions would have to be met. First, work would have to meet a vocation; second, it would have to be performedin pleasant surroundings;third, it would have to allow some scope for variation;and fourth,it would have to be useful. On the firstpoint Morrisargued that each individualshould be able "to choose the work which he could do best."54For the most partfree choice would not leave anyjobs undone. Morris cited with approval Fourier's suggestion that children "who generallylike makingdirt-pies and getting into a mess, should do the dirtywork of the community."5Moreover, echoing Fourier'sbelief that individuals fell into one of 810 basic personalitytypes, each with a differentrange of interests and abilities, Morrissuggested that "people'sinnate capacities are prettymuch

51 "Makingthe Best of It," 115-16 52 Morris to Emma Lazarus, The Collected Letters of WilliamMorris, ed. Norman Kelvin (4 vols.; Princeton, 1987), II, 276-77. 53 James Leatham, WilliamMorris: Master of Many Crafts (London, 1994), 74. 54 "AttractiveLabour," Political Writings,94. 55 Morris and Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, 567. WilliamMorris 505 as various as their faces are."56This variationof character,he suggested, en- suredthat individualswould opt to undertakea rangeof differenttasks and that no communitywould be left with a job undone. Whatevertheir chosen occupations,all individualswould work in pleasant surroundings.On the model of MertonAbbey, factories would be made clean, spacious, light, and airy, and they would be set within green fields ratherthan concentratedin urbanareas or "congeriesof towns."57Like Fourier(and Marx), Morrisbelieved that they would also become centers of educationas much as they were units of production.In the futurefactories would have "amplebuild- ing for library,school-room, dining hall andthe like."People would gatherthere not only to work, but in orderto take partin "social gatherings"such as "musi- cal or dramaticentertainments."58 The thirdcondition for work to be synonymouswith leisure was that labor shouldbe varied.This conditionmeant that all work would containboth a men- tal and a manualaspect. Throughouthis life, Morrisremained skeptical about the value of purely intellectual labor. But instead of considering the problem egocentricallyas he had done earlier,he began to examine the division between mental and manualwork from the point of view of the manualworker. Guiltily comparinghis own position to that of a bricklayer,Morris realized that he was fortunateto be able to combinehis mentallabor with "strongphysical exercise." After a hard day's writing, he could "take a boat out and row for a couple of hours or more."The hodman,by contrast,was too exhaustedfor mental relax- ation and fit only for "beerand sleep."59In socialism, by contrast,when labor was performedfreely, both men would be able to enjoy the same opportunities. Since some of the hodman'swork would be performedby writerslike Morris,he would be able to utilize his free time in more constructivepursuits. Variationalso requiredmixing indoorand outdoorpursuits. In many of his laterwritings Morris mapped this stipulationonto his prohibitionof the division between mental and manuallabor. In an ideal world, he argued,brain workers would find relaxationin primarilyagricultural pursuits. Although there were always likely to be some "obstinaterefusers" (as he called them in News From Nowhere), most workerswould willingly turnthemselves towards"easy-hard work,"and especially to haymaking.60There were, Morrisbelieved, "few men ... who would not wish to spend part of their lives in the most necessary and pleasantestof all work-cultivating the earth."61Elsewhere he painteda picture thatwas positively idyllic:

56 "Attractive Labour," 94. 57 Ibid., 96. 58 "Workin a Factory As It Might Be," WilliamMorris: Artist WriterSocialist, ed. May Morris (2 vols.; New York, 1966), II, 137. 59 "The Reward of 'Genius,' "Political Writings,196. 60NewsFrom Nowhere, 173. 61 "Useful Work," 112. 506 Ruth Kinna

Surely almost everyone would wish to take some share in field or gar- den work besides his indoor occupation,even if it were no more than helping to get in the harvestor save the hay; and such occasions would become reallythe joyous andtriumphant festivals which the poets have dreamedof them as being, and of which pleasurethere is still some hint or, it may be, survival in barbarouscountries.62

Morrisoutlined the requirementsfor his fourthand final condition,the need for labor to be useful, by contrastingit with useless toil. He considered the uselessness of existing labor from two points of view. Just as Fourierdistin- guishedbetween acts of positive destructionand acts of negative creation,Mor- ris distinguishedbetween those jobs he considereddefinitely harmful from those which were simplywasteful. The firstcategory included the productionof arma- ments and of"adulteratedfood and drink."63The second category was largely directedtowards the productionof luxuryitems or otherconsumer goods which Morristhought unnecessary. A whole mass of people, he argued,were "occu- pied with ... miserabletrumpery."64 This categoryalso includedwork which was directedtowards the "temporarypalliation" of unemployment.In times of crisis, Morrisobserved, workers were often employed in "reliefworks" which meant, for example, "justdigging a hole and filling it up again."This was not useful workbut a "make-believeof real work."65Useful work enhancedthe well-being of the communitywhile at the same time meeting a genuine need. It produced goods which were fit for a particularpurpose, not a passing fad. Because it enhancedthe worker'sself-esteem, useful work also producedgoods thatwere designed both to be durableand to give pleasureto theirowners. Once all these conditionshad been met, leisure would no longer be consideredas relief from work.It would transcendlabor and in time, and"people would ratherbe anxious to seek workthan to avoid it."Indeed, under socialism work would be character- ized by "merryparties of men and maids."66 Having invoked Fourierto pursuehis understandingof work as voluntary labor,Morris needed to reconcile this conceptionwith his Marxistunderstand- ing of leisureas free time. He attemptedto do so by arguingthat, once necessary labortime hadbeen reduced,socialist society could move towardsthe organiza- tion of unforcedlabor, or laboras art. He admittedthat this furthertransforma- tion (to what he called communism)was uncertain.It was possible that where

62"Attractive Labour," 94-95. 63"Artand Socialism," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 195. 64Ibid. 65 "Noteson PassingEvents," William Morris : Contributions to "Commonweal" 1885-1890, ed. Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, 1996), 136. 66 "How We Live and How We Might Live," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 21. WilliamMorris 507 labor was free, in the sense of being compelled by naturealone, work might neverthelesscontinue to be organizedas it had been undercapitalism. In "a free community"individuals might "work in the samehurried, dirty, disorderly, heart- less way as we do now."But his answerwas thatanybody would be contentwith this state of affairs. Such a partialrevolution "would mean that our new-won freedomof conditionwould leave us listless andwretched."7 In any case, though the realizationof unforcedlabor was not inevitable, Morriswas confident that its prospect provided one of the strongest impulses for revolutionarychange. The primaryliberation of laborfrom capitalism,he argued,"would not leave ... artuntouched" because "theaims of thatrevolution ... include the aims of art- viz., abolishingthe curse of labour."68 On this optimisticnote Morrisanticipated a two-stage revolutionin which the second stage would develop and improve on the first but not transcendit. Like Marx,Morris assumed that a certainamount of necessaryproduction would remaineven in communismand that the realmof freedomcould only be realized once a residualamount of necessarylabor had been performed.In Morris'sview the likely patternof futuredevelopment was for machineryto "go on developing, with the purpose of saving men labour,till the mass of the people attain real leisure enough to be able to appreciatethe pleasure of life." Once they had "attained...mastery over Nature,"they "would soon find out thatthe less work they did (the less work unaccompaniedby art...)the more desirablea dwelling- place the earthwould be."69 He describedthe resultingorganization of work and leisure in communist society in some detail. Individualswould spend most of their time engaged in some sort of voluntarylabor. Anticipating the futureand-once again-using himself as a model, he argued:

And I may say that as to that leisure ... I should often do some direct good to the communitywith it, by practicingarts or occupationsfor my hands or brain which would give pleasure to many citizens; in other words, a great deal of the best work done would be done in the leisure time of men relieved from any anxiety as to their livelihood, and eager to exercise their special talent, as all men, nay, all animalsare.70

Trueto his earliestbeliefs, Morriscontinued to believe thatthis voluntarylabor would remain largely unmechanized.Individuals could use machines if these suited theirpurposes, but in most cases workerswould be able to performtheir

67 "Useful Work," 116. 68"The Aims of Art," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 93. 69 Ibid. 70"How We Live," 19. 508 Ruth Kinna work more easily without them. It was not, he argued, "the making of a real work of art that takes so much ingenuity as the making of a machine for the making of a makeshift."71 While individualscould pass the majorityof theirtime in voluntarywork, in communistsociety some periodswould be reservedfor necessarylabor. In some respects Morris's ideas about the organizationof this work were vague. For example, he did not specify whethera partof each day would be given over to this work or whetherit would be organizedin irregularperiods. Similarly, he did not decide whether the work would be organizedby rote or whether it would simply be performedby volunteers.But however it was organized,he did not believe that the existence of necessary laborwould be eitherparticularly oner- ous or difficult to organize.For one thing therewould be very little of it. Com- munismwould abandonall those tasks which were "artificiallyfostered for the sake of makingbusiness for interest-bearingcapital."72 This residualamount of necessary laborwould also be performedvery easily. None of it would be "ex- acting on mentalcapacity," and since it entailedthe "minimumof responsibility on those engaged in it," it did not requireany particulartraining.73 Moreover, much of it could be done with the aid of machines. Whilst machinerywas not suitablefor voluntarylabor, it could relieve the burdenof necessarywork. Ad- mittedly,in commercialsociety, Morrisargued so-called " 'labour-saving'ma- chines ... really ... reduce the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled." But in "truesociety" he suggested thatthese same "miraclesof ingenuitywould be for the first time used for minimizing the amountof time spent in unattractive labour."74 Morris'spicture of communistsociety has often been describedas utopian.75 The elements of the picture that he took from his understandingof work and leisuresupport this view. His was anArcadian vision. Workersmight sometimes laborin the new factories,but they would no longer be found in such high con- centrationsas capitalismdemanded. As the mode of productionchanged, so too would the cities; andmuch of the existing infrastructurewould collapse. Instead of being forcedto live in a "horriblemuck-heap" like London,individuals would inhabit a "few pleasant villages on the side of the Thames."Similarly, where they now had to travel in haste by rail, in the futurethey would have more time to indulgethemselves and "travelin a tilted waggon [sic] or on the hindquarters of a donkey."76

71 "The Society of the Future,"Artist, Writer,Socialist, 461. 72 Morris and Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, 614. 73 Ibid. 74 "Useful Work," 117. 75 See K. Kumar,"News From Nowhere: The Renewal of Utopia," History of Political Thought, 14 (1994), 133-43. 76 "The Society of the Future,"461. WilliamMorris 509

Clearlythis vision can be, andhas been, criticizedfor its lack of realism.Yet the problems arising from Morris's understandingof communism go further thanthis. Many arise from the contradictionsof his understandingof attractive labor.Notwithstanding his confidence that the organizationof leisure as free time would give way to the realizationof voluntarylabor, or laboras art, in the end Morriswas unableto reconcilehis two conceptionsof work and leisure.The tension between the two is shown both in his ambiguousattitude towards ma- chinery and in his estimates of the amountof work communistswould be re- quiredto perform.Morris made no attemptto develop a coherentposition on the mechanizationof productionand maintained that it could be avoidedin pleasur- able pursuitswhilst still being used to diminishirksome duties. But he was aware that the existence of both voluntaryand necessary labor in communismthreat- ened to saddleindividuals with an intolerableburden. Considering the organiza- tion of laborin socialism, he questioned:

So, you see, I claim that work in a duly orderedcommunity should be made attractiveby the consciousness of usefulness, by its being carried on with intelligentinterest, by variety,and by its being exercisedamidst pleasurablesurroundings. But I have also claimed, as we all do, thatthe day's work should not be wearisomely long. It may be said, "How can you make this last claim squarewith the others?"77

Partof Morris'sinability to provide a satisfactoryanswer to his own ques- tion stemmed from the high priorityhe gave to art and his tendency to equate necessary,forced labor with all non-artistictasks. Sometimes the results were comic: examples of "necessary and usually repellant [sic] work" included "scavengering,sewer-cleaning, coal-hewing, midwifery, and mechanical clerk's work."78Not all of these jobs are obviously unpleasant,but even if they were, his dismissalof all non-artisticwork contradictedhis Fourieristassumption that all labor was attractiveto some personalitytypes. It also artificiallyincreased the categories of necessary labor that Morris believed communists would be compelledto perform. Even if Morrishad revised his idea that artheld the key to voluntarylabor, his acknowledgementthat some necessary laborwould remainin communism points to two more intractableproblems. The first concernsthe dynamic of so- cialisttransformation. In some ways, Morris'spredicament was similarto Marx's. He, too, relied on two separatedynamics of developmentto explain the transi- tion from one form of work to another.While the liberationof mankindfrom necessarylabor was underpinnedby the developmentof productiveforces, inde-

77 "Useful Work," 116. 78Morris and Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, 614. 510 Ruth Kinna pendentof humancontrol, the organizationof voluntarylabor was based on an exercise of will. ThoughMorris was confidentthat class strugglewould lead to the abolitionof capitalism,he could not show how or why the workerswould be able, by exercising their will power, to direct socialism's development at the moment of their liberation.The convergencebetween Morrisand Marxon this issue was not coincidental.Morris was adoptinga Marxiantheory of develop- ment in an effort to show that labor in communismcould be made as attractive as Fourierhad suggested. Though Morrisseemed to have been unawareof the influence, Marx in his turn had also been influenced by Fourier's ideas; and althoughMarx's view of historywas, arguably,less deterministicthan Morris's, he was no more successful in reconcilinghis earlyFourierist ideals with his later understandingof the developmentof economic forces thanMorris.79 The second problemconcerns the division of laborin socialism. Unlike ei- therMarx or Fourier,Morris's capacity to reconcile his ideal of voluntarywork with his notion of necessarylabor was confoundedby his uncompromisinghos- tility to this division. For Marx and Fourierthe division was not in itself some- thing to be deplored.Though both attackedits operationin capitalismand ar- gued thatit stifled expressionand creativity,they both also agreedthat in social- ism it would help ensurethat individuals would be able to varytheir occupations and develop theirhuman capacity to the full. In short,for Marxand Fourierthe abolitionof the division of labor actually implied its extension, in concertwith the abolitionof exploitation;the decline of specializationconsequently held the key to socialistsolidarity and the developmentof interdependence.As PaulMeier notes, Fourierargued for "thedivision of labour...carriedto the ultimatein order to provideeach sex and every age with suitableoccupations."80 Similarly, Marx arguedin Capital that "Moder Industrynecessitates variationof labour,flu- ency of function,[and] universal mobility of the labourer."8'Though in its capi- talistic form, division preventedworkers from takingadvantage of the rangeof tasks available,in communismthe developmentof industrialproduction prom- ised to "replacethe detail-workerof to-day"with one "readyto face any change of production,and to whom the different social functions ... are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own naturaland acquiredpowers."82 Morris'sposition was very different.His love of artled him to arguethat the abolitionof the division of labormust mean its eradicationand a returnto spe- cialized labor.83Instead of celebratingmoder industryfor the range of tasks it

79 Isaiah , Karl Marx (Oxford, 19834),95-96; also David McLellan, "Marxand the Whole Man";Tom Bottomore,"Socialism and the Division of Labour,"The Conceptof Social- ism, ed. Bhikhu Parekh(London, 1975), 62-71; 154-66. 80 Meier, Marxist Dreamer, I, 183 81 Marx, Capital, 489. 82 Ibid., 490-91. 83 See Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism (Cambridge, 1989), 49-58. WilliamMorris 511 would enable futureworkers to undertake,he maintainedan attachmentto the realizationof a pre-capitalistdivision: the example of the carriage-makerswas stampedon his vision. Indeed,in his laterwritings he explicitly drewon the idea of medieval productionas a model for socialist organization.Within the medi- eval guilds, he argued,"there was but little division." Individualshad learned theircrafts "from end to end."Work had been performed"leisurely and thought- fully," it "developedthe workman'swhole intelligence," and it allowed each "freedomfor due humandevelopment."84 Morris admitted that any attemptto try to revive such conditionsof laborand to graftthem on to the body of capital- ism was futile.85Yet he still maintainedthat the medieval handicraftsprovided an importantmodel of organization.Medieval artistshad attemptedto "destroy the curse of labourby makingwork the pleasurablesatisfaction of our impulse towardsenergy, and giving to thatenergy hope of producingsomething worth its exercise."86Communists had an identicalaim. In Morris'sview they sought to reestablishwork on the basis of a craft-specialismrather than encourage the developmentof limitless diversity.In SocialismFrom the Root Up, for example, he arguedthat certain kinds of arthad fallen foul of a division which had divided the "makerof the ornament"from the "designerof the ornament."87Under com- munismMorris expected thatthese two roles would again be unitedin one per- son.88 Fourierand Marx faced the difficult task of showing how the existing divi- sion of laborcould be perfectedand made compatiblewith an idea of free labor. Morris'sproblem was even more severe:to demonstratehow the developmentof capitalistmethods of productionin socialism was compatiblewith the returnto specialization.In the end Morrisnot only formulatedtwo separateideas of work and laborbut, equatingvoluntary labor with art,reinforced the distinctionsbe- tween the two by associating them with two entirely differentmethods of pro- duction.This formulationundermined his own argumentthat individualscould divide their time in communismbetween necessary tasks and pleasurablepur- suits. The time spent in necessary laborwould either increase as a result of the abandonmentof the division of labor and the mechanizationit supposed, or workerswould continueto be compelled to performdismal divided tasks at the cost of their creativityand Morris'scraft ideal. Yet for all its weaknesses, Morris's conception of the division of labor in communismwas one of the most original aspects of his thought,and it offered an integratedview of humandevelopment and creativity.Morris did not con-

84 "ArtUnder Plutocracy,"Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 176. 85"Hopes of Civilization,"77-78. 86"Aims of Art," 91. 87Morris and Bax, Socialism From the Root Up, 616. 88 See also his "Artistand Artisan as an Artist Sees It," Political Writings,276-79. 512 Ruth Kinna sider thathis desire to overcome the existing division of laborthrough the rees- tablishmentof craftworkwould stifle creativeexpression. In his view individu- als were more concernedto exploit their primarytalents than they were to ex- plore ever new avenues of expression. In 1891 he arguedthat

the Socialist claims art as a necessity of human life ... and he claims also that in orderthat his claim may be establishedpeople shall have every opportunityof takingto the workwhich each is best fittedfor; not only thatthere may be the least possible waste of humaneffort, but also that that effort may be exercised pleasurably.For I must here repeat what I have often had to say, that the pleasurableexercise of our ener- gies is at once the source of all artand the cause of all happiness:that is to say the end of life.89

The idea of creativitywhich this idea supportswas very differentfrom the one offered by either Marx or Fourier.Whereas they suggested that the key to humandevelopment lay in the pursuitof variety,Morris believed thatindividu- als should develop themselves within a particularfield. On occasion his views appearextremely conservative. In News FromNowhere, for example,when Guest quizzes old Hammondabout the tendency of women to wait on their menfolk Hammond asks in response: "don't you know that it is a great pleasure to a clever woman to manage a house skillfully, and to do it so that all the house- mates about her look pleased, and are gratefulto her?"90Yet, however Morris perceivedthe sexual division of labor,there is no reasonto assume thatwomen would be requiredto perform such traditionalwork against their will. In his vision the attractivenessof labordepended on the developmentand realization of social roles, not their transcendence.But individualswould be able to invest theirbeing in their labor.And to do so they would, like Morrishimself, have to follow theirown promptingsand desires.

LoughboroughUniversity.

89 "The Socialist Ideal," Collected Worksof WilliamMorris, XXIII, 260. 90News From Nowhere, 60.