- What’s the kind of work worth doing? 3 hopeful traits
- Hope of rest: work can have pleasure, and can have pain. The compensation for it is rest. “We must feel while we are working that the time will come when we shall not have to work” p3. Rest should be long enough to enjoy and longer for us to recover, not disturbed by anxiety
- Hope of product: producing things we want and are allowed to use
- Hope of pleasure: making something that exists because one is working on it, wills it, exercises the mind, body, and soul. Guided by one’s experiences and inspiration
- There are different classes in society:
- People (not a few) who don’t work and don’t pretend to (rich, aristocracy)
- People (a lot) who pretend to work hard and have time and permission to vacation (middle class) but produces nothing
- People who work so much that there’s nothing else to do but work (working class) but is compelled by the other 2 to do unproductive work
- Rich people do no work, but they consume so much while producing nothing; they are kept alive at the expense of everyone who does work — a burden to the community
- They don’t see a problem with this, nor do they have any solutions to make any changes; the hope is that somehow to government will change things eventually
- Dependent on the middle class; it’s mostly composed of the most successful of that class, otherwise their descendants
- Middle class are the trades, manufacturing, professional people. They seem to be helpful to the community
- They work, but don’t produce, and when they do they consume disproportionately
- The most powerful part of the middle class fight against themselves for their shares, which forces workers to provide for them; sounds like privatization. This is less for the public and more for the privileged class.
- Parasites of property; they seem useful but are supporters of a system of fraud, tyranny, and folly
- This isn’t about production, this is about power, gaining position — if not for themselves but for their children “it is their ambition and the end of their whole lives to gain, if not for themselves, yet at least for their children, the proud position of being obvious burdens on the community” p6
- A subgroup of this looks like a lower middle class, which supports both itself and other classes
- Produces very little and consumes enormously
- Numerous and all powerful
- These are soldiers who perpetuate nationalism (? Might be misinterpreting this)
- Also includes sales people (soldiers of the private war for wealth, what a way to put it lol); they’re part of the reason why things cost more to sell than to make
- Another mass of people who make all the luxury goods, “The demand for which is the outcome of the existence of the rich non-producing classes” p7
- This is not wealth, it is waste
- Morris defines wealth as: “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 incorruptible.” P7-8
- Highlighting how messed up it is that workers make things that are necessary for them, but wouldn’t be consumed by the rich. Cheap things, food that doesn’t nourish, housing that doesn’t cover, etc. “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.” P9
- They existence of a privileged class isn’t actually necessary for the production of wealth, they’re just there to uphold privilege and govern the producers of wealth
- Morris is essentially suggesting equality where everyone works for what they need and according to their ability, and that basic needs would be guaranteed (socialism) — equality of condition, no one class would be at a disadvantage for the benefit of society
- We should add to our wealth without diminishing our pleasure (we shouldn’t just do shitty work, “nature will not be finally conquered till our work becomes part of the pleasure of our lives” p 13
- One small way to do this is to take pleasure in the small things
- Changing our relationship with work (making labor attractive) might help us with capitalism. How do we do that?