Morris was right then and he is right now: Capitalism is ugly.

Article produced for the upcoming EXHIBITION “William Morris: The Wallpaper man” - a collection of new work inspired by the legacy of William Morris.

in collaboration with the storybox collective.

Online launch via Zoom Thursday 22.10.20 at 18.30-20.30. Our booklet will be exhibited in the William Morris society museum in the beginning of 2021.

“I tell you the very essence of competitive commerce is waste.” When William Morris said this in his lecture Art under Plutocracy in 1883, he was referring to ecological degeneration under capitalism. The same statement is also applicable to describe the wasted potential which unethical labour under capitalism involves. As a reaction to the industrial revolution, both these issues became matters of the heart to Morris. While being a man of many trades, he spent much of his time advocating for what would later be known as ‘eco-socialism’. Morris argued that capitalism is harmful because it puts profits over people and nature, and he would go on to criticise this system through his novels, essays, and lectures. We are now in the year 2020 but many of the ideas and concerns he expressed during his lifetime are still relevant today. So what exactly can this Victorian socialist of the past teach us about our present day and future?

More than 100 years after Morris’ death, the horrors of traditional factory work in the UK is no longer the face of capitalism’s dark side. Despite this, the economic system continues to allow room for exploitation. It has simply taken on a new form since then. The factories of Morris’ time relied mainly on low paid workers to do essential work. Many of whom were financially insecure and, in order to get by, would resort to oppressive work that only enriched a privileged few. Today, big corporations, such as Amazon, are operating using a similar model: People of lower classes are exploited because they accept the vast differences in working conditions and pay, due to their vulnerable background. In that way, social mobility is hindered, while the ruling class is free to continue to hoard wealth. In other words, capitalism allows one person’s gain to come at the expense of many others, time after time, just like it did in the Victorian period.

Class differences is not the only negative consequence of capitalist production that Morris condemned. He was passionate about artistic expression, considering it to be vital to human dignity, and believed capitalism stripped away this creative freedom. His book Useful Work versus Useless Toil details how work is meant to be a source of pride and satisfaction: “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.” The workmanship was supposed to be a personal process where the worker would leave an individual trace on the goods they produced. This made the work purposeful to the worker and added value to the final product. To Morris, capitalism’s ideal of mass production, therefore, meant sacrificing what made labour meaningful in the first place.

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a society that measures success by wealth rather than purpose...

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When mass production started to reach the mainstream during the industrial revolution, Morris was quick to point out the downsides of the increasing overconsumption that followed. He even used his lectures to encourage people to boycott corporations for their increasingly invasive advertising methods that promoted this new understanding of ownership. To Morris, it was evident that the continuous expansion of production was unnecessary. Not only did it cause unjustified harm to workers and the environment, but it also lacked a purpose. In his lecture The Lesser Arts of Life, he made a point of this: “There is a vast deal of labour spent in supplying civilised man with things which he has come to consider needful, and which, as a rule, he will not do without. Much of that labour is grievous and oppressive; but since there is much more of grievous labour in the world than there used to be, it is clear that there is more than there need be, and more than there will be in time to come (...).” In other words, Morris recognised that the normalisation of overconsumption meant that materialistic goods were no longer a question of need, but rather a question of want - a want that could only be obtained through unethical production. Environmental destruction and exploitation of workers are to be expected, and sometimes even encouraged, in a society that measures success by wealth rather than purpose.

To support his case against capitalism, Morris often made the distinction between ugly and beautiful. He argued that work could only be beautiful if the worker was happy and working under good conditions. Furthermore, he believed that material goods must be made in accordance with nature. In The Lesser Arts, he explained: “Everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent...” According to Morris, capitalist production is inevitably incompatible with the Earth’s ecological balance and the root problem for ecological depletion. In the same lecture, he asks: “Is money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke and worse, and it's nobody’s business to see to it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce… will do for us.” This statement clearly communicates his pessimistic view of the reality he was faced with. The question is: Has anything really changed since Morris’ time?

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there is no point in trying to better a system that is broken at its core.

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Under capitalism, both the environment and the workers are victims of exploitation. They become what is viewed as a necessary sacrifice, serving a system driven by a hunger for ever-increasing profits. In that sense, the mass production introduced during the industrial revolution is a good example of how the ideas supporting socialism and environmentalism naturally merge. The overlap of these ideologies would become the foundation of eco-socialism as we know it today. In essence, eco-socialists wish to dismantle capitalism, believing that such a system causes social exclusion, poverty, war, and environmental degeneration. Despite mainly being associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, Morris devoted his time and broad skillset to promote his eco-socialist ideas. One of Morris’ most well-known novels is News from Nowhere, which is in fact, about a utopian socialist future. The protagonist wakes up in the year 2102 and finds himself in a society where there is no capitalist system, money nor industrialisation, and humans live in harmony with each other and nature. With 82 years to go, how much closer are we to the type of utopia that Morris seemingly dreamed of?

The fact is that capitalism still holds a strong grip on society, and if we do not make fundamental changes, our future might steer away from utopia and rather resemble the prediction Morris offered during his lecture Art under Plutocracy: “the grasp of inexorable commerce…. our green fields and clear water, nay the very air we breathe are turned to…. dirt… under the present gospel of capital not only is there hope of bettering it, but…. things grow worse year by year, day by day (...)” Even to Morris, the utopia he described in News from Nowhere was likely to remain nothing more than a piece of fiction. He expected that as society progressed, it would be dominated by increasingly larger businesses competing for and chasing profits. Still, he continued to use his voice and influence to advocate for an alternative route for humanity’s future.

Our contemporary world is far from Morris’ ideal where workers and materials matter more than profit and production scale. However, as history will have it, the world is constantly changing. Like feudalism once moved on to capitalism, there will be a time where the world moves beyond capitalism. This is not to say that making such fundamental changes will be easy. Even Morris faced challenges when producing furniture and textiles that aligned with the beliefs he was advocating for. Since Morris valued affordability and anti-elitism, he was conflicted when he received commissions from the ruling class. There are bound to be many challenges on the way to a new and better world, but that does not mean it is impossible to achieve.

What we need to recognise is that there is no point in trying to better a system that is broken at its core. Morris believed capitalism to be ugly, and a fresh start, built on principles of sustainability and equality is absolutely essential if we want to replace capitalism and all its faults with beauty. Reforming British attitudes, like attacking neophilia and rethinking the way we understand ownership, is what the planet and its workers need in order to break free from the vicious cycle of oppression and exploitation under capitalism. While we work towards creating a much needed sustainable future, we may look to Morris’eco-socialist principles for guidance and to further build on his ideas. Like Morris stated in Signs of Change: “The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.”