Useful Work versus Useless Toil [1884]

Retirement in Utopia: William Morris's Senescent Socialism

“…is so far from being a blessing that it is a curse." 64 Useless toil results in the production of wasteful luxuries that ensure the necessity of a capitalist underclass. Morris continues, writing that "under conditions where all produced and no work was wasted, not only would every one work with the certain hope of gaining a due share of wealth by his work, but also he could not miss his due share of rest."…”

The Divergence of Art from “African Culture”: From Achimota to the Educational Reforms of 1986 in Ghana's Art Education

“…Like Pippet, the purpose, as Meyerowitz saw it, was not to create craftsmen out of children, but rather "giving the children the opportunity to appreciate all these fine things, because they are learning the joy of making things -making things for themselves" and "to respect the beauty of the old traditional work" (Meyerowitz, 1942, p. 407). Meyerowitz was inspired by numerous sources: William Morris's sense of the possibility that labor could be pleasurable (Morris, 1973b); Bamako's Maison Artisanat, a craft center which introduced broadlooms and potters' wheels; and craft revivals in Sweden, Russia and Poland (Harrod, 1999).…”

Politics, ideology and utopia: a defence of eutopian worlds

“…Whilst still formally subject to the 'tyranny of nature', individuals would no longer feel tyrannized by the necessity to labour and would thus be free to shape the world according to their creative desires. 27 Morris described the ethic of communism as 'brotherhood' or, more usually, 'fellowship'. In general, this concept expressed an idea of solidarity among strangers or, as Bax puts it, '"one for all and all for one," the spirit of common interest, of mutual standing with one another as a body, quite irrespective of individual likes or dislikes'.…”