Artisan producer of furniture objects, poet, novelist, affiliated with the artistic brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites, utopian and prophetic socialist. Very rarely in the work of a committed scholar of the late nineteenth century do we find, lucidly highlighted and refuted, the juxtapositions and contradictions of the workers' movement of the twentieth century: the failure of the model of authoritarian socialism, the social democratic acquiescence towards the rigidity of roles desired by bourgeois power. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Furthermore, Morris has developed themes that posterity has not even dared to address, no doubt for fear of appearing naïve, naïve, poorly aligned: the desire to create a world where work is joy and artistic creation, the casual criticism of excessive power of science and technology, the revaluation of the natural environment, another great victim, together with man, of capitalist degradation and exploitation. One of his great admirers, Oscar Wilde, recounted a confidence given to him by Morris himself: 'I have tried to make each of my workers an artist, and when I say artist I mean a man. Born into a wealthy background, Morris found the university city of Oxford the ideal place to be fascinated by a myriad of different cultural and artistic interests, and perhaps for this reason he did not complete any regular course of study. In addition to the Christian socialism of Charles Kingsley, then temporarily abandoned in favor of bourgeois liberal radicalism, we find the decisive influence of John Ruskin, who instilled his love for architecture. In Labor useful and useless effort Morris demonstrates his desire to clear the table of a whole series of clichés regarding work, before proceeding in the direction of theorising a new conception on the subject. It's wrong, Morris says, to enthusiastically claim that every job is a blessing in itself. Congratulating the lucky worker for his work is especially appropriate for those who live off others. In fact, not all of the population is dedicated to work activities, indeed there are enormous differences in this regard. There are the rich, the aristocrats. Then there is the upper bourgeoisie, the class that Marx defined as "owners of the means of production", engaged in frenetic and ferocious competition, at home and abroad, for the accumulation of wealth, with the sole aim of being able to abstract themselves from work, and therefore become unproductive, as aristocrats have been for centuries. After the mass of employees and soldiers, here are the workers, forced, and this becomes the focal point of Morris' reasoning, to produce 'luxurious and extravagant objects whose demand is linked to the existence of rich and unproductive classes, objects that leads a dignified and uncorrupted life one would not even dream of desiring. Morris therefore argues that the taste of his time for the objects of everyday life - furniture, curtains - appears distorted, poisoned by the nefarious mechanisms of economic exploitation of man by man. This adulteration of taste spreads to every part of society, as the poor produce for their own use the artifacts which are ridiculous imitations of the luxury of the rich. This deformity in the way of conceiving and, consequently, of looking at the things produced derives from the disharmonious structuring of the social body: an idle class of unproductive people who maintain themselves in a large number of slaves. What characteristics should work possess that gives man hope, instead of causing him pain and suffering? It should guarantee him the hope of rest: however pleasant it may be, it still involves a certain animal suffering in putting his energies into motion. Rest should.