50 Years Ago: Socialism, Work and Beauty

In the “golden age of labour“ the craftsman owned his tools and used them for the production of beautiful and useful objects, which were his when made. It was to his credit to put the best that was in him into the things he produced, and all things combined, not only to give him opportunity, but to encourage him to exercise thoroughness in the construction, and to give his work that expression of his individuality which is the very essence of art. He was his own master, free to embody his own ideas in his own product in his own time, not dogged at every step by some impatient holder of a stop-watch, and forced to inscribe on a time-sheet the moments of each stage of production.

How different is the position of the modern toiler (craftsman he cannot be called). Labour today is divorced from art. The labourer has neither right nor interest in the object upon which he labours. It matters not to him whether the article produced be ugly or beautiful, useless or useful. He is an automaton hired to do a certain task; the slave of a machine. . . .

To raise the workers from the level of the machine and to place them in the position of men is the object of Socialism. . . . It is our desire, not to return to the method of production of the Middle Ages, but to obtain the happiness and comfort, and the security of life enjoyed by the craftsmen of that day, by making ourselves masters, collectively, of our tools, material and time, shapers of our own destiny.

From the SOCIALIST STANDARD, October. 1910.