morris wilde le guin on art work utopia
(2009) by laurence davis via 25 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/laurence-davis-morris-wilde-and-le-guin-on-art-work-and-utopia]
notes/quotes:
3
Abstract
Oscar Wilde’s essay The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891) rarely features on university syllabi concerned with the study of political ideologies and the history of political thought. It should. This point is perhaps best illustrated when Wilde’s work is juxtaposed with more widely acknowledged political masterpieces authored by his nineteenth-century socialist contemporaries Karl Marx and William Morris. Such was the project I undertook in my first academic journal article, “Morris, Wilde, and Marx on the Social Preconditions of Individual Development”, published in Political Studies in 1996. Looking back on the piece now, some fourteen years later, I am struck by how well Wilde’s essay stands the test of such a rigorous comparison.
Over the years I have continued to grapple with many of the questions raised in that early publication. I have also come to re-think some of its conclusions in the light of subsequent reading and reflection. This process of extended critical engagement recently culminated in the publication of the article reprinted in full here, “Morris, Wilde, and Le Guin on Art, Work, and Utopia”. Like the earlier piece, this one begins with a comparative analysis of the political thought of Wilde and Morris. However, rather than give the last word to Marx, it considers instead the anarchist and ambiguously utopian literary political vision of our own inimitable contemporary Ursula K. Le Guin. Considering this article alongside the earlier one, it is interesting to note that in spite of their different aims, terms of comparison, and ultimate conclusions, Wilde’s The Soul of Man under Socialism emerges from both as an undisputed modern political masterpiece.
Introduction
The anarchist scholar of utopia Marie Louise Berneri nicely suggests some of the distinctive features of the libertarian utopian tradition in the concluding lines of her book Journey through Utopia:
The authoritarian utopias of the nineteenth century are chiefly responsible for the anti-utopian attitude prevalent among intellectuals to-day. But utopias have not always described regimented societies, centralised states and nations of robots. Diderot’s Tahiti or Morris’s Nowhere gave us utopias where men were free from both physical and moral compulsion, where they worked not out of necessity or a sense of duty but because they found work a pleasurable activity, where love knew no laws and where every man was an artist. (317)
huge.. let’s do this first: free art\ists
(wasn’t free enough to even see in nowhere)
In this article, I focus on one relatively neglected but, I believe, highly significant aspect of the libertarian utopian tradition highlighted in the final part of the Berneri quotation: namely, the ideal of “every man… an artist,” .. t or as I would re-formulate the idea to take account of both halves of the human race, everyone an artist. I intend to do so by considering it in relation to another idea in the above quotation, that of pleasurable labour. My primary aim in undertaking these conceptual tasks is to draw out what I take to be one of the most compelling and vibrant political functions of the libertarian utopian tradition in the modern world. I refer, more specifically, to the ways in which it may function as a counter-cultural challenge to the currently dominant, capitalist form of archist ideology and practice by opposing to it an anarchist or libertarian socialist utopian alternative distinguished by the qualities of self-direction, free expression, and creativity associated with artistic, non zero-sum,..t and nature-friendly labour.
has to be everyone
4
I develop this analysis by means of a quite focused consideration of relevant politically-oriented fiction and essays by three anarchist or libertarian socialist artists who attempted to formulate self-consciously utopian visions of a world in which the arts might flourish: William Morris (1834–1896), Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), and Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-). Foremost among the many reasons why I have chosen to focus on these particular utopian writers is that, in spite of differences in genre and historical circumstances, all of them engage intelligently and imaginatively with a common set of socially highly significant questions about the role and status of art in relation to labour. As I will demonstrate by means of detailed textual analysis, all three strove to imagine post-capitalist, non-coercive societies in which artistic creation would replace profit-driven economy as the fundamental aim of social life,..t yet they did so from revealingly different perspectives about the nature and social functions of art. A careful comparative analysis of these different perspectives may, I suggest, help to illuminate the genealogies of—and hence potential alternatives to—some particularly dogmatic and destructive ongoing ideological debates in the areas of cultural politics, ecology and the politics of work and technology, and anarchist and utopian studies. More to the point politically, it is intended as a contribution to the revolutionary project of constructing a sustainable libertarian utopian counter-cultural challenge to the capitalist form of domination that has so disfigured our world and the lives of all those who inhabit it.
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
The plan for the article is as follows. First, I will systematically reconstruct, analyse, and contrast the utopian visions of artistic community animating the work of Morris and Wilde. I will then conclude by arguing that Le Guin’s The Dispossessed draws what are opposing positions in the work of Morris and Wilde into creative dialogue, and in so doing redeems the promise of anarcho-socialist revolution held out by her nineteenth-century utopian predecessors. More broadly, I argue that the comparative analysis of selected works by Morris, Wilde, and Le Guin demonstrates the desirability and theoretical plausibility of an anarchist or libertarian socialist alternative to capitalism in which artistic freedom and creativity infuses everyday labour, and by extension social life as a whole.
5
The Craft Utopia of William Morris
William Morris’s most original and lasting contributions to political thought were his critique of useless toil under capitalism and his utopian vision of a world in which all forms of labour, even the commonest, might be made attractive. These contributions are inextricably linked insofar as Morris believed that only with the historical evolution of specifically *capitalist institutions was a wedge driven between art and work. As capitalism has grown the wedge has deepened, with the result that most people are now surrounded by ugliness and work and live in pain. The situation will be reversed, he claimed, only when artificial obstacles to pleasurable labour distinctive to market-engulfed capitalist societies are removed, and all have the opportunity to make their innate senses of beauty an integral part of their lives.
Morris developed his vision of a society in which work and art—and nature—blend harmoniously in a range of utopian writings, the best known of which is his socialist romance News from Nowhere (1891). A moneyless and stateless craft utopia, perhaps the most radically utopian feature of Nowhere is that all the work done in it is pleasurable, either because of the hope of social honour with which the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement even when the work itself is not pleasant; or because it has grown into a pleasurable habit, as in the case of mechanical work; or, most important of all, because everybody is an artist insofar as each is able to take some conscious, sensuous pleasure in the work itself.
news from nowhere – didn’t let go enough to see
We first encounter this aspect of the tale in Chapter Two, when a casual remark by an inhabitant of future London alerts the reader to a recurring feature of the romance: namely, detailed descriptions of physical objects that suggest the loving artistic care lavished on them by the multi-skilled craftspeople who populate Nowhere. Considered as a whole, these details depict an alluring and compelling vision of a society infused with art. It is not “art” as we know it, however—the prerogative of isolated and mysteriously inspired beings detached from the workaday world of ordinary people—but the living popular art produced by those able to take pleasure in their daily work.
but (news from nowhere) still had ie: gift\ness.. thank you ness.. obligation ness.. testart storage law et al
Following his Oxford mentor John Ruskin, Morris conceived art in very broad terms as “man’s expression of his joy in labour” (“Art under Plutocracy,” Morton 67). Understood in this way, art extended well beyond “those matters which are consciously works of art,” to encompass not only “painting and sculpture, and architecture, but the shapes and colours of all household goods, nay, even the arrangement of the fields for tillage and pasture, the management of towns and of our highways of all kinds; in a word… the aspect of all the externals of our life” (Morton 58). Artists, in turn, were simply those who were committed to standards of excellence in their daily work: “what is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?” (“The Lesser Arts,” Morton 51). In short, Morris understood art as a form of craftsmanship: as the desire to do a job well for its own sake.
art – being human et al
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Such definitional claims of course beg the question of why Morris’s vision of art could not easily be realised in late Victorian England, or indeed in our own contemporary world. If standards of workmanship are the key to artistic production, then why can’t such standards be encouraged within the framework of existing industrial capitalist societies? In fact, this same question bedevilled Morris at a quite personal level for many years. In the early 1860s, he and some friends established a business that proposed to undertake quality handiwork in various forms of decoration. By the 1870s, the firm had grown considerably and was generally regarded as a success, not only in purely commercial terms but as a trend setter among the so-called “cultivated” (i.e., wealthy) elite. However, Morris himself was dissatisfied. He explained the reasons for this dissatisfaction in a letter written in 1883 to his socialist friend Andreas Scheu:
In spite of all the success I have had, I have not failed to be conscious that the art I have been helping to produce would fall with the death of a few of us who really care about it, that a reform in art which is founded on individualism must perish with the individuals who have set it going. Both my historical studies and my practical conflict with the philistinism of modern society have forced on me the conviction that art cannot have a real life and growth under the present system of commercialism and profit-mongering. (qtd. in Thompson 98)
Deeply egalitarian by temperament, and painfully aware of the depths into which art had fallen since commercial society divorced it from authentic popular tradition, Morris could not be content with art for a few. He demanded instead an “art which is to be made by the people and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user” (“The Art of the People,” Cole 535), and it was his passionate desire for the satisfaction of this egalitarian artistic and altruistic craving that ultimately propelled him across “the river of fire” to become a revolutionary socialist.
berners-lee everyone law.. none of us are free et al..
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According to Morris, the resulting dehumanisation of work inevitably took its toll on the arts. Among the more “intellectual” arts affected were architecture, sculpture, and painting. Among the “decorative” arts degraded were house building, joinery and carpentry, smithy work, pottery and glass making, and weaving. Like those who laboured on them, the various arts were fractured into intellectual and manual categories, and subjected to the time constraints of competitive market demand.
Morris’s tale of decline extends into the eighteenth century. As the workshop-system continued to fill the demands of ever-widening markets, so the argument goes, two competing manufacturing ideologies developed in tandem with it. The first was the older idea that the main aim of manufacture is the production of quality goods. The second was the newer notion that it be carried on for the sake of a profit. For a time, neither ideology predominated over the other. The consequence was that some interest continued to be taken in the making of wares. According to Morris, the condition of art and labour had deteriorated considerably since the Middle Ages, but had not yet reached the depths of the machine era.
A man who has to weave plain cloth but finds the job tedious, for example, might reasonably use a power-loom that will weave the cloth nearly as well as a hand-loom. In doing so, he forgoes the small advantage of the little extra art in the cloth, but gains leisure or time for more pleasurable work. What both cases have in common is their reasonableness. They are instances of how a reasonable man would behave if he were free from compulsion. Not being free, men act very differently. They use machines to produce knick-knacks even when doing so costs them dearly in time, energy, happiness, and even humanity..t
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
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In those of his publications that explore the possible forms of art and work in the new society, Morris articulates a number of imaginative “hints” as to how they might be reconnected and thus transformed such that all working people would be artists and creators able to take an intelligent interest in their labour. In News from Nowhere, for example, he depicts a society organised around artisan production, with its emphasis on individual initiative, responsibility, and self-imposed time-scales and rhythms set in an environment of spontaneous co-operation. In this profoundly democratic society, people are free to decide for themselves what they need and want, balancing those desires against how much work they want to do. In stark contrast to our own world, where most of the work done is useless toil in the service of commerce or social control, in Nowhere everyone takes tremendous pleasure in creating things that are both beautiful and useful to others. Refined machine tools are used to relieve people of irksome labour, but otherwise are done without. As a result, technology has lost its destructive dynamism, and humanity neither conquers nature nor is conquered by it. The denizens of Nowhere have recovered a strong sense of place rooted in the land, and their community life is bound together by the natural order of work rather than the coercive powers of the state.
nah.. still same song as long as any form of m\a\p as long as any red flags.. (ie: responsibility ness, democratic admin ness, takes a lot of work ness, et al)
endnote 8: Dialogic in its dynamic and popular mode of delivery and publication, Morris’s utopianism is also dialogic in its pluralistic and inclusive approach to *alternative radical visions. The open, constructive, and dialogic cast of Morris’s mind is particularly evident on the few occasions when he reflects about the nature and purposes of utopia. Consider, for example, his remarks in a June 1889 Commonweal review of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. According to Morris, “the only safe way of reading a utopia is to consider it as the expression of the temperament of its author” (Salmon 420). Those who read them as “conclusive statements of facts and rules of action” ignore their necessary partiality. Utopias, he explains further in this review and elsewhere, are necessarily partial for at least two reasons. First, individual tempers differ, and what is a dream to one person may be a nightmare to another. Second, the dreams of any utopian author are conditioned by, and responsive to, the historical circumstances in which he or she lives. As Morris and Bax put the matter in their jointly authored Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, “no man can really think himself out of his own days… his palace of days to come can [therefore] only be constructed by the aspirations forced on him by his present surroundings, and from his dreams of the life of the past, which themselves cannot fail to be more or less unsubstantial imaginings” (Morris and Bax 17–18). As these remarks make abundantly clear, Morris was well aware of the limitations of the perfectionist utopian tradition. Crucially, however, rather than abandon utopianism altogether, he embraces it in a chastened and anti-perfectionist but paradoxically **more revolutionary form.
*just not alt/radical enough
**revolution form we need: hardt revolution law
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
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However, unlike him she explicitly draws a distinction between the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of artistic labour even as she recognises their interconnection. For Lee, the defining characteristics of the artistic mode of production are both aesthetic and ethical. They are aesthetic insofar as: first, there are no external ends to which the activity is subordinated, such as reward, fame, honour, and so on; second, the artist strives to create an object which is dictated by the laws of art peculiar to the object; and third, artist and material are part of a single process of production so that interaction between the two is not a means to an externally imposed end, but is simply a part of the activity which is the artist’s end. They are ethical and social as well insofar as “qua artist” she or he need not look upon others as hostile rivals and competitors but as mutually inspiring; and the activity performed enables the individual to dedicate her or himself to something larger than purely private ends, “to an ideal or movement which one is helping to sustain and enrich.” In this way, Lee concludes, “conflict between individual and social demands may become muted and less polarised” (223–224).
This point is important because it highlights a feature of Morris’s craft utopian vision that in my opinion ought to be more carefully and critically scrutinised. As the commentary from Lee’s work just quoted makes clear, she imagines that the transition to an artistic mode of production would reduce the conflict between individual and social demands. She does not suppose that it would eliminate entirely all lasting public disagreement about fundamental matters of principle. Morris, by contrast, supposes precisely this. Consider, for example, the following passage from a book he authored jointly with the socialist philosopher E. Belfort Bax:
then not art/free enough
As regards the future form of the moral consciousness, we may safely predict that it will be in a sense a return on a higher level to the ethics of the older world, with the difference that the limitation of scope to the kinship group in its narrower sense, which was one of the causes of the dissolution of ancient society, will disappear, and the identification with social interests will be so complete that any divorce between the two will be inconceivable to the average man. (Morris and Bax 298)
not if we don’t let go enough.. to see that dance.. so.. all this.. still not enough
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The Artist’s Utopia of Oscar Wilde
By way of a corrective to this *perhaps too pronounced functionalist tendency in Morris’s writing, it may be helpful to turn briefly to the writing of another artist who imagined an anarchist or libertarian socialist utopia in exactly the same year (1891) that News from Nowhere was published in book form. In many ways, the utopian vision of a society infused with art that is articulated in Oscar Wilde’s classic essay The Soul of Man under Socialism is strikingly similar to Morris’s. Like Morris, Wilde conceives his utopian vision in quite radical terms as an expression of a root and branch repudiation of capitalist society. He suggests that **charity and other palliative measures do more harm than good by preventing people from realising the full horrors of the system of private property, and advocates the reconstruction of society on such a basis that poverty would be impossible..t He does so, moreover, from a distinctively socialist perspective insofar as he believes that private property and the wage-based society ***must be abolished in order to make way for a community in which all will share in the general prosperity and happiness. Like Morris as well, he unambiguously rejects authoritarian socialism in favour of a libertarian variant. He emphasises the values of freedom from any form of government and from compulsion in work, and links these notions to an ideal of universal individual self-realisation associated with the diffusion of art into all aspects of life.
*perhaps.. ha.. ie: previous page.. has to be for others.. has to be of use/functionality.. oi
**yeah.. again.. steiner care to oppression law.. graeber violence in care law.. et al
***yeah.. we need a way sans any form of m\a\p.. but also sans all the energy spend on abolishing ness..
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Where Morris and Wilde differ most clearly is the latter’s much more emphatically individualistic conception of art. This point is apparent from the very first page of Wilde’s The Soul of Man under Socialism, which opens with a perspective on altruism diametrically opposed to the one implicit in Morris’s work: “The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody” (Wilde 1). For both Morris and Wilde, one of the reasons why capitalism ought to be opposed is because it stifles the artistic impulses latent in all human beings. Each means something very different from the other, however, when he uses the term “artistic.” For Morris, the paradigm of an artistic community is the medieval guild. He admires in particular the paternalistic moral force that the guild ideally exercised over its members—its power in fairly apportioning the work at hand, in distributing the rewards of labour, in checking competition, in ensuring production for use and not profit, and in maintaining a standard of value. For Wilde, by contrast, the exercise of paternalistic moral force in the realm of artistic production would be a prime example of that “sordid necessity of living for others” which has spoiled so many lives. The artistic impulse is not something that responds to the “clamorous claims of others,” and has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Rather, it emerges naturally from a mature and self-expressive personality. In the present stunted and stifling condition of society, he believes, the expression of artistic personality is confined to the work of a few highly gifted and materially privileged individuals who succeed in isolating themselves from the demands of the public. In a libertarian socialist or anarchist society in which the ordinary daily work of the world is done by machines, wealth is distributed equitably, and people have developed an unselfish respect for the individual autonomy and creativity of others, everybody would have the opportunity to express himself or herself in an artistic manner.
Unlike Morris, Wilde is in his discussion of art particularly sensitive to the danger of what John Stuart Mill famously referred to in his essay On Liberty as a “tyranny of the majority.” According to Mill, those who wish to protect individual liberty must be vigilant against more than just the tyranny of the magistrate. They must guard as well against “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own” (Mill 171). Wilde articulates a similar point in The Soul of Man, though of course in his own inimitably epigrammatic way, and with particular reference to the sphere of art. Specifically, he suggests that while tremendous progress has been made over time in limiting social interference with the individualism of speculative forms of thought such as science and philosophy, the attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art persists in quite an aggressive and brutalising way. As evidence for this proposition, he cites the damage done to the English novel and the dramatic arts by the exercise of popular authority. More specifically, he observes that any attempt to extend the subject-matter of art has provoked a fearful reaction on the part of the public, who regard such artistic innovation as a disturbing form of individualism. And they are right to do so, for “art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known” (Wilde 17). “Art is Individualism,” in fact, and “therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine” (19). In other words, far more so than Morris, Wilde acknowledges a positive role for the socially disruptive individualistic dimension of art. If for Morris this anarchic aspect of art is nothing more than a symptom of its degeneration under capitalism that will disappear with the re-unification of art and labour under socialism, for Wilde it is a sign of social vitality and an essential safeguard against the ever-present threat of social conformity and stagnation posed by popular authority masquerading as guardian of the peace..t
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem
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Critics of Wilde’s conception of art in The Soul of Man have labeled it “elitist” or “aristocratic,” and there is some truth in this charge though not to the extent and in the way that most of them assume. For example, it is frequently claimed that his utopian vision of a society composed of artistic individuals engaged in “cultivated leisure” reflects his own belief in a slothful or hedonistic mode of life based primarily on self-development through commodity consumption. However, the evidence of the text suggests otherwise. While Wilde does indeed speculate at one point in the essay that “cultivated leisure… and not labour, is the aim of man” (16), the passage in question ought to be interpreted in context, for Wilde makes it very clear only a few sentences earlier that by “labour” he means in this particular instance “all unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions” (15). In addition, in the remainder of the sentence quoted above, he imagines a wide variety of non-consumerist ways in which individuals emancipated from the tyranny of want might make use of their new-found freedom: “while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure—which, and not labour, is the aim of man—or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work” (16). In short, like Morris, Wilde envisages in The Soul of Man an exceptionally creative, imaginative, beautiful, and joyful way of life very different from what passes for “the good life” in contemporary consumerist societies.
It is also frequently claimed that Wilde’s conception of artistic individualism in the essay is elitist insofar as it can only possibly be realised by a few. However, Wilde himself does not draw such a conclusion. To the contrary, he refers to “the great actual Individualism latent and potential in mankind generally” (7), an individualism that has been corrupted by political and economic power in hitherto existing societies, but which in a truly non-authoritarian society would blossom naturally and simply as a flower. And when it does, he speculates, it will be infinitely varied, because “there are as many perfections as there are imperfect men” (12).
has to be all of us
In what sense, then, may Wilde’s utopian vision be characterised as elitist? In order to answer this question in a fair and balanced fashion, it may be helpful to recall briefly why and in what ways Morris believed that art ought to be democratised. For Morris, one of the most distressing features of modern life was the wedge driven between art and labour by the historical triumph of capitalism. He demanded a revolutionary change in the basis of society that would lead to a world in which work and art—and nature—blend harmoniously. This harmony is made possible by the fact that work is no longer a curse entailing the ruthless exploitation of nature to meet ever-increasing human needs. Instead it has become a source of joy, an infinitely rewarding co-operative endeavour in which all contribute voluntarily and usefully to the support of the community as a whole. It is also a well-spring of living popular art insofar as people no longer driven desperately to painful and terrible overwork are apt to crave beauty in their lives, and to begin to learn once again how to ornament their creations by emulating the products of nature.
For Wilde, by contrast, artistic beauty and socially useful labour must be firmly separated. The former is the purely individualistic product of a unique temperament. The latter is the responsibility of the state, which in Wilde’s utopia is to be constituted as a non-governing voluntary association that organises labour and manufactures and distributes necessary commodities. Any attempt to bridge this divide between individualistic art and social labour will surely lead to the loss of both: “Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other” (16). The reason why this is so, according to Wilde, is that an individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Conversely, the moment an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, “he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesma
to me.. this is a sign not seeing big picture.. aka: we have not yet let go enough to see the dance.. so .. we have no idea what legit free people are like.. i don’t think anything would be ‘separated’
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The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that it is premised on precisely those capitalist-era, class-based distinctions between intellectual and manual labour, socially respected artists and socially reviled craftsmen, that in a socialist society would presumably be obsolete. It is difficult to conceive how a socialist society could maintain such hierarchical, status-oriented distinctions and still be recognisably socialist. One possible reply to this conundrum might be that while the distinctions themselves would linger on they would cease to have any practical meaning because machines would do all the utilitarian work necessary to sustain civilisation. But this reply in turn raises more questions than it answers. Specifically, it elides all of the profoundly challenging questions hinted at or implied by Morris about the wisdom of embracing a machine-based civilisation. For example, who will design, control, and operate the machines in Wilde’s technocratic utopia? Would members of the general population be expected to volunteer to undertake such tasks on a temporary basis? If so, why would they do so, knowing that not only would no social honour accrue to their altruistic behaviour, but also that they would, on the contrary, be regarded derisively as dull or amusing craftsmen? And if, as might be expected in such circumstances, the necessary volunteers did not come forward, would “the state” in Wilde’s utopia be composed of a permanent sub-class of non-artists whose aim in life was to secure the material pre-conditions for the free individual development of others? Finally, even granting the very remote possibility that technology might be developed by self-regarding, scientifically-oriented individuals to such an extent and in such a way that it was entirely non-exploitative and largely self-operating, what impact would this elaborate technology have on the environment, and on humanity’s relationship with nature? Would nature continue to be regarded, as it is now, merely as a disposable resource for human consumption?
to me.. we have ways for this to not be so today..
ie: use tech (whatever) as nonjudgmental expo labeling.. and stop all the other cancerous/consuming/extracting distractions
Such difficulties and lacunae notwithstanding, Wilde’s exceptionally intelligent and engaging essay raises some profoundly challenging questions of its own about the (historically variable) nature and social functions of art. For example, is art social primarily because it stands opposed to society as an autonomous entity unconstrained by conventional social norms? Or is it social in the radically democratic, popular, and labour-oriented sense suggested by Morris? Can it be both, and if so, to what extent are these ideas necessarily in tension with one another?
The heart of the matter, I contend, is that Morris and Wilde each glimpse a fragment of a larger truth about the relationship between art and society. As John Stuart Mill observed in his essay On Liberty, truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is primarily a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites. Truth in this sense is not the unitary phenomenon so many monistic thinkers have supposed it to be, but a multifaceted affair that eludes easy classification by those who view only one side of it. In what follows I will argue that both Morris and Wilde are right in part, and that what is now needed in the way of a sustainable counter-cultural challenge to capitalism is an anarchist utopian cultural politics that balances individual and society in a way that simultaneously protects the autonomy of art and firmly rejects the assumption that it must be something precious and elitist maintained by the joyless labour of an enslaved majority. I intend to make this argument not abstractly, but in the context of a close textual reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
18
Art and Anarchy in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed
ursula le guin.. the dispossessed
In many ways, the utopian societies depicted in Morris’s News from Nowhere and Le Guin’s The Dispossessed are strikingly similar. Both are based on a profoundly ecological understanding of the world not as some sort of machine, but as a vast and complexly interdependent organism. Both have abolished the profit-oriented institutions of their ruthlessly competitive and violent capitalist forebears, and organised social life instead according to the principle of from each according to his or her initiative and ability, to each according to his or her needs. Both have opted for a pace of technological growth much slower than that of profit-driven societies, but without regressing to pre-technological tribalism. Both wholeheartedly respect the values of free individual choice and personal responsibility, and are committed to the idea that people flourish best without imposed authority and external coercion. Both are decentralised, composed of small, dispersed communities that are self-regulating and self-governing. Both make space for misfits. Both are deeply committed to the ideals of equality and mutual aid, and strive for a condition in which human beings are at peace with themselves and their environment. Both originate in revolution, and acknowledge the enduring reality of human suffering.
but choice and responsibility are already imposed authority and external coercion
this is huge.. and we’re missing it.. blinding us to what legit free people could be
Both are also premised on the belief that people free to choose what work they wish to do when they wish to do it will engage in creative pursuits that contribute to social and individual well being. In The Dispossessed, this philosophy is encapsulated in the words of Laia Odo, the revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist thinker whose writings inspired the anarchist utopian settlement on Anarres:
need curiosity over decision making
A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole. (Le Guin 247)
i think it’s the whole concept of ‘usefulness’ that darkens/blinds/numbs/intoxicates the heart..
In keeping with Odo’s teachings about the natural and durable joy of doing needed work and doing it well, Pravic, the language of Anarres, employs the same word for both work and play (a different word is used to express the idea of drudgery). Those of Le Guin’s readers acculturated in modern capitalist societies may, of course, be somewhat sceptical about such a conflation of terms. In our world, work and play are generally regarded as antonyms. The former is associated with the economic compulsion to “earn a living,” and the latter with simple idleness or “leisure pursuits” (pithily defined by Bob Black as “nonwork for the sake of work,” and more wittily as “time spent recovering from work and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work”). In Anarresti society, by contrast, there is no economic compulsion to work because everybody simply takes what material goods they need from the communal stores. An entirely voluntary activity free of coercively imposed external restriction, work is no longer a curse but, instead, a form of play integrally associated with sociability, festivity, and joyful artistic creation.
The Day Before the Revolution suggested (in endnotes?) as intro to the dispossessed.. but can’t find in anarchist library but did on wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution]
earn a living ness and abolition of work et al
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..these expressions of craft pleasure are in part the *product of an educational system that trains all Anarresti in the practice of the arts from a very young age. Because no distinction is drawn on Anarres between the arts and the crafts—and everyone receives as a matter of course practical training in singing, metrics, dance, the use of brush, chisel, knife, lathe, and so on—art is generally regarded “not as having a place in life, but as being a basic technique of life, like speech” (156). In short, art suffuses Anarresti society, and **everyone is a creative artist in the practical and popular sense of the term suggested by Morris.
*oi.. no train
**so .. not a legit free art\ist
At a much deeper philosophical and cultural level, Anarresti society is also an artistic community insofar as individual autonomy and wilfulness are generally expressed not in the form of domination and control, but as creativity conceived as the expression of artistic beauty. As a result, the destructive conflict between individual and society endemic to capitalist societies has been significantly diminished. People generally assume that others will be helpful and so tend to trust them. Such trust is not absolute or unconditional, and hence may be withdrawn if abused. Nevertheless, the anarchist inhabitants of Anarres tend by and large to recognise that their unique society, and the individual flourishing it makes possible, are dependent on a high degree of voluntary co-operation ultimately rooted in enlightened self-interest.
not unique enough.. high degree? voluntary? co op? enlightened.. oi
Yet for all their accomplishments the Anarresti have not succeeded in eliminating entirely the conflict between individual and society. Moreover, Le Guin suggests paradoxically, this apparent failing is also a blessing, insofar as the realisation of the perfectionist ideal of complete harmony between the two would entail the death of individual liberty and the diversity, novelty, creativity, and vibrant life it makes possible. Like Wilde in this respect, and unlike Morris, Le Guin acknowledges a prominent and enduring place in her utopian vision for a socially disruptive form of individual assertiveness. In fact, it is fair to say that her representation of this disruptive assertiveness in the narrative of Shevek’s progressive rebellion against the creeping conformity and stagnation of Anarresti society constitutes the main dramatic action of the novel.
oi.. individual assert as cancerous distraction.. not a part of the dance
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.. Shevek articulates a balanced position on the proper relationship between individual and society that combines some of the most important insights of both Morris and Wilde. On the one hand, like Morris he emphasises the value of mutuality and community in facing necessity. More specifically, he embraces the Odonian ideal of an organic community in which all share equally the inescapable burdens of life. On the other hand, like Wilde he is alert to the dangers of a tyranny of the majority, and hence also to the value of protecting individual autonomy even and perhaps especially when it conflicts with prevailing social norms. Indeed, his thoughts in this regard are occasioned by his recollection of the example of Tirin, whom he refers to approvingly as “a born artist. Not a craftsman—a creator. An inventor-destroyer, the kind who’s got to turn everything upside down and inside out. A satirist, a man who praises through rage” (328). Like Wilde in this respect, and unlike most of his fellow Anarresti, Shevek distinguishes between artists and craftspeople. Moreover, he does so to emphasise the positive individualistic and anarchic function of art as a means of *disrupting slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, hypocritical moralism, fear of social ostracism, fear of being different, fear in short of being free. However, unlike in Wilde’s essay The Soul of Man, the distinctions Shevek draws in The Dispossessed between art and craft and artist and community have no elitist connotations, inasmuch as they are conceived within the context of an emphatically co-operative utopian vision in which individual and society are inextricably linked. As Shevek muses to himself at a pivotal point in the novel, “With the myth of the State out of the way, the real **mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change, the essential function of life” (333).
not *this.. if still **this
Taking this philosophy to heart, Shevek makes a brave decision. He resolves to fulfil his proper function in the social organism by becoming an anarchist revolutionary in an anarchist utopian society conceived as a permanent revolution. In so doing, he takes the first tentative step towards an increasingly public and political life that culminates in his groundbreaking journey to Urras and his momentous scientific breakthrough. He also begins a distinctive revolutionary journey that illuminates a road not yet taken in the continuing struggle on our own world to create a decent and sustainable alternative to capitalism.
oi.. not new.. not alt
In sum, true to both her novelistic craft and her anarchist political convictions, Le Guin succeeds in embodying in The Dispossessed an extraordinarily imaginative and sophisticated utopian vision that draws the two apparently opposing perspectives articulated in the work of Morris and Wilde into creative dialogue. Just as Shevek persistently strives “not to deny one reality at the expense of the other, but to include and connect,” so too Le Guin strives in her writing to balance individual and society in a way that both protects the autonomy of art and reminds us that it needn’t be something precious and elitist maintained by the joyless labour of an enslaved majority. And just as Shevek ultimately succeeds in renewing the revolutionary promise of the utopian vision articulated in his world’s past by Laia Odo, so too with The Dispossessed Le Guin succeeds in renewing the revolutionary promise of the utopian visions articulated in her world’s past by Morris and Wilde.
again.. not revolutionary enough
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She does so in at least two respects. First, she dramatises everyday life in an anarchist communist society in such a way as to render believable and appealing the revolutionary romantic ideal of everyone an artist. Second, she links this utopian vision to a simultaneously individualistic and communistic model of revolutionary change memorably encapsulated in the words of Odo, “The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin” (359). In both respects, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed continues to speak powerfully and directly to those of us unwilling to acquiesce to the prevailing consensus that capitalism is the terminus of history and art and labour must be forever rigidly divided.
but she doesn’t.. maybe she makes the idea believable? but her means have too many red flags.. oi..
Conclusion
From the perspective of those who inhabit market-engulfed capitalist societies, the revolutionary romantic aspiration to transform social life in such a way that *everyone would be an artist may well appear to be an impossible dream. Yet it is a dream that inspired the artistic and political imaginations of some of the most brilliant utopian writers of the past two centuries, among them William Morris, Oscar Wilde, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Each in his or her own way, Morris, Wilde, and Le Guin strove to imagine post-capitalist, **non-coercive societies in which artistic creation would replace profit-driven economy as the fundamental aim of social life, yet they did so from revealingly different perspectives about the nature and social functions of art.
*indeed.. and grateful.. but they didn’t let go (imagine) enough..
**again.. she didn’t let go enough to be non coercive.. has to be sans any form of m\a\p
Morris the socialist craftsman believed that art should be radically democratised, and that it ought to serve the social function of making common labour a source of pleasure and joy. Wilde the dramatic artist and art critic believed on the contrary that art should be insulated from democracy, free to grow autonomously in a highly individualistic society characterised by a far greater degree of material equality and respect for individual difference than our own. In The Dispossessed, Le Guin the Daoist literary artist illuminates a compelling and persuasive third perspective somewhere between the two, one that acknowledges that art is inextricably bound up with social activity (especially labour) and ought to be democratised to a far greater degree than it is today, yet also remains acutely aware of the dangers of reducing art to its social function and hence neglecting the individual springs of both artistic and social vitality.
In this article, I have undertaken the first sustained, critical comparison of the work of these three utopian writers in pursuit of an answer to *a question that has engaged and stymied some of the greatest artistic and political minds of the post-medieval world: namely, how to make quotidian human labour more art-like without sacrificing the positive elements associated with modern ideas of artistic autonomy. Far from being purely an academic question, I have claimed, this is one on which the fate of contemporary civilisation may depend, insofar as the ever-widening chasm between art and labour impoverishes both and has spawned a slave society in which the vast majority of humanity labours under unrelieved toil. The argument of this article suggests one possible exit route from this real-world dystopia. Its critical contribution to what is ultimately a collective political project is thus to affirm the desirability and theoretical plausibility of an anarchist or libertarian socialist alternative to capitalism in which artistic freedom and creativity infuses everyday labour, and by extension social life as a whole.
*deeper problem/question (because we have no idea what legit free people are like and so we keep clinging to some kindn of order.. some/any form of m\a\p).. need to be asking/trying.. what conditions need to be so that all are free..
ie: findings:
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
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be you. 