Raymond Williams

Culture and Society, 1780-1950

Williams on William Morris being very prophetic.

Cameron

 This insight into what has been perhaps the actual course of events since his death is a measure of Morris's quality as a political thinker. Yet it is no more than an application, under new circumstances, of the kind of appraisal which the century's thinking about the meanings of culture had made available. The arts defined a quality of living which it was the whole purpose of political change to make possible: 

I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civilization is not to be as causeless as the turning of a wheel that makes nothin

Socialist change was the means to a recovery of purpose. The limitation of such change to 'machinery' would only be possible 

on the grounds that the working people have ceased to desire real socialism and are contented with some outside show of it joined to an increase in prosperity enough to satisfy the cravings of men who do not know what the pleasures of life might be if they treated their own capacities and the resources of nature reasonably with the intention and expectation of being happy. 

Culture and Society, 1780-1950

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