SOMETHING OF WILLIAM MORRIS APPROPRIATE TO TODAY

On 'Reforming' Capitalism

The palliatives with which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless: because they are but unorganized partial revolts against a vast wide-spreading grasping organization which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the condition of the people with an attack on a fresh side; new machines, new markets, wholesale emigration, the revival of grovelling superstition, preachments of thrift to lack-alls, of temperance to the wretched; such things as these will baffle at every turn all partial revolts against the monster we of the middle class have created for our own undoing . (Art and Socialism)

Those who think they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the tremendous organization under which we live, and which appoints to each of us his place, and if we do not change to fit it, grinds us down until we do. Nothing but a tremendous force can deal with this force; it will not suffer itself to be dismembered, nor to lose anything which really is its essence without putting forth all its force in resistance; rather than lose anything which it considers of importance, it will pull the roof down upon its head. (WILLIAM MORRIS - 'Whigs, Democrats, and Socialists', in Signs of Change)