craftsmen/artisans vs Cheap goods

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

William Morris:
If you cannot learn to love real art at least learn to hate sham art.

Unfortunately Morris often extended the definition of "sham art" to those items "mass produced"-- as opposed to produced, one at a time, by craftsmen.

And also:
No man is good enough to be another's master.

While at university Morris became a socialist, and flirted with the anarchist movement, before rejecting that theory and embracing communisim.

And,
So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.

Morris, who was secure in his upper-middle class upbringing and who was financially comfortable in Victorian England, was friends with both Marx and Engels, as well as the other leading communists of his time. His view on capitalism destroying art, and indeed bringing down civilization, not only parrot Marx, but failed to take into consideration that capitalism is necessary to provide the funding for the arts to flourish. Artists must eat, and factory workers must be paid if they are to purchase a ticket to a concert or wish to buy a print of a painting-- provided of course that they have not been indoctrinated to hate the "sham art" of the print, and would rather stare at the bleak walls of their home, distracted only by Mr. Morris's wall paper.