William’s Words

- William Morris continues with his description of capitalist production as War
in the pamphlet, “How We Live and How We Might Live” (page 21),

"Meantime, let us pass from this “competition between nations to that between the organizers of labour, great firms, joint stock companies; capitalists in short, and see how competition stimulatesproduction among them: indeed it does do that; but what kind of production? Well, production of something to sell at a profit, or say production of profits: and not how war commercial simulates that: a certain market is demanding goods; there are, say, a hundred manufacturers who make that kind of goods and every one of them would if he could keep that market to himself, and struggles desperately to get as much of it as he can, with the obvious result that presently the thing is overdone, and the market is glutted, and all the fury of manufacture has to sink into cold ashes. Doesn’t that seem something like war to you? Can’t you see the waste of it – waste of labour, skill, cunning, waste of life in short? Well you may say, but it cheapens goods. In a sense it does; and yet, only apparently as wages have a tendency to sink for the ordinary worker in proportion as prices sink:”
A good analysis of how economic crises come about and relevant given our situation today.
John Ayers