[lbo-talk] Politics of DIY

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Jan 23 12:53:39 PST 2011


On Jan 23, 2011, at 3:45 PM, Ferenc Molnar wrote:


> I'm surprised no one's mentioned William Morris yet who very much did see a politics of the handmade. I think DIY comes out of two long traditions. One is the American taste for utopian communities that's been going since Brook Farm and the other is William Morris. I think Morris himself admitted that the goal of de-alienating the worker from his labor by reviving the cult of the artisan was a failed project for a number of reasons (mainly because the production was so slow and painstaking that only the very wealthy could afford these artisanal goods) but for Morris aesthetics was directly connected to his idea of socialism.

I agree on aesthetics - American life is often very ugly, and that matters. But if I have to make my own clothes, you can keep your revolution.

Doug



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