Another of Morris’ contributions to Marxism was his positive conception of work under socialism. Not for Morris - as for his contemporary Paul Lafargue – the right to be lazy. He was fond of Daniel Defoe’s dictum about working to live, not living to work, but what he really wanted was the transformation of work, firstly to minimise the amount of necessary labour, to share that labour out equally and to make it as bearable as possible; and secondly to free up time for work of an individual’s own choosing.

In Socialism from the Root Up (5 May 1888), he elaborated this conception of work at greater length:
“To make the matter of production under Communism clearer let us consider the various kinds of work which the welfare of Communal Society would demand.
First, there would be a certain amount of necessary work to be done which would be usually repellent to ordinary persons; some of this, probably the greater part of it, would be performed by machinery; and it must be remembered that machinery would be improved and perfected without hesitation when the restrictions laid on production by the exigencies of profit-making were removed. But probably a portion of this work at once necessary and repellent could not be done by machinery. For this portion volunteers would have to be relied upon;… As examples of this necessary and usually repellent work, we may give scavengering, sewer-cleaning, coal-hewing, midwifery, and mechanical clerk's work… Disagreeable work which a Communal Society found itself saddled with as a survival of past times, and which it found out not to be necessary, it would get rid of altogether.
Secondly, work in itself more or less disagreeable, and not absolutely necessary, but desirable if the sacrifice to be paid for it were not too great… rough occupations… such as sea-fishing, exploration of new countries, etc…
Thirdly, we come to a kind of work which we may well hope will take a much higher position in communal life than it does at present; we mean work that has in it more or less of art; and we should here say that the very foundation of everything that can be called art is the pleasure of creation, which is, or should be felt in every handicraft.” (Salmon 1994 pp.614-615)

The duration of necessary work was important. As the Manifesto of the Socialist League, published in February 1885 expressed it, “the essential work of the world will be reduced to something like two or three hours…” (Salmon 1996 p.6)

But it was the transformation of work that mattered most, reaching right down to the individual workplace. In an early article, A Factory As It Might Be, published in Justice, (17 May 1884) he wrote that: “Our factory then, is in a pleasant place: no very difficult matter, when as I have said before it is no longer necessary to gather people into able sweltering hordes for profit's sake: for all the country is in itself pleasant or is capable of being made pleasant with very little pains and forethought. Next, our factory stands amidst gardens as beautiful (climate apart) as those of Alcinous, since there is no need of stinting it of ground, profit rents being a thing of the past and the labour on such gardens is like enough to be purely voluntary.”

And he was clear that the factories of the future would be ecologically calibrated: “Well, it follows on this garden business that our factory must make no sordid litter, befoul no water, nor poison the air with smoke. I need say nothing more on that point, as "profit" apart it would be easy enough.” (Salmon 1994 p.33, p.34)

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