John Ruskin
John Ruskin, born in 1819, was a social thinker, artist and writer whose books emphasized nature, art, and society, and attacked division of labor and industrial capitalism. His socialist conviction for social problems, such as poverty, unemployment, and poor working conditions caused him to reject his fortune to spread his ideologies. His theory was that the main cause of the poverty was due to monotony of the Industrial Revolution. He believed that “[t]he organic relationship ...between the worker and his guild, the worker and his community, between the worker and his natural environment, and between the worker and his God”[1]. He believed that the society can be reformed through art as the relationship between art and social justice was interconnected according to his writing.
Essay & Artwork
He wrote an anti-capitalist essay, "Unto This Last 1862" which criticized the disastrous effects of technology from industrial revolution. In his writing, he stated that “men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them...[until the] soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust”[1]. Ruskin drew a drawing of watercolor (Figure 3) when he visited Dunbar. He worked from close observation and only interested in recording not composing as we can clearly see the details of the rocks, seaweed and water. As seen from his writing and artwork, he totally rejected the use of any machine or technology and machine-made objects as dishonest. Instead, he focused on the importance of handwork. His ideology and writing influenced many artists from the Arts and Crafts Movement which enabled them to focus on more on craftsmanship and rejection of technology.
[1] John Ruskin. Seven Lamps of Architecture, numbered Artists Edition (New York: Merrill & Baker, n.d.) 39.

Figure 1
John Ruskin, watercolor 1847
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coast_Scene_near_Dunbar.jpg
(accessed September 20, 2014)