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The right to useful employment, and its professional enemies
252
Books
BOOKS The ideas man James Robertson The Right to Useful Employment, and its Professional Enemies Ivan Illich 95 pages, E3.95 (London, Marion Boyars, 1978) Ivan Illich’s impact has been rather like the Club of Rome’s. The Club’s reports have attracted a great deal of professional criticism of a secondary nature. Yet they have successfully communicated, as was never done before, their primary message that planet Earth is finite. Similarly, Illich has been vigorously attacked-for example by professional educators and medics for whom Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis are full of unwarranted exaggeration. Yet he has left us conscious, as we never were before, that the institutions which we create in modern society to meet our needs have become counterproductive: their effect is forever to expand our needs beyond their capacity to satisfy them, and simultaneously to deprive us of the capacity to satisfy our needs ourselves. Illich has helped to give many people a better feel for the choice of futures which the overdeveloped countries face today. Now, once again, in The Right To Useful ~nem~~o~rnent (which he describes as a postscript to Tools For Conviviality) Illich’s “interest is directed towards . . . the process through which autonomy is undermined, satisfaction is dulled, exJames Robertson is the author of Reform of British Central Government, Profit or Peoble?, Power, Mmey and SEIYand, his m&t recent dook, The Sane Altermtive: Signposts io a Seifrfuulf;liing Future (7 St Ann’s Villas, London Wl I 4RU, UK, James Robertson, 1978).
perience is flattened out, needs are frustrated for nearly everyone”-a process which seems to be an inevitable “concomitant of modernisation”.
The scheme of job creation He shows how the opportunity to experience personal and social satisfaction outside the market has been destroyed : “I am poor, for example, when the use-value of my feet is lost because I live in Los Angeles or work on the 35th floor of a skyscraper”. He is as scathing as ever about the main beneficiaries of this process, the “scavengers who live on the side effects of yesterday’s growth : educators who live on society’s alienation, doctors who prosper on the work and leisure that have destroyed health, politicians who thrive on the distribution of welfare. . .” With analysis as powerful as ever he explains how every new need that is professionally certified translates sooner or later into a right. The political pressure for the enactment of each right generates new jobs and commodities. Each new commodity degrades an activity by which people have so far been able to cope on their own: each new job takes away legitimacy from work so far done by
the unemployed. Anyone who still takes pride in being a “problem-solver” in the economic, social, or political sphere will learn from this little book why Illich calls the mid 20th century the “Age of disabling professions”, and will benefit therefrom. The trouble is that, as in his other writings, Illich shows little interest in helping his readers to work out what
FUTURES
June 1978
Books
they would actually do if they accepted his diagnosis. For him, and for those of us who agree with him, the real challenge now is surely to find practical ways ofdecolonising the institutional~ed system based on money, jobs, and careers and of liberating ourselves and others from excessive dependence on it.
253
In his next book Illich should take the diagnosis for granted and turn the spotlight on the strategy, tactics, and forms of action which the diagnosis implies. Otherwise, there is a risk that his message will lose its impact. It might even become counterproductive, and that would be a sad irony indeed.
Taking conservation to the market John 0. S. Kennedy Conservation Eficiency
and Economic
Talbot Page 266 pages, Ll1.25 (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, 1977)
xvii +
Conservationists argue that myopic decision making, responding simply to market forces, may lead to excessive flows of natural resources from the environment, and of wastes to the environment. The nest may be fouled for future generations. This book does not attempt to allay such fears. Nevertheless, Page argues for the retention of the market system because of its potential for the efficient allocation of resources. However, the market system can be influenced by policy measures. Its efficiency should be employed, its undesirable effects removed: the market system should be allowed to operate, but within an overall policy framework, guided by conservation criteria. The first section introduces a framework for viewing material flows and their direction by the market, from extraction to production, consumption, recycling, and pollution. The second section examines the efficiency implications of some current US pricing John 0. S. Kennedy is with the Department of Economics of La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia.
FUTURES
June 1978
policies : discriminatory charges for freight and energy, and taxes on packaging material and virgin materials are discussed. Making conservation count The final section is the most thoughtprovoking, dealing with intertemporal equity, and suggestingvariousrationales for maximising discounted social welfare.i Page points out that whereas present-value criteria have the advantages of low implementation costs and of efficiency, it is quite possible that these criteria will lead to the elimination of natural resource assets, particularly those that are nonrenewable, or which regenerate at a slower rate than the rate used for discounting. Page favours a conservation criterion that ensures that each generation is selfsufficient. He argues that such a criterion would emerge as an intergenerational contract between delegates of generations taking Rawlsian original positions. Page singles out one instrument and one sub-criterion in particular as being useful for ensuring permanent livability, whilst otherwise leaving allocations to the market. It is easy to take issue with both of these. The instrument advocated is the severance tax, or a tax levied on each unit of virgin material. As a sub-criterion, a quantity-weighted price index of virgin materials would be
Books
BOOKS The ideas man James Robertson The Right to Useful Employment, and its Professional Enemies Ivan Illich 95 pages, E3.95 (London, Marion Boyars, 1978) Ivan Illich’s impact has been rather like the Club of Rome’s. The Club’s reports have attracted a great deal of professional criticism of a secondary nature. Yet they have successfully communicated, as was never done before, their primary message that planet Earth is finite. Similarly, Illich has been vigorously attacked-for example by professional educators and medics for whom Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis are full of unwarranted exaggeration. Yet he has left us conscious, as we never were before, that the institutions which we create in modern society to meet our needs have become counterproductive: their effect is forever to expand our needs beyond their capacity to satisfy them, and simultaneously to deprive us of the capacity to satisfy our needs ourselves. Illich has helped to give many people a better feel for the choice of futures which the overdeveloped countries face today. Now, once again, in The Right To Useful ~nem~~o~rnent (which he describes as a postscript to Tools For Conviviality) Illich’s “interest is directed towards . . . the process through which autonomy is undermined, satisfaction is dulled, exJames Robertson is the author of Reform of British Central Government, Profit or Peoble?, Power, Mmey and SEIYand, his m&t recent dook, The Sane Altermtive: Signposts io a Seifrfuulf;liing Future (7 St Ann’s Villas, London Wl I 4RU, UK, James Robertson, 1978).
perience is flattened out, needs are frustrated for nearly everyone”-a process which seems to be an inevitable “concomitant of modernisation”.
The scheme of job creation He shows how the opportunity to experience personal and social satisfaction outside the market has been destroyed : “I am poor, for example, when the use-value of my feet is lost because I live in Los Angeles or work on the 35th floor of a skyscraper”. He is as scathing as ever about the main beneficiaries of this process, the “scavengers who live on the side effects of yesterday’s growth : educators who live on society’s alienation, doctors who prosper on the work and leisure that have destroyed health, politicians who thrive on the distribution of welfare. . .” With analysis as powerful as ever he explains how every new need that is professionally certified translates sooner or later into a right. The political pressure for the enactment of each right generates new jobs and commodities. Each new commodity degrades an activity by which people have so far been able to cope on their own: each new job takes away legitimacy from work so far done by
the unemployed. Anyone who still takes pride in being a “problem-solver” in the economic, social, or political sphere will learn from this little book why Illich calls the mid 20th century the “Age of disabling professions”, and will benefit therefrom. The trouble is that, as in his other writings, Illich shows little interest in helping his readers to work out what
FUTURES
June 1978
Books
they would actually do if they accepted his diagnosis. For him, and for those of us who agree with him, the real challenge now is surely to find practical ways ofdecolonising the institutional~ed system based on money, jobs, and careers and of liberating ourselves and others from excessive dependence on it.
253
In his next book Illich should take the diagnosis for granted and turn the spotlight on the strategy, tactics, and forms of action which the diagnosis implies. Otherwise, there is a risk that his message will lose its impact. It might even become counterproductive, and that would be a sad irony indeed.
Taking conservation to the market John 0. S. Kennedy Conservation Eficiency
and Economic
Talbot Page 266 pages, Ll1.25 (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, 1977)
xvii +
Conservationists argue that myopic decision making, responding simply to market forces, may lead to excessive flows of natural resources from the environment, and of wastes to the environment. The nest may be fouled for future generations. This book does not attempt to allay such fears. Nevertheless, Page argues for the retention of the market system because of its potential for the efficient allocation of resources. However, the market system can be influenced by policy measures. Its efficiency should be employed, its undesirable effects removed: the market system should be allowed to operate, but within an overall policy framework, guided by conservation criteria. The first section introduces a framework for viewing material flows and their direction by the market, from extraction to production, consumption, recycling, and pollution. The second section examines the efficiency implications of some current US pricing John 0. S. Kennedy is with the Department of Economics of La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia.
FUTURES
June 1978
policies : discriminatory charges for freight and energy, and taxes on packaging material and virgin materials are discussed. Making conservation count The final section is the most thoughtprovoking, dealing with intertemporal equity, and suggestingvariousrationales for maximising discounted social welfare.i Page points out that whereas present-value criteria have the advantages of low implementation costs and of efficiency, it is quite possible that these criteria will lead to the elimination of natural resource assets, particularly those that are nonrenewable, or which regenerate at a slower rate than the rate used for discounting. Page favours a conservation criterion that ensures that each generation is selfsufficient. He argues that such a criterion would emerge as an intergenerational contract between delegates of generations taking Rawlsian original positions. Page singles out one instrument and one sub-criterion in particular as being useful for ensuring permanent livability, whilst otherwise leaving allocations to the market. It is easy to take issue with both of these. The instrument advocated is the severance tax, or a tax levied on each unit of virgin material. As a sub-criterion, a quantity-weighted price index of virgin materials would be