ENVIRONMENT, TECHNOLOGY
AND THE POST-LABOUR SOCIETY
9/4/92
THE 'PROBLEM' OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN A HI-TECH, ENVIRONMENT CONSCIOUS
AGE.
"(Alan Greenspan, head of US Federal Reserve) ... finally after
two years of insisting that things would get better, he had to
make the admission all Americans dreaded hearing: the US economy
was deteriorating and he really had no answers.
"Greenspan, in a sense, was conceding defeat - the "pause",
as he had called his search for a remedy, had been the easing of
monetary policy. He had lowered interest rates nine times through
1991 but without any impact. He had been unable to kickstart the
world's largest economy....
"......Each day an average of 4,000 Americans are being
retrenched, this in what Bush had called a "modest recovery".The
first wave took the farmers and small business people with it.
This new wave, the "double dip recession " is cutting a swath
through large corporations: General Motors 74,000 jobs gone, Sears
33,000, IBM 20,000, AT&T 14,000 and so on. Bush had vowed to
create 30 million jobs in eight years. Industry groups estimate
that 1 million have been lost permanently since he came to power.
"......The big difference between this recession and
previous ones is that this is a "white collar recession". While
thousands of blue collar workers are also being offloaded, many of
their executives this time are joining them in the dole queues.
(In the 1981-82 recession, white collar jobs increased by
750,000.) Most of the jobs being axed are unlikely to return."
from "Battle Hymn of a Republican" - Sydney Morning Herald
4/1/92.
THE HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF UNEMPLOYMENT
The first point I want to make here is that unemployment is not
necessarily an indication of general economic disaster. It is only
our reaction to it that may be disastrous in broader economic
terms.
Recession or not, there is no particular problem for developed
countries in obtaining or producing basic commodities. It is
entirely the issue of PROVIDING OCCUPATIONS (and thereby
DISTRIBUTING commodities) to the populace that is at the
foundation of the outcry against recession. "Give me a job!" cry
the 1 million (in Aust), or so the story goes.
Unemployment has taken such a central position in the neurosis of
our evolving society that it now seems the only reason to do
anything anymore is to create employment. The only counterweight
to this political singlemindedness is the knowledge that we must
attempt to come to terms with environmental constraints on human
activity.
Secondly I want to argue that environmental limits and new
efficient labour displacing technologies have far exceeded, as
causes of unemployment, fluctuating rates of growth . Again,
global unemployment does not indicate global economic decay but
merely a decay in the economy's ability to meet old expectations
of how it should behave - ie not a decay at all but a qualitative
transformation. The emerging ecological and technological factors
are economically acceptable in every way except in that they are
not employment creating.
It's worth exploring the employment-technology- environment
equation a little here to observe the changing of terms. It is
true that mechanisation during the industrial revolution created
more jobs than it destroyed, but the advent of automation, where
the machines, instead of requiring human operators, begin to "work
themselves" (replacing mental as well as physical activity) is
reversing the effect. This explains the "white-collar"
unemployment phenomenon described in the article quoted above (re
Greenspan). As we move into the information economy, as the value
in commodities resides more in the information contained within
them (research, design, patents, advertising etc), we should
consider that information use is in fact MORE automatable than
material production ever was. Accelerated to super-human speeds
and volumes via computers, information is infinitely reproducible
and reprocessable, far more so than materials. Furthermore,
computers begin to take on functions that not only replace human
labour but also new functions that were never 'humanly' possible.
I would suggest that allowing the credit- driven "binge" of the
80's to occur was the first response by governments to the
encroaching threat to employment posed by technology. As the
requirement for labour per unit of production dropped, total
production was encouraged to expand unrestrainedly to compensate
and maintain the level of employment.
In essence the "binge" didn't work, except to delay the onset of
the circumstances we are currently experiencing. The crash of 87
and the debt-driven "hangover" that brought us into the 90's were
a recognition that the party couldn't go on forever. Environmental
concerns have meanwhile taken centre stage to vie for precedence
with economic concerns and will serve to prevent the party
starting up again in anything like its former glory.
UNEMPLOYMENT: SOLUTIONS ON OFFER
So given the global and historical scope of the problem why are
politicians humbling themselves for not having been better
managers, why so eager to take the blame (or at least blame each
other)? Is it because more dangerous than the idea that its all
their fault is the admission that it is out of control, beyond
their potency to address? Or perhaps they don't KNOW what's
happening? Or that the real adjustments, if they can glimpse them,
require measures so deeply resonant, so transgressive of old
assumptions, power relationships and so on that it seems better
left to future history to sort out the winners and losers?
Well political solutionists do persist within and without
government. A government or an opposition group is moribund
without solutions to offer on cue, however implausible under
concerted analysis they may be.
A common thread in all of them seems to be the myth of the
"turnaround" or recovery to get things back to "normal". The left
and right differ around whether an employment recovery should
manifest in the public or private sector. Keating feels pressure
to reduce monetary restraints from investors and employers but
also to do the opposite from advisors with an eye on the deficit.
It is likely there'll be relief measures - some direct expenditure
on public sector jobs (though less jobs than will be lost) plus
technical education to fill what new places the advancement of
technology is to provide. This training process will of course be
necessary to staff the march of technology and the nation's
ongoing quest to maintain a competitive edge and structural
compatibility with the rest of the world. However these new
positions will only take the place of the far larger number of
jobs they render obsolete. If we succeed in maintaining a foothold
in the technology race (the economic version of the arms race) we
may achieve a recovery in growth, but it will be growth without
employment. This prospect is becoming more widely acknowledged as
some economic indicators begin to hint at an upswing. (Expansion
of the education "sector" to soak up some of the non-working
population would also impact favourably on unemployment figures -
an obvious electoral plus.)
Salvation through Export?
The broadest consensus, at least among
current contenders for government, seems to be that salvation lies
in export drive. This is rational within a certain context - it
all depends how nationalistic is your world view and thus your
view of the problem. It's obvious every nation cannot be a net
exporter (if one country sells more than it buys, somewhere
another country must buy more than it sells - unless we export to
Mars). Furthermore, one country's competitive gain is simply
another's loss. Our nationalist export drive will pale in
comparison to the emerging US self-interest. Percentage
unemployment in Britain is just as high as here - 10% the worst
level since the war. The world congeals into competitive trade
blocs because all the developed nations, big exporters included,
are experiencing the same social/ economic problems - and
pressures on governments to improve conditions at home are so
great that they will make sacrifices in civilised international
policy to alleviate them.
That aside, the idea is that greater national income from exports
means more money to employ for public and/or private sectors.That
doesn't defy logic but I would argue, even if Australia achieved
such a goal - to turn the tables on the rest of the world - the
effects would be no more than a mild retardant against the
inexorable effects of technological displacement of human labour -
and it is the pressure for international competitiveness that will
itself dictate the adoption of such technologies (or perhaps a cut
in wages, but I'll get to that shortly). Consider also that back
to "normal" according to Liberal and Labour parties seems to mean
around 6% unemployment - ie 60% of the current level is considered
normal, or even as approximating "full employment"! This is the
politically manageable number wherein the unemployed sector become
once again a minority of diminished electoral significance.
Wage Cuts?
Then there's the wage cutting option - to stop workers
"pricing themselves out of a job" as John Howard would have it, to
cut the cost of human labour to a level competitive with machine
labour.
The appeal of this to some in Australia is that it puts us in line
with cheap-labour based countries in the emerging Asian economic
bloc, on whom Australia is currently pinning its hopes of finding
alliances against the US and European blocs. (An important reason
why Liberal Party policy must, via GST, shift its tax base away
from wages is that their agenda is also to exert significant
downward pressure on wages.)
Stimulus to Labour Intensive, Ecologically Benign Industries?
Here we have the targeting of certain industries that are both
ecologically neutral and labour intensive. This locks us out in
the competition stakes - for the reasons already covered as to why
labour is displaced to begin with, ie: the basic cheapness of
automation. Therefore it must be considered feasible only in
isolationist terms, away from import-export and into self
provision. For Australia this is not an unacceptable course,
however it does overlook the future ecological gains that may be
had via technology. It sacrifices technological evolution for
employment. While this too does sustain logical analysis I will
argue (if i need to) a bit further on that its less desirable
among alternatives.
Note:**Some readers may have by this time decided
that I'm in a position of simply accepting "technological
determinism", the moulding of society via the evolution of
technology along capital- imperative lines and creating a
technocratic power- elite. What I am accepting is that the
evolution/refinement of technology offers opportunities even as it
undermines established economic and social balances. Technological
"opportunism" (as opposed to determinism), if you will, means
technology offers us choices, some of which may not be simply
capital driven and could be broadly empowering. It depends who's
making the choices.
Public Sector Employment?
Finally there's the tree planting (and
hospital building if you're on the lefter end of the green
spectrum) school of thought. This is basically public sector
employment dependent on government revenue. To create a
significant "solution" (or a symptom-attack you could call a
solution), government would have to radically escalate its tax
base to provide wages and project infrastructure, thus driving
investment offshore etc - so we wind up isolationist again.
Furthermore, how long can such a strategy continue? How many trees
can you plant (how many hospitals can you build)? What happens
afterwards? To illustrate such an argument, here follows another
SMH article citing Senator John Coulter upon his assumption of the
Democrats leadership (if you can accept anything the dailies are
likely to say about Democrats, Greens etc as accurate reportage).
"(His critics)... he says, fail to understand the
inter-relationship between the environment, the economy and
Australia's level of indebtedness
"For example, he argues, the conversion of
Australian homes to solar energy over five years would stimulate
the economy, create many jobs, reduce the level of greenhouse gas
emissions and end resource depletion. It would also reduce the
contribution of overcapitalised power stations to the foreign
debt." (SMH 5/10/91)
I applaud all of this except the bit about "stimulate the economy,
create many jobs" which I find extraordinary. In five years the
conversion will be finished and the "converters" will be out of a
job, along with all the people who used to work on the central
power grid. Also people living in these converted homes will no
longer need to buy fuel which is hardly an economic stimulus.
In fact these people are very interesting. They have been to an
extent freed, and could pursue their freedom further in areas like
producing some or all of their own food etc, freed from the kinds
of need that the whole idea of 'the economy' seems so desperately
to be trying to fulfill for them. The only problem is who are
they? If they have their own homes they're certainly not
everybody. Those who acquired their homes (rather than perhaps
inheriting them) probably did so via some kind of intensive
involvement in "the economy" and now they expect to waltz away
with the rewards and stop buying, selling, exchanging, employing
etc because they can get it all at home now with a little help
from the sun.
What about the rest of the community coming after them? When
access to capital flow (via employment) breaks down how do you
break into the solar-house- garden club if you can't buy in? Well,
lets come back to that a bit further on..
GROWTH IN UNEMPLOYMENT HERE TO STAY?
When exactly DID we ever have anything like full employment
anyway? In 1991, as the jobless rate was still climbing to 10%,
the figure generally agreed as a goal was 6% unemployment. At that
time 10% meant disaster while 6% was deemed to be perfectly
alright and even floated as a definition of "full employment". As
6% looked further and further out of reach there was talk of 8% in
the foreseeable future. There has been virtual silence on such
figures since. Better not to talk about it now.
In any case, official unemployment figures do not include many
people who might in "brighter" economic times choose to be in
employment. These include young people choosing to go on to
tertiary education instead, and families becoming dependent on
single breadwinners. It is also customary for statistics to
designate even those who work only one day or one hour a week as
being fully employed. The figures are further qualified by the
aging of the population and the increased percentage in
retirement. In these contexts, those "out of work" certainly
number well over 1 million, maybe closer to 2?
While the idea that things can go back to the way they were and
that some time in the future everyone can have a job again has yet
to face major dissent, there is growing silence on the subject.
Might I suggest a reasonable expectation for unemployment in the
long term, ie a semi-stable destination or resting point to be
more in the vicinity of 20-30%? And that's in official figures..
IS UNEMPLOYMENT REALLY THE PROBLEM?
Well, what's so great about work anyway?
The basic problem of unemployment is one of poverty - its not
really the job its the paycheck right? Some attach feelings of
self-esteem to labour but really where's the self esteem in doing
a job created solely for the purposes of reducing unemployment and
serving no other useful function? Its like the dole you get when
you're not getting the dole, plus you're losing 40 hours of your
life a week to it. I would gain no self-esteem there. I'd feel
insulted, mollycoddled, pacified. The activity of life would be
underpinned by an insufferable meaninglessness.
But as I've tried to convey, it doesn't seem a viable option
anyway. Unemployment is to continue growing and few independent
observers (ie not contenders for government or business
propagandists) expect a reversal except those arguing in the most
narrow and increasingly dishonest terms. I think its finished,
kaput, finito, that's all folks. It's knock-off time.
I want to suggest that rather than seeing an image of unemployment
and economic disaster we could be witnessing the natural and
inevitable phasing out of employment as the centre of life, as
part of an economic adjustment to newly evolved technological
factors and ecological awareness. The question at hand is not how
to stop it but how to react and adapt to it.
I'm reminded of something I've seen cited a number of times by
environmentalists - the chinese symbol for crisis, represented by
two characters,
(sorry no graphics today - dn)
the second of which is a symbol denoting opportunity - ie: in
every crisis lies an opportunity.
The distribution of needs within society can no longer be simply
hung onto employment. That's the crisis. The poverty question has
to be shifted away from employment. Our problem can no longer be
seen as one of employment it has to been seen more raw, as a
problem of distribution.
The opportunity is that we can all knock off early.
Keynes himself, the virtual godfather of much postwar government
economic policy, foresaw this in his "Economic Possibilities for
our Grandchildren" (1930) noting that:
"we are being afflicted with a new disease... namely
*technological unemployment*. This means unemployment due to our
discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the
pace at which we can find new uses for labour."
Glimpsing the opportunity within the crisis, a crisis he sees not
only in economics but in human purpose, he asks:
"Will this be a benefit? If one believes at all in the
real values of life, the prospect at least opens up the
possibility of benefit. Yet I think with dread of the readjustment
of the habits and instincts of the ordinary man, bred into him for
countless generations, which he may be asked to discard within a
few decades..."
Writing the above in 1930, I imagine Keynes' grandchildren would
be adults by now. The notions contained in it (the "leisure
society" and all that) were common discussion as we entered the
eighties and the computer-consumer revolution, but have since been
kicked almost to death.
1980'S: THE "NEW RIGHT" AGENDA
I've already suggested that unleashing the boom of the 80's was
the first reaction to the emergence of post- industrial reality,
to delay the effects on employment by expanding overall activity.
It saw the rise too of Reagan-Thatcherism. The historical problems
in the (labour)market were addressed by bolstering the freedom and
influence of the market but of course this set the stage for the
problems to re-emerge even larger, once the boom went bust.
That period lasted long enough to blast post-industrial ideas off
the information channels and it seems they've yet to be recalled.
Meanwhile a "new right" philosophy emerged to perpetuate the idea
that all problems were to be solved within the market, most
importantly that a vibrant market would still deliver jobs.
Behind the carving out of this apparently anachronistic position
was the recognition by the existing "haves" that post- industrial
conditions threatened to instigate a new basis of redistribution
away from them. In response they sought to fight for the right to
allow technology-delivered wealth to concentrate with them through
their ownership of that technology, wealth which used to be
distributed to (now expendable) employees. It was (is) an attempt
to maintain a technocratic power-based control of distribution in
place of any possible socially oriented form of distribution that
might arise. There was a concerted attack on "welfarism".
So I would put it that this question of having to review the
notion of hanging distribution onto employment in a
post-industrial age, is central to understanding the history of
80's and 90's - and the current state of left/right dialectics.
Greater prominence to the market and the introduction of
enterprise bargaining (bargaining for a job) would add the double
bonus to the technocrats of a huge and impoverished pool of
potential labour, increasingly willing to lower the price of their
toil in an effort to compete with each other and with the
cost-efficiency of automated systems.
That's the dark side of "technological opportunism" and that's the
side that's been overwhelmingly visible till now. The visible
opposition has largely been a humanist ideological resistance
lacking a clear alternative direction - a gallery of critics whose
attacks merely default to the status quo. But the 'status quo'
cannot survive. It is already merely a nostalgic myth about the
past. The world is changing. 20th Century economics won't cut it
in the 21st Century.
REDISTRIBUTION OF WORK ?
To elucidate again the other side, the other opportunity, I quote
more Keynes from same passage in "Economic Possibilities for our
Grandchildren":
"The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it
will be those peoples who can keep alive, and cultivate into a
fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell
themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the
abundance when it comes."
Yet Keynes remained aware of the crisis that would still manifest
in human purpose:
"For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong
in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be
contented...
"...to make what work there is still to be done to be
as widely shared as possible. Three hour shifts or a fifteen hour
week may put off the problem for a great while..."
So here is the idea of a redistribution of work (into little bits)
but how or whether at all this is linked to the distribution of
"abundance" isn't spelled out. He seems more interested in the
psychological necessity to distribute work. Does work remain the
central or sufficient means for life?
The problem of breaking up work into little bits that can be
shared around is that unless there are measures to counteract it,
you're only breaking up the same amount of distributed wealth into
little bits, so everyone only gets a little bit instead of a
satisfactory amount. Not quite what we had in mind? Suppose we say
then that each little bit of work is worth a lot more dollars, so
we can work a little bit but get a lot or enough in return.
Alright.
This proposes an equation where high employment and reduced
production (for environmental goals) are both achieved by sharing
the work around with a fairly dramatic increase in the overall
cost of labour. This is valid, although the cost-effects on
production would be just the same as those I've earlier discussed.
It's not a "competitive" production base - it's a nationalist-
isolationist scenario again. This too is valid though I have a
doubt about work sharing in regard to many jobs, particularly
those involving technology management that will require a high
level of specialist knowledge and extensive training (it's a lot
of preparation for a three hour shift).
Is there yet another alternative? So much for the supply side.
What if we looked at the whole scenario to see if it might suggest
measures to reduce DEMAND for employment?
To quote Barry Jones:
"Among...(those currently)... in work there are many
who would do other things - study, return to domestic work,
travel, pursue hobby and craft interests - but for income
dependence and the fear of being regarded useless and worthless by
withdrawing from work. On the other hand, there may be...people
who are desperate to obtain work, under almost any circumstances.
The most humane way to handle labour-force problems is to assist
those who want to get out of work to do so without trauma, and to
provide income support, while encouraging those who want to get
into work to do so." (Sleepers Wake 1982 p.142-3)
This alternative advocates a means of distribution that is
de-linked from labour and still offers the possibility of
operating under zero or negative growth conditions (which exchange
economics can't) whenever required to do so by environmental
conditions - ie: when the screws are on we get less, but the lines
of distribution don't freeze up.
So this brings us to a Guaranteed Adequate Income scheme (GAI)
such as exists in the policies of the Democrats and some Green and
some left parties. However in most (all?) cases this seems to
propose GAI as a compassionate adjunct to questionable programs to
restore or redefine "full employment" rather than the crucial
economic instrument GAI could be considered and promoted to be.
For the record it is also buried somewhere in ALP policy. The 1975
Australian Commission of Inquiry into Poverty (aka the Henderson
Report) recommended the introduction of a GAI, or GMI (guaranteed
minimum income), for all those up to 20% above the poverty line,
replacing nearly all specific benefits. The report was published
in April 1975, the Whitlam government was dismissed in November
1975. The ALP adopted a principle of GMI but without specifying
the exact form or cost of its future implementation.
A NATIONAL STRATEGY?
Such an economic strategy would still be inherently isolationist,
an "island Australia" economics. A high- labour-cost or high-tax
(to finance GAI) environment will be a threat to capital profits
and a discouragement to investment. While the problem of capital
movements off-shore could be controlled there is no such means of
attracting it on-shore, at least not from the usual sources. Not
in a position to take the rest of the world with it, Australia
would have to pioneer its benign (and by definition uncompetitive)
economy relying on its own resources.
I only point out that this is a radical course and that "island
Australia" is a concept currently under attack by the mainstream
consensus. However it does concur with the traditional ideology
(not the latterday ESD ideology) of the green movement, being one
that embraces self-sufficiency and decentralisation of economy.
The ideal would of course be to have a global economic strategy,
but this will be more the choice of larger nations or economic
blocks, not the Australian political process. If you identify such
a need for action you try it on as wide a scale as available. If
there is no global solution, go for a national one. If no national
one you have to try for a community or personal one.
Thinking nationally there's still a few bugs in the system - ie a
cash based GAI scheme - as there's a limit to the amount of tax
you can actually raise in such a restrained economic environment
and whether its enough to provide sufficient income support.
This is where we come back to those people in their solar powered
houses I mentioned before. Their self- provision actually worsens
the external economy by the withdrawal of their production and/or
consumption (and land and resources of course). This makes it all
the worse for those outside the fence (cum stone wall with barbed
wire?).
SELF-RELIANCE AND PROPERTY
I recently picked up a book on self-sufficiency and early in the
piece was a title heading "The Land You Own". Well that pretty
much sums it up doesn't it?
What about renting? Well if we forget the fact that we started
this journey with the issue of unemployment and the subsequent
lack of means to do things like pay rent on a tin shed let alone a
slab of land with a fertile garden, if we forget that for the
moment, there is another problem.
I know few renters who have managed to stay in the same place for
more than a year or two. Compare that with a figure for
establishing a mature permaculture. It could take up to 60 years.
In any case even establishing a viable vegie garden could, as
self- provision became more and more the way to go, lend
considerable value to a rental property. It would be like the
tenants who now slap a new coat of paint around their flat. The
landlord loves it, seeing how much better it makes his property
look. If he hasn't the gall to raise the rent on them he might
simply decline to renew the lease and get a new lot of tenants in
at a higher rate.
I am not aware that people like Ted Trainer, great critic of the
status quo that he is, have ever addressed this problem - that
when you accept a negative growth situation and the resulting
collapse of profit/exchange economics you get a freezing up of
property - some people will have lots of land and others won't
have any and there will be no means of opening that up. So what
you will have is a neo-feudal situation - a peerage of land-owners
(and technocrats).
At the moment a fifth of commercial (I don't know how much
residential) space in Sydney sits empty while people sleep on the
streets or in refuges. Again it is not a problem of lack of
resources. It's lack of access. Unemployment and poverty are not
resource problems. It's lack of access.
The development of an ecological society, be it national, global
or communal, goes beyond economics pure. It may also hinge on some
pretty radical redefinitions of property, chiefly land/housing
reform. Unless we are to see a major expansion of public housing,
then monopolisation and vacant possession of privately held living
space (including currently designated commercial space - won't
the demand for office space drop proportional to employment
rates?) ought to be curtailed by law so that everyone has a chance
to establish a position of greater self-reliance. In short,
hoarders of idle property would be obliged to sell up - and do so
at whatever price they were offered. This is also an environment
wherein rent ceilings can be effectively applied because the
choice to withdraw property from the rental market is eliminated.
At least it would be a start.
Once food, housing and people themselves are taken off the market
(by creating such opportunities for self- provision, turning
consumers into producers etc and/or providing certain economic
guarantees), a market could then continue in a healthy way, no
longer ruling life and dealing in the fear of homelessness and
hunger. Work could become less bound to fear and survival and more
into imagination and adventure and the refinement of the quality
of life. The market and/or social economy and the fruits of
economic activity could be guided by law and where necessary
restricted without fatally compromising the welfare and wellbeing
of people.
SUMMARY
The post-industrial vision of the early eighties wasn't naive
utopianism. It was simply naive to expect to have it handed to us
on a platter rather than have to fight for it.
"Jobs" aren't coming back. As full employment becomes less and
less to represent a plausible norm, the term "unemployment",
implying a deficiency waiting to be corrected, becomes a
misnomer.
Let's talk "non-employment", implying choice of lifestyle, and
(rather than collapse) talk economic adjustment to ecological
enlightenment and potentially desirable advancements in
technology. Let's try viewing loss of jobs as liberation from
drudgery - and work when (and at what) we want to rather than have
to.
Let's look at promoting a revision of distribution that serves to
actually distribute rather than monopolise and force its
production base to mindlessly, endlessly expand.
Finally, let's throw out a dead argument rather than continue
flogging a dead horse - that horse being "jobs jobs jobs" (flog
flog flog). Forget it.
David Nerlich
9/4/92
NOTES AND FURTHER CONVERSATIONS
