Employment Alternatives for Post-industrial Societies

Book: Shaun Wilson, The Struggle Over Work: The ‘End of Work’ and Employment Alternatives for Post-industrial Societies (Routledge, 2004)

Reviewed by Goetz Ottmann at http://the.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/88/1/132

Review

Excerpt:

"The promise made by Wilson is to challenge the ‘end of work’ argument that was put forward most famously by Jeremy Rifkin who argues that technological change leads to an irreversible decline in employment. Consequently, there have been various calls for a less work-centred society. The Struggle Over Work does not simply oppose this perspective with an encouraging ‘struggle for work!’, but scrutinizes the theoretical and empirical origins and facts on which the ‘end of work’ argument rests.

Wilson unravels the claim of a possible end of work from Marx, Weber and Durkheim, through to contemporary sociologists. For the classics work is the driving force that fundamentally changes, sustains and potentially destroys modern society. This line of thought finds in Wilson’s opinion a continuation in what he calls the ‘post-industrial pessimists’. Above all, it is Jürgen Habermas who most fundamentally deals a blow to the centrality of work for modern society by shifting the paradigm of social theory from work to communication. Wilson also discusses Alain Touraine who identifies an increasing weakness of labour movements and Claus Offe who takes the argument even further, claiming that full employment is no longer a realistic or desirable goal for advanced societies. Offe and others postulate that postindustrial societies need a political framework that depends less on work, which they claim to find in basic income models. Besides the strong points that Wilson takes from Touraine and Offe, his reasoning throughout the book remains essentially Habermasian.

The argument that Wilson seeks to challenge is built on four assumptions, which he draws from various theorists:

(i) technological and organizational changes are the main reason for a declining number of available jobs;

(ii) the loss of work as a central concept for society and individuals finds expression in an end of labour movements;

(iii) full employment as a goal is passé and unachievable; and

(iv) basic income models are regarded as a way of redistributing income fairly in a post-work society.

Overall, Wilson tackles this multifaceted ‘end of work’ argument mainly on empirical grounds. Employment-to-population ratios do not give any clear indication of lower employment levels. Furthermore, the British Social Attitudes Survey of 2000 reveals that people want to work even if they receive a basic income which would afford them the freedom to do without gainful employment. Moreover, the problems that beset the labour movement are reversible. As Wilson argues, ‘full employment policies may still be possible if they are politically “reinvented” and find new public support, bolstered by strengthened labour movements’ (p. 4).

On a deeper level, Wilson struggles with three different strategies that claim to prevent an end of work by either re-establishing or redefining work as an integrating force. First, the appeal of deregulated labour markets, or what Wilson calls the ‘US model’, lies in the fundamental assumption that employment is the best social policy. Deregulation, privatization and flexibilization promise to generate full employment if only a totally unhampered market was allowed to rule. There is no need for labour movements in deregulated labour markets as a just distribution of income will be provided by the invisible hand of the market.

And yet, as Wilson correctly concludes:

‘Whatever claims are made for the US model, lowering inequality is not among them’ (p. 123). However, he does not clearly point out that it fails because of the one-dimensional generation of systemic integration which has the effect of marginalizing normative integration.

Second, the most far-sighted alternative to deregulated labour markets that Wilson presents is basic income models based on the assumption that full employment as a goal is passé. Assuming an end of work, basic income models subsequently do not only provide a living for all citizens, but in addition maintain high levels of social equality. While the basic income model offers strikingly simple solutions to various contemporary problems, its central weakness is the unchanged reliance on work and taxation. Again, it is systemic integration that takes priority over normative integration.

Third and most importantly, Wilson proposes a renewal of the labour movement as a real alternative to the other models. However, while the US model and basic income model are widely discussed in the book, the reader might throughout the discussion wonder what the renewal of the labour movement could practically look like. Providing examples and statistics from 10 countries, Wilson arrives at the following fundamental proposition: Labour movements challenge the distribution of money and power, thereby opening up the ‘social question’, forcing democratic politics to address social problems. In order to be able to continue to do so, labour movements depend on the ongoing capacity to act industrially and politically."