De-industrialising society

Phasing out labour-saving technology

In many cases, the phasing out of labour-saving technology will have to be undertaken as a matter of urgency, simply in order to prevent the collapse of key services, which can no longer be sustained on the present capital-intensive basis. The cost of the educational system in both the UK and the US has been rising much faster than GNP.

In the UK the point has now been reached where it has become seriously short of capital. Predictably the reaction is to reduce the number of teachers rather than abandon the use of the elaborate and totally unnecessary technological equipment (language laboratories, audio visual aids, computers, etc.) with which they have been equipped during the last decades. This extraordinary misguided set of priorities must be reversed. The equipment is expendable – schools without teachers just do not work.

The inputs to modern agriculture are not only increasingly costly, but their supply is particularly precarious. Shortages of fertilisers and pesticides are becoming increasingly common. Phosphates mainly come from Morocco and could be cut off at a moment’s notice for political or other reasons.

The oil requirements of modern agriculture are notoriously high. It is variously estimated that 5-10 units of fossil fuels are required in the US to produce one unit of food energy. In the interests of avoiding serious discontinuities, agricultural machinery and chemicals must be phased out as rapidly as possible. This will of course have a solution multiplier effect by creating employment, restoring local communities and reducing pollution.

These processes will occur anyway, as the price of capital equipment becomes prohibitive. It is simply a question of accelerating them and synchronising them with those other measures which would make available the trained labour force together with the appropriate small-scale technology it would require to replace capital-intensive inputs.

Fiscal measures should be introduced to accelerate this trend. This would include two taxes proposed in A Blueprint for Survival. [9]

1. A raw materials tax. This would be proportionate to the availability of the raw material in question, and would be designed to enable our reserves to last over an arbitrary period of time, the longer the better, on the principle that during this time our dependence on such raw materials would be reduced.
2. An amortisation tax. This would be proportionate to the estimated life of the product, thus it would be 100 percent for products designed to last no more than a year, and would then be progressively reduced to zero percent for those designed to last 100 or more years. Obviously this would penalise short-lived products, especially disposable ones, thereby reducing resource utilisation and pollution. Plastics, for example, which are so remarkable for their durability, would be used only in products where this quality is valued, and not for single-trip purposes. This tax would also encourage craftsmanship and employment-intensive techniques in general.

In addition:

1. A transport tax would encourage the use of local products which are also likely to be less energy intensive and of a more renewable nature.
2. A legal amortisation rate for equipment that would have to be phased out as a result of the implementation of this programme could be appropriately raised.

The adoption of these measures would give rise to at least three problems:

1. Producers would experience difficulty in competing with foreign companies using more capital intensive methods. The solution lies in persuading other countries to adopt the same programme. This may not be so difficult because its adoption in one country would go a long way towards causing others to do likewise. In any case, a discriminatory import duty could be exacted on the produce of countries which had failed to adopt such a policy.
2. Prices are likely to rise because of the increased cost of production, though this is only true vis-a-vis what they once were, not what they would have been, had the programme not been adopted.
3. The consequent fall in output would make it no longer possible to pay people the same wage. Such a situation could provide an opportunity for initiating the phasing out of disruptive social services, to make people realize what these extremely inefficient over-centralized state services actually cost them and their families in terms of taxes they have to pay to finance them and the inflationary pressures they give rise to. It should not be difficult to persuade people to forgo their claims on such services in return for a cash payment which could be but a fraction of the per family cost (especially in view of the increasingly low quality of the services provided). This payment would partly at least compensate people for their reduced purchasing power. Providing people with more money in this way would not be inflationary, since, by the same token, we would reduce government expenditure by a greater amount.

At the same time, a considerable effort would be made to change the pattern of consumption so that money could be diverted from the purchase of capital-intensive goods and services to that of more labour-intensive ones. In an industrial society, consumer products are acquired less for the comfort and convenience they might procure than for reasons of social prestige. This being so, to bring about changes in this pattern of consumption, it would suffice to induce corresponding changes in the determinants of social prestige.

The advertising industry has perfected the art of obtaining the connivance of socially prestigious figures in bringing about changes in consumption patterns favouring the commercial success of particular wares. Their services could be obtained for bringing about in similar manner, changes to the present pattern of consumption which favour the success of our programme. The changes required are in any case those already under way as part of the growing reaction to the industrial way of life. Let us consider some of them.

In the last few years ‘self-sufficiency’ has become an ‘in’ word. More and more people grow their own fruit and vegetables. This trend could be radically accelerated. We could follow the example of Italy where 5 million urban dwellers still indulge in part-time agriculture. People could be encouraged to acquire small-holdings in rural areas. The current tendency toward favouring large agricultural enterprises fiscally and otherwise could and indeed must, be reversed. If this were generalised, it would have an impressive solution multiplier effect by leading people to identify themselves with rural communities.

It would also provide them with a new interest in life, a veritable new goal structure, all of which is of key importance to people lost in the anonymous world of large cities and increasingly deprived of any purpose in life. At the same time, more allotments must be created near city centres. They should be regarded as a high priority land us. More and more space could be allocated to this end, as the infrastructure of industrial society is gradually dismantled. All this could be encouraged in many ways. Gardening and agriculture could play an important part in the curricula of schools, and school time could be allocated to work on allotments or farms.

Also, as a reaction to industrially produced food, there is a growing interest in cooking, a creative and satisfying occupation, which should also figure prominently in school curricula. Cooking schools should also be opened for adults. Cooking skills could figure advantageously among the desirable social accomplishments of our post-industrial society, as indeed they did in the pre-industrial one. Another desirable accomplishment is the playing of musical instruments. An orchestra, however amateurish, makes a greater contribution to a festive occasion than does the most elaborate juke box or hi-fi set.

What is, in fact, required is the ritualisation of economic activity, in the sense in which aggression can be ritualised – that is to say by channelling it in those directions which cause the minimum damage to the social and physical environment. This means producing goods and services which are not only labour intensive, and make use of naturally occurring materials, but which have a largely aesthetic and ritualistic appeal, instead of those which are purely utilitarian and which are much more destructive, both directly and indirectly, by usurping functions that should be fulfilled by families and communities.

This principle, needless to say, goes quite contrary to the utilitanan ethic, which is so strong in such countries as the UK that anything that is aesthetically pleasing tends to be regarded as immoral. As our programme is implemented, conditions will increasingly favour the “ritualization of economic activity”.

But what happens to those who are already unemployed and those who might lose their employment, in spite of the measures we would take to prevent it? The only solution that satisfies the other requirements of the programme would be to enrol them into a new organisation, which could be known as the ‘Restoration Corps’.

Its role would be primarily to clean up the mess left by a century and a half of industrialisation – restore derelict land, replant hedgerows, restore forests, clean up tips where poisonous waste threatens ground water reserves.

The Restoration Corps would fulfil those uneconomic tasks necessary for the success of our programme, so that normal employment would not be adversely affected. It would be organised into local groups, each one responsible for work in its own home area. This is important, since more enthusiasm can be mobilised for cleaning up one’s own locality than somebody else’s and life in the Corps must be made as attractive as possible since the financial rewards would be minimal.

All unemployed people would automatically have to join the Restoration Corps, unemployment benefits being altogether eliminated. This is very important since unemployment is not merely a question of material but also of social deprivation, leading to loss of self-esteem, and causing demoralisation, broken marriages and social deviancy. In this way the welfare system could be further dismantled.

After graduating from the Restoration Corps, a young person would be made to serve in the Defence Corps, a militia equipped with light weapons only, and organised on a local basis, with periods of duty for several weeks each year, as in the Swiss Army. The present massive expenditure on armaments together with the growing role it plays in international trade, is one of the scandals of our time.

Heavy equipment is unnecessary for the defence of one’s homeland. The Vietnam War saw the victory of people over machines. It showed that a peasant army, if its morale is high enough, can defeat an army equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry.

Both the local Restoration Corps and the local Defence Corps would help build up local patriotism and the spirit of public service which are quite essential for the effective decentralisation of society.

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The phasing out of consumer products

As the programme is implemented, so would people have less money to spend on consumer products. This means that at the same time the need for consumer products must be correspondingly diminished, which, as we have seen, could only be done by restoring the functioning of those natural systems which once provided the benefits for which consumer products provide mere compensations.

One of the most important ways of achieving this is by removing such compensations in as painless a manner as possible. Thus, by reducing the number of consumer goods which people require, it would no longer be necessary for two members of the same family to go out to work.

It is also only in this way that small farms could conceivably survive, for although a small farm can provide a satisfying way of life, it cannot supply the financial surplus necessary to satisfy today’s consumption pattern. The same principle holds good for artisans and small shopkeepers. The maintenance of today’s consumption pattern is equally incompatible with the survival of the ecosystems which make up the real world.

The consumer goods we wish to phase out must simply be removed from the market. Taxing them is not sufficient, as they would possibly still be regarded as desirable acquisitions, while their growing inaccessibility would lead people to feel that without them their standard of living was correspondingly low. By removing them from the market, on the other hand, life styles would change to accommodate their absence and the cost of living would thereby be reduced.

Since consumer goods start off as luxuries and gradually become necessities, as life styles change to accommodate them, we would have to start off by phasing out luxuries which have not yet been transformed into necessities. In this category one can include colour television sets, private motor yachts, snowmobiles, large automobiles, videotape recorders, electric toothbrushes, electric carving knives, etc. From the point of view of the consumer this is unlikely to cause too great a hardship.

From the point of view of the producer, it would undoubtedly do so if other activities were not phased in to replace their manufacture. This, however, presents few problems, in view of the massive new investment programme, described above, in more desirable and sustainable enterprises.

To suggest that dish-washing machines and other domestic appliances should be phased out, would obviously meet with instant opposition. They may be needed in a family consisting of but two or three people and in which both husband and wife must go out to work. They would become quite unnecessary, however, once the family had become re-established and eight to ten people once more inhabited the same house, and also once each family required but a single wage earner for ifs support. The gradual phasing out of luxury consumer products would have a solution multiplier effect.

In all these ways we would slowly achieve the Gandhian ideal for a nation state as an association of “village republics” loosely organised into larger social groupings, and in which economic activities were carried out on the smallest possible scale, so as to interfere as little as possible with the social and physical environment.

What is particularly important is that popular enthusiasm should be aroused for the social philosophy which underlies this programme. At present there is considerable disenchantment with the benefits of modern industry, while conventional wisdom is losing much of its credibility. It is but a question of time for this disenchantment to yield to total disillusionment, and for conventional wisdom to become correspondingly discredited in the face of the ever more obvious failure of the expedients it prescribes for solving our worsening problems.

At some point, panic will set in and people will grope about frantically for an alternative social philosophy with an alternative set of solutions. The most attractive is likely to be the most radical-the one which provides the best vehicle for expressing the reaction to the values of industrialism. The ecological social philosophy best answers these requirements.

Right and left wing movements provide but alternative recipes for baking the industrial cake and alternative ways of distributing its slices. We would be offering a totally different cake, the only one whose ingredients are likely to be available, also the only one that can satisfy our real needs and those of society and the world of living things on which we depend for our welfare, indeed for our very survival.

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References

1.	A. Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities”. Scientific American September 1965.
2.	Carroll Wilson, et al., Man’s Impact on the Global Enrironment: the study of critical environmental problems (SCEP). MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass 1971.
3.	Stephen Boyden, “Evolution of Health”. The Ecologist Vol.13, No.8, August 1973.
4.	Paul Samuelson, Economics. McGraw Hill, New York, 1967.
5.	Georg Borgstrom, Too Many. Collier-Macmillan, New York, 1973.
6.	Karl Polanyi, “Our Obsolete Market Mentality”. The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 6, 1974.
7.	Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Charles Scribner, New York, 1930.
8.	Andrew McKillop, personal communication.
9.	Edward Goldsmith, Robert Allen et al., “A Blueprint for Survival”. The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 1, January 1972.

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