Book Review

End of Work paints a grim picture of the future

by Jeremy Rifkin
G.P. Putnam's Sons
350 pages, $32.50

Reviewed by Peter Zvalo

It's in the news every day: information about slick new technological breakthroughs, corporate downsizing, high unemployment, rising poverty levels, hopelessness and increasing crime rates. Despite the bombardment of the public by news stories describing such events, the interrelationships between these phenomena are largely ignored.

In The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin presents a compelling, disturbing, and ultimately hopeful look at the world of the future. Rifkin argues that the world is entering a new phase in history—one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs. This new phase, which Rifkin calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the result of the emergence of sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications, and other technologies that are replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry. And most of the jobs that will continue to be lost are never coming back.

Rifkin dispels many of the myths that are often promoted by today's political and industry leaders. One of these myths is that technological innovation stimulates perpetual economic growth. Rifkin contends that the conventional economic wisdom of this century which says that increased supply (resulting from gains in productivity) actually stimulates consumer demand for the goods being produced, is flawed. Rifkin makes this assertion based on his observation that the outcome of the "trickle-down-technology" argument which says that new technologies boost productivity, lower the costs of production, and increase the supply of cheap goods, which in turn, stimulates purchasing power, expands markets, and generates more jobs, has not materialized. Instead, we are witnessing unprecedented levels of technological unemployment and a precipitous decline in consumer purchasing power.

Rifkin meticulously analyzes how technology has affected the way in which people have performed work in the agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors throughout the twentieth century. With each new laborsaving technological innovation, there have been significant increases in productivity. Each innovation has also left victims in its wake—people whose previous jobs were made redundant by new technology. In the past, such victims were usually absorbed by another sector of the economy that required a new infusion of human labor. In a particularly gripping chapter describing the effects of technology on African-Americans, Rifkin presents a microcosm of the way technology will likely affect the entire economy in the coming years. The introduction of the mechanical cotton picker in 1944, which could do the work of 50 people using only one operator, was just the first of many blows that black Americans have faced in the past five decades. The subsequent erosion of manufacturing jobs has further helped to transform an exploited labor force into an economic outcast—no longer needed by the economic system.

In his analysis, Rifkin leaves out few occupations that have been, or will be, affected by technology. The livelihood of America's 152,000 librarians, for example, is in jeopardy as electronic data systems are able to search, retrieve, and electronically transmit books and articles over information networks in a fraction of the time spent in performing the same task with human labor. Not even the art of book writing is immune to automation. Rifkin points to the world's first computer-generated novel, released in 1993 to lukewarm reviews, entitled Just This Once. Three quarters of the prose in the love story was created by an Apple Macintosh computer loaded with artificial intelligence software. Just This Once sold 15,000 copies in its first printing.

Of course, not everyone is, nor will be, a loser in the new information-based economy that is emerging. A small number of workers in the so-called knowledge sector will prosper as the need for their expertise in the design, use, and repair of state-of-the-art technology increases. The knowledge sector will constitute a new elite in society, as their critical skills will elevate them to centre stage in the global economy. While some new jobs will be created by new technologies, Rifkin contends that new opportunities will not be nearly enough to absorb the millions that are made obsolete. Another winning segment of the economy is top management. Rifkin sites various statistics to emphasize that the primary beneficiaries of productivity gains and increased profit margins of the past 50 years has been top management. Perhaps most shocking is the fact that in the period between 1979 and 1988, the average incomes of CEOs in the United States increased from 29 times the income of the average manufacturing worker, to 93 times. Rifkin says that the growing gap in wages and benefits between top management and the American workforce is creating a deeply polarized society—a small cosmopolitan elite of affluent Americans enclosed inside a larger country of increasingly impoverished and unemployed persons. Such a polarization will exacerbate an already high crime rate, as the restless and discontented masses take to the streets in acts of theft and random violence.

Rifkin writes that now that the commodity value of human labor is becoming increasingly unimportant in the production process, new approaches to providing income and purchasing power, and to equitably distribute the fruits of technological progress, will need to be implemented. First, the dramatic advances in productivity will need to be matched by reductions in the number of hours worked and steady increases in salaries and wages. Unfortunately, the trend in recent years has been the opposite—Americans are working longer hours than they have been since the 1920s, and are receiving less of their share of corporate profits. This phenomenon, notes Rifkin, is the result of the introduction of laborsaving technologies that have allowed companies to eliminate workers, creating a reserve army of unemployed. Those still holding onto a job are being forced to work longer hours, partially to compensate for reduced wages and benefits. Many companies, in their quest to be profitable and "competitive" prefer to employ a smaller workforce at longer hours rather than a larger one at shorter hours. Despite overall trends, Rifkin sites several examples of progressively-minded corporations that have experimented with shortened workweeks in efforts to avoid laying off workers, with positive results.

The second solution proposed by Rifkin to counteract the impact of technology is for governments to provide greater support for what Rifkin calls the "third sector" or the "social sector". This sector of the economy is basically community service, more akin to the ancient economics of gift-giving. While such an exchange often has economic consequences to both the beneficiary and the benefactor, community service is substantially different from market activity, in which social consequences are less important than economic gains and losses. Rifkin notes that the third sector already plays an important role in the United States, and that the 1,400,000 non-profit organizations contribute about 6 percent to the economy and is responsible for 9 percent of national employment. Many services—from libraries to museums to volunteer fire departments—are being provided by the third sector, and this number will continue to grow as the importance of the market economy diminishes for a large number of people, and cash-strapped governments continue to cut back on expenditures. Rifkin proposes that individuals contributing their time to non-profit organizations be given a "shadow" wage from the public sector—a system similar to what is being currently proposed in Ontario under the "workfare" initiative. This, says Rifkin, will provide additional income to the people who most need it, while giving them a greater sense of self-worth.

The End of Work contains a wealth of information that helps to explain the current economic malaise in which the world finds itself. While most of the information focusses on the American experience, the lessons learned apply equally to Canada, and indeed to all industrialized nations. It is interesting to note that many of Rifkin's proposed solutions have, to varying degrees, already been experimented with in Europe and Canada. This is not surprising, since socialistic ideas are much more acceptable in countries such as France and Germany, and where the disparities between the rich and the poor are not nearly as pronounced as they are in the United States. To his credit, Rifkin never proposes that technological progress be stymied. Obviously, he knows that progress is an unstoppable force, but he also knows that the intellectual side of the human race needs to catch up with the advances made on the technology side. His work is an attempt to stimulate dialogue with the aim of bringing about a society that is just, a society in which all members can feel a sense of belonging and contribution. In Rifkin's own words, "The end of work could spell a death sentence for civilization as we have come to know of it...or could also signal the beginning of a great social transformation, a rebirth of the human spirit. The future lies in our hands." Are our political and economic leaders listening?