Social Inventions is the Journal of the Institute for Social Inventions. (£15 for Institute subscription, £3 each back issue of the journal. [address]). No. 26, 1992, reprints a passage from the article Work, Who Needs It? which appeared in IC56 May 1992, and adds the following comment: If it is true as George Walford argues,… read more »
DO YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER WORK? While other things change work persists, grinning at us every Monday morning. Those who have it grumble; those without it want it. We even hear of a right to it. Unlimited education and medical care for everybody, a big detached house, a Rolls and a luxury yacht for… read more »
A NEWSPAPER headline cries: “Marx gets the workers united – against him.” [1] So what’s new? Since Marxism first appeared practically all workers, by their actions if not their thoughts, have supported its opponents. [1] (Sunday Times 11 Feb 90) OLIVER IN SKIRTS The feminists will have gained their point when men wear skirts as… read more »
SECRET SCIENCE Leo Strauss died in 1973; some of his books are now being re-issued. He thought advanced political ideas valuable but also dangerous; the Enlightenment led to Hitler. His answer was to keep scientific and philosophical thinking secret from the general body of ordinary people. (TLS 1 Dec 89). Such caution hardly seems called… read more »
An article in the TIMES (22 Mar 89) discusses employment prospects and concludes that there is no need to worry about any shortage of labour in the near future. The bulge is to be followed by a demographic trough, but the number of young people coming out of the schools to 1995 will still be… read more »
WORK Is it good or bad? On the one hand, worries about unemployment, and cries of triumph at having got more people back to work. On the other, a report that since 1979 the increasing productivity of car factories has enabled them almost to halve the number of people employed to 289,000 – and that,… read more »
OLD CAUSES and old slogans are losing their appeal; the bright young people no longer see themselves leading the masses into violent revolution. Gender and race resonate more loudly than class. Peterloo may still rank above Waterloo, but the emancipation of the slaves shines brighter than either, while the formerly exploited workers of western Europe… read more »
For ages I’ve been tempted to write dealing with one aspect or another of s.i. It seems such a rational theory and yet it is one that I will never accept because, if true, it follows that humanity is doomed never to make any real advance. IC35 arrived just as I finished – finally –… read more »
Under this title IC conducts a campaign, not against work but against the belief that more or less everybody needs work if they are to lead a satisfactory life. Here we speak of the epoch before the beginning of work, a period, far longer than the time for which work has been among us, when… read more »
The Pope has been reported (Sunday Times 3 May 87) as urging that available work be distributed fairly; he believes those without it would be happier if given some. In our youth the religious people used to be keen on a book they called the Bible. It had a lot of stories about an old… read more »