This book is well known in the field of economics, public policy and environmental studies. If the title alone doesn’t draw you in, then maybe the following question will: Could society’s age old demand for increased productivity and efficiency lead to “The End of Work” as we know it? As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. In this eye-opening book, Jeremy Rifkin argues that improvements such as automation, computerization and re-engineering mean that more goods and services can be produced with less human labor. If less people are working then who will buy all these new products that hit the market at an accelerated rate?
The author's organization webpage (www.foet.org), retrieved on March 3rd, 2011 provides a brief biographical sketch on Jeremy Rifkin as an American economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist. Rifkin is the President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of seventeen bestselling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, society, the workforce, and the environment. His most recent books include The Empathic Civilization, The Hydrogen Economy, The European Dream, The End of Work, The Age of Access, and The Biotech Century. He currently serves as an advisor to the European Union, European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU heads of state and has been influential in shaping public policy in the United States.
With global unemployment hitting an all time high and effecting virtually every sector and industry, this book is as relevant today as it was when it was first published over fifteen years ago. In the republished 2004 edition Rifkin updates the introduction to address his discontent with the old logic that advancement in productivity enhancing technology may destroy some jobs but create just as many, if not more, new jobs. Rifkin suggests that this idea of “trickle-down-technology” is just not true and does not exist. He goes on to say that many of today’s technological advances have simply allowed manufactures, retailers, farmers, service providers and government to produce far more goods and services at greater profit margins and with far less workers.
Rifkin chronicles the technological innovations and market-driven forces that are moving us to the edge of a near workless world in what he calls the “Third Industrial Revolution.” (p.xlvi) At the time this book was written more then 800 million human beings were unemployed or underemployed in the world and participating in what Rifkin called the “great migration” (p. xliii) of workers leaving jobs that technology had taken away while desperately looking for the others that it was creating. “In the United States, corporations are eliminating more then 2 million corporate jobs annually.” Every week more and more employees are being let go as others in offices and factories around the world wait in fear. Hoping to be spared one more day. (p. 3)
For most of the 1980’s it was fashionable to link foreign competition and cheap labor markets abroad with the record number of layoffs in the United States but recent in-depth studies of the U.S. manufacturing sector have proven otherwise. Noted economists Paul R. Krugman of MIT and Robert L. Lawrence of Harvard University suggest, on the basis of extensive data, that “the concern, widely voiced during the 1950’s and 1960’s, that industrial workers would lose their jobs because of automation, is closer to the truth than the current preoccupation with a presumed loss of manufacturing jobs because of foreign competition.” (p. 8) All the while corporate profits and productivity continue to rise, exclusively benefiting only the top executives and stockholders. Rifkin warns that the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots could lead to social and political upheaval on a global scale. (p.13)
It should be obvious that if capitalist producers continue to replace human labor with machines they would inevitably be “digging their own grave, as there would be fewer and fewer consumers with sufficient purchasing power to buy their products.” (p. 17) Henry Ford, to his credit, suggested that workers be paid enough to buy the products companies were producing. Otherwise, he asked, “Who would buy my cars?” (p. 24). His colleagues chose to ignore the advice. It seems today that the business community has failed to understand that by replacing workers with laborsaving technologies they have created larger numbers of unemployed and underemployed workers who lack purchasing power.
Rifkin goes on to sight several specific examples of where technology has replaced jobs in the private sector as he attempts to analyze where this new and growing “reserve army” of unemployed will look for work. This brings us to government. “By the mid-1970’s more then 19 percent of all U.S. workers had jobs in the public sector, making the government the largest employer in the United States.” (p.33) Unfortunately, government will not be the place in which job growth will occur. On the contrary, it is likely to dramatically decline due to increased deficits and an astronomical rise in the debt at all levels of government, which has focused strong attention on the need to cut spending.
Rifkin sights Frederick W. Taylor and his principles of “scientific management” several times in the book for which he attributes the “cult of efficiency” (p. 49) that so many corporations have adopted, which created the problem in the first place. In true Taylorist style, Rifkin explains that “efficiency came to mean the maximum yield that could be produced in the shortest time, expending the least amount of energy, labor and capital in the process.” (p. 49) Economic historian Daniel Bell says of him, “If any social upheaval can ever be attributed to one man, the logic of efficiency as a mode of life is due to Taylor.” (p. 50)
Rifkin explains the hierarchical management structure as the defining characteristic of the modern corporation, which led to the issue of re-engineering. He describes how every modern corporation organization chart appears as a pyramid with field staff and production workers at the bottom and an ascending staff of professional managers rising up the hierarchy, with a chief executive officer on the top of the pyramid. (p. 93) At the bottom of the corporate hierarchy is the unskilled and semiskilled worker who’s tasks are rigidly routinized along the classical lines of scientific management first adopted by efficiency expert Frederick Taylor. (p. 94) This rigid routinized work is what made those at the lower lever so easy to replace with automation technology. Yet, no one is safe. Even middle managers jobs are threatened as the trend towards flatter corporate hierarchies becomes the norm and we move into the new post-market era.
Written to address the post-market paradigm, Rifkin maintains throughout the book that we are currently in Third Industrial Revolution, which has been going on since World War II ended. The First Industrial Revolution occurred in the late 1700’s and lasted through the mid 1800’s when steam power was first developed and replaced human labor in factories and mines. Then came the Second Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1860’s and lasted through World War I and was powered by the fossil fuels, which began to “replace more and more human and animal tasks in the economic process.” (p.60) Unlike the Third Industrial Revolution, in both the First and Second Industrial Revolutions the economic niches and opportunities that opened up by these new advances in productivity created as many jobs as they eliminated.
The Third Industrial Revolution has led to the casting aside of tens of millions of workers in the agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors. (p. 162) Rifkin “worries that the Third Industrial Revolution is going to mean a few high-tech jobs for the new class of elite knowledge workers and growing long-term technological unemployment for millions of others.” (p. 205) A survey of recent technological trends and developments in the manufacturing, agricultural, and service sectors suggests that a near-workless world is fast approaching and may arrive well before society has sufficient time to either debate its implications or prepare for its full impact. (p. 106)
However, this transition to the post-market era was not made seamlessly and without a few fights along the way. Several forces of obstruction, such as the labor unions met this transition head-on. Concerned of a high-tech future that would threaten millions of jobs and weaken their collective bargaining power as well as their clout, the unions attempted to take action. Unfortunately, labor leaders were forced on the defensive; fearful of being branded as obstacles of progress, they openly embraced the new laborsaving technologies. Eventually, automation destroyed the labor unions most important weapon of all, the strike. “The new technologies allowed management to run plants with skeletal crews during strikes, effectively undermining the unions’ ability to win significant concessions at the collective bargaining table.” (p. 86)
Although the book addresses an issue that arose because the mechanistic paradigm, Rifkin takes a very humanistic approach by suggesting ideas that he hopes could act as a road map into the new world. One of less private and public sector work. A new world, Rifkin explains; “where each persons avocation and contribution to the lot of humanity and the well-being of the Earth will likely be of a far different sort than anything previously imagined.” (p. xi) Rifkin offers two main suggestions to address the issue of the lack of available work.
First, Rifkin suggest a shortening the workweek from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week so that instead of few people having all the work, all people could share in some of the work and thereby provide “increased leisure” time to everyone. This idea would require challenging the business community for a more just distribution of the productivity gains of the Third Industrial Revolution. It would also require new cross-cultural political movement based on coalescing of communities of like-minded interests, who share a vested interest in shortening the workweek. (p. 234) This suggestion also touches on the open-system model by pointing out the importance of dynamic relationships and interdependencies.
Secondly, and most importantly, Rifkin suggests strengthening the “third sector,” “civil society” or “independent sector,” which includes not-for-profit activities as an “antidote to a world increasingly defined in strictly commercial terms.” (p. xxxiii). Political Scientists, who prefer to view America as being made up of just two realms, the private and the public, often ignore the third sector. Yet it is the third sector that has traditionally played a critical mediating role between the formal private sector economy and the government, performing services and taking on tasks that the other two sectors are unwilling or incapable of handling. (p. 241)
Both of Rifkin’s suggestions as to how to deal with the post-market paradigm work hand-in-hand by allowing the skills, talents and expertise of the unemployed or underemployed to be put to use to improve the social good of the larger community and at the same time advancing one’s own well-being. With the inevitable decline in the job market, Rifkin suggest we look towards the non-profit sector where “the goal is not the accumulation of wealth but rather social cohesion.”(xxxiii) Rifkin suggests that governments will be faced with two choices for the increasing number of people with no jobs at all in the market sector. Option one, finance additional police and build more jails for to incarcerate the growing class of people that will be forced to criminal activities for survival or option two, finance alternative forms of work in the third sector. (p. 249)
In order to build up the third sector Rifkin suggests implementing a series of tax incentive programs. These programs would include “shadow wages” in the form of a deduction on personal income taxes for volunteer hours given, value-added taxes (VAT) on all nonessential goods and services, “social wages” instead of welfare for the poor in return for performing community service, and increased tax deductions for corporate philanthropy tied to productivity gains. To finance the this transition, Rifkin suggests that government funds could be also be freed up by discontinuing costly subsidies to corporations that have outgrown their domestic commitments and now operate in countries around the world. Lastly Rifkin suggests decreasing the federal governments “bloated defense budget.” (p. 268) He identifies that cost cutting of military related industries would result in a loss of some jobs but far more are likely to be created in the third sector if the savings are directly used to finance employment.
Rifkin ends the book with several examples of private and public sector organizations around the world that have successfully implemented many of the ideas that he suggests throughout the book related to shorter work weeks and third sector development. These organizations and their staffs are now reaping the benefits. Finally, Rifkin points out that society is at a crossroads and our safe transition into the next era will depend on our determination and foresight. The end of work could spell a death sentence for civilization as we know it or it could bring about a great social transformation. “The future lies in our hands.” (p. 293)
Emily Northrop’s scholarly review of The End of Work from the Journal of Economic Issues, December 1996, Vol. 30, Isssue 4; page 1219, helps to point out the fact that Rifkin never even hints at the possibility or desirability of refusing laborsaving technologies. Rather, he focuses on their consequences and our choices for dealing with those consequences. She criticizes the careless way in which Rifikin employs data to support his position. Most notable, the way in which “he fails to realize that his argument does not hinge on an absolute decline in the number of jobs but only on a more feasible decline in the employed as a percentage of the population.” Northrop’s review of the book is excellent and she ends by saying “The End of Work is an important, informative, and provocative invitation to look beyond our past to see where we are headed.”
I think this book is an excellent read although it can become a little repetitive as Rifkin is constantly reiterating his point that more work can now be done with less people. The many examples he provides are very specific and easy to understand but make for a slightly longer read then may be necessary. Rifkin’s ideas about the increased role of the third sector to supplement future unemployment from the private and public sectors due to increase automation are brilliant. I believe Rifkin accomplished what he set out to do, which was to examine promises and perils of the Third Industrial Revolution and address the complex problems that will accompany the transition into a post-market era. (p.xlvi).
I would strongly recommend this book to any graduate student in a public or business administration program because the lessons can be applied to both sectors, while at the same time maintaining a nonbiased look at the future of automation. Although several of Rifkins concepts are slightly outdated, the bases for his arguments are just a relevant today, if not more, then when it was first written. I would also recommend this book to anyone that has ever lost a job to re-engineering or corporate downsizing. Lastly I think all non-profit sector managers should read this book because it makes a very strong case for the growing importance of the third sector.