What is a medium? – translation from Wolfgang Hagen part two

Acknowledging the fact to which Walter Seitter also refers, namely that the term was injected into an Aristotelian text where it does not appear in the origional. The arestotelian doctrine of perception did not know the concept of the medium.

The corresponding Corpus Peri Psyche was typically, and up to the threshold of 19th century, just under its Latin title "De anima" known based on translations of the 12th Century, shortly after the Corpus Aristotelicum in Europe was once again fully arrived. From 1268 it is Thomas Aquinas' translations of and comments on "De Anima", which from now on form for centuries the canon of all theology and philosophy of education, the latter of which, as we all know, down to the 19th centuries where Mandatory course for all science was physics. All western elites up until then studied the latin translations of "De Anima".

In the second paper Sentencia Libri de Anima alone, the term medium is used more than 100 times. In the thirty chapters following it, even more often. There is no doubt that it was Thomas von Aquin, who first realized the full meaning of the single text devoted to what we are calling today an empirical or analytical psychology. But in the second Paper Sentencia Libri de Anima is the medium term much more than 100 times, and the 30 chapters of which appeared a little later, "Quaestiones de Anima" still much more frequently. No question: It is Thomas Aquinas, who was the first the importance Aristotle recognizes this single text, which is devoted to what we are today calling an empirical or analytical psychology would be reflected.

I do not want to bore you with philological details, but it is clear that among aristotles many many writtings, these books "about the soul" account as the most densely texts written by him. Olof Gigon, a famous Hellenist writes that "given the confusion of the various dispositions, terminology and doctrines (...)It is hard to imagine that Aristotle himself can be credited for its creation." Olof Gigon writes of disparate and superficial gathering together of the materials in this text and explains this fact with its incompleteness. Alleged De Anima is the appendix of a lost Aristotle's dialogue - Eudemos. Which, if at all, can only be interpolated from secondary sources.

But all this does not need to interest us. But it explains a little bit the historic-semantic findings and how it happened that the concept of the medium got implanted under the pretext to smooth out uncertainties of a given text corpus. Only as to become itself the medium for the construction and transmission of a new philosophy, namely a catholic. An immortal, because, in principle, divine soul of man - or so at least in Thomas Aqunias understanding. He who seek to unit secular monarchies with papacy with his attempt to unite the notions of a divine will and the new work ethics of his day. No other reasoning than to reach sovereignity over the siege by the Arab and oriental forces that he fears threatens western thought.

Back to Aristotle, who undertakes an empirical exploration of the soul in his work on Peri Psyches. The result is a truly staccato tour de france of roughing together sensory physiology and epistemology terminology. Only in the modern era (1460-Now) was his attempt to think them together again in a rational psychology - a sience of perception and of thinking on the basis of natural philosophy - accomplished.

Reading this text today, in addition with the palimpsest of a smuggled concept of a medium, is not an easy undertaking. At the forfront there is to note what A.C. Crombie in his work on the theories of classical optics recalls: "The striking difference between Greek and later medieval and modern optical theory is the absence of any conception of the Greek eye itself as an image-forming optical instrument and hence of any analysis of its dioptrical function. "(Crombie 1990.608)

Aristotle knows from the ear as an organ nothing. The voice is created for him in the windpipe. And from the eye as the organ of sight in Aristotle's perception theory is nothing in the text. Incidentally, no beams fire, as in Plato and some pre-Socratics philosophers also. Aristotle's system has no eye beams of fire, but describes the sensory perception, ie, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, as an ontological unity of complex functions of the soul, the Psychä.

What is a medium? - translation from Wolfgang Hagen

What is a medium? "Medium" is, first and foremost a Latin word. It has a relatively clear etymology and an extensive word history already in classical Latin. Lexicographically, we identify it as the neuter of "medius, a, um (altind. ádhya-h, greek μεσσοσ, μεσοσ, gothic midjis, OHG mitti = NHG middle), which functions as an adjective and a noun. Medius, just like the Messos Greek, means "the middle one, located in the middle," ie "mediam locavit, he gave her the middle place, "but also in the partitive phrase" in ponere via media ", right in the path '. Temporary registers the countless Lexicography Expressions such as "medio tempore, in the interim, or" in medios dormire dies, -- and finally connects with "medium" of the figurative expression as in the middle "Cum inter bellum et pacem nihil intersit medium" or in the quotation from Livy: "Ferme fugiendo in media ruitur fata ", in German: He who flees, runs his fate in the midst of arms.

A lexicographic word etymology and history fails here to clarify the concept. It is not the classical Latin that helps here. It is more the Ciceronian way of dealing with the Latin Language that characterizes its historical semantics. Cicero and those following him, the Latinized scientific elites of the West have always been reluctant to latinize Greek terms. Leo Spitzer shows in his famous work on historical semantics show how Cicero avoids to speak of Mathematicians as mathematicians (just a Greek word) but instead calls them "qui mathematici vocantur" or "qui grammatici vocantur", when he speaks of the so-called grammarians, mathematicians. Cicero, when translating the Greek term qualitas into Latin made us today speak of the quality of a thing and not of his poiotik.

Cicero thus avoided to translate a central concept of Aristotle's philosophy, namely the periechon - the Ambient, Encircling the room, the ambiance, the air, Sheltered, the bulk, - It has since then in Latin as many words there, and later also in German. Spitzer tracks this down because he wants to come to terms with Milieu and ambiance.

If there is a surrounding area of sensitivity, an topomnetisches or atmosphere, so it is not a periechon condition, but an environments or atmosphere. Reading Spitzer's analysis exactly, systemtheory's attempt to explain to us that each environment is always just environment within a system looks outdated. The first major non constructivist systems in the West, namely Aristotle's system developed in the concept of the periechon a conception of space, environment, air, ambiance and protection which is not reducible to the physical realm.

All this has much to do with our socratic question about the medium. Seitter Walter, whom I really miss in this circle, has made it recently clear: The history of the term medium, we are on the trail, begins with Thomas Aquinas and his attempt to translate those passages of the Aristotelian text which deals with the physiological-perceptual theories of vision, of seeing, hearing, of touch, Tasting and smelling (Περι Πυχη). Here Aquinas interpolated, as I will show, with some embarrassment in a Greek text the word medium where it is not found. This leads to large and prolonged irritation in the discussion on optics in the early modern period, especially in Kepler, then goes over into the first mechanistic interpretations of Descartes and flows into the clean and sober mathematical relationships of the medium-term in Newton. They in turn clash in German Romanticism into an intense, classically motivated resistence and motivated to take on the great speculative ways in dealing with the concept of the medium in Schelling and Hegel. Highly charged with exuberant romantic speculation the concept of the medium gets into the clutches of the telegraph, radio and film - the amplifying and multiplying apparates of the 19th century. And they do so with far reaching consequences.

With the romantic password of the medium are the cognitive, affective and conative effects of these techniques at least tangible. This leads to interactions with the spiritualist phenomenons, namely, the media of the intercommunicative mediumistic Spiritualism on the one hand and the training of the conceptual apparatuses of the empirical Psychologies on the other. The latter which is essentially the result of this unsuccessful confrontation between the medium with its new cultural application. As product of this unsuccessful confrontation we see Pierre Janet, William James and Sigmund Freud concepts such as psychic automatism, the Unconscious, the transfer, the streams of consciousness, differentiations of mental instances of the self, all that cast their shadows far into the 20th century. There it amalgamated with what would amend a seperate meeting, namely the concept of mass, id est: The mass medium.

Lecture on -Aristotle: On the Knowledgeable- part five

In any case, on Aristotle's account you dont understand anything fully. You dont have a Epistemic with respect to something. Unless you are able to comprehend the four causal modalities. And McLuhans tetrahedron is a tool to do exactly this. To understand what a thing is, is centrally to know what a thing is for. The number of things we can know, is based on the number of questions we can ask. Of which there are the following:

- Does a thing exists?
- If it exists, to what degree does it exists
- In what relation does it stands to other things
- And what is it for.

This is the central part of the aristotelian programm wether its going to be in the domain of Knowledge or in the domain of ethics, or politics. In the domain of politics the question is: Whats the polis for? In the domain of ethics, its going to be "what kind of beeing am I, and in the light of that, how do the actions of mine either realize what is potential within me or stultify what is potential within me." These potentialities are in a manner of speaking "What am I here for? And how do I live my life in such a way as to honor that central fact of my being?

Now, the developed knowledge that we have leads us to an understanding that the things of the universe, including the living things of the universe do intentiat a design feature, a plan, they fit in. Nature does not do things without a purpose. So, when you find a reliably accruing phenomenon. The ultimate question you are asking at the epistemic level the ultimate question you are asking after you satisfied yourself that "well, it is made of stone, marble or got wood ..." The ultimate question is "How does this fit into things? What is it for? What purpose does it serve? What is its functions?" The explanations are to be functionalist explanations. But functionalist in a rather enlarged sense. By bringing metaphysical insights into the physical realm, the transformation's catalyst, in and of itself culture waves the fabric of its destiny by the process of cultural evolution.

You do know if the outset, that nothing with patterns and design is going to come about accidental. Aristotle said "If the art of shipbuilding where in the wood, we would have ships by nature." Let me repeat that, its a statement in the physics "If the art of shipbuilding where in the wood, if there would just something about wood, such as it you left it around long enough, a great boat would develop with three tiers of oas man or letter sails...and all that. No, says Aristotle, that is'nt. You dont get ships like this, the art of shipbuilding is not something that is intrinsic to wood.

You need to wood to make ships but wood just constitutes the material cause of a ship. You need also a workman to know where to put the loas in the lap. But this is also of efficient causation. The art of shipbuilding is in the shipdesigner. And the art of shipbuilding is in the shipdesigner in the sense of the shipdesigner knowing what ships are for. What function do they going to serve. And it would be useless to think that knowledge ends with some consideration of material composition. This is an almost off hand replay to Demokrites, its not enough to say that the ultimate constituency of reality are atomic particles. Thats simply an account of the materiality of the universe. But that surely is a very very paired down form of knowledge and certainly nothing that raises to the level of Epistemy. But in practical terms does not need to. You don't need to run a perfect business. Running a business is good enough. And then successfully maybe the next step.

Surely developed knowledge embraces not only the material, efficient and formal causes, "but that for the sake of which these causes where recruited in the first instance" That for the sake of which. There is something else in Aristotles Philosopy of Explanation or Philosphy of Science, that is worth noting. Because Aristotle on this count is sometimes missunderstood.

Aristotle does argue that a fairly scientific explanation is one that is capable of producing a universal principle of which the thing to be explained is an instance. Something that is always what it is, that is always the case. (Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist)
You understand an event, when you can show to be an example of some universal principle of which it is an instance. But when Aristotles writting on Biological subject, as opposed to purely physical types of events, when he is writing on biological and particularly of psychological and social phenomenon, he always puts in a qualifier, its almost like a placemark in his treaties, the expression in greek is "os happy otole" Which I think is best rendered as "For the most part, or by enlarge, or in generell"

So I wouldn't want you to come away with the view that aristotle model of explanation requires of an explanation that it always be correct to end place after the decimal, covered by an unswerving, determined physical law if there is any noisyness of the phenomenon you are on the wrong track, Aristotle teaches and teaches centrally to expect precision only to the extend that the subject adhand admids of it. And to seek no more precision that what the subject adhand will admid of. We do not ask for probable reasoning from a mathematician. Nor do we ask for certainty for a shoecarpenter. So when it comes to those phenomena, those complex social and politcial and moral events and undertakings and disspositions and characteristics overwhelmed by the complexities of daily life.

By the ambiguities inherent in the case. What we look for are general presepts, which are right by enlarge in general and for the most part "os happy otole". The last word can't be written in this area, as it is written in mathematics. This I should say, read in a certain light, is a rather liberating conception, in relation to the teachings of the academy. If we take the teachings of the academy as aiming ultimatly toward a kind of "mathematicalness necessity" aiming toward "a degree of precision and purity" representet by something like the Pythagorean theorem.

Well, for goodness sake, progress in the social and biological and psychological and political domains would be impossible. We just know, I mean, we know at a common sense level that you never going to have a a2 plus b2 equals c2 when it comes to phenomena of this sort. And whats Aristotle is insisting is, look those very phenomena by there very nature, they never going to admid of that. That is no reason to give up. What you look for is what is the case generally for the most part, by enlarge ... Nature does nothing without a purpose. So there will be pattern and design and reliability in all of things that realy are consequential in the natural realm and we are part of that realm. And when you can solve that realm because of the very nature of things.

Expect no more precision in your explanation than what the phenomena themselves would allow. But there will be enough to precision and reliability for explanation to rais to the level of a systematic understanding. Whats required there is an exercise of the senses, and exercise of reason, the recognition that the data of experience must be incorporated into intelligible wholes. Those intelligible wholes are in the form of causal accounts. And a causal account is incomplete until it reaches the very point and purpose of the phenomenon itself. What is the point of something.

In the ancient greek, the point is the logos. If we had a law dispute between us, the point of that dispute would be called the logos of that dispute. And when the greek is translated in the grand grand good book "In the beginning was the word." Well, the greek word is logos. And that might have been translated "In the beginning was the point of it all". The plan that would be realized, do you say, the intelligent design that the balance of human life and human history would instantiate. In the beginning was the point, and aristotle is very helpful in getting us to the point. Thanks. <end>

Lecture on -Aristotle: On the Knowledgeable- part four

Of course the margin at that point might say, "Look, lots of things can be worked, I mean this looks like something special". Well you might go to say "well look, not only do you need something thats able to take on a certain shape. But in order for, to be that kind of thing it has to take on a recognizable shape. It has to has a Form, that reveals the fact, that indeed it is a representation of something it, it stands for something, it is a something of a certain kind - it is a cup, a person its a puppy etc.

And to the extend that you cant help of that unless it formaly incorporate these special features, we can say that the very form of the item is constitutive of its causal grounding. And thats what Aristotle would mean by the formal cause.

Now of course, a bile of bricks is not a house. So what you got to do, you got to start biling up the bricks and you but cement between them and so on. And when it comes to the fountain of the rivers, somebody or some group has to stand there with hammer and chisel and start working that stuff into an identifiable shape. And each blow of the hammer on the chisel is having some definit effect on the matter that it thus beeing struck. And blow by blow by blow by blow, that material is beeing changed. And each one of those interaction is the efficient cause of ultimately the fountain of the rifers. Its the billiard ball coliding to the otherbilliard ball and the other one moves. The efficient cause.

No the margin at this point might say, how do you know where to hit this thing. At that point Aristotle would be inclined to say, "Hey look, you don't know where to hit this block of matter unless you already have the mind, as it where, what it is you are trying to bring about. That is unless, you got Bernini there with this goal, in the greek the TELOS, this end or goal, the fountain of the rivers. There simply is'nt any basis on which on to attack or approach this.

Thus the ultimate understanding of the cause of this thing, its just that plan, the intelligent design that the thing itself realizes. And Aristotle refers to this, the final cause. And what he mean by the final cause that it is the final thing realized in time but it is the first consideration in conception.

Unless you have the intelligent plan to begin with, non of the rest of this causal modality will operate to any fact. So all of the other causal modalitys, choosing the right material, giving it its certain shape, striking blows... All of this are done for the shake of something, and what they are done for the sake of is the original plan or design or pattern or goal. And that kind of causal explenation is generally refered to as a Teleological explenation. You explain an event by showing its purposes, or plans or designs that that even realizes or instantiates when brought about.

Teleological explanation to not have to presuppose some actually intelligent divine beeing with a plan. Evolutionary theory is teleological in that certain characteristic, phenotypic properties of organisms are what they are because they serve certain purposes integral to the life of the organism. And you understand fins, and wings and maiding behaviour in terms of survivialistic considerations. These are teleological explanations, tho they are not what might be called a genitally teleologically, they dont assume that there is a super entity with a TELOS that is than realised by giving creatures characteristics of this sort.

Lecture on -Aristotle: On the Knowledgeable- part three

Now that capacity to traffic in universal proposition to deal with cognitive items that are universal and necessary, abstract. Thats what epistemonica to do. Its a special feature of rationality. And its the sort of thing that fits us out uniquely for among other things the rule of law. Because after all what is the rule of law, except the ability some universal precept to an individual instance do you say. And its in virtue of this rationality that we become fit for a mode of political and social and civic life. Otherwise unavailable within the kingdom of life.

Now given that we have this faculties and powers. How is aristotle going to understand and approach the problem of knowledge. For aristotle, to know something is essential to know the cause of something. "Happy is the man who know the causes of things" as the acient maxim. A full understanding to posses what in the greek is called episteme. To have that kind of systematic scientific understanding of things is to know the causes by which things like that are brought about. Aristotle get back very very briefly without even mentioning it, to the Mino Problem.

And you could see the difference between Aristotle and Socrates or Platos approach to these. Aristotle says look: "When we say that someone knows that a right angle triangle has 180 degrees. This can be known in one of two ways. Smith may know that a triangle has 180 degrees because he has a messuring instrument and he messures the angels and he sees that the triangle has 180 degrees. Jones knows that this triangles has 180 degrees because Jones knows that by definition triangles are three sided figures circumscribing 180 degrees. So what Jones knows. Jones know to be universally true of all things that are triangles and Smith knows only in the particular case of this triangle. Now what is the difference between Jones and Smiths knowledge. Smith has the knowledge of a fact based on an experience. Jones has a genuine form of episteme with respect to triangles.

Jones realy knows what a triangle in and of itself is. Smith just happens to know something about that triangle. So on Aristotle account "Developed knowledege is a knowledge of the regulative princibles and laws that govern the affairs of things. Its not simply a factual knowledge this or that".

But of course to say that knowledge requires a understanding of the causes of things is to raise a question of about well just what is a cause. The greek word is used indifferently acros cases. The greek word is AITIA. But as Aristotle is quick to point out in the metaphysics and elsewhere and in the physics. And in his logical writings. "Cause is not a unifical term, there actual has rather different senses".

Now, this is something that can be easily confused. Let me take as an example some statue of busk. Something that all tourist will know about. Everybody goes to Rome and its not long after they land in the airport that they tell the taxi driver take me to the Piazza Navona where all americans will congregate and how very very expensive cups of coffee and take a look at Berninins Fountains of the Rivers. This is sort of s shrine. You have not been there unless you sad there, pays those prizes and looked at that rather rhetorical, large ver very muscular congruous of figures. Now suppose what you trying to establish, suppose you came from mars or somewhere and you poped out in the B.N, right in front of the rivers and you raise the question: Whats the cause of that?

You ask knowing person to account for that. Well understand that a lot of answers entirely cracked can be given to that question. One answer might be this. "Look, to have anything like this you've got to have some kind of material that will retain shape. You can't get something like this if the universe consisted only of air. Or if the universe consisted only of fluids." If what you mean by cause, is that which in absence of which something could not be. Than surely one of the causes of the fountain of the rivers is the material of which it is made. Absence that kind of of matter, you cant have that kind of thing. And thats what Aristotle means the material cause of something.

Lecture on -Aristotle: On the Knowledgeable- part two

So we already see in the very opening of the metaphysics a common sense naturalistic perspective in this work which is probably the most saddle of aristotle philosophical writtings. This is going to be a work of great great deepth and will leave ample room for misunderstandings and misconstrues. But as an opening statement.

The opening statement of the metaphysic is a veritable vindication of knowledge gleaned by perception. This is not going to be enought. But thats the starting point for our "journey towards the truth is a sensory awareness of the world around us". In fact in other works, aristotle will define animal as that "which has sensation". The very princible that establishes an entity as an animal entity is a sensory principle. And this again for quiet common sense reason. What animal have to do is gain information through the sense organs in virtue of which they are able to adopt to the requirements as they face the world. Aristotle is going to invest perception with many many powers and possibilities.

In doing this he will grant to the animal kingdom rich perceptual ressources but will denie the animal kingdom the ultimat rational ressource that is the special attribute of the human psychy. That degree of rationality. This is not so much aristotle depreciating the animal kingdom. As aristotle elevating the role of perception in the affairs of life and adaptation to the demands of the environment. So human beeings have this desire to know and we take delight in our senses for practical utilitarian principles there is something joyful for us of the experience that we have of the world. The experience of gaining knowledge. Now we can do this in virtue of the fact that we are constituted biologicaly in such way as be able to pick up information from the external world. Thats what the sense organs are all about. And this leads us to aristotles understanding of the varies powers that the animal kingdom comes equipped with. And a scheme of classification that will distinguish between and among animal types in terms of the powers that the animal have. The powers or faculties that they have. Powers and Faculties in Greek would be DYNAMES. A dynames would be power. The english word dynamic is entomological related to that. But what we mean by facualty or power is what the word DYNAMES tries to convey.

Now aristotle again begins with the common sense biologist position. What is the fundamental power in virtue of which a living thing has live? That is, what is it that the soul as it where the psyche of an entity must posses by way of DYNAMES such that life itself becomes possible? At the most fundamental level there must be a nutrative power. There must be some means by which the creature can obsorb nutritional elements from the environment and through that grow and survive. There must be a nutrative faculty or power. Anything alife has at least that. And thats essential for the life of the individual creature. For the survival of that whole class of creatures there must also be a reproductive power. There must be some means by which a given organism is capable of dubilcating its kind or bringing its kind about. At the most fundamental level of psychic power or psyche faculties we find nutrative and reproductive capacities in the kingdoms of life.

Added to this where living systems are more complex, and this includes plants, there is also a locomotive power. The entity is capable of some degree of movement. There are also plants who do this. So as we get everymore complex in the kingdom of live we move from the nutrative and reproductive to the n. r. and locomotive. The animal kingdom begins when as aristotle, when you get sensation. The power of perception. The power of acting as it where knowingly, consciously I attempted to say, reacting to events in the external world. So now we have a nutritive, reproductive, locomotive, perceptive and a sensitive faculty. And these are all powers of the soul. And when aristotle in his treatises on the soul gives his definition of the soul, "What is the soul" he says "By soul I mean, By psyche I mean the archesoa - the first principle of living things the principles according to which a thing if it is alife comes to have life. So he is not treating the soul as something beyond the natural. He is treating the soul as a generic term for those processes that are life-giving, life-sustaining and mediating of a wise as such powers and faculties as movements and sensation.

Now when you get to ever more complex organisms. You would not use the term. To these powers of the soul is added some kind of intellectual or intelligent power. The power problemsoving. And he grands this much to the animal kingdom. They have this in common with us. But he reserves to human beenings a psychic power or faculty of a very special kind, sometimes rendered in english as reason. But the word he uses in his treatises on the soul in for this power is not the greek word for reason, the word he uses is not NEWS, the word he uses first time around is epistemonica. And I dont want to tedious trying to define some of this ancient words. But by epistemonica one is referring to the means or the power or the cognitive abbility by which we comprehend universal propositions. That is to say a young child can learn anything you want the young child to learn about this or that, but at "too young at age the child will never learn about ALL these, ALL that - universals do you say. The child can learn that uncle Jack and ant Marry had died. But it would be very very difficult for a three year old that "all men are mortal" Do you say.

Lecture on -Aristotle: On the Knowledgeable- part one

+++ ARISTOTLE: On the Knowledgeable +++

If I had to single out any event as evidence of extraterrestrial life of some civilization in a distant galaxy beyond the milky way that took great concerne for the slow progress of the human race and imagination it would well be the life of Aristotle. "For goodness sake those human beeings they dont seem to be getting on with that at all. Aristotle, why dont you go down and get things going."

The sheer intellectual power of this man, expressing itself in Biology and Natural Science and Ethics and Politics and Metaphysics and Logic is without parallel in the history of scholarly thought. There is almost no academic subject, commonly thought that has not been stamped by his influence. Sometimes it steeped so durably that we had to spend a lot of time to get rid of that stamp and get on with things and perhaps progress beyond the point where arestotelian thought left the subject. No single lecture or even several lectures that I am going to devote to Aristotle can do justice to breath and deepth of his accomplishment.

He is the son of a physician, naturalistically inclined, interested in biology. He becomes a student in platos academy and he stays there for merly nearly twenty years. Thats not because he is slow learner. He stays within the platonic circle. There are evidences that his earliest writtings where in the dialoge form. These are no longer with us. In fact, such accounts we can but together of what he did write of the fields he was responsible for indicate that we only got the finnest fraction of the total works that came from that vital imagination. One answer to the question "What is the arestotelian position on x y or z is ..., well do you mean in terms of what survived in his works or what may have been his position in works we may probably will never find. Find again."

At the beginning of his metaphysics. Which is a formidable and significant work in so many ways its obviously one of the great works in the history of thought. One thing about that is particulary important that it is the first treatises that constitutes a critical history of philosophical thought on major subjects. The metaphysics is the work in which aristotle sets down a teaching of a wide range of pre-socratic philosophers as well the socratic-teachings themselves. He tries to, I think by enlarge, does give a fair hearing. He obviousley has its own prgramm and agenda and that is going to color-round his judgement of things. But this treatises is the earliest one we have by any philosopher in which there is a systematic presentation of the ideas dominant in the several schools of pre-socratic and generally hellenic philosophical thought. And the metaphysics is going to examine the assets and liabilities of these schools and try to build upon the assets and avoid the liability or defects. So it is important as an historical document tells us perhaps more than any other document just what the teachings of competing schools where.

But the work opens up on a new note. "All man by nature desire to know. An example of this is the delight we take in our senses. For even a part of there usefullness they are loved for there own sake. And non more than the sense of sight."

All man by nature desire to know. He already exams that there is an inexplicable impulse within us to develop a knowledge of the world, to develop a knowledge period, a knowledge of things. And than he goes on with the quiet straight forward that is characteristically for him. The quiet straight forward matter of fact common sense position is "All man by nature desire to know. An example of this delight..." So here we are not going to have a philosophy that depreciates the evidence of sense. He is to much the biologist, to much the natural scientist, to much the man with two feeds on the ground to be dismissive of the information gleaned by the senses.

Not only that, but famously aristotle will argue that "nature produces nothing without a good reason for it". That Change is not the operative principle in the universe and that things are to be understood in terms of the purposes they serve. Nature certainly would not have fit out, the animal kingdom with sensory organs for the sole purpose of the deceiving the entire animal kingdom. And indeed, if that had been the design of nature, the senses as organs of deception, creatures would not able to get from one side of the street to the other.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part nine (last part) by Michael Shanks

Each of these proposals britles with difficulties, and none can be recommended without a great deal of further study. What is depressing, however, is that (at least as far as I am aware) they are really not being adequately studied in any country today. I would be very happy indeed to be proved wrong on that point.

A fourth solution which is, very naturally, beeing advanced in many quarters to the problem of unemployment is work sharing. Here I believe we have to separate two elements. A deliberate policy of dividing the available work between more people seems to me to have very limited scope for resolving our present problems, if only because of the increasing costs it would involve - unless, which seems very unlikely, those sharing jobs are prepared to accept a commensurate (corresponding in size or degree) reduction in wages.

On the other hand there is obvious scope for taking people out of the workforce by earlier retirement, or by prolonigng pre-work training - provided it is recognised that by so doing we are merely shifting the incidence of joblessness between age groups (for which there may well be sound reasons). In other words, this is a palliative not a solution.

In any event, it seems inevitable that as we move through the 1980s there will be progressive reductions in the working week, with earlier retirement, longer holidays (including quite possibly mid-career sabbaticals) and restrictions on overtime. Whether this will create significantly more jobs is open to question, but that it will improve the general quality of life is very probable. The problem for employers will be to see that the reduction in hours does not push up unit costs excessively.

So far as can be judged from rather inadequate records, normal working hours in the mid-nineteenth century averaged around 65-70 hours per week. From then until 1939 there was a steady reduction to around 40-45 hours. Normally one would have expected the trend to continue downwards. But the demand for labour in the post-war boom arrested the trend, and average hours woked did not start to fall again until the early 1970s. Since then they have been dropping slowly but steadily, so that today average hours worked in industry throughout the Western world are probably around 38-40 (allowing for overtime an short-time).

My guess is that by 1990 this fiugre will have fallen to around 32-34 hours, and effectively we will move from a five day to a four day working week. This will have a number of radical effects on society. It will greatly increase the scope for "moonlighting", enabling people if they wish to hold down two jobs; it will greatly boost the hidden economy, in which the second job will normally be worked. At the same time it will create major opportunities for new leisure industries to be developed, and one's guess is that the leisure sector (including, hopefully, expanded education and training) will be among the most buoyant growth areas of the post mannufacturing economy. Whatever else it is, the world of the 1990s is likely to be one in which work plays a smaller part in the totality of people's lives, and leisure a greater part, than today. Hopefully, also, the present sharp divisions in our lives between work and leisure will become more blurred, as work becomes less aruous and disciplined and leisure more purposeful and creative (for those who wish it to be).

So the prospect for mankind in the post-manufacturing era is one of challenge and opportunity. The risks are obvious, the opportunities immense. But in order tor grasp the opportunity, society has to become much better at coping with change -which will be occurring at an ever accelerating rate. We have to make our institutions, particularly our political institutions, much more creative and much more flexible. The present widespread disaffection regarding our institutions -the pervasive view that "small is beautiful" and "big is ugly" - is not necessarily the most appropriate set of attitudes for approaching the post-manufacturing era. We cannot exist without institutions, and if our present institutions are thought to be incapable of dealing with today's problems - let alone tomorrow's - that is an ominous sign. Our institutions cannot be ignored. They have to be reformed. We cannot sit back, as some advocates of the post-industrial society have suggested, and wait for technology to resolve our present tensions and lead us complacently towards a golden, affluent future. Technology has not solved society's problems so far. For every problem it has solved it has tended to create a new one. Why should the future be any different?

Technology, in short, is a tool to be used, not a magic wand to be waved. In the end society will be what we want it to be and are prepared to make it. The solutions in the end rest, as they always have done, with us. In this sense tomorrow's Garden of Eden will be no different from that described in Gensis. It will be up to us to give the story a happier ending.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part eight by Michael Shanks

On the answer to this psychological question will also depend much of the future of important sectors of the service economy such as retailing, catering and the theatre. With the development of viewdata it will be possible, if we wish, to do virtually all our shopping by telephone, without actually having to go shopping at all. In this case the shop could simply become a warehouse with a delivery service. Equally, with home video equipment and with the enhanced cooking facilities which development of domestic computers will bring, one will be able to have all one's entertainment and all one's meals at home without any fuss, if one so wishes.

Will we so wish it? One can easily envisage a future in which those above a certain threshold of affluence become increasingly self-sufficient hermits (a person living in solitude), earning their living in conducting their lives without having to leave their electronically protected houses-cum-offices. It is a technologically possible future, but not exactly an inspiring one. It would also of course have catastrophic effects on employment in service sector such as retailing.

That is one risk arising from the technological possibilities opening up in postmanufacturing society - a psychologically debilitating (weak and infirm (not mentally strong)) retreat into affluent introversion. But it is not, in my view, the biggest risk. Much more serious potentially is the danger implied by the phrase used in the last paragraph, "those above a certain threshold of affluence". It is plain that, over the whole of Western Europe, an increasing proportion of the working class is acquiring middle class standards and middle class life styles. Despite the fluctuations of the business cycle, average real living standards are rising slowly and inexorably, so that by the end of the century the kind of average living standard now found in Scandinavia will be general over the whole of Western Europe, while the scandinavians and other trend-setters will have moved much higher.

But these standards will not apply to everybody. In all Western countries there will probably be a substantial minority who, for one reason or another, cannot find a place in the post-manufacturing economy. As the real cost of labour rises, more and more of the least skilled jobs become uneconomic; they either become automated, or they cease to be done at all. As the amount of captial per worker increases, the cost of employing unequalified workers - who cannot operate, or who might actually damage, the very complex and expensive machinery at their disposal - becomes prohibitive.

So one very disagreeable feature of post-manufacturing society could well be the existence of a sub-class of excluded men and women, more or less permanently unemployed. Being a minority these people would not command the political muscle which the industrial working class has enjoyed in post-war Europe. A declining trade union movement is unlikely to give them the support which their counterparts have tended to enjoy hitherto. The risk that they would become permanently disaffected, a focus of increasing crime and violence, is a real one.

This is perhaps the biggest danger for the West from the present recession. If substantial unemployment among the present under 25s persists for several years -and all the signs are that it will - we may find a whole generation of our young people have lost, or never had the chance to acquire, the habit of regular work. The sub-class of unemployables could in these circumstances become an alarming large one, such as would pose major problems of absorption and containment for society. Other factors also make the prospect still more dangerous. All large Wetern countries now contain substantial minorities of immigrants who are not fully integrated into the community, who tend to have high rates of unemployment and access usually only to the least attractive jobs. These people are likely to form the hard core of a depressed sub-class increasingly at odds with the rest of society. Moreover, as the pattern of income distribution starts to move from a pyramidal to a diamond-shaped structure -as is now happening generally in the West - the political pressure for equalisation is starting to diminish, and income and wealth differentials are widening. In the areas of advanced technology workers with the appropriate skills placed to secure high wage differentials. Thus the natural inequalities within society could widen dangerously.

The withdrawal of the State, and the retreat from the principle of the comprehensive welfare state, pose further problems. Previously the State has provided employment for many of the least skilled. It has also of course supplemented the incomes of the poor, and provided them with services they could not buy on the market. It has been on the whole a rather inefficient provider of these services, but if it withdraws from them it is not clear that anybody else will provide them. Deprivation may be more limited than in the past, but it may equally be more acute for those it affects.

At the same time, the increasing internationalisation of business will make it very difficult for any individual country to pursue policies of income distribution, or social justice, which are markedly at variance with its neighbours. Business will tend to migrate to those countries where it has to shoulder the fewest social burdens - other things equal - and as technology advances it will become progressively easier so to do.

Thus there are a number of factors which, unchecked, will tend to make a post-manufacturing society more socially unequal, and therefore more divisive, than hitherto. We cannot therefore afford to be complacent. As already indicated, there are no firm bases for projecting how large a proportion of the population in the long term the sub-class of the excluded will comprise. But that it will exist is virtually certain, and we cannot afford to ignore it.

We have to tackle the matter now, before unemployment becomes too deeply embedded in our culture. I believe, therefore, that we should now be looking very seriously at such issues as:

1. Can local communities take up the slack ( characterized by a lack of work or ) left by the retreat of the State, to see that vacuum of socially needed work and the employment needs of the local jobless are filled?
2. In order to do this, and to inculcate the habit of work among the young, should we be considering schemes for compulsory community service and work experience for young people - a form of non-military national service?
3. Should we not be examining with greater urgency than we are the case for easing the present link between contribution and reward, in other words between work and income (deeply embedded as it is in the Protestant work ethic), so that income is more closely related to need, via such schemes as negative income tax, which the increasing sophistication of computers now makes more possible than ever before?

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part seven by Michael Shanks

One can paint an idyllic picture of industry in the post-manufacturing society, and many writers have done so. Unfortunatley there are enough negative aspects to puncture the euphoria, and some daunting question marks. But before coming to these, let me mention two other major implications of the application of computer technology. They concern the role fo woman, and the future of trade unions.

Mention has already been made of the remarkable changes in the perception by woman of their role, and the expansion of their aspirations, as a result of improved methods of contraception. Female participation in the labour force has increased sharply in recent years, and with it female demands for better job opportunities and better access to training and promotion. It is perhaps surprising that despite the recession and the rise in male unemployment, there has been very little evidence of a male backlash against these aspirations.

Industry will therefore increasingly adjust its working patterns to suit the requirements of woman, who will play an even-bigger part in it as we move into the post-manufacturing society. If one looks at the present pattern of female employment, it tends to fall into two distinct blocks. One the one hand, woman are heavily concentrated in a group of activities where the future prospects are particularly bleak: labour-intensive industries like clothng and textiles, and in service occupations most vulnerable to office automation (clerks and shorthand typists). Woman are also heavily concentrated in the retail trade, which we shall mention below.

Thus the first sweep of the computer revolution could have serious effects on female employment. On the other hand, woman are strongly placed in some of the fastest-growing sectors - in teaching, communications, and more recently in the computer industry itself. We may expect to see increased pressure for job opportunities to be provided for women in these expanding sectors of the economy, particularly if this can be done on the basis of working from home on a flexitime system.

It is clear that the kind of "return to cottage industry" type of working pattern sketched out above offers considerable attractions to woman, in that it enables them to combine home life and work. This means that there will be great social pressures in this direction. But of course this option will only be available to woman with adequate qualifications. More effort will need to be directed towards re-training woman who have left the labour force to rear a family, an wish to reenter work once the family is reared.

This is a particular instance of a much more general problem. The need for retraining to enable employees to cope with the very rapid technological changes which will be experienced in the post-manufacturing society will be a continuing challenge. The old concept that one learns a skill at the start of one's working life which one then practices throughout one's career has little relevance in a world where, in Professor Stonier's words, "changes are taking place at an exponential rate rather than a linear one". In future we must all expect to have to change jobs several times in our working life, to learn new skills continuously, if we are to cope with the accelerating pace of change.

At present society is ill-adapted to this emerging pattern. There is a serious mismatch between what the education system in most Western countries is geared up to provide, and what the world of work demands. We have to improve this relationship, by introducing greater flexibility on both sides. We have to strenghten the vocational (occupation or employment) training aspect of education, and adapt it more closely to the changing needs of industry. We have to increase the work experience element in schooling, and bridge the present yawning gap between school and life. We also have to ensure that career patterns in business are sufficiently flexible to enable people, as they feel the need, to take "sabbatical leave" to update their skills and re-charge their intellectual batteries, without detriment to their careers.

One option which merits serious consideration is to make business enterprises themselves, under suitable supervision, awarders of qualifications. The idea that the firm can be a teacher is one which is only beginning to become respectable, and it naturally arouses hostility in parts of th educational profession. But if we are to bridge the gap between work and education, and if experience in doing a job is to be properly recognised, there is much to be said for making the enterpris itself the teaching organisation in sutiable cases.

The needs of woman in this respect are thus a particular example of a more general theme. Nevertheless, they have a special relevance in another context. Only woman can bear children. One result of the contraceptive pill and the change in female attitudes and aspirations resulting from it has been a sharp decline in the birth rate in most, thought not all, Western countries. It is true that the labour force in most of these countries will continue rising until the late 1980s as a result of the early post-war "baby boom". But it will start to tail off quite sharply as we move into the 1990s, and if present trends continue it is safe to predict that Western Europe will start to become seriously concerned about its dwindling population, and the prospect of fewer and fewer youngsters having to support a growing army of dependents.

Future trends in the birth rate are quiet extraordinarily difficult to frecast, depending as they do largely on changes in attitudes and life styles which defy analysis. But it would be rash to assume that the birth rate will turn round of itself. It would be wiser to consider what kind of inducements would persuade woman to want to have more children. The most obvious incentive would be to make it easier for woman to combine a career with child-rearing.

The computer revolution could have a profound impact on the scope and importance of trade unions. During the 1970s in Europe, thougt not in North America, trade unionism gained very considerably in power, influence and numbers. Aided by sympathetic governments, trade unions secured legislation in most European countries which would guaranteed employees a high degree of job security. It became both difficult and very expensive to make workers redundant. Health and safety regulations at work were made stricter and more comprehensive, more generous arrangements for sick pay were secured, and woman workers won equality of pay for equal work and (at least in principle) equal opportunities for training and promotion. In a numbe rof countries workers won seats on the boards of directors as a statutory right, and in almost all the powers and scope of works councils (elected representatives of employees on the shop floor) were enhanced.

Thus industrial democracy took a major step forward in most Western European countries during the 1970s. At the same time, of course, European governments and industries faced continual pressure for higher real wages and shorter working hours. As a result European wages increased substantially compared to those in North America and the Third World. Moreover, as a result of job security provisions labour became essentially a fixed rather than a variable cost item, at least in large firms.

From the workers' point of view, many of these gains seem to be proving counterproductive. The higher cost of labour has undoubtedly acted as a stimulus for the introduction of labour-saving automation, and has also deterred firms from expanding in Europe as much as they would otherwise have done. There has been a marked tendency for multinational investment to migrate from Europe to North America. The high cost of dismissing workers has made large firms reluctant to take them on if alternatives can be found. Thus the job security of those at work has, at least in part, been paid for by very high unemployment among the young, who have not had the opportunity of acquiring secure status at work. In almost every Europen country the under-25 age group has by far the highest percentage unemployed. Another reason for this fact has been trade union pressure to reduce the differentials between fully trained workers and young workers still under training. Since apprentice labour is no longer particularly cheap, it is less attractive to employers.

Thus the constraints applied by labour to large firms have led, and will lead increasingly in the 1980s, to a shift in numbers employed from large to small firms. Where possible, large firms now prefer to sub-contract work to small firms, which do not suffer the same constraints, rather than take one extra workers themselves. As large firms become more bureaucratised and more politicised, entrepreneurship is reviving at the level of small enterprises on whom the large ones increasingly rely. The principle of "small is beautiful" applies here too.

Entrepreneurship is indeed coming back into fashion. It accords with the spirit of the times, the prevailing distrust of large scale which we have already noted. It responds to the needs of large scale industry, encrusted by the restraints imposed on it by governments and collective bargaining. It is a natural reaction to the excessive taxation which the expansion of the State in the early 1970s necessitated. So we see in most European countries - particularly in Italy, but also in the UK, Germany, France and Scandinavia - a vigorous growth of the so-called "informal" or "hidden" or "black" economy, where work is being performed and income is earned by individuals or groups which are not recorded in the official statistics and not available to the tax collector.

The swing to small scale enterprise is encouraged by other factors too - notably the reviving taste for craftsmanship, the reaction against mass produced consumer products, the growing desire for individuality and self-expression among the peoples of the West. Until recently there were two powerful forces pulling int eh other direction. One, as we have seen, was technology, which before the age of the computer put a heavy premium on large scale. But, as we have seen, this is now changing. Perhaps the most significant change of all between the 1970s and the 1980s will prove to have been the fact that technology now begins positively to favour decentralisation and small scale rather than the opposite. When technology and public aspirations and values are pulling in the same direction, it is a powerful combination.

The second factor which has worked against the pressure to decentralise has been the tendency for governments, faced with the horrors of "stagflation", to try to enlist the support of trade unions and employer organisations in governmental decision making. During the 1970s most European countries moved a long way down the road to the corporate state, with increasing power and influence devolved to the central decision-making authorities in the trade unions and employer organisations. In some countries - West Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, The Netherlands - the system worked reasonably well. In onter - Italy, Ireland, UK - it was less successful. But in almost every case the experiment was working against the grain of public opinion, and at the cost of a certain rigidity and bureaucratisiation of industrial policy, which as the decade wore on became less and less acceptable.

Now there is growing evidence that, at least in some European countries, the importance of the trade unions is declinig as inflation recedes and unemployment rises. Trade unions are on the whole not popular bodies. The rise in unemployment reduces their bargaining power, and their numbers. It forces them back onto the defensive. As we have seen, trade unions operate much more successfully in large organisations than in small entrepreneurial ones, where personal contacts between the individual workers and his or her boss are much closer. The kind of decentralised pattern of working life indicated above is likely to prove an inhospitable climate for trade unions. Part of the undinding of the dichotomies created by the Industrial Revolution, which we are postulating as characteristic of post-manufacturing society, is a decline in the overall influence of trade unions - thought they will undoubteldy remain very important in certain sectors of the economy (particularly I suspect, in the public sector).

Of course, the pattern will vary from country to country. As so often in recent years, among European countries it is the UK where the pendulum seems to be swinging most violently, towards and now away from the corporate state. In countries with a more stable political structure, such as Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries, the trend is less marked; but I suspect that in varying degrees it will apply over most of Western Europe.

The 1980s, therfore, will see a move back towards small units, operating in much pleasant environments than the old manufacturing industries today, with fewer constraints, closer personal links between managers and employeess, and with very large amounts of capital installed per worker. The opportunities for job satisifaction should be much greater than has been the case for the average worker hitherto.

Utopia? What are the snags (unexpected or hidden obstacles and drawbacks) and the risks? The first, which has been little studied up to now, concerns human nature. Working with computers has one huge drawback; for intelligent people - and intelligence is needed to be a computer programmer, still more an analyst - it can be extremely boring. That is one reason why, even today, there is an acute shortage of computer software operators. In some ways working alone with a computer in a laboratory, or supervising a bunch of robots in a hygienic control room, can be even more boring than the most repetitive work on a moving production line. On the production line one can at least talk to one's neighbours. Much of the work required in the age of information technology is mentally but not physically fatiguing - and above all, lonely.

Industrial psychologists thus have a complex set of problems to address in the postmanufacturing age. Will it be necessary to maintain the factory and the office, not as a functional necessity - all communication can if necessary be carried out without physical contact, via the telephone and the closed-circuit TV - but as a psychological requirement, to cater (satisfy) for the human need for contact with one's fellow beings?

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part six by Michael Shanks

The first question, then, which arises is the likely impact on employment of the new technologies. The leading technology of the 1980s is likely to continue to be, as it undoubtedly is today, information technology based on the computer and the silicon chip. As with all new technological innovations, it is easier at first glance to see what jobs will be lost through its application than what jobs will be gained. Thus on the one hand, computer-based automation on the shop floor (primarily through the substituion of robots for humans) is plainly going increasingly to replace men and woman by machines in the actual manufacture of goods. The production lines of the future, at least in Western society, will be manned by robots and not by people. Similarly, in the offices of the future the recording and trasmitting of information, hitherto performed by an army of clerks and typists, will in future be increasingly electronically handled and processed. Office automation will also have major impact on the operations and staffing of banks and insurance companies.

On the other hand, as with earlier innovations, the long term effect could well be to create more jobs than are lost. Analysis of the impact of past innovations on jobs suggests, unexcitingly, that it is impossible to establish any general correlation between innovation and the total number of jobs. Some innovations have on balance destroyed jobs; others have on balance created jobs; in others teh effect is indeterminable. It is never easy to isolate the impact of the innovation from other events (e.g. the movement of the business cycle). But perhaps the most significant effect of innovation is to remove bottlenecks to growth (bottlenecks which perhaps had not previously been identified as such). To quote one example, it has been calculated that had automatic telephone dialling not been invented, the entire working population of the UK would now have to be employed as telephone operators. The example is a neat one. Automatic dialling is an innovation which does not, on the face of it, create a new industry. In this respect it is not like the invention, say, of plastics or of bio-technology (which we will be discussing below). It is a straightforward subsitution of capital for labour. Yet its major long term effect has not been to destroy jobs but to enable the market it serves, and indirectly the economy as a whole, to expand much faster and further than would otherwise have been possible.

Undoubtedly similar effects will come form other aspets of the computer revolution: for example, the transmission of information via viewdata and the development of intelligent terminals linked to a main-frame computer in the office and the home. The nature and location of jobs will change, and the skills rquired. We will address these matters later. The point I wish to make at this stage is that there is no way, so far as I am aware, of determinng whether the total number of jobs available (leaving aside other factors) will increase or diminish as a result of the computer and the related impact of information technology (or telematics, informatics or whatever other name is used). In default of any firm evidence, one can only rely on intuition. My intuition tells me that, while the short term effect may well be negative, the longer term overall effect will be positive.

But of course the computer and its offshoots are not the only manifestation of technological innovation in the post-manufacturing society. Indeed, by the end of the decade they may no longer appear the most dramatic or important in their impact. By then the leading new technology could very well be bio-technology or the synthesising of life, including genetic engineering. The implications of biotechnology for society are perhaps even more radical, and certainly potentially more dangerous, than those of the micro-processor. It is not our intention to explore these here; but rather to make the point that, from the point of view of jobs, the implications of bio-technology are likely to be more obviously benign than those of the computer revolution. For bio-technology will essentially create new industries rather than alter the inputs to existing ones.

The same is true of the other leading areas of new technology in the 1980s, so far as they can be identified today. These include the development of new sources of energy - without which economic activity is likely to encounter major bottlenecks inhibiting further growth in the 1990s; the rapidly improving understanding of the Earth through plate tectonics, the sue of satellites and other means; and the development of materials science through molecular electronics and the like. In all these cases the impact on overall employment should be unambiguously beneficial.

The other point which has to be made at this stage is that forecasting the application of new inventions is a hazardous exercise. The most significant impact of an invention is usually one which has not been forseen by its inventors, its advocates or its critics. A note of humility is therefore appropriate at this stage of the argument.

Taking account of all these uncertainties, I conclude that the best judgement one can make at this point in time is that the overall impact of new technology on total employment in the post-manufacturing society will be at worst neutral, more probably bening.

I now turn to the effect of social factors. Will the social pressures discussed above continue to operate in the post-manufacturing society, and if so what will be their impact on overall levels of employment?

First, to repeat, there is very little evidence from opinion surveys that the distrust of business and government, the desire for more environmental protection and protection of the consumer which characterised the 1970s are likely to diminish in the 1980s. Insofar as these pressures impact on overall employment, their effect is more negative than positive, in that they tend to deter new investment. However, their impact varies from industry to industry.

For example, social resistance is liable to slow down - for good or ill - the introduction of bio-technologies and the spread of nuclear energy. On the other hand, computer technology is likely to make industry less environmentally vulnerable. Computers do not pollute. Information technology is essentially a "clean" industry. It can operate in attractive surroundings, and can offer its employees and the communities within which it operates a pleasant and stimulating environment. An industrial revolution based on knowledge rather than on coal and steel is clearly one which imposes fewer external costs on society.

It has another, even greater advantage. At the very beginning of this pamphlet I referred to the alienating effects which the technology of the first industrial revolution imposed on its participants because of its requirement for very large scale operations to achieve maximum efficiency. The technology of the first industrial revolution emphatically was on the side of the big battalions. As we have seen, society and public opinion increasingly are not.

This dichotomy (contrast between two things) can to a large extend be resolved in the knowledge-based second industrial revolution. Computer technology facilitates small scale decentralised operations. At the extreme the computer can turn the home into an information centre, so that if we want to we can revert in large sections of our economy to the kind of pre-industrial working pattern described at the very beginning of this pamphlet. In other words, by using the link between the telophone and the TV screen, by installing viewdata systems and word processors in the home, with intellignet terminals, we can return if we so wish to the pattern of cottage industry, with virtually all the operations of the office decentralised to the home, the workers communicating with each other by telephone and closed-circuit television. They can, of course, work on a flexitime basis. The need for large concentrations of office workers disappears. Commuting to work can become an option rather than a necessity, and operatives can to a very large extent choose their place of work.

At the factory itself the function of humans will increasingly be the control the operations of robots, so that the numbers who need to work there will be greatly reduced and the conditions in which they work can be greatly improved.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part five by Michael Shanks

This gap between expectations and achievement in the Western society is one of the main problems confronting us as we move into the post-manufacturing era. There is little evidence that the gap is narrowing. Undoubtedly there has been some reduction in expectations as the world has moved from boom into recession. Unemployment is clearly modifying wage demands. Student unrest has largely disappeared as a social force with the rise in unemployment for the under 25s (the worst affected age group in virtually all countries). It could of course return with redoubled force if we fail to solve the problem of youth unemployment.

But, as expectations decline, so does the ability of the productive machine to meet them. If you cannot satisfy expecations when real output is growing at 3 or 4% a year, it requires a major change in attitudes to satisfy them when real output is static or declining. Opinion research indicates that with the exception of student unrest, there has been no discernible reduction in the strength of the social attitudes which played their part in disrupting the boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And, as we have moved through the 1970s, one set of attitudes has emerged in survey after survey in country after country - a deepening disrespet and contempt for authority in all its guises. This is a point of enourmous significance to which we shall return later in our analysis of post-manufacturing society.

However, the point I wish to make now is the impact of all these forces on government. Governments in all Western countries came under increasing pressure from the late 1960s on. Social expectations increased while inflation and recession weakened industrial performance. The first reaction of most governments - most notably in the case of the UK, Italy and The Netherlands - was to expand the public sector to offset the decline in the private sector and to respond to the increased demands of society. As a result the proportion of the total population employed in the public sector, and the proportion of total national income taken by the State grew progressively as "stagflation" (persistent high inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand in a country's economy) worsened.

The result was, of course, to burden the private sector, and the taxpayer, still more - without in fact satisfying the public demand for improved services. From the mid-1970s, therefore, government in all major Western countries has been contracting, both as an employer and as a provider of services. This retreat of government from earlier commitment is a painful and difficult process. Nevertheless it seems an inevitable trend as we move into the 1980s. The turnaround has been most marked in the US and the UK, but in contrast to a decade ago it is evident everywhere.

This turnaround has two major effects. First, it means that one major source of employment in the service sector is declining. Second, it means that services formerly provided, with varying degrees of adequacy, by the State are either going to revert to private enterprise in the 1980s or are not going to be provided at all.

I hope the foregoing analysis explains, albeit sketchily, why the 1980s - the first decade in which Western society can be said to have fully entered its "post manufacturing" phase - is likely to be a decade of under-employment. But is this a necessary condition of the post-manufacturing society, or merely an unfortunate and temporary coincidence?

This is the next major question I wish to address. in order to do so, it is first necessary to define in rather more detail the main characteristics of post-manufacturing society. The following definition is drawn from an article by Professor Tom Stonier in a recent publication by the Henley Centre for Forecasting in London. Stonier describes as the main characteristics of what he calls "the post-industrial economy":

"1. It is primarily a service economy rather than a manufacturing one with the knowledge industry predominating.
2. It is a credit-based economy, characterised by a flow of credit information rather than by large transactions involving money or gold.
3. It is primarily transnational rather than national
4. changes are taking place at an exponential rate rather than a linear one.
5. It is characterised by unprecedented affluence both at the private individual level and in the public sector."

Whether or not these are the most noteworthy characteristics is something that could be argued about a great length. Other writers have cited slightly different elements. But for our purposes this is probably as good a list as any. The question I have to pursue is what the implications of a society whith these characteristics are likely to be for employment and for work. I take them in that order, though obviously the two are inter-related. I assume that, in accordance with Kondratieff's theory, irrespective of the speed of movement down the post-manufacturing road, the level of economic activity and therefore of employment will generally be less in the 1980s than in either the 1970s or the 1990s. In other words, we can anticipate some recovery in employment and in the general level of business activity, taking account of the fluctuations of the business cycle, during the 1990s (assuming, of course, no major outburst of hostilities and no major breakdown in law and order). That much economists can tell us. What they cannot tell us is the precise extent of that recovery - whether, for example, it will be enough to restore the kind of employment levels that we experienced in the heyday of the post-war boom in the 1950s and 1960s.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part four by Michael Shanks

Another factor worth mentioning at this stage is the dramatic change now taking place in many Western countries with regard to public sector employment. The early 1970s saw a major increase in the public sector in many Western countries, notably the USA, UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. The reason for this increase were complex. In the period from the mid-1960s on, the Western world underwent what amounted almost to a social revolution. New pressure groups - consumerist, environmentalist, minority rights, groups for racial and sex equality, student unrest, worker participation and industrial democracy - came to exercise an increasing influence on society and on political life. In the USA these movements acquire a considerable fillip from the widespread protest against the Vietnam war. In France there was the remarkable if short lived student-and-worker uprising against the Gaullist regime in May 1968. In Western Europe as a whole, but particularly in the UK and Italy, there was increasing trade union militancy at the end of the 1960s, leading to wage-induced inflationary pressures. Elsewhere in Western Europe the trade unions concentrated on penetrating the power structure of industry through participation in the decision-making processes of management. Only in the US did the trade union movement become less powerful in the 1970s.

This complex of new social pressures - which helps to form the backcloth to the emerging post-manufacturing society - can be ascribed, I believe, to two main factors: rising expectations and an increasing disrespect for authority, permeating throughout Western (thought not, in the second instance, Japanese) society. Why? A number of elements played their part. I would like to identify what seems to me to be some of the major ones - not necessarily in order of importance.

1. Declining belief in and acceptance of traditional religion - partly resulting from the intellectual demolition of Christian ideology through the discoveries of Charles Darwin and his followers gradually seeping down through the community. Scientific humanism gives no credence to the existence of an after life which will redress the injustices of this life; it therefor tends to make one less tolerant of imperfections on Earth. By encouraging a questioning attitude of dogma, it also tends to remove one of the traditional buttresses (a projecting support) to establish authority in society.

2. The pervasive effect of the mass media in widening people's horizons and increasing their expectations. The use of the media as a marketing tool of great persuasiveness and effet meant that exporsure to the media increased people's discontents.

3. Similarly, the great expansion of education - especially higher education - which took place in all Western countries in the 1950s and 1960s, increased expectations and at the same time led to a much greater questioning of authority, whether it be of government, church, education itself, trade union or business.

4. The invention of the contraceptive pill has had, and will continue to have, a farreaching impact on society by its enlargement of the options open to woman. It has clearly done much more than anything else to enable woman to overcome the constraints placed upon them by society in ordering their life styles. As such, its effect on life styles and values, on social normes, on family life and on the so-called "permissive society" has been pervasive. We shall return to this point later when we come to examine likely working patterns in post-manufacturing society.

5. The increased movement of people in the post-war era has also done much to enlarge expectations, especially among the poorer sections of the population.

6. It is no accident that the social explosion took place towards the end of the longest period of sustained full employment and economic growth in world history, when people had come to assume that the boom would go on for ever, and that full employment and rising living standards could be taken for granted.

The combined result of these and other factors was that by the start of the 1970s expectations where outrunning by a substantial margin the ability of society to meet them. This gap between expectation and achievement had both a materialist aspect and a qualitative one. On the one hand the increases in wages and salaries demanded far exceeded the feasible increases in production; the resulting gap could only be bridged by price rises, reducing the real value of the income increases won and thus generating fresh demands. Europe had already started to slip down the inflationary chute before OPEC gave it a final shove. On the other hand, demands for improvements in the quality of life - often at the expense of productive efficiency - further widened the gap between the demands of society and the ability of the productive machines to meet them.

(Two examples. The hostility of environmentalists to nuclear power stations in a number of European countries adds to energy costs and thereby reduces industrial productivity. In the USA it is argued that one of the main reasons for the decline in productivity growth in recent years has been the diversion of a significant part of the national's capital investment into measures to improve the industrial environment at the behest of regulatory bodies of one kind or another. Of course these examples do not imply that opponents of nuclear power or US regulatory agencies are wrong - merely that you cannot expect to have your cake and eat it.)

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part three by Michael Shanks

We are now plainly in a sixth phase, where for the time being at least there is not enough demand to ensure full employment and investment opportunities are insufficent to prevent captial saturation. Kondratieff disciples would say that this was inevitable, that we are now in a period equivalent to that of 1873-1893, and that a major recovery in world trade and economic activity is unlikely before the 1990s. The OPEC price explosion of 1973 may have delivered the final coup de grace to the post-war boom, but its demise was inevitable anyway, as the forces which gave it its initial impetus began to run down.

In fact both unemployment and inflation were starting to grow in most Western countries from the mid-1960s, and by the start of the 1970s inflation had become a significant problem in many countries. The boom was starting to run out of steam before the oil producing countries put the boot in. According to this view, there is not much we can do to restore economic activity until the natural process of digestion has worked its way through the system, and new factors - the accumulating impact of new technology, the need to renew run-down capital, perhaps the emergence of major new markets in China and South East Asia - provide a base for lift-off around the end of the decade. Until then, while the shorter term cycles will provide fluctuations around the base level of activity, the upturns will be inadequate to restore full employment and the downturns will be severe.

However, the remarkable coincidence of dating - OPEC's emergence coinciding with the centenary of the stock market crash which ended the railway boom - should not lead us to suppose that we are living through a straight re-run of the 1880s. In many ways the dilemma facing policy-makers is much more complex now than then. This is the first time in world history that economic depression has gone hand in hand with infation. This fact makes it very unlikely that governments will be prepared to undertake Keynesian-type reflation (expand the output by government stimulus) to boost activity, for fear that reflation will stimulate inflation faster than it will restore jobs. The fight against inflation has also pushed up interest rates throughout the world, thus further deterring new investment.

The other significant feature of the 1980s is that the "stagflation" is taking place against a packcloth of rapid technological innovation, and intense competition in manufacturing from the newly industrialised countries in East and South East Asia and elsewhere. This competition is pushing Western Europe and the USA - and, to a lesser but significant extent, Japan -even faster down the road to a service-based, post-manufacturing society.

To some extent, of course, this was what happened in the 1930s - and it is perhaps to the 1930s rather than teh 1880s that we should look for parallels to our present situation. (There are in fact more people out of work today in the UK - the worsthit of any major Western economy by the present recession - than at any time in the 1930s). In the 1930s, as today, increasing international competition in stagnant world markets led to rapid erosion of traditional industries -coal, textiles, heavy engineering; while the products of new technology - automobiles, aircraft, electronics, cinema - enjoyed the same kind of boom conditions as we associate today with the energy industries and computer software. Periods of recession do not slow down the process of economic change; rather they accelerate it. History does not suggest that technological innovation comes to a grinding halt in harsh economic conditions. What happens rather is that the life cycle of industries, from vigorous youth to declining senility, is accelerated. That is what we are witnessing today.

Of course, governments try to arrest the process by artificial means. In the 1930s the favoured process was the imposition of restrictions on imports, and the encouragement of cartels in threatened industries. So far we have avoided the same kind of headlong retreat into cartels and autarchy in the present recession, and the evidence of the long term harm which it engendered in the inter-war era is probably sufficiently strong to enable us to continue to resist the temptation. But a milder version of the same policy is being followed in industries like steel (the EEC's "Davignon plan"), shipbuilding, textiles and automobiles, with "voluntary" restrictions on imports and "orderly marketing" arrangements to cushion the shock of competition and recession. Such arrangements on the whole do little good, but not too much harm. The run-down of traditional industries continues, though at a slightly less frightening pace.

The point that I am seeking to make is this. At the present time in Western Europe and North America we are living through a number of inter-related developments and it is important that we should separate them out in our minds if we are to make sense of where we are going. The most important long term trend is to move away from a manufacturing-based economy to one based on services, and particularly on knowlegdge-based activities. This trend is being accelerated by the erosion of our traditional manufacturing base resulting from stagnant world markets (the Kondratieff effect) and increasing Third World competition. The trend itself owes a great deal to the developments of technology, in two respects: the creation of new service industries on the one hand (see below), and the elimination of jobs in manufacturing - and, it must be said, in many of the service industries as well - by increased productivity through automation in one form or another.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part two by Michael Shanks

I prefer to describe the new society now emerging in the Western world as "post-manufacturing society", since its most obvious feature is the shift in the balance of the workforce out of manufacturing into services. Just as farm mechanisation and more efficient husbandry - crop rotation, irrigation, fertilisers - starting in the mid-eighteenth century meant that a small minority of the labour force could eventually supply all the food needed by the community, so automation and increasing industrial efficiency are rapidly reducing the numbers of people needed to satisfy the world market for manufactured goods. Just as manufacturing expanded to emloy the agricultural labour surplus two centuries ago, so today people are moving in large numbers out of manufacturing into the service industries - into banking and insurance, retailing, catering and hotels, public utilities and communications, education and leisure, and perhaps above all into the public services outside the market economy.

One of the major questions facing the Western world in the 1980s is whether the service sector can expand fast enough to absorb all those now surplus to the needs of agriculture and manufacturing. Although the service sector now employs more than half the total labour force of most Western countries, there is nevertheless a growing problem of unemployment. The likelihood is that manufacturing unemployment will continue to rise during the 1980s. We need to understand why this should be so.

If we review the history of Western capitalism from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day, we see that economic development has been characterised by cyclical fluctuations - of three kinds. There are the short term (two to three years) fluctuations of commodities, determined by time lags between supply and demand; there are the major business cycles (seven to eight years before the Second World War, now typically four to five years in duration) which occur in all industrialised economies, and which spring essentially from fluctuations in demand for capital - and to a lesser extent consumer - goods. But over and above these cycles there are longer term fluctuations, lasting typically for twenty or twentyfive years, know as the Kondratieff cycle after the distinguished Russian economist of the 1920s who perished in one of Stalin's labour camps.

Until recently economist were divided on the question of the validity of the Kondratieff cycle, but developments since the Second World War have greatly strenghtened the case for its existence. Kondratieff's case is that capitalist development proceeds in major spurts, driven largely by technological changes which create new markets for capital saturation, while it digests as it were the effects of the previous boom. Thus, if one goes back to the London Great Exhibition of 1851, which was also the launching-pad for the great railway boom, one can identify six subsequent periods of alternating rapid and slow economic advance. During the periods of rapid growth, booms were long and pronounced, recessions short and shallow; during the periods of stagnation, the reverse was true.

The six "Kontratieff periods" since 1851 have been:
1. 1851-73. The era of the railway boom, leading to the opening-up of large tracts of North and South America, with rapid industrialisation in Western Europe; discoveries of gold and precious metals in North America and Australasia were also significant.
2. 1873-93. The end of the railway boom in 1873 ushered in a period of slower growth and capital saturation until the mid-1890s.
3. 1893-1914. The "belle epoque" which led up to the First World War was another period of fast growth, characterised by the heyday of imperialism, the "scramble for Africa", the opening-up of Japan, China and South East Asia, a new round of gold and precious metal discoveries in South Africa and the Western part of North America, and the beginning of industrialisation in European Russia.
4 1918-1939. The end of the Second World War ushered in the greatest and most prolonged economic boom the world has ever seen. With the benefit of hindsight, one can assign as one of the main causes cheap energy in the pre-OPEC era. Other factors included major technological advances, a rapid increase in world population, reconstruction after the war and catching up with the run-down in investment during the pre-war slump, greatly improved communications, and the elimination of many of the artificial barriers for trade created during the 1930s, producing an explosion in world trade.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society - part one by Michael Shanks

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society

Two centuries ago, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the workforce lived at or within walking distance of their place of work. Most were self-employed or members of what we would now call "autonomous working groups". They worked what we would now call "flexitime", clocking on being unknown if only because very few people had clocks or kenw how to use them. Work was part of the normal pattern of life, its rhythms and disciplines being not very distinct from those of leisure and the family. Thogh there was considerable unemployment, unemployment in the formal sense we know today barely existed. Social discipline was exercised largely by and through the church, and by the needs of survival.

Today, the Information Revolution, in the process of invading every aspect of more and more people's time and life, evaporates in ever faster and bigger innovation cycles. Driven by enormouse public investment in Research and Development of ICT products and costtaking procurement measurs it constitutes the fastest growing sector in the economy in most of the industrialized countries since the '80s. Leaving the flagships of the european economic recovery plan, coal and steel based manufacturing industries and agriculture behind, it serves as the major catalyst for economic growth throughout the western world. With very little public involvement in its direction of development.

The Industrial Revolution, which shifted the main balance of the workforce from agriculture into manufacturing, was the result of two parallel technological drives. Technological changes in farming led to dramatic rises of productivity, thus throwing up a surplus of erstwhile peasants whose labour was no longer needed on the land. These people migrated into the towns of cities, where fortunately another series of technological innovations was simultaneously creating a demand for labour in the new manufacturing industries arising from mechanisation and the steam engine.

Industrial technology, until very recently, has consistently operated to increase the size of operations, by facilitating economies of large scale. In so doing it has not only created the range of artefacts which has tranformed the world. It has also imposed social changes in the industrial workforce which have been hardly less revolutionary in their implications. To ensure that installed capital operates profitably, workers have had to accept an externally-imposed discipline which was not required in pre-industrial communities, and which has increasingly diverged from the conditions of life outside the factory. They tyranny of the stop-watch and of the moving assembly line - the subordination of man to the machine - has been the price for improved material living standard. The gulf between work and leisure, between work and the family, between working life and social life, has widened dramatically. At the same time, as the average size of productive unit has increased, the gulf between bosses and workers, and between capital and labour, has widened. Increasing remoteness, plus the intrinsic boredom of much industrial work, and the growing tension between the imposed discipline of factory life contrasted with the growing democratisation of society - and increasing standard of education and awareness - have led to the widespread phenomenon of alienation and bitterness on the shop floor, and the growth of a rival focus for employee loyalty in the shape of trade unions. The tensions and conflicts of industrial life have spilt over into society, with the decline of traditional religion and the takeover of large areas of the trade union movement by various forms of Marxist socialism.

All these phenomena, which have come to loom so large in Western society, derive more than anything else from the scale of operations dictated by the technologies of the ninetheenth and the first half of the twentieth century - technologies epitomised (a perfect example) by the assembly lines of Detroit, Birmingham or the Ruhrgebiet. So long as Western economies were essentially manufacturing-based and so long as technology favoured large scale operations, there was little that could be done to prevent the personal friction, the frustration and the alienation to which they gave rise; or so at least conventional wisdom maintained. Attempts to return to the pastoral innocence of the pre-industrial era were not on the whole very impressive or widely followed.

However, since the Second World War, and particularly since the beginning of the 1960s, we have begun to see remarkable changes in the pattern of Western society - changes in the pattern of social life, the distribution of the workforce, and in the thrust and direction of technology. Some writers have characterised what has been happening since the 1950s as the emergence of "post-industrial society", as different from the society created by the Industrial Revolution as that society was from its predecessor.

Work, Europe and Utopia – part ten by Henri Brugmans

10 Provisional Conclusions

Concluding this paper, it is clear that the "crisis" of the present time is not one of relatively short duration, to be struggled through as best we can. On the contrary, the persistence, in particular, of endemic unemployment which promises to remain with us for a long time, illustrates the gravity of the evils which confront us. It is more a matter of a cultural change, one of those historical transformations in which both the basic concepts and the organisational structures are challenged. We have sought to throw light on certain particular aspects, but we must admit that, in none of these areas, do we yet find ourselves faced with a genuine revival, or a bold attempt to tackle the roots of the problems. This absence of "leadership" which arises is all the more dangerous for our regime, our way of life, precisely because democracy cannot prosper without a sense of authority, without the certainty of being directed towards fixed goals. Where this need for effective authority is not satisfied there is the risk of nurturing desires for totalitarian dictatorship, of whatever political persuasion. It is relatively unimportant whether the new sensibility arises in one particular area or another. What is essential is that public opinion has a sense of clarity on the part of its leaders and will to achieve certain objectives = and that it feels itself affected, and is called upon to make its own contribution. In effect, democracy is not solely control of rulers by the people and their representatives; it is also policy clearly defined in terms of clear principles.

But if our society is afflicted with indecision, it is not a matter of one or another national society in particular. Certainly in one country the situation appears a little different than in another. One country has strenghts and weaknesses unknown to another. But on the whole all of us outside state-controlled Europe, in other words in the West, are in the same boat. The European Economic Community is the halting and provisional expression of this irreversible truth.

The E.E.C. had, in the beginning, two complementary objectives. In the first place it had to break down frontiers and customs barriers between member states. This task was called "negative integration"; it was accomplished after a fashion and in record time - even if the national governments continue to obstruct the process. But the second task, much more difficult to achieve, that of so-called "positive integration" - to achieve together what one could no longer do well in isolation - has scarcely been begun. Only agriculture was by virtue of the Treaty of Rome to become a community responsibility. But the broad policy which ought to have gone along with it has been engulfed in quarrels over prices, subsidies and production quotas. The result has been a state of affairs which greatly benefits the large producers, but hardly permits smaller ones to lead a decent life. In other sectors - industry, transport, finance - nothing or very little has been achieved in the way of introducing a common European administration.

It is thus for good reason that some people criticise the community for remaining "liberal" and for having removed the barriers which hindered commerce without having introduced the planning which would be necessary to give shape to a new solidarity. But these critics have been wrong to conclude from their findings that it is necessary to fall back upon "national solutions".

The areas that suffer most from the absence of "leadership" are above all regional policy and, of particular concern to us here, social policy.

Undoubtedly, one could not say that nothing has been done. Italian migrant workers in another community country know something about this. The Treaty of Rome has enabled them to benefit immediately, in Germany or elsewhere, from all the social security legislation the enjoyment of which up until then was reserved for nationals. In addition, a certain harmonisation has been possible, generally in the direction of improvement. Workers from the less favoured countries and employers of more generous countries, had a common interest in raising the standards to the level of the best.

Nevertheless, no attempt has been made to outline the features of another type of society, specifically European in being at the one time different from Soviet state-control and American liberalism. On the other hand, employers have grasped much more quickly and more vigorously than the trade union movement, the opportunities and risks which European interation offered them. Certainly, there is a mass of workers organised at a European level, but up to now, it has scarcely defined a clear and convincing policy. It has really been more a case of an office which played a useful role in following events, rather than being boldly progressive. But this undoubtedly is no more than a beginning.

In conclusion, the existence of a federal union of Europe is scarcely justified if it does not lead to new forms of social organisation. Europeans do not aspire towards unity for its own sake, but towards the possibility of coming nearer to greater human justice. And further, they are beginning to understand, still vaguely, that all the promises which have been made to them in this respect are, as long as they remain within national frontiers, nothing more than electioneering demagogy. In short, there will be no Europe without a plan for the future. But there will be no plan for the future realisable unless adequate continental space is available.

In effect, (what we have been saying unceasingly (=continuously) in the course of this paper): the reconstruction of our structures is inconceivable in a single country, because every country infatuated (inspired with an intense but short lived passion) with progress always risks endangering its competitive position. If it is to embark upon reconstruction and break out of its lethargy, Europe must act as a whole. Undoubtedly, small-scale experiments will still be necessary and Roosevelt was right to say, as he once did, that every state of the Union was a laboratory in the matter of its own legislation. But when it comes to applying the results of this experimentation the costs are such that they must be assumed collectively. The European Community constitues the smallest workable unit in this respect.

In short the existence of national states hungry for absolute power condemns us nowadays to impotence, and constitutes a major barrier on the way to progress. It is possible that even Europe is not suffieciently large of an entity; perhaps we should be thinking instead of the O.E.C.D. countries, which also include North America and Japan. Jean-Francois Deniau was right to point out in Europe without Power that there will never be a purely "European" economy: we will always have to pay the utmost attention to the Dollar and the Yen.

This being the case, the concept of a "national economy" is, a forteriori, meaningless. But if Europe's originality is not to be found in the economic realm, it is certainly outstanding in the cultural. If Eurpe is anything it is a unique civilisation, and this uniqueness is most apparent in its social structure. Some essential industrial technology is the same everywhere, but workers' aspirations are very different in Osaka and Pittsburgh from what they are in Essen or the suburbs of Paris.

This European civilisation is possibly no better than the others. But, undoubtedly, it has a role to play in a world seeking to bring about some form of international agreement, involving Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R., the United States, Black Africa, the Arab countries, Latin America, South-East Asia. Within each of these land masses, there will be different degrees of private- and public ownership, but everywhere there will be problems which demand immediate attention. In the future, no one would tolerate the disgrace of famine and the injustice of entire peoples exploited by more powerful forces. Europe could take the lead in this debate, but cannot hope to do so as long as nationalism among European states remains the governing law.

A vision such as this of a world finally peaceful and united could not have come to the Euroepans of the 1930s. No one, in fact, ever dreamt of it. Despite the terrible poverty of the unemployed at that time the crisis then remained relatively limited. It did not yet involve the whole world and was of relatively short duration. There was soon an upturn of the business cycle and the new Keynesian policy of deficit spending could produce spectacular results, much to the amazement of classical economists. In 1933, Hitler, having come to power, had already the good fortune of an assured economic revival, and war preparations did the rest. In the United Staes, Roosevelt made some lasting innovations by setting up a social security system which, although subsequently modified, was never abolished.

Today it is a different story. Keynesian economics produces nothing but inflation. The slight recovery, tentatively announced every so often, does not reduce the enormous number of unemployed in Europe. It is a collective reappraisal that is needed from Europeans, lest (with the intension of preventing) otherwise they slide gently towards the gilded (false brilliance) poverty of civilisations which have lost the chance of recovery.

It is far from certain whether Europeans, exhausted by their wars and their failures, will have nough energy to embark upon such an undertaking. All that can be said for sure is a renaissance will never be achieved without a plausible utopia, without the "leap in the dark" which Robert Schuman was brave enough to inaugurate, in his declaration of 9 May 1950. They were then talking about coal and steel, which were still thought to be the basis of the modern economy. But, at the end of the day, those pioneers were not simply interested in these particular products but in giving a boost to the European ideal.

It is in this spirit that this paper has been written. It cotains no ready-made solutions, but is intended to make the reader reflect upon the problems that face us in the future.