A Post-Marxist Strategy for the Post-Industrial Revolution by James Robertson

“At the genesis of all revolutionary action lies an act of faith: the certainty that the world can be transformed, that man has the power to create something new, and that each of us is personally responsible for this transformation.”

This quotation from Roger Garaudy’s book, The Alternative Future, provides an apt keynote for what I have to say. In asking me to give a paper on “Responsibility and Response-ability”, the organisers of this conference had in mind that I would discuss “individual responsibility and the human and institutional constraints to moral initiative” in the broad context of “Culture, Society and the Individual”. I shall address this question in the context of a revolutionary situation. The revolution in question is the post-industrial revolution. Responsibility concerns what we ought, and response-ability what we are able, to do to help to bring this revolution about.

One of the most pressing problems today for many people in countries like ours is that they do not like the way things are going, they know that a better alternative must be possible, but they do not see how they can help to bring it about. They feel helpless as individuals. They get no constructive vision or sense of purposeful solidarity from their institutions – political parties, churches, and so on. They feel imprisoned and immobilised by their own selves – by their habits, their personality, and the knowledge of their own past ineffectiveness. They also feel imprisoned and immobilised by their institutions; they dare not rebel against the firm on which they depend for their job and their pension, the mortgage company on which they depend for their house, the utilities on which they depend for necessities like heat and light, the medical and social services on which they depend for their welfare.

Discussion of what to do often revolves around the dilemma: should we first try to change society, or ourselves? Politicians and economists are among those who tend to assume that we should concentrate on changing the structure of society – either by reform or revolution – in order to create the kind of environment in which people can live better lives. Priests and psychiatrists, whose concern is directly with people, are among those who tend to assume that we should concentrate on changing ourselves, since otherwise we shall be incapable of creating a better society. The fact is, of course, that the dilemma is total. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

This, then, is my starting point. Each of the ways in which people traditionally strive to create a better world – economic and social reform, political revolution, and personal change – is doomed to failure unless we pursue all three simultaneously. So far as reform is concerned, I have described elsewhere how the “institutional imperative” ensures that all reform will be too little and too late. Another British thinker, Ronald Higgins, also with personal experience of high level government, has recently concluded that the frightening inertia of our political institutions is one of the main factors leading us into a world of rapidly mounting confusion and horror. But political revolution is no answer either; it merely substitutes one set of rulers – one form of domination – for another, and otherwise leaves things much as they were or worse. Finally, concentration on personal change is all too often tantamount to dropping out, turning one’s back on the world in order to take care of oneself. Those who commit themselves to economic a nd social reform, or to political revolution, or to personal change, as the answer, may find self-importance, self-expression and self-satisfaction in so doing. But it is self-delusion for them to suppose, in the face of all evidence, that they will thereby create a better world.

The realistic approach is to seek to change society and ourselves at the same time, by the same actions. The search is for ways in which people can simultaneously change the direction of their personal lives, contribute to reforming the institutional structure of society, and help to bring about a post-industrial revolution which will create a better society. My aim in this paper is to suggest what this will involve.

The approach is a personal one. It is practical, not academic. I shall outline the future that I hope to help create, and suggest ways in which we can help to create it. Up to this point I shall be drawing on the themes of The Sane Alternative. But then I shall break new ground and, in the last main section of the paper, I will try to show that my approach, though not Marxist, takes account of Marxism in certain significant respects.

This is important. Our vision of the future is post-industrial, not pre-industrial; it builds on and goes beyond the technical progress made since the Industrial Revolution. It is post-modern, not pre-modern; it builds on and goes beyond the economic and cultural progress made since the Renaissance. It is post-Christian, not pre-Christian; it builds on and goes beyond the spiritual progress made in the Christian era. Similarly, our perception of how the post-industrial revolution will take place must build on the insights about the dynamics of social change which Karl Marx and his followers have given to us, and go beyond them. It must be post-Marxist, not pre-Marxist.

Outlines Of A New Future

The industrial age is ending. Athough many people still find it difficult to imagine anything other than a Business-As-Usual future, such a future is not feasible for the industrialised countries or the world as a whole. Limits – physical, social, psychological, institutional, conceptual – are closing in. Britain, the first industrial country, is among the first to hit these limits. In other countries of Europe and North America industrialism may have a few more years to go, but not very many.

So what sort of post-industrial society do we want?

Leaving aside the possibilities of Disaster and Totalitarian Clampdown (both of which have their prophets), there are two sharply contrasting views of post-industrial society. I refer to them as the Hyper-Expansionist (HE) future and the Sane, Humane, Ecological (SHE) future. The second is the kind of post-industrial society I want to help to create. I shall briefly describe it: first by contrasting it with the HE future; second, by suggesting some of the changes it would involve.

A Hyper-Expansion (HE) Future

The HE view of the future has been expounded by North American thinkers like Herman Kahn and Daniel Bell. They assume that the post-industrial revolution will be a transition to a super-industrial way of life. High technology industries like aerospace, computing and telecommunications will set the pace, supported by the knowledge-based, information-handling professions and occupations. The service industries will continue to overtake manufacturing as the growth points of the economy. Personal and social services, including the provision of care, amenity and entertainment, will continue to become more institutionalised and professionalised. By accelerating these existing trends in modern society – and by relying on advanced science and technology in areas like space colonisation, nuclear energy, automation, genetic engineering and behavioural manipulation – the super-industrial peoples will be able to break out of further limits to material growth. According to this scenario the most important new breakthroughs will continue to be geographical and physical, economic and technical. The assumption is that if European, scientific, expansionist, economic, masculine man will have the courage of his convictions, he will be able to brush aside (or at least bring under control) the political, social and psychological problems, as well as the economic problems, that beset industrialised societies today.

This approach to the future implies an ethic of elitism and domination in a class-divided world. Internationally it implies that, by becoming super-industrialised as the less developed countries become industrialised, today’s industrialised countries will maintain their economic superiority. It implies that within each superindustrialised country there will be two sharply polarised classes – a responsible technocratic elite in charge of every important sphere of life, and the irresponsible unemployed masses with little to do but enjoy their leisure. Apart from one’s moral reservations about this scenario, there are strong doubts about its technical and economic feasibility, and it also seems quite unrealistic from a political, social and psychological point of view. It may be best to regard it as a Utopian projection of the fantasies of the dominant technocratic elites in the affluent countries today.

A Sane, Humane, Ecological (SHE) Future

This contrasting view of post-industrial society is based on the assumption that the most important new frontiers are now psychological and social (personal and human) not technical and economic. Whereas the industrial revolution was primarily about the development of things, the post-industrial revolution will be primarily about the development of people; it will enable human beings to break out of the psychological and social limits which thwart further progress today, just as the industrial revolution enabled them to break out of the constraints which limited their technical and physical capabilities 200 years ago. This means that the transition from industrial to post-industrial society will involve a change of direction, not an acceleration of industrial trends.

Among the foreseeable changes of direction will be the following:

• from economic growth to human growth,
• from polarisation of sex roles in society to a new balance between them,
• from increasing specialisation to increasing self-sufficiency,
• from increasing dependence on big organisations and professional know-how to increasing self-reliance,
• from increasing urbanisation to a more dispersed pattern of habitation,
• from increasing centralisation to more decentralisation of power,
• from increasing dependence on polluting technologies that waste resources and dominate the people who work with them to increasing emphasis on technologies appropriate to the environment, to the availability of resources, and to the needs of people, and
• from increasing emphasis on rationality and the left-hand side of the brain to increasing emphasis on intuition and the right-hand side of the brain.

(In this paper I am dealing with the post-industrial revolution only as it will affect the “overdeveloped” countries. However, it should be noted that these changes of direction will apply also to “less developed” countries, where a needs-oriented approach to development may already be superseding the pursuit of blind economic growth. So far as the international economic order is concerned, SHE post-industrialists (by contrast with their HE opponents) aim for economic convergence between overdeveloped and underdeveloped countries, which will enable all the inhabitants of the planet to achieve an adequate and sustainable level of material life early in the next century. This approach is sometimes called “Another Development”.)

We can imagine what this change of direction will involve by remembering that industrialisation has tended to shift activities (growing food, baking bread, caring for old people, for example) out of the informal part of the economy in which work is done for love into the formal part in which work is done for money. In the HE future this tendency would be accentuated; many activities still carried on today in informal, interpersonal, familial, neighbourly relationships would become the formalised work of paid professionals attending to the needs of customers and clients. In the SHE future, on the other hand, this tendency will be reversed. People will live a greater part of their lives in and around their homes and local communities, doing more for themselves and for one another. People will become more self-reliant, more familial, more neighbourly. Work, leisure, education, and family life will become more closely integrated, not more fragmented. The different compartments – schooling, work, retirement – in which the young, the adult and the elderly are now expected to live their lives, will begin to break down.

This change of direction will involve reversing today’s increasing financial indebtedness (through mortgages, hire purchase, credit cards, etc.) and increasing financial commitments (to pensions, insurance policies, etc.) which now keep people’s noses to the grindstone of paid work. It will require new financial institutions -local enterprise trusts, appropriate technology investment bonds, ecological land bonds, land trusts, etc. – which will enable people to invest their spare money in developments which they themselves support. It will involve many other reforms of the existing monetary and financial system (national and international) which will allow people and localities to take more control over their personal and local interests, and to reduce their dependence on outside sources of money.

In the SHE future an education system mainly geared to the acquisition of paper qualifications will become increasingly irrelevant. Education will aim at preparing young people for a job (if they have one), and for useful and rewarding unemployment (if they do not), and (in either case) for personal growth and a good quality of adult life. Education will be recognised as an aspect of life which should continue from the cradle to the grave, and not as something provided during childhood and adolescence by professional teachers in special institutions called schools and colleges. As the prevailing concept of education develops in this way, increasing numbers of young people will wish to become more deeply involved in real-life activities centred around their homes and local communities. At the same time, changing patterns of work, leisure and retirement will be involving adults and elderly people more deeply in these activities, too. These changes will soften existing demarcation lines, not only between men and women and between old and young, but also between education, work, leisure, preparing and growing food, and many other aspects of personal and community life.

In short, as we move into the SHE future, more and more people will perceive the need to liberate themselves and one another from excessive dependence on the system – for their employment, social services, health, education, politics, and so on. At the same time, more and more people working in the system will begin to perceive the need to “decolonise” it before it breaks down; that is, to enable people to reduce their dependence on it and become more self-reliant. These concepts of liberation and decolonisation are central to my theme.

The Nature Of The Challenge

A post-industrial revolution on these lines, involving a change of direction from material growth to personal and social growth, will be as large a historical change as the Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago. How will a change of this magnitude come about? And what can we do to help it come about as smoothly and peacefully as possible?

First, we can learn useful lessons from the Industrial Revolution itself.

The Industrial Revolution was not brought about by enlightened government policies. It was not brought about by political revolution. It happened because an old way of life had reached its limits, because innovators and entrepreneurs then opened up new space, and because multitudes of people then followed them into it in a self-sustaining cumulative process. The innovations and new enterprises of that time were of a technical and economic nature. They have altered the whole character of society – the ways people work and live and think. The innovations and new enterprises of the post-industrial revolution will be personal and human, social and psychological. They, too, will alter the whole character of society. Social and psychological innovators and social and psychological entrepreneurs will provide the shock troops for the post-industrial revolution.

Second, we should understand that the industrialised way of life is breaking down, and we need a breakthrough to a post-industrial way of life. This immediately suggests three vital tasks: to speed up the breakthrough; to ease the breakdown; and to help both to come about in such a way that they combine in a single process of evolutionary transformation.

We can speed up the breakthrough by helping to liberate ourselves from too much dependence: on employers for our work; on business corporations for our food and the other goods we need; on the medical profession and the drug companies for our health; on the educational profession and educational institutions for our learning; on professional priests and religious organisations for our spiritual needs. A very wide range of activity is opening up here, in alternative economics, alternative technology, alternative health, alternative education, alternative politics, alternative religion, and many other fields.

We can ease the breakdown by helping other people to become more self-reliant and less dependent. Doctors can help people to become more self-reliant about their health. Engineers can develop small-scale technologies which will enable people to provide for their own energy needs, or to repair their own houses and cars and household equipment, in a more self-reliant way. Government officials can work out policies which will enable people to do more for themselves and one another in their own localities, and thus to become less dependent on government services. These are three examples – doctors, engineers, government officials – of people with professional or managerial positions in “the system”, who can help to ease its breakdown by helping people to become less dependent on them. They will be giving away their own power over these people, before it breaks down. They will be decolonising the system, iust as the European powers found it necessary to decolonise their empires.

We can help breakdown and breakthrough to combine in a single process of evolutionary transformation by helping people to understand what is going on, and by helping them to see the future in new ways. For example, we may be able to help protagonists of human scale technologies, organic agriculture, rural resettlement, a small business (or common ownership) economy, alternative approaches to education or health, and so on, to see that these are connected parts of the same new frontier. Or we may be able to help to replace today’s industrial concepts of wealth, work, growth, power, and so on with post-industrial concepts as the dominant concepts in people’s thinking.

Third, we need to understand the psychological aspects of the post-industrial revolution. It will involve grieving for the industrial age which is passing. It will be like a crisis of adolescence, in which children liberate themselves from their parents, and parents decolonise the relationship with their children. It will be like a mid-life crisis, in which a person rethinks the direction of his life. It will be like a personal breakdown in which the individual’s old way of life becomes blocked or collapses around him, until he finds the ultimate reserve of energy which enables him to break through to a new way of life.

A Multitude of Roles

The post-industrial revolution will be a pluralist, polymorphous, polycentric process. It will be brought about by many different types of people, acting in many different fields, and interacting with one another in many different roles.

In The Sane Alternative I identified ten positive roles, which I called “transformation roles”, as follows:

• people whose aim and skill is to speed the breakdown of the old system, by helping to make it inoperable and destroying its credibility; theirs is a demolitionrole;
• people who are trying to improve the old system, by introducing changes which will make it better and stronger; their aim is to avert the breakdown of the old, but their actions may help to ease the transition to the new; theirs is a reformingrole;
• people who are creating and developing the growth points for a new society; theirs is a constructionrole;
• people who aim to liberate themselves and other people from their present dependence on the existing system of society; theirs is a liberatingrole;
• people who are working to ensure that the old system breaks down as painlessly as possible for everyone who is dependent on it; in managing its collapse, theirs is a decolonisingrole;
• people who, as liberators or as decolonisers, are helping other people to take more control over their own lives – in health, or politics, or learning, or religion, or their economic activities or in any other important aspect of their life; theirs is an enablingrole;
• people who are changing their personal way of life, and helping other people to change theirs, so that their lives will be more consistent with their image of a sane, humane, ecological future; theirs is a lifestylerole;
• people who are exploring and communicating new concepts of power, wealth, work, growth, learning, healing, and so on, appropriate to a sane, humane, ecological society; as the paradigm shifters, the ideological revolutionaries, theirs is a metaphysical reconstructionrole;
• people who recognise that all these different sorts of people will contribute positively to the transformation of society, and who are working to make sure that the transformation, though polycentric, is a widely understood, widely shared process of conscious evolutionary change; theirs is a strategicrole;

I also identified four negative or neutral roles:

• people who refuse to countenance the breakdown of the old system and its replacement by a new one; in trying to suppress the activities of the people listed above, theirs is a reactionaryrole;
• people who, having themselves failed in their own attempts to change society in one way or another, are confident that no one else will succeed, and anxious that they should not; they include Nestorian wiseacres, but mainly theirs is the pessimistic and cynicalrole;
• people who are humble (or superior) observers of what is happening and who, while they enjoy talking about it, writing about it, and scoring points off one another about it, do not want to take part; they can be helpful or unhelpful; theirs is the academicrole;
• and, finally, people who, wanting simply to get on with their own lives in whatever circumstances happen to exist, are not particularly concerned to encourage change or to resist it; theirs is the routine practitionerrole.

How will people playing these different roles, in many different fields of activity, interact with one another as the post-industrial revolution gathers pace? We cannot discuss this in detail here. But, as in his day Karl Marx confidently expected a general polarisation around the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, so today we should expect all sections of society to polarise to a greater or lesser extent around the two sides of the coming conflict between the protagonists of the HE and SHE visions of post-industrial society.

What Would Marx Say?

A friendly critic recently told me that my thinking seemed to miss the kind of issues which have been the central concerns of the traditional Left. It appeared to be based in: what might be termed a liberal conception of the human being and social relations: the individual is a fairly powerful entity, possessing a fair amount of freedom, who can exert influence in the realm of ideas. This is quite plausible from a middle-class vantage-point, but it makes very little sense from that of about 50% of the population of a nation such as Britain. The Left, therefore, has generally dubbed such conceptions as “bourgeois idealism” – meaning, in effect, a projection from the bourgeois’ own place in society. Instead, it has advised us to take very seriously the huge differences in power and in material interests between the classes in society; and it looks for radical social change, not through the work of individuals in “transformation roles”, but through the concerted action of a whole class. Even though such action may bring about some hurt, the argument is that it is the only way that the “class conflict” can be won.

I understand why I have given this impression. The principal concerns and strategies of the contemporary Left in the industrialised countries carry little more conviction with me than those of the contemporary Right. Nonetheless, as I said at the start of this paper, one of the features of industrialised society today is a widespread sense of personal helplessness, and one of the greatest needs is for a new sense of constructive solidarity that will enable people to act. In this respect, among others, my perception of the situation is similar to Marx’s perception of the situation which prevailed in the nineteenth century. Indeed, I suspect that if Marx were living now the prospect of transforming today’s industrialised society into the SHE future would grip his imagination, just as strongly, as the prospect of transforming 19th century capitalism into his vision of communism gripped it during his actual lifetime.

Marx’s thinking bears more directly on the post-industrial revolution than does the thinking of many of his followers living today.

Marx saw that the prevailing economic and social relations between people in a society corresponded to the stage of economic development which that society had reached. As he said,

The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, on which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

He saw that every society contained inherent – and, as we would now say, escalating contradictions in its existing structure of relations, which would eventually lead to its collapse. This applied to ancient society and to feudal society and it applied – so he thought – especially to capitalist or bourgeois society. The future would thus contain a qualitative break. A new kind of society would come into existence. A new epoch would be born.

For such a transformation (or revolution) to occur, Marx pointed out that not only must the objective circumstances have developed to the right point, but the subjective condition must also have arisen. By this he meant that there must be widespread consciousness of tne nature of the situation and of the action needed to transform it. He identified alienation as an important ingredient in this widespread growth of consciousness – alienation being the process which leads people to realise they are treated as mere commodities in the kind of society that currently exists. He saw that those who are thus alienated from the dominant values of their society will eventually form a large section of it, drawn together by consciousness of their common condition.

Thus, Marx argued, as the contradictions in the existing structure of economic and social relations become more acute, the most powerful forces in society will polarise around two conflicting sets of interests. The dominant set of interests will be enforced by the dominant section of society. The opposing set of interests will be developed by the alienated section of s ociety, which the dominant section has brought into existence in opposition to it. Because of the contradictions in the existing structure of society, either the alienated section will eventually win its struggle for liberation, or the whole society will collapse.

In all this, Marx’s thinking helps our understanding of what the post-industrial revolution will involve and what will bring it about. There are, however, two crucial differences in the situation as it exists today and as it existed in the nineteenth century. The first concerns the two sides in the struggle. The second concerns the role of the State.

In industrial societies today, the structure of relations between people who own the means of production and people who sell their labour has changed so fundamentally since Marx that it no longer throws up two separate classes of people. Every inhabitant of Britain, for example, is now an owner of the means of production, through insurance companies, pension funds, or public corporations (including nationalised industries); at the same time, the majority of active people are now paid employees. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in Marx’s sense, no longer exist. Their heirs today are the people who are trying to create a technocratic (HE) future and those who, emerging in opposition to them, are trying to create a humane (SHE) future. These are the opponents whose conflict is beginning to provide the motor force for the post-industrial revolution.

In Marx’s day it was reasonable to argue that the main function of the State was to provide the ruling class with an instrument of control and, in the last resort, of violence with which to dominate the rest of society. According to Marx, therefore, the revolutionary class must take over the State, turn it into their own instrument for dominance and control, and use it to effect the revolutionary transformation of the old form of society into the new. That transformation would consist of rooting out the remains of the previous ruling class, eliminating the class antagonisms surviving from their period of dominance, and enabling a new society – a new set of social and economic relationships – to emerge “in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. The emergence of that new society would permit, and at the same time require, the State to wither away, since a ruling class would no longer exist which might need to impose its will upon society by force. The State could thus be expected to decolonise itself (in my terminology), to give away its powers over people, and to enable people to exercise power for themselves.

Marxists still approach the transformation of society as a two-stage process on these lines, with the State playing a centrally important role. They have been mainly concerned with questions arising at the first stage, when the revolutionary class takes over the State and establishes its own rule. Such questions have revolved around the identity of the revolutionary class (e.g. are peasants included as well as workers?) and about the role of the revolutionary party (e.g. should it lead the masses and impose revolutionary goals upon them from outside, or should it merely enable them to channel their energies into the achievement of revolutionary goals which are their own?) In general, Marxist thinkers have devoted much less attention to the question of how the second stage is to be accomplished – how, once established, the dictatorship of the revolutionary class will decolonise itself, dismantle the State, and bring the new society into existence. The great exception is Mao, of course. Having led the revolutionary Chinese masses successfully through the first stage, he developed the strategy of permanent revolution to ensure that, even if the second stage were not accomplished, at least it would not be altogether forgotten.

As post-Marxists we may agree with the classical Marxist view that the State reflects and aims to perpetuate the prevailing structure of economic and social relations. Like all i nstitutions the State is, in cybernetic terms, “programmed to produce itself”. It is “dynamically conservative’. Its transformation – in a sense, its withering away – will be an important feature of the post-industrial revolution. Where the post-Marxist goes beyond the traditional Marxist is in recognising that the complex of institutions which make up the late twentieth century industrialised State is qualitatively different from the nineteenth century European State experienced by Hegel and Marx, and the twentieth century Russian and Chinese States experienced by Lenin and Mao. This means that the classical Marxist two-stage strategy of revolutionary transformation – first take over the State and then use the State as an instrument with which to dismantle itself – is no longer valid, if indeed it ever was.

Two developments, in particular, have changed the nature of the State. In the first place, the kind of corporate Welfare State that has now grown up in a country like Britain extends its activities right through industry, the trade unions, the social services, the professions and other parts of society. As I have said, the people who carry out its functions no longer represent a different class of people from the rest. In their different roles as pupils, students, workers, customers, taxpayers, patients, savers, pensioners, etc., most people belong on both sides of the old divide between society and the State. In this sense the people have already infiltrated the State and taken it over. By contrast with an earlier stage of industrial capitalism, when people of one class may have used the State to dominate and exploit people of another, one of the main features of today’s industrial societies is that people use the extended State to dominate and exploit one another, and even to dominate and exploit themselves, wearing another hat. In the second place. the process which I have referred to elsewhere as “dismantling the Nation State” is gathering momentum. In Britain, for example, the increase of international government activity and power at European and world levels, together with increasing pressure for the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales and other “regions”, and also to the truly local level, has begun to whittle away the significance of national sovereignty. Both these developments have outdated the idea of a revolutionary takeover of the State. It has become both pointless and unfeasible.

This explains why traditional left-wing approaches to the future of industrial society now lack credibility. The following comments on three recent British approaches of this kind are relevant.

Stuart Holland’s proposals for a programme of full, centrally-controlled, nationalisation seem to depend excessively on the rationality and public-spiritedness of governments and trade unions, for which there is little historical evidence. Moreover, in the face of his own evidence he nowhere shows how national governments can control the operations of the multinational companies, which evidently are in a position to adapt their strategies to suit the circumstances of any particular nation state. Glyn and Sutcliffe look forward to “the control by the working class of its own fate in a democratic socialist system”, but they don’t anywhere spell out how this is going to be achieved, and certainly give no evidence that the working class movement itself is moving in this direction in Britain … Nairn’s vision is frankly apocalyptic. The British political system will fragment, and out of the ashes of a disintegrated United Kingdom will rise the phoenix of the English working class, the bourgeois scales finally fallen from its eyes, and capable at last of realising its common struggle and common destiny with the international working class movement.

As awareness spreads that traditional, Marxist strategies now lack credibility in the industrialised West, and that the situation has developed beyond the capacity of traditional Marxist theory to explain and transform, a new consciousness is emerging in opposition to the dominant values and the dominant system of today’s society. It is a consciousness of being exploited, deprived, de-humanised, alienated, just as Marx described. But we feel that the exploitation, deprivation, dehumanisation are now imposed as much by ourselves as by others. The new consciousness is of people becoming aware of the need to liberate themselves and one another from dependence on the system. This consciousness represents what Marx would have called the subjective condition for the post-industrial revolution. Those in whom ‘it is rising are beginning to form what Marx would have called the new “revolutionary class”.

A Non-Violent Revolution

So, reverting to the title of this paper – responsibility and response-ability – what should we do and what can we do?

I have made it clear that I hope the post-industrial revolution will be a non-violent transformation of industrialised society. It will happen because industrialised society is breaking down and because people are beginning to see a better alternative to it. It will happen because more and more people are beginning to understand that by liberating themselves from excessive dependence on the system which industrialised society has created they can enjoy a better quality of life, and that by liberating themselves from unnecessary material wants they can develop themselves more richly as people.

In every department of their lives there is a multitude of ways in which people can begin – many have already begun – to liberate themselves, and help one another to do the same. There is no need to try to destroy the system or take it over. It will be enough to withdraw support from it: to work rather less in the paid job, and rather more at unpaid work at home and in the local neighbourhood; to spend rather less money on food, or repairs, or entertainment, and to give rather more time to growing food, doing repairs, and creating entertainment for oneself, one’s family and one’s neighbours; to give rather less time and attention to remote forms of politics. and rather more time and energy to important local issues that affect the life of oneself and one’s friends more closely; and so on. As more and more people become aware that more and more people are doing this, more and more people will become conscious of belonging to the new “revolutionary class”.

It would be naive to suppose that everyone in dominant positions will be eager to give their power away, or that everyone in dependent positions will be eager to liberate themselves. Domination is what provides a sense of security and self-worth for some people; dependence is what provides it for others. The SHE vision of the post-industrial future will be rejected by both these types. As its prospect becomes more likely, the possibility of mass psychosis among them, leading to new forms of facism, is not to be ignored. They will do all they can to create the HE future, with its dominant technocratic elite and its dependent, irresponsible masses. Failing that, they will try to impose Totalitarian Clampdown as second best.

But there is also a more favourable side to the situation. As industrialised society reaches its limits and begins to break down, more and more people in managerial and professional positions are beginning to feel they are imprisoned in worthless roles. They find it less easy to help, or to dominate, those who are supposed to be dependent on them. They begin to yearn for a more convivial, more familial, more neighbourly life for themselves. They begin to see that their own liberation depends on giving their power away. They begin to want to help their customers or their clients to be less dependent on them. They begin to think about the changes and reforms that will be necessary in order to decolonise their part of the system. As these people decide to change the direction of their own lives they will, ipso facto, be deciding to change the structure of relations in society. It is of such changes in the existing structure of relations that the post-industrial revolution will consist.

Conclusion

There are many crucial questions, especially about the organisation necessary to carry out the post-industrial revolution and about its international aspects, which there is no time or space to discuss here and now. But let me conclude by saying briefly why I believe that our two countries – Britain and Canada – may both be expected to play important parts in it.

Britain, as I have said, was the first industrial nation and is among the first to reach the limits of industrialism. We have never committed ourselves as wholeheartedly to material economic success as have some other peoples, such as the Germans, the Americans, and the Japanese. Our recent economic problems have, to some extent, reflected our preference for quality of life.

I believe that, in fact, the post-industrial revolution has already started in Britain. One morning we shall wake up and realise that, in spite of the exhortations of the economic Cassandras, we have been beginning to move unconsciously and crabwise into the post-industrial future.

In Canada, of all the other countries I know, one finds the most healthy scepticism about a Business-As-Usual future, based on indefinite economic growth and the continuing sovereignty of the nation state. I am aware of more serious thinking in Canada at all levels of society about the prospect of a post-industrial society than in any other country. This thinking covers the possibilities and practical implications of a more conserving society, a more familial society, and a more needs-oriented approach to Third World development – including, by an extension of that concept, the future development of the indigenous peoples of Canada.

That is why I expect both Britain and Canada to play important parts in the post-industrial revolution, with citizens of both our countries continuing to work on it together.

(7 St. Ann’s Villas, London, 1978)

~ This article is chapter 2 of “Beyond the Dependency Culture – People, Power and Responsibility” by James Robertson (the entire book can be downloaded for free)