The new industrial revolution does not concern power, but ideological change and the sweeping transformation it brings about in productive activities. It is a transition to a new situation, a process for achieving an objective. It is a means, a goal in itself. There is no point setting out on the journey without a clear destination or goal. Thus first of all we have to discover the correct goal towards which mankind, the industrial world, and Europe as an integral part of it, should move towards over the next century?
Which of the typical but simultaneously distorted features of our modern society should we free ourselves of? They may be so ingrained in us, or we so bogged down in them, that we do not notice how rotten they are.
Growth, quantity, stress
I suggest that the sickest of these sick features is growth and its blind adulation, the subjection of quality to quantity.
We have been in the grip of the ideal of growth since the inception of industrialisation. Growth manifests itself in many ways. The growth in national and world population, the expansion in gross domestic product, the increase in company sales and profits, as well as in private incomes and wealth, are all forms of the same rolling wave. Growth has been considered an unequivocal virtue.
The essential elements in the target situation is that very few nonrenewable natural resources are used, the environment is not polluted beyond its bearing capacity, and organic nature is preserved in a sustainable state. Alongside these qualitative improvements, quantitative material growth ceases.
An indispensable objective is that the populations of most countries would stabilise at a lower level than now. Europe’s population does not necessarily change in the same way as the world’s. In an optimistic alternative it would already decline over the following decades and would be lower than now by the time the second industrial revolution has been brought to a conclusion in about 50 years time. Afterwards, in conjunction with a declining world population, it could gradually fall to about 60 per cent of the present level. The basic assumption of my plan is that world population would be lower and in Europe it could be slightly lower than now. This is not a forecast, but a realistic hope, and the condition for the success of all other improvements.
The amount of land available for utilisation would also not increase. The border between the area devoted to nature and that for man’s utilisation would become much clearer in the future and be more jealously guarded than national boundaries have ever been. Europe will be reconstructed, afforested and reserved into an enclosed nature conservation area extending from Greece to Gibraltar, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean. This, too, is a hope, but a realistic one.
Neither population nor the utilised area grow, but neither do the materials man takes into use. The technosphere is a megamachine, which continuously reproduces the goods man needs from waste. Once created, this megamachine, which will be described in greater detail later on, remains virtually unchanged. The building stock, road network, production capacity – everything whose growth we have thought of hitherto as an immutable law of nature – naturally changes, but nevertheless looks the same from one century to the next.
Growth is replaced by equilibrium. The ideology of growth contains one logical feature which I consider one of the distortions of the present age: the adulation of quantity.
Growth and quantity are linked together. If there is no quantitative growth, then logically quantity itself loses its status and the respect it enjoys. On the other hand, if quantity is not treated with such inane respect, then growth would no longer have the same attraction.
Quantity is replaced by quality. Growth is the reproduction of quantity. The powerful growth which everyone aims at these days is rapid reproduction. For this reason – once the value of growth disappears – the importance of quantity, and of urgency, will also disappear. If there is no point in growth, then there is even less in the speed of growth. Let stability be absolute, all encompassing, a universal value reflecting everything.
Stress is replaced by serenity. The end to growth does not mean stagnation. A society, once it has done away with growth, quantity and urgency, could land up in a state of monastic tranquility which few passionately aspire to. Nobody, however, is expected to accept a state of stagnation. Changes within the limits of stability are not only permitted but encouraged. Balance does not for a moment mean that the dimension of time is dimmed, that one age resembles the next, or that everything takes on a military-type uniformity.
Ideas, culture, education
The new way of thinking derives its sustenance from an life-oriented ethic. Exactly what this is a question of dispute, but its common basic line is indisputable. According to this the basis for all solutions is a respect for the diversity of nature, for all the different species on earth of which man is but one form of life among others. The second industrial revolution aims at a time when these values are both respected and practiced. Man’s well-being is but a by-product of this process.
The ultimate goal of the natural sciences is to create a state of continuity on earth that will last, not for centuries or millenniums, but for millions of years. The meaning of sociology and similar sciences becomes marginal. Budgets and gdp do not grow, so economic debate in a state of equilibrium has no meaning. The cycles of booms and slumps are yesterday’s nightmares. The exercise of power and government is just about detail, neither are there any reasons for major political changes. Political disputes concern the right to use established wealth, the division between those who, on the one hand, participate in maintaining the machinery of production and society’s basic services, and, on the other hand, those who are excluded or have withdrawn from it. Research into politics, circus art and minor crime is carried out by lower grade institutes.
The arts and culture will be more appreciated than now. In the future we are all poets or aesthetes. Time, which is nowadays both a luxury and a scarcity, becomes a basic right. Sports have become more universal and range from world cup football to special competitions for the elderly and handicapped. All will keep fit according to their own individualised programmes. The same will happen to culture. The chain from elite to popular culture is long, diverse and unbroken. Different games will survive. They have always been and in the future, too, there will be virtual realities with their battles, victories and defeats. Among them will survive, as low grade amusements, the sweet yet harmless bad memories of a past full of competition, growth, efficiency, war and destruction.
The most significant reform in man’s everyday life will be the decline in regular, full-time employment. Consequently, the primary aim of education will no longer be to gain an advantage, instead schools will be multi-oriented in spirit. There will be no compulsory education, but community service will generalise. An important aspect of population restrictions is the idea that life itself is a privilege, including as it does the sense of obligation and duty. There will be no room for stowaways. Compulsory, wage labour will be equally divided among all, although there will be much less of it than now. Thus there will be more time for hobbies and studying. Learning is a life-long process and interest will focus largely on ecology, nature, philosophy, the arts, history and other seemingly worthless subjects from the point of view of production. You no longer leave school and start work, as school continues forever and there is no longer a worklife in the old sense of the word. All this is because there is no further growth in wealth and the newly-built megamachine is responsible for all production. The amount of labour required in its maintenance and recycling operations is significantly lower than in today’s production-oriented system.
Agreements and laws
In the sequel to the change, states and alliances will have entered into numerous agreements, particularly ones concerning the environment, binding themselves to observe them or otherwise suffering sanctions imposed by the international community. These sanctions are fines or in extreme cases military actions. National armies have been abolished and policing is carried out by soldiers serving the international community. These agreements and reforms nullify, to a significant extent, the sovereignty of present-day states. Regional governments, the heirs of today’s countries, submit to these agreements in the same way as individuals do nowadays to the laws of their own countries. This desired state has been reached through and with the aid of a massive change in production. This change I call the second industrial revolution.
As the population stabilises the demographic division between peoples remains unchanged from one century to the next. Age groups are more or less similar in size, neither is there any oversizing or undersizing due to extreme variation within them. The relative division between age groups remains, as well as that between family types. The number of children in families is much the same – about 2.5 – likewise the number of single people in the population. Population stability is strictly regulated through economic controls. Thus the benefits and services offered citizens can remain unchanged in form and extent from one decade to the next the unemployment or labour shortages caused by cyclical variations. There will no longer be such a thing as mass migrations from one area to another. Europe will also protect its borders against would-be immigrants from other continents.
Work
The amount and nature of work necessary depends on the megamachine. This embraces energy generation, commodity production, cropland, commercial forests, transportation, buildings and robots. The basic characteristics of the megamachine are standardisation, total recycling, the use of renewable energy, and an easily tuned automation. The amount of labour required for the maintenance and development of the megamachine is considerably less than needed to operate today’s unsophisticated, growth-oriented system. Thanks to a simplified and stable society, the service sector is slimmer than now and the burden of government lighter. In actual fact the amount of official and necessary work is only a fraction of what it is now.
Public income
It is ages now since the taxation of work was considered morally justified or even economically wise. Sales tax and value added tax are also forms of taxing work, if only by increasing the prices of finished and semi-finished products. Taxes on raw materials, emissions and waste, on the other hand, help to save scarce natural resources and direct production towards strict recycling. Thus it is wiser to increase environmental taxes, especially on the users of natural resources and polluters at the beginning and end of the production chain. But once such a tax has achieved its goal and production recycles materials in a non-polluting way, there is no longer any justification for it. How and from where will society after the second industrial revolution obtain its income? At least two types of taxes are ethically justifiable and logical.
The first is a tax on existence. Present day benefit policies, with children’s allowances being paid in some countries and others planning a citizen’s wage, are downright immoral. They belong to a world and a society which, for some reason or other, wishes to increase the population or where laziness is considered desirable. Once the idea of keeping the population small is accepted and there is enough useful work to go round, then policies should aim at the opposite: you have to pay taxes on existence and children. The right to live in itself is a sufficient privilege.
The second is a tax on land use. For centuries to come, in addition to an excess population, there will also be a shortage of land. Energy production needs land – the soil is left under the power plants – even though the energy could be obtained inexhaustibly from the sun. Similarly, houses, factories, cropland, commercial forests and transportation all take up room. This is all taken away from some other use, so taxes must be paid. The users and owners of all land not designated for conservation purposes must pay taxes. Only then can the correct price be found for the product of the land.
Public expenditure
Let us ask ourselves what a balanced society uses its income on?
The machinery of production is to a large extent the achievement of earlier generations and thus an inherent asset of society, much the same as the transport infrastructure. The technology of the future is much more demanding, likewise services. Difficult jobs exclude some people because, in order to guarantee reliable performance, it is best to exclude them from such work. It is cheaper and safer to keep an imaginative but capricious pilot grounded on benefit rather than release him into the cockpit. Basic services, therefore, will have to be increased over the present level. In addition to elementary education and medical care, basic housing, food and public transport will also be free. Thus everybody is cared for, nobody dies of hunger or freezes to death, even if they cannot perform demanding official tasks. But there is plenty of other work. The simple jobs beyond the reach of machines can be performed in return for these free services. Basic rights are not paid for in money, but by fulfilling basic obligations. Laziness is not condoned, so those unable to perform more demanding tasks are poorer than others. Just so: diligence, skill and natural abilities are rewarded. This may sound cruel on the individual, but it is in the interests of society and everyone in it.
Wealth and incomes are distributed as in the market economy, though within certain upper and lower limits. The main determinant of income is work performance. In the official sector the means of production are not in the hands of tycoons, but are either publicly-owned or managed by corporations like listed companies in which majority ownership is restricted. This is essential as the establishment of new factories must be regulated and competition restrained, so very large groups of owners cannot be allowed.
The material environment
The greatest physical difference with the present is that both the building stock and transport infrastructure are unchanging. No more houses are built and neither are existing ones extended. They are just renovated and improved as tastes change. Once a nonrenewable building material has been taken into use it stays put, even though it may change shape in time. The point of departure in planning a building is the durability of the materials and permanence of the details, even though individual structures are sometimes dismantled and reassembled in a new way. Like houses, factories and public buildings are also permanent. As the building stock does not increase, even over the centuries, the design and construction of new buildings is an exception. Basically, planning concerns the reassembly of old parts and materials into new, more functional and interesting ways. Just in the same way as people rearrange their furniture from time to time.
If the character of the future building stock is unchanging, that for the machines producing goods are in a continuous process of recycling and renewing. Each part of a product has its ideal lifespan. When a machine becomes old, for example, it is dismantled and the parts returned to the producer. The parts are not destroyed after being used. The essential element in planning is the recycling of the product and its parts. This concerns the machinery used in producing goods, generating energy, vehicles and consumer goods. The mass of goods people possess is always changing, quickly or slowly. The materials they contain do not disappear into the air, water or ground. No waste is created and hardly any natural resources used.
Recycling also requires energy. Nearly all energy is taken from the sun in different forms: radiation, wind, water or bioenergy. Geothermic energy is more extensively applied than now. Energy is considered like food; the area required for its production is compared to the area under cultivation and nonrenewable energy reserves are guarded like the crown jewels. Many new solutions to the problems of energy storage and transmission are discovered, such as using hydrogen technology and a continental-wide energy market.
As a source of energy the sun is virtually inexhaustible and the generating plants permanent in different parts of the continent. No more are built as there is no increase in energy consumption. Their parts, which are produced in automatised factories, are replaced regularly and systematically.
The new life style
The ordinary daily lives of people resembles that of the gods of antiquity or the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Slave labour has been replaced by machines and the great megamachine which functions almost automatically, self-renewing, neither using natural resources nor spoiling the environment, unobserved and isolated, mostly buried in the bedrock. Like life itself, the machines are powered by the sun. For the vast majority of people, their daily lives are spent in locally-organised, small-scale and edifying activities and hobbies. Much of their times is devoted to picking mushrooms and berries, fishing, cultivating their allotments, repairing their homes, making furniture and so on. Their lives are like a year round holiday.
People’s lives are no longer divided into separate phases, like early childhood when they adjust to becoming part of the great social machine, childhood when tough competition begins, youth when economic values become paramount, an adulthood of worrying about money and finally a dull old age in a nanny state. Neither will it be divided into periods of work and holiday, between the mundane and the festive, or even into working time and free time in the same day. People’s lives and the way they use their time will approach that of the other natural species. Their days will be divided into rainy and sunny ones, breezy and balmy ones, the seasons by evenings drawing in and mornings becoming warmer, the colour of leaves and the fall of snow. And the years will be divided into warm or wet ones, windy or snowy ones. Time is no longer linear, neither fluctuating, but cyclical, an unending succession of days and years within which individuals age without the compulsion of daily or annual work. Time is not replete with growth and stress, but stability and peace.
But this state has not been reached yet. To obtain it we have to undergo a radical change in attitudes and carry through a project of enormous proportions. To achieve this paradisiacal state will require considerable sacrifices by those of us alive today. These will be discussed in the following. We have machines, but they are not well-functioning. Neither will a change in physical structures suffice. Government, education and the whole mental climate will have to change. Among the many other things this book is concerned with are the alterations to the physical environment and material activities necessary to carry out this transformation.
