Why do we continue to value employment and economic success above
all other things in life, when both are becoming increasingly hard
to achieve for an ever-growing part of our population? Why are
governments constantly fudging their figures to play down the
unemployment statistics, when laying off workers is an accepted
mode of management? More and more people are finding themselves
caught in a trap of depression and despair, trying desperately to
carve out a niche for themselves in a world where they feel
marginalized and unwanted.
"Economic Horror" is an impassioned book addressed to the
dominant political and economic elites in our society. Those in
power, Forrester tells us, continue to present employment as the
norm - and by doing so make the unemployed feel worthless.
Everything of value in contemporary western society - our income,
our status, our contacts, our self-esteem, our power and our peace
of mind - is inextricably bound up with work. The panaceas of
work-experience and re-training often do nothing more than
reinforce the fact that there is no real role for the unemployed.
They come to realize that there is something worse than being
exploited, and that is not even to be exploitable.
The feeling that we must prove ourselves useful to society, or
at least to the market economy, is rooted in the value system of a
world which no longer exists. As we are unlikely ever to have a
culture of full employment again, Forrester urges us to stop basing
our identities, individually and communally, around the idea of
employment. First and foremost, the new millennium calls out for a
new culture, with a new social structure which is not centred on
paid employment. Meanwhile, globalization should be managed and
controlled by political processes, rather than seen as the
inevitable product of an abstract "economy."
Received with enormous acclaim and success in France, Germany,
Italy and elsewhere, and currently being translated into more than
20 languages, "Economic Horror" is a powerful attack on the
hypocrisy and the dishonesty that informs contemporary debates on
work and unemployment. It deserves to be widely read and debated
throughout the English-speaking world.
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