The End of Work
| The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era | |
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 Front Cover |
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| Author(s) | Jeremy Rifkin |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Socio-economics |
| Publisher | Putnam Publishing Group |
| Publication date | 1995 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | 1-585-42313-0 |
The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.[1]
In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He traced the devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees. While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the American middle class continues to shrink and the workplace becomes ever more stressful.
As the market economy and public sector decline, Rifkin predicted the growth of a third sector—voluntary and community-based service organizations—that will create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling down the military budget, enacting a value added tax on nonessential goods and services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a "social wage" in lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers.[1]
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[edit] Critical reception
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A number of economists and sociologists have been critical of Jeremy Rifkin for being one of the major contributors to the "end of work" discourse and literature of the 1990s. Autonomist political philosopher George Caffentzis concluded that Rifkin's argument is flawed because it is based on a technological determinism that does not take into account the dynamics of employment and technological change in the capitalist era.[2]
[edit] See also
- Luddite fallacy
- Deindustrialization
- Other books by Jeremy Rifkin:
- The European Dream (2004)
- The Empathic Civilization (2010)
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Rifkin, Jeremy (1995). The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. Putnam Publishing Group. ISBN 0-87477-779-8.
- ^ Caffentzis (1998)
[edit] References
- Caffentzis, George (1998) The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery? A Critique of Rifkin and Negri, presented at the Globalization from Below Conference at Duke University, February 6, 1998. Also published in Bonefeld, Werner, ed. (2003). Revolutionary Writing: Common Sense Essays in Post-Political Politics. Autonomedia. ISBN 157027133X. "Negri and Rifkin are major participants in the "end of work" discourse of the 1990s [...] The formal logic of the argument appears impeccable, but are its empirical premises and theoretical presuppositions correct? I argue that they are not, for Rifkin's technological determinism does not take into account the dynamics of employment and technological change in the capitalist era. [...] The "end of work" literature of the 1990s, therefore, is not only theoretically and empirically disconfirmed."
