In the Mirror of the Past

by Ivan Illich

  But our ancestors committed genocide with means which also had normal uses — clubs, knives or fire. These objects were used for peaceful purposes, for example, the preparation of food, but also for the horrendous acts of torture, murder and genocide. This is not true of atomic bombs. Their exclusive purpose is genocide. They are not useful for anything else, not even for murder.

  Such genocidal instruments, inventions for the destruction of peoples, were conceived for the first time in the early forties, at the same time as President Roosevelt set out to produce the atomic bomb, following the guidelines of Albert Einstein. Simultaneously, Hitler began research on such a bomb in Germany. Its conception there, however, created extermination camps for the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other groups of people considered unworthy of life.

  These camps had been in operation for four years when the Enola Gay dropped its bomb on Hiroshima. They were operated by Germans, most of whom are now dead or quite old. However, many young Germans feel a personal association with those genocidal machines employed by some of their parents, although they were born after the last concentration camps, the last gas chambers, the last mass crematoria were shut down or torn down. These young people, haunted by the images of the camps, experience unspeakable horror. They consider it totally unnecessary and, indeed, quite impossible to state any logical reason why they would resist reconstruction of such camps. They think it unnecessary because nobody in Germany today proposes concentration camps for the purpose of genocide, and they think it impossible to discuss the obvious.

  In Nazi Germany, the only ones who argued against the construction and operation of concentration camps were some high-ranking Nazi functionaries who believed either that genocide should be postponed, or that it could be carried out more effectively by other means. Still others called attention to the high costs. Today, many young Europeans refuse to behave as these Nazi functionaries. They recognize that atomic bombs are not weapons but genocidal machines, that their existence — and especially their emplacement on German soil — must be resisted, but without wasting a single word on it.

  Secondly, I know that some people scream out in horror when they can no longer control their emotions. And there is nothing wrong with acting from a prudent heart rather than from a clear mind. But as a philosopher I know that there are compelling reasons for refusing to be drawn into a direct argument about certain topics. Jews, and some Christians, believe that they should not pronounce the name of God. Modern philosophers have discovered concepts which render the statements in which those concepts occur nonsensical. In wills, for example, the sentence beginning ‘Upon my death I will…’ is customary but nonsensical. Upon my death, I can no longer will anything.

  Genocidal machine is another of those concepts to which logicians attribute ‘extraordinary epistemological status.’ I can speak about the atomic bomb (and in my personal opinion, equally about nuclear power plants) only with arguments which prove that it is a genocidal machine. However, as soon as this is proven, I cannot use the concept any longer in a sentence without dehumanizing my status as a speaker. Not even for the sake of discussion can I join in an argument in which the threat of genocide, however cautiously uttered, is considered.

  Thirdly, I can only scream when I encounter people who deal with this matter by argument. And, paradoxically, screaming is closer to silence than to speech. Similar to tears, or the syllable ‘OHM’, certain ways of wailing and screaming lie, just as silence does, outside the realm of language. Yet these forms of expression can speak louder and more accurately than words.

  Further, silence, framed by the scream of horror, transcends language. People from different countries and age groups who might not have a common language can speak with one voice in their silent scream.

  Finally, unconditional opposition to the existence of genocidal machines as expressed in a commitment to silence is radically democratic. Let me clarify. If I assert that atomic bombs are not weapons but genocidal machines, and further argue as a scientist that nuclear energy will unavoidably endanger future generations, the weight of my arguments depends on my competence in a complex subject matter, and my credibility depends on my social standing. Public argument, especially in today’s media-dominated society, cannot help but be hierarchical. But such is not true for eloquent and rationally chosen silence. The most intelligent and most experienced expert can use silence as his last word. And anyone in the world can choose silent protest and the demonstration of unspeakable horror as an expression of his direct and wise faith in life and in hope for his children. The decision to remain silent, the ritual of ‘No, thank you,’ is a voice with which a great majority can speak up with stark simplicity.

  Fourth, in speaking out for silence as an example to be followed, I do not intend to discourage sensible argument which identifies the reasons for maintaining silence. But I am aware that silence threatens to introduce anarchy. He who remains silent is ungovernable. And silence proliferates. Hence, there will be attempts to break our silence. Our participation in ‘peace discussions’ will be demanded. A witch hunt against the silent people is even possible. At this time, then, the right to silent retreat from argument, the right to end argumentation if the participants’ dignity, in their view, is jeopardized, must be claimed and defended. There is also a right to propagate horrified silence.

  I Too Have Decided to Keep Silent

  * * *

  Read and distributed at the 20th Evangelischer Kirchentag Hanover, 9th June 1983

  I, too, have decided to keep silent

  because I shall not be drawn into any discussion about genocide;

  because nuclear bombs are not weapons; they cannot be used except for man’s extermination;

  because the deployment of nuclear bombs makes both peace and war senseless;

  because silence here speaks better than words;

  because in discussing conditions under which I would renounce using these bombs, I become a criminal;

  because nuclear deterrence is folly;

  because I will not threaten others with my suicide;

  because the ‘zone of silence’ which surrounded genocide under the Nazis has been replaced by a ‘zone of argument’;

  because only my silence speaks clearly in this zone of compulsive peace talks;

  because my horrified silence cannot be used or governed;

  because…

  Cross out whatever does not fit you. Add your own reasons for silence. Circulate these.

  Alternatives to Economics:

  Toward a History of Waste

  * * *

  Address to the annual Human Economy Session at the Eastern Economics Association Conference Boston, 11th March 1988

  My theme is the blessings which we still enjoy, in spite of economic growth; the rediscovery of the present when it moves out of the shadow which the future has cast on it during three development decades. And this is the moment, I think, to plead for research on the non-economic boon which we best discover when the hope in further so-called development fades.

  I purposely speak of blessings and boons when I refer to the rediscovery of walking and cycling in lieu of transportation; of dwelling in self-generated space in lieu of claims to housing; of planting tomatoes on the balcony and meeting in bars that exclude radio and TV, of suffering without therapies and of preferring the intransitive activity of dying to monitored medicide. I do not use the word ‘value.’ I know how recently this economic term has slipped into our discourse to replace ‘the good.’ But I recognize the danger of trying to preserve the notion of the good. Today, the term ‘good’ characteristically denotes management; the professional ‘for your own good’ in the mouth of teachers, physicians and ideologues. I therefore try to recover the ideas of blessing and boon to speak about the rediscovery of joys, but also of sorrows, that I have observed in both rich and poor countries at the moment the expectation of marketable pleasures and securities comes to a crash.

  The fact that ble
ssing and even boon once had sectarian connotations does not worry me. For I want to argue that discourse about these experiences can have theoretical consistency and practical relevance only if it is conducted in a language which is devoid of economic implications, of references to productivity, needs, resources, decisions, systems, feedback, and above all, development.

  I count it as a privilege that you invite me to discuss this theme among professional economists who see themselves as dissidents within their own discipline; that among you I may raise the issue of blessings — something economic language cannot grasp but only corrupt; that I may speak about an alternative to economics among academics who acknowledge in Boulding and in Kapp, in Mishan and, above all, in Schumacher their immediate ancestors, and among whom several claim to be inspired by Bateson. But I am also daunted by the challenge of submitting my thesis to this learned assembly because, as far as I can see, dissidence within economics has meant no more than the extension of the disciplinary umbrella of scarcity-related assumptions over facts and relationships that most main-liners leave untouched.

  I am not an economist; instead I am something akin to a historian. I study history as an antidote to obsessive speculations about the future. For the historian the present appears as the future of the past. History heightens my sensitivity to the time-vector hidden in all our terms when we try to discuss public goods. Historical studies make me aware that most of the clear certainties by which I act, think and even perceive were neither suspected nor imaginable for the authors whose writings are my sources. I study history to become sensitive to those modern assumptions which, by going unexamined, have turned into our epoch-specific, a priori forms of perception. I am neither using history nor do I want to escape into history. I study the past to look out of its perspective at the axioms of that mental topology of thought and feeling which confronts me when I write or speak. And, coming out of the past and entering the present I find that most of the axioms generating my mental space are tinged with economics.

  Preparing for this meeting, I read The Other Economic Summit (TOES) papers, and often reached for the book which Paul Ekins edited. Let me quote the words with which this book begins. ‘Economics is at an impasse. Its instruments are blunted. Its direction is confused.’ The public is indeed ‘becoming skeptical and bewildered.’ The American presidential campaign of 1988 mirrors this confusion. The post-war consensus about the status of economics as an accepted discipline is gone. While in the sixties economists were admired as society’s astronomers, they are now consulted more like astrologers. Investment just does not bring down unemployment. Nor does growth. Inflation is endemic. No intelligent political candidate speaks about development. Majid Rahnema makes AIDS the metaphor for something which until quite recently was called ‘takeoff’ — that point at which a culture loses its immunity against a self-sustaining transmogrification into an economy. At this point latent HIV manifests itself as AIDS: cultural self-sustenance quickly breaks down. Everywhere poverty spreads with progress. The new book by Rist and Sabelli has an appropriate title: ‘Once upon a time, there was something called development.’

  Relentlessly, TOES authors pile up the evidence for counterpurposive outcomes of monetarization. But much more importantly, they have created concepts which make these paradoxical and painful results of growth into scientific facts that can no longer be ignored by the academy. A whole set of new indicators has thus come into being. Technical criteria can now discriminate between the costly growth of goods and the growth of costly waste. But some of these new concepts make the alternative economist into an advocate for the economic colonization of housework, sex or gardening. Paradoxically, the economic demonstration of the counterproductivity of economic growth confirms the belief that what matters for human beings can be expressed in economic terms.

  What I plead for is a second look at those certainties that are common to alternative economists and their dragons. In the mirror of the past their assumptions about wants, needs, values and resources are of the same ilk. It appears blatantly illogical when Ekins, on the same page, defines the aim of TOES as the provision of scientific guidance in the optimum allocation of scarce resources for the maximization of human welfare, and continues with this sentence: ‘The very assumptions which form the basis of conventional economics are now unsound.’ Constant repetition of the desire to place economics at the service of people and their welfare, rather than of things and their accumulation, in no way touches the very assumption of scarcity by which homo œconomicus is imputed needs and desires. Economists, professional or lay, official or dissident, drive home the assumption of scarcity with every utterance.

  I cannot help but see the TOES papers as ads for the Macintosh, with its barbs against IBM. In ad after ad after ad I am told that the Mac is run on an operating system that is designed as if people mattered. Let me assume that this is true. For reasons which you can easily imagine, this would only make me more wary of the Mac. As much as with conventional economics, their opponents also conceive of economics within any society in analogy with the operating system of a computer. Economists know and manage the programs. Calling needs ‘basic,’ values ‘human,’ development ‘personal,’ demanding a ‘sustainable use of resources’ and a rate of growth ‘moderated by cultural considerations,’ economics can be whitewashed, but none of its basic assumptions are touched. Its language remains useful only to grasp that which from a cultural good has been changed into a value by being recast as a social factor which functions under the assumptions of scarcity.

  Any serious critic of conventional economics is inevitably caught in a dilemma: in order to formulate the implicit and unavoidable consequences of economic growth he has to measure the cultural destruction which results from such growth in monetary terms. This then leads the critic to couch his recommendations in a language which sounds like an ad for Band-Aids, or a religious exhortation. However, it is not this, but another discovery which makes reading some of the TOES papers fascinating for me. Now and then one of the authors turns from being a mere dissident into a true skeptic. Schumacher was one such person. Late in life he redefined intermediate technology (which he, after all, had originally named) as appropriate technology and became the initiator of a series of questions which now takes the form: ‘After development, what?’ Among the questioners, Kohr has been a teacher for many by suggesting that self-sustaining well-being depends on factors which only dimensional analysis can reveal; it cannot be reduced to any kind of welfare measured in quantitative terms.

  James Robertson, in his TOES paper, provides a well-formulated example of a critique of economics as a field which goes far beyond a critique within the field. His article asks: ‘What comes after full employment?’ Full employment is by now recognized as a concept whose practical implementation is not a utopia, but an impossibility. Robertson discusses the evidence. He says that we are in the midst of jobless growth. Employment in many sectors is becoming an uneconomical way of getting work done, something similar to slavery in the past, becoming itself uneconomical. But it still serves some obvious purposes. For example, in an uneconomical and increasingly unethical way it serves to redistribute gains. But maybe it is time to disengage our perception of myriads of human activities from the reductionist normative concept of employment.

  When Robertson reaches the end of his paper, where he has deconstructed the conventional current category of work, he notices that, in so doing, he has simultaneously deconstructed the discipline within which he argued: ‘The age of economics has, in fact, coincided with the age of employment. It is only over the last two hundred years that employment has developed as the dominant way of organizing work… The question is whether economics will turn out to have been a fairly short-lived structure of reasoning … while employment has been the dominant form of work, or whether economists will be able to extend their discipline to deal with choices that reflect the needs and activities of real people as contrasted with those of homo œconomicus.’


  Robertson, in this sentence, deals with economics as that discipline which formalized the mentality that prevailed in an epoch in which employment was the dominant form of work. Accepting the cogency of his reasoning, ‘employment’ can be replaced by other terms, for example, by ‘needs.’ The age of economics coincides with the progressive discovery of human needs, something which economists now define as finite, few, classifiable and universal. I want to focus on need, and deconstruct the naturalness of this concept in analogy to what Robertson does with work. What we perceive and experience as needs is a social creation even more recent than work.

  What we define as needs was unknown in past epochs. Michael Ignatieff in The Needs of Strangers correctly criticizes my former attempts to speak of a ‘History of Needs.’ What in the past was homologous to our needs has a place so different within the constellation of social assumptions that the two are incomparable. A recent epistemic break marks the appearance of what we call ‘need’. Therefore, we cannot trace the history, but can only examine the late modern sociogenesis of needs as we have learned to perceive them.

  It is a delicate task to speak about the sociogenesis of needs. We need needs — our own and those of strangers — to keep our integrity intact. We must try to find a line of reasoning which avoids conjuring up either anger or nostalgia. When, for instance, I contrast the death of an old man in the corner of his hovel with the death of one whose ‘needs’ for intensive care have been fully met, I do not compare the desirability of two conditions or situations. The example only stresses the impossibility of using the same words when speaking about both men. Please note what I am saying. I hunt for no lessons in the past. But I believe that history, when properly practiced, makes us more clearsighted about the condition of Needy Man which homo œconomicus is.