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The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
In this political essay, Ivan Illich calls for the right to useful a positive, constructive, and even optimistic concept dealing with that activity by which people are useful to themselves and others outside the production of commodities for the market.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
18 people are currently reading
1172 people want to read
About the author
Ivan Illich
108 books450 followersIvan Illich was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest and critic of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects of the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, and economic development.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
February 13, 2008
Short and accessible, and a good reframing of the rather tired debates about 'the lack of work' and the need to provide jobs for those in poverty. Jobs don't do anyone any good if they pay crap wages and still don't allow people to take care of themselves. This holds doubly true if the majority of our society's institutions are in fact geared to restrict people's freedom to care for themselves when they could. (Think the American Medical Association and their regular advocacy for legal restrictions on the types of medical care people can give themselves, even when such care used to be common.)
Illich bills this as a 'postscript' to his Tools of Conviviality, which is now on my to-read list.
Illich bills this as a 'postscript' to his Tools of Conviviality, which is now on my to-read list.
November 17, 2016
The Right to Useful Unemployment is a short succinct polemic on post-industrialist market-dependence shaped by professionals who feed into a concept Illich conceive's as "modern poverty". Illich argues for the right to action outside of an economized model of work. The institutionalization of every domain in our lives, the fabrication and accumulation of wants-evolved-to-needs that exceed our basic needs increase our market dependency and renders us useless in the process.
Illich attempts to unshackle us from the indoctrinated belief that we need professionals to do the things we can do ourself. Contemporary economics focus solely on market-based value and dismiss any work value that doesn't directly - or monetarily - feed the propagation of the market; this centralization has led us astray from valuable, subsistence-based work.
Illich, however, doesn't leave the reader with this somber illumination, but rather proposes solutions to these problems in conclusion to the book.
Fun book, go read.
Illich attempts to unshackle us from the indoctrinated belief that we need professionals to do the things we can do ourself. Contemporary economics focus solely on market-based value and dismiss any work value that doesn't directly - or monetarily - feed the propagation of the market; this centralization has led us astray from valuable, subsistence-based work.
Illich, however, doesn't leave the reader with this somber illumination, but rather proposes solutions to these problems in conclusion to the book.
Fun book, go read.
January 28, 2018
30+ years later, Illich is still spot on about our society's inability to value unpaid or unorganized labor. As technology and automation continue to obsolete jobs, this is something we will have to deal with in a big way. However, I can't agree with his position on professionals being the enemy of freedom and happiness. For example, he specifically cites electricians and building codes that require licensed electricians to do wiring, and says this robs people of their ability and freedom to handle their own wiring.
Sorry, but I'd rather require licensed electricians than let J. Random Homeowner wire up a fire hazard in the house next door. Similar arguments would extend to most professionals that he targets.
Overall, a short and worthy read despite my disagreement with half of Illich's premise.
Sorry, but I'd rather require licensed electricians than let J. Random Homeowner wire up a fire hazard in the house next door. Similar arguments would extend to most professionals that he targets.
Overall, a short and worthy read despite my disagreement with half of Illich's premise.
March 29, 2024
A bit of a black-pill, this one. Billed as a “post-script” to another of his books, so there are some gaps in specificity that may be filled by the full project (I haven’t read it).
As a manifesto this is excellent and as stirring as it is frightening, but as noted above there is a lack of detail and references that could be easily filled by a more fleshed-out project, and more effectively point the reader to filling in that detail themselves. I had to look into the “Canadian Minister of Health” Illich mentions in order to find out his name, for example, little problems like that. As a result, while deeply arresting, this tract also left me wondering how much of it was “strictly” philosophy compared to the results of actual research. How much of medicine is genuinely practiceable by the layman, for example Where is knowledge like this located?
On the whole I am also interested by the pull these ideas have to communists—Illich’s seems a specifically and inherently anarchist project so to have it so attractive to de facto defenders of bureaucracy is frankly hilarious.
As a manifesto this is excellent and as stirring as it is frightening, but as noted above there is a lack of detail and references that could be easily filled by a more fleshed-out project, and more effectively point the reader to filling in that detail themselves. I had to look into the “Canadian Minister of Health” Illich mentions in order to find out his name, for example, little problems like that. As a result, while deeply arresting, this tract also left me wondering how much of it was “strictly” philosophy compared to the results of actual research. How much of medicine is genuinely practiceable by the layman, for example Where is knowledge like this located?
On the whole I am also interested by the pull these ideas have to communists—Illich’s seems a specifically and inherently anarchist project so to have it so attractive to de facto defenders of bureaucracy is frankly hilarious.
March 1, 2013
According to Illich, we desire (parts of) The Machine because we have been duped by the rites of Experts - and not so much by TV - into believing that it provides for our Needs. We've all been prescribed standardized health care (needs significant reorienting, I admit), all receive schooling as supposed Emancipation (absolute donkey dick), and finding "a job" is the road to Happiness (...). Accept this logic of continuously handing your faith over to Professionals and you'll continue to suffer. Any frustration is met with a particular strategy, part of a growing bureaucratic infrastructure. This entangles and ultimately fails the citizen: having lost the capacity to subsist autonomously, the Modern Poor no longer control their own life.
What then? Do not assume you have externally defined Needs and demand the means to satisfy them - or worse, to confuse means and needs (do you really, biologically, NEED a car or could your work-life be organized differently?). Start from your personal experiences instead, and work on shit yourself. Do you need sex? Maybe, but discover the kind you like, don't just follow the this-goes-into-that instructional videos. Illich is not a man of Reason, but of reasons. He argues these tend to look alike, though, so make sure to separate an enchanting ritual from a sensible argument!
"Een voor dienstverlening ontworpen wereld is het utopia van burgers die zijn verworden tot welzijnszorgtrekkers." (59) I'm hesitant about this typical anarchist argument that unemployment checks create dependency, since it seems to lead to the unforgiving Right as easily as to the compassionate Left. But Illich - like Amartya Sen and others - clearly advocates equal rights as the basis for freedom, rather than that Freedom is merely formal and serves to legitimate and perpetuate uneven starting positions. The Right to Useful and not dreadful Unemployment is the equal capacity to provide for oneself as each sees fit.
What then? Do not assume you have externally defined Needs and demand the means to satisfy them - or worse, to confuse means and needs (do you really, biologically, NEED a car or could your work-life be organized differently?). Start from your personal experiences instead, and work on shit yourself. Do you need sex? Maybe, but discover the kind you like, don't just follow the this-goes-into-that instructional videos. Illich is not a man of Reason, but of reasons. He argues these tend to look alike, though, so make sure to separate an enchanting ritual from a sensible argument!
"Een voor dienstverlening ontworpen wereld is het utopia van burgers die zijn verworden tot welzijnszorgtrekkers." (59) I'm hesitant about this typical anarchist argument that unemployment checks create dependency, since it seems to lead to the unforgiving Right as easily as to the compassionate Left. But Illich - like Amartya Sen and others - clearly advocates equal rights as the basis for freedom, rather than that Freedom is merely formal and serves to legitimate and perpetuate uneven starting positions. The Right to Useful and not dreadful Unemployment is the equal capacity to provide for oneself as each sees fit.
April 30, 2021
from citizen to consumer-client, from folk to professional knowledges
overt critique of the post-industrial state as a tool that disempowers workers from their own creativity — captured by market relations (the commodification of life) and ossification through technocratic metrics (the professionalisation of knowledge)
the last man sighing at their objectified imago returned as an eternally recurring audit (rate me! owo)
very foucauldian, very marcusian
hints of the neoliberal revolution to come: from professional-client relations (state-domination) to the entrepreneurial subject (self-discipline) — proliferation of the self-help industry
the oedipal project culminate: become your own daddy, discipline your own body!
what is lost? useful labour that's worthless to the market — labour that does not measure itself through productivity quotas and technical standards, but is, rather, an expression of a singular need (my desire, and my power to realise it — materially, aesthetically, politically — subsistence and joy, intertwined)
in other words, the survival of the body and the spirit beyond the flattening of exchange — the impossible exchange of incomparable things
overt critique of the post-industrial state as a tool that disempowers workers from their own creativity — captured by market relations (the commodification of life) and ossification through technocratic metrics (the professionalisation of knowledge)
the last man sighing at their objectified imago returned as an eternally recurring audit (rate me! owo)
very foucauldian, very marcusian
hints of the neoliberal revolution to come: from professional-client relations (state-domination) to the entrepreneurial subject (self-discipline) — proliferation of the self-help industry
the oedipal project culminate: become your own daddy, discipline your own body!
what is lost? useful labour that's worthless to the market — labour that does not measure itself through productivity quotas and technical standards, but is, rather, an expression of a singular need (my desire, and my power to realise it — materially, aesthetically, politically — subsistence and joy, intertwined)
in other words, the survival of the body and the spirit beyond the flattening of exchange — the impossible exchange of incomparable things
February 3, 2011
Short (22000 word) book, which despite its length just keep the insights into modern society coming.
November 24, 2019
Good, but mostly replicates the ideas in Tools for Conviviality.
December 6, 2021
I was attracted to this book by its title, and because I'd previously enjoyed Illich's Disabling Professions, Tools for Conviviality and Deschooling Society. For me the book doesn't really deliver on its title: it feels like a postscript and minor update on Professions and Tools. The scope of 'unemployment' for Illich is limited to what falls outside the purview of what the creeping cancer of professionalism ascribes to itself. In other words, its a niche, technical use of the term rather than a general use.
And I was more than usually put off by the Illich's dense writing style. For a very short book, it feels much longer than it needs to be. For me the four pages of Chapter 4 provided an admirably concise account of the main argument of the books, and rendered the rest of it... slightly superfluous. For a writer who's reputation is for siding with the laity against the priesthood, Illich's language -- use-values, negative externalities, biocracy and heteronomous production -- is curiously liturgical and jargon-heavy.
This passage, taken from Chapter 4, captures both the essence of the books argument, and something of how it feels tied to it's late-1970s era:
And I was more than usually put off by the Illich's dense writing style. For a very short book, it feels much longer than it needs to be. For me the four pages of Chapter 4 provided an admirably concise account of the main argument of the books, and rendered the rest of it... slightly superfluous. For a writer who's reputation is for siding with the laity against the priesthood, Illich's language -- use-values, negative externalities, biocracy and heteronomous production -- is curiously liturgical and jargon-heavy.
This passage, taken from Chapter 4, captures both the essence of the books argument, and something of how it feels tied to it's late-1970s era:
As soon as all law students currently registered at United States law schools are graduated, the number of United States lawyers will increase by about 50 percent. Judicare will complement Medicare, as legal insurance increasingly turns into the kind of necessity that medical insurance is now. When the right of the citizen to a lawyer has been established, settling the dispute in the pub will be branded unenlightened or anti-social, as home births are now. Already the right of each citizen of Detroit to live in a home that has been professionally wired turns the auto-electrician who installs his own plugs into a lawbreaker. The loss of one liberty after another to be useful when out of a job or outside professional control is the unnamed, but also the most resented experience that comes with modernized poverty. By now the most significant privilege of high social status might well be some vestige of freedom for useful unemployment that is increasingly denied to the great majority. The insistence on the right to be taken care of and supplied has almost turned into the right of industries and professions to conquer clients, to supply them with their product, and by their deliveries to obliterate the environmental conditions that make unemployed activities useful. Thus, for the time being, the struggle for an equitable distribution of the time and the power to be useful to self and others outside employment or the draft has been effectively paralyzed. Work done off the paid job is looked down upon if not ignored. Autonomous activity threatens the employment level, generates deviance, and detracts from the GNP: therefore it is only improperly called ‘work’.
October 27, 2017
This is a dense read. He has some eye-opening insight on commodities and how it paralyzes people, but not all of his ideas are particularly relevant.
For instance, his conclusion that people's freedom are inhibited mainly by the needs created by the professionals, and therefore are made market dependent, are big assumptions that seems largely unsubstantiated. While it is true that professionals contribute to the rise in market dependance, isn't it the economic system and the employment conditions that prove to be stronger shackles for people? His call for more rights to be taken away from the league of professionals back to the people, so that the people might enjoy the freedom and satisfaction from autonomous actions are vastly underestimating the benefits of professionalism and the dangers of certain actions not being regulated by law or governed by experts, both to the people and the society as a whole. A good example would be the rise of anti-vaccination movement and the threat it poses to society. People do not always act rationally, nor do they always have perfect information. Experts mentioned in the book such as gynecologists, electricians, and morticians are there to supervise certain activity to ensure that the society runs smoothly.
Surely the solutions to freeing the people from market dependance lies not in changing people's behavior, but by completely revolutionizing the economic system? However Illich does not provide any concrete solutions to his supposed problems. The last chapter of his book does seem to lean towards a fairer share of rights and resources, but whether through more state interference or by changing people's behavior, it doesn't say. How to take away power from the professionals (or more specifically, how to do it when they have the three main measures of defending themselves, as the author mentions later in the book), and how to deal with its aftermath? What are the potential issues of that? Maybe I missed something, but the answer to these questions seems unanswered. I will have to re-read it on a later date to find out, but this is my response to finally reading the book for the first time.
For instance, his conclusion that people's freedom are inhibited mainly by the needs created by the professionals, and therefore are made market dependent, are big assumptions that seems largely unsubstantiated. While it is true that professionals contribute to the rise in market dependance, isn't it the economic system and the employment conditions that prove to be stronger shackles for people? His call for more rights to be taken away from the league of professionals back to the people, so that the people might enjoy the freedom and satisfaction from autonomous actions are vastly underestimating the benefits of professionalism and the dangers of certain actions not being regulated by law or governed by experts, both to the people and the society as a whole. A good example would be the rise of anti-vaccination movement and the threat it poses to society. People do not always act rationally, nor do they always have perfect information. Experts mentioned in the book such as gynecologists, electricians, and morticians are there to supervise certain activity to ensure that the society runs smoothly.
Surely the solutions to freeing the people from market dependance lies not in changing people's behavior, but by completely revolutionizing the economic system? However Illich does not provide any concrete solutions to his supposed problems. The last chapter of his book does seem to lean towards a fairer share of rights and resources, but whether through more state interference or by changing people's behavior, it doesn't say. How to take away power from the professionals (or more specifically, how to do it when they have the three main measures of defending themselves, as the author mentions later in the book), and how to deal with its aftermath? What are the potential issues of that? Maybe I missed something, but the answer to these questions seems unanswered. I will have to re-read it on a later date to find out, but this is my response to finally reading the book for the first time.
August 31, 2021
A true Hipster book. I was hoping he would write more about the benefits of useful, non GDP generating activities or DIY activities, but he goes even further than that, to renounce capitalism altogether, over vague notions like 'Ethical Austerity' and 'Shaming disabling professions' for submitting themselves to the conspiracy of lifelong teaching, consumerism, medicine etc.
While i agree that many professions today are manipulative, and self-replicating / validating like education, medicine, mass production; i.e. industries that convince you that you NEED these education / medicine / mass produced product, he proposes no actual, tenable, viable solutions. In fact some of them border upon infringing human rights over supposed 'equity'.
If you think that Schools, medicine, and consumerism are manipulative, and self perpetuating, *Don't Buy / use them*. He is too readily favoring going out of his way to punish 'academic elites' and the 'greedy gullibility of their victims.' Just because they do not fit into his world view.
If his vision comes true, who will make the products that people are willing to buy? Can everyone build their own house, make their own chairs, fish for their own food? These next step questions are conveniently not answered.
However, and this is important, i can see that the changes he wanted to see, are right now occuring because of the age of internet, where people can see that they can do away with many professional services because they would know better- Something that is unthinkable in the 70s when this book was conceived
While i agree that many professions today are manipulative, and self-replicating / validating like education, medicine, mass production; i.e. industries that convince you that you NEED these education / medicine / mass produced product, he proposes no actual, tenable, viable solutions. In fact some of them border upon infringing human rights over supposed 'equity'.
If you think that Schools, medicine, and consumerism are manipulative, and self perpetuating, *Don't Buy / use them*. He is too readily favoring going out of his way to punish 'academic elites' and the 'greedy gullibility of their victims.' Just because they do not fit into his world view.
If his vision comes true, who will make the products that people are willing to buy? Can everyone build their own house, make their own chairs, fish for their own food? These next step questions are conveniently not answered.
However, and this is important, i can see that the changes he wanted to see, are right now occuring because of the age of internet, where people can see that they can do away with many professional services because they would know better- Something that is unthinkable in the 70s when this book was conceived
January 3, 2018
the argument is interesting. While it is thought provoking, I am not completely convinced with the radical reconstruction of society on the tools of conviviality, in particular the reconstitution of useful unemployment. The idea of market forces is as organic as the development of a mercantilist society from which Illich draws many of this ideas. I am however interested in the idea of developing countries creating a modern poverty, where individuals who are self sufficient and capable of self subsistence are institutionalized into poverty and made incompetent to earn for themselves a living. Also the idea of "useful unemployment" is incredibly interesting. I found it appealing because it challenges the social anathema toward unemployment and possibly introduces the idea of skills development. Its not much to far fetched an idea given that Silicon Valley has embraced things like sabbaticals and hours of free work/play for employees.
November 23, 2025
This is the first book of the infamous Ivan Illich, which turns out to be a post script of his earlier publication. May not be recommended as the first book from his works, but in overall it feels dated, too academic with the gigantic words. While I agree with most of his points, reading his works feels... Unsettling. It has been a while since I feel this way. Will try his other works next time.
June 15, 2019
While I didn't necessarily reach the same conclusions Illich argues here, I do appreciate the criticisms he provides to things I've never questioned before. No idea why he felt the need to crap on sex workers in the making of some of those points, those sections were really weird.
December 7, 2019
This seems a bit more of a muddle than his other books that I've read.
October 12, 2022
This guy hates professions!!
June 27, 2023
The boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I read this book on company time.
October 25, 2023
Short but accessible to anyone curious about this topic.
Read
July 16, 2025so yeah i'm not "unemployed" anymore. i'm "reclaiming my vernacular skills from the tyranny of the expert class"
on-pause
March 20, 2017How did I hear of this book? ::sigh:: Wasn't that long ago: ~2 months ago.
I need to put this on pause since my ILL is due shortly. It is tough going but seemingly brilliant so far.
I need to put this on pause since my ILL is due shortly. It is tough going but seemingly brilliant so far.
July 18, 2016
I highly recommend checking out ALL of Ivan Illich's books.
From his Guardian obit: "A polymath and polemicist, his greatest contribution was as an archaeologist of ideas, rather than an ideologue. ... He analysed the corruption of institutions which, he said, ended up by performing the opposite of their original purpose." http://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/...
Well worth wading through his sometimes heavy writing style for his fresh contrarian take on many crucial topics (learning, health, literacy, work and more). However, this short book is an easy read and does much to help redefine work in a way that makes sense for the health of people and the planet.
He was featured on many CBC Ideas radio programs. Here's one podcast on education: http://castroller.com/podcasts/CbcRad...
From his Guardian obit: "A polymath and polemicist, his greatest contribution was as an archaeologist of ideas, rather than an ideologue. ... He analysed the corruption of institutions which, he said, ended up by performing the opposite of their original purpose." http://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/...
Well worth wading through his sometimes heavy writing style for his fresh contrarian take on many crucial topics (learning, health, literacy, work and more). However, this short book is an easy read and does much to help redefine work in a way that makes sense for the health of people and the planet.
He was featured on many CBC Ideas radio programs. Here's one podcast on education: http://castroller.com/podcasts/CbcRad...
April 27, 2016
Bits of ideas I was on board with but not as convincing or as well thought out as his take on education. I think I need to read Tools for Conviviality to truly grasp his argument and see how much of it I want to pursue.
Read
October 29, 2011This was kind of inscrutable and didn't have that much to do directly with work. Wish I'd read Tools for Conviviality first.
January 17, 2013
The content is very interesting, but either the translation in Dutch is awful, or Illich just writes very densely.
March 26, 2014
een scherp punt - en meer dan één dat in dit essay gemaakt wordt.
March 19, 2015
var olan birkaç fikrimin disipline oturtulması gerekiyordu, iyi oldu.
Read
November 25, 2015Must read.
April 16, 2016
Illich is a great master that should always be revisited.
April 11, 2017
Illich always makes you think. He questions the society we live in and the role of many people and services we take for granted. Stimulating though a bit dated in terms of when it was written. I do recommend him to anyone interested in expanding their world view.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews