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Social Scientist

Sociological Ideas of Ivan Illich


Author(s): Subhash Kak
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 2, No. 11 (Jun., 1974), pp. 59-65
Published by: Social Scientist
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516956
Accessed: 21-01-2019 11:13 UTC

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Sociological Ideas of Ivan Illich

IN the recent ears the raiso;z-d'etre of industlial growtll has come to be


increasingly questioned. Broadly this criticism runs alonO two lines. First,
technolog) has created a icious circle of demand and ,rowth.' Second,
technologn has reached a stage where a product is not only alienated frorn
the worker but, more importantlv, from its many more consumers as well.
A technolobv cannot get grafted to a culture unless it were the appro-
priate technoloy for that culture. Technolog^ must obviously gl'OW into
a form that permits man to use his tools as a natural extension of his
faculties; in other words to let him live in llarmonv with machines and
not be ts7rannised by them. This is essentiallt the same idea as put for-
ward by Marx earTier.
The Mexican sociologist, Ivan Illich2 is one cf the leaders of the
movement for a critical assesslnent of various aspects of the relationship
between man and his tools. Illich in his studv uses a veIy broad defini-
tion of tools, in which he not onlv includes various artifacts anci machines
but also productive institutions such as factories that rnake tangible com-
modities such as cars or electric current, and productive systems for
intangible conlmodities such as those whicil turn out "education",
"health", "knowledge", or "decisions." In this article we briefly examine
Illich's theories in regard to their loCical basis and their relevance to the
Indian situation.
The overall design of Illich's inquiry has been described by him as
a 'critical research on the monopolv of the industrial ulode of pro-
duction' and deSnition of 'conceptually alternative modes that would fit
a post-industrial aCe.' The studv is concerned essentiallv with the
Ame1^ican situation, so this section must be examined with this limitation
in viess. However Illich claims to have abstracted some universal Iaws
from this particular experier: ce.
DurinCtheflatesixties Illich examined a particular modeofpro-
duc.tion, namely the educational system, producing the commeditv, educa-
tion. The results, published as a booli5, pointed out the followirlg elany
shortcominC,s of the present scllooling s-stem: it condivioils the students,
its curriculum is obligatory, it is oliented toward -credentials, it gt'OUpS

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SOCIAL SU'IENTIST
60

students by age and their achievements, and finally that it is a hierarchical


structure wi th the student at the bottom and the principal at the top.
Similar criticism has been voiced, amongst others, loy educationists John
Holt and Paul Goodman.
Illich maintains that the educational system i:s a paradigm of other
industrial mode.s of production. Therefore these modes suSer from similar
shortcomillgs. This is particularly so for those modes that ostensibly set
out to provide apublic service. E^amples are the transportation svstem
shere on certain highways driving below a certain speed is an offence;
the medical profession, svhere it is compulsory to have a degree from a
medical school to practice even though in certain situations such forma-
lized training Inay not be neceSsar77 etc. rNcc.ording to him:
To formulate a theorn7 about a future society both very modern and
not dominated by industry, it will be necessary to recot,nize certain
common illusions. We must recognize that onlv within limits can
machines take the place of slaves; beyond these limits they lead to a
new kind of serfdom. Only within limits carl education fit pcople into
a man-made environment: benond these limits lies the universal
schoolhouse, hospital ward or prison. 4
This brings Illich to one of his most fascinating concepts, namely
thatofwatershedsofproduction. Toillustratehis point Illich considers
the history of modern medicine, which he claims is marked by two water-
sheds, one the year 1913 and the other around 19o0. About the year 1913
it became more than 50 percent probalule that a graduatt of a medical
school would be able to treat his patient, if he was suSerillg from one of
the documented diseases of the time. The method of the scientific inquiry,
namely classification and deterrllination of casual relationships was applied
increasingly to study diseases and this knowledge made medical science
more eSective. However, the greatest contribution toward the lengthened
life span of man was perhaps by improved sanitation, hygiene, better food,
inoculation against coInmon diseases, etc. Yet medical care has, after the
1950's, become a tool tO further the economic interests of a profession,
namely the doctors. This profession svill not admit people into it unless
they have degrees from nzedical schools. At the same time doctors in
America (through their association, the AMA) reU,ulate the admissions to
nedical schools. Doctorb seem to have becotne fewer and fewer and proper
medical care seems to be availalule to the rich only.
Another example is the autGmobile. It seems to have cl^ossed. the
secorld watershed, beeause according tO Illich, the harrrl done by it tO the
environment far exceeds the good done by it. In fact, Illich estimates
that the average speed of a cal in America, after inoluding the time spent
on maintaining it, is about 6 miles per hour. This ineidentally is the
speed of the bicyele, wllicll is tlle luost effieient maehine in respeet of its
energy eonsumption per Ullit 0 weinht earried over a unit of distanee.
Collsider this in view of the faet that the US spends 23 pereent of its groas

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61
NOTE

expenditure on transportation in various forms.


This leads to the question: How does one sletermine the safe limits
(watersheds) of production? To answer this Illich visualizes a society called
the convivial society, where each member is guaranteed "the most ample
and free access to the tools of the community." This should be considered
with Illich's vern7 broad deSnition of ttools Elsesvhere:
A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the
most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others.
People feel joy as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent their labour
is cleative; while the Orowth of tools beyond a certain point increases
reU,inzentation, dependence, exploitation and impotence. 7
In the past some groups did have convivial life styles but these were
based on 'the servitude of otller.' The ratiollale of inventing machines in
the filst iIldustrial levolution has been to pleovidc an alternative to human
slave labour. Tools were esseIltially desi;,ned to be used and not to be
worked Wit}l. This of course does not apply to lools that enhance man's
faculties or thobe that are available to all, at leat ill potential. Examples
of the latter ale tlle mail system, the lec,al system, and the telephone.
Illicil points out that institutions, as they move toward their second
vatershed, become hiohlw7 manipulalive. Thus 'it costs more to make
teaching possible than to teach.' An cxample of this from tlle Indian
context is the fact that the number of bupporting staSat the Indiall Institute
of Technoloc,, Dclhi is five times the number of the acadenlic staS. Ttlis
sllould be considered in view of the innumerable complaints that the IITs
are producinO ;,raduates that are of no use to Indian society and tech-
nolot,y. The same is true of most other Indian.universities as well as
other industrial orOanizations. To emphasize the importance of the stru
cture of an organization rather than its ownership, Illich says:
Equally distracting is the sug3estion that the present frustration is
primarily due to the private ownership of the means of production,
and that the public ownership of these same factories under the
tutelage of a planninC board could protect the interest of the majoritsr
and lead society to an equally shared abundance. As long as Ford
A{otor Compan) can be condemned simply because it makes Ford
rich, tlle illusion is bolstered that the same fastorv could make the
public rich. As long as people believe that tile public can profit from
cars, they will not condemn Ford for making cars. This issue at hand
is not the juridical ownership of tools, but rather the discovery of the
characteristics of some tools which make it impossible for anybodnr to
'own' them. The corlcept of ownership cannot be applied to a
tool that cannot be controlled. The issue at hand therefore is svhat
tools can be controlled in the public intelest. Only secondarilv does
the question arise hether private contzol of a potentia]ly use.ful tool
is in the public interect.8
Illich nosr identifies the areas in urhich existenre is threatened by

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SOCIAL SCIENTIST
62

uncontrolled irldustrial development causina production to c


second watershed. These are:

(i) EcoloOical dama3e, thus, upsetting the delicate balance betwee


and naturev

(ii) 'Radical monopoly' of products which is the monopoly of a ty


product rather than a brand, thus denying convivial existence to
Examplesofradicalmonopolies are the education-mill,the car
transportation system, etc.,

(iii) Overprot,ramming or too much of unnecessary specialization


serve the myth that each job requires very special abilities,
(iv) Runaway industrialization leading to more centralization of au
supposedly to exercize controls but in practice concentrating pow
the hands of fewer and fewer people,

(v) Enforced obsolescence. ThrouOh adverticements and tlle like a


pany may force individuals to replace their perfectly workinC old
gets for new ones.

To counter these dallC,ers Iilich sugests what he aptly calls


terfoil research'. This, he says, has two tasks:
to provide guidelines for detectinC, the incipient staaes of mur
logic in a tool; and to devise toc,ls and tool systems that optim
the balance of life, and thereby maximize liberty for all.9
Further science, which has come to be accepted as a cure-all m
demytholo;,ized. People must appreciate its actual role as well as it
tations. At the same time, the leval system, which potentially is a
vial tool, must be given freedom to play its real role. Also the my
democracies with ,overnments voted by a majority of votes refl
aspirations of people needs to be exploded. InstitutiorXs based on
can quite suddenly lose theil respectability, their leaitimacy and
reputation for serving the public good. It happened to the Rom
Church in the Reformation, to Royalty in the Revolution. The
thinkable became obvious overnit,ht: the people could and
behead their rulers. 1 o

Let us examine tlle logical basis of Illich's frame-work. Any


of society based on the scientific method is bound to leave certain
tions unanswered. This is not because it is not possible to gather d
these questions, but because they lie in the twilight zone of logic
either assertion or negation is rneaninU,less. Godel's Incomple
Theorem shows that a lo,ical system of suffieient complexity mus
tain certain unresolvable paradoxes.ll In other words for any str
comprised of postulates and with definite rules of operation ther
exist statenlents that carl Ileithcr be prosAed llor disproved. Real
being infin}tely more complex than any mathematical systPm, it f
that such paradoxes would }De much more common in social and eco
swJstems. In fact many controversial issues in these fields, when explo

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ATOTE 63

deeply, turn out to be variants of the elassieal et,g-and-hen debate.

Even while keeping in view the limitations of seientifie analysiS


there are various shorteomings one ean point out in Illieh's interpretation
of eontemporary soeiety. Hequestions the very rationale of eost-benefit
analysis which is often employed bY protagonists of unlimited industrial
growth to justify their approaeh. At the same time he makes use of the
same cost-beneSt analysis to measure the utility or the disutility of a tool.
Thus he eoneludes that cars are bad beeause on the avera<ge they do not
earry one faster than 6 miles per hour while polluting the atmosphere ete.
Cost-benefit analysis forms the eorner-storle of systems engineering or a
scientifieanal#;sis and synthesis of evolutionary systems. Carried to its
logieal eonelusion this meehanistie viewpoint leads us to Skinner's world' 2,
whieh Illieh elaims to abhor.

Protaaonists of teehnoloaieal arowth maintain that it enhanees the


quality of life and permits a rnore efficient use of resourees on spaeeship
Earth. It extends man's faculties: hearinO and speaking through the tele-
phone, movement through the automobile, vision through the Television
ete., givina him time to refleet on issues other than those of bread and
butter. Illich on this Srst points out the distinction between science
and teehnology. 8 Seienee is fine sinee it explains (elassifies) natural pheno-
mena. As for teehnolory that leads to good and lrad tools. Telephone
and pieturephone if made available to all are eonvivial tools, while the
automobile is not. But one fails to understand how in a world with only
the bieveIe as the transport, telephones and pietureF)hones srould have any
use. Also it is no use denvinC, the faet that automobiles are useful in a
variety of-situations: brinbing relief to the vietims of a natural ealamity,
publie transportation etc. Once one grants a few automobiles, where does
one draw the line sinee individuals ean almost always justifv their need for
these. TalkinO in the same vein of the formal sehoolinC system that Illieh
does not faney, one ean point out that India had had a long tradition of in-
formal edueation. \/\rhere did that lead: to handinC down of crassest
prejudiees from one ,eneration to another, i;,noranee, ritual, superstition,
fatalism. The formal edueation system surely has faults, but on the whole
it seems to work fairly well.

Soeiety is a homeostat. Therefore even if present day technolofry


eats up earth's resourees too fast or pollutes the environment one ean
expeet it to transform so as to adjust with altered eonditions Of eourse
this argument does not indieate if sueh an uneheekfod course would not
lead to violent upheavals, natural or man-made. A cybernetieian rith
his maehine in view miOht assert that dvnamie stability is more desirable
than unrestrai-ned oseillations. That is perfectly valid und-er his set of
assumptions. To extralpolate this to soeietv is extremelv hazardou, beeause
no performanee function aeeeptable to all ean be laid down Sor it. To
borrow another eoneept sfrom eybernetics, Illich and hls supporters do
perform a vital funetion, sinee they represent the reaction of tlle soe etal

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64 SOCIAL SCIE1NTIST

system trying to modify itself as well as the environment so as to continue


existence in a stable sta te.
If we look at an underdeveloped country like India it becomes clear
that a lat of Illich's analysis is invalid: it does not in any case apply to
pre-;ndustrial societies. The pollution in India, paradoxically, far exceeds
the pollution in the United States: most people drink contamlnated water,
living quarters are unhygienic, sanitation.is a scandaI. Admitted that this
pollution is mostlvorU,allic as contrasted with chemical pollution in the
U S, but it is perhap3 more dangerous because people telld to ignore it.
The tyranny of man as obtained almost anywhere in India is much more
diabolical than the tyranny of machines in the U S. Inopite of all the
glamorization of poverty one cannot help agreeing with Oscar Lewis that
"poverty of culture is one of the crucial traits of the culture of povertsr''.l4
Finally the questlon: \\rho will exercise control in Illich's utopia ?
Will it require creation of a new class, a new buleaucracy? If it does, wllo
will ensure that this class does not exceed its fiat. Groups withotlt a stronC
external discipline have a propensity to form hierarcIlical sul-goups.
Anarchy is the best government is a meaningless statement. Illich's fame-
work is inherently an oversimplification. A dialectical synthesis - of his
vJewpoiilt and the current philosophy behind growth would form a realis-
tic and workable approach. The character of technolo<,xr at a point in
time reflects the spirit of that age. Ill the past technclogs has e-c)rked
tcxwards the creation of a slaxTe, an automaton-an Alladin's djinn-who
would do all unpleasant chores for men. Now, Witll the univ-ersal
acceptanceof the {oncept of equalitnr one would expect a greater effort
towards the desiU,n of convivial tools.
By way of conclusion, it must be emphasized that this has been a
very fragmentary study of Illich's theories on societs and technology.
which hardly touches on the epistemological and technological questions
involved. 1t should be reiterated that Illich has at many places, with
great insight, ?resented the true sicnificance of technological growth. In
this article, certain flaws in Illich's framewœk have been pointed out, con-
sideration of which permits one to view the relation between man and his
tools in a better perspective. I'he major weakness of Illich's analysis is
that he has attempted a linear extrapolation of trends in AmericaX Societal
dynamits are higlll, non-linear however, as is borne out by the simplistic
results obtained bv ssrstellls engineers using computer models of growth. 1 5

SUBRASH KAR

1 J K Galbraith, The Aguent Society, Houghton Mifflin, Boston l958.


i Ivan Illic-h, Retooling Socicty, CIDOC: Mexico 1972 (Mimeographed manuscript to
have been ptlblished as a book of the -same name by Harper and Rosv 1973.)
s Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society Harper and Rosv.
4 Ivan Illich, Retoolina Society, op cit, p-9.
5 S S \Vilson,"Bicwcle Technology'S, Scient;0c American, \;ol 298, March 1973, pp 81-91
6 Ivan Illich, Retooling Society, op.cit., pp 2-4

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NOTE 65

7 lbid, pp 2-15.
8 Ibid, pp 9-23.
9 Ibid,pp3-48.
10 Ibid, pp 5-6

See for example PhilosopAy of Science, The Delasvare Seminar, Interseience Publishers
1963.
1 s ]3 F Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, A Knopf 1971.
13 Not directly, ho^rever this distinction is implicit in his analysis.
14 Oscar Lewis, "The Culture of Poverty", Scientific American, Vol 215, October 1965*
pp 19-25.

t 5 D H Meadows, DL Meadosvs, J Randers and William WBehrens, III, The Limits


to Growth, Universe Books 1972.

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