- Hardcover: 144 pages
- Publisher: Polity Press (14 May 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0745619932
- ISBN-13: 978-0745619934
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.4 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,864,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"People have found many scapegoats to explain the rise of unemployment and the inability to combat it – globalization, multinationals, neo–liberalism, even the end of history. Viviane Forrester goes beyond these concepts. Her book sets the terms of a real debate at last. Others will say whether her analyses are relevant, her concepts sound and her facts accurate – in short, whether she is right or wrong. But the reader of Economic Horror will undoubtedly be persuaded of one thing: what she says is just." Le Monde
"Economic Horror also comes to us as a European publishing sensation ... she does have a vision of contemporary capitalism which focuses almost exclusively on its destructive, disorientating side. And which does so in a passionate, pulsing style, clearly attuned to the everyday fears of its predominantly middle–class readership, but not asking them to think too theoretically about the sources of their angst ... Powerful stuff" Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
"Amid so many contemporary arguments about "Third Ways" and the inevitability...of capitalism, it is refreshing to read such an impassioned account of its essential malignance. Some may feel that the case is overstated by the lack of qualification of claims about globalisation and the lack of differentiation between nations, classes, ethnicities, genders. But this is partly deliberate, in order to present starkly that which is usually masked in qualification, to hold onto the wider picture, to refuse to set different sections of the population against each other."Ruth Levitas, Work, Employment and Society.
′Viviane Forrester′s The Economic Horror, a bestseller in her native France, is full of passion for the destructive nature of employment. While governments advocate the "sanctity" of work, the unemployed are made to feel excluded, worthless, detached from the mainstream of society. With the razzmatazz of new Labour′s New Deal fast fading, Forrester′s arguments have a knowing persistence that upsets the conventional wisdoms of even the most modernised politics.′ Mark Perriman, New Statesman
Reviews
"People have found many scapegoats to explain the rise of unemployment and the inability to combat it - globalization, multinationals, neo-liberalism, even the end of history. Viviane Forrester goes beyond these concepts. Her book sets the terms of a real debate at last. Others will say whether her analyses are relevant, her concepts sound and her facts accurate - in short, whether she is right or wrong. But the reader of Economic Horror will undoubtedly be persuaded of one thing: what she says is just." Le Monde
"Economic Horror also comes to us as a European publishing sensation ... she does have a vision of contemporary capitalism which focuses almost exclusively on its destructive, disorientating side. And which does so in a passionate, pulsing style, clearly attuned to the everyday fears of its predominantly middle-class readership, but not asking them to think too theoretically about the sources of their angst ... Powerful stuff" Sunday Herald --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
We are living the midst of a masterly deception, in a world gone forever, although we stubbornly insist on denying it, and while artificial policies claim to perpetuate it. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
We are living the midst of a masterly deception, in a world gone forever, although we stubbornly insist on denying it, and while artificial policies claim to perpetuate it. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a 'post-modernist' contribution to the debate about unemployment. It starts from the facts that the present economic system prevents full employment, and that the working class as a whole is becoming surplus to requirements. There are now 18 million unemployed people in the EU alone. It is increasingly a world in which workers have no place at all, especially our young people. An OECD Jobs Study openly recommended raising unemployment to cut wages. The World Bank openly recommended cutting benefits to force workers into low-paid jobs, and said that "wage cuts and redundancies [are] essential."
Unfortunately, Ms Forrester argues that we must accept ever-growing unemployment. Instead of working out ways to end mass unemployment, she proposes, in characteristic post-modernist style, to end the 'culture' of employment. She writes that our terms of work and unemployment 'created such reality', so if we stop using the terms, we change the reality! She calls for "organising society starting precisely from the absence of work." According to her, unemployed people do not need work; they need instead to free themselves from the very idea of work.
She seems unaware of the paradox that she has produced a book - which is work - calling for everyone to recognise the end of work! Not surprisingly, she never mentions the words 'manufacturing' or industry': the idea that things are made and need making never seems to strike her.
But of course there is an alternative. We can change our ideology to change the world. Workers do have the right to work; we must organise to reclaim that right. We need to rebuild our industry, in order to rebuild our society. Work needs to be done: improving the environment and our transport services, building homes, schools and hospitals, developing education and culture. How can society survive without work? Jobs need doing, and people need to work. So let's put the two together!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Viviane Forrester passionately articulates the futility of basing our economic model around the idea of 'work', when the reality is that work is becoming ever more scarce. Large sections of Western society (and, indeed, the vast majority of the global population) are being marginalised and excluded. Many of her conclusions are painful, but most are accurate. However, I found the book painful to read not so much because of its conclusions, but because of the overly literal translation. Passionate discourse in French may lend itself to interminably long sentences with tens of confusing sub-clauses, but whoever translated this book does not demonstrate much command of readable English. In addition, some of the allusions and examples used by Forrester have little resonance outside her native country. If this book is truly to become the 'global bestseller' its cover claims, the publisher should have it re-translated - or, more broadly, re-interpreted - by someone with a bit of stylistic flair. It would then deserve a far higher rating.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An extraordinary study of economics liberalism's destiny on how human nature responds to what is is's role in our society. Unemployment being the concern of millions of young people, Forrester gives them little to dream about but a lot to be changed by government's economic policy.
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