What Is a “Radical Monopoly”? | Ivan Illich on Radical Monopolies
Ivan Illich’s second significant, and perhaps most influential, work was Tools For Conviviality, which was published two years after Deschooling Society. In this work, Illich expands his critique of modern institutions, of the dominant role played by technocratic elites in industrial society, of the institutionalization of specialized knowledge, and ultimately argues for the development of new tools to empower normal citizens to reacquire practical knowledge.
Illich’s thought was particularly inspired by his experience working in Mexico among the peasant poor, who were increasingly adversely affected by modern industrial society. The quote we’re looking at today addresses this issue:
“When overefficient tools are applied to facilitate man’s relations with the physical environment, they can destroy the balance between man and nature. Overefficient tools corrupt the environment. But tools can also be made overefficient in quite a different way. They can upset the relationship between what people need to do by themselves and what they need to obtain ready-made. In this second dimension overefficient production results in radical monopoly… By ‘radical monopoly’ I mean the dominance of one type of product rather than the dominance of one brand. I speak about radical monopoly when one industrial production process exercises an exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need, and excludes nonindustrial activities from competition.”
– Ivan Illich, Tools For Conviviality
We live in a world of radical monopolies, where new technologies completely supplant old technologies largely because the only criteria for whether or not they’re adopted is whether or not they are “efficient.” Illich came face-to-face with this problem as he encountered Mexican peasants who were no longer able to make a living through their traditional subsistence lifestyle. The problem with making efficiency the sole criteria when evaluating a new technology is that increased efficiency does not necessarily translate into greater human flourishing. This is why, when evaluating the adoption of any new technology, human flourishing should be the ultimate criteria.
Chase Madar, in writing about Illich explained it like this:
“Elite professional groups, wrote Illich, have come to exert a ‘radical monopoly’ on such basic human activities as health, agriculture, home-building, and learning, leading to a ‘war on subsistence’ that robs peasant societies of their vital skills and know-how. The result of much economic development is very often not human flourishing but ‘modernized poverty,’ dependency, and an out-of-control system in which the humans become worn-down mechanical parts.”
~ Chase Madar, “The People’s Priest”
As we seek to understand what has happened to humanity over the past few hundred years, it’s helpful to realize that our world is one that has been profoundly shaped by radical monopolies, most of which are largely invisible to us, and that we take for granted as being simply “the way things are.”
The truth of course is that only history will be able to judge these radical monopolies properly. Many (Most?) of them rely on an unsustainable industrial society to provide the necessary inputs (energy, raw materials, etc.) to keep running. Once oil reserves are completely depleted, automobiles that run on gas will no longer work. Science and technology promise us that they will come up with solutions, the problem of course is that the new “solutions” they come up with address “problems” that have largely been invented by the modern world. Also, a new “solution” such as the electric car is, again, dependent on limited raw materials.
My hope is that by asking the right questions, we can discern a path forward that is human-centric and that promotes true human flourishing. For a variety of reasons, I do not hold out hope for large scale solutions. Ultimately the best path forward is for each of us to realize that we do have agency over our lives, and that, to the extent possible, we should live our lives in ways that exercise and increase this agency. This is particularly important for parents. While a good education is important, perhaps the most important lesson we can teach our children is that they don’t need to give control of their life over to large institutions, that their lives don’t have to be controlled by radical monopolies.
OK…that’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed this look at the work of Ivan Illich…as always, stay tuned for more by downloading The How Did We Get Here? Reading List…and I will see you soon!