ABSTRACT
This 1981 article by A. J. Watt discusses the work of Ivan Illich apart from Marxism, comparing it to nineteenth-century anarchism and socialism and particularly the work of Michael Bukunin. Arguing that there is ‘in the history of ideas nothing absolutely new under the sun’, Watt notes that many of Illich’s ideas roughly correspond to those of Bukunin, given differences in their historical contexts. In relation to education, both argued in particular against inequality of resources and facilities in education, as such inequalities provide for inequitable social outcomes. Illich’s views are also seen to align with earlier anarchistic perspectives in arguing for a limited role for technology, given its potential for pollution and waste, which Watts notes ‘did not readily come to mind a century ago, though it is commonplace now’. Additionally, technology ‘places the user in the power of others’ to thus ‘extricate the individual from the power of other people’. However, a certain level of scepticism about the role of technology to enhance overall social well-being might be seen as shared among Illich, anarchists, and Marx. Watts concludes his account by arguing that Illich is not as original as he is seen to be in the context of Marxist and anarchistic traditions.
