The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies

In this postscript to Tools for Creativitiy, Illich calls for the right to useful unemployment: 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. Unfettered by managing professionals, unmeasured and unmeasureable by economists, these activities truly generate satisfaction, creativity, and freedom.