I read his "Farewell to the Working Class" when I was in my twenties - I still have the Pluto Press edition I bought at the time.
In "Farewell", Gorz envisaged the "possibility of liberation from socialized labour" and the rise of the "neo-proletariat":
"[Which] can be defined as a non-force, without objective social importance, excluded from society. Since it plays no part in the production of society, it envisages society's development as something external, akin to a spectacle or a show. It sees no point in taking over the machine-like structure which, as it sees it, defines contemporary society, nor of placing anything whatsoever under its control. What matters instead is to appropriate areas of autonomy outside of, and in opposition to, the logic of society, so as to allow the unobstructed realisation of individual development alongside and over that machine-like structure."High hopes indeed.
Gorz, who was one of the leading lights in the development of political ecology, seemed to me, at times, naive and "Farewell to the Working Class" reflects that. The essay which closes the book (Utopia for a Possible Dual Society) in which Gorz imagines waking one morning to an eco-socialist utopia, after a new government introduces his ideas across the board, was particularly hard to swallow. Yet reading that essay now, I'm struck by how many of the initiatives Gorz mentions - from measures to combat traffic congestion to organic farming - have moved into the mainstream over the last twenty five years.
When I first read his work, I was amazed to find a French philosopher articulating many of the ideas which informed the work of myself and others as we scurried around in Thatcherism's wake creating workers' co-operatives, community businesses, credit-unions, city farms and a host of other small scale social and environmental projects. His work didn't so much influence us directly as provide us with a modicum of intellectual respectability - particularly useful at a time when political discussions of "our role" were so often dominated by Gramsci-wielding zealots and their "war of position". (Makes me shudder just to think of it.)
Anyway, I looked online for some tribute to Gorz that recognized the contribution he made to the development of social and political thought, and which also conveyed some understanding of the man himself. I found it in this article by Finn Bowring in the March/April issue of Radical Philosophy. It's a long one but it's worth the read.
