12. The Underclass—An Open Wound in Society's Belly

Five percent of the West German population is illiterate, by a conservative estimate. If functional illiterates are included—those who cannot read even a tabloid or who have trouble signing their names—the figure is close to 15 percent.

Big cities have always had their share of paupers and derelicts, and that will never change. One person cannot stop drinking; another may be unable to abide by regulations and schedules; others have had bad luck with bosses; still others have been ill and never really got back on their feet.

Such cases have always made up the lower depths of society, but today they assume new proportions, affecting millions in many countries. Developments in the workplace are largely responsible. The introduction of new technologies has led to a demand for more highly qualified workers. These changes have meant not only fewer jobs, but also that those with fewer skills are those who lose out.

Skilled workers in mechanized industry become unskilled workers in electronically run factories. They become helpers, then occasional workers and finally the hardcore unemployed. When it comes to pensions and social standing those who have lost their jobs fall through every net and end up at the bottom.

Other social phenomena intensify this picture. There is the loss of ties that once held fellow workers together, so that the newly unemployed fall into a social void. The situation is even worse for those who never rose high enough to fall.

Foreigners are another class of social outcasts. Many countries import large numbers of foreign workers but do not integrate them or give them a clearly defined status. The ghetto was more hospitable.

Such misfortune has a tendency to compound itself. The teenage blacks arrested in England are almost certainly illiterate. They are targets for police brutality, and because they do not have legal representation they tend to answer in kind. They do not even consider looking for regular employment after their first vain attempts.

Underclass, however, is a misleading term; it is not a class. There is no solidarity among its members because there is no shared reason why they end up in it.

Those who lose their jobs blame their bad luck, or complain that they picked up the "wrong" skills, or regret that they cannot relocate to another part of the country. When they do blame the new technology they treat it as if it were some kind of natural catastrophe. Obviously there are others who have kept their jobs in spite of the new machines, and people who now work less and earn more. The jobless have simply missed the boat.

It is not true—even if one hesitates to say it—that rising joblessness threatens the established order. At least it is not that simple.

Many of the unemployed vote for conservatives. People without jobs want law and order and economic recovery.

Defenders of the work ethic are disturbed because there are so many people not working. What surfaces out of discussions of unemployment is more a sense of unease about disorder than a sense of solidarity with those victimized by joblessness.