The social structure of the future

Abstract

Raghavan N. lyer was a Fellow and Lecturer in Politics at St. Antony's College, Oxford University, from 1956 to 1964. He was a member of the staff of the Center from 1964 to 1966, when he assumed a full-time teaching post in Political Theory at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He remains with the Center as a Consultant. His book, The Glass Curtain, was published by Oxford University Press, which will also publish his exhaustive study of the political and social thought of Gandhi. The central assumption of this paper is the possible provision of a guaranteed annual income (or its equivalent in goods and services) to every American citizen in the abundant economy of the foreseeable future. The main purpose of the paper will be to indicate some of the drastic implications of this proposal for social theory and contemporary values, and for a more daring vision of the future than is now commonly contemplated.