The Scheme For Full Employment: A Novel (Hardcover)

The novel begins with a short page or two monologue on how the Scheme failed - serving at once to make us curious as to what the Scheme is, but also destroying any sense of wonder at the ending of the story. From there, we are slowly introduced to the workings of the Scheme through the eyes of the nameless narrator; little snippets of information divulged between lengthy detours involving cakes and new recruits and a whole lot of tea.

Univans are the name of the game, the drivers drive them, the engineers fix them, the managers oversee them, and they are used to transport parts for...more univans. Completely self-contained, we are told that the public honours and values these Univan drivers, though we are never told why. Surely the public would understand that the Univans do not actually produce a single thing, and thus are a greater strain on the economy than simply paying the workers an equivalent amount of money? Roads, Univans, uniforms, food, equipment, buildings - these all have to be paid for, and are a huge expense when you consider the alternative of simply paying the unemployed to sit at home.

Unfortunately, the social angle of the Scheme is never explored. Rather, we are soon involved in a debate between the 'flat-dayers', men who wish to work the full eight hours, and the 'early swervers', those who think it is alright to have an early exit when the situation calls for it. Considering that these men have an extremely leisurely job - and we are told many times that the afternoons consist of reading newspapers and sleeping, in short, wasting time - the early swerver's position is never really understandable. Nor are matters helped by the narrator remaining factionless throughout the novel - by having no strong opinion either way, the narration suffers from a lack of urgency.

The book ends as it must - with the Scheme collapsing. The reason for it being disbanded is ridiculous to the extreme and completely, absolutely unbelievable. We are, however, given hints that the Government was waiting for an excuse to shut the project down, and the ending does give it that excuse, but as the novel seemed so against social commentary or the ramifications of the Scheme earlier, this ending seems tacked on and is a let down.

In the end, I was left asking myself why this book was written and why I had read it. Everybody knows that there are problems with social welfare, but this book neither offers a solution nor poses any hard questions. In the end, we know what we always did - that work can be tiresome, that people enjoy the easy route over the hard, and that getting all that you paid for isn't always a guarantee.

Except there is the small matter of the "early swervers" who try to get off work early. This causes a division amongst those who would rather do the full 8 hours or "flat-dayers" as they are called.

The book begins with a warning that the Scheme cannot go on forever and sure enough, human nature enters to destroy even this carefully laid-out plan.

This is a great little book, a gem as itpoints out the absurdity of what we call work which can all be boiled down to human beings moving things around the world's surface. very good!