Page 116 - The Drucker Lectures

12

Knowledge Lecture I

1989

’m always amazed, as a very old political journalist, at how
Ilittle attention the media and the scholars pay to the truly
important events of any period. And if you ask in retrospect,
provided this planet survives 200 years hence, “What is the
most important event in this century?” you will probably find
some people who say the final demise of the utopian creeds with
Marxism. And other people may point, and quite rightly so, to
those horrible world wars. And there have been very few centu-
ries in which there have been more refugees. And other people
will look at the environment. But I think 200 years from now,
it’s quite likely that the majority consensus will say, “This is the
century with the most unprecedented, unexpected changes in
the way people work.”
If you go back to the beginning of this century—you know,
in 1911, the British made the first modern census that asked
socioeconomic questions. And domestic servants made up the
largest single group in the employed population. Thirty-seven
percent of all people made their living working for somebody
else. In fact, that famous census defined “lower middle class” as
people who do not have more than three servants. And I don’t
know whether anybody in this room has lately seen a servant.
They have become extinct in developed countries. And the in-
teresting thing is they’re becoming extinct in developing ones,

[ 97