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Lecture 20: Technocracy

Technocracy means `rule by experts', a phrase which naturally suggests the question, `experts on what?'. To answer this, we have to ask a further question: ``What is the chief task facing society?'' There is no given answer to this question. Answers that have seemed reasonable to past societies include `To win the war' -- implying rule by military leaders and changes in civilian life to make it more closely resemble life in the armed forces; `To bring the people closer to God', implying rule by a priesthood -- examples would include the political supremacy of the Pope during the Dark Ages, or the involvement of mullahs in the governance of Khomeini's Iran; `To so organise the human and material resources of the country to provide material abundance for all' -- implying rule by experts in organization and production, that is, by engineers.

Thus, a necessary precondition for techocracy is the emergence of a class of engineers with experience in handling large enterprises, a class which started to emerge at the beginning of the last century in response to the introduction of mass production and the assembly line.

Although techocracy as a political movement belongs to the 20^th century, it was anticipated by several earlier thinkers. One of these was the Englishman Francis Bacon, whose ` New Atlantis', published in 1627, envisaged an ideal society directed by an establishment of scientists. Bacon was, perhaps, inspired by the impact on his society of three recent scientific developments: printing, gunpowder, and the compass. However, his ideas had no immediate political effect.

From 1802 to his death in 1825, the French writer Saint-Simon set out his ideas for technocratic government in a series of books. His general position was that competent organization of production was more important to society than any other political question, and that society should therefore be organized by those with experience in production. He was writing at a time well before the emergence of engineers like Taylor and Gantt, expert in manangement and organization, so his `experts' were made up of industrialists as well as engineers. For example, he proposed a three-part parliament for France, its three parts being concerned with Invention, Examination, and Execution respectively. The first chamber of this parliament was staffed by engineers and artists, the second by scientists, but the third by industrialists -- people we might now call owners or entrepreneurs rather than experts.

Unlike Bacon, Saint-Simon left a political legacy. His followers, the `Saint-Simonistes', continued to advance his ideas for several decades.

The next steps in the history of technocracy occurred in the United States. In 1899, Edward Bellamy published a novel, ``Looking Backward'', in which he imagined the America of the year 1999 as a utopian community, offering material abundance and pleasant, useful work for all. This transformation was based, not on any miraculous new invention, but on the rational re-organization of work within the society. The details of the new society reflect the ideas that would emerge from the technocractic movement over the next thirty-five years.

Over the same decade, the number of college-educated engineers increased tenfold. At the same time, there began to be a change in the loyalties of the engineers. In the nineteenth century, the engineers had identified closely with the interests of their employers; one leading engineer advised those joining the profession: ``always be subservient to those who represent the money invested in the enterprise.'' The new graduates had a higher idea of their importance and their independence. Henry Gaslee Prout, speaking before the Cornell Association of Civil Engineers in 1906, said, ``The engineers more than all other men, will move humanity forward until we come to some other period... On the engineers and on those who are making engineers rests a responsibility such as men have never before been called upon to face.'' However, no-one had a clear idea of how engineers were to take on this responsibility, beyond doing their jobs as well as possible. One of the most ambitious proposals came from Frederick Winslow Taylor (whose ideas on scientific management we discussed in the last lecture.) He argued that there are scientific laws governing the most efficient management of labour, just as there are governing the properties of matter; and this argument immediately extends the engineer's domain of expertise to the managerial, admininstrative and political spheres.

One of the chief political issues of that time was conservation, and this seemed to be an area in which engineers could take the lead. Frederick Haynes Newell, director of Roosevelt's Reclamation Service, claimed that ``In all matters pertaining to the conservation and use of the resources of the country, both material and human... the engineer should be the leader.''

One of the most aggressive proponents of the independence of engineers from businessmen was Henry L. Gantt, disciple of Taylor and inventor of the Gantt chart. Gantt argued that ``our great waste is caused by the system of production for profit.'' Such a method of production, he argued, ``puts in places of authority those who seek selfish advantages regardless of the interests of the community.'' If business ``failed to accept its social responsibility and devote itself primarily to service...the community will ultimately make the attempt to take it over in order to operate it in its own interest.'' His solution was to bring business under the control of experts. He suggested that industry had become ``too complex to be run any longer by mere deskmen who sit as the agents of a leisure class...The role of irresponsible finance and the advertisers' press is played out.'' Just as Taylor had introduced methods for measuring the efficiency of the worker, Gantt believed it was time to measure the efficiency of managers, and replace those who didn't measure up.

In December 1916 Gantt attempted to get the ASME to support his call for bringing production under the control of experts. When this attempt failed, he organised a group of fifty engineers into a group called `the New Machine' to press for the changes he advocated. However, nothing came of this, and the group collapsed the following year, as the U.S. entered World War I.

The War itself may have helped make the case for technocracy; meeting the requirements of production for global conflict required setting up wartime planning boards, staffed by non-partisan experts. If such policies were the most effective way of waging war, why should they not be extended to plan for a prosperous peace?

The wartime experience led some engineers, including the editors of Engineering News, to hope for a more rational organization of postwar production. The newly formed Federated American Engineering Societies organized the `Committee on Elimination of Waste' to study irrationalities in the existing system. This committee was headed by Herbert Hoover, himself an engineer (and who would be elected president of the States in 1928). The committee's report, published in 1921, documented the existence of immense waste in the six industries it studied: low production resulting from faulty management and equipment; interrupted production due to strikes and lock-outs; conscious restriction of production; and low production caused by acccidents, physical defects, and ill-health. The report concluded that this waste resulted primarily from bad manangement, and that it could be cured by scientific management.

However, the report did not have much effect. A conservative backlash led to the formation of a new engineering body, the Engineering Council, which viewed engineers as advisors to business rather than replacments for business. Hoover himself seemed to share this view.

In the same year as Hoover's report came out, radically new criticisms of the existing system were set out by Thorsten Veblen in a new book, ``The Engineers and the Price System.'' Veblen was an economist, not an engineer. Nevertheless, he believed that engineers were the best fitted to direct society's production. Over a series of books, he contrasted the greed and short-sightedness of businessmen with the disinterested, scientific approach of the engineer. Clearly, society could only expect to see universal prosperity when the engineers took over. But how was this to happen? Veblen approached the leadership of the ASME, but was unable to fire them with his enthusiasm. By 1920, he had concluded that, ``By settled habit the technicians, the engineers and industrial experts are a harmless and docile sort.''

Given this unpromising revolutionary material, it was difficult to see the path from the present situation to technocracy. Veblen considered two possibilities: that the businessmen, swayed by his arguments, would simply abdicate power; and that the technicians would call a general strike, thus demonstrating their power and bringing down the existing order. (A similar scenario is envisaged by the right-wing ideologues Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, in ``Atlas Shrugged' and `The Roads must Roll' respectively.)

Since neither of these possibilities seemed at all likely, Veblen spent the remainder of the 1920's proposing a major study of U.S. industry. The study would concentrate on the amount of waste in the current system, and would have two benefits: it would raise awareness of the irrationality of the current system, and it would provide the engineers with the necessary data for building a better one. One of his disciples, Howard Scott, formed an organization known as the Technical Alliance to promote technocracy and to conduct Veblen's study. But, although the Alliance briefly attracted some outstanding engineers, it broke up in 1921, many of the participants being sharply critical of Scott's managerial and financial abilities.

By the late twenties, society was no closer to technocratic rule. Then something dramatic happened. On Tuesday, 29 October, 1929, the New York Times industrial averages share price dropped by 43 points, losing all the value it had gained over the previous year. With intermittent rallies, the price continued to drop, until by November it was at 224 -- down from a high of 524 in early September. Industrial production also began to fall -- automobile production, coal mined, iron and steel production. And things continued to get worse. By 1932, industrial average share price was down to 58. Steel production was at 12% of capacity. The striking thing about the Crash was not that it occurred, but that its effects lasted so long. Four years later, one out of four of the workforce was unemployed. Even in 1938, nine years after the Crash, one in five was unemployed. The country returned to full employment only when the Second World War started.

North America had been hit by a disaster more crushing than a military defeat. And yet, the means of production had not been destroyed. The steel mills were intact, but idle. The problem lay, not with any material cause, but in the controlling economic system. The country was ready to listen to alternatives.

Scott returned from obscurity with a new ally, Walter Rautenstrauch, Chair of Columbia University's Department of Industrial Engineering. In 1932, Rautenstrauch formed a new organization, the Committee on Technocracy, which would chart the path to a more rational form of society. The Committee began by conducting an `Energy Survey of North America', which would prepare the ground for the reorganization of production. The idea that energy was the appropriate metric for designing and measuring productivity originated with Howard Scott; not all members of the Committee agreed on the importance of introducing this new measure, and many felt it was a distraction from the needed social reforms. In particular, the concentration on energy led the Committee to concentrate on manufacturing and to ignore service industries, whose activities were more difficult to measure in terms of energy.

The initial aim of the Committee was just to outline and diagnose the current problem. But as technocracy became more visible, they came under increasing pressure to propose a solution. Many groups calling themselves technocrats appeared throughout North America, offering schemes for a new society. The most thoroughgoing proposals came from Howard Scott, and we will focus on those as the closest thing we have to an official technocratic solution.

• The Solution
• Denouement