Technocracy movement

The Technocracy Monad, official symbol of Technocracy, Inc.

The technocratic movement is a social movement that started in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s and advocates a form of society where the welfare of human beings is optimized by means of scientific analysis and widespread use of technology. Today the movement exists as Technocracy Incorporated, whose members partake in discussion groups and publish quarterly magazines.

History

A sign on the outskirts of a Depression-era town proclaims regular Monday meetings of the local branch of Technocracy. Library of Congress photo.

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A large Technocracy Public event at an outdoor Auditorium

The technocracy movement has it origins back in the progressive engineers of the late 19th century and the works of Thorsten Veblen, especially “Engineers and the price system” as well as Scientific management. Early technocratic organisations formed after the First World War, these included Henry Gantt’s “The New Machine” and Thorten’s Veblen’s “Soviet of Technicians”. These organisations folded after a short time. However, the “Soviet of Technicians” resulted in a series of lectures that were attended by Howard Scott who started the Technical Alliance in the winter of 1918-1919. The word “technocracy” was first used to describe a form of government of scientists and engineers by William H. Smyth in 1919 and was used in the 1920s to describe to works of Thorsten Veblen.

The Technical Alliance, composed of mostly scientists and engineers, started an energy survey of the North American continent near the beginning of the 20th century. Many of their conclusions gave a scientific background upon which they based their ideas for a new social structure. Thorstein Veblen, who wrote Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), was a member of the Technical Alliance.

After the dissolution of the Technical Alliance, Howard Scott became the founder and leader of a new organization called Technocracy Incorporated, which sought to implement the findings of the Alliance and create a new kind of society. The group was incorporated in the state of New York in 1933, as a non-profit, non-political, non-sectarian organization. Led by Scott, then director-in-chief (his organizational title was "Chief Engineer"), the organization promoted its goals of educating people about their ideas, with a North American lecture tour in 1934, gaining support throughout the depression years. The precedent document of the Technocracy movement is the Technocracy Study Course.

The organization has published several magazines through out it's history, including the The Technocrat, The Northwest Technocrat and Technocracy Digest, it currently publishes the North American Technocrat and the movement still continues after more than 70 years of history. One of the most notable members of the movement was M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist who proposed the theory which has become known as the Hubbert Peak or Peak oil.

The standard unit for the organization is the chartered Section, consisting of at least fifty members. At Technocracy's height in popularity, many cities contained more than one Section, sometimes as many as a dozen or more. These sections would be the organs that undertook the majority of Technocracy's work, including the research that continued after the Technical Alliance.

The organization receives its funds entirely from dues and donations from its members. Membership is open to any citizen of North America, save politicians, as Technocracy is not a political party, but moreover seeks the abolition of political controls.

Technocracy's Continental Headquarters (CHQ) was originally situated in New York. It has moved several times through its history, and is currently located in Ferndale, Washington.

European movement

Main article: Network of European Technocrats

In 2005, a group of Europeans, inspired by Technocracy, decided to use some of the ideas of North American Technocracy in Europe and created the Network of European Technocrats, or NET, an autonomous research and education organisation with the primary goal of undertaking an Energy Survey (similar to the Energy Survey of North America) in order to determine the possibility of establishing a Technate upon the European continent. Although NET was inspired by Technocracy Incorporated, they are not officially affiliated and there are differences between the two groups (such as NET's avocation of Holons). The organisation's goals are aimed at testing the concepts of the technocratic movement through experimentation and networking. One of the other main differences between European and North American Technocracy is NET's focus and investigation into decentralised and ecological methods of resource and information distribution.

NET was officially registered as an independent association in Sweden in April 2006. Its provisional headquarters (EHQ) are in Umeå, Sweden. The current NET director, elected in September 2006 in an online conference, is Mansel Ismay, a resident of Oslo, Norway.

Ideas and goals

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Trends of the price system with technologic escalation.

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A diagram of the Technical Administration of the North American Technate showing the Functional sequences and their relationship to one another.

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A Technocrat giving a speech, with Monad flag in background

The Technocratic movement aims to establish a zero growth socio-economic system based upon conservation and abundance as opposed to scarcity-based economic systems like capitalism and the system used by Communist states. A core conclusion reached by the Technocratic movement is that a price system, or any system based on scarcity, is an illogical means of distribution in our technologically advanced world. Technocracy sees established economic, political, and administrative forms as relics of a traditional past.

Technocrats argue that developments in mechanization have caused a massive shift of employment towards the service sector. Further increases in efficiency and productivity mean that most of the tasks performed by human employees could be reduced or eliminated through better management, automation, and centralization. These trends should signal an increase in both production possibilities and leisure time since more can be produced with less human labor. Within a market system, however, increased productivity often leads to downsizing because companies need fewer workers and lower wages because of competition. Consequently, the standard of living falls for many. Thus, Technocrats argue that we are faced with a fundamental paradox: As inexpensive machines become available to replace human labor, they do not make our lives easier; on the contrary, they make them harder. The more people are capable of producing due to technology, the greater the disparities in wealth will become and the potential benefit of technology will be shared less. The basic cause of this problem, in the view of the Technocratic movement, is the fact that we rely on a money-based system to make economic decisions.

As opposed to economists, who define efficiency in terms of maximal allocation of limited resources, in order to provide the most utility to their owners, Technocrats define efficiency in terms of empirical evidence. Efficiency, for a Technocrat, is measured scientifically: a ratio of energy applied for useful work to energy applied in the complete system. Technocrats argue there exists a massive rift between the real world of science and the world of economics. They claim the inputs needed to make most products are in abundance, especially those critical to society's needs like food, shelter, transportation, information, etc. Technocrats argue that most social ills, such as poverty and hunger are due to faulty economics and improper use of technology. They frequently point out that the current price system is wasteful as it utilizes as many resources as possible but can only create scarce products (excludable and rival private goods). Technocrats argue that full use of our technology and resources should be able to produce an abundance.

Technocrats claim that the price system entails a severe lack of purchasing power, and has been propped up by wasteful tactics, major patches to the economic system, and increasingly huge amounts of debt, which began to increase exponentially after 1930. This debt includes the U.S. national debt, mortgages (see global debt), long term debt, credit debt, and the growing stock market. Technocrats see growing debt as a threat to the stability of capitalism. Technocrats claim that the price system will eventually fail, in which case the movement hopes to have educated enough of the populace in order to peaceably make changes to the economic structure and create a Technate.

An alternative to money: Energy accounting

Main article: Energy Accounting

An elderly Howard Scott with John Gregory at Technocracy Inc. Continental Headquarters (CHQ), then in Rushland, PA. Background maps show the proposed area of the Technate overlaid with the Continental Hydrology.

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A Technocracy Inc. event, the map in the background is of the proposed North American Technate

Energy Accounting is a hypothetical system of distribution, which would record the Energy used to produce and distribute goods and services consumed by citizens in a Technate. The units of this accounting system would be known as Energy Credits (sometimes called an Energy Certificates), these would replace money in a Technate, but unlike traditional money or currencies, energy credits could not be saved or earned, only distributed evenly among a populace. The amount of credit given to each citizen would be calculated by determining the total productive capacity of the technate and dividing it equally. The Energy Credits themselves would probably not have to be physically used by the populace, as the system would be computerised. In energy accounting the Technate would use information of Natural resources, industrial capacity and citizen’s purchasing habits to determine how much of any good or service was being consumed by the populace, so that it could match production with consumption.

The reason for the use of Energy Accounting serves to ensure the highest possible standard of living as well as equality among the Technate’s citizenry, as well as prohibit spending that is beyond the productive capacity of the technocracy. Technocrats point out that energy accounting is not rationing; it is a way to distribute an abundance and track demand. Everyone would receive an equal, abundant (i.e. far more than they need), amount of energy credits. Technocrats predict that at today's rates of energy conversion, no person will rationally be able to spend all their energy credits.

The North American Technate

The North American Technate is a design and plan to transform North America into a Technocratic society after the collapse of the Price system. The plan includes using Canada's rich deposits of minerals and hydro-electric power as a complement to the United States's industrial and agricultural capacity (Many of the details of this plan are presented in the Technocracy Study Course).

The North America Technate would be composed of all of North America, Central America, the Caribbean, parts of South America and Greenland, encompassing some 25 modern nations (as well as numerous Non-Self-Governing Territories). If the Technate were setup today, it would contain nearly 600 million citizens and its total land area would be over 26 million square km (making it the largest nation on Earth). Its territorial claims would stretch from the North Pole in the north, to the Equator in the south and from the Caribbean in the west, to the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean, to the east.

Urbanates: A technocratic replacement for cities

Once a technate has been established, the Technocratic movement believes that it should proceed to construct an entirely new form of living environment called Urbanates. An Urbanate is essentially an assembly of buildings where people live and work. These places would have all the facilities needed for a community, including schools, hospitals, shopping malls, waste management and recycling facilities, sports centres, and public areas.

Technocrats wish Urbanates to be something akin to resorts, designed to give each citizen the highest standard of living possible. Getting around in an Urbanate would be inherently easy and efficient. Every kind of major facility would be placed within walking distance of a housing complex, eliminating the need for cars.

Urbanates would be connected via a continent-wide transportation network envisioned by Technocracy, which would involve a High-speed rail network linking every Urbanate, the Continental Hydrology (a massive Canal network), and air transport. These systems would also be connected to the Technate’s industrial sites for easy transport of goods to consumers, and to all recreational and vacation areas of the continent.

The reason given by the Technocratic movement for all this ambitious restructuring of urban life is that modern cities are often extremely poorly planned and built in a haphazard way leading to major inefficiencies, waste, and large numbers of social and environmental problems. Technocrats believe that rather than trying to solve all these problems within the framework of existing cities, it is best to start with a clean slate and construct Urbanates. Technocrats propose that all of the old cities in the technate should be gradually abandoned and "mined" for their resources. This would involve recycling resources (e.g. steel, concrete, glass, plastics, etc.), which would then go into building the Urbanates, thus reducing the need to extract and process new materials and lessen environmental damage. Though some buildings (or perhaps whole areas of the old cities) that are of historical or cultural importance, would likely be kept and preserved as a type of outdoor museums.

Criticisms of the movement

The movement is too obscure to attract much criticism, however, Technocrats themselves would argue that those in power, politicians and heads of corporations, are a form of organized opposition. The movement claims that this opposition has helped spread a negative connotation to the term technocracy and the ideas associated with it.

Critics make the following claims regarding technocracy:

• There is no possible way to eliminate the scarcity of products in the modern world, especially given the large variety that exists today.
• The theory that labor time could be drastically reduced at current productivity levels seems extremely suspect given the low unemployment rate in modern Western societies.
  • Technocrats, on the other hand, see these societies as inefficient and wasteful, and argue that the unemployment rate is not an accurate measure of the total amount of people working and the amount of work being performed. In the United States, of those of working age, only 65% participate in the economy, while European countries have an even smaller proportion. Moreover, a significant number of employees work in industries such as finance, advertising, and retail. Many of these jobs would disappear after the transition from a monetary economy to a technocracy, meaning that the "adjusted" unemployment rate (a measure excluding such pecuniary jobs) is much higher than indicated.
• The movement lacks organization and a clear path.
• Technology cannot solve all of our problems.
• Naturally scarce things (e.g. gold, diamonds, the Mona Lisa) are impossible to distribute equally.
  • A Technocratic rebuttal to this criticism might be that under Technocracy, these things would have no greater value than their actual worth in producing other goods or their utility in generating energy. Gold and diamonds would have no special value due to their scarcity. Technocrats argue that in the consumerist societies of today, the majority of what people consume is made by machine, usually in some form of mass production or scientific management; thus, the majority of consumables is subject to complete automation. Naturally scarce things are so scarce that they will not have an effect on a technocratic society.
    • A second rebuttal is that Diamonds are only "scarce" due to their controlled limited release, not due to any actual rarity of the gem. Many other "valuable" commodities are propped up by similar purposely limited-supply and marketing schemes.
• Many people believe that human beings are materially selfish and would not be willing to work unless that work gave them some direct material benefit; thus the technate would fail to function due to a shortage of labor.
  • Technocrats do not see an unwillingness to work as a problem. They posit that a technocratic society would seek to eventually eliminate the majority of human labor altogether through automation. As for the remaining jobs, technocrats hold that many citizens would continue to work given that they have the skills and/or if they enjoy it. Moreover, technocrats believe that those who refuse to work, without sufficient reason, would lose respect in the eyes of their fellow citizens.
  • As the efficiency of the system continues to increase and advance, the living standard of all humans would improve, thus yielding a tangible material gain due to a collective work effort.
• Many critics believe that the entire Technocratic system relies on the notion that human want is finite.
  • Technocrats, however, make no such claim. Instead, they make no statement regarding human "want", only that the human ability to actually consume is finite. This is exampled by such things as food, or transportation. While one can "own" any amount of cars in a scarcity system, they can only actually "consume" so much transportation; that is, they can only drive (or fly, etc.) for so many hours in a day. Since the very concept of ownership would be different in a Technate, citizens would not own methods of transportation, but only use them to whatever amount they like, limited only by how much they physically can.

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The Sellout of the Ages by Howard Scott, a Technocracy Inc. publication.

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Map of the North American Technate, taken from the TTCD, Page 22

Technocracy Incorporated Publications

• Technocracy Study Course [Technocracy, Inc.] (1934)
• Technocracy Handbook [Technocracy, Inc.], (1939)
• The Sellout of the Ages, Howard Scott, (1941)
• Our Country, Right or Wrong, (1946)
• Continentalism: The Mandate of Survival, (1947)
• Technological Continental Design (TTCD) [Technocracy, Inc.] (1975)

Further reading

Books on the early history of the Technocratic movement:

• William E. Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941 (University of California Press, 1977) ISBN 0-520-03110-5
• Henry Elsner, The Technocrats, Prophets of Automation (Syracuse University Press, 1967)
• Harold Loeb, Life in a Technocracy. What it Might Be Like (The Viking Press, 1933)
• Allen Raymond, What is Technocracy? (McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., LTD., 1933)

Elsner's account is from a sociological perspective. Akin's book is much more detailed, though deals mostly with the intellectual history of the movement. Neither book is terribly critical of the movement, though they both agree that the Technocrats' influence on American history has been negligible. The authors argue that Technocracy gained a fair amount of national press attention in the midst of the Great Depression, but their time in the spotlight lasted scarcely a year, from 1932-33.

Technocracy in fiction

Science fiction writer Howard Waldrop's short story "You Could Go Home Again" postulates an alternate history where a technocratic government came to power in the United States, resulting in many historical differences, including World War II having never happened. However, Waldrop never intended for the story to be an accurate depiction of Technocracy, instead only borrowing elements from it as a backdrop for his story.

The United Federation of Planets in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek franchise bears some similarity to a Technocratic society. Although its economics are rarely discussed in detail, the Federation is almost certainly some form of Post scarcity, moneyless society.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy describes the development of a highly automated society whose economy was based on caloric input/output and had few materials valued based on their scarcity, thus bearing some similarities to Technocratic ideas.

Satirical Treatments

The Technocratic movement was the subject of several satires in the 1930s. A special notable "Technocracy Number" of Judge humor magazine illustrated by Dr. Seuss made fun of Technocracy, Inc. and featured satirical rhymes at the expense of Frederick Soddy. In a 1933 Flip the Frog cartoon “Techno-Cracked”, Flip builds a robot to work for him and gets a lesson in unintended consequences.

See also

• Jacque Fresco
• Monad (Technocracy)
• Post scarcity
• Techno-utopia
• Techno-utopianism
• Technorealism

External links

• Technocracy Incorporated (Official Website)
• Technocracy Study Course (TSC) (PDF)
• Technological Continental Design (PDF)
• Network of European Technocrats A pan-European technocracy organisation based in Sweden.
• Historical Background and Development of Social Security from the U.S. Social Security Administration (see section Technocracy)
• Archive material from Technocracy Incorporated
• Booklet on Energy Accounting
• History and Purpose of Technocracy according to Howard Scott