Technocracy movement
Encyclopedia
The technocracy movement is a social movement
which arose in the early 20th century. It put forth a plan for operating the North American continent as a non-monetary society. Technocracy was highly popular in the USA for a brief period in the early 1930s, when it overshadowed many other proposals for dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression
. The technocrats proposed replacing politicians and economists
with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy
.
based forms of government and economy are structurally incapable of effective action, and promoted a more rational and productive type of society headed by technical experts.
The coming of the Great Depression
created an opening for some of these radical ideas of social engineering
. By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves "technocrats" and proposing reforms.
By the mid-1930s, interest in the technocracy movement was declining. Most historians have attributed the demise of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal
, a more democratic method of accomplishing the planning and economic reconstruction that the technocrats had called for. The authoritarian, elitist, and even fascist overtones of the technocracy movement undermined its popular appeal as a political movement.
"The popularity of their movement was transient, but the Technocrats’ vision of reducing society to a single energy dial, to be adjusted objectively by social engineers, would recur in the field of
ecology."
Many books have discussed the rise and decline of the technocracy movement in the 1930s. The most notable of these is Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941 by William E. Akin.
, along with some of the later works of Thorstein Veblen
such as Engineers And The Price System written in 1921. William H. Smyth, a Californian engineer, invented the word "technocracy" in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers", and in the 1920s it was used to describe the works of Thorsten Veblen.
Early technocratic organisations formed after the First World War in both Europe and the United States. In the U.S., these included Henry Gantt
’s "The New Machine" and Veblen’s "Soviet of Technicians". These organisations folded after a short time, but not before Howard Scott
attended a series of "Soviet of Technicians" lectures.
Howard Scott has been called the "founder of the technocracy movement" and he started the Technical Alliance
in New York near the end of 1919. Members of the Alliance were mostly scientists and engineers. The Technical Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, which aimed to provide a scientific background from which ideas about a new social structure
could be developed. However the group broke up in 1921 and the survey was not completed.
In 1932, Scott and others interested in the problems of technological growth and economic change began meeting in New York City. There they met Marion King Hubbert, who was impressed by Scott and the work of the Technical Alliance, and began urging Scott to round up some of the old members and get some of his ideas down on paper. Hubbert later wrote the Technocracy Study Course, a small booklet containing an introduction to what they were talking about. "In the Technocracy Study Course M. King Hubbert called economists apologists for businessmen." Their ideas gained national attention and the "Committee on Technocracy" was formed at Columbia University
, by Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch
. However, the group was short-lived and in January 1933 splintered into two other groups, the "Continental Committee on Technocracy" (led by Harold Loeb
) and "Technocracy Incorporated" (led by Scott).
At the core of Scott's vision was what he called "a thermodynamic interpretation of social phenomena", which was supposed to substitute a 'metrical' for a 'value' interpretation. Since the basic measure common to the production of all goods and services was energy, he reasoned "that the sole scientific foundation for the monetary system was also energy". Technocracy Inc. officials wore a uniform, consisting of a "well-tailored double-breasted suit, gray shirt, and blue necktie, with a monad insignia on the lapel", and its members saluted Scott in public.
Public interest in technocracy peaked in the early 1930s:
Following Scott's unsuccessful radio address, the condemnation of both him and technocracy in general reached a peak. The press and businessmen reacted with ridicule and almost unanimous hostility. The American Engineering Council charged the technocrats with "unprofessional activity, questionable data, and drawing unwarranted conclusions".
The faction-ridden Continental Committee on Technocracy collapsed in October 1936. However, Technocracy Incorporated continued, adopting distinctive red and grey uniforms for its staff and a fleet of cars in these colors. These features brought the organization under suspicion during World War II
. The organization was banned in Canada for several years, but the ban was lifted in 1943.
There were some speaking tours of the USA and Canada in 1946 and 1947, and a motorcade from Los Angeles to Vancouver they called "Operation Columbia":
1948 saw a decline in activity and considerable internal dissent. One central factor contributing to this dissent was that "the Price System had not collapsed, and predictions about the expected demise were becoming more and more vague". Some quite specific predictions about the Price System
collapse were made during the Depression, the first giving 1937 as the date, and the second forecasting the collapse as occurring "prior to 1940".
Membership and activity declined steadily in the years after 1948, but some activity persisted, mostly around Vancouver in Canada and on the West Coast of the United States. Technocracy Incorporated currently maintains a website and distributes an occasional newsletter.
, a think-tank founded in 1931, also advocated similar economic intervention. In Germany prior to the second world war a technocratic movement based on the American model introduced by Technocracy Incorporated existed which ran afoul with the political system there.
A Russian movement existed based on similar beginnings from the North American movement also.Alexander Bogdanov
also had a conception of technocracy, and his conception of Tectology
bears some semblance to technocratic ideas. Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings as presented by Zenovia Sochor, imply that he expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society. The most important of the non-Leninist Bolsheviks may have been Alexander Bogdanov.
Social movement
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....
which arose in the early 20th century. It put forth a plan for operating the North American continent as a non-monetary society. Technocracy was highly popular in the USA for a brief period in the early 1930s, when it overshadowed many other proposals for dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. The technocrats proposed replacing politicians and economists
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
.
Overview
Technocracy advocates contend that price systemPrice system
In economics, a price system is any economic system that affects its distribution of goods and services with prices and employing any form of money. Except for possible remote and primitive communities, all modern societies use price systems to allocate resources...
based forms of government and economy are structurally incapable of effective action, and promoted a more rational and productive type of society headed by technical experts.
The coming of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
created an opening for some of these radical ideas of social engineering
Social engineering (political science)
Social engineering is a discipline in political science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. In the political arena, the counterpart of social engineering is political engineering.For various reasons,...
. By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves "technocrats" and proposing reforms.
By the mid-1930s, interest in the technocracy movement was declining. Most historians have attributed the demise of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
, a more democratic method of accomplishing the planning and economic reconstruction that the technocrats had called for. The authoritarian, elitist, and even fascist overtones of the technocracy movement undermined its popular appeal as a political movement.
"The popularity of their movement was transient, but the Technocrats’ vision of reducing society to a single energy dial, to be adjusted objectively by social engineers, would recur in the field of
ecology."
Many books have discussed the rise and decline of the technocracy movement in the 1930s. The most notable of these is Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941 by William E. Akin.
Origins
The technocratic movement has its origins with the progressive engineers of the early twentieth century and the writings of Edward BellamyEdward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.-Early life:...
, along with some of the later works of Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...
such as Engineers And The Price System written in 1921. William H. Smyth, a Californian engineer, invented the word "technocracy" in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers", and in the 1920s it was used to describe the works of Thorsten Veblen.
Early technocratic organisations formed after the First World War in both Europe and the United States. In the U.S., these included Henry Gantt
Henry Gantt
Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is most famous for developing the Gantt chart in the 1910s....
’s "The New Machine" and Veblen’s "Soviet of Technicians". These organisations folded after a short time, but not before Howard Scott
Howard Scott
Howard Scott was a controversial engineer who had an interest in technocracy, and helped to form the Technical Alliance, Committee on Technocracy, and Technocracy Incorporated.-Early life:...
attended a series of "Soviet of Technicians" lectures.
United States and Canada
Technical Alliance
Towards the end of 1919, American engineer Howard Scott formed the Technical Alliance, a group of engineers, scientists, and technicians based in New York. The Technical Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, aimed at documenting the wastefulness of the capitalist system...
in New York near the end of 1919. Members of the Alliance were mostly scientists and engineers. The Technical Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, which aimed to provide a scientific background from which ideas about a new social structure
Social structure
Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
could be developed. However the group broke up in 1921 and the survey was not completed.
In 1932, Scott and others interested in the problems of technological growth and economic change began meeting in New York City. There they met Marion King Hubbert, who was impressed by Scott and the work of the Technical Alliance, and began urging Scott to round up some of the old members and get some of his ideas down on paper. Hubbert later wrote the Technocracy Study Course, a small booklet containing an introduction to what they were talking about. "In the Technocracy Study Course M. King Hubbert called economists apologists for businessmen." Their ideas gained national attention and the "Committee on Technocracy" was formed at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, by Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch
Walter Rautenstrauch
Dr. Walter Rautenstrauch took the Chair of Columbia University's Department of Industrial Engineering in the 1930s. He was instrumental in the creation of this department which is said to be the first such department in the United States...
. However, the group was short-lived and in January 1933 splintered into two other groups, the "Continental Committee on Technocracy" (led by Harold Loeb
Harold Loeb
Harold Albert Loeb was an American figure active in the arts in Paris in the 1920s. Loeb attended Princeton University where he boxed. Loeb served in World War I and after the War was Ernest Hemingway's sparring partner. Loeb served as co-editor of Broom, An International Magazine of the Arts . He...
) and "Technocracy Incorporated" (led by Scott).
At the core of Scott's vision was what he called "a thermodynamic interpretation of social phenomena", which was supposed to substitute a 'metrical' for a 'value' interpretation. Since the basic measure common to the production of all goods and services was energy, he reasoned "that the sole scientific foundation for the monetary system was also energy". Technocracy Inc. officials wore a uniform, consisting of a "well-tailored double-breasted suit, gray shirt, and blue necktie, with a monad insignia on the lapel", and its members saluted Scott in public.
Public interest in technocracy peaked in the early 1930s:
Technocracy's heyday lasted only from June 16, 1932, when the New York Times became the first influential press organ to report its activities, until January 13, 1933, when Scott, attempting to silence his critics, delivered a rambling, confusing, and uninspiring address on a well-publicized nationwide radio hookup.
Following Scott's unsuccessful radio address, the condemnation of both him and technocracy in general reached a peak. The press and businessmen reacted with ridicule and almost unanimous hostility. The American Engineering Council charged the technocrats with "unprofessional activity, questionable data, and drawing unwarranted conclusions".
The technocrats made a believable case for a kind of technological utopia, but their asking price was too high. The idea of political democracy still represented a stronger ideal than technological elitism. In the end, critics believed that the socially desirable goals that technology made possible could be achieved without the sacrifice of existing institutions and values and without incurring the apocalypse that technocracy predicted.
The faction-ridden Continental Committee on Technocracy collapsed in October 1936. However, Technocracy Incorporated continued, adopting distinctive red and grey uniforms for its staff and a fleet of cars in these colors. These features brought the organization under suspicion during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The organization was banned in Canada for several years, but the ban was lifted in 1943.
There were some speaking tours of the USA and Canada in 1946 and 1947, and a motorcade from Los Angeles to Vancouver they called "Operation Columbia":
Hundreds of cars, trucks, and trailers, all regulation grey, from all over the Pacific Northwest, participated. An old school bus, repainted and retrofitted with sleeping and office facilities, a two-way radio, and a public address system, impressed observers. A huge war surplus searchlight mounted on a truck bed was included, and grey-painted motorcycles acted as parade marshalls. A small grey aircraft, with a Monad symbol on its wings, flew overhead. All this was recorded by the Technocrats on 16-mm 900-foot colour film.
1948 saw a decline in activity and considerable internal dissent. One central factor contributing to this dissent was that "the Price System had not collapsed, and predictions about the expected demise were becoming more and more vague". Some quite specific predictions about the Price System
Price system
In economics, a price system is any economic system that affects its distribution of goods and services with prices and employing any form of money. Except for possible remote and primitive communities, all modern societies use price systems to allocate resources...
collapse were made during the Depression, the first giving 1937 as the date, and the second forecasting the collapse as occurring "prior to 1940".
Membership and activity declined steadily in the years after 1948, but some activity persisted, mostly around Vancouver in Canada and on the West Coast of the United States. Technocracy Incorporated currently maintains a website and distributes an occasional newsletter.
Europe
In Great Britain, Political and Economic PlanningPolitical and Economic Planning
Political and Economic Planning was a British policy think tank, formed in 1931 in response to Max Nicholson's article A National Plan for Britain published in February of that year in Gerald Barry's magazine The Week-End Review....
, a think-tank founded in 1931, also advocated similar economic intervention. In Germany prior to the second world war a technocratic movement based on the American model introduced by Technocracy Incorporated existed which ran afoul with the political system there.
A Russian movement existed based on similar beginnings from the North American movement also.Alexander Bogdanov
Alexander Bogdanov
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov –7 April 1928, Moscow) was a Russian physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and revolutionary of Belarusian ethnicity....
also had a conception of technocracy, and his conception of Tectology
Tectology
Tectology is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a discipline that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences, by considering them as systems of relationships, and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems...
bears some semblance to technocratic ideas. Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings as presented by Zenovia Sochor, imply that he expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society. The most important of the non-Leninist Bolsheviks may have been Alexander Bogdanov.