Reflections On A ``Forgotten Folly''

Stephen L. Doll

1990

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 1st quarter 1990, No. 318
Section 3 Newsletter, March 1990, No. 79

Among the less memorable, but more entertaining, items in the Technocratic archives is an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal of June 3, 1948. The article, entitled ``Remember the Technocrats?'' was written by W.H. Chamberlin, and proceeded literally to stomp on Technocracy's proposals, deriding the organization's concepts as a ``forgotten folly" of the Depression era. An excellent rejoinder appeared in the September issue of the The Technocrat (unfortunately now out of print), which in itself proceeded point by point to blast to smithereens the shortsighted attempts by Mr. Chamberlin to tout the American version of the Price System as ``the best and surest means of satisfying human need.''

It is obvious that Mr. Chamberlin's excoriation of Technocracy's principles, and his staunch defense of the Price System, were written from the Never-Never Land of finance whence all pecuniary philosophy has emanated. As we all well know, this is a land in which logic and reason has no place, where high emotion and opinion hold sway over its day-to-day activities. It is a world of humans and their whimsies. It is not a world of physical science, but is instead a world over which the denizens of this Never-Never Land nevertheless think they exercise control through prudent and profitable manipulation of the gossamer strands of finance.

Now, forty years after Chamberlin's writing in which he champions the Price System, we are faced with an array of problems undreamed of in the post-war boom and certainly not included in Mr. Chamberlin's philosophy. Unemployment is a very real part of our social dilemma, generated by the exact conditions that Technocracy has pointed out all along. Of course our society has created millions of jobs -- minimum-wage burger-flippers and retail sales people for whom the American Dream is no closer than it was in the late forties. Pollution, homelessness, taxpayers bailing out hundreds of savings and loans organizations, unscrupulous inside traders stalking the halls of Mr. Chamberlin's erstwhile stomping grounds -- one wonders how Mr. Chamberlin would answer these conditions today. Would he write them off as mere temporary aberrations of our society, inevitable results of the flux of our economic system, as he did the Depression years of the thirties? Try telling that to someone living in a cardboard box on the outskirts of our nation's capitol or to the executive who is drying out in a drug rehab center because he couldn't take the pressures of pursuing the Dream.

To be sure, we enjoyed boom times from World War II -- at a cost of a mere 1,078,162 killed and maimed Americans, not to mention untold resources rusting away on sea bottoms or crushed into rubble by bombs. Since the forty-year interim, we now see in retrospective investigation, that much of that prosperity was a direct product of war, and while our boys were crawling under barbed wire fences, some good old patriotic American companies were fattening their coffers by doing some fancy fence-crossing themselves -- by selling the materiel of war to both sides.

Not only has the quest for profit, which Chamberlin points out as the impetus for our high standard of living, resulted in a lowering of that standard for a growing number of North Americans, it has taken, and is continuing to take, a devastating toll of the physical plant we require for our existence. Of course, evidence of this having just come to public view in the last couple of decades, it couldn't have entered into Mr. Chamberlin's championing of the Price System. The tragedy is, although we now have knowledge of the evidence, most North Americans, some of them extremely concerned about environmental and social issues, still steadfastly look for deliverance to the very fantasy system that has caused the crisis -- kind of like using one cancer to combat another.

Technocracy's forecasts, being based on sound scientific principle, are as viable now as they were at the time of Mr. Chamberlin's pooh-poohing. Mr. Chamberlin's observations were born in the intangibility of the monetary system, and a four- decade sweep of events has negated whatever appearance of substance his assertions may have had in 1948.

Mr. Chamberlin wrote, ``One more fallacy might also be tossed on the intellectual scrapheap: the idea that production should be `for use, not for profit'. This conveys the absurd suggestion that what is produced for profit does not get into use.''

The fact is, many things that are being built for profit -- existing houses, automobiles sitting on car lots by the millions, vacated factories, empty stores in strip shopping centers -- are not being used, but are being produced with no clear intent but to feed the economic structure. Millions of tons of resource are being frittered away on these things, merely for the immediate, temporary benefit of short-term employment, or on the speculation that they might prove to be profitable, and only in that way can they be called useful.

Chamberlin speaks of too much money in circulation. Certainly this seems to be the case nowadays, as it was at his writing. They're falling all over themselves trying to give away bucks by the bucketfuls, but where are those bucks? Why does the North American public labor under a debt structure that amounts to trillions of dollars if there's plenty of money to go around? And who gets this money? Lottery winners? Winners of magazine sweepstakes? It doesn't take a PhD in high finance for one to realize that the preponderance of this money goes into the loyal hands of those who do nothing more than keep the wheels of finance cranking along. This is, of course, fitting but unfortunate that the rights of these individuals to consume tangible resource are elevated in accordance with their fealty to the non-realities of the monetary system. Meanwhile, those on the productive end wind up with the least power to consume the fruits of their labors.

And of what good is this consolidation of wealth into the hands of the fortunate few to society in general, especially for those who are duped into shorting their families in order to divert grocery to the purchase of lottery tickets?

Another glaring faux pas on the part of Mr. Chamberlin is his contention that ``the dream of universal abundance'', as envisioned by the Technocrats, has failed to materialize. Perhaps that was true forty years ago, but, oh, look at us now! On the surface, we seem to be enjoying the fruits of our productive capacity to a ridiculous extent. We fill our houses with baubles, bangles and beads, and toss them out in plastic bags or store them in land-consuming storage units when we tire of them, blissfully unmindful of the resources in the dumps and storage buildings.

Yet, despite all this seeming opulence, why do we find ourselves building more jails and drug and alcohol treatment centers? Why do elementary schools post search and seizure signs on their campuses? Why is the security system business booming? Did Mr. Chamberlin foresee all this? Did he foresee the massive loss of jobs of North American companies in farming out production to foreign countries? Hence, a product that proudly bears a label ``Made in U.S.A.'' may be nothing more than a conglomerate of foreign-made parts, and only assembled in America. As Mr. Chamberlin has pointed out, however, the grand and glorious profit motive is the name of the game, and when it comes to paying fifty cents an hour for labor as opposed to paying one's own countrymen eight or ten dollars per hour, it's easy to see where the loyalties have ultimately come to rest.

In response to Mr. Chamberlin's contention that, because Technocracy's forecasts had not materialized as of 1948 and so had lost validity, the editors of the TECHNOCRAT pointed out, very correctly, that Technocracy deals with, and has always dealt with, long-term trends, not the temporal nature of a Price System that operates solely on the whims and caprices of human opinion and greed. Who can predict these elements with any degree of accuracy? Any economist worth his calculator will tell you that his forecasts are valid for only a couple of months at most -- and on this we base our future? An economist deals with elements that have never been overly reliable in dictating long-term trends. Only the manner in which we employ our technologies to control energy and resource can accomplish this end. And when profit enters the picture, contrary to Mr. Chamberlin's assertion, it invariably overshadows any consideration of benefit to humanity.

The operators of the Price System revert to hype to preserve their rackets, and now a whole new generation of W.H. Chamberlins, stronger than ever, is hovering in the wings, willing to do what they can to prevent scientific government. Sooner or later, however, the visible actualities must hit home. Let's only hope there is someone there to hear the knock at the door.

Mr. Chamberlin could no more consign Technocracy to oblivion at its tender age of fifteen than we can ignore the scientific facts that gave rise to the organization. His article may well fall under the category of ``forgotten folly'', but, as this article indicates, Technocracy lives on.