Technocracy -- An Idea For Now

Stephen L. Doll

1992

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 1st quarter 1992, No. 326

See also:

The Hotel Pierre Address

On January 13, 1933, North Americans gathered around radios to listen to a live broadcast by Howard Scott, as he addressed an audience of industrial magnates at the Hotel Pierre in New York City. These captains of industry had come to hear Scott's presentation on the findings of the research group known as the Technical Alliance of which Howard Scott was Chief Engineer.

Scott was no politician or businessman, as the listeners soon found out. He began with a brief background of the Technical Alliance which had spent fourteen years on an objective study of the effects of science and technology on social change in North America.

He went on to point out the dramatic increases in population growth in certain parts of the world, particularly in the North American Continent. Then, he proceeded to dash to pieces some preciously-held concepts.

The reason for population increase and the improvement in the standard of living of the industrialized nations, Scott pronounced, was not due to financial philosophy or form of political government. The Technical Alliance found that, as technology is introduced to production, it is the purely physical factor of the time rate of doing work -- the reduction of time required to convert energy into forms usable to humans -- that is directly responsible for meeting the needs of, and making possible, the growth of populations and improvement in the standard of living.

In societies previous to the introduction of the steam engine to industry, around 1840, work was carried out mainly by human muscle power, with a little help from animals and water wheels. Production was carried out at the speed of the hand tool, and was naturally slow. This low-energy state had prevailed throughout recorded history.

It was during this time of low energy conversion, reaching back some 7000 years, that the present concepts of government, finance, and the virtues of sweat-of-the-brow labor were conceived and refined. Also, during this period of time there came into being the current distribution system that Technocracy calls the Price System -- that is, any social system that effects the production and distribution of goods and services using money.

The world was still toiling in a state of low-energy conversion when, in 1776, Adam Smith published what was to become the classic economic theory we still employ to control production and distribution.

Scott pointed out that this theory, which is based largely on the assumption that human labor determines the value of goods and services, is inappropriate in a high-energy civilization. As more extraneous energy -- that is, energy derived from a source other than human power -- is introduced into industry, production increases. At the same time, the necessity for human labor decreases. Therefore, the factor of human labor is no longer applicable.

At the same time production increases, man-hours must decrease. And, since man-hours generate consuming power in the form of wages, consuming power must decrease.

This trend may best be seen in the accompanying chart, a composite of the analysis of over 3000 aspects of the social structure of North America -- from resources to energy consumption to industrial output. Technocracy employs the chart not as support for its observations, but as the reason for them. It is also what made it possible for Technocracy to make, over fifty years ago, projections about societal trends that are showing up now.

[graph of man-hours and
production]

As may be seen in the "Physical Production" line, the amount of goods produced has increased in proportion to the installment of machinery. In the days before the introduction of the steam engine to industry, 98% of the labor was carried out by muscle power. It was during this time that the Price System, the only method of distribution now in use in the world (with the possible exception of a few isolated tribes) came into being.

From 1840 on, we saw an increase in "Total Employment in Man-Hours." This trend continued until the mid-1920s. when a peak was reached. The decrease in total industrial employment has been constant ever since, as business has introduced labor-saving devices, or farmed out its labor to foreign countries, to maintain its profit margins. It has been successful at this, as labor, once the largest expense business had to deal with, only accounts now for about 10% of operating expenses.

Now observe the "Man Hours Per Unit Production" line. Compare this curve with the "Production" line. It is clear that man-hours, both as a method of determining value and as a source of consuming power in the form of wages, are on the way out.

In his address, Scott pointed this out, and said that as this trend continued, we would see progressively more severe periods of unemployment and loss of consuming power, "not in technological employment, but in a reduction of total employment and of total purchasing power." (It may be noted here that the only way purchasing power has been maintained has been by the creation of an imponderable debt structure.)

Scott observed that rather than the amount of labor that goes into producing goods or services, it is the scarcity of supply that dictates value, and scarcity is incompatible with a technology capable of producing an abundance for everyone. He drew a very definite line between physical wealth, the actual conversion of energy into use-able forms, and monetary wealth, which is nothing more than the ability to create debt.

It is time, he told the nation, for a new way of operating the Continent, one that would unleash the tremendous productive capacity of North America for the benefit of all citizens. It is time for a governance not of people, but of the physical plant of North America by those most qualified. Get the politicians and financiers out of the way, Scott declared, and the Continent would witness a prosperity such as the world has never before seen.

These observations, as may be expected, were bitter gall to industrialists who spoke in terms of dividends and profit margins. They had come to hear how they could get out of the Depression with their corporate skins intact and resume business as usual. Here was this man talking about energy conversion and the time rate of doing work. He even went so far as to say that all such special interest groups as liberals, debt merchants, and communists would wind up sharing "the mud of the last ditch wherein they now struggle so valiantly."

The industrialists clicked their tongues, shook their heads, and proceeded to write Technocracy off as just another will-O'-the-wisp, like the Townsend plan. Then they went off to the government, hats in hand. They even tried to hire Scott at a princely wage, but Scott refused to be bound by what he called their "platinum handcuffs."

Technocracy's researchers were summarily dismissed from Columbia University. Scott later maintained that he had in his possession a telegram directing all employees of the Hearst Corporation never to mention Technocracy again if they wanted to keep their jobs.

Not everyone was cowed by the bluster of the media megaliths, however. The VANCOUVER SUN heralded Technocracy's program for social reconstruction as "North America's Great Chance". The Decatur, Illinois, HERALD-REVIEW headlined it as the "CURE FOR ECONOMIC ILLS". Encyclopedia Americana called it the "only program of social and economic reconstruction which is in technical accord with the age in which we live." H.G. Wells spoke of it as a sound method of placing economics on a purely physical basis.

Simply stated, Technocracy's three-curve chart shows that, with the installation of high-production machinery, we should be enjoying more and working less.

So why, one may ask, is the average North American working six more hours per week than in 1976? Why do we endure poverty in the midst of such potential? Why do we see record numbers of murders being committed? Why do our prisons house a greater proportion of inmates than any other nation? Why do we destroy food or leave fields unplanted as people go hungry? Why have we fouled our air and water? Why do we fritter away precious natural resources on shoddy or non-essential goods, or on the needless duplication of production in the name of "competitive enterprise"?

The answer lies in our slavish adherence to the outmoded monetary structure, or Price System. It is the Price System, and our diehard efforts to preserve it regardless of the cost to human society and our physical environment, that accounts for the vast majority of the social and environmental stress we are witnessing.

It is the adherence to this Price System, the forced shortage of supply in order to keep up prices, or value, that is the root cause of the inequity in distribution that gives rise to a great many of our social problems: crime, poverty, wars, stress-induced drug, alcohol, child and spouse abuse, bribery, political corruption -- even the dissolution of the family structure, as both parents are forced out of the home into the workplace in order to make ends meet.

It is also the Price System and its use of contrived methods to effect the consumption of tangible resources, that has led to the misuse of our technology to increasingly devastate our earth.

Howard Scott and the Technical Alliance, applying the scientific method to the social structure and by subjecting it to objective analysis, concluded that a technological administration of the physical functions of the Continent was the next most probable state of society -- the destiny of North America. To attempt to forestall or prevent such a conversion would ultimately result in social and environmental chaos.

The Technocracy organization maintains that the distribution of abundance to all is a technical not a political or financial problem. We have in North America the installed equipment, the resources, and the technological know-how to offer to every citizen the highest standard of living in the world, with a minimum of human toil.

In North America we have have reached a parting in the road; one way leads to a continuation of the increasing social ills already in progress, and the other leads to a solution, once and for all, of the social inequities which have plagued mankind for centuries. At present, this Continent, as predicted by Technocracy, is in a transitional period; and a deliberate effort is required for its citizens to move off the track leading to chaos. More study and understanding is necessary. An investigation of Technocracy's Technological Social Design is essential.