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INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE
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Introduction
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of
those of us who live in advanced countries, but they have destabilized
society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to
indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the
Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe
damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology
will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to
greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it
will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological
suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in
advanced countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break
down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical
and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and
very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently
reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered
products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the
system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way
of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving
people of dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very
painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the
results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best
break down sooner rather than later.
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system.
This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden
or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We
cant predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the
measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order
to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This
is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow
not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present
society.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative
developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological
system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore
altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments
as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion
to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which
we have something new to say. For example, since there are
well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written
very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild
nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled
society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of
our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can
serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern
society in general.
7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century
leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be
called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
mind mainly socialists, collectivists, politically correct types,
feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type,
or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by leftism
will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist
psychology. (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
clear than we would wish, but there doesnt seem to be any remedy for
this. All we are trying to do here is indicate in a rough and
approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are
the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be
telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion
is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of
the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of
the 19th and early 20th centuries.
9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
call feelings of inferiority and oversocialization. Feelings of
inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern
leftism; but this segment is highly influential.
FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
10. By feelings of inferiority we mean not only inferiority feelings in
the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low
self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
defeatism, guilt, self- hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that
these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern
leftism.
11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said
about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he
has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is
pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong
to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are
hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about
anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms negro, oriental,
handicapped or chick for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a
woman originally had no derogatory connotation. Broad and chick were
merely the feminine equivalents of guy, dude or fellow. The negative
connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists
themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject
the word pet and insist on its replacement by animal companion. Leftish
anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about
primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative.
They want to replace the world primitive by nonliterate. They seem
almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive
culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive
cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity
of leftish anthropologists.)
12. Those who are most sensitive about politically incorrect
terminology are not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant,
abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of
whom do not even belong to any oppressed group but come from privileged
strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among
university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable
salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from
middle- to upper-middle-class families.
13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of
groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American
Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists
themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit
to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because
they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their
problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE
inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)
14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong
and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may
NOT be as strong and as capable as men.
15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization,
they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists
give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their
real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike,
imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same
faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the
leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that
they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly
exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization.
Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftists real motive for
hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they
are strong and successful.
16. Words like self-confidence, self-reliance, initiative, enterprise,
optimism, etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary.
The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society
to solve everyones problems for them, satisfy everyones needs for them,
take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his
own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition
because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.
17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus
on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone,
throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing
anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to
immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.
18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative.
It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of
scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective
reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish
philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically
analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved
emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these
concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their
attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is
successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the
leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain
beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false
(i.e., failed, inferior). The leftists feelings of inferiority run so
deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as
successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This
also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental
illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to
genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such
explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to
others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an
individuals ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is inferior it is
not his fault, but societys, because he has not been brought up
properly.
19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in
himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he
can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and
his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1]
But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority
are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually
strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel
strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with
which he identifies himself.
20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists
protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke
police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be
effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist
trait.
21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the
leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of
benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For
example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black
people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a
diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative
action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take
such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems
serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people,
because the activists hostile attitude toward the white majority tends
to intensify race hatred.
22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse
for making a fuss.
23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a
rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.
OVERSOCIALIZATION
24. Psychologists use the term socialization to designate the process
by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A
person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the
moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of
that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are
oversocialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel.
Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such
rebels as they seem.
25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can
think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not
supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some
time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are
so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally
imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt,
they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and
find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a
non-moral origin. We use the term oversocialized to describe such
people. [2]
26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of
powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means
by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed
of behavior or speech that is contrary to societys expectations. If
this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to
such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the
thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more
restricted by societys expectations than are those of the lightly
socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant
amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they
break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say
spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the
other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he
does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred.
The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt,
thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he
cannot think unclean thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter
of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior
that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized
person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on
rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people
this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a
severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more
serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.
27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the
modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of
great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism.
Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members
of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3]
constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also
the most left-wing segment.
28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his
psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually
he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of
society. Generally speaking, the goals of todays leftists are NOT in
conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an
accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses
mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial
equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed
to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to
animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve
society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All
these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its
middle and upper classes [4] for a long time. These values are
explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the
material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the
educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized
type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their
hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that
society is not living up to these principles.
29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized
leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our
society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists
push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige
jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such
schools; the way of life of the black underclass they regard as a
social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system,
make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like
upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last
thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man;
instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what
does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can
hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening
to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a
black- style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself
only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of
the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white,
middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects,
become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status
ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to
make black fathers responsible, they want black gangs to become
nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the
industrial-technological system. The system couldnt care less what kind
of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a responsible parent, is
nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the
oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system
and make him adopt its values.
30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized
type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our society.
Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have gone so
far as to rebel against one of modern societys most important
principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account,
violence is for them a form of liberation. In other words, by
committing violence they break through the psychological restraints
that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized these
restraints have been more confining for them than for others; hence
their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their
rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence
they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.
31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex,
and anything like a complete description of it would take several
volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to
have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies in the
psychology of modern leftism.
32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our
society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and
defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially
noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And todays
society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous
society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how
to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.
THE POWER PROCESS
33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something
that we will call the power process. This is closely related to the
need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same
thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of
these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to
have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in
attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more
difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it
autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).
34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he
wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop
serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but
by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he
may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured
aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting
aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But
leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves
usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have
power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward
which to exercise ones power.
35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical
necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are
made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains
these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.
36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are
physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals
is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals
throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.
37, Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human
being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a
reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.
SURROGATE ACTIVITIES
38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized.
For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent
hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became
distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy
their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves.
In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same energy and
emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put into the
search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman
Empire had their literary pretensions; many European aristocrats a few
centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting, though
they certainly didnt need the meat; other aristocracies have competed
for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats,
like Hirohito, have turned to science.
39. We use the term surrogate activity to designate an activity that is
directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves
merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely
for the sake of the fulfillment that they get from pursuing the goal.
Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities.
Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal
X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy
to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to
use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way,
would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If
the answer is no, then the persons pursuit of goal X is a surrogate
activity. Hirohitos studies in marine biology clearly constituted a
surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if Hirohito had had
to spend his time working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order
to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt deprived
because he didnt know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine
animals. On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is
not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence
were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their
lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite
sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really
needs, can be a surrogate activity.)
40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to
satisfy ones physical needs. It is enough to go through a training
program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on
time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only
requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all,
simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from
cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take the
physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of
mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is
full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic
achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation,
climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods
far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional
physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues
that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of
white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These
are not always PURE surrogate activities, since for many people they
may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some goal
to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive for
prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings, militant
social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue them,
these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For example,
the majority of scientists will probably agree that the fulfillment
they get from their work is more important than the money and prestige
they earn.
41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less
satisfying than the pursuit of real goals (that is, goals that people
would want to attain even if their need for the power process were
already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many or
most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are
never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly strives
for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem
than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself
to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate
activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these
activities than they do from the mundane business of satisfying their
biological needs, but that is because in our society the effort needed
to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More
importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological
needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an immense social
machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in
pursuing their surrogate activities.
AUTONOMY
42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for
every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of
autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be
undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own
direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this
initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually
enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen people
discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint effort to
attain that goal, their need for the power process will be served. But
if they work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave them
no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then their need for the
power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are
made on a collective basis if the group making the collective decision
is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant. [5]
43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for
autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by
identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they
belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be
satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat
soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that
he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).
44. But for most people it is through the power processhaving a goal,
making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goalthat self-esteem,
self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not
have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the
consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power
process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem,
inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt,
frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism,
abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6]
SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS
45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in
modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We arent
the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This
sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason
to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration
and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is
true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse
of women was common among the Australian aborigines, transexuality was
fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does
appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have
listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive
peoples than they are in modern society.
46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern
society to the fact that that society requires people to live under
conditions radically different from those under which the human race
evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of
behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier
conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we
consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process
as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern
society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing
with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we
will discuss some of the other sources.
47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society
are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature,
excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural
small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the
tribe.
48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The
degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from
nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial
societies were predominantly rural. The Industrial Revolution vastly
increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that
lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible
for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did
before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because
it puts increased disruptive powers in peoples hands. For example, a
variety of noise- making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles,
etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace
and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted,
people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations. But if
these machines had never been invented there would have been no
conflict and no frustration generated by them.)
49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes
only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of
security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature
rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very
rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable
framework.
50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of
traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological
progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that
you cant make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy
of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the
society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down
traditional values.
51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the
breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale
social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also
promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt
individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their
communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family
ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern
society an individuals loyalty must be first to the system and only
secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal
loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the
system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the
expense of the system.
52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints
his cousin, his friend or his co- religionist to a position rather than
appointing the person best qualified for the job. He has permitted
personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is
nepotism or discrimination, both of which are terrible sins in modern
society. Would-be industrial societies that have done a poor job of
subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the system are
usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus an advanced
industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale communities that
are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the system. [7]
53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been
widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe
they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen
today.
54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their
inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to
the same extent as modern man. In America today there still are
uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban
areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas.
Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor.
55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th
century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended
families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as
these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by
choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles,
that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have
developed problems as a result.
56. Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and
deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach
of law and order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he
arrived at old age he might be working at a regular job and living in
an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper
change than that which typically occurs in the life of a modern
individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological problems.
In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and
self-confident tone, quite unlike that of todays society. [8]
57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely
justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th century
frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created
change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of
land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his own
effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of
hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity
than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a
member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered
community. One may well question whether the creation of this community
was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied the pioneers need for
the power process.
58. It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which
there has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties without
the kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in todays
industrial society. We contend that the most important cause of social
and psychological problems in modern society is the fact that people
have insufficient opportunity to go through the power process in a
normal way. We dont mean to say that modern society is the only one in
which the power process has been disrupted. Probably most if not all
civilized societies have interfered with the power process to a greater
or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society the problem has
become particularly acute. Leftism, at least in its recent (mid- to
late-20th century) form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with
respect to the power process.
DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY
59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can
be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but
only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately
satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the
process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives
there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger,
eventually defeatism, depression, etc.
60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed
into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist
increasingly of artificially created drives.
61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into
group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort.
But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to
everyone [9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical needs
are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the
effort needed to hold a job is minimal; but usually, in lower- to
middle- level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of
OBEDIENCE. You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do
what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do you
have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly any
autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not well
served.)
62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group 2
in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual. [10]
But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status,
the effort required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to
satisfy adequately the need for the power process.
63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group
2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and
marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel
they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed
of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these
artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. (But see paragraphs
80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely
through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and
marketing industry [11], and through surrogate activities.
64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial
forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears
repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of
the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many
people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called by
other names such as anomic or middle-class vacuity.) We suggest that
the so-called identity crisis is actually a search for a sense of
purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It may
be that existentialism is in large part a response to the
purposelessness of modern life. [12] Very widespread in modern society
is the search for fulfillment. But we think that for the majority of
people an activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a surrogate
activity) does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other
words, it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. (See
paragraph 41.) That need can be fully satisfied only through activities
that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love,
status, revenge, etc.
65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing
the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other
way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals
AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone elses employee and, as we
pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are
told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even people who are in
business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic
complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands
are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations
are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations
are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A
large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system.
It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of
the franchise-granting companies require applicants for franchises to
take a personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who have
creativity and initiative, because such persons are not sufficiently
docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes
from small business many of the people who most need autonomy.
66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them
or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they
do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the
system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the
opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules and regulations
[13], and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is
to be a chance of success.
67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a
deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in the pursuit of
goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall
into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter
how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for
security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have
no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the
people who make them. (We live in a world in which relatively few
peoplemaybe 500 or 1,000make the important decisionsPhilip B. Heymann
of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April
21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear
power plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is allowed
to get into our food or how much pollution into our air; on how
skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; whether we lose or get a job
may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporation
executives; and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position to
secure themselves against these threats to more [than] a very limited
extent. The individuals search for security is therefore frustrated,
which leads to a sense of powerlessness.
68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure
than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence
modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity
that is normal for human beings. But psychological security does not
closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure is
not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability
to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal
or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He
has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means
helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual on
the other hand is threatened by many things against which he is
helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental
pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large
organizations, nationwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt
his way of life.
69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the
things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the
risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is no
ones fault, unless it is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon.
But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They are not
the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other persons whose
decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence. Consequently he
feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.
70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own
hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) whereas
the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations
that are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to
influence them. So modern mans drive for security tends to fall into
groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter etc.) his security is
assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in other areas he
CANNOT attain security. (The foregoing greatly simplifies the real
situation, but it does indicate in a rough, general way how the
condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man.)
71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessarily
frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become
angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations it
does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one may be
in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one generally
has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic
signals. One may want to do ones work in a different way, but usually
one can work only according to the rules laid down by ones employer. In
many other ways as well, modern man is strapped down by a network of
rules and regulations (explicit or implicit) that frustrate many of his
impulses and thus interfere with the power process. Most of these
regulations cannot be dispensed with, because they are necessary for
the functioning of industrial society.
72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In
matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can
generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as
long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the
system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice
safe sex). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But
in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our
behavior.
73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only
by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion
or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations
other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large
organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to manipulate public
attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to commercials and
advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as
propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of
entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example
of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work
every day and follow our employers orders. Legally there is nothing to
prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from
going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little
wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited
number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as
someone elses employee.
74. We suggest that modern mans obsession with longevity, and with
maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced
age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with
respect to the power process. The mid-life crisis also is such a
symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly
common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.
75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs
and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular
reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through
the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for
fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women
the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we
wont discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed
through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the
responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people
indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking
some kind of fulfillment. We suggest that the fulfillment they need is
adequate experience of the power processwith real goals instead of the
artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully
raised his children, going through the power process by providing them
with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is
done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long)
and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the
prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount
of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition,
appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment
resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers
to any practical use, have never gone through the power process using
their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has
used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration
of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his
body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need
for the power process has been satisfied during his life who is best
prepared to accept the end of that life.
76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say,
Society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through
the power process. For such people the value of the opportunity is
destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they
need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system
GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To attain
autonomy they must get off that leash.
HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST
77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from
psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied
with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people
differ so greatly in their response to modern society.
78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the drive
for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have relatively
little need to go through the power process, or at least relatively
little need for autonomy in the power process. These are docile types
who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the Old South. (We
dont mean to sneer at the plantation darkies of the Old South. To their
credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their servitude. We do
sneer at people who ARE content with servitude.)
79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which they
satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have
an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole lives
climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that game.
80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques. Some are so susceptible that, even if they make a great
deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the the
shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes.
So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is
large, and their cravings are frustrated.
81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques. These are the people who arent interested in money.
Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.
82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for
goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in
overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.). Thus material
acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not
necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied. They may have
insufficient autonomy in the power process (their work may consist of
following orders) and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g.,
security, aggression). (We are guilty of oversimplification in
paragraphs 80- 82 because we have assumed that the desire for material
acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing
industry. Of course its not that simple. [11]
83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying
themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An individual
lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its
goals as his own, then works toward those goals. When some of the goals
are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have
played only an insignificant part in the attainment of the goals, feels
(through his identification with the movement or organization) as if he
had gone through the power process. This phenomenon was exploited by
the fascists, nazis and communists. Our society uses it too, though
less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was an irritant to the U.S.
(goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. invaded Panama (effort) and punished
Noriega (attainment of goal). Thus the U.S. went through the power
process and many Americans, because of their identification with the
U.S., experienced the power process vicariously. Hence the widespread
public approval of the Panama invasion; it gave people a sense of
power. [15] We see the same phenomenon in armies, corporations,
political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological
movements. In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who
are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people
identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not
fully satisfy the need for power.
84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power
process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs
38-40, a surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an
artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the
fulfillment that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs
to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive
for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or
acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our
society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or
stamp-collecting. Some people are more other-directed than others, and
therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity
simply because the people around them treat it as important or because
society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very
serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge,
or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more
clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate
activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough
importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that
way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a persons way of
earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate
activity, since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the
physical necessities and (for some people) social status and the
luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put into
their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and
status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate
activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional investment
that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the
continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative
consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph 131). Especially,
for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends to be
largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that it
deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a moment
(paragraphs 87-92).
85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern society
do satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or lesser
extent. But we think that for the majority of people the need for the
power process is not fully satisfied. In the first place, those who
have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly hooked on a
surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with a movement or
organization to satisfy their need for power in that way, are
exceptional personalities. Others are not fully satisfied with
surrogate activities or by identification with an organization (see
paragraphs 41, 64). In the second place, too much control is imposed by
the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which
results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in frustration due to the
impossibility of attaining certain goals and the necessity of
restraining too many impulses.
86. But even if most people in industrial-technological society were
well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of society,
because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill ones
need for the power process through surrogate activities or through
identification with an organization, rather than through pursuit of
real goals.
THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS
87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of
surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by
curiosity or by a desire to benefit humanity. But it is easy to see
that neither of these can be the principal motive of most scientists.
As for curiosity, that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on
highly specialized problems that are not the object of any normal
curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an
entomologist curious about the properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane?
Of course not. Only a chemist is curious about such a thing, and he is
curious about it only because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is
the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a new
species of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the
entomologist, and he is interested in it only because entomology is his
surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologist had to exert
themselves seriously to obtain the physical necessities, and if that
effort exercised their abilities in an interesting way but in some
nonscientific pursuit, then they wouldnt give a damn about
isopropyltrimethylmethane or the classification of beetles. Suppose
that lack of funds for postgraduate education had led the chemist to
become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case he would
have been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared
nothing about isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal
to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and
effort that scientists put into their work. The curiosity explanation
for the scientists motive just doesnt stand up.
88. The benefit of humanity explanation doesnt work any better. Some
scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human
racemost of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some
other areas of science present obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet
scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as
those who develop vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of
Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in
promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from a desire
to benefit humanity? If so, then why didnt Dr. Teller get emotional
about other humanitarian causes? If he was such a humanitarian then why
did he help to develop the H- bomb? As with many other scientific
achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear power
plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the cheap electricity
outweigh the accumulating waste and the risk of accidents? Dr. Teller
saw only one side of the question. Clearly his emotional involvement
with nuclear power arose not from a desire to benefit humanity but from
a personal fulfillment he got from his work and from seeing it put to
practical use.
89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare
exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit
humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal
(a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort (research) and to
attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate
activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get
out of the work itself.
90. Of course, its not that simple. Other motives do play a role for
many scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be
persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see
paragraph 79) and this may provide much of the motivation for their
work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the
general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and
marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods
and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is
in large part a surrogate activity.
91. Also, science and technology constitute a power mass movement, and
many scientists gratify their need for power through identification
with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).
92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare
of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the
psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials
and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.
THE NATURE OF FREEDOM
93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot
be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing
the sphere of human freedom. But, because freedom is a word that can be
interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom
we are concerned with.
94. By freedom we mean the opportunity to go through the power process,
with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and
without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone,
especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control
(either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the
life-and-death issues of ones existence; food, clothing, shelter and
defense against whatever threats there may be in ones environment.
Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but
the power to control the circumstances of ones own life. One does not
have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power
over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that
power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with
mere permissiveness (see paragraph 72).
95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain
number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as
important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a
society is determined more by the economic and technological structure
of the society than by its laws or its form of government. [16] Most of
the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the
cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in
reading about these societies one gets the impression that they allowed
far more personal freedom than our society does. In part this was
because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the rulers will:
There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid
long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of
information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was
relatively easy to evade control.
96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of
freedom of the press. We certainly dont mean to knock that right; it is
very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and
for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly
exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of
very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media
are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated
into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have something
printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but
what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put
out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make an
impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for
most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. If we had
never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a
publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been
been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted
many readers, because its more fun to watch the entertainment put out
by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had
many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they
had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which
the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public
with some chance of making a lasting impression, weve had to kill
people.
97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not
serve to guarantee much more than what might be called the bourgeois
conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a free
man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a
certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are
designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of
the individual. Thus the bourgeoiss free man has economic freedom
because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press
because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; he
has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the
powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of
Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if they used it to
promote progress (progress as conceived by the bourgeois). Other
bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere means
to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, Chinese Political Thought in the
Twentieth Century, page 202, explains the philosophy of the Kuomintang
leader Hu Han-min: An individual is granted rights because he is a
member of society and his community life requires such rights. By
community Hu meant the whole society of the nation. And on page 259 Tan
states that according to Carsum Chang (Chang Chun-mai, head of the
State Socialist Party in China) freedom had to be used in the interest
of the state and of the people as a whole. But what kind of freedom
does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes? FCs
conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other
bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have
made the development and application of social theories their surrogate
activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of
the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky
enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed.
98. One more point to be made in this section: It should not be assumed
that a person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has enough.
Freedom is restricted in part by psychological controls of which people
are unconscious, and moreover many peoples ideas of what constitutes
freedom are governed more by social convention than by their real
needs. For example, its likely that many leftists of the oversocialized
type would say that most people, including themselves, are socialized
too little rather than too much, yet the oversocialized leftist pays a
heavy psychological price for his high level of socialization.
SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY
99. Think of history as being the sum of two components: an erratic
component that consists of unpredictable events that follow no
discernible pattern, and a regular component that consists of long-term
historical trends. Here we are concerned with the long-term trends.
100. FIRST PRINCIPLE. If a SMALL change is made that affects a
long-term historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost
always be transitorythe trend will soon revert to its original state.
(Example: A reform movement designed to clean up political corruption
in a society rarely has more than a short-term effect; sooner or later
the reformers relax and corruption creeps back in. The level of
political corruption in a given society tends to remain constant, or to
change only slowly with the evolution of the society. Normally, a
political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by widespread
social changes; a SMALL change in the society wont be enough.) If a
small change in a long-term historical trend appears to be permanent,
it is only because the change acts in the direction in which the trend
is already moving, so that the trend is not altered by only pushed a
step ahead.
101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not
stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather
than following a definite direction; in other words it would not be a
long- term trend at all.
102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is sufficiently large
to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, then it will alter
the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which
all parts are interrelated, and you cant permanently change any
important part without changing all other parts as well.
103. THIRD PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is large enough to alter
permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the society as
a whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various other societies
have passed through the same change and have all experienced the same
consequences, in which case one can predict on empirical grounds that
another society that passes through the same change will be like to
experience similar consequences.)
104. FOURTH PRINCIPLE. A new kind of society cannot be designed on
paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance,
then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.
105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of
human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of
a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the
environment and vice versa, and the changes in the economy and the
environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways;
and so forth. The network of causes and effects is far too complex to
be untangled and understood.
106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose
the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of
social evolution that are not under rational human control.
107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.
108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an
attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which the
society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change
that would have occurred in any case) or else it has only a transitory
effect, so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To
make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important
aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is required.
(A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising or the
overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a revolution never
changes only one aspect of a society, it changes the whole society; and
by the third principle changes occur that were never expected or
desired by the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when
revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never
works out as planned.
109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The
American Revolution was not a revolution in our sense of the word, but
a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political
reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of
development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They
only freed the development of American society from the retarding
effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any basic
trend, but only pushed American political culture along its natural
direction of development. British society, of which American society
was an offshoot, had been moving for a long time in the direction of
representative democracy. And prior to the War of Independence the
Americans were already practicing a significant degree of
representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The political
system established by the Constitution was modeled on the British
system and on the colonial assemblies. With major alteration, to be
surethere is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very important
step. But it was a step along the road that English-speaking world was
already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies
that were populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up
with systems of representative democracy essentially similar to that of
the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and
declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our way of life today
would not have been significantly different. Maybe we would have had
somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had a Parliament and
Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President. No big deal. Thus
the American Revolution provides not a counterexample to our principles
but a good illustration of them.
110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles.
They are expressed in imprecise language that allows latitude for
interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present
these principles not as inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or
guides to thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas
about the future of society. The principles should be borne constantly
in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with them
one should carefully reexamine ones thinking and retain the conclusion
only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.
[clearspc.gif] INDUSTRIAL-TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY CANNOT BE REFORMED
111. The foregoing principles help to show how hopelessly difficult it
would be to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent it
from progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom. There has been a
consistent tendency, going back at least to the Industrial Revolution
for technology to strengthen the system at a high cost in individual
freedom and local autonomy. Hence any change designed to protect
freedom from technology would be contrary to a fundamental trend in the
development of our society. Consequently, such a change either would be
a transitory onesoon swamped by the tide of historyor, if large enough
to be permanent would alter the nature of our whole society. This by
the first and second principles. Moreover, since society would be
altered in a way that could not be predicted in advance (third
principle) there would be great risk. Changes large enough to make a
lasting difference in favor of freedom would not be initiated because
it would be realized that they would gravely disrupt the system. So any
attempts at reform would be too timid to be effective. Even if changes
large enough to make a lasting difference were initiated, they would be
retracted when their disruptive effects became apparent. Thus,
permanent changes in favor of freedom could be brought about only by
persons prepared to accept radical, dangerous and unpredictable
alteration of the entire system. In other words by revolutionaries, not
reformers.
112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacrificing the supposed
benefits of technology will suggest naive schemes for some new form of
society that would reconcile freedom with technology. Apart from the
fact that people who make such suggestions seldom propose any practical
means by which the new form of society could be set up in the first
place, it follows from the fourth principle that even if the new form
of society could be once established, it either would collapse or would
give results very different from those expected.
113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly improbable that
any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile freedom
with modern technology. In the next few sections we will give more
specific reasons for concluding that freedom and technological progress
are incompatible.
RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
114. As explained in paragraphs 65-67, 70-73, modern man is strapped
down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the
actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence.
This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of arrogant
bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any technologically
advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in
order to function. At work people have to do what they are told to do,
otherwise production would be thrown into chaos. Bureaucracies HAVE TO
be run according to rigid rules. To allow any substantial personal
discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would disrupt the system and lead
to charges of unfairness due to differences in the way individual
bureaucrats exercised their discretion. It is true that some
restrictions on our freedom could be eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING
the regulation of our lives by large organizations is necessary for the
functioning of industrial-technological society. The result is a sense
of powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however,
that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by
psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires of
us. (Propaganda [14], educational techniques, mental health programs,
etc.)
115. The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are
increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For
example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It
cant function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to
excel in these fields. It isnt natural for an adolescent human being to
spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A
normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the
real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are
trained to do tend to be in reasonable harmony with natural human
impulses. Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in
active outdoor pursuits
just the sort of thing that boys like. But in our society children are
pushed into studying technical subjects, which most do grudgingly.
116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify
human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who
cannot or will not adjust to societys requirements: welfare leeches,
youth-gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical
environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.
117. In any technologically advanced society the individuals fate MUST
depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great
extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small,
autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation
of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be
highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large
numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then
each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a
one-millionth share in making the decision. What usually happens in
practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation
executives, or by technical specialists, but even when the public votes
on a decision the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote
of any one individual to be significant. [17] Thus most individuals are
unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their
lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically
advanced society. The system tries to solve this problem by using
propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for
them, but even if this solution were completely successful in making
people feel better, it would be demeaning.
118. Conservatives and some others advocate more local autonomy. Local
communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and
less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and
dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer
networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern
health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that
technology applied in one location often affects people at other
locations far way. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may
contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the
greenhouse effect affects the whole world.
119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs.
Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs
of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social
ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the
fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but
by technical necessity. [18] Of course the system does satisfy many
human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extend
that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of
the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For
example, the system provides people with food because the system
couldnt function if everyone starved; it attends to peoples
psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it
couldnt function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But
the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant
pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system.
To much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational
system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of
propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of
voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is
inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying
subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job
by technical advances and have to undergo retraining, no one asks
whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It
is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical
necessity. and for good reason: If human needs were put before
technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment,
shortages or worse. The concept of mental health in our society is
defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord
with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of
stress.
120. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and for autonomy
within the system are no better than a joke. For example, one company,
instead of having each of its employees assemble only one section of a
catalogue, had each assemble a whole catalogue, and this was supposed
to give them a sense of purpose and achievement. Some companies have
tried to give their employees more autonomy in their work, but for
practical reasons this usually can be done only to a very limited
extent, and in any case employees are never given autonomy as to
ultimate goalstheir autonomous efforts can never be directed toward
goals that they select personally, but only toward their employers
goals, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any company
would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to act
otherwise. Similarly, in any enterprise within a socialist system,
workers must direct their efforts toward the goals of the enterprise,
otherwise the enterprise will not serve its purpose as part of the
system. Once again, for purely technical reasons it is not possible for
most individuals or small groups to have much autonomy in industrial
society. Even the small-business owner commonly has only limited
autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government regulation, he is
restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic system and
conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a new
technology, the small-business person often has to use that technology
whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive.
THE BAD PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE GOOD PARTS
121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in
favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which
all parts are dependent on one another. You cant get rid of the bad
parts of technology and retain only the good parts. Take modern
medicine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on progress
in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields.
Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech equipment that
can be made available only by a technologically progressive,
economically rich society. Clearly you cant have much progress in
medicine without the whole technological system and everything that
goes with it.
122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of
the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils.
Suppose for example that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People with
a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and
reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for
diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the
population. (This may be occurring to some extent already, since
diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through use of insulin.)
The same thing will happen with many other diseases susceptibility to
which is affected by genetic degradation of the population. The only
solution will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive genetic
engineering of human beings, so that man in the future will no longer
be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your
religious or philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.
123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much
NOW, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic
constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow
the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the
consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.
[19]
124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about medical
ethics. But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in the
face of medical progress; it would only make matters worse. A code of
ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means of
regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody (probably
the upper-middle class, mostly) would decide that such and such
applications of genetic engineering were ethical and others were not,
so that in effect they would be imposing their own values on the
genetic constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of
ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority would
be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a
different idea of what constituted an ethical use of genetic
engineering. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom
would be one that prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human beings,
and you can be sure that no such code will ever be applied in a
technological society. No code that reduced genetic engineering to a
minor role could stand up for long, because the temptation presented by
the immense power of biotechnology would be irresistible, especially
since to the majority of people many of its applications will seem
obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating physical and mental
diseases, giving people the abilities they need to get along in todays
world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used extensively, but
only in ways consistent with the needs of the industrial- technological
system. [20]
TECHNOLOGY IS A MORE POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCE THAN THE ASPIRATION FOR
FREEDOM
125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology
and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social
force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED
compromises. Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the
outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful
than the other. The powerful one demands a piece of the others land.
The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, OK, lets compromise. Give
me half of what I asked. The weak one has little choice but to give in.
Some time later the powerful neighbor demands another piece of land,
again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a long series of
compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually gets all of
his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology and freedom.
126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force than
the aspiration for freedom.
127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often
turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider
motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased,
go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was
independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were
introduced they appeared to increase mans freedom. They took no freedom
away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didnt
want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel
much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of
motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict
greatly mans freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous,
it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car,
especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one
likes at ones own pace ones movement is governed by the flow of traffic
and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations:
license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance,
maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price.
Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since
the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities
has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live
within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas
and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the
automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public
transportation, in which case they have even less control over their
own movement than when driving a car. Even the walkers freedom is now
greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for
traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the
country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along
the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated
with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is
introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he
chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new
technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find
themselves FORCED to use it.)
128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our
sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF
appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid
long-distance communications ... how could one argue against any of
these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical
advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to
resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many
advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs
59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created a world
in which the average mans fate is no longer in his own hands or in the
hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians,
corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and
bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence. [21]
The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering,
for example. Few people will resist the introduction of a genetic
technique that eliminates a hereditary disease. It does no apparent
harm and prevents much suffering. Yet a large number of genetic
improvements taken together will make the human being into an
engineered product rather than a free creation of chance (or of God, or
whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).
129. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is
that, within the context of a given society, technological progress
marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a
technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become
dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it
is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people
become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even
more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what
would happen to the system today if computers, for example, were
eliminated.) Thus the system can move in only one direction, toward
greater technologization. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take
a step back, but technology can never take a step backshort of the
overthrow of the whole technological system.
130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at
many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and
regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large
organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic
engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and
computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would
require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect
freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the
rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no
longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile.
Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a
whole; but that is revolution, not reform.
131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to describe all
those who perform a specialized task that requires training) tend to be
so involved in their work (their surrogate activity) that when a
conflict arises between their technical work and freedom, they almost
always decide in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the
case of scientists, but it also appears elsewhere: Educators,
humanitarian groups, conservation organizations do not hesitate to use
propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve their
laudable ends. Corporations and government agencies, when they find it
useful, do not hesitate to collect information about individuals
without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement agencies are
frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and
often of completely innocent persons, and they do whatever they can do
legally (or sometimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent those
rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers
believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, but when these
conflict with their work, they usually feel that their work is more
important.
132. It is well known that people generally work better and more
persistently when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid a
punishment or negative outcome. Scientists and other technicians are
motivated mainly by the rewards they get through their work. But those
who oppose technological invasions of freedom are working to avoid a
negative outcome, consequently there are few who work persistently and
well at this discouraging task. If reformers ever achieved a signal
victory that seemed to set up a solid barrier against further erosion
of freedom through technical progress, most would tend to relax and
turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits. But the scientists
would remain busy in their laboratories, and technology as it
progresses would find ways, in spite of any barriers, to exert more and
more control over individuals and make them always more dependent on
the system.
133. No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or
ethical codes, can provide permanent protection against technology.
History shows that all social arrangements are transitory; they all
change or break down eventually. But technological advances are
permanent within the context of a given civilization. Suppose for
example that it were possible to arrive at some social arrangements
that would prevent genetic engineering from being applied to human
beings, or prevent it from being applied in such a way as to threaten
freedom and dignity. Still, the technology would remain waiting. Sooner
or later the social arrangement would break down. Probably sooner,
given the pace of change in our society. Then genetic engineering would
begin to invade our sphere of freedom, and this invasion would be
irreversible (short of a breakdown of technological civilization
itself). Any illusions about achieving anything permanent through
social arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently happening
with environmental legislation. A few years ago its seemed that there
were secure legal barriers preventing at least SOME of the worst forms
of environmental degradation. A change in the political wind, and those
barriers begin to crumble.
134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful
social force than the aspiration for freedom. But this statement
requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next
several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing
severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and
especially due to problems of human behavior (alienation, rebellion,
hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We hope
that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will cause
it to break down, or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a
revolution against it becomes possible. If such a revolution occurs and
is successful, then at that particular moment the aspiration for
freedom will have proved more powerful than technology.
135. In paragraph 125 we used an analogy of a weak neighbor who is left
destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land by forcing on him
a series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor gets
sick, so that he is unable to defend himself. The weak neighbor can
force the strong one to give him his land back, or he can kill him. If
he lets the strong man survive and only forces him to give the land
back, he is a fool, because when the strong man gets well he will again
take all the land for himself. The only sensible alternative for the
weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance. In the
same way, while the industrial system is sick we must destroy it. If we
compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will
eventually wipe out all of our freedom.
SIMPLER SOCIAL PROBLEMS HAVE PROVED INTRACTABLE
136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the
system in such a way as to protect freedom from technology, let him
consider how clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully our society
has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and
straightforward. Among other things, the system has failed to stop
environmental degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking or
domestic abuse.
137. Take our environmental problems, for example. Here the conflict of
values is straightforward: economic expedience now versus saving some
of our natural resources for our grandchildren. [22] But on this
subject we get only a lot of blather and obfuscation from the people
who have power, and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action,
and we keep on piling up environmental problems that our grandchildren
will have to live with. Attempts to resolve the environmental issue
consist of struggles and compromises between different factions, some
of which are ascendant at one moment, others at another moment. The
line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion.
This is not a rational process, nor is it one that is likely to lead to
a timely and successful solution to the problem. Major social problems,
if they get solved at all, are rarely or never solved through any
rational, comprehensive plan. They just work themselves out through a
process in which various competing groups pursuing their own (usually
short- term) self-interest [23] arrive (mainly by luck) at some more or
less stable modus vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated in
paragraphs 100-106 make it seem doubtful that rational, long-term
social planning can EVER be successful.
138. Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited
capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social problems.
How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem
of reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut
material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means
different things to different people, and its loss is easily obscured
by propaganda and fancy talk.
139. And note this important difference: It is conceivable that our
environmental problems (for example) may some day be settled through a
rational, comprehensive plan, but if this happens it will be only
because it is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these
problems. But it is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve
freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest
of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest
possible extent. [24] Thus, while practical considerations may
eventually force the system to take a rational, prudent approach to
environmental problems, equally practical considerations will force the
system to regulate human behavior ever more closely (preferably by
indirect means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom). This
isnt just our opinion. Eminent social scientists (e.g. James Q. Wilson)
have stressed the importance of socializing people more effectively.
REVOLUTION IS EASIER THAN REFORM
140. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be
reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The
only way out is to dispense with the industrial-technological system
altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising,
but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of
society.
141. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much
greater change than reform does, it is more difficult to bring about
than reform is. Actually, under certain circumstances revolution is
much easier than reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement
can inspire an intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot
inspire. A reform movement merely offers to solve a particular social
problem. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one
stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for
which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this
reasons it would be much easier to overthrow the whole technological
system than to put effective, permanent restraints on the development
or application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic
engineering, for example. Not many people will devote themselves with
single-minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on genetic
engineering, but under suitable conditions large numbers of people may
devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the
industrial-technological system. As we noted in paragraph 132,
reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of technology would be
working to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain a
powerful rewardfulfillment of their revolutionary visionand therefore
work harder and more persistently than reformers do.
142. Reform is always restrained by the fear of painful consequences if
changes go too far. But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a
society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake
of their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian
Revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority of the
population is really committed to the revolution, but this minority is
sufficiently large and active so that it becomes the dominant force in
society. We will have more to say about revolution in paragraphs
180-205.
CONTROL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had
to put pressures on human beings of the sake of the functioning of the
social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society
to another. Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive
labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise,
crowding, forcing human behavior into the mold that society requires).
In the past, human nature has been approximately constant, or at any
rate has varied only within certain bounds. Consequently, societies
have been able to push people only up to certain limits. When the limit
of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong:
rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or depression
and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a declining
birth rate or something else, so that either the society breaks down,
or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is (quickly or
gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution) replaced by some
more efficient form of society. [25]
144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the
development of societies. People could be pushed only so far and no
farther. But today this may be changing, because modern technology is
developing ways of modifying human beings.
145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make
them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their
unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in
our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression
has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is
due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs
59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is
certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in todays society.
Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern
society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are
a means of modifying an individuals internal state in such a way as to
enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find
intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic
origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays
the predominant role.)
146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the new methods
of controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us
look at some of the other methods.
147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden
video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places,
computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information
about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the
effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). [26] Then
there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication
media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been
developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public
opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important
psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out
large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man
with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television,
videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration,
dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they dont have work to
do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all,
because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most
modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise
they get bored, i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.
148. Other techniques strike deeper than the foregoing. Education is no
longer a simple affair of paddling a kids behind when he doesnt know
his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is
becoming a scientific technique for controlling the childs development.
Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in
motivating children to study, and psychological techniques are also
used with more or less success in many conventional schools. Parenting
techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children
accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the
system finds desirable. Mental health programs, intervention
techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are ostensibly designed to
benefit individuals, but in practice they usually serve as methods for
inducing individuals to think and behave as the system requires. (There
is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or behavior
bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that is
too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to
suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier
if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the
system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes
him into conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is
disapproved in most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a
trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost
everyone. But many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much
more broadly. Is spanking, when used as part of a rational and
consistent system of discipline, a form of abuse? The question will
ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce
behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of
society. In practice, the word abuse tends to be interpreted to include
any method of child-rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the
system. Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious, senseless
cruelty, programs for preventing child abuse are directed toward the
control of human behavior on behalf of the system.
149. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness
of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we
think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be
sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that
technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be
used. We have already mentioned the use of drugs in this connection.
Neurology may provide other avenues for modifying the human mind.
Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur in
the form of gene therapy, and there is no reason to assume that such
methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the body
that affect mental functioning.
150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely
to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of
human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And
a considerable proportion of the systems economic and environmental
problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low
self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who wont study,
youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe
sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race
hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (e.g., pro-choice
vs. pro- life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage,
anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very
survival of the system. The system will therefore be FORCED to use
every practical means of controlling human behavior.
151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the
result of mere chance. It can only be a result of the conditions of
life that the system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most
important of these conditions is disruption of the power process.) If
the systems succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior
to assure its own survival, a new watershed in human history will have
been passed. Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have
imposed limits on the development of societies (as we explained in
paragraphs 143, 144), industrial-technological society will be able to
pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological
methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems
will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human
being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system. [27]
152. Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will
probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even
through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom. [28] Each new
step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a
rational response to a problem that faces society, such as curing
alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study
science and engineering. In many cases there will be a humanitarian
justification. For example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an
anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly doing that
individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold the drug from
someone who needs it. When parents send their children to Sylvan
Learning Centers to have them manipulated into becoming enthusiastic
about their studies, they do so from concern for their childrens
welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one didnt have
to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid didnt have
to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can they do?
They cant change society, and their child may be unemployable if he
doesnt have certain skills. So they send him to Sylvan.
153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a
calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social
evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible to
resist, because each advance, considered by itself, will appear to be
beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will
appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the
advance will seem to be less than that which would result from not
making it (see paragraph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many
good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. [14]
Sex education is obviously useful, yet the effect of sex education (to
the extent that it is successful) is to take the shaping of sexual
attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands of the state
as represented by the public school system.
154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the
likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal, and suppose some
sort of gene therapy can remove this trait. [29] Of course most parents
whose children possess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It
would be inhumane to do otherwise, since the child would probably have
a miserable life if he grew up to be a criminal. But many or most
primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with that of
our society, even though they have neither high- tech methods of
child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment. Since there is no reason
to suppose that more modern men than primitive men have innate
predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must be due to
the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which many
cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove
potential criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of
re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of the system.
155. Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or
behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible
because when an individual doesnt fit into the system it causes pain to
the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the
manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a
cure for a sickness and therefore as good.
156. In paragraph 127 we pointed out that if the use of a new item of
technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN
optional, because the new technology tends to change society in such a
way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to
function without using that technology. This applies also to the
technology of human behavior. In a world in which most children are put
through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent
will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if
he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking,
an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or suppose a biological
treatment is discovered that, without undesirable side-effects, will
greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people
suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to undergo the
treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced,
so that it will be possible for the system to increase the
stress-producing pressures. In fact, something like this seems to have
happened already with one of our societys most important psychological
tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape
from) stress, namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use
of mass entertainment is optional: No law requires us to watch
television, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment
is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have
become dependent. Everyone complains about the trashiness of
television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have kicked the TV
habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without
using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until quite recently in
human history most people got along very nicely with no other
entertainment than that which each local community created for itself.)
Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not have
been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure on
us as it does.
157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that
technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete
control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any
rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely
biological basis. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as
hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by electrical
stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can be
destroyed by damaging parts of the brain or they can be brought to the
surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced or
moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human
soul, but if there is one it clearly is less powerful that the
biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case
then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate human
feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.
158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have
electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by
the authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so
open to biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling
human behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons,
hormones and complex molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible
to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in
solving technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great
advances will be made in the control of human behavior.
159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological
control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made
to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control
will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there
will be no rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs
127, 132, 153.)
160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we
point out that yesterdays science fiction is todays fact. The
Industrial Revolution has radically altered mans environment and way of
life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly
applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as
radically as his environment and way of life have been.
HUMAN RACE AT A CROSSROADS
161. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one thing to develop
in the laboratory a series of psychological or biological techniques
for manipulating human behavior and quite another to integrate these
techniques into a functioning social system. The latter problem is the
more difficult of the two. For example, while the techniques of
educational psychology doubtless work quite well in the lab schools
where they are developed, it is not necessarily easy to apply them
effectively throughout our educational system. We all know what many of
our schools are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and guns
away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques for making
them into computer nerds. Thus, in spite of all its technical advances
relating to human behavior, the system to date has not been
impressively successful in controlling human beings. The people whose
behavior is fairly well under the control of the system are those of
the type that might be called bourgeois. But there are growing numbers
of people who in one way or another are rebels against the system:
welfare leaches, youth gangs, cultists, satanists, nazis, radical
environmentalists, militiamen, etc.
162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to
overcome certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the
problems of human behavior are the most important. If the system
succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over human behavior quickly
enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down. We
think the issue will most likely be resolved within the next several
decades, say 40 to 100 years.
163. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several
decades. By that time it will have to have solved, or at least brought
under control, the principal problems that confront it, in particular
that of socializing human beings; that is, making people sufficiently
docile so that heir behavior no longer threatens the system. That being
accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further
obstacle to the development of technology, and it would presumably
advance toward its logical conclusion, which is complete control over
everything on Earth, including human beings and all other important
organisms. The system may become a unitary, monolithic organization, or
it may be more or less fragmented and consist of a number of
organizations coexisting in a relationship that includes elements of
both cooperation and competition, just as today the government, the
corporations and other large organizations both cooperate and compete
with one another. Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because
individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large
organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced
psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings,
besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small
number of people will have any real power, and even these probably will
have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too will be
regulated; just as today our politicians and corporation executives can
retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains
within certain fairly narrow limits.
164. Dont imagine that the systems will stop developing further
techniques for controlling human beings and nature once the crisis of
the next few decades is over and increasing control is no longer
necessary for the systems survival. On the contrary, once the hard
times are over the system will increase its control over people and
nature more rapidly, because it will no longer be hampered by
difficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing. Survival is
not the principal motive for extending control. As we explained in
paragraphs 87-90, technicians and scientists carry on their work
largely as a surrogate activity; that is, they satisfy their need for
power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this with
unabated enthusiasm, and among the most interesting and challenging
problems for them to solve will be those of understanding the human
body and mind and intervening in their development. For the good of
humanity, of course.
165. But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming
decades prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down
there may be a period of chaos, a time of troubles such as those that
history has recorded at various epochs in the past. It is impossible to
predict what would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate
the human race would be given a new chance. The greatest danger is that
industrial society may begin to reconstitute itself within the first
few years after the breakdown. Certainly there will be many people
(power-hungry types especially) who will be anxious to get the
factories running again.
166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which
the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work
to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the
likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that
a revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to
develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the
industrial society if and when the system becomes sufficiently
weakened. And such an ideology will help to assure that, if and when
industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be smashed beyond
repair, so that the system cannot be reconstituted. The factories
should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc.
[clearspc.gif] HUMAN SUFFERING
167. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of
revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack
unless its own internal problems of development lead it into very
serious difficulties. So if the system breaks down it will do so either
spontaneously, or through a process that is in part spontaneous but
helped along by revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many
people will die, since the worlds population has become so overblown
that it cannot even feed itself any longer without advanced technology.
Even if the breakdown is gradual enough so that reduction of the
population can occur more through lowering of the birth rate than
through elevation of the death rate, the process of de-
industrialization probably will be very chaotic and involve much
suffering. It is naive to think it likely that technology can be phased
out in a smoothly managed, orderly way, especially since the
technophiles will fight stubbornly at every step. Is it therefore cruel
to work for the breakdown of the system? Maybe, but maybe not. In the
first place, revolutionaries will not be able to break the system down
unless it is already in enough trouble so that there would be a good
chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyway; and the bigger
the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of its breakdown
will be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of
the breakdown, will be reducing the extent of the disaster.
168. In the second place, one has to balance struggle and death against
the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom and dignity are
more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain. Besides,
we all have to die some time, and it may be better to die fighting for
survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless
life.
169. In the third place, it is not at all certain that survival of the
system will lead to less suffering than breakdown of the system would.
The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause, immense
suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of
years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with
their environment, have been shattered by contact with industrial
society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of economic,
environmental, social and psychological problems. One of the effects of
the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much of the
world traditional controls on population have been thrown out of
balance. Hence the population explosion, with all that that implies.
Then there is the psychological suffering that is widespread throughout
the supposedly fortunate countries of the West (see paragraphs 44, 45).
No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the
greenhouse effect and other environmental problems that cannot yet be
foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology
cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible Third
World nations. Would you like to speculate about what Iraq or North
Korea will do with genetic engineering?
170. Oh! say the technophiles, Science is going to fix all that! We
will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody
healthy and happy! Yeah, sure. Thats what they said 200 years ago. The
Industrial Revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make everybody
happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The
technophiles are hopelessly naive (or self-deceiving) in their
understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to
ignore) the fact that when large changes, even seemingly beneficial
ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of
other changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph 103).
The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable that in
their attempts to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy
personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems
that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present once. For
example, the scientists boast that they will end famine by creating
new, genetically engineered food plants. But this will allow the human
population to keep expanding indefinitely, and it is well known that
crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is merely one
example of the PREDICTABLE problems that will arise. We emphasize that,
as past experience has shown, technical progress will lead to other new
problems that CANNOT be predicted in advance (paragraph 103). In fact,
ever since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been creating new
problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old
ones. Thus it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error
for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New World (if
they every do). In the meantime there will be great suffering. So it is
not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve
less suffering than the breakdown of that society would. Technology has
gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be
any easy escape.
THE FUTURE
171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next
several decades and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the
system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be?
We will consider several possibilities.
172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in
developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than
human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done
by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will
be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be
permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight,
or else human control over the machines might be retained.
173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we
cant make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible
to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the
fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might
be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand
over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the
human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that
the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that
the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of
such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice
but to accept all of the machines decisions. As society and the
problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines
become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more
and more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made
decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a
stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the
system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable
of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in
effective control. People wont be able to just turn the machines off,
because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would
amount to suicide.
174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the
machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control
over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his
personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be
in the hands of a tiny elitejust as it is today, but with two
differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater
control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be
necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the
system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate
the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or
other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate
until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the
elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft- hearted liberals, they may
decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human
race. They will see to it that everyones physical needs are satisfied,
that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions,
that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone
who may become dissatisfied undergoes treatment to cure his problem. Of
course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be
biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need
for the power process or to make them sublimate their drive for power
into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in
such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will
have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in
developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains
necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the
simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human
workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already.
There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work,
because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire
the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the
present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands
will be placed: They will need more and more training, more and more
ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile,
because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism.
Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so that their work will
be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on
one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that
it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be
docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to sublimate
their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement
that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require
qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided
that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that
serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which
there is endless competition for positions of prestige and power. But
no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only
real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society
in which a person can satisfy his need for power only by pushing large
numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR
opportunity for power.
176. One can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than
one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it
may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real,
practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being
given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example,
that a great development of the service industries might provide work
for human beings. Thus people would spent their time shining each
others shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts
for one another, waiting on each others tables, etc. This seems to us a
thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt
that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless
busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, crime,
cults, hate groups) unless they were biologically or psychologically
engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.
177. Needless to say, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all
the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem
to us most likely. But we can envision no plausible scenarios that are
any more palatable than the ones weve just described. It is
overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial- technological system
survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed
certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the
bourgeois type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and
who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on
large organizations; they will be more socialized than ever and their
physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a
very great extent) will be those that are engineered into them rather
than being the results of chance (or of Gods will, or whatever); and
whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants
preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and
management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In
the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is likely that neither
the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know
them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic
engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that
the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms
have been utterly transformed.
178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is
creating for human beings a new physical and social environment
radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural
selection has adapted the human race physically and psychologically. If
man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially
re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful
process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the
latter.
179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the
consequences.
STRATEGY
180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride
into the unknown. Many people understand something of what
technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude
toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) dont think
it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here
some indications of how to go about stopping it.
181. As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present
are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and
to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the
industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and
unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern
would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French
society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their
respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness.
Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world
view that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case,
revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then,
when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by
financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept
away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines.
182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were
failures. But most revolutions have two goals. One is to destroy an old
form of society and the other is to set up the new form of society
envisioned by the revolutionaries. The French and Russian
revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of society
of which they dreamed, but they were quite successful in destroying the
old society. We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a
new, ideal form of society. Our goal is only to destroy the existing
form of society.
183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have
a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as
well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is
Nature. That is, WILD nature: those aspects of the functioning of the
Earth and its living things that are independent of human management
and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we
include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning
of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized
society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on
your religious or philosophical opinions).
184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several
reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the
opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of
the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly
it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists ALREADY
hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. [30] It is
not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia
or any new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a
spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and
for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies
coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of damage.
Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on
nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it
is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only
necessary to get rid of industrial society. Granted, this will not
solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous
damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to
heal. Besides, even pre-industrial societies can do significant damage
to nature. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will
accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on
nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity
of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature
(including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the
demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will
live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology
there is no other way that people CAN live. To feed themselves they
must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunters, etc. And,
generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase, because
lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the
capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local
communities.
185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial
societywell, you cant eat your cake and have it too. To gain one thing
you have to sacrifice another.
186. Most people hate psychological conflict. For this reason they
avoid doing any serious thinking about difficult social issues, and
they like to have such issues presented to them in simple,
black-and-white terms: THIS is all good and THAT is all bad. The
revolutionary ideology should therefore be developed on two levels.
187. On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address itself
to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The object
should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the
industrial system on a rational, thought-out basis, with full
appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved, and of the price
that has to be paid for getting rid of the system. It is particularly
important to attract people of this type, as they are capable people
and will be instrumental in influencing others. These people should be
addressed on as rational a level as possible. Facts should never
intentionally be distorted and intemperate language should be avoided.
This does not mean that no appeal can be made to the emotions, but in
making such appeal care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the
truth or doing anything else that would destroy the intellectual
respectability of the ideology.
188. On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a
simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the
conflict of technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. But even on
this second level the ideology should not be expressed in language that
is so cheap, intemperate or irrational that it alienates people of the
thoughtful and rational type. Cheap, intemperate propaganda sometimes
achieves impressive short-term gains, but it will be more advantageous
in the long run to keep the loyalty of a small number of intelligently
committed people than to arouse the passions of an unthinking, fickle
mob who will change their attitude as soon as someone comes along with
a better propaganda gimmick. However, propaganda of the rabble-rousing
type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of collapse
and there is a final struggle between rival ideologies to determine
which will become dominant when the old world-view goes under.
189. Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not
expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by
active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a
clear and consistent idea of what it really wants. Until the time comes
for the final push toward revolution [31], the task of revolutionaries
will be less to win the shallow support of the majority than to build a
small core of deeply committed people. As for the majority, it will be
enough to make them aware of the existence of the new ideology and
remind them of it frequently; though of course it will be desirable to
get majority support to the extent that this can be done without
weakening the core of seriously committed people.
190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but
one should be careful about what kind of conflict one encourages. The
line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the
power-holding elite of industrial society (politicians, scientists,
upper-level business executives, government officials, etc.). It should
NOT be drawn between the revolutionaries and the mass of the people.
For example, it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to
condemn Americans for their habits of consumption. Instead, the average
American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and
marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk
that he doesnt need and that is very poor compensation for his lost
freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a
matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising industry for
manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing itself to be
manipulated. As a matter of strategy one should generally avoid blaming
the public.
191. One should think twice before encouraging any other social
conflict than that between the power- holding elite (which wields
technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its
power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract attention from
the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people,
between technology and nature); for another thing, other conflicts may
actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such
a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over its
adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also
appears in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in America
many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African Americans by
placing back individuals in the technological power-elite. They want
there to be many black government officials, scientists, corporation
executives and so forth. In this way they are helping to absorb the
African American subculture into the technological system. Generally
speaking, one should encourage only those social conflicts that can be
fitted into the framework of the conflicts of power-elite vs. ordinary
people, technology vs nature.
192. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT through militant
advocacy of minority rights (see paragraphs 21, 29). Instead, the
revolutionaries should emphasize that although minorities do suffer
more or less disadvantage, this disadvantage is of peripheral
significance. Our real enemy is the industrial- technological system,
and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no
importance.
193. The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily
involve an armed uprising against any government. It may or may not
involve physical violence, but it will not be a POLITICAL revolution.
Its focus will be on technology and economics, not politics. [32]
194. Probably the revolutionaries should even AVOID assuming political
power, whether by legal or illegal means, until the industrial system
is stressed to the danger point and has proved itself to be a failure
in the eyes of most people. Suppose for example that some green party
should win control of the United States Congress in an election. In
order to avoid betraying or watering down their own ideology they would
have to take vigorous measures to turn economic growth into economic
shrinkage. To the average man the results would appear disastrous:
There would be massive unemployment, shortages of commodities, etc.
Even if the grosser ill effects could be avoided through superhumanly
skillful management, still people would have to begin giving up the
luxuries to which they have become addicted. Dissatisfaction would
grow, the green party would be voted out of office and the
revolutionaries would have suffered a severe setback. For this reason
the revolutionaries should not try to acquire political power until the
system has gotten itself into such a mess that any hardships will be
seen as resulting from the failures of the industrial system itself and
not from the policies of the revolutionaries. The revolution against
technology will probably have to be a revolution by outsiders, a
revolution from below and not from above.
195. The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be
carried out on a nation-by-nation basis. Whenever it is suggested that
the United States, for example, should cut back on technological
progress or economic growth, people get hysterical and start screaming
that if we fall behind in technology the Japanese will get ahead of us.
Holy robots! The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell
more cars than we do! (Nationalism is a great promoter of technology.)
More reasonably, it is argued that if the relatively democratic nations
of the world fall behind in technology while nasty, dictatorial nations
like China, Vietnam and North Korea continue to progress, eventually
the dictators may come to dominate the world. That is why the
industrial system should be attacked in all nations simultaneously, to
the extent that this may be possible. True, there is no assurance that
the industrial system can be destroyed at approximately the same time
all over the world, and it is even conceivable that the attempt to
overthrow the system could lead instead to the domination of the system
by dictators. That is a risk that has to be taken. And it is worth
taking, since the difference between a democratic industrial system and
one controlled by dictators is small compared with the difference
between an industrial system and a non-industrial one. [33] It might
even be argued that an industrial system controlled by dictators would
be preferable, because dictator-controlled systems usually have proved
inefficient, hence they are presumably more likely to break down. Look
at Cuba.
196. Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind
the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like
NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the short
run, but in the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they
foster economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to
destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy
is so unified that its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to
its breakdown in all industrialized nations.
197. Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too
much control over nature; they argue for a more passive attitude on the
part of the human race. At best these people are expressing themselves
unclearly, because they fail to distinguish between power for LARGE
ORGANIZATIONS and power for INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. It is a
mistake to argue for powerlessness and passivity, because people NEED
power. Modern man as a collective entitythat is, the industrial
systemhas immense power over nature, and we (FC) regard this as evil.
But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far less
power than primitive man ever did. Generally speaking, the vast power
of modern man over nature is exercised not by individuals or small
groups but by large organizations. To the extent that the average
modern INDIVIDUAL can wield the power of technology, he is permitted to
do so only within narrow limits and only under the supervision and
control of the system. (You need a license for everything and with the
license come rules and regulations.) The individual has only those
technological powers with which the system chooses to provide him. His
PERSONAL power over nature is slight.
198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable
power over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN
nature. When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare
edible roots, how to track game and take it with homemade weapons. He
knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals,
etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because
the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to
the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society.
199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should
argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and
that this will greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS
and SMALL GROUPS.
200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the
destruction of that system must be the revolutionaries ONLY goal. Other
goals would distract attention and energy from the main goal. More
importantly, if the revolutionaries permit themselves to have any other
goal than the destruction of technology, they will be tempted to use
technology as a tool for reaching that other goal. If they give in to
that temptation, they will fall right back into the technological trap,
because modern technology is a unified, tightly organized system, so
that, in order to retain SOME technology, one finds oneself obliged to
retain MOST technology, hence one ends up sacrificing only token
amounts of technology.
201. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took social justice
as a goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice would not come
about spontaneously; it would have to be enforced. In order to enforce
it the revolutionaries would have to retain central organization and
control. For that they would need rapid long-distance transportation
and communication, and therefore all the technology needed to support
the transportation and communication systems. To feed and clothe poor
people they would have to use agricultural and manufacturing
technology. And so forth. So that the attempt to insure social justice
would force them to retain most parts of the technological system. Not
that we have anything against social justice, but it must not be
allowed to interfere with the effort to get rid of the technological
system.
202. It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the
system without using SOME modern technology. If nothing else they must
use the communications media to spread their message. But they should
use modern technology for only ONE purpose: to attack the technological
system.
203. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of
him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, Wine isnt bad for you if used
in moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine are even good for
you! It wont do me any harm if I take just one little drink.... Well
you know what is going to happen. Never forget that the human race with
technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.
204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as they can. There is
strong scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a significant
extent inherited. No one suggests that a social attitude is a direct
outcome of a persons genetic constitution, but it appears that
personality traits are partly inherited and that certain personality
traits tend, within the context of our society, to make a person more
likely to hold this or that social attitude. Objections to these
findings have been raised, but the objections are feeble and seem to be
ideologically motivated. In any event, no one denies that children tend
on the average to hold social attitudes similar to those of their
parents. From our point of view it doesnt matter all that much whether
the attitudes are passed on genetically or through childhood training.
In either case they ARE passed on.
205. The trouble is that many of the people who are inclined to rebel
against the industrial system are also concerned about the population
problems, hence they are apt to have few or no children. In this way
they may be handing the world over to the sort of people who support or
at least accept the industrial system. To insure the strength of the
next generation of revolutionaries the present generation should
reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so they will be worsening the
population problem only slightly. And the important problem is to get
rid of the industrial system, because once the industrial system is
gone the worlds population necessarily will decrease (see paragraph
167); whereas, if the industrial system survives, it will continue
developing new techniques of food production that may enable the worlds
population to keep increasing almost indefinitely.
206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we
absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the
elimination of modern technology, and that no other goal can be allowed
to compete with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an
empirical approach. If experience indicates that some of the
recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give
good results, then those recommendations should be discarded.
TWO KINDS OF TECHNOLOGY
207. An argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution is
that it is bound to fail, because (it is claimed) throughout history
technology has always progressed, never regressed, hence technological
regression is impossible. But this claim is false.
208. We distinguish between two kinds of technology, which we will call
small-scale technology and organization-dependent technology.
Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale
communities without outside assistance. Organization-dependent
technology is technology that depends on large-scale social
organization. We are aware of no significant cases of regression in
small-scale technology. But organization-dependent technology DOES
regress when the social organization on which it depends breaks down.
Example: When the Roman Empire fell apart the Romans small-scale
technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build,
for instance, a water wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by
Roman methods, and so forth. But the Romans organization-dependent
technology DID regress. Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and were
never rebuilt. Their techniques of road construction were lost. The
Roman system of urban sanitation was forgotten, so that not until
rather recent times did the sanitation of European cities equal that of
Ancient Rome.
209. The reason why technology has seemed always to progress is that,
until perhaps a century or two before the Industrial Revolution, most
technology was small-scale technology. But most of the technology
developed since the Industrial Revolution is organization-dependent
technology. Take the refrigerator for example. Without factory-made
parts or the facilities of a post-industrial machine shop it would be
virtually impossible for a handful of local craftsmen to build a
refrigerator. If by some miracle they did succeed in building one it
would be useless to them without a reliable source of electric power.
So they would have to dam a stream and build a generator. Generators
require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to make that wire
without modern machinery. And where would they get a gas suitable for
refrigeration? It would be much easier to build an icehouse or preserve
food by drying or picking, as was done before the invention of the
refrigerator.
210. So it is clear that if the industrial system were once thoroughly
broken down, refrigeration technology would quickly be lost. The same
is true of other organization-dependent technology. And once this
technology had been lost for a generation or so it would take centuries
to rebuild it, just as it took centuries to build it the first time
around. Surviving technical books would be few and scattered. An
industrial society, if built from scratch without outside help, can
only be built in a series of stages: You need tools to make tools to
make tools to make tools ... . A long process of economic development
and progress in social organization is required. And, even in the
absence of an ideology opposed to technology, there is no reason to
believe that anyone would be interested in rebuilding industrial
society. The enthusiasm for progress is a phenomenon peculiar to the
modern form of society, and it seems not to have existed prior to the
17th century or thereabouts.
211. In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that
were about equally advanced: Europe, the Islamic world, India, and the
Far East (China, Japan, Korea). Three of those civilizations remained
more or less stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one knows why
Europe became dynamic at that time; historians have their theories but
these are only speculation. At any rate, it is clear that rapid
development toward a technological form of society occurs only under
special conditions. So there is no reason to assume that a long-lasting
technological regression cannot be brought about.
212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward an
industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no use in worrying
about it, since we cant predict or control events 500 or 1,000 years in
the future. Those problems must be dealt with by the people who will
live at that time.
THE DANGER OF LEFTISM
213. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a
movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type often are
unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and
membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish
types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so
that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the
movement.
214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes
technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid
all collaboration with leftists. Leftism is in the long run
inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the
elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to
bind together the entire world (both nature and the human race) into a
unified whole. But this implies management of nature and of human life
by organized society, and it requires advanced technology. You cant
have a united world without rapid transportation and communication, you
cant make all people love one another without sophisticated
psychological techniques, you cant have a planned society without the
necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need
for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through
identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is
unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable
a source of collective power.
215. The anarchist [34] too seeks power, but he seeks it on an
individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups
to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes
technology because it makes small groups dependent on large
organizations.
216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose
it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is
controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in
society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands
of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth.
In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown
again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were
outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police,
they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth;
but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter
censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had
existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least
as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of
decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist
professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in
those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they
have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone elses academic
freedom. (This is political correctness.) The same will happen with
leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if
they ever get it under their own control.
217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type,
repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as
well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have
double- crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre did
this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian
Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his
followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would
be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate
with leftists.
218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of
religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist
doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being.
But, for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much like that
which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in
leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological economy. His
beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has a deep
conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and that he
has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone.
(However, many of the people we are referring to as leftists do not
think of themselves as leftists and would not describe their system of
beliefs as leftism. We use the term leftism because we dont know of any
better words to designate the spectrum of related creeds that includes
the feminist, gay rights, political correctness, etc., movements, and
because these movements have a strong affinity with the old left. See
paragraphs 227-230.)
219. Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position
of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every
thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the
quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftist
beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian
force because of the leftists drive for power. The leftist seeks to
satisfy his need for power through identification with a social
movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to
pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no
matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist
is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see
paragraph 41). That is, the leftists real motive is not to attain the
ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of
power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal. [35]
Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has
already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to
pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for
minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality of
achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some corner
of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the leftist has
to re-educated him. And ethnic minorities are not enough; no one can be
allowed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals, disabled
people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on and on. Its
not enough that the public should be informed about the hazards of
smoking; a warning has to be stamped on every package of cigarettes.
Then cigarette advertising has to be restricted if not banned. The
activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after
that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc. Activists have fought
gross child abuse, which is reasonable. But now they want to stop all
spanking. When they have done that they will want to ban something else
they consider unwholesome, then another thing and then another. They
will never be satisfied until they have complete control over all child
rearing practices. And then they will move on to another cause.
220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that
were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social
change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of
years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain
about, some new social evil to correct because, once again, the leftist
is motivated less by distress at societys ills than by the need to
satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on society.
221. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior
by their high level of socialization, many leftists of the
over-socialized type cannot pursue power in the ways that other people
do. For them the drive for power has only one morally acceptable
outlet, and that is in the struggle to impose their morality on
everyone.
222. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, are True
Believers in the sense of Eric Hoffers book, The True Believer. But not
all True Believers are of the same psychological type as leftists.
Presumably a true-believing nazi, for instance, is very different
psychologically from a true-believing leftist. Because of their
capacity for single-minded devotion to a cause, True Believers are a
useful, perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any revolutionary movement.
This presents a problem with which we must admit we dont know how to
deal. We arent sure how to harness the energies of the True Believer to
a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that no
True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his
commitment is exclusively to the destruction of technology. If he is
committed also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a
tool for pursuing that other ideal (see paragraphs 220, 221).
223. Some readers may say, This stuff about leftism is a lot of crap. I
know John and Jane who are leftish types and they dont have all these
totalitarian tendencies. Its quite true that many leftists, possibly
even a numerical majority, are decent people who sincerely believe in
tolerating others values (up to a point) and wouldnt want to use
high-handed methods to reach their social goals. Our remarks about
leftism are not meant to apply to every individual leftist but to
describe the general character of leftism as a movement. And the
general character of a movement is not necessarily determined by the
numerical proportions of the various kinds of people involved in the
movement.
224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements
tend to be leftists of the most power- hungry type, because
power-hungry people are those who strive hardest to get into positions
of power. Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the
movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly
disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring
themselves to oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and
because they cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders.
True, SOME leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian
tendencies that emerge, but they generally lose, because the
power-hungry types are better organized, are more ruthless and
Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a strong power
base.
225. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries
that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of
communism in the USSR, leftish types in the West would seldom criticize
that country. If prodded they would admit that the USSR did many wrong
things, but then they would try to find excuses for the communists and
begin talking about the faults of the West. They always opposed Western
military resistance to communist aggression. Leftish types all over the
world vigorously protested the U.S. military action in Vietnam, but
when the USSR invaded Afghanistan they did nothing. Not that they
approved of the Soviet actions; but because of their leftist faith,
they just couldnt bear to put themselves in opposition to communism.
Today, in those of our universities where political correctness has
become dominant, there are probably many leftish types who privately
disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom, but they go along
with it anyway.
226. Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild
and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole form
having a totalitarian tendency.
227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far
from clear what we mean by the word leftist. There doesnt seem to be
much we can do about this. Today leftism is fragmented into a whole
spectrum of activist movements. Yet not all activist movements are
leftist, and some activist movements (e.g., radical environmentalism)
seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and
personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought to know better
than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade out
gradually into varieties of non-leftists and we ourselves would often
be hard-pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a
leftist. To the extent that it is defined at all, our conception of
leftism is defined by the discussion of it that we have given in this
article, and we can only advise the reader to use his own judgment in
deciding who is a leftist.
228. But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing
leftism. These criteria cannot be applied in a cut and dried manner.
Some individuals may meet some of the criteria without being leftists,
some leftists may not meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have to
use your judgment.
229. The leftist is oriented toward large-scale collectivism. He
emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of
society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude
toward individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be
for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically
enlightened educational methods, for social planning, for affirmative
action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He
tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often
finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of
using the common catch- phrases of the left, like racism, sexism,
homophobia, capitalism, imperialism, neocolonialism, genocide, social
change, social justice, social responsibility. Maybe the best
diagnostic trait of the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the
following movements: feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability
rights, animal rights, political correctness. Anyone who strongly
sympathizes with ALL of these movements is almost certainly a leftist.
[36]
230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most
power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic
approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may
be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of
aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work
quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values, enlightened
psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the
individual on the system, and so forth. These crypto- leftists (as we
may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as far as practical
action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and
motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under control
of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply
because his attitudes are conventional. The crypto-leftist tries to
bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer
in a collectivistic ideology. The crypto-leftist is differentiated from
the average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his
rebellious impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is
differentiated from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact
that there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him
to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And
maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of
the average bourgeois.
[clearspc.gif] FINAL NOTE
231. Throughout this article weve made imprecise statements and
statements that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and
reservations attached to them; and some of our statements may be flatly
false. Lack of sufficient information and the need for brevity made it
impossible for us to formulate our assertions more precisely or add all
the necessary qualifications. And of course in a discussion of this
kind one must rely heavily on intuitive judgment, and that can
sometimes be wrong. So we dont claim that this article expresses more
than a crude approximation to the truth.
232. All the same, we are reasonably confident that the general
outlines of the picture we have painted here are roughly correct. Just
one possible weak point needs to be mentioned. We have portrayed
leftism in its modern form as a phenomenon peculiar to our time and as
a symptom of the disruption of the power process. But we might possibly
be wrong about this. Oversocialized types who try to satisfy their
drive for power by imposing their morality on everyone have certainly
been around for a long time. But we THINK that the decisive role played
by feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem, powerlessness,
identification with victims by people who are not themselves victims,
is a peculiarity of modern leftism. Identification with victims by
people not themselves victims can be seen to some extent in 19th
century leftism and early Christianity but as far as we can make out,
symptoms of low self-esteem, etc., were not nearly so evident in these
movements, or in any other movements, as they are in modern leftism.
But we are not in a position to assert confidently that no such
movements have existed prior to modern leftism. This is a significant
question to which historians ought to give their attention.
Notes
1. (Paragraph 19) We are asserting that ALL, or even most, bullies and
ruthless competitors suffer from feelings of inferiority.
2. (Paragraph 25) During the Victorian period many oversocialized
people suffered from serious psychological problems as a result of
repressing or trying to repress their sexual feelings. Freud apparently
based his theories on people of this type. Today the focus of
socialization has shifted from sex to aggression.
3. (Paragraph 27) Not necessarily including specialists in engineering
or the hard sciences.
4. (Paragraph 28) There are many individuals of the middle and upper
classes who resist some of these values, but usually their resistance
is more or less covert. Such resistance appears in the mass media only
to a very limited extent. The main thrust of propaganda in our society
is in favor of the stated values.
The main reason why these values have become, so to speak, the official
values of our society is that they are useful to the industrial system.
Violence is discouraged because it disrupts the functioning of the
system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic conflicts also disrupt the
system, and discrimination wastes the talents of minority-group members
who could be useful to the system. Poverty must be cured because the
underclass causes problems for the system and contact with the
underclass lowers the morale of the other classes. Women are encouraged
to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and,
more importantly, because by having regular jobs women become better
integrated into the system and tied directly to it rather than to their
families. This helps to weaken family solidarity. (The leaders of the
system say they want to strengthen the family, but they really mean is
that they want the family to serve as an effective tool for socializing
children in accord with the needs of the system. We argue in paragraphs
51, 52 that the system cannot afford to let the family or other
small-scale social groups be strong or autonomous.)
5. (Paragraph 42) It may be argued that the majority of people dont
want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do their thinking
for them. There is an element of truth in this. People like to make
their own decisions in small matters, but making decisions on
difficult, fundamental questions requires facing up to psychological
conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. Hence they tend
to lean on others in making difficult decisions. But it does not follow
that they like to have decisions imposed upon them without having any
opportunity to influence those decisions. The majority of people are
natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have direct personal
access to their leaders, they want to be able to influence the leaders
and participate to some extent in making even the difficult decisions.
At least to that degree they need autonomy.
6. (Paragraph 44) Some of the symptoms listed are similar to those
shown by caged animals.
To explain how these symptoms arise from deprivation with respect to
the power process:
Common-sense understanding of human nature tells one that lack of goals
whose attainment requires effort leads to boredom and that boredom,
long continued, often leads eventually to depression. Failure to attain
goals leads to frustration and lowering of self-esteem. Frustration
leads to anger, anger to aggression, often in the form of spouse or
child abuse. It has been shown that long-continued frustration commonly
leads to depression and that depression tends to cause guilt, sleep
disorders, eating disorders and bad feelings about oneself. Those who
are tending toward depression seek pleasure as an antidote; hence
insatiable hedonism and excessive sex, with perversions as a means of
getting new kicks. Boredom too tends to cause excessive
pleasure-seeking since, lacking other goals, people often use pleasure
as a goal. See accompanying diagram.
The foregoing is a simplification. Reality is more complex, and of
course, deprivation with respect to the power process is not the ONLY
cause of the symptoms described.
By the way, when we mention depression we do not necessarily mean
depression that is severe enough to be treated by a psychiatrist. Often
only mild forms of depression are involved. And when we speak of goals
we do not necessarily mean long-term, thought-out goals. For many or
most people through much of human history, the goals of a hand-to-mouth
existence (merely providing oneself and ones family with food from day
to day) have been quite sufficient.
7. (Paragraph 52) A partial exception may be made for a few passive,
inward-looking groups, such as the Amish, which have little effect on
the wider society. Apart from these, some genuine small-scale
communities do exist in America today. For instance, youth gangs and
cults. Everyone regards them as dangerous, and so they are, because the
members of these groups are loyal primarily to one another rather than
to the system, hence the system cannot control them.
Or take the gypsies. The gypsies commonly get away with theft and fraud
because their loyalties are such that they can always get other gypsies
to give testimony that proves their innocence. Obviously the system
would be in serious trouble if too many people belonged to such groups.
Some of the early-20th century Chinese thinkers who were concerned with
modernizing China recognized the necessity breaking down small-scale
social groups such as the family: (According to Sun Yat-sen) the
Chinese people needed a new surge of patriotism, which would lead to a
transfer of loyalty from the family to the state.... (According to Li
Huang) traditional attachments, particularly to the family had to be
abandoned if nationalism were to develop in China. (Chester C. Tan,
Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century, page 125, page
297.)
8. (Paragraph 56) Yes, we know that 19th century America had its
problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of brevity we have to
express ourselves in simplified terms.
9. (Paragraph 61) We leave aside the underclass. We are speaking of the
mainstream.
10. (Paragraph 62) Some social scientists, educators, mental health
professionals and the like are doing their best to push the social
drives into group 1 by trying to see to it that everyone has a
satisfactory social life.
11. (Paragraphs 63, 82) Is the drive for endless material acquisition
really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing
industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material
acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have desired
little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic
physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican peasant
culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been
many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition has played
an important role. So we cant claim that todays acquisition-oriented
culture is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing
industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry
has had an important part in creating that culture. The big
corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldnt be spending
that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back
in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales manager a couple of
years ago who was frank enough to tell him, Our job is to make people
buy things they dont want and dont need. He then described how an
untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product,
and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional
salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that
people are manipulated into buying things they dont really want.
12. (Paragraph 64) The problem of purposelessness seems to have become
less serious during the last 15 years or so, because people now feel
less secure physically and economically than they did earlier, and the
need for security provides them with a goal. But purposelessness has
been replaced by frustration over the difficulty of attaining security.
We emphasize the problem of purposelessness because the liberals and
leftists would wish to solve our social problems by having society
guarantee everyones security; but if that could be done it would only
bring back the problem of purposelessness. The real issue is not
whether society provides well or poorly for peoples security; the
trouble is that people are dependent on the system for their security
rather than having it in their own hands. This, by the way, is part of
the reason why some people get worked up about the right to bear arms;
possession of a gun puts that aspect of their security in their own
hands.
13. (Paragraph 66) Conservatives efforts to decrease the amount of
government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one
thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because
most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the
deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so
that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it
to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that
government interference in his life is replaced by interference from
big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more
chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The
conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting
his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.
14. (Paragraph 73) When someone approves of the purpose for which
propaganda is being used in a given case, he generally calls it
education or applies to it some similar euphemism. But propaganda is
propaganda regardless of the purpose for which it is used.
15. (Paragraph 83) We are not expressing approval or disapproval of the
Panama invasion. We only use it to illustrate a point.
16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule
there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than
there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there
was more personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and
after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial
Revolution took hold in this country. We quote from Violence in
America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Hugh Davis
Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, pages 476-478:
The progressive heightening of standards of propriety, and with it the
increasing reliance on official law enforcement (in 19th century
America) ... were common to the whole society.... [T]he change in
social behavior is so long term and so widespread as to suggest a
connection with the most fundamental of contemporary social processes;
that of industrial urbanization itself....Massachusetts in 1835 had a
population of some 660,940, 81 percent rural, overwhelmingly
preindustrial and native born. Its citizens were used to considerable
personal freedom. Whether teamsters, farmers or artisans, they were all
accustomed to setting their own schedules, and the nature of their work
made them physically independent of each other.... Individual problems,
sins or even crimes, were not generally cause for wider social
concern....But the impact of the twin movements to the city and to the
factory, both just gathering force in 1835, had a progressive effect on
personal behavior throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The
factory demanded regularity of behavior, a life governed by obedience
to the rhythms of clock and calendar, the demands of foreman and
supervisor. In the city or town, the needs of living in closely packed
neighborhoods inhibited many actions previously unobjectionable. Both
blue- and white-collar employees in larger establishments were mutually
dependent on their fellows; as one mans work fit into anthers, so one
mans business was no longer his own.
The results of the new organization of life and work were apparent by
1900, when some 76 percent of the 2,805,346 inhabitants of
Massachusetts were classified as urbanites. Much violent or irregular
behavior which had been tolerable in a casual, independent society was
no longer acceptable in the more formalized, cooperative atmosphere of
the later period.... The move to the cities had, in short, produced a
more tractable, more socialized, more civilized generation than its
predecessors.
17. (Paragraph 117) Apologists for the system are fond of citing cases
in which elections have been decided by one or two votes, but such
cases are rare.
18. (Paragraph 119) Today, in technologically advanced lands, men live
very similar lives in spite of geographical, religious, and political
differences. The daily lives of a Christian bank clerk in Chicago, a
Buddhist bank clerk in Tokyo, and a Communist bank clerk in Moscow are
far more alike than the life of any one of them is like that of any
single man who lived a thousand years ago. These similarities are the
result of a common technology.... L. Sprague de Camp, The Ancient
Engineers, Ballantine edition, page 17.
The lives of the three bank clerks are not IDENTICAL. Ideology does
have SOME effect. But all technological societies, in order to survive,
must evolve along APPROXIMATELY the same trajectory.
19. (Paragraph 123) Just think an irresponsible genetic engineer might
create a lot of terrorists.
20. (Paragraph 124) For a further example of undesirable consequences
of medical progress, suppose a reliable cure for cancer is discovered.
Even if the treatment is too expensive to be available to any but the
elite, it will greatly reduce their incentive to stop the escape of
carcinogens into the environment.
21. (Paragraph 128) Since many people may find paradoxical the notion
that a large number of good things can add up to a bad thing, we
illustrate with an analogy. Suppose Mr. A is playing chess with Mr. B.
Mr. C, a Grand Master, is looking over Mr. As shoulder. Mr. A of course
wants to win his game, so if Mr. C points out a good move for him to
make, he is doing Mr. A a favor. But suppose now that Mr. C tells Mr. A
how to make ALL of his moves. In each particular instance he does Mr. A
a favor by showing him his best move, but by making ALL of his moves
for him he spoils his game, since there is not point in Mr. As playing
the game at all if someone else makes all his moves.
The situation of modern man is analogous to that of Mr. A. The system
makes an individuals life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in
doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate.
22. (Paragraph 137) Here we are considering only the conflict of values
within the mainstream. For the sake of simplicity we leave out of the
picture outsider values like the idea that wild nature is more
important than human economic welfare.
23. (Paragraph 137) Self-interest is not necessarily MATERIAL
self-interest. It can consist in fulfillment of some psychological
need, for example, by promoting ones own ideology or religion.
24. (Paragraph 139) A qualification: It is in the interest of the
system to permit a certain prescribed degree of freedom in some areas.
For example, economic freedom (with suitable limitations and
restraints) has proved effective in promoting economic growth. But only
planned, circumscribed, limited freedom is in the interest of the
system. The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the
leash is sometimes long (see paragraphs 94, 97).
25. (Paragraph 143) We dont mean to suggest that the efficiency or the
potential for survival of a society has always been inversely
proportional to the amount of pressure or discomfort to which the
society subjects people. That certainly is not the case. There is good
reason to believe that many primitive societies subjected people to
less pressure than European society did, but European society proved
far more efficient than any primitive society and always won out in
conflicts with such societies because of the advantages conferred by
technology.
26. (Paragraph 147) If you think that more effective law enforcement is
unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then remember that
crime as defined by the system is not necessarily what YOU would call
crime. Today, smoking marijuana is a crime, and, in some places in the
U.S., so is possession of an unregistered handgun. Tomorrow, possession
of ANY firearm, registered or not, may be made a crime, and the same
thing may happen with disapproved methods of child-rearing, such as
spanking. In some countries, expression of dissident political opinions
is a crime, and there is no certainty that this will never happen in
the U.S., since no constitution or political system lasts forever.
If a society needs a large, powerful law enforcement establishment,
then there is something gravely wrong with that society; it must be
subjecting people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow the
rules, or follow them only because forced. Many societies in the past
have gotten by with little or no formal law- enforcement.
27. (Paragraph 151) To be sure, past societies have had means of
influencing human behavior, but these have been primitive and of low
effectiveness compared with the technological means that are now being
developed.
28. (Paragraph 152) However, some psychologists have publicly expressed
opinions indicating their contempt for human freedom. And the
mathematician Claude Shannon was quoted in Omni (August 1987) as
saying, I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to
humans, and Im rooting for the machines.
29. (Paragraph 154) This is no science fiction! After writing paragraph
154 we came across an article in Scientific American according to which
scientists are actively developing techniques for identifying possible
future criminals and for treating them by a combination of biological
and psychological means. Some scientists advocate compulsory
application of the treatment, which may be available in the near
future. (See Seeking the Criminal Element, by W. Wayt Gibbs, Scientific
American, March 1995.) Maybe you think this is OK because the treatment
would be applied to those who might become violent criminals. But of
course it wont stop there. Next, a treatment will be applied to those
who might become drunk drivers (they endanger human life too), then
perhaps to peel who spank their children, then to environmentalists who
sabotage logging equipment, eventually to anyone whose behavior is
inconvenient for the system.
30. (Paragraph 184) A further advantage of nature as a counter-ideal to
technology is that, in many people, nature inspires the kind of
reverence that is associated with religion, so that nature could
perhaps be idealized on a religious basis. It is true that in many
societies religion has served as a support and justification for the
established order, but it is also true that religion has often provided
a basis for rebellion. Thus it may be useful to introduce a religious
element into the rebellion against technology, the more so because
Western society today has no strong religious foundation. Religion,
nowadays either is used as cheap and transparent support for narrow,
short-sighted selfishness (some conservatives use it this way), or even
is cynically exploited to make easy money (by many evangelists), or has
degenerated into crude irrationalism (fundamentalist protestant sects,
cults), or is simply stagnant (Catholicism, main-line Protestantism).
The nearest thing to a strong, widespread, dynamic religion that the
West has seen in recent times has been the quasi-religion of leftism,
but leftism today is fragmented and has no clear, unified, inspiring
goal.
Thus there is a religious vacuum in our society that could perhaps be
filled by a religion focused on nature in opposition to technology. But
it would be a mistake to try to concoct artificially a religion to fill
this role. Such an invented religion would probably be a failure. Take
the Gaia religion for example. Do its adherents REALLY believe in it or
are they just play-acting? If they are just play-acting their religion
will be a flop in the end.
It is probably best not to try to introduce religion into the conflict
of nature vs. technology unless you REALLY believe in that religion
yourself and find that it arouses a deep, strong, genuine response in
many other people.
31. (Paragraph 189) Assuming that such a final push occurs. Conceivably
the industrial system might be eliminated in a somewhat gradual or
piecemeal fashion (see paragraphs 4, 167 and Note 4).
32. (Paragraph 193) It is even conceivable (remotely) that the
revolution might consist only of a massive change of attitudes toward
technology resulting in a relatively gradual and painless
disintegration of the industrial system. But if this happens well be
very lucky. Its far more probably that the transition to a
nontechnological society will be very difficult and full of conflicts
and disasters.
33. (Paragraph 195) The economic and technological structure of a
society are far more important than its political structure in
determining the way the average man lives (see paragraphs 95, 119 and
Notes 16, 18).
34. (Paragraph 215) This statement refers to our particular brand of
anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called
anarchist, and it may be that many who consider themselves anarchists
would not accept our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, by
the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members
probably would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly would not
approve of FCs violent methods.
35. (Paragraph 219) Many leftists are motivated also by hostility, but
the hostility probably results in part from a frustrated need for
power.
36. (Paragraph 229) It is important to understand that we mean someone
who sympathizes with these MOVEMENTS as they exist today in our
society. One who believes that women, homosexuals, etc., should have
equal rights is not necessary a leftist. The feminist, gay rights,
etc., movements that exist in our society have the particular
ideological tone that characterizes leftism, and if one believes, for
example, that women should have equal rights it does not necessarily
follow that one must sympathize with the feminist movement as it exists
today.
If copyright problems make it impossible for this long quotation to be
printed, then please change Note 16 to read as follows:
16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule
there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than
there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there
was more personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and
after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial
Revolution took hold in this country. In Violence in America:
Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Hugh Davis Graham
and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, it is explained how in
pre-industrial America the average person had greater independence and
autonomy than he does today, and how the process of industrialization
necessarily led to the restriction of personal freedom.
