The movement was committed to abstaining from all partisan politics and communist revolution. It gained strength in the 1930s but in 1940, due to opposition to the Second World War, was banned in Canada. The ban was lifted in 1943 when it was apparent that 'Technocracy Inc. was committed to the war effort, proposing a program of total conscription.'[3] The movement continued to expand during the remainder of the war and new sections were formed in Ontario and the Maritime Provinces.[4]
The Technocracy movement survives into the present day and, as of 2013[update], was continuing to publish a newsletter, maintain a website, and hold member meetings.[5] Smaller groups included the Technical Alliance, The New Machine and the Utopian Society of America.
Overview
Technocracy advocates contended that price system-based forms of government and economy are structurally incapable of effective action, and promoted a society headed by technical experts, which they argued would be more rational and productive.[6]
The coming of the Great Depression ushered in radically different ideas of social engineering,[7] culminating in reforms introduced by the New Deal.[6][7] By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves technocrats and proposing reforms.[8]
By the mid-1930s, interest in the technocracy movement was declining. Some historians have attributed the decline of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal.[9][10] Historian William E. Akin rejects that thesis arguing instead that the movement declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the failure of its proponents to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change' (p.111 Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900–1941 by William E. Akin), although many technocrats in the United States were sympathetic to the electoral efforts of anti-New Deal third parties.[11] One of the most widely circulated images in Technocracy Inc.’s promotional materials used the example of a streetcar to argue that engineering solutions will always succeed where legislation or fines fail to adequately deal with social problems. If passengers insist on riding on the car’s dangerous outer platform, the solution consists in designing cars without platforms.[12]
Origins
The technocratic movement has its origins with the progressive engineers of the early twentieth century and the writings of Edward Bellamy,[13] along with some of the later works of Thorstein Veblen such as TheEngineers And The Price System written in 1921.[14][15][16] William H. Smyth, a California engineer, invented the word technocracy in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers",[17][18] and in the 1920s it was used to describe the works of Thorstein Veblen.[19]
Early technocratic organizations formed after the First World War. These included Henry Gantt’s "The New Machine" and Veblen’s "Soviet of Technicians". These organizations folded after a short time.[19] Writers such as Henry Gantt, Thorstein Veblen, and Howard Scott suggested that businesspeople were incapable of reforming their industries in the public interest and that control of industry should thus be given to engineers.[20]
United States and Canada
A sign on the outskirts of a Depression-era town about meetings of the local technocracy branch
Howard Scott has been called the "founder of the technocracy movement"[2] and he started the Technical Alliance in New York near the end of 1919. Members of the Alliance were mostly scientists and engineers. The Technical Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, which aimed to provide a scientific background from which ideas about a new social structure could be developed.[21] However the group broke up in 1921[22] before the survey was completed.[23]
In 1932, Scott and others interested in the problems of technological growth and economic change began meeting in New York City. Their ideas gained national attention and the "Committee on Technocracy" was formed at Columbia University, by Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch.[24] However, the group was short-lived and in January 1933[25] splintered into two other groups, the "Continental Committee on Technocracy" (led by Harold Loeb) and "Technocracy Incorporated" (led by Scott).[26][27] Smaller groups included the Technical Alliance, The New Machine and the Utopian Society of America, though Bellamy had the most success due to his nationalistic stances, and Veblen's rhetoric, removing the current pricing system and his blueprint for a national directorate to reorganize all produced goods and supply, and ultimately to radically increase all industrial output.[28][29]
At the core of Scott's vision was "an energy theory of value". Since the basic measure common to the production of all goods and services was energy, he reasoned "that the sole scientific foundation for the monetary system was also energy", and that society could be designed more efficiently by using an energy metric instead of a monetary metric (energy certificates or 'energy accounting').[30] Technocracy Inc. officials wore a uniform, consisting of a "well-tailored double-breasted suit, gray shirt, and blue necktie, with a monad insignia on the lapel", and its members saluted Scott in public.[6][31]
Public interest in technocracy peaked in the early 1930s:
Technocracy's heyday lasted only from June 16, 1932, when the New York Times became the first influential press organ to report its activities, until January 13, 1933, when Scott, attempting to silence his critics, delivered what some critics called a confusing, and uninspiring address on a well-publicized nationwide radio hookup.[27]
Following Scott's radio address (Hotel Pierre Address),[32] the condemnation of both him and technocracy in general reached a peak. The press and businesspeople reacted with ridicule and almost unanimous hostility. The American Engineering Council charged the technocrats with "unprofessional activity, questionable data, and drawing unwarranted conclusions".[33]
The technocrats made a believable case for a kind of technological utopia, but their asking price was too high. The idea of political democracy still represented a stronger ideal than technological elitism. In the end, critics believed that the socially desirable goals that technology made possible could be achieved without the sacrifice of existing institutions and values and without incurring the apocalypse that technocracy predicted.[34]
The faction-ridden Continental Committee on Technocracy collapsed in October 1936.[27][35] However, Technocracy Incorporated continued.[10][36]
On October 7, 1940, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested members of Technocracy Incorporated, charging them with belonging to an illegal organization. One of the arrested was Joshua Norman Haldeman, a Regina chiropractor, former director of Technocracy Incorporated, and the grandfather of Elon Musk.[37][38]
There were some speaking tours of the US and Canada in 1946 and 1947, and a motorcade from Los Angeles to Vancouver:[39]
Hundreds of cars, trucks, and trailers, all regulation grey, from all over the Pacific Northwest, participated. An old school bus, repainted and retrofitted with sleeping and office facilities, a two-way radio, and a public address system, impressed observers. A huge war surplus searchlight mounted on a truck bed was included, and grey-painted motorcycles acted as parade marshals. A small grey aircraft, with a Monad symbol on its wings, flew overhead. All this was recorded by the Technocrats on 16-mm 900-foot colour film.[40]
In 1948 activity declined while dissent increased within the movement. One central factor contributing to dissent was that "the Price System had not collapsed, and predictions about the expected demise were becoming more and more vague".[41] Some quite specific predictions about the price system collapse were made during the Great Depression, the first giving 1937 as the date, and the second forecasting the collapse as occurring "prior to 1940".[41]
Membership and activity declined steadily in the years after 1948, but some activity persisted, mostly around Vancouver in Canada and on the West Coast of the United States. Technocracy Incorporated currently maintains a website and distributes a monthly newsletter and holds membership meetings.[42]
In a publication from 1938 Technocracy Inc. the main organization made the following statement in defining their proposal:
Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population of this continent. For the first time in human history it will be done as a scientific, technical, engineering problem. There will be no place for Politics or Politicians, Finance or Financiers, Rackets or Racketeers. Technocracy states that this method of operating the social mechanism of the North American Continent is now mandatory because we have passed from a state of actual scarcity into the present status of potential abundance in which we are now held to an artificial scarcity forced upon us in order to continue a Price System which can distribute goods only by means of a medium of exchange. Technocracy states that price and abundance are incompatible; the greater the abundance the smaller the price. In a real abundance there can be no price at all. Only by abandoning the interfering price control and substituting a scientific method of production and distribution can an abundance be achieved. Technocracy will distribute by means of a certificate of distribution available to every citizen from birth to death. The Technate will encompass the entire American Continent from Panama to the North Pole because the natural resources and the natural boundary of this area make it an independent, self-sustaining geographical unit.[43]
Calendar
A Technocratic work schedule
The Technocratic movement planned to reform the work schedule, to achieve the goal of uninterrupted production, maximizing the efficiency and profitability of resources, transport and entertainment facilities, avoiding the "weekend effect".[44]
According to the movement's calculations, it would be enough that every citizen worked a cycle of four consecutive days, four hours a day, followed by three days off. By "tiling" the days and working hours of seven groups, industry and services could be operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This system would include holiday periods allocated to each citizen.[44]
Continental Accounting System
From the previous research of The Technical Alliance's Energy Survey of North America, Technocracy Inc. states that a few key points need to be realized in order for a healthy distribution of resources can be efficiently made.
Register on a continuous 24-hour time period basis the total net conversion of energy, which would determine
the availability of energy for Continental plant construction and maintenance,
the amount of physical wealth available in the form of consumable goods and services for consumption by the total population during the balanced load period
By means of the registration of energy converted and consumed, make possible a balanced load
Provide a continuous 24-hour inventory of all production and consumption
Provide a specific registration of the type, kind, size, etc., of all goods and services, where produced, and where used
Provide specific registration of the consumption of each individual, plus a record and description of the individual
Allow the citizen the widest latitude of choice in consuming his individual share of Continental physical wealth
Distribute goods and services to every member of the population[45]
The Energy Certificate & The Energy Distribution Card
Replacing the price system meant figuring out a new means of measuring distribution that also needed to be based on science. This lead to the technocrats concluding that measurements by units of energy was the most logical thing to do. Although Thorstein Veblen's The Engineers and the Price System did not talk about price by energy. Nor did William Henry Smyth's Technocracy Social Universals.
Technocrats rationalized that the flow of energy can be what determines a price by energy. With the usage of all forms of energy units, especially having emphasis on the erg and joules. They came up with The Energy Certificates. It would have a table with the information of a citizen's identification, age, sex, occupation/location, energy allotment, purchases made, the issued date and expiration date of the certificates, formatted in a Dewey Decimal System. Each individual would be issued a booklet of the certificates. In modern times it would be as if we blended our ID with a bank card; Technocracy Inc. updated the certificates to be more like a debit card as they called it "The Energy Distribution Card."[45]
The Energy Certificate The Energy Distribution Card
Differences between Energy Accounting and Monetary Systems are;
Equal allotments of energy
It was suggested that citizens under the workforce age(25) would still have an allowance of energy totally independent from parents or guardians
Retired citizens(45) would still get their allotments
Citizens out of work would still receive their allotments[28]
Citizens cannot trade or giveaway certificates. They can only spend energy at verified vendors
Once a purchase is made at a vendor. The used energy is made void, the vendor does not gain the used energy. Therefor there is no circulation of energy or hording of energy
The certificates have an expiration date. Any energy not used will become void, and on a given date the citizen will receive their new allotment of energy. Once again no citizen can horde energy
Certificates are directly tied to an individual's ID. Therefor it cannot be stolen or used by someone else[45]
The term "computer" wasn't used much by Howard Scott. But when it was, he used it with great optimism. Scott said technocracy's C.A.S, energy certificates, and Dewey decimal system's were a more paper based way of tracking computation; the IBM computers were exactly the kind of devices a C.A.S would want to deploy. Scott insisted that — "One of the big troubles with all of this is that your computers is going to do away with your accountants and your engineers, and it is also going to do away with your executives, as well as the blue collar and the white collar, so more power to all of the computer control mechanisms."[46]
A year after Scott's passing, Chile started Project Cybersyn; a computerized system that tracks the economy. Philosophies of computerized government also popped up; see Cyberocracy. Engineers are the center profession of technocracy's foundation, so claiming that they to will be replaced by automation is a big deal coming from a technocrat. Over the years, software for computer-aided design (CAD) and the 2022 revolution of large language models brought hysteria that engineers and software developers would be replaced by artificial intelligence.
Their chart of "Irreversible Physical Trends Shape America's Destiny," was a continuation of The Technical Alliance's Energy Survey of North America. With the graph being created by the Committee of Technocracy. Upon completion, the energy survey was approximately going to have 3,000 charts finished; with every field of industry being analyzed.[47]
According to Dr. Rautenstrauch the committee found that the formulas Technocracy worked out from business enterprise, greatly resembled the biological growth curves charted by Raymond Pearl's "Studies in Human Biology." The committee compared the Pearl-Reed equation to several major growth charts from U.S. industries; fitting similarly.
A foundation of technocracy's arguments was made with said chart. What it shows is that pre-industrial revolution civilization primarily generated its consumer goods from human energy—human labor. And after the industrial revolution happened, a flip in dynamic changed. Resulting in greater energy output with less human toil. Machinery enable for more efficient work without human muscle. To the technocrats, this shift of equilibrium was going to lead to rapid technological unemployment with no plan for the price system to navigate distribution of wealth to the unemployed population.[47][48][49]
The Technate
Technocracy looked for large areas with bountiful resources to enable self sufficiency. A Technate is practically a large body of land governed by a technocracy that only needs minimal trade.[28]
Technocrats had a strong belief in continentalism.[50] Scott mentioned that in the case of forming a North American Technate would be like forming a federation or union under the guidance of technocracy. Areas engaging in continentalism are the U.S.S.R and the European Union.[51][46]
North American Technate
Technate Hydrology
Continental Hydrology
A radical plan to transform the Technate's mode of transportation was to have total control over all rivers and lakes across the continent. Travel by ship was faster than car or train at the time. The continental hydrology would end up linking several rivers. It also aimed to help monitor erosion of the country, generate power, and be educational for students.
This plan faced criticism for being a project that would destroy several habitats.[52]
Practicable Soviet of Technicians
Organization chart described in The Engineers and the Price System
Thorstein Veblen outlined what it would take for engineers to manage a country's economy. Praising the idea that technicians in places of trust is an excellent idea. Veblen concluded that engineers in all fields would need to work together in accounting for all aspects of the industrial system.
Veblen loosely proposed a trilateral administration; three large councils of engineers that would lead into a central council.
Veblen also argued that people educated in business would need to be banned from positions of trust. Believing that those who understand traditional economics thought too much like a businessperson and in doing so, bring the inefficient ideals that technocracy is trying to solve.
In point: "By force of habit, men trained to a businesslike view of what is right and real will be irretrievably biased against any plan of production and distribution that is not drawn in terms of commercial profit and loss and does not provide a margin of free income to go to absentee owners. The personal exceptions to the rule are apparently few."[53]
Art Representations of Technocracy
The Technocracy Movement has made way for various pieces of artwork, from illustrations, and photography, to video games, and music.
Technocracy Inc.'s General Aesthetics
Card carrying members were issued a Monad lapel pin or Monad patch and would wear gray suits during events and meetings. They have been encouraged to paint their cars gray as well. A few published technocracy books are mainly gray. The chosen color of technocracy, is gray. Howard Scott viewed a repetition of an official uniform would help spread a national identity for technocrats, and peak onlookers curiosity into the movement.[54][55]
A common theme with technocracy's publications are images of industrial equipment's and factories.
Science Vs. Chaos! By Howard Scott
Original study course by M. King Hubbert
A cluster of different publications by Technocracy Inc.
A guy in a restaurant reading Technocracy and the American Dream by William E. Akin
Technocracy also had other items with propaganda slogans on them. Such as the case with the following technocracy match covers.[56][57]
Match cover front view
Match cover back view
Match cover inside view
Match cover outside view
Match cover inside view
Technocrat Robots
Notable illustrations are robots that represent a being of technocrats.
The Technocrats Magazine
Illustration used in The Technocrats Magazine
A birthday card from the 1930s displaying a technocrat robot(Note that the author's signature is on the card but is seemingly unreadable)
One of The Technocrats Magazines features a humanoid robot. With the cover showing the robot as a destructive force. Inside the magazine it shows the same robot overseer of civilization. And a robot is also representative of a technocrat from a cartoon artwork for a birthday card, although the artist seems to be confused as to what a technocrat is.[59][58]
Article on technocracy published by San Francisco Examiner
A small article that explains technocracy as being pro-machine. But debates that even if machinery could help humanity, we aren't wise enough to use them in a benevolent manner. Hence the robot dinosaur destroying a city.[60]
Influence in Literature
Some Sci-Fi literature written by big industry names has featured the term technocracy or a society governed by technical experts. Which has resulted in both modern popularity in favor of a technically run society, and fear of a technically run society.
Isaac Asimov
After Howard Scott's passing, Technocracy Inc. was failing to keep their relevancy. In efforts to gain popular attention they tried to interact with any writers expressing techno-utopian ideas with the hope that gaining them as members would also convince their audience to investigate technocracy. This included writing to Isaac Asimov. Although there does not appear to be information as to whether or not Asimov responded to Technocracy Inc.'s letters.[61]
For some time Asimov was a member of the Futurians, a science fiction club based in New York. A few of its members were interested in technocracy, though this interest was short lived as once the interested members got a copy of the Technocracy Study Course, they changed their opinions. Viewing the Technocracy Movement as no different than progressive Stalinists. However there is no current information confirming if Isaac Asimov took part in reading the study course.[61]
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World was intended to be a mockery of the ideals expressed by H. G. Wells. But turned into something more serious, a criticism of technocracy. Though dystopian the main civilization is highly advanced and has a rather happy populous; in essence the dystopian novel blurs the lines between what Utopians such as the technocrats strive for. Much like an argument of horseshoe theory.[62]
A interesting line from the book — "Alpha children wear gray. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever." The alphas are at the top of society's hierarchy, becoming the scientists and engineers that govern civilization. But a possibly coincidental part is the mentioning of alphas wearing gray, just as the Technocracy Movement's gray uniforms.[62]
Despite being science fiction, Brave New World has become a popular and easy retort towards technocracy. During the Covid-19 pandemic the North American public, primarily in the United States, believed that the measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus was too authoritarian, comparing it to Brave New World, and 1984. Resulting in many congress hearings against Dr. Fauci's science career.[63]
H. G. Wells
Well's book The Shape of Things To Come was written in response to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. There have been a few mentions of Huxley in the book as Wells called him a "reactionary."
The book follows alternative history of society rebuilding after WW2, with a technocratic faction rising from the rubble to rebuild the planet. Unlike B.N.W, The Shape of Things To Come was an argument in favor of a rational and engineered society.
In the book Wells explained technocracy — "In America an interesting movement known as 'Technocracy' was attracting attention. Essentially that was a soundly scientific effort to restate economics on a purely physical basis. But it was exploited in a journalistic fashion and presented to a remarkably receptive public as a cut-and-dried scheme for a new social order in which social and economic life was to be repudiation of democratic control by the Technologists at that date is very notable. The unit of energy was to be the basis of a new currency. So every power station became a mint and every waterfall a potential 'goldmine', and the money and the energy in human affairs remained practically in step."[64]
Influence in Video Games
The Technocracy Movement has made its way into video games. With many mentions from big AAA companies.
Paradox Interactive
In video games, technocracy possibly gets its most representation from Paradox Interactive, a high budget game development company that primarily focuses around history strategy games.
Stellaris
Upon its 2016 release this space strategy game allows for players to become a technocracy government type. As of the 2.0 update the technocracy government type brings special research bonuses and "capital buildings replace some Politician jobs with Science Director jobs."[65][66]
The early 1.0 version the game had a particular loading screen image that had a humanoid alien looking out to a clean looking sci-fi city. And once the humanoid expansion came out the developers made the humanoid alien from the loading image into its own portrait and pre-made build called "Voor Technocracy."
The economics in 1.0 Stellaris mainly relied on the "mineral" resource for purchasing buildings, and ships. But since 2.0 the developers intended that the energy resource would act more like the main currency. "Energy Credits" is the name of the energy resource, closely resembling the concept of technocracy's Energy Certificates.[67]
Hearts of Iron 4
A large mod known as the "Red Flood" mod extends the base game's ideologies. Most relevantly it loosely brought the events of the North American Technocracy Movement. The main storyline is Howard Scott's Technocracy Inc. The player can now play as the United Technates of America.[68]
The Kaiserreich mod also has Technocracy Inc. as a playable faction, lead by Howard Scott. As well as the rival faction the Continental Committee on Technocracy with Harold Loeb as its leader.[69]
Land of the Free mod has The Technical Alliance as a faction in California with Howard Scott as the leader.[70]
All of the mentioned factions have unique national focus trees that represent the ideas advocated by the base movement.
Frostpunk 2
One of the factions in Frostpunk 2 are the Technocrats. This faction has ideas based around machinery and population control. They also get research bonuses.[71]
Victoria 3
Technocracy flag featured in Victoria 3
Distribution of Power has a technocracy civic defined as "the nation is governed by an unelected council of men of reason and ability," giving multiple bonuses based around engineering, science, and authority. To adopt this distribution, the Central Archives need's to be researched.[73]
In the base game; for the United States the player can form into the "Unified Scientific Associations," and adopting technocracy while being a Republic will change the flag into a technocracy flag; gray background with the Monad in the middle.[72]
Technocracy Vs. Socialism
Many comparisons between technocracy and socialist body of thought have been made by various readers. So much so that people often argue that countries such as the U.S.S.R, China, Singapore, and the European Union are technocracies. By definition of what the technocrat theorists argued; technocracy hasn't truly been implemented. And there is a distinction between technocrats and socialists.
In Paul Blanshard's publication of "Technocracy and Socialism," he argued that because socialists don't want liberal democracy, that doesn't mean they'd want a technocracy. Because socialists still very much want voting.[74] From the socialists perspective all workers should have a say in organization, including the technocrats valued technician. Blanshard also believed that replacing the price system is not yet worth the risk, because technocracy has not fully detailed out how energy accounting would work.[74]
Paul Temple's "A Totalitarian Fantasy-Technocracy, Fascism, and the war," made personal attacks on Howard Scott as he believed that Scott acted like a dictator. And that Scott's propaganda was too close to a typical fascist to be taken seriously. Temple points out that technocrats don't make the distinction of representative democracy under capitalism from a direct democracy under socialism.[75]
"Technocracy and Marxism" by William Z. Foster and Earl Browder asserts that communists (as taught from Lenin and Stalin) have already realized all the issues technocrats have pointed out, years before. Howard Scott makes a bold claim that pre-industrial revolution philosophies have become totally irrelevant due to technology making a new need for a new philosophy; Foster & Browder disagree. They also point out that basing price by energy rejects the socialists measurements labor theory of value, claiming that this action is using an arbitrary unit (the erg) and was just switching one unit for another.[76]
H. G. Wells seemed to argue for both socialism and technocracy. When Wells had a conversation with Joseph Stalin he insisted that the technical intelligentsia have begun to realize that capitalistic society has created lots of problems in all social classes. Which would bring a scientific perspective to a revolution. Stalin was not so convinced, as during previous revolutionary action those in fields of science and engineering have been more complacent than willing to help a working class movement.[77]
Howard Scott believed that there was distinction between technocracy and socialism. He's made the provocative statement — "As far as technocracy's ideas are concerned. We're so far left that we make communism look bourgeois." In this single sentence Scott asserts that technocrats are further left-wing than communists. And used the socialists jargon of bourgeois against them; making it known that technocrats believe themselves to be more egalitarian than socialists. Scott also criticized communism as "not being radical enough," as every socialist country still used the price system. Howard Scott has also said "the Red Technocrats" during a meeting; further solidifying that technocracy while not socialism was on the left.[78][51][79][61]
Europe
In Germany before the Second World War, a technocratic movement based on the American model introduced by Technocracy Incorporated existed but ran afoul of the political system there.[80]
There was also a Soviet movement whose early history resembled the North American one during the interwar period. One of its leading members was engineer Peter Palchinsky. Technocratic ideology was also promoted by the Engineer's Herald journal. The Soviet technocrats advanced the scientization of the economic development, management as well as industrial and organizational psychology under the slogan "The future belongs to the managing-engineers and the engineering-managers.". Those viewpoints were supported by leading Right Opposition members Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov. The promotion of an alternative view on the country's industrialization and the engineer's role in society incurred Joseph Stalin's wrath. Palchinsky was executed in 1929, and a year later leading Soviet engineers were accused of an anti-government conspiracy in the Industrial Party Trial. A large scale persecution of engineers followed, forcing them to focus on narrow technical issues assigned to them by communist party leaders.[81] The concept of Tectology developed by Alexander Bogdanov, perhaps the most important of the non-Leninist Bolsheviks, bears some semblance to technocratic ideas. Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings as presented by Zenovia Sochor,[82] imply that he expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society.[83]
Related Research Articles
Thorstein Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.
Evolutionary economics is a school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology. Although not defined by a strict set of principles and uniting various approaches, it treats economic development as a process rather than an equilibrium and emphasizes change, innovation, complex interdependencies, self-evolving systems, and limited rationality as the drivers of economic evolution. The support for the evolutionary approach to economics in recent decades seems to have initially emerged as a criticism of the mainstream neoclassical economics, but by the beginning of the 21st century it had become part of the economic mainstream itself.
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, better known as Henri de Saint-Simon, was a French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman whose thought had a substantial influence on politics, economics, sociology and the philosophy of science. He was a younger relative of the famous memoirist the Duc de Saint-Simon.
A Veblen good is a type of luxury good, named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, for which the demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. The higher prices of Veblen goods may make them desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own.
The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is a treatise of economics and sociology, and a critique of conspicuous consumption as a function of social class and of consumerism, which are social activities derived from the social stratification of people and the division of labor; the social institutions of the feudal period that have continued to the modern era.
Institutional economics focuses on understanding the role of the evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping economic behavior. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen's instinct-oriented dichotomy between technology on the one side and the "ceremonial" sphere of society on the other. Its name and core elements trace back to a 1919 American Economic Review article by Walton H. Hamilton. Institutional economics emphasizes a broader study of institutions and views markets as a result of the complex interaction of these various institutions. The earlier tradition continues today as a leading heterodox approach to economics.
Neosocialism was a political faction that existed in France and Belgium during the 1930s and which included several revisionist tendencies in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).
Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-makers are selected based on their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge. Technocracy follows largely in the tradition of other meritocratic theories and assumes full state control over political and economic issues.
In economics, a price system is a system through which the valuations of any forms of property are determined. All societies use price systems in the allocation and exchange of resources as a consequence of scarcity. Even in a barter system with no money, price systems are still utilized in the determination of exchange ratios between the properties being exchanged.
Howard Scott was an American engineer and founder of the Technocracy movement. He formed the Technical Alliance and Technocracy Incorporated.
Jacque Fresco was an American futurist and self-described social engineer. Self-taught, he worked in a variety of positions related to industrial design.
The efficiency movement was a major movement in the United States, Britain and other industrial nations in the early 20th century that sought to identify and eliminate waste in all areas of the economy and society, and to develop and implement best practices. The concept covered mechanical, economic, social, and personal improvement. The quest for efficiency promised effective, dynamic management rewarded by growth.
The Theory of Business Enterprise is an economics book by Thorstein Veblen, published in 1904, that looks at the growing corporate domination of culture and the economy.
Walter Rautenstrauch (1880–1951) was an American mechanical and consulting engineer, and Professor at Columbia University's Department of Industrial Engineering in the 1930s. He coined the term break-even point, and developing the break-even chart together with Charles Edward Knoeppel.
The Technical Alliance was a group of engineers, scientists, and technicians based in New York City, formed towards the end of 1919 by American engineer Howard Scott. The Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, aimed at documenting the wastefulness of the capitalist system.
The Technocracy Study Course is a technocratic critique of the price system, written by M. King Hubbert and first published in 1934. It is the ideological basis for the Technocracy movement, highlighting economic and social consequences of the capitalist price system and suggests an alternative socioeconomic system based on physical laws and constraints.
Frederick L. Ackerman (1878–1950) was an architect and housing reformer in the United States. He supported proactive engagement of the federal government to supply quality housing for the working class. He participated in the federal government's earliest housing program with architects Clarence S. Stein and Henry Wright on their projects Sunnyside (1924) and Radburn (1928), and worked for the New York City Housing Authority. While he favored traditional architecture and lower income housing, he also designed modernist buildings, luxury apartment buildings and home designs. Ackerman graduated from Cornell University in 1901 and designed Balch Hall on campus in 1929. He also designed Day Hall, Cornell's main administrative building, in 1947.
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory in assuming that a society's technology progresses by following its own internal logic of efficiency, while determining the development of the social structure and cultural values. The term is believed to have originated from Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), an American sociologist and economist. The most radical technological determinist in the United States in the 20th century was most likely Clarence Ayres who was a follower of Thorstein Veblen as well as John Dewey. William Ogburn was also known for his radical technological determinism and his theory on cultural lag.
The Engineers and the Price System, by Thorstein Veblen, is a compilation of a series of papers originally published in The Dial in 1919, each of which mainly analyzes and criticizes the price system, planned obsolescence, and artificial scarcity. The final chapter outlined a plan for a "soviet of technicians".
Guido Hugo Marx was an American mechanical engineer who was active in progressive politics, the technocracy movement, and civil liberties. He contributed to helping feed and house hundreds of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake survivors and led the Stanford Academic Council through changes in academic freedom, culminating in founding both the American Association of University Professors and the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
1 2 William E. Akin (1977). Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocracy Movement 1900-1941, University of California Press, pp. ix-xiii and p. 110.
↑ Beverly H. Burris (1993). Technocracy at work State University of New York Press, p. 30.
↑ Beverly H. Burris (1993). Technocracy at work State University of New York Press, p. 32.
1 2 Frank Fischer (1990). Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise, Sage Publications, p. 86.
↑ Nelson, Daniel; Akin, William E. (March 1978). "Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941". Reviews in American History. 6 (1). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 104. doi:10.2307/2701484. JSTOR2701484.
↑ Elsner, Henry Jr. (1967). The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation. Syracuse University.
↑ Donald R. Stabile, Veblen and the Political Economy of the Engineer: the radical thinker and engineering leaders came to technocratic ideas at the same time, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol, 45, No. 1, 1986, pp. 43-44.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
