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 eve n 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 modify ing 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 the refore 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 can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a ver y
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 e conomic 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 o ther 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 w ilderness 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 a 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 p sychology (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 doesn't seem to be
any remedy for this. All we are trying to do 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 discu ssion could be applied to the leftists of
the 19th and early 20th century.
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 ce rtain 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 strictest sense but a whole spectrum of
related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive
tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that m odern
leftists tend to have 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
advocates, wh ether or not they belong to the minority groups whose
rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to
designate minorities. The terms "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or
"chick" for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woma n
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 advocates hav e gone so far as
to reject the word "pet" and insist on its replacement by "animal
companion." Leftist anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying
anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted
as negative. They want to re place the word "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 hy persensitivity 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-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 infe rior.
They would never admit it 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 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 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. clear ly 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 excus es 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 leftist's
real mot ive 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 everyone's needs for them,
take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy
his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of
competition because, deep inside, he fee ls like a loser.
17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist
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 calculatio n
and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the
moment.
18. Modern leftist 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 a
ll, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious
that modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians
systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply
involved emotionally in their attack on tr uth 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 hate s science and rationality because they classify certain
beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false
(i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's 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 abili ties 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
individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is "inferior" it
is not his fault , but society's, 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 sen se 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 s o 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 me
ans 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 principle, 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 ac tivism.
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 we ll as a
functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that
many leftists are over-socialized, 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 n
ot. 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 explanation s 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 im
portant means by which our society socializes children is by making
them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's
expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is
especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by f eeling ashamed of
HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized
person are more restricted by society's 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 s ocialization is not
just a matter of morality; we are socialized to confirm 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 tha t 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
g et 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 today's 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, nonviole nce 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 it
s 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 t he 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 educat ion 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-m iddle-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 cultur e
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 more
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 l adder 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 couldn't care les s 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, how ever 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 valu es of
our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists
have gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society's most
important principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own
account, violence is for them a form of "li beration." 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 b reak 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 thumb-na il 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
tend encies 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 noti ceable in the left, they are widespread in our
society. And today's 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 eleme nts. 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 de fine 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 develo p 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 po wer is not enough. One must
have goals toward which to exercise one's 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 th e 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 compatib le 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 m ust 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 t o 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 physica l necessities. Thus the
aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretentions; many
European aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and
energy in hunting, though they certainly didn't need the meat; other
aristocracies have com peted 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 th emselves 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 m
uch 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
facilities 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 person's pursuit of a goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito's
studies in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity,
since it is pretty cer tain 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 didn't
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 one's 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 very modest effort needed to ho ld 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
physical necessities for granted, b ut 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
whit e 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 wi ll 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 the ir biological needs, but that it 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 p
arts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a
great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities. 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 un der 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 themselve s 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 bases 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
process-having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining t the
goal-that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are
acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go througho ut
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 aren't 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 w omen and common among the Australian
aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American
Indian tribes. But is does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of
problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less
commo n 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 t
he 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 abnor mal 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 break-down
of natural small-scale communities such as the extended fam ily, 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, te chnology
exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased
disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a variety of
noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the
use of these devices is unrestricted, people who w ant 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 moder n 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 can't make rapid, drastic changes in the tech nology
and the economy of a society with out 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 individual' s
loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a
small-scale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale
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 i nefficient. (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 nucl ear
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 that 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 centu ry American society had an optimistic and
self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today's 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 pi oneer
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
pioneer's 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 he kind of massive behavioral aberration that is
seen in today's 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 don't mean to say that modern society is
the only one in which the power pro cess 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 on e 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 effor t, 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 soc ial
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 de sired 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 a rtificial 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 purposeles sness
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 co mmitment 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 peo ple 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 satis fied
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 else's emplo yee as,
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 most people
who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a
chronic complaint of small-busines s 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
societ y. 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 de signed
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 thos e that
the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with
the 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 pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human
drives that fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequ ately
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 liv e in a world in which relatively few
people - maybe 500 or 1,00 - make the important decisions" - Philip 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 economi sts 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 individual's 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 psychologi
cal 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, ca n 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, nation-wide 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 one's fault, unless is the fault of some im
aginary, 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 frustrat ed, 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 man's 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 securi ty. (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 necessary 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. Wh en 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 one's work in
a different way, but usually one can wo rk only according to the rules
laid down by one's 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 disposed with,
because the 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 t he 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 employer's 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 owne rs. Hence
most of us can survive only as someone else's employee.
74. We suggest that modern man's 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 cris is" 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 hunte r, 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 won't discuss that here.) This phase
having been successfully passed through, th e 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 fulfil lment they need is adequate experience of
the power process -- with 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 ne
cessities, 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
death, as is shown by the amount of effort they exp end 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 use, have never gone through the
power process using their bod ies 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 t he 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 i t
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 don't mean to sneer at "plantation darkies" of
the Old South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content
with their servitude. We do snee r 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 ev er
getting bored with that game.
80. People vary in their susceptibility to
advertising and marketing techniques. Some people are so susceptible
that, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy
their constant craving for 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 aren't
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 p
romotions, 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 in dustry. Of course it's not that simple.
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 these
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 thro ugh 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 pun ished Noriega (attainment of goal). 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 n eed 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 that is directed toward an
artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of t he
"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 sta mps. 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 attack importance to a surrogate activity
simply because the p eople 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 ca ses a person's 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 t hem 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 accompan ies 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 is
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 th e
first place, those who have an insatiable drive for status, or who get
firmly "hooked" or 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. O thers 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 i n 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 one's need for the power process
through surr ogate activities or through identification with an
organization, rather then 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," that notion is simply absurd. Most
scientists work on highly specialized problem that are not the obje ct
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 c hemistry
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 acti vity. 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 couldn't
giver a damn about iso propyltrimethylmethane 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' motiv e just doesn't stand up.
88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't
work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to
the welfare of the human race - most of archaeology or comparative
linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present obvio usly
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 nucle ar power plants. Did
this involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then
why didn't 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 s cientific 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 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 eff
ort (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, it's 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 mass
power 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 fu nds
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 fi rst 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. Freed
om means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a
SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food,
clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in
one's environment. Freedom means having power ; not the power to
control other people but the power to control the circumstances of
one's 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 th at 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 economi c
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 t hese societies one gets
the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than out
society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms
for enforcing the ruler's will: There were no modern, well-organized
police forces, no rapi d 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 don't mean to knock
that right: it is very important tool for limiting concentration of
political power and for keeping those who do have political po wer 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 mak e 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 accepted and published, they
probably would not have attracted many readers, because it's 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, mo st 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, we've had t o kill people.
97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point,
but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what could be called
the bourgeois conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois
conception, a "free" man is essentially an element of a social ma chine
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 bourgeois's "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 rights 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 Po
litical 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 who le 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 do es one have if one can use it only
as someone else prescribes? FC's 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 theo ries 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
control of which people are unconscious, and moreover many peopl e's
ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social
convention than by their real needs. For example, it's 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 transitory - the 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
won't 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 but 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,
than it will alter the society as a whole. In other words, a society is
a system in which all parts are interrelated, and you can't permanently
change any important part without change all the 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.
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 o
nly has 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; 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 t he
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 p olitical culture along its
natural direction of development. British society, of which American
society was an off-shoot, 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
sure - the re is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very
important step. But it was a step along the road the English-speaking
world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its
colonies that were populated predominantly by people of Britis h
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 sign ificantly 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 rule s 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 reexa mine one's thinking and
retain the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.
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 one -- soon swamped by the tide of history -- or, if large
enough to be permanent would alter the nature of our whole society.
This by the first and second principles. Moreover, since society wo uld
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 realized that they would gravely dis rupt 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 fav or 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 suggestions sel
dom 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 d ifferent from those
expected.
113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly
improbably 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 freedo m and
technological progress are incompatible.
RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL
SOCIETY
114. As explained in paragraph 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 t he
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 prod uction 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 indi vidual 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 soc iety.
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 [1 4], 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 can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on
children to excel in these fields. It isn't 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 are in natural harmony with natural human impulses.
Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active
outdoor pursuits -- just the sort of things that boys like. But in our
society chil dren 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 soc iety's
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
individual's 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 indi vidual to be
significant. [17] Thus most individuals are unable to influence
measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. Their is no
conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society.
The system tries to "solve" this proble m 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 away. Thus pesti cide 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 technolog ical 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 extent that it is to the advantag e 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 couldn't function if everyone starved; it attends to people's
psychological need s whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it
couldn't 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 sys tem.
Too 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 on e 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 hum iliating 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, shortag es 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 catalog ue, 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 emp loyees are never given autonomy as
to ultimate goals -- their "autonomous" efforts can never be directed
toward goals that they select personally, but only toward their
employer's goals, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any
company would so on 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 gov ernment 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 t o 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 can't get
rid of the "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "g ood" 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 can't 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 c ontrolled through
the 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 engineeri ng 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 hum an
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 wo uld 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 t hey 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 differ ent 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 today's
world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used extensively, but
only in ways consis tent 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
other's land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, "OK, let's
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 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, g o 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 man's freedom. They took no freedom away from
the walking man, no one had to h ave an automobile if he didn't want
one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much
faster than the walking man. But the introduction of motorized
transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly
man's freedom of l ocomotion. 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 one's own pace one's 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 lon ger
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 opportuni ties, 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 walker's freedom
is now greatly restri cted. In the city he continually has to stop and
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 the important point we have illustrat ed 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 t hat 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 world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own
hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of
politicians, corporation execu tives 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 tech nique 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 G od,
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 us
ually become dependent on 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 -- short of the overthrow
of the whole techno logical 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, g enetic
engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and
computers, etc.) To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would
require a long different 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 pathetic 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 r evolution 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 psycho logical 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 l aw 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 throu gh
their work. But those who oppose technilogiccal invasions of freedom
are working to avoid a negative outcome, consequently there are a 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 technological 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 pr ogresses 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 technologic al 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 appli ed in
such a ways as to threaten freedom and dignity. Still, the technology
would remain waiting. Sooner or later the social arrangement would
break down. Probably sooner, given that pace of change in our society.
Then genetic engineering would begin to i nvade 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 happeni ng with environmental legislation. A few
years ago it 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 syst em 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 wh ich the system is
likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least weaken it
sufficiently so that 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 his 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, i t 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 a
re 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 obfus cation 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, or 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
pu rsing 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 b e
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? Te chnology
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
conceivab le 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 inter est 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 s ystem 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 isn't 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 a such a way as to reconcile freedom with
technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial-tech
nological 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 cann ot 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
ma ke 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 of application of any one
segment of technology, such as genetic engineering, but unde r 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 limite certain aspects of
technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome. But
revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward -- fulfillment of their
revolutionary vision -- and therefore work harder and more persistently
than reformers do.
142. Reform is always restrainde by the fear of
painful conseque nces 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 su ch
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 on e society to another. Some of the pressures are physical (poor
diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological
(noise, crowding, forcing humans behavior into the mold that society
requires). In the past, human nature has been appro ximately 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 rong:
rebellion, or crime, or c orruption, 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 gradua
lly, through conquest, attrition or evolution) replaces 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 coud be pushed only so
far and no farther. But to day this may be changing, because modern
technology is developing way of modifying human beings.
145. Imagine a society that subjects people to
conditions that amke them terribley unhappy, then gives them the drugs
to take away their unhappiness. Scien ce fiction? It is already
happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the
rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent
decades. We believe that this is due to disruption fo the power
process, as explained in par agraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong,
the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME
conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the
conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them
antidepressant dr ugs. In effect, antidepressants area a means of
modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him
to toelrate 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 methods of controlling human behavior that modern society is
developing. Let us look at some of the ot her 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 win ning 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 wi th an essential means of escape. While absorbed
in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety,
frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don't
have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing
nothing a t all, because they are at peace with themselves and their
world. But most modern people must be contantly occupied or
entertained, otherwise the get "bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy,
irritable.
148. Other techniques strike deeper that the fore
going. Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid's
behind when he doesn't know his lessons and patting him on the head
when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for
controlling the child's development. Sylvan Learning Ce nters, 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 conque r 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 int o 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 ab use 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 of the
system.
149. Presumably, research will continue to increas
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 mentiond the use of drugs in this connection.
Neurology may provide other avenues of 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 the such
methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of t he
body that affect mental funtioning.
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 system's
economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings
behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion;
children who won't 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 (i.e., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism,
terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. A ll these
threaten the very survival of the system. The system will 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 f o
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 itw own survi val, a new watershed in
human history will have 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 thos e 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 th e 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
humanitarian justification. For e xample, 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 Center s to have them manipulated into becoming
enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their
children's welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one
didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their
kid di dn't have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But
what can they do? They can't change society, and their child may be
unemployable if he doesn't have certain skills. So they send him to
Sylvan.
153. Thus control over human behavior will b e
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 le ast 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 ha ve 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-e ngineering 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 doesn't 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 i f 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 d oes 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 m any 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, some thing like this
seems to have happened already with one of our society's 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 enterta inment 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 telev ision, 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 bro ught 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 c omplex 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 o f
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 yesterday's science fiction is
today's fact. The Industria l Revolution has radically altered man's
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 bee n.
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
t o 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 i nto 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 t hose 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..
1 62. 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 behav ior
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 their 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, includin g 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 cooperati on 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 or ganizations 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 na rrow limits.
164. Don't 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 system's survival. O n 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 motiv e 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
unab ated 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 othe r 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 t here 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 w ork 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 c annot be reconstituted. The
factories should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc.
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 break s 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 world's population has
become so overblown that it cannot even fee d 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 pr obably 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 wor k 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 deep trouble so that there would be a good
chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyw ay; 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 the
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, an d
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 all certain that
the survival of the system will lead to less suffering than the
breakdown of the system would. The system has already caused, and is
continuing to cause , immense suffering all over the world. Anc ient
cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory
relationship with each other and their environment, have been shattered
by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole
catalogue of economic, environmental, social a nd 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 it 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 problem
s 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 abut
what Iraq or North Korea will do with genetic eng ineering?
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. That's 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 attempt 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
that the present one. For example, the scientists boast th at 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 for society far more rapidly
that it has been solving old ones. Thus it will take a long difficult
period o f trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of
their Brave New World (if they ever do). In the meantime there will be
great suffering. So it is not all clear that the survival of industrial
society would involve less suffering than the b reakdown 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 decade 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 develop ing intelligent machines that can do all
things better that 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. Th
e 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 can't 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 the 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 machines become more and more intellig ent, people will let
machines make more of their decision for them, simply because
machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones.
Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to
keep the system running will be s o complex that human beings will be
incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will
be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines
off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off
woul d 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 of his personal computer, but co ntrol over large systems of
machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today,
but with two difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have
greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer
be necessary t he masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the
system. If the elite is ruthless the 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 b irth rate
until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the
elite. Or, if the elite consist 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 everyone' s 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 cour se, 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 be
ings 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 w
ill be placed; They will need more and m ore 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 I
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, p
rovided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels
that serve that needs of the system. We can imagine into channels that
serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which
there is endless competition for positi ons of prestige an 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 needs for power only by pushing large
numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR
opportunity for power.
176. Once 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 of
industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people will would
spend their time shinning each others shoes, driving each other around
inn taxicab, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each
other's 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 biological or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a
way of life.
177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above
do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of
outcomes that seem to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible
scenarios that are an y more palatable that the ones we've 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 t hose 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" that ever and their physical and mental
qualiti es 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 God's will, or whatever); and whatever may be
left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserv ed 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 it is likely that neither the
human race nor any other important organisms w ill 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 tr ansformed.
178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain
that technology is creating for human begins a new physical and social
environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to
which natural selection has adapted the human rac e physically and
psychological. If man is not adjust to this new environment by being
artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a
long an painful process of natural selection. The former is far more
likely that the latter.
17 9. 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 the y think it is inevitable. But we
(FC) don't 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 pro mote 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 possib le. 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 be ing 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 financ ial crisis in France, by
military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we
propose in something along the same lines.
182. It will be objected that the French and Russian
Revolutions were failures. But most revolutions have two go als. 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 existing form of society.
183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic
support, must have a positive ideals well as a negative one; it must be
FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positi ve 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 nat ure, 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. Nat ure 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 i s 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 dama ge. 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 s
ociety. 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. Nev ertheless, 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 natu re (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 not other way that people CAN live . To
feed themselves they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or
hunter, 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 society -- well, you can't 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
oppose d 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 th at 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 ideolog y 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, intemp erate 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 intel ligently 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 sys tem
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 rev olutionaries 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; th
ough 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 doesn't 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-elit e 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 w ant
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 soc ial 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, e thnic 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 fo cus 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 it
self 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 ski llful 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 of
fice and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe setback. For
thi s 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 revo lutionaries. 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 bas is.
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 T he 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, di ctatorial 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
possibl e. 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 dictato rs. 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. Revolutionar ies 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. I will be eaier to destroy the industrial system on a
worldwide basis if he world economy is so unified that its breakdown in
any on major nation will lead to its breakdwon in al industrialized
natio ns.
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 m ajor 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 distingu ish
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 entity--that is,
the industrial system--has immense pow er 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 sm all 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 f
or 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 wi th 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 themse lves
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 techno logy 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 revolution aries
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 th at 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 tech nology 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 isn't
bad for you if used in moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine
are even good for you! It won't 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 shoul d 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 person's genetic constitution, but it
appears that perso nality 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 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 doesn't
matter all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or
through childhood training. In either case the 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 worl d 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 must reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so they
will be worsening the population problem only slightly. And the most
important problem is to get rid of the industrial system, because once
the industrial system is gone the world's population necessarily will
decrease (see paragraph 167); whereas, if the industrial system
survives, it w ill continue developing new techniques of food
production that may enable the world's population to keep increasing
almost indefinitely.
206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only
points on which we absolutely insist are that the single overr iding
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 regress ion 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 commu nities 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 r egress 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
cou ld 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 until rather recent times did the sanitation of
European cities 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 tec hnology 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 sho p 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 an d 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 dr ying 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 b uilt 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 absenc e 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
particular to the modern form of society, and it seems not to have
existe d 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 remai ned 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
soc iety occurs only under special conditions. So there is no reason to
assume that long-lasting technological regression cannot be brought
about.
212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward
an industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no u se in
worrying about it, since we can't 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 are often unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose
goals and membership are not in itially 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 can't
have a united world without rapid t ransportation and communication,
you can't make all people love one another without sophisticated
psychological techniques, you can't have a "planned society" without
the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the
need for power, an d 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] t oo 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.< p> 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
becom es 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 universities where
leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take
away from everyone else's 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 mor e 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 follower s 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
eve ryone. (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 don't know of any better words to designate the sp ectrum 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 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 leftists
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 leftist's 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 p rocess 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 negati ve 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. I t's 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 alco hot 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 unwholes ome,
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 tha t 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
becau se, once again, the leftist is motivated less by distress at
society's 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 leve l 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 Hoffer's
book, "The True Believer." But not all True Believers are of the same
psychological type as leftists. Presumably a truebelieving nazi, for
instanc e is very different psychologically from a truebelieving
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 whi ch we must
admit we don't know how to deal. We aren't 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 commit ment 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
don't have all these totalitarian tendencies." It's quite true that
many leftists, possibly even a numerical majority, are decent pe ople
who sincerely believe in tolerating others' values (up to a point) and
wouldn't 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 char acter 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 movem ents 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 w ho
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 gut s 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 ap peared 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 wron g 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. mi
litary 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 couldn't bear to put themselves in
opposition to communism. Today, in those of ou r 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 do esn't 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 personaliti es
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 dec ide 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 d eciding 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 no t meet any of the criteria. Again,
you just have to use your judgment.
229. The leftist is oriented toward largescale
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 ton
e. He tends to be for gun control, for sex education and other
psychologically "enlightened" educational methods, for 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 m ost 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 te chniques 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, ideol ogy 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 sy stem 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
different iated 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 st ronger than that of
the average bourgeois.
FINAL NOTE
231. Throughout this article we've 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 f or brevity made it impossible for us to fomulate 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 don't
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. 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 t
ypes 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 vic tims 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, sympto ms 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 Victor ian 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 shift ed from sex to aggression.
3. (Paragraph 27) Not necessarily including
specialists in engineering "hard" sciences.
4. (Paragraph 28) There are many individuals of the
middle and upper classes who resist some of these values, but usually
their resi stance 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 reasons why these values have become, so to
speak, the offi cial 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 t
alent 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 moral of the other
classes. Women are encouraged to have careers be cause 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 don't want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do
their thinking for them. There is an element o f truth in this. People
like to make their own decisions in small matters, but making decisions
on difficult, fundamental questions require facing up to psychological
conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. Hence they tend
to lean on others in making difficult decisions. The majority of people
are natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have direct
personal access to their leaders and participate to some extent in
making difficult decisions. At least to that degree they need autono my.
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 lac k of goals whose attainment requires effort leads to boredom
and that boredom, long continued, often leads eventually to depression.
Failure to obtain 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 t oward 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 neces sarily 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 hum an history, the
goals of a hand-to-mouth existence (merely providing oneself and one's
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 th e 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 th ese 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 necessit y of 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) traditiona l attachments, particularly to the
family had to be abandoned if nationalism were to develop to 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
breviety 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, educ
ators, "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 re ally 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 satisf
y 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 can't c laim that
today's 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 s pend millions on
advertising wouldn't 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 pe ople buy things they don't want and don't 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
don't 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 phy sically 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 li berals and leftists would wish to solve
our social problems by having society guarantee everyone's 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 f or people's 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 g un 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 elim inated 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 mea ns 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 jus t 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 i s
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 gu
arantees 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
property, and with it the i ncreasing 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. It's citizens were
used to considerable personal freedom. Whether teamsters, fa rmers or
artisans, they were all accustomed to setting their own schedules, and
the nature of their work made them physically dependent on 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 b y 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 i n larger
establishments were mutually dependent on their fellows. as one man's
work fit into another's, so one man's 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 o r
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 Budd hist bank clerk in Tokyo, a Communist
bank clerk in Moscow are far more alike than the life 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," Ballentine 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 tre atment 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 go od things can add up
to a bad thing, we will illustrate with an analogy. Suppose Mr. A is
playing chess with Mr. B. Mr. C, a Grand Master, is looking over Mr.
A's 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 the game, since there
is not point in Mr. A's 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 individual's life easier for him in
innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him o f 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 h uman 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 one's own ideology or
religion.
24. (Paragraph 139) A qualificati on: 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, circumscr ibed, 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 don't mean to suggest that
the efficiency or the potential for su rvival of a society has always
been inversely proportional to the amount of pressure or discomfort to
which the society subjects people. That is certainly not the case.
There is good reason to believe that many primitive societies subjected
people to less pressure than the 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 t hat 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 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 c ertainty 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 subjectin g 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 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 I'm rooting for the machines."
29. (Paragraph 154) This is no science fictio n!
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 psychologic al 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 treatmen t would 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 re bellion 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, wide spread, 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 vaccuum in our society
that could perhaps be fil led 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 adh erents 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 i
n 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 piecemea l 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
we'll be very lucky. It's 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 va riety 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 FC's 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 necessarily 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.
Source:
http://www.time.com/time/reports/unabomber/wholemanifesto.html