Against technocracy (Part 1) (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a scene in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), where Captain Jean-Luc Picard comments: ‘The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money does not exist in the 24th century…The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity’.

Such sentiments draw on a long tradition of utopian thinking. A common feature of such thinking is the idea of material abundance. Abundance is what renders money obsolete.

In the painting The Land of Cockaigne by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1567), a trio of figures is depicted dozing beneath a tree, their tools of the trade lying unused beside them. This is a magical world in which a cooked goose makes itself available on a platter and a roasted pig trots past with a carving knife stuck in its flank. No need to lift a finger to satisfy one´s hunger pangs.

The painting has attracted different interpretations. For some, it represents a moralising critique of the spiritual emptiness associated with sloth and gluttony (‘consumerism’); for others, the wistful dream of a world beyond grinding labour and material deprivation.

The Cockaignian tradition can be traced to the folk utopias of early medieval Europe and even earlier. What is striking about it is the relative lack of emphasis on technology as the means of achieving abundance. Mother Nature, not human ingenuity, was the provider of plenty.

This began to change over time, Bacon´s scientific utopia, The New Atlantis (1627), being an early example. From the mid-18th century, small-scale cottage industries gave way to the factory system. This was the first industrial revolution based on steam power and mechanisation. We have since had a second industrial revolution, commencing in the late 19th century (Fordist mass production and electrification), a third in the late 20th century (automation and digital electronics) and are currently in the throes of a fourth, featuring such cutting-edge innovations as AI, machine learning, the Internet of Things, advanced robotics and biotechnology.

Marx and Engels

When Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto in 1848, the Second Industrial Revolution had not yet begun (the first patented electric light bulb was still decades away). They held that socialism depended not only on a majority wanting it and understanding what it entailed, but also on the productive apparatus being sufficiently developed to ensure the reasonable needs of the population could be adequately met.

In the mid-19th century, this was not possible. For this reason, the Manifesto called for the ‘centralisation of all instruments of production in the hands of the State, ie, of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible’. State ownership was thought to be a more effective way of achieving this by capitalising on economies of scale.

However, by the late 19th century, there was a clear shift in their thinking. Thus, their 1872 Preface to the Manifesto stated that, because of the advances of modern industry since 1848, the state capitalist transitional measures they earlier proposed had become ‘antiquated’ and that ‘no special stress’ should be laid on them.

Interestingly, in 1878, we find Engels writing: 

‘The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here’ (1878, Anti Dühring, Part 3).

New thinking about how to expedite a post-capitalist society was certainly required (and Marx and Engels were moving in this direction), but sadly, many supposed ‘Marxists’ today seem to be trapped in a time warp, their vision limited to nothing more ambitious than the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights of industry’.

Edward Bellamy

Back then, socialists were not alone in recognising the growing technological potential to supersede the capitalist money-based economy. A foretaste of a non-Marxian technocratic version of this was provided by the American journalist, Edward Bellamy, in his fictional work Looking Backward (1888).

This was an enormously influential book, particularly in America, selling over a million copies shortly after publication. In it, Bellamy described the huge economic benefits that would result from dispensing with money:

‘Another item wherein we save is the disuse of money and the thousand occupations connected with financial operations of all sorts, whereby an army of men was formerly taken away from useful employment’.

However, his vision of a future moneyless society was a statist one, the ‘nation’ being deemed ‘the sole employer and capitalist’ (reminiscent of Lenin’s later description of ‘socialism’). Production was organised under the aegis of a ‘General Council of the Industrial Army’.

There was limited political democracy insofar as the government was elected, with this kind of society enjoying broad support, but practical decision-making itself was generally top-down and paternalistic. Labour would take a compulsory, quasi militaristic form (unlike Marx´s idea of ‘freely associated labour’) with individual consumption being rationed via a credit card scheme.

Bellamy saw this future moneyless society as being technically advanced and exhibiting a high degree of automation. This was not a vision that appealed to everyone, however. William Morris, who likewise wrote about a future moneyless society in News from Nowhere (1890), was critical of Bellamy´s outlook – in particular, its negative depiction of work as a coerced activity requiring extrinsic incentives to motivate individuals to work.

The idea of work being intrinsically undesirable is also implicit in some contemporary representations of a moneyless future. One example is the concept of ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ (FALC), associated with writers such as Aaron Bastani.

Automation will undoubtedly play an important role in a post-capitalist society, particularly when it comes to work deemed dangerous, dirty or monotonous. However, we would surely not want to eliminate all work and the potentially enormous creative pleasure to be derived from working. It is the terms and conditions under which we currently work that are the problem, not necessarily work itself.

All too often, work is unthinkingly equated with waged employment. These are not the same. In fact, even today under capitalism, most work is performed outside the money sector, not within it (María Ángeles Durán 2012, ‘Unpaid Work in the Global Economy’, Fundación BBVA).

We need work, or labour, as a form of creative self-expression. In hunter-gatherer societies, the distinction between work and play tends to be blurred. Much the same approach to work is found in Marx´s description of a higher phase of communist society in which ‘labour has become not only a means of life, but life’s prime want’ (1875, Critique of the Gotha Programme).

The Technocracy Movement

Bellamy´s futuristic society has been interpreted to represent a proto-technocratic utopia. However, the term ‘technocracy’, denoting governance by technical experts, was only coined somewhat later, in 1919, by an engineer, William Smyth. The basic idea behind this subsequently found expression in the rise of a movement in the 1930s in America (also in Canada and parts of Europe), bearing that name: the ‘Technocracy Movement’.

Though Howard Scott and Marion King Hubbert founded this movement, the individual thought to have first clearly set out the basic principles of technocracy was the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen in 1921, in an article titled ‘Engineers and the Price System’.

Veblen saw technological development as paving the way to the reorganisation of the economy, leading automatically to the gradual disappearance of money. Technological innovation followed its own developmental trajectory. The price mechanism was regarded as simply a wasteful and unnecessary encumbrance on production. It did not so much ‘guide’ technological development as follow it (and profit from it).

Veblen envisaged the decline of business culture and its replacement by a more technically-minded society in which people like scientists and engineers would lead the way. There was, he suggested, a built-in or deep-seated antagonism between the pecuniary values promoted by financiers and businesspeople and the industrial values embraced by the technicians and skilled workers.

The economist J M Keynes later said something similar in his 1930 essay ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’. Keynes suggested that within a century, technological progress and rising affluence would cause our obsession with money to die out. At the same time, the working week would contract to a mere 15 hours on average.

During the Great Depression, interest in the Technocracy movement grew rapidly, and the movement became quite popular for a brief period (at one point attracting hundreds of thousands of adherents) before going into steep decline following the implementation of Roosevelt´s New Deal reforms that drew support away from the movement.

Among the various ideas it advanced was the suggestion, grounded in Scott´s ‘Energy Theory of Value’, that energy units (joules) should replace money as the unit of accounting in the production and distribution of goods, with citizens being allocated ‘energy certificates’ to regulate consumption. What lay behind this was the belief that the money system was something inherently wasteful and oriented towards the perpetuation of needless scarcity. As one contemporaneous article noted:

‘Technocracy states that price and abundance are incompatible; the greater the abundance, the smaller the price. In a real abundance, there can be no price at all. Only by abandoning the interfering price control and substituting a scientific method of production and distribution can an abundance be achieved’ (Sept 1937, “What is Technocracy”, The Technocrat).

Jeremy Rifkin and Zero Marginal Cost

The claim about increasing abundance brought about by the price-collapsing effect of technological innovation is the stuff of much recent sensationalist speculation. According to Jeremy Rifkin, author of the best-seller The Zero Marginal Cost Society (2015), the ‘emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism’.

However, Rifkin´s thesis is based on a flawed understanding of marginal cost pricing. Even if the marginal cost of producing some item (the cost of producing one additional unit of this item) fell to zero, there are still fixed costs to account for. Information goods, for example, may be ‘non-rivalrous’ in the sense that if I use the internet to do a Google search, it doesn’t prevent you from doing the same. But, internet-based corporations like Google or Meta still have enormous fixed costs to pay for. They still have to generate revenue to cover these costs and realise the huge profits they make in the process.

For the same reason, the prognosis of people like the billionaire, Elon Musk, about AI eliminating all jobs within two decades is fanciful in the extreme. Remarkably, someone who has profited so much from capitalism seems to know very little about how it actually works.

Capitalist production presupposes sufficient ‘effective demand’, such that a business can expect to realise a profit meeting this demand. Without the prospect of profit, even essential needs will remain unmet. To satisfy them, workers depend on paid employment in a capitalist, money-based economy.

How would this be possible if no one had a job? Living labour, not machinery, is the source of capitalist profit. In theory, if all work were automated, the rate of profit would fall to zero, and capitalism would cease to exist.

However, this is not remotely likely to happen. Well before that, Marx’s famous ‘counteracting tendencies to the falling rate of profit’ would kick in. For instance, growing technological unemployment would depress wages, thereby paradoxically making it more profitable once again to employ more labour.

Thus, there are self-correcting mechanisms that pre-empt the sort of scenario that people like Musk have in mind. Indeed, some studies suggest AI will lead not to a reduction but to an increase in jobs overall, with its main impact being to transform the nature of work under capitalism.

We cannot depend on technological innovation alone to transcend capitalism. This is a major weakness of the technocratic paradigm, which we will examine in Part 2.

Robin Cox

Link to Part 2.

Blogger's Note:

Star Trek: First Contact was reviewed in the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Against Technocracy (Part 2) (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

According to Jason Crawford:

‘The 19th century was dominated by a belief in the power of human reason and its ability to advance science and technology for the betterment of life. But after World War I and the Great Depression, it got harder to believe in the rationality of humanity or in the predictability and controllability of the world’ (The lure of technocracy).

As Crawford notes, in the 1920s, a ‘democratic realist’ school of thought emerged, exemplified by individuals like Walter Lippmann. The masses were viewed as fundamentally irrational and uninformed. Their role in public life should be limited, with fundamental decisions affecting the future of society being entrusted to a tiny, informed elite. Democracy should be redefined as ‘rule for the people but not by the people’.

The elitist assumptions behind such thinking found expression in the 1930s in such forms as Stalinism, the growth of fascism, and the rise of the Technocracy Movement itself.

During the early post war boom, increasing living standards and low unemployment shaped the optimism conveyed in books like Galbraith’s The Affluent Society (1958). In his subsequent work, The New Industrial State (1967), sometimes called a ‘blueprint for technocracy,’ Galbraith argued that a corporate ‘technostructure’ of experts and managers had come to dominate businesses, eclipsing owners and shareholders – an argument anticipated by James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution (1941).

In this ‘affluent society,’ Galbraith argued, the ‘technostructure’ should shift its focus from just economic growth to broader social goals, including more public investment and reducing inequality. His position overlapped with elements of the pre war Technocracy Movement, particularly its emphasis on scientific, centralised economic management.

However, there were also differences in that the latter opposed the capitalist market and money. The existence of money was deemed incompatible with abundance because of the way the price system worked.

Paradoxically, the growing prosperity that many workers experienced in the early post-war years provided the conditions out of which a broad counterculture movement emerged. This called into question the idea of top-down, expert-led coordination of society, as well as the basic direction in which technological development was heading. The hippies of the 1960s were perhaps the vivid example of this, representing a confluence of tendencies opposed to militarism, environmental destruction in the name of progress and the threat to individual freedom posed by an increasingly oppressive and intrusive technology.

As post war prosperity faded and capitalism entered recession in the 1970s, these conditions that had sustained the counterculture weakened. The downturn exposed the limits of Keynesian demand management, whose reliance on deficit spending failed to overcome the built-in capitalist trade cycle of boom and slump. In response, Keynesianism gave way to a more market oriented policy framework –monetarism – the cornerstone of the emerging neoliberal order.

The Technocracy Movement, having peaked in the 1930s, declined sharply thereafter. Some of its core ideas were simply absorbed into wartime economic planning, making the movement somewhat redundant. Later, in the context of the Cold War, its anti market and central planning orientation fell out of favour because of the perceived resemblance to Soviet state planning. At the same time, the technocratic approach to problem-solving was subjected to mounting criticism from a countercultural (and particularly environmentalist) perspective.

For technocracy as a concept to survive, it had to adapt. One interesting example of this was the Venus Project (TVP).

The Venus Project

TVP´s origins can be traced back to the 1970s, though it officially began life in 1995. Its founders were Jacque Fresco, a structural engineer, industrial designer and futurist author who had been involved in the Technocracy Movement in the 1930s, and Roxanne Meadows, an illustrator, designer and architect. They established a research centre at a place called Venus in Florida (hence the name) and published material promoting their ideas.

From a socialist standpoint, TVP unquestionably represented an advance over the old Technocracy Movement. Whereas the latter proposed a system of rationing in the form of ‘energy certificates,’ TVP advocated, instead, a ‘free access’ model for the distribution of goods and services. This required making the industrial and natural resources of the planet the common heritage of all humanity. All forms of sectional or private ownership (including state property) of the means of production would cease to exist.

Thus, a resource-based economy (RBE) would mean goods and services being freely available to individuals to take for themselves, with cybernetic feedback and automated resource management working to ensure adequate real-time availability.

Another breakthrough was TVP´s rejection of the concept of a single universal unit of accounting (money, labour-time or energy units). The need for this only arises in a system based on quid pro quo exchange, where you have to ensure that what is being exchanged is equivalent. This requires commensurability.

However, commensurability becomes irrelevant in a non-exchange, free-access model. Accounting, according to TVP, would be based on purely physical metrics, dubbed ‘resource-based accounting.’ This resembles the socialist idea of calculation-in-kind, but the emphasis is more on resource flows and biophysical limits (an example of technocracy´s adaptation to environmental criticism).

However, there are also serious flaws in TVP´s outlook. One is its attitude towards democratic decision-making. Fresco´s approach differed from that of the top-down approach of the Technocracy Movement. He was wary of entrusting scientists with excessive power to make decisions affecting others. He preferred a decentralised system based on collaborative design and making extensive use of automated AI-optimised feedback systems.

In fact, the socialist principle of free access endorsed by TVP is precisely what would pre-empt the possibility of concentrated or asymmetrical power emerging in a post-capitalist society. It removes any leverage that any group or individual could exercise over any other, and thus, is the ultimate guarantor of any truly ‘free’ society.

However, to go further and assert, as TVP does on its own website, that ‘it is doubtful that, in the latter part of the twenty-first century, people will play any significant role in decision-making’ is absurd.

As individuals, we will continue to play a decisive role in the choices we make concerning what we consume and what we contribute. This is implicit in the old socialist slogan, ‘from each according to ability to each according to need.’ An algorithm in a computer programme may facilitate (even anticipate) our choices, but they will still be ours to make. Otherwise, we are looking at some anti-humanistic dystopia where the machines have taken over.

Importantly, there will also be joint decisions to be made that, by their very nature, (inevitably) impact multiple individuals who, accordingly, should have a say in making them. Joint decisions will need to be made at different spatial levels – local, regional and even global – examples of which are literally countless.

You cannot depend on a machine, however sophisticated, to make these decisions for you. This is because they involve human values and human interests. The sociological naiveté of the technological determinists, in that respect, is truly remarkable.

Fresco himself argued ‘Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution’ (2002). Democracy may well be a ‘con game’ in a plutocratic capitalist society, but that is definitely not because there is too much of it but rather, too little!

Another serious flaw in TVP´s approach is its repudiation of economic classes and class struggle. On its website, it states, ‘In no way does The Venus Project advocate this approach to social change. In contrast, The Venus Project approaches social change as a process of guided evolution and a problem of engineering to produce a working alternative.’

This immediately prompts the question – if TVP advocates for the common ownership of the industrial and natural resources by humanity as the material basis of the moneyless post-capitalist world it desires, how is this to be realised without first removing the possibility for a tiny owning class to monopolise these resources at the expense of the rest of humanity? In short, how can you possibly avoid ‘class’? ‘Classlessness’ is implicit in the very way TVP frames its vision of a post-capitalist society, so achieving it, almost by definition, has to involve confronting this vexed question of class.

Broligarchy

Technology is not neutral; it is fundamentally conditioned by today´s class ownership and control of the means of production. This is becoming increasingly apparent in the light of recent developments.

There has been much talk recently about the rise of ‘techno-fascism,’ a dangerous new force, particularly visible in American politics, representing a ‘broligarchy’ of far-right tech billionaires bent on seizing power and reshaping the body politic to suit their interests and ideological inclinations, technology being the means by which they aspire to realise this elitist vision.

In truth, American politics has always been deeply plutocratic, with only the merest paper-thin claim to being a functioning ‘democracy,’ while being constantly subjected to the enormous power of lobby groups and political donations (bribes). Indeed, some argue that the Founding Fathers themselves framed the Constitution precisely this way to guarantee this outcome – ensuring that the interests of the rich and powerful would be perpetually protected.

However, recent developments, particularly since Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, suggest a turn for the worse. It has prompted some to ask whether, given the inordinate influence now being exercised by people like Peter Thiel (aided and abetted by the far-right blogger, Curtis Yarvin), Elon Musk and others, this does indeed represent an attempt on the part of these tech billionaires to ‘seize power’ and dismantle what little there is of democracy in America.

Some commentators suggest that these people see themselves as some kind of Übermensch, superior to everyone else. They resent any barrier in their path or any constraint that would rein in their wealth or power. An example is Thiel, a venture capitalist with a current (2025) personal worth of approximately $22 billion:

‘In a 2009 Cato Unbound essay, Thiel wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” That wasn’t just a provocation, it was a programmatic declaration that aligns him with authoritarians both abroad and at home — culminating in a second Trump administration that daily tests the limits of US constitutional democracy. Climate change, racial justice, and economic inequality all become “distractions” in this framework as they demand collective effort and overlapping interests’ (Christopher Marquis, Jacobin, 6 Oct 2025).

If nothing else, this should serve as a salutary reminder of the risk of relying too much on ‘techno-fixes’ that can sometimes have unintended, and even runaway, negative consequences. Of course, there should always be scope for technological innovation and progress. But innovation should be adapted to, and informed by, the needs and concerns of society in general, and that is simply not possible in a society based on minority class ownership of the means of production.

This is what fundamentally obstructs the implementation of a resource-based economy. Failure to acknowledge this in a bid to appear less ‘partisan’ condemns TVP to promoting an approach that can only depict a future that might be called a ‘nice idea’ but one incapable of being realised.

The Zeitgeist Movement

TVP gave rise to a spin-off called the Zeitgeist Movement (TZM), dubbed the ‘activist arm’ of TVP. It was founded in 2008 by Peter Joseph, a filmmaker, and rapidly expanded to the point of having up to 250 local chapters worldwide, attracting many thousands of supporters. Whereas TVP focused more on blueprints and designing sustainable structures, such as ‘circular cities,’ TZM emphasised grassroots activism and cultural transformation. Underlying tensions arising from these differences in approach resulted in TVP and TZM drifting apart in 2011.

As with TVP, there is much in what TZM says that socialists can endorse, but there are also fundamental, even irreconcilable, differences, particularly over the question of class and the need for democracy.

Nevertheless, any attempt to transcend the rigid barriers a money-based mindset imposes on our thinking is welcome and a step forward. The point is, surely, to take serious steps further in that direction.

Robin Cox

Cooking the Books: An electronic labour-exchange bazaar (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Joseph, the person whose 2007 film Zeitgeist inspired the Zeitgeist Movement, has moved on or, rather, has moved backwards. The Zeitgeist Movement at least spread the idea of a world based on no ownership and open access for all to what they needed without having to pay and in which modern technology would be used to provide plenty for everybody on a world scale. True, what it envisaged was technocratic and it offered no clear way of how it might come into being.

Joseph is now arguing that capitalism can be gradually replaced by the spread of a network of cooperatives that don’t use money:

‘Integral is a federated, post-monetary cooperative economy designed to incrementally replace capitalist market systems and hierarchical governance with a cybernetically coordinated, commons-based model of labor reciprocity ( …) It is not a set of ideals waiting for institutional permission or mass awakening—it is a system that can be lived into, node by node, creating tangible post-capitalist capacity without coercion, ideology, or dependency on state actors’ (integralcollective.io/faq/).

Because this will be operating within the wider capitalist economy, it would not be possible to practise free, open access. People working within the alternative economy would be allocated labour-time credits which they could use to obtain what they need:

‘Rather than using money, Integral employs a non-transferable time-credit system as a reputation-based ledger of contribution, enabling individuals to access the collective goods and services produced across a network of autonomous cooperatives. (…) Integral functions by tracking voluntary labor contributions through time credits, which are not spent like money but act as symbolic tokens of one’s participation. These credits entitle individuals to access the outputs of other cooperatives within the network’.

A similar scheme was discussed by Marx in 1847 in The Poverty of Philosophy, his polemic against the French anarchist Proudhon. Proudhon proposed that products should be priced directly as the amount of time it had taken to make them. Marx pointed out that others had proposed this before and that it had even be tried. ‘Equitable-labor-exchange bazaars’, he wrote, ‘have been set up in London, Sheffield, Leeds and many other towns in England’.

The one in London, opened by the utopian socialist Robert Owen in 1832, ‘used a new currency which was based on labour. Workers could exchange goods for notes according to the time they had taken to make the goods. The notes were measured in hours. The notes could then be exchanged for goods of equal “time value”’ (atom.aim25.com/index.php/equitable-labour-exchange-2).

In the 1860s Proudhon’s followers envisaged the exchangers being worker cooperatives rather than individual artisans and that these would eventually, gradually and peacefully replace the capitalist production-for-profit economy and its wages system. Others, in England and America, saw this as the way to the ‘Cooperative Commonwealth’ that was once an alternative name for socialism.

Joseph is in effect reviving this, but in a modernised form with the backing of computer technology. Marx had warned: ‘These bazaars have all ended in scandalous failures after having absorbed considerable capital.’ We can’t say that this will be the fate of Joseph’s scheme (if it gets off the ground) but it will involve the investment of considerable capital in the computers needed to operate it and in paying for the electricity to power them. That, in itself, indicates that the alternative economy wouldn’t be independent of its capitalist environment, quite apart from the zero chance of it being able to ‘incrementally replace’ capitalism by outcompeting economically the corporate and state enterprises that currently dominate wealth production.

Joseph dismisses the need for a ‘mass awakening’, but a higher degree of consciousness would be required of those prepared to abandon working for wages in the capitalist economy to take part in his blueprint than for political action by an ‘awakened’ working class to establish socialism.

Pathfinders:The Machine inside the Ghost (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enthusiasm continues apace for the online movie-cum-movement phenomenon Zeitgeist, with its articulate, clean-cut and photogenic presenter Peter Joseph touring even harder than Bob Dylan, it seems, to bring word to the world about the ‘resource-based economy’ idea which sounds so new to everyone else and so uncannily like socialism to us. Socialists should applaud and encourage the efforts of Peter Joseph and Zeitgeist activists everywhere to popularise the ideas of non-market production for use, especially because anti-socialists everywhere will do their best to discredit them with any damn-fool argument they can think of.

That’s not to say that there aren’t issues of disagreement, of course. There is a strange emphasis on the technological aspects of the case for a post-capitalist future and proportionally little to say on the role of human activity and decision-making. It’s clear from recent lectures by Peter Joseph (‘Where are we now?’ et al, 2009, YouTube), that far from being merely a matter of emphasis, this bespeaks a quite different perspective on history:

  “I think it is safe to say … Technology is the fundamental catalyst for progress and change. It is by far the primary factor driving the development of human civilisation not only in the facilitation of achieving specific ends but also in the more subtle manifestation of our belief systems, philosophy, frames of reference and how we interpret the world around us.”

It is not safe to say any such thing. If technology was the fundamental catalyst for change then Ancient Greece would have had steam locomotives and China would have ruled the world since the Renaissance. The problem for the ‘technologist’ is to explain why these things didn’t happen.

Socialists are materialists, and materialists look at history as a process of general underlying ‘tectonic’ shifts in material conditions which give rise to often drastic changes, growths or collapses of superstructures built on them, for example, political, social, cultural and technological outgrowths. In this view, technology doesn’t determine change but is both determined by and proactive on underlying material conditions.

In giving technology this unique driving power, Zeitgeist risks overlooking other motors of history, not least the importance of human organisation itself. “Everything in regard to social organisation is a technical process” says Peter Joseph, adding for emphasis: “Society is a technical creation. Science and tech is the overarching element that governs the entire mechanism of social organisation.” From this the conclusion automatically follows that “Those who study those attributes should be given, not control, but the forefront of participation.”

He pours scorn on those ‘paranoid’ types who would fear abuse of power by this implied class of technocrats, asking “What would be their incentive?” Well, who knows? What would be the incentive for crime? We don’t know that either, but that’s not to offer a cast-iron guarantee that there wouldn’t be any. Given the Zeitgeist apparent indifference to human self-determination as a key factor in society and given also a hundred centuries of brutal oppression by power-mad elites who monopolised knowledge among other things, is it really so unreasonable to feel disquiet over this? While the technicians are minding the machines, who’s minding the technicians?

The emphasis on technology develops into a more serious problem however, and one that needs addressing now.  Zeitgeist argues that capitalism is opposed to technological progress, hence the need to abolish it. To take one example, Peter Joseph uncritically repeats the claims of the popular film Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006). This film argues that in the 1990s there was a huge potential American market for electric vehicles (EVs) but that the carmakers and government-backed oil industry deliberately sabotaged it. The problem with the film is that it is the arguments of General Motors (GM), not the pro-EV lobby, which are being borne out by events. Market demand, production costs, technology and the supplies and fuelling infrastructure really were not viable in 1996, and we know that because they are still not ready today (see for instance ‘Drivers resist the electric switch’, Guardian, 16 January). Even as the dust settles over the electric car ‘scandal’ there is a raft of new EV products on the market from GM competitors and from GM itself. Even if GM really were as dumb and parochial as the conspiracy-buffs like to think, the Japanese and the Indians certainly weren’t. The market is maturing. Capitalism is working in just the way that Zeitgeist says that it can’t. It’s changing.

All that’s a matter for capitalism and car nuts, and of no interest to socialists. But they are of huge interest to Zeitgeist, appearing as they do to back up the central argument that capitalism relies on inefficiency and outmoded technology.

This proposition is so demonstrably wrong as scarcely to be worth spelling out. Incredibly, Peter Joseph implies that capitalism will never find a cure for cancer because it will undermine cancer industry profits, and ditto for cheap solar panelling and the power industry. Logically, if capitalism was so anti-progress there would never have been any technology in the first place, nor any industrial revolution. To attack its ‘inability’ to promote technology is to attack it not at its weakest but at its strongest point. Alarmingly, Zeitgeist is choosing precisely the worst ground for its battle-line.

In fact, capitalism has cured or eradicated plague, typhus, syphilis, cholera, polio and smallpox, regardless of the money already being made in treating those diseases. It abolished steam power, horse power and gas light despite its huge investment in those infrastructures. Its achievements cannot and should not be denied unless one wants to look ridiculous. Indeed its greatest achievement is its potential undoing: it has embraced technological progress so successfully that productive processes now make it entirely feasible to move beyond capitalism altogether. 

Workers need to know their enemy, not underestimate or misunderstand its methods. Most of the problems humans have are not caused by lack of technology, but lack of equal access to resources. Millions die because they can’t afford food or clean water or basic cheap medicines. War, violence and oppression are not technological problems, they exist because there are power elites who get their power from private property we humans should not allow anyone to own in the first place. These are the real weaknesses of capitalism, the ones which will not go away, the ones Zeitgeist really ought to be attacking instead of, like EV-nuts, bewailing its ‘failure’ to deliver the latest tech.

It’s possible that Zeitgeist are reluctant to confront the reality of ruling class power, in case the merest hint of conflict causes the enthusiasm to evaporate and the followers to melt away. But we’re not making the class war up, and we can’t wish it away: “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. (Warren) Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning” (New York Times, 26 November, 2006). Tiananmen Square students innocently thought they could win freedom by pushing flowers into gun barrels. In their zeal to promote a vision of a happy-tech cyber-future, the Venus visionaries are tip-toeing on a dangerous edge. In replacing class struggle with a faith in machines, Zeitgeist has created a spectre which will return to haunt them.

Paddy Shannon

Aspect: Capitalist education (1970)

The Aspect column from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have no illusions about the role which institutions like the universities have to play in class society. Like the government and the churches they serve the interests of the ruling capitalist class.

The basis of modern society is the ownership of the means of production by a section only of society and their consequent use to make profits for those owners. The rest of us, cut off from ownership, have to sell our mental and physical energies in order to live. We, who make up over 90 per cent of the population, alone produce all the wealth of capitalist society.

The time has long since past when the capitalists themselves took any part in production. They have long since become redundant parasites, employing specially trained wage-labourers to perform the jobs, in the administration of the State and the management of their businesses, which when capitalism was younger they used to do themselves.

Modern society and industry is now run from top to bottom by paid members of the working class. All the jobs in the administration, planning, production and distribution of wealth are carried out by workers.

The glaring contradiction in modern society is between large-scale social or co-operative production and the outdated sectional ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth. Class ownership has become an anachronism that is holding back the use of society’s wealth to provide plenty for all.

So what have we got? A modern technology capable of providing abundance. Workers capable of operating this highly-developed industrial system, yet doing this in the interests of a non-working, owning class who want their means of production geared to profit-making. But whether these are used to make profits or to satisfy human needs the technology is the same. Thus, the owners face the problem of training workers to administer and operate modern industry.

At one time the task of schools was merely, by means of religious indoctrination, to break in the children of the working class to the sort of discipline and hard work they could expect when they went into the factories and mills and mines. But with the growing application of science to production the employers required more and more specially-trained workers. In 1870 the State brought in compulsory elementary education. More money was spent on technical schools. Soon, a three-fold division emerged in education: Elementary schools turning out factory workers; secondary schools turning out clerks; and the public schools teaching the children of the ruling class to be the rulers. This division was recognised and enshrined in the 1944 Education Act which made secondary education compulsory.

Compelled by economic necessity to spend money through the State on education, the capitalists came to expect more of schools than mere indoctrination. They wanted to turn out workers who understood what they were doing in the factory or office. They wanted, in other words, an educated or rather a trained working class.

Hence, in capitalist society, money spent on education comes to be seen as an “investment”, the return on which can be calculated in commercial terms. The educational system becomes the “education sector” of the economy or the “knowledge industry”. Thus Lord Butler, former Tory politician now an academic, can write about students “as the type of capital investment which will accrue with every year” and which has “enormous value” (The Times, 20 November 1968). Labour Ministers are not different. Gordon Walker, who used to be Education Minister, wrote in the Financial Times (11 March 1968) about the colleges of education achieving “a striking increase in productivity”, that is, turning out more teachers per £ invested.

People like to think of education as something outside the commercial world where human rather than commercial values are taught and learned. Thus all this talk of “investments”, “industry” and “productivity” in connection with education seems offensive and cynical. But Butler and Gordon Walker are being realistic. They are telling the truth. What is called education is today prostituted to the service of capitalist industry and its profit-making, pandering to its manpower and research needs. Education today really is an industry, a sector of the economy turning out a certain kind of product, whose performance is judged on the rate of return it brings on the capital invested in it.

This, of course, applies equally to the universities—though how they were captured by Big Business is another interesting story.

For universities existed before the rise of capitalist industry. They came into being in the Middle Ages as centres of religious learning where people could study theology, law and medicine. Indeed up until the end of the 18th century nearly all graduates were Church of England clergymen and until 1871 acceptance of the 39 Articles was a condition for going to a university (the poet and revolutionary Shelley was expelled from Oxford in the 1820’s for being an atheist). In the last century Oxford and Cambridge, the main universities, were institutions turning out Anglican clergymen and top civil servants. Since at that time the governing class still managed its own affairs, their role was to train the ruling class to rule.

Capitalist industry was faced with the problem of turning these bastions of aristocratic privilege into the knowledge industry, of driving out leisurely learning for its own sake and replacing it by business and technical training. Many of the early manufacturers were non-conformists and so were barred from Oxbridge. They therefore used their money to set up their own rival institutions—the redbrick universities—where the emphasis was on science and commerce rather than on Latin and Greek. The capitalists denounced the old universities as “a collection of books” and “a place where nothing useful is taught”.

This was an ironic situation. The mediaeval origins and traditions of these old universities, geared to serving a leisure class, made them value learning as such and resist the capitalist pressures to reduce them to the simple task of training managers, engineers and technicians for capitalist industry.

Traditionally, then, the universities were attended only by the sons of the rich, and especially Oxbridge by the idle sons of the idle rich. This is no longer so. Part of the money invested in education goes to provide grants for children of the working class to go to college. 90 per cent of students are the sons and daughters of workers maintained at college out of local authority grants. When after three or four years training they leave university, they enter the labour market just like someone leaving school at 15. Thanks to the capital invested in them, their ability to work is more valuable and so they can get a higher wage. But wage-workers they still are. The labour market for graduates is conducted partly through the advertisement columns of papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Observer, but now increasingly capitalist firms are entering the universities and trying to sign up students even before they graduate.

Make no mistake about this: students come from the working class and are merely being trained as special high-grade workers who still have to find an employer to live. Most students come from the working class and are being trained to fill the top posts in the State and industry.

Universities are capitalist bodies geared to producing valuable graduates for the employing class to exploit. So it is not surprising that these students who have seen this can only regard as hypocrites those academics who proclaim that the universities are “republics of learning” or “communities of scholars” dedicated to seeking after Truth. Students have every right, like other workers, to protest about being treated as an “investment” and judged merely from a profit-making point of view.

Adam Buick

Is There a “Managerial” Revolution? (1943)

From the February 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist class are able to maintain their ownership and control of society’s means of life because they have control of the machinery of government through which laws acceptable to the owning class are made and enforced. That is why Socialists point to the necessity of a Socialist working class democratically obtaining control of the machinery of Government in order to introduce Socialism. Various opponents of Socialism give other interpretations of the facts and one of the theories now achieving some acceptance is that effective control has passed, or is passing, out of the hands of the capitalist class, not into the hands of the working class, but into the hands of the managerial section of industry. A recent book (The Managerial Revolution, by J. Burnham; Putnam; 7/6)) states the case for this view. It was reviewed by the City Editor of the News-Chronicle, the argument in the book being summarised as follows : —

  His (Mr. Burnham’s) thesis briefly is this. The dominant political power was once in the hands of the great landowners, the feudal lords; then it passed to the big merchants and manufacturers—the capitalists. But capitalism is now moribund, because the people who own the instruments of production no longer manage them. The next phase is not socialism . . . but—if I may coin the word, “managism.” Power is now passing to the “social group or class of the managers,” who, in the course of a generation or so, will have achieved social dominance, will be the ruling class in society all over the world.— (News-Chronicle, August 10, 1942.)

It is interesting to observe that the City Editor of the News-Chronicle, Mr. Oscar Hobson. whose views on this matter are certainly entitled to be given some weight, can see no signs that such a development is taking place. He writes : —

  The works managers I know are not of the stuff of which revolutions are made. In this country they are singularly unvocal. They are not a class apart, differentiated from finance executives and all the rest of the capitalist hierarchy. And when Mr. Burnham sees the rise of Nazidom in Germany as part and parcel of the managerial revolution I almost scoff! Where among the Nazi leaders will he find a “manager”?

Who Controls Whom ?
Actual incidents in contemporary capitalism support Hobson’s view as against Burnham’s. All the evidence is that in Germany and Italy it has not been the case that managers have become the political ruling class, but that the Nazi and Fascist leaders, once they have achieved control of the machinery of Government, have set about acquiring or extending their ownership of industrial, commercial and financial concerns. Their actions prove that they at least do not believe that management is the thing that matters, they have gone all out to become owners. A writer in the Times recently described how the Fascist leaders in Italy have used their hold on political power to acquire ownership or shareholdings in businesses; their political control has been used to make them rich. The Times writer summed it up by saying that whereas the Fascists jibe at Britain and America as countries of “plutocrats,” i.e., countries where the wealthy have acquired political power, Italy under Fascism may be described as a country of “cratoplutes,” a country in which the Party bosses have used political power in order to acquire wealth.

In this country recently we have had some examples of how capitalist industry is controlled and the way that control is exercised. On November 17 the case of Sir Roy Fedden was discussed in the House of Lords. According to Lord Brabazon (reported in the Times, November 18) Sir Roy Fedden was chief engineer of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, and was reputed to have outstanding technical achievements to his credit, among them “the most successful radial air-cooled engines in the world,” and Lord Sempill claimed that Fedden is “one of the greatest geniuses in aircraft design in the world.” But the Company, which was originally founded by Sir George White, is controlled by the family—”Never had anyone but the family and relations of it been allowed on the board. Of the present board, none was an engineer ” (Lord Brabazon). But trouble arose and when Sir Roy Fedden refused to agree to the board’s order that part of his  organisation was to be controlled by the Production Manager he was dismissed. Sir Roy Fedden’s own statement was:—

  On February 6 the Chairman gave me six months’ notice, on the grounds they wanted to make a new agreement. … I have never wished to leave the company. While negotiations were going forward I was dismissed on October 1.” (Evening News, October 31, 1942.)

Lord Sempill also stated in the House of Lords (Times, November 18, 1942) : —

  The trouble was a symptom of other troubles in the aircraft industry. Something should be done to prevent a repercussion of the same kind of difficulties in which people on the financial side made war against those on the technical side, and, as in the case of Sir Roy Fedden, threw them out of a job. The other companies specifically concerned with such trouble were the De Havilland Company,, the Fairey Aviation Company, Napiers and Sons, and Short Brothers. There was another, but the matter was sub judice and he would not mention the name.

It will be seen from this that the man with the technical knowledge was entirely at the disposal of the family who owned and controlled.

Another illustration of the vital importance of ownership was given by the case of Sir Edward Baron and Carreras, Ltd., the £5,000,000 tobacco concern. Here the position was that the Baron family hold 150,000 out of 240,000 £1 ordinary shares and it is only the ordinary shareholders who, under the articles of the company, have voting rights on the Board. The case taken to Court revolved around the question whether Sir Edward Baron, the Managing Director, should persist in his refusal to let the majority of directors make their own choice of a director to be re-elected to the Board, it being alleged that Sir Edward Baron had given a verbal contract not to use his voting rights. The Court held that no such contract had been entered into (Times, December 19, 1942), so the family group of shareholders will continue to control the management of the Company. Where, it may be asked, do Mr. Burnham’s managerial group come into this picture? It was solely a dispute between two groups of owners and their nominees, the Baron group and the minority group—nobody ever thought of mentioning the non-owning managers.

It is quite true that with the growth of mammoth amalgamated concerns the direct control of family groups declines, and that in the public utility corporations the State itself takes a hand in the appointment of the boards of directors. This is, so to speak, an interference by the capitalist State, representing the capitalist class as a whole, in the affairs of individual capitalist undertakings, but two points of paramount importance should be observed. One is that the main interest of the owners, the safeguarding of their income from their investments, is not interfered with. The second is that the creation of public utility corporations under some kind of Governmental control is not in the slightest degree the work of the managerial group but is carried out by those who control the machinery of government.

Russia also has been instanced as a country where the so-called managerial revolution, is in progress, but according to a writer in the Economist who refers to Schwarz’s ”Heads of Russian Factories” (Economist, January 9, 1943), Russia has now gone over to one-man control, the controller being the industrial manager appointed by the State. The Economist writer claims that as a result of recent changes the new type of industrial manager in Russia has as his aims : "Fulfilment of the monthly plan, a rising graph of production, absolute obedience and discipline in the workshop, and one-man direction of the plant.” He has “almost unlimited powers to establish his authority and to deal with slackness and infringements of labour discipline.” True he has to deal with the Bolshevik Party “cell” but ”the once familiar conflict between party cell and factory director has long been forgotten. The fullest unity between party and management has in fact been achieved. The manager is now only very rarely a non-party man. The Party on the other hand has evolved into an almost non-political body. All its interests and activities have been centred on the problems of production.”

Here again we see that the State and those who have its backing are supreme against other groups.

In spite of Mr. Burnham the managers will not become a new ruling class unless they do so through political control. The task of the workers still remains that of gaining political control for Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Czechoslovakia's brief Spring (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month Russian. East German. Hungarian and Polish tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and put an end to the "Prague Spring", an attempt to liberalise the state capitalist regime there.

The process of liberalisation had begun in January when the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party voted to replace the ageing Stalinist Novotny as General Secretary with Alexander Dubcek. This represented a decisive victory for the liberalising elements within the Party over the conservative elements. In April the Party published a 24,000 word Action Programme entitled Czechoslovakia's Road to Socialism. On the political field, it proposed an end to censorship, the introduction of freedom of assembly, the expression of minority opinion and various other reforms of a democratic nature. On the economic field, it sought to move away from the centralised, bureaucratic kind of state capitalism that existed in the country towards a more decentralised, market-oriented kind that came to be known as "market socialism" (despite the contradiction in terms). Under a plan drawn up by a professor of economics. Ota Sik, who became one of the deputy Prime Ministers, individual state enterprises were to be given a wide measure of autonomy and forced to compete for markets and bank loans; in addition, elected works councils were to be instituted as a means of preventing management from slipping back into lazy, bureaucratic ways.

Real steps were taken in the direction of freedom of expression and assembly: censorship was actually abolished and views critical of the regime could be freely expressed. Outside Czechoslovakia, intellectuals who had always been sympathetic to Russia but secretly felt guilty about its totalitarian nature welcomed the changes as the coming of "socialism [read: state capitalism] with a human face".

The changes were less welcome to the Russian ruling class and indeed to elements within the Czechoslovak ruling class too. As the statement we published in the Socialist Standard at the time made clear, the main concern of the Russian ruling class was strategic: they were afraid that political liberalisation might get out of hand and lead to Czechoslovakia escaping from the Russian sphere of interest. As this was not a development they could risk, they sent in their tanks to restore a political regime that was potentially less dangerous.

Leading role of the party
Basically, the sort of political regime the Russian ruling class wanted to see in Czechoslovakia was one similar to their own. where "the leading role of the Communist Party" was firmly entrenched. Because of the nature of state capitalism in Russia and similar countries the ruling elite needs to be tightly organised to exercise its control over the means of production. Any weakening of "the leading role of the Party" is therefore a weakening of the position of a ruling class made up of those who occupy the top posts in the Party, the government, the armed forces and the nationalised industries and who in Russia are known as "nomenklatura" after the list of posts filled by party appointees.

Liberal elements within the Czechoslovak Party had begun to waver on the question of the leading role of the Party and it was this that led the Russian rulers to defend their strategic interests. The Party's Action Programme, published in April 1968, had declared that "the leading role of the Party was too often understood as a monopolistic concentration of power in the hands of the party organs" and in a questionnaire prepared with the collaboration of the Party's Central Committee and published in the Party's journal Rude Pravo on 13 May, readers were asked to answer such questions as:

Does the internal democratisation of a Communist Party provide a sufficient guarantee of democracy?
Can you speak of democracy as being socialist when the leading role is held only by the Communist Party?
Should the Communist Party carry out its leadership role through serving devotedly free, progressive socialist development, or through ruling over society?

Technocrats and bureaucrats
Actually, in questioning the leading role of the Party, the liberal elements within the Czechoslovak ruling class had no intention of abdicating power. As the last question above shows, they still wanted the Party to play this role but in a less authoritarian fashion.

They had been forced into this position by the economic situation that had arisen in Czechoslovakia. Leading economists like Ota Sik realised that in the context of world capitalism what Czechoslovakia needed was a competitive economy whose products were able to compete in terms of price and quality with those of other countries. According to Sik. the only way to revitalise the Czechoslovak economy to this end was to move away from centralised, bureaucratic control to decentralised, market control. This would naturally involve taking power from some of the bureaucrats and giving it to industrial managers. It was in this sense that the leading role of the Party was questioned: not that the Party should give up power, but that it should no longer seek to take all decisions centrally.

This — a struggle between technocrats and bureaucrats — is how the struggle between liberals and conservatives was seen, inside as well as outside Czechoslovakia. The present writer recalls a discussion at one of our outdoor meetings in the summer of 1968 in which a Czech student argued that Dubcek was working, quite correctly in his view, to end "the dictatorship of the proletariat" in Czechoslovakia, by which he meant the rule over competent technocrats like his father by (as he put it) "thick workers" appointed to management posts on the basis of their Party loyalty!

It was in fact such ex-workers whose position and privileges were threatened by the Dubcek reforms and who welcomed the Russian tanks with open arms. The conservative elements within the Czechoslovak ruling class were restored to power in August 1968 (Dubcek was not finally removed from office and demoted to a forestry worker until April 1969). but this did not mean that the country's economic problems went away. The new government the Russians installed tried to solve them by introducing a certain measure of "market socialism" while strictly upholding the "leading role" (or political monopoly) of the Party

From Prague to Moscow
Ironically, twenty years later Russia is facing the same sort of economic problems as did Czechoslovakia, and Gorbachev has embraced the economic analysis and solution proposed by Ota Sik in 1968: the granting of autonomy to individual state enterprises to swim or sink in a competitive market situation.

For this is what the much-vaunted perestroika, or restructuring, amounts to. And like Dubcek. Gorbachev has met with resistance from conservative elements within the ruling class, those whose power and privileges are threatened by a relaxation of central, bureaucratic control over the economy. To overcome this Gorbachev too has appealed for support among the population in general, but unlike Dubcek has not for one moment questioned "the leading role of the Party"; and he has no intention of doing so. since he firmly believes that the Party should retain its monopoly of political power. All he wants is to overcome conservative resistance to the economic perestroika that has become necessary to revive Russia's stagnating economy. The furthest he is prepared to go in permitting activity outside Party control is local pressure groups over local issues such as preserving some historic building or opposing a road going through their back gardens.

Gorbachev would answer the three questions posed by Rude Pravo in May 1968. "Yes. the internal democratisation of a Communist Party does provide a sufficient guarantee of democracy”; "Yes, you can speak of democracy being socialist when the leading role is held only by the Communist Party", and "Yes. the Communist Party should carry out its leadership role through ruling over society". On this issue he is in complete agreement with his alleged rival Ligachev. who has declared that "the guarantee of the irreversability of perestroika is the Communist Party" (Observer, 5 June)

For Gorbachev does not believe in democracy. What he believes in is what used to be called "oligarchy". the rule of the few, in his case the leaders of the Communist Party. Nor do the constitutional measures he proposes — limitation on length of terms of office, secret ballots for the election of Party leaders, more power to Party members in Soviets — amount to a "democratisation" of the Party. All he is trying to devise is some method for renewing the cadres of the vanguard party so as to avoid a repetition of the recent government of Russia by sick and tired old men. The Communist Party will continue to be run from the top down even if those at the top are chosen differently (and even that remains to be seen: Khrushchev proposed the same sort of measures in 1960 and the Central Committee used its new powers to vote him out of office).

A collectively-owning state capitalist class such as exists in Russia recruits its members and leaders in a different way from the individually-owning private capitalist class in the West. The latter renews itself through inheritance and also by some small businessmen becoming richer, while the administration of its political affairs is left to politicians elected by a capitalist-minded populace. In Russia the ruling class is organised as a hierarchy — the Party — renewed by recruitment and promotion.

Gorbachev's concern is to provide mechanisms to enable younger and more dynamic people to rise to the top of the hierarchy without having to wait for their predecessors to die. so as to allow the Russian ruling class to pursue its interests at home and abroad more efficiently. This has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy, not even with the limited political democracy that exists in some Western countries. It is not a process of democratisation. but one of reorganisation of the promotion procedures within the Russian ruling class.

Adam Buick

The Affluent Society (1959)

Book Review from the December 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the May and June Socialist Standard we reviewed Galbraith's book "The Affluent Society” in respect of his views on Marxism. We promised to review the book as a whole, but other subjects intervened. We have now been able to make good the omission.

Professor Galbraith's book The Affluent Society (Hamish Hamilton. 25s.) is in refreshing contrast to the academic tradition of bourgeois economics. Not only does he raise questions never formulated in orthodox circles, but he also tries to answer them. His particular concern is with the nostrums, attitudes and values of politicians, pundits and businessmen. These ruling ideas are characterised by him as “The Conventional Wisdom.” What he calls ‘‘conventional wisdom,” we as Marxists would term aspects of the ideological super-structure of capitalism. Of “the conventional wisdom,” he says: —

. . . to some extent [it] has been professionalised. Individuals most notably the great television and radio commentators, make a profession of knowing and saying with elegance and unction what their audiences will find most acceptable. But in general, articulation of the conventional wisdom is a prerogative of academic, public or business position. . . .  It is one of the rewards of high academic rank, although such a rank is also a reward for expounding the conventional wisdom at a properly sophisticated level. (Page 9.)

He further states: —

The conventional wisdom having been made more or less identical with sound scholarship, its position is virtually impregnable. The sceptic is disqualified by his tendency to go brashly from the old to the new.

Professor Galbraith maintains that production has become the major preoccupation of American capitalism and to an ever increasing extent of Western capitalism, generally. It seems that the ruling ideas—“conventional wisdom’’—sees it as the alchemy for solving all social problems. His central theme can be stated in his own words:—

The ancient preoccupation of economic life—with equality, security and productivity, have now narrowed down to a preoccupation with productivity and production. Production has now become the solvent of the tensions once associated with inequality, and it has become the indispensable remedy for the discomforts, anxieties and privations associated with economic insecurity. (Page 93.)

Nevertheless, he thinks there are reasons for the preoccupation of conventional wisdom with ever greater production. If production is ever increasing, they argue, then a greater amount of goods can be distributed among the poor without any corresponding loss to the rich. This will also have the effect of giving a greater semblance of security to the mass of the people as well as taking off the edge of the demand for greater social equality.

People, notes Professor Galbraith, identify economic security with regular employment. The greater the employment, the higher is the level of production. Thus, increase of production is looked upon as the essential means of maintaining employment. In this way argues, “conventional wisdom,” security can be provided for the working population. High pressure advertising sales techniques and propaganda, called by them economic theory, is the dynamic for promotion of sales and increasing production.

Once in the more rarified climate of Victorian days, classical bourgeois economics taught the greater the supply of goods the less would be their marginal utility, that is the less urgent would be the desire of people to satisfy their wants. But the wheel has come full circle. Now the opposite is being taught, i.e. the greater the supply of wants the more urgent for people will their wants become. This refinement of economic sophistication has already been enshrined as “The Theory of Consumer Demand.”

The Sovereign Power

Bourgeois utility theory classically formulated the economic fiction that the consumer is the sovereign power of the economic realm. Via the operations of the market, it is he who is supposedly able to discriminate down to the most subtle nuances, his various wants. It is this subtle ability of consumers to assess the finest shades of the intensity of their desires in a given state of supply of goods which determines the marginal utility, i.e. the market price of the goods they buy. Production, we are solemnly informed, merely serves to gratify their whims.

Professor Galbraith notes that the range and multiplicity of goods offered for sale is not so much determined by the alleged “independent consumer” but rather as the outcome of high pressure publicity and sales techniques of firms engaged in production. In accordance with production for profit, capitalists seek to maximise profits by maximising production. Not only do the various lines of production seek to sell the greatest amount of goods possible, but they seek via advertising, to create wants and so, in the act of production, set up a demand for their products. We may add so far as the consumer being the sovereign power of the economy, he is not even a free subject in the world of consumer choice. The pervasive and persuasive power of ad-mass have seen to that. Not only has the modern wage worker no say in what he produces, he is having less and less say in what he consumes. 

The author points out that ever greater production, and this means almost exclusively the products of private enterprise, is the “conventional wisdom’s” yardstick for measuring economic achievement. Whether the products are good, bad. or indifferent is no concern of the economist. In line with his “objective science," he must remain on such matters, ethically neutral. Or as Professor Galbraith wryly puts it “The first step was to divorce economics from any judgment on the goods with which it was concerned." It would thus appear that it is the occupation as well as the preoccupation of the economist to try to increase demand, so as to increase production, to further increase demand, to further increase production, ad infinitum—ad nauseam. The germ of a|l modern economic theory is to lower consumer resistance.

Production for Production’s Sake

Professor Galbraith sees the major preoccupation of the American set-up and elsewhere, as one of seeking to increase production regardless of what is being produced. Production for production's sake it would appear has become the aimless dreary goal of American and Western capitalism. Such a goal he thinks can only end in social and political bankruptcy.

In one sense capitalism can be regarded as production for production's sake. But here we must sharply differentiate from Professor Galbraith’s view, who sees it merely as an end in itself. True, capitalism is a system without conscious regulation or social purpose. It does not follow, however, that it is purposeless. While one of the essential conditions for commodity production is that commodities must possess use-value, the turning out of such is entirely subordinated to the aims of capitalist production production for profit. This is the restless, never-ending process of capital accumulation. Each act of production has its beginning and end for one purpose—production of surplus value i.e. unpaid labour. It is the expanded production of surplus value which initiates and regulates the expanded production of commodities. In this sense capitalist production can be regarded as production for production's sake.

Professor Galbraith never discusses capitalism at this level of abstraction. It seems the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our social set up. but in our “conventional wisdom.” What is wrong, according to Professor Galbraith, is not the social system but the system of ideas. Not the inherent nature of capitalism but the inherent conservatism and inertia of social thinking. In that case, phrenology or psychology would appear to be more relevant to the studies of the problem of our times than economics.

Ideas and Class Interests

But whatever may be the sins of omission and commission of “conventional wisdom” at bottom it is the expression of private property relations and hence committed in some form or another to the defence and perpetuation of the status quo. An ideology cannot be treated like the alleged love of a man for a woman—“ as a thing past.” So while in his own mind the author may be clear as to what he is attacking he is unclear as to what it is that “conventional" wisdom is really defending.

In actual fact ideology and material class interests are inseparably connected. Because Professor Galbraith inverts social reality by making ideas conventional wisdom—the basis for his social analysis, instead of the economic soil from which they grow, his picture of extant society has an “Alice Through the Looking Glass” perspective. He wants society to be a national undertaking designed for human ends. It is “conventional wisdom” which prevents it. But he fails to come to grips with the substantial reality of the situation, by being unable to see that social production is not geared to social interests but private interests, i.e. owners of capital, and thus the objective source of conflict between the interests of a few and the needs of the whole of society. Conventional wisdom itself is a reflection of that conflict.

Professor Galbraith may flay “conventional wisdom” with invincible logic, but the final illogicality rests with him. He wants “the ruling ideas" to give up their preoccupation with increasing production, but the fact remains that the self expansion of capital, and hence expansion of production, is the basic law of capitalism's existence. Nor is logic his strongest point when he reproves the “ruling ideas” for the reluctance to spend money on social reforms and the readiness to spend money on armaments. It is true both come out of profits, but social services are a “luxury" to be kept within bounds. Armaments are a necessity for the defence of capitalist interests.

Ideas and Logic

Professor Galbraith dwells on the aimlessness of a social set-up whose goal is production for the sake of production. What he ignores is the fact that the national allocation of productive resources towards social ends cannot be undertaken in a society where capital is the form of man's domination over man. He comments acidly on, the nature of our social transactions, but he evades the crucial issue that the very nature of extant society compels the major social transaction to be a cash one and where the social scale is marked off in pounds, shillings and pence, or the equivalent currency and status and prestige values are part of the norms of social assessment. Indeed, in the country where Professor Galbraith lives, it has been said that to be a “failure" is the toughest thing on earth. Such are the set of values, inevitably reared in a set-up whose ruling injunction is — exploit or be exploited.

One can agree with the author that the thinking of “conventional wisdom" is riddled with contradictions, illusions, illogicality and pretensions. But disguised motivation is the heart of all ideologies. Yet the dilemma which Professor Galbraith sees is not as he thinks the dilemma of “conventional wisdom,” it is the dilemma of capitalist society. It is part of the social paradox that whatever the illogicality of conventional wisdom, thinking its basic assumptions are logically consistent with the requirements of class conditioned society. They may see the social reality “through a glass darkly," but at least they see it. Professor Galbraith's idealistic “glass" having no material backing to it. he fails to see reality, he only sees through it.

Nevertheless, it must not be thought that conventional wisdom is ideologically a closed shop. It is always absorbing new entrants into the Establishment. It has accommodated many heretics in the past, it will accommodate many more in the future. Keynes was once regarded by conventional wisdom as a heretic, says Professor Galbraith, when he formulated his “General Theory of Employment." Now vide the author “Keynes . . . was also on his way to constructing a new body of ‘conventional wisdom,’ the obsolescence of some parts in its turn, is now well advanced." It is true that the author tells us that the enemy of “conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events" (page 10). But never does he relate ideas to the economic realities and development of capitalism. Seeing ideas as Kantian "things in themselves." he simply relates ideas to other ideas. It thus becomes the process of the puppy chasing its own tail.

Like most ideologues he does not see the conflict of ideas, including his own as in reality a conflict between the productive forces and the social relation within which they work, but as a struggle between progressive and non-progressive forces. In essence the social problems are not the obsolescence of ideas, but the obsolescence of a system which has outlived its social usefulness. Whether capitalism produces more or produces less from the standpoint of productive activity and human creative energies it will always remain a society materially and culturally impoverished. Not until productive sources and activity are freely and commonly shared in a classless society can the rational allocation of resources towards human ends become the ruling principle of social life.

Professor Galbraith has many telling things to say about capitalism. Yet in the end his own “brave new world " is an American capitalism entrenched behind new lines of defence. He may think he is in hot pursuit of progress. No doubt if he runs hard enough he will catch the coat tails of the Fabians of the 1880’s. If he runs harder still he may come abreast of their notions of a reformed and more humane capitalism.

And so at the end. Professor Galbraith stands for capitalism. albeit a reformed capitalism. If asked then where his basic loyalties lay, in all honesty he would have to reply “on the side of ‘conventional wisdom'."

Ted Wilmott

The Phoney Revolution - Part 2 (1957)

From the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part One

The Managerial Revolution

The Managerial Society is now part of popular mythology. Even in Marx’s time it seems to have been a commonplace, for he quotes Dr. Ure as saying in 1840, that not the industrial capitalists but the industrial managers “are the soul of our industrial system.” (Capital, vol. 3, pp. 454/5).

It is of course true as the managerial theorists say that the unity between owners of capital and the actual direction of production has been ruptured. In fact Marx himself acutely analysed in the third volume of Capital the reasons for this and showed it to be intimately bound up with the concentration of capital (the continuous enlargement of the productive units) and the centralisation of capital (the amalgamation of a number of smaller capitals into a single capital). The centralisation of capital was considerably helped by the tremendous growth of the credit system and with it the emergence of the joint stock company.

When Marx speaks of the credit system he includes the whole financial machinery of capitalism, i.e., banks, finance houses, security markets, etc. It is via the credit system that scattered capitals can be deposited in vast amounts and made available for large scale capital investment. In this way said Marx it “transforms itself into an immense social mechanism for the centralisation of capital.”

The Absentee Capitalist

Joint stock companies (corporations) operate not merely with their own capital but other peoples. Of them Marx says, “Capital … is here directly endowed with the form of social capital … as distinguished from private capital and assumes the form of social enterprise as distinguished from private enterprise. It is the abolition of capital as private property within the boundaries of capitalist production itself.” Marx adds, that it leads to the “transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, and administrator of other peoples capital and the owners of capital . . . into mere money capitalists.” (Capital, vol. 3, pp. 516/17.)

Marx, unlike our modern theorists, did not believe the development of the corporation to be a step towards Socialism. Collective capital, he said, although it gave impetus to the social character of wealth production could never overcome, but only intensify the antagonism of socially produced wealth and private appropriation. He also added that the development of the corporation and “the credit system, brings a new set of parasites . . . promoters, speculators …  a whole system of swindling by means of corporation juggling, stock jobbing and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.” (Capital, vol. 3,, p. 519.)

The hired managers

Marx also dealt with the replacement of the capitalists as industrial entrepreneurs by managers. The early capitalists, while not producing surplus value, supervised the activities of those who did. This appropriation of unpaid labour was called the profits of enterprise. The economic apologists of the day also called it the wages of superintendance. With the vast growth of capitalism the function of the capitalist as a representative of capital became delegated to managers, whose wages of superintendence was fixed at the market price and was but a mere fraction of what the capitalist had appropriated for such work. Managers are then agents for the capitalists and hence agents for capital.

The so-called Middle Class

Managers constitute the elite of the amorphous mass called by some people the new “middle class.” It includes civil servants, professional workers, office staff, salesmen, etc. They are also known as the salariat. The requirement of large scale capitalism has brought about a considerable increase of these types of employees. Labourites and Tories have claimed that the growth of this group of the working population has falsified Marx’s prediction of the decline of the middle class. When Marx spoke of the decline of the “petty bourgeoisie” he was referring to independent handicraftsmen, small traders and those living on small fixed incomes. This prediction holds good. Such people constitute small property owners. The salariat are not an expanded form of these lower sections of the historic bourgeoisie. This “new middle class” is in substance not a property section but a propertyless section of the community, forced to work for a livelihood. The term middle class is not based upon an objective evaluation of the position of individuals in the economic structure of society but on a subjective assessment of one’s occupation, residence, and general cultural qualifications.

The census of classification of occupations (1951) ignored these finer nuances by classifying sections of the working population as industrial and non-industrial. The census also tells us that in this country there are approximately 750,000 managers. Of these 185,000 are termed general managers and directors. Some of these directors will have been appointed to boards of concerns as top ranking technicians, administrators or because they have big names and influence. Some of these directors will be big stock holders who have got themselves appointed with the additional advantages of expense accounts. The general managers for the most part are not substantial shareholders—what ever they hope to become. It is these with the overwhelming bulk of managers the 700,000 or so who are under orders for the concerns for which they work. As such they are representatives of the capitalists, operating in a capitalist environment and working for capitalist objectives. As such they do not form a separate class with aims and economic interests different and in opposition to those who employ them. It is these, along with the highly placed technicians, who constitute the hard core of Burnham’s and the new look Fabian’s alleged managerial class, who they claim have replaced, or are in process of so doing, the capitalist class.

What is a Class?

Having used the term “class” in the context it is perhaps necessary to define it more precisely. In the first place a class is not merely a question of social origins. An individual born in the working class may enter the capitalist class and vice versa. Nevertheless a class tends to perpetuate itself along the lines of its social origins. It is also true that individuals are influenced by the ideas and attitudes of the class to which they belong. But ideas and attitudes do not determine a class structure.

Nor as is popularly supposed is a class made up of people getting near enough the same income. Some highly paid workers may get as much or more than some small capitalists. It does not mean therefore that they have an identity of interests. A civil servant and an aircraft mechanic may both earn £1,000 per year but it does not give them a class affiliation as against those who earn double or half of that amount. Although differences of income are a feature of classes, it is not the size of the income but the source of income, common to a number of individuals which is more important for the purpose of analysis. But to say no more than this would leave the question up in the air.

To discover the real nature of class structure one must go to the roots of a social system and that must be sought in the social relations of production i.e. the way one set of individuals stand to another set of individuals in the process of producing wealth. Using this criterion we can say that social classes are characterised by those who own the means of production and those who work for them and who provide above the general cost of their maintenance, surplus labour for the former. The appropriation of surplus labour has always exemplified class society of which capitalism is historically the last form. In capitalism the social groups consist of the ruling section who own the wealth producing agencies and the subordinate class—non-owners—who work for them and the surplus labour takes the form of surplus value. The essence of class privilege being the appropriation of unpaid labour, the individuals who make up the ruling section will have a common interest in perpetuating a social order upon which the survival of its privileges depends. An antagonism of interests is then a feature of class society.

It is true that people can be classified in innumerable ways, dependent upon the purpose in view. But if we wish to know from whence profits are derived, what determines wage levels and the impetus of capital accumulation, in short what makes the system tick, then only the Marxist classification is relevant for such purposes.

Production of surplus value is the life blood of capitalism. It provides capitalists with their personal incomes and is the source of extended capital accumulation. In a society in which two classes face each other as owners of the means of production and wage workers owning only their working capacities the way control is exercised over the agencies of production is evident. That is why capital is not just another name for means of production, as some woolly minded Fabians think. For the capitalist the means of production represent a sum of values which take the form of investment. The capitalist is not concerned with means of production as such, but as capital and the only function capital has for him is to expand.

Expand or go under

In a world where monopolistic, quasi monopolistic, or free market competition is the order of the day (plus capital depreciation due to technical changes which tend to depreciate capital values) the self-expansion of capital becomes the essential condition for successful survival of the capitalist or combination of capitalists. Capitalism is a social organisation where production and distribution of wealth has to follow certain rules. Capitalists, and the management, must conform to these rules on pain of elimination. Because capitalism was bound up with, (and the outcome of), a past economic evolution, it constitutes a definite stage of historic development. For that reason the aims and motives of capitalists are proscribed within the social framework. Not for nothing did Marx state that his view “can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.”

If production of surplus value and the self-expansion of capital are the dominant drives of the system, then whether capitalists run their own concerns or have them run by managers they must both act as functionaries of capital. And whatever other motives, capitalists or managers may or may not bring to the direction of enterprises they are all subordinate to the over-riding compulsion of the self-expansion of capital in a profit motivated economy. If they are not successful in capital accumulation they cannot be successful in anything.

Having defined a class as the position individuals occupy in the economic structure of society in relation to other individuals, i.e., as owners and non-owners of the means of production it may be asked in what way do managers constitute a class. In what way do they stand to the relations of production in contrast to the owning class and the non-owning class. What economic function —not occupational or technical—have they separate from employers and employees? What objectives do they pursue which are not capitalist objectives and what is the system they are supposed to be operating which is neither capitalist or socialist? It is precisely on such issues, crucial to the claims of the managerial theorists that they become vague, and even obscurantist.

The Place of the Technician

There is a variation of the managerial theme which holds that the complex character of automation will produce a race of technicians upon whom the capitalists will be so utterly dependent that they and the managers will be able to hold the big capital owners to ransom and impose their own terms upon the system. In substance these arguments were put forward by technocrats thirty years ago. They argued that the ever-growing complex technical evolution of the system would result in the power of control passing to technicians and administrators, who would be small and compact enough to hold the capitalists to ransom. Experience shows, however, that the technical requirements of capitalism have never failed in the long run to bring about a generous, sometimes over-generous supply of necessary technicians, and there is no reason to suppose that automation technicians either now or in the future will not be as liberally forthcoming as they have been in the past.

The Bureaucracy

To the structure of this alleged new ruling class there has been added another component, the bureaucrats. Although what role they are supposed to play in the economy and in what manner they fuse with the managers, is never made concretely clear. Hitler’s Germany is often used as the classic example of managers, bureaucrats and political adventurers usurping the capitalist ruling class. But as was pointed out in a previous article on the “managerial revolution” there was never the slightest evidence to show that an economy other than capitalism had emerged or was emerging under the Fascist regime. It is true that the development of what is known as Monopoly Capitalism has been linked with the expansion of the economic functions of the state which in turn has engendered close contacts between the organisations of big business, chambers of commerce, etc., and the various state departments. Again large scale State investment for the provision of cheap raw material and essential services for the economy as a whole, has brought about an interlocking between parts of the state apparatus and industry. All of which reflects itself in capitalist parliaments and governmental policies. But this has not led to the elimination of the capitalist economy, nor has it led to its undermining but rather to its underpinning.

But even if the assumption was granted—and there is not any evidence for so doing—that managers, top ranking technicians, and boards of directors have displaced or will displace the big capital owners, does it follow that they constitute a new ruling class? Having defined class within the context of the subject, we have seen that a class is not merely a set of people organised around certain interests but a group of individuals who occupy a certain position in the economic structure of society, and so stand in certain relationship to another group in a specific mode of production. And the ruling group are those who via ownership are able to exercise control of the means of production. In what way then would managers who ousted the former owners constitute a new ruling class. The answer is that they would not. The social productive relations would remain unaltered. The essential features of the capitalist economy would remain and the production of surplus value and extended accumulation of capital would still be the dominant motives of those who now occupied the leading positions in the economy. In short they would still function as representatives of capital. It would still be the ruling class as we have defined it. All that it would mean is that the dominant section would be made up of different persons, and no more significant in fundamental change than the replacement of Jewish capitalists by Aryan capitalists. On such slender threads rests the grandiose assumptions of the managerial theorists. The claims put forward by Labourites and Tories on behalf of managerial society are rooted in political and propaganda purposes rather than in genuine investigation. But this and other matters must remain the subject of another article.

Ted Wilmott

Link to Part Three