Technocracy movement

Historians associate the movement with engineer Howard Scott's Technical Alliance and Technocracy Incorporated prior to the internal factionalism that dissolved the latter organization during the Second World War.

[1] The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy.

[4] The Technocracy movement survived into the 21st century and as of 2013[update] was continuing to publish a newsletter, maintain a website, and hold member meetings.

Technocracy advocates contended that price system-based forms of government and economy are structurally incapable of effective action, and promoted a society headed by technical experts, which they argued would be more rational and productive.

[7] The coming of the Great Depression ushered in radically different ideas of social engineering,[8] culminating in reforms introduced by the New Deal.

[10][11] Historian William E. Akin rejects that thesis arguing instead that the movement declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the failure of its proponents to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change' (p. 111 Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900–1941 by William E. Akin), although many technocrats in the United States were sympathetic to the electoral efforts of anti-New Deal third parties.

[12] One of the most widely circulated images in Technocracy Inc.’s promotional materials used the example of a streetcar to argue that engineering solutions will always succeed where legislation or fines fail to adequately deal with social problems.

The Technical Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, which aimed to provide a scientific background from which ideas about a new social structure could be developed.

Their ideas gained national attention and the "Committee on Technocracy" was formed at Columbia University, by Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch.

[27][28] Smaller groups included the Technical Alliance, The New Machine and the Utopian Society of America, though Bellamy had the most success due to his nationalistic stances, and Veblen's rhetoric, removing the current pricing system and his blueprint for a national directorate to reorganize all produced goods and supply, and ultimately to radically increase all industrial output.

[31] Technocracy Inc. officials wore a uniform, consisting of a "well-tailored double-breasted suit, gray shirt, and blue necktie, with a monad insignia on the lapel", and its members saluted Scott in public.

In the end, critics believed that the socially desirable goals that technology made possible could be achieved without the sacrifice of existing institutions and values and without incurring the apocalypse that technocracy predicted.

[11][37] On October 7, 1940, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested members of Technocracy Incorporated, charging them with belonging to an illegal organization.

One of the arrested was Joshua Norman Haldeman, a Regina chiropractor, former director of Technocracy Incorporated, and the maternal grandfather of Elon Musk.

[38][39] There were some speaking tours of the US and Canada in 1946 and 1947, and a motorcade from Los Angeles to Vancouver:[40] Hundreds of cars, trucks, and trailers, all regulation grey, from all over the Pacific Northwest, participated.

An old school bus, repainted and retrofitted with sleeping and office facilities, a two-way radio, and a public address system, impressed observers.

A huge war surplus searchlight mounted on a truck bed was included, and grey-painted motorcycles acted as parade marshals.

[44] The Technocratic movement planned to reform the work schedule, to achieve the goal of uninterrupted production, maximizing the efficiency and profitability of resources, transport and entertainment facilities, avoiding the "weekend effect".

[45] From the previous research of The Technical Alliance's Energy Survey of North America, Technocracy Inc. states that a few key points need to be realized in order for a healthy distribution of resources can be efficiently made.

In point: "By force of habit, men trained to a businesslike view of what is right and real will be irretrievably biased against any plan of production and distribution that is not drawn in terms of commercial profit and loss and does not provide a margin of free income to go to absentee owners.

Howard Scott viewed a repetition of an official uniform would help spread a national identity for technocrats, and pique onlookers curiosity into the movement.

[62] Some Sci-Fi literature written by big industry names has featured the term technocracy or a society governed by technical experts.

[72] Distribution of Power has a technocracy civic defined as "the nation is governed by an unelected council of men of reason and ability," giving multiple bonuses based around engineering, science, and authority.

Blanshard also believed that replacing the price system is not yet worth the risk, because technocracy has not fully detailed out how energy accounting would work.

Foster and Earl Browder asserts that communists (as taught from Lenin and Stalin) have already realized all the issues technocrats have pointed out, years before.

When Wells had a conversation with Joseph Stalin he insisted that the technical intelligentsia have begun to realize that capitalistic society has created lots of problems in all social classes.

[79][52][80][63] In Germany before the Second World War, a technocratic movement based on the American model introduced by Technocracy Incorporated existed but ran afoul of the political system there.

The Soviet technocrats advanced the scientization of the economic development, management as well as industrial and organizational psychology under the slogan "The future belongs to the managing-engineers and the engineering-managers.".

A large scale persecution of engineers followed, forcing them to focus on narrow technical issues assigned to them by communist party leaders.

Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings as presented by Zenovia Sochor,[83] imply that he expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society.