Technocracy movement

thumb|The official symbol of the technocracy movement (Technocracy Inc.). The monad emblem signifies balance between consumption and production.

The technocracy movement was a social movement active in the United States and Canada in the 1930s which favored technocracy as a system of government over representative democracy and partisan politics. 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. Technocracy was ultimately overshadowed by other proposals for dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression. The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy. The movement did not fully aspire to scientocracy.

The movement was committed to abstaining from all partisan politics and communist revolution. It gained strength in the 1930s. In 1940, due to opposition to the Second World War, it was banned in Canada. The ban was lifted in 1943 when it was apparent that "Technocracy Inc. was committed to the war effort, proposing a program of total conscription." The movement continued to expand during the remainder of the war, and new sections were formed in Ontario and the Maritime Provinces.

The technocracy movement survived into the 21st century and, , was continuing to publish a newsletter, maintain a website, and hold member meetings. The Technocracy, Inc. web site later had a post on it stating that the site was under renovation, under new ownership, announcing a "Transition Plan 2016", and an online meeting in April 2021. Smaller groups included the Technical Alliance, the New Machine, and the Utopian Society of America.

Overview

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

The coming of the Great Depression ushered in radically different ideas of social engineering, culminating in reforms introduced by the New Deal. By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves technocrats and proposing reforms.

By the mid-1930s, interest in the technocracy movement was declining. Some historians have attributed the decline of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal. 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.

thumb|Technocracy three buses design talking point

One of the most widely circulated images in Technocracy Inc.'s promotional materials used the example of a streetcar to argue that engineering solutions will always succeed where legislation or fines fail to adequately deal with social problems. If passengers insist on riding on the car's dangerous outer platform, the solution consists in designing cars without platforms.

Origins

The technocratic movement has its origins with the progressive engineers of the early twentieth century and the writings of Edward Bellamy, along with some of the later works of Thorstein Veblen such as The Engineers And The Price System written in 1921. William H. Smyth, a California engineer, invented the word technocracy in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers", and in the 1920s it was used to describe the works of Thorstein Veblen. Writers such as Henry Gantt, Thorstein Veblen, and Howard Scott suggested that businesspeople were incapable of reforming their industries in the public interest and that control of industry should thus be given to engineers.

Europe

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

There was a Soviet movement, the early history of which resembled the North American one during the interwar period. One of its leading members was engineer Peter Palchinsky. Technocratic ideology was also promoted in the Engineer's Herald journal. The Soviet technocrats advanced the scientization of the economic development, management as well as industrial and organizational psychology under the slogan, "the future belongs to the managing-engineers and the engineering-managers".

Those viewpoints were supported by leading Right Opposition members Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov. The promotion of an alternative view on the country's industrialization and the engineer's role in society incurred Joseph Stalin's wrath. Palchinsky was executed in 1929, and a year later leading Soviet engineers were accused of an anti-government conspiracy in the Industrial Party Trial. A large scale persecution of engineers followed, forcing them to focus on narrow technical issues assigned to them by communist party leaders. imply that he expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society.

United States and Canada

Howard Scott has been called the "founder of the technocracy movement". In 1921, the group broke up before the survey was completed.

In 1932, Scott and others interested in the problems of technological growth and economic change began meeting in New York City. Their ideas gained national attention and the "Committee on Technocracy" was formed at Columbia University, by Howard Scott and Walter Rautenstrauch. The group was short-lived and in January 1933 splintered into two other groups, the "Continental Committee on Technocracy" (led by Harold Loeb) and "Technocracy Incorporated" (led by Scott).

Smaller groups included the Technical Alliance, American Technocratic League, 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.

thumb|A sign on the outskirts of a [[Great Depression|Depression-era town about meetings of the local technocracy branch]]

At the core of Scott's vision was "an energy theory of value". Since the basic measure common to the production of all goods and services was energy, he reasoned "that the sole scientific foundation for the monetary system was also energy", and that society could be designed more efficiently by using an energy metric instead of a monetary metric (energy certificates or 'energy accounting'). 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.

Public interest in technocracy peaked in the early 1930s:

Calendar

thumb|A technocratic work schedule

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

According to the movement's calculations, it would be enough that every citizen worked a cycle of four consecutive days, four hours a day, followed by three days off. By "tiling" the days and working hours of seven groups, industry and services could be operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This system would include holiday periods allocated to each citizen.

The energy certificate and the energy distribution card

Replacing the price system meant figuring out a new means of measuring distribution that also needed to be based on science. This led to the technocrats concluding that measurements by units of energy was the most logical thing to do, although Thorstein Veblen's "The Engineers and the Price System" did not talk about price by energy, nor did William Henry Smyth's technocracy social universals.

Technocrats rationalized that the flow of energy can be what determines a price by energy. With the usage of all forms of energy units, especially having emphasis on the erg and joules. They came up with "energy certificates", which would have a table with the information of a citizen's identification, age, sex, occupation/location, energy allotment, purchases made, the issued date and expiration date of the certificates, formatted in a Dewey Decimal System. Each individual would be issued a booklet of the certificates. This was sometimes called an "energy distribution card".

A year after Scott's passing, Chile started Project Cybersyn, a computerized system intended to track the economy. Philosophies of computerized government also popped up; see cyberocracy. Engineers are the central profession of technocracy's foundation, so claiming that they too will be replaced by automation is a big deal coming from a technocrat. Over the years, software for computer-aided design and the 2022 revolution of large language models brought hysteria that engineers and software developers would be replaced by artificial intelligence.

Growth curves

Justification for such a radical economy was heavily demonstrated through technocracy's growth curves of economic equilibrium.

center|frame|Physical trends that shape America's destiny

Their chart of "Irreversible Physical Trends Shape America's Destiny" was a continuation of the Technical Alliance's energy survey of North America, with the graph being created by the Committee of Technocracy. Upon completion, the energy survey was approximately going to have 3,000 charts finished, with every field of industry being analyzed.

According to Dr. Rautenstrauch, the committee found that the formulas technocracy worked out from business enterprise, greatly resembled the biological growth curves charted by Raymond Pearl's "Studies in Human Biology". The committee compared the Pearl-Reed equation to several major growth charts from U.S. industries and found that it fit similarly.

A foundation of technocracy's arguments was made with said chart. What it shows is that pre-industrial revolution civilization primarily generated its consumer goods from human energy—human labor. After the industrial revolution happened, a flip in dynamic changed, resulting in greater energy output with less human toil. Machinery enabled more efficient work without human muscle. To the technocrats, this shift of equilibrium was going to lead to rapid technological unemployment with no plan for the price system to navigate distribution of wealth to the unemployed population.

The technate

thumb|upright=1.8|The North American technate, including Samoa

Technocracy looked for large areas with bountiful resources to enable self sufficiency. A "technate" is practically a large body of land governed by a technocracy that only needs minimal trade. Scott mentioned that in the case of forming a North American Technate would be like forming a federation or union under the guidance of technocracy.

Continental hydrology

thumb|upright=1.8|Technate hydrology

A radical plan to transform the technate's mode of transportation was to have total control over all rivers and lakes across the continent. Travel by ship was faster than car or train at the time. The continental hydrology would end up linking several rivers. It also aimed to help monitor erosion of the country, generate power, and be educational for students.

This plan faced criticism for being a project that would destroy several habitats.

thumb|upright=1.4|Technate administration chart

Technocracy organization

Technocracy laid out a grand scheme to organize a new government. There are a few distinct layers; the continental director, continental board, special sequences, functional sequences, and area board.

All directors are appointed from top down, with the only exception being the continental director, because no position is above it; the continental director is chosen from area control by the continental board.

The continental directors help oversee the continent. Additionally, the continental director can be thrown out should two-thirds of the continental board say so.

The continental board consists of the area control.

Technocrats wanted to divide the technate into regional divisions for administration, and decided to use the earth's latitude and longitude as a basis for calculating a "quadrangle" setup.

Functional sequences are filled based on what the requirements of the regional division needs are, and can be added or removed as such.

It is in this effort that the technocrats aimed to totally organize both the economic system and the government as a blend of each other. This functional government would then work towards making the continental accounting system a reality.

Practicable Soviet of Technicians

thumb|Organization chart described in the Engineers and the Price System

Thorstein Veblen outlined what it would take for engineers to manage a country's economy. Praising the idea that technicians in places of trust is an excellent idea. Veblen concluded that engineers in all fields would need to work together in accounting for all aspects of the industrial system.

Veblen loosely proposed a trilateral administration; three large councils of engineers that would lead into a central council.

• Central directorate
• Executive council of resource engineers
• Executive council of production engineers
• Advisory council of production economists

Exclusion of business people

Veblen also argued that people educated in business would need to be banned from positions of trust, believing that those who understand traditional economics thought too much like a businessperson and in doing so, bring the inefficient ideals that technocracy is trying to solve.

In point: "By force of habit, men trained to a businesslike view of what is right and real will be irretrievably biased against any plan of production and distribution that is not drawn in terms of commercial profit and loss and does not provide a margin of free income to go to absentee owners. The personal exceptions to the rule are apparently few." From the socialist's perspective, all workers should have a say in their organization. This would including the technocrats valued technician. Blanshard also believed that replacing the price system was not yet worth the risk, because technocracy has not fully detailed out how energy accounting would work.

Technocracy and Marxism by William Z. Foster and Earl Browder asserts that communists (as taught from Lenin and Stalin) have already realized all the issues technocrats have pointed out, years before. Howard Scott makes a bold claim that pre-industrial revolution philosophies have become totally irrelevant due to technology making a new need for a new philosophy; Foster & Browder disagree. They also point out that basing price by energy rejects the socialists measurements labor theory of value, claiming that this action is using an arbitrary unit (the erg) and was just switching one unit for another.

H. G. Wells seemed to argue for both socialism and technocracy. When Wells had a conversation with Joseph Stalin he insisted that the technical intelligentsia have begun to realize that capitalistic society has created lots of problems in all social classes. Which would bring a scientific perspective to a revolution. Stalin was not so convinced, as during previous revolutionary action those in fields of science and engineering have been more complacent than willing to help a working class movement.

Howard Scott believed that there was distinction between technocracy and socialism. He made the provocative statement: "As far as technocracy's ideas are concerned. We're so far left that we make communism look bourgeois." Scott also criticized communism as "not being radical enough", as every socialist country still used the price system. Howard Scott has also said "the red technocrats" during a meeting, further solidifying that technocracy, while not socialism, was on the left.

Art representations of technocracy

The technocracy movement has made way for various pieces of artwork, from illustrations, and photography, to video games, and music.

Technocracy Inc.'s general aesthetics

Card-carrying members were issued a monad lapel pin or patch, and would wear gray suits during events and meetings. They were encouraged to paint their cars gray as well. A few published technocracy books are mainly gray. The chosen color of technocracy, is gray. Howard Scott viewed a repetition of an official uniform would help spread a national identity for technocrats, and pique onlookers curiosity into the movement.

A common theme with technocracy's publications are images of industrial equipment's and factories.

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!thumb|Science Vs. Chaos! By Howard Scott

!thumb|Original study course by M. King Hubbert

!thumb|416x416px|A cluster of different publications by Technocracy Inc.

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Technocracy also had other items with propaganda slogans on them, such as the case with the following technocracy match covers.

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!thumb|Match cover front view

!thumb|Match cover back view

!thumb|Match cover inside view

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!thumb|Match cover outside view

! colspan="2" |center|thumb|Match cover inside view

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Technocrat robots

Illustrations of robots as representations of technocrats.

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!thumb|The Technocrats Magazine

!thumb|Illustration used in The Technocrats Magazine

!thumb|A birthday card from the 1930s displaying a technocrat robot. Note the sender's observation: "Aunt Mary, with yellow hair + rouge"

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One of the technocrats' magazines featured a humanoid robot, with the cover showing the robot as a destructive force. Inside the magazine it shows the same robot overseer of civilization, and a robot is also representative of a technocrat from a cartoon artwork for a birthday card, although the artist seems to be confused as to what a technocrat is.

Technocracy music and dance

A dance was named after technocracy at the Roseland Dance Hall. Supporters from Vancouver created a technocracy orchestra.

For some time, Asimov was a member of the Futurians, a science fiction club based in New York, some of the members of which were reportedly interested in technocracy. This interest would be short-lived, however, as after obtaining a copy of the technocracy study course, they determined that it was no different from "progressive Stalinism". There is no available information confirming if Asimov took part in reading the study course.