TECHNOCRACY

Technocracy may be generally described as an organizational structure in which decision makers are selected based on their specialized, technological knowledge, and/or rule according to technical processes. It has also been defined more simply as rule by experts. In all such cases technocracy constitutes a particular interaction between science, technology, and politics that has led to significant ethical debate.

Historical Development

The concept of technocracy needs to be qualified because the idea of rule by experts is at least as old as Plato's proposal for philosopher kings. Similarly, in his New Atlantis (1627), Francis Bacon envisaged an ideal society directed by scientists. But the contemporary meaning of technocracy presupposes the existence of complex industrial societies and the large-scale production and consumption processes that arose at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is only under these conditions that a class of experts in organization and production, namely engineers or technologists, could form. Technocracy, then, is rule by this particular type of expertise. Its advocates either assume or explicitly state that the efficient, rational production and distribution of goods for material abundance is the primary or even exclusive goal of society, because only in this way could they justify expert governance in these fields.

Early in the nineteenth century, the French writer Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) foreshadowed calls for modern technocracy by arguing that the organization of production was more important to society than any other political end. By the 1890s, an emerging ambiguity in the social role of engineers led some to question their traditional subservience to employer goals. Unlike doctors, lawyers, and most other experts, engineers used their expertise to shape productive and technological systems, thereby transforming entire societies. Many began to feel that their power enabled or even obliged them to bring about social progress. With his idea that scientific laws would govern the efficient management of labor and use of resources, Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) provided a practical platform to extend the domain of engineering expertise into management and politics.

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) and James Burnham (1905–1987) further argued for the independence of engineers in their critiques of societal irrationalities and inefficiencies. Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) critiqued wastefulness in the dominant political and economic system (i.e., the capitalist price system) and argued that engineers were best suited to direct society, because their objectivity was preferable to the short-sighted greed of business leaders. One of his disciples, Howard Scott (b. 1926), formed the Technical Alliance (in 1918) and later—rivalling with the "Continental Committee on Technocracy" (led by Harold Loeb and Felix Frazer)—Technocracy Inc. (in 1933). Members of Technocracy Inc. advocated a transition away from the price system and the establishment of a "governance of function," or a Technate, on the North American Continent. They argued that the scientific design of social operations would guarantee abundance for all.

Types of Technocracy

Analytically there exist at least seven variations on the technocracy theme. First, there is the notion of "expertocracy," or a conspiracy of experts who usurp decision making powers from democratically elected representatives. Second, technocracy can serve as a form of social engineering, where administrative procedures and organizational contrivances, rather than experts, gain power and form a "technological state." Third, there is a technocracy of work best articulated by Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (1911). Fourth, the technological imperative of "can implies ought," in which means and feasibility determine goals, may create a technocracy that values the improvement of instrumentalities as a primary end. Fifth, there is the systems technocracy that may emerge from dynamic, interdependent systems engineering and by thereby administrating soci(et)al and political systems. Sixth, technocracy can refer to a situation in which laws are enforced by designing systems such that it is almost impossible to break them and that societal decisions and developments are totally streamlined by them and/or computerization. Finally, there is the technocratic movement spearheaded by Technocracy Inc. Additionally, the term has also been applied to a number of dictatorship governments and to a virtual reality game that claims to be based on "the inexorable advance of real-life technocracy" (see the web site at www.white-wolf.com/Games/Pages/MagePreview/technocracy.html).

Nevertheless, only four of these possibilities exhibit continuing viability. The idea of technocracy as expertocracy remains the most popular: a conspiracy of experts taking power through their personal, knowledge-based control of complex decision making. In the version promoted by Veblen (1925) this would involve rule by engineers especially in industrial corporations. But other alternatives might stress the intelligence and efficiency of more localized expertise, such as medical doctors to run health care systems. In all instances, expertocracies are argued to increase intelligence and efficiency in technical action—but threaten democracy.

A second widely discussed possibility focuses on the scientific optimization of social engineering through public administration. Here it is not experts as persons but administrative procedures and organizational structures that would exercise power. No individual or group would rule; individuals or groups would at most have a role in properly managing institutions and processes. This is the vision of technological politics presented by Jacques Ellul and others in which technological and administrative decisions replace political deliberation. Legislation by elected officials would wither under such an automated bureaucracy.

During the 1960s the idea of a technological imperative led to the articulation of another important version of technocracy, although one that has declined in intellectual salience. According to critical social theorist Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) and science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem (b. 1921), there is a strong tendency for technical possibilities to determine social or political goals. Anything that can be done or produced will be done or produced, even becoming a matter of need. Means would determine ends; can implies ought. In a society established along these lines, improvement of instrumentalities becomes of singular value; the constant improvement of technology becomes the goal.

A fourth form of technocracy that continues to be examined conceives it in system terms. This is an important new variation on the technocracy theme. Systems engineering as well as systems analyses of the interconnections and complexities of society (as in the work of Niklas Luhmann) suggest a new kind of systems-technocracy. Discussions of systems-technocracy and the special case of "computerocracy" have emerged as serious issues in association with the rise of the so-called era of "information and systems technology" (Hans Lenk 1971, 1973).

Is systems-technocracy the wave of the future? There certainly are trends pointing in this direction, and the discussion should not be left to sociologists and politicians only. Instead, the single-focus framework of the social sciences should be combined with historical, engineering, and philosophical approaches to create an adequately interdisciplinary perspective. From such a perspective it can be argued that in a pluralistic technoscientific society the best way forward is to steer a pragmatic middle path between the extremes of an inhumanly efficient technocracy, a ruthless power politics, and a vulgar democracy devoid of intelligence.

Assessment

As Jean Meynaud (1964) summarized the issue, the decades-old debate on technocracy comes down to the fact that there is no conspiracy on the part of the technical community to usurp political power, though technical matters have taken on ever increasing importance.

Because the complexity of social, technological, economic, and ecological systems has increased, there is a progressive demand for technological, scientific, and organizational expertise. At the same time, narrow expertise calls forth a complementary needs for generalists, people with a broad view ("specialists of the general") of interdisciplinary complexes who can take a systems approach toward problems.

Historically speaking, the technocracy debate simply continued the social criticisms of technology from the early part of the twentieth century. Its dominant characteristic has been a pessimistic attitude that ignores the extensive ways technology has humanized the world. But the privileged position of experts in particular cases has not led to the demise of politics in the so-called "technolocal state" (Helmut Schelsky) or of the importance of its interplay between conflicting and overlapping interest groups and power structures. The opposite seems to be the case. The most significant outcome of the technocracy debate is thus an awareness that complex political decisions cannot be replaced by the technological or "computerocratic" procedures of optimization and maximization.

There are several explanations for this. Most significant is the fact that complex political decisions involve both information and the adjudication of a plurality of values. The inexplicable and undecidable character of political questions in contrast to technological answers, as was argued by Hans Lenk (1973), has largely been confirmed by experience. Society and the state are not machines with mere objective standards of performance, and there is no scientifically generated "one best way" (as Schelsky believed) to solve many technical, let alone political, problems. Attempts to apply science to societal problems with this intention often lead to interminable debates among competing experts, while the underlying values at stake remain unexamined.

Yet it remains true that technical matters have taken on ever increasing importance in the complex problems of modern societies and computerocracy as a virulent version of systems technocracy is an imminent danger in our hi-tech societies. The challenge for democratic governance is to integrate technical experts with non-expert participants to strike common interest solutions in contexts where many elements are beyond the comprehension of all but a few specialists. These interdisciplinary contexts may even demand generalists capable of integrating diverse sets of knowledge and perspectives.

HANS LENK

SEE ALSO Ellul, Jacques;Expertise;Participation.

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