Technocracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technocracy is a system of governance where decision-makers are selected on the basis of technological
knowledge. Scientists, engineers, technologists, or experts in any field, would compose the governing body,
instead of elected representatives.[1] Leadership skills would be selected on the basis of specialized knowledge
and performance, rather than parliamentary skills.[2] Technocracy in that sense of the word (an entire
government run as a technical or engineering problem) is mostly hypothetical. In another commonly used
sense, technocracy is any portion of a bureaucracy that is run by technologists in technically and analytically
sound ways.

The term technocracy was originally used to advocate the application of the scientific method to solving social
problems. In such a system, the role of money and economic values could be less emphasized. Concern would
be given to sustainability within the resource base, instead of monetary profitability, so as to ensure continued
operation of all social-industrial functions. Some uses of the word refer to a form of meritocracy, where the
ablest are in charge, ostensibly without the influence of special interest groups.[3] The word technocratic has
been used to describe governments that include non-elected professionals at a ministerial level.[4][5]

Contents
1 History of the term
2 Precursors
3 Characteristics
3.1 Engineering
4 Technocracy movement
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

History of the term

The term technocracy is derived from the Greek words , tekhne meaning skill and , kratos meaning
power, as in governance, or rule. William Henry Smyth, a Californian engineer, is usually credited with
inventing the word "technocracy" in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency
of their servants, the scientists and engineers", although the word had been used before on several
occasions.[3][6][7][8] Smyth used the term "Technocracy" in his 1919 article "'Technocracy'Ways and Means
to Gain Industrial Democracy," in the journal Industrial Management (57).[9] Smyth's usage referred to
Industrial democracy: a movement to integrate workers into decision making through existing firms or
revolution.[9]

In the 1930s, through the influence of Howard Scott and the Technocracy movement he founded, the term
technocracy came to mean, 'government by technical decision making', using an energy metric of value. Scott
proposed that money be replaced by energy certificates denominated in units such as ergs or joules, equivalent
in total amount to an appropriate national net energy budget, and then distributed equally among the North
American population, according to resource availability.[10][1]

There is in common usage found the derivative term technocrat. Technocrat can refer to someone exercising
governmental authority because of their knowledge,[11] or "a member of a powerful technical elite", or
"someone who advocates the supremacy of technical experts".[12][4][5] McDonnell and Valbruzzi define a prime
minister or minister as a technocrat if at the time of his/her appointment to government, he/she: has never held
public office under the banner of a political party; is not a formal member of any party; and is said to possess
recognized non-party political expertise which is directly relevant to the role occupied in government.[13]

Precursors
Before the term technocracy was coined, technocratic or quasi-technocratic ideas involving governance by
technical experts were promoted by various individuals, most notably early socialist theorists such as Henri de
Saint-Simon. This was expressed by the belief in state ownership over the economy, with the function of the
state being transformed from one of pure philosophical rule over men into a scientific administration of things
and a direction of processes of production under scientific management.[14] According to Daniel Bell:

"St. Simon's vision of industrial society, a vision of pure technocracy, was a system of planning and
rational order in which society would specify its needs and organize the factors of production to
achieve them."[15]

Citing the ideas of St. Simon, Bell comes to the conclusion that the "administration of things" by rational
judgement is the hallmark of technocracy.[15]

Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian scientist and social theorist, also anticipated a conception of technocratic
process. Both Bogdanovs fiction and his political writings, which were highly influential, suggest that he
expected a coming revolution against capitalism to lead to a technocratic society.[16]

From 1913 until 1922, Bogdanov immersed himself in the writing of a lengthy philosophical treatise of original
ideas, Tectology: Universal Organization Science. Tectology anticipated many basic ideas of Systems Analysis,
later explored by Cybernetics. In Tectology, Bogdanov proposed to unify all social, biological, and physical
sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that
underlie all systems.

Arguably, the Platonic idea of philosopher-kings represents a sort of technocracy in which the state is run by
those with specialist knowledge, in this case, knowledge of the Good, rather than scientific knowledge. The
Platonic claim is that those who best understand goodness should be empowered to lead the state, as they would
lead it toward the path of happiness. Whilst knowledge of the Good is different to knowledge of science, rulers
are here appointed based on a certain grasp of technical skill, rather than democratic mandate.

Characteristics
Technocrats are individuals with technical training and occupations who perceive many important societal
problems as being solvable, often while proposing technology-focused solutions. The administrative scientist
Gunnar K. A. Njalsson theorizes that technocrats are primarily driven by their cognitive "problem-solution
mindsets" and only in part by particular occupational group interests. Their activities and the increasing success
of their ideas are thought to be a crucial factor behind the modern spread of technology and the largely
ideological concept of the "information society". Technocrats may be distinguished from "econocrats" and
"bureaucrats" whose problem-solution mindsets differ from those of the technocrats.[17]

The former government of the Soviet Union has been referred to as a technocracy.[18] Soviet leaders like
Leonid Brezhnev often had a technical background in education; in 1986, 89% of Politburo members were
engineers.[19]
Several governments in European parliamentary democracies have been labeled 'technocratic' based on the
participation of unelected experts ('technocrats') in prominent positions.[4] Since the 1990s, Italy has had
several such governments (in Italian, governo tecnico) in times of economic or political crisis,[20][21] including
the formation in which economist Mario Monti presided over a cabinet of unelected professionals.[22][23] The
term 'technocratic' has been applied to governments where a cabinet of elected professional politicians is led by
an unelected prime minister, such as in the cases of the 2011-2012 Greek government led by economist Lucas
Papademos, and the Czech Republic's 20092010 caretaker government presided over by the state's chief
statistician, Jan Fischer.[5][24] In December 2013, in the framework of the national dialogue facilitated by
Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, political parties in Tunisia agreed to install a technocratic government led
by Mehdi Jomaa.[25]

In the article "Technocrats: Minds Like Machines",[5] it is stated that Singapore is perhaps the best
advertisement for technocracy: the political and expert components of the governing system there seem to have
merged completely. This was underlined in a 1993 article in "Wired" by Sandy Sandfort,[26] where he describes
the information technology system of the island even at that early date making it effectively intelligent.

Engineering

Following Samuel Haber,[27] Donald Stabile argues that engineers were faced with a conflict between physical
efficiency and cost efficiency in the new corporate capitalist enterprises of the late nineteenth century United
States. The profit-conscious, non-technical managers of firms where the engineers work, because of their
perceptions of market demand, often impose limits on the projects that engineers desire to undertake.

The prices of all inputs vary with market forces thereby upsetting the engineer's careful calculations. As a
result, the engineer loses control over projects and must continually revise plans. To keep control over projects
the engineer must attempt to exert control over these outside variables and transform them into constant
factors.[28]

Unlike most countries which emphasizes the importance of lawyers and diplomats, leaders of the Communist
Party of China are mostly professional engineers as a result of their political culture.[29] The Five-year plans of
the People's Republic of China have enabled them to plan ahead in a technocratic fashion to build projects such
as the National Trunk Highway System, the China high-speed rail system, and the Three Gorges Dam.[30]

Technocracy movement
The American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen was an early advocate of Technocracy, and was
involved in the Technical Alliance as was Howard Scott and M. King Hubbert (who later developed the theory
of peak oil). Veblen believed that technological developments would eventually lead toward a socialistic
organization of economic affairs. Veblen saw socialism as one intermediate phase in an ongoing evolutionary
process in society that would be brought about by the natural decay of the business enterprise system and by the
inventiveness of engineers.[31] Daniel Bell sees an affinity between Veblen and the Technocracy movement.[32]

In 1932, Howard Scott and Marion King Hubbert founded Technocracy Incorporated, and proposed that money
be replaced by energy certificates. The group argued that apolitical, rational engineers should be vested with
authority to guide an economy into a thermodynamically balanced load of production and consumption, thereby
doing away with unemployment and debt.[1]

The Technocracy movement was highly popular in the USA for a brief period in the early 1930s, during the
Great Depression. By the mid-1930s, interest in the movement was declining. Some historians have attributed
the decline of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal.[33][34]
Historian William E. Akin rejects the conclusion that Technocracy ideas declined because of the attractiveness
of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Instead Akin argues that the movement declined in the mid-1930s as a result of
the technocrats' failure to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change'.[35] Akin postulates that many
technocrats remained vocal and dissatisfied and often sympathetic to anti-New Deal third party efforts.[36]

See also
Calculation in kind, a type of resource management proposed for a socialist money free society
Continentalism
Energy accounting
Groupe X-Crise, formed by French former students of the Ecole Polytechnique engineer school in the
1930s
Imperial examination was an examination system in Imperial China designed to select the best
administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy
Meritocracy
Positivism
Post-politics
Post scarcity
Price System
Redressement Franais, a French technocratic movement founded by Ernest Mercier in 1925
Scientism
Scientocracy, the practice of basing public policies on science
Tektology
Thermoeconomics
Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut's speculative fiction novel describing a technocratic society
The Revolt of the Masses a book by Jos Ortega y Gasset containing a critique of technocracy
Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt, a book by Nobel prize-winning chemist Frederick Soddy on monetary
policy and society and the role of energy in economic systems

References
1. Berndt, Ernst R. (1982)."From Technocracy To Net
Energy Analysis: Engineers, Economists And
Recurring Energy Theories Of Value" (http://dspace.mi
t.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/2023/SWP-1353-090577
84.pdf) (PDF). Studies in Energy and the American
Economy, Discussion Paper No. 11, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Revised September 1982.
2. "Questioning of M. King Hubbert, Division of Supply
and Resources, before the Board of Economic
Warfare" (http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/Techn
ocracy1943.pdf) (PDF). 1943-04-14. Retrieved
2008-05-04.p.35 (p.44 of PDF), p.35
3. "History and Purpose of Technocracy by Howard
Scott" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090422182206/h
ttp://www.technocracy.org/Archives/History%20&%20
Purpose-r.htm). Technocracy.org. Archived from the
original (http://www.technocracy.org/Archives/Histor
y%20&%20Purpose-r.htm) on 22 April 2009.
4. "Who, What, Why: What can technocrats achieve that
politicians can't?" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazi
ne-15720438). BBC News. BBC. November 14, 2011.
Retrieved April 23, 2013.
5. "Technocrats: Minds like machines"(http://www.econo
mist.com/node/21538698). The Economist. 19
November 2011. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
6. "Who Is A Technocrat? Wilton Ivie (1953)" (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20041230024203/http://www.t
echnocracy.org/periodicals/nwtechnocrat/237/who-is-a
-technocrat.html). Web.archive.org. 2001-03-11.
Archived from the original (http://www.technocracy.or
g/periodicals/nwtechnocrat/237/who-is-a-technocrat.ht
ml) on December 30, 2004. Retrieved 2012-05-16.
7. Howard Scott Interviewed by Radcliff Student
Origins of Technical Alliance & Technocracy (1962)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TRc9kGle7U)on
YouTube
8. Barry Jones (1995, fourth edition).Sleepers, Wake!
Technology and the Future of Work, Oxford University
Press, p. 214.
9. Oxford English Dictionary 3rd edition (W ord from 2nd
edition 1989)
10. "Technocracy - Define Technocracy at Dictionary.com"
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/technocracy).
Dictionary.com.
11. "Technocracy facts, information, pictures |
Encyclopedia.com articles about Technocracy" (http://
www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Technocracy.aspx).
www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
 12. Wickman, Forrest (November 11, 2011). "What's a
Technocrat?" (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and
_politics/explainer/2011/11/technocrats_and_the_europ
ean_debt_crisis_what_s_a_technocrat_.html) . Slate.
The Slate Group.
13. Duncan McDonnell and Marco Valbruzzi (2014)
"Defining and classifying technocrat-led and
technocratic governments(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.co
m/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.12054/abstract)", European
Journal of Political Research, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 654-
671.
14. Encyclopdia Britannica,Saint Simon; Socialism
15. Bell, Daniel (2008) [1st. Pub. 1976].The Coming Of
Post-industrial Society(https://books.google.com/book
s?id=q6_56x5tB7gC&pg=PA76). ISBN 978-
0465097135. Retrieved 2014-11-02.
16. "Bogdanov, technocracy and socialism"(http://www.w
orldsocialism.org/spgb/apr07/page10.html).
worldsocialism.org.
17. Njalsson, Gunnar K. A. (December 2005)."From
autonomous to socially conceived technology: toward
a causal, intentional and systematic analysis of
interests and elites in public technology policy"(http://
www.berghahnbooks.com/journals/th). Theoria: a
journal of political theory. Berghahn Books (108): 56
81. Retrieved 2006-12-15.
18. Graham, Loren R. The Ghost of the Executed
Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. 73
19. Graham, 74.
20. Gundle, Stephen (ed.); Parker, Simon (ed.) (1996) [1st.
Pub. 1996]. The new Italian Republic: from the fall of
the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=vL-20NZx2OQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=
onepage&q=technocratic&f=false). Routledge.
ISBN 0-415-12162-0. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
21. D'Alimonte, Roberto; Bartolini, Stefano." 'Electoral
Transition' and party system change in Italy"(https://bo
oks.google.com/books?id=Ny-LuRLiipUC&lpg=PP1&
pg=PA226#v=onepage&q&f=false). In Bull, Martin J;
Rhodes, Martin. In: Crisis and transition in Italian
politics. Routledge. p. 226.ISBN 0-7146-4366-1.
Retrieved 21 February 2012.
22. MacKenzie, James; Moody, Barry (16 November
2011). "Italy gets new technocrat government"(http://
www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/16/italy-idUSL5E7M
G0PF20111116). Reuters. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
23. "Italys new prime minister The full Monti: Mario
Monti holds out for a technocratic government until
2013" (http://www.economist.com/node/21538778).
The Economist. 19 November 2011. Retrieved
19 February 2012.
24. "Q&A: Greece's 'technocratic' government"(http://ww
w.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15690289).BBC
News. 11 November 2011. Retrieved 21 February
2012.
External links
25. "Tunisia's new prime minister takes office" (http://ww
w.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/01/tunisia-new-prim
e-minister-takes-office-201411016745324360.html).
AlJazeera. AlJazeera. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
26. "The Intelligent Island", Wired 1.04,
September/October 1993
27. Haber, Samuel. Efficiency and UpliftChicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964.
28. Stabile, Donald R. (1986). Veblen and the political
economy of the engineer: The radical thinker and
engineering leaders came to technocratic ideas at the
same time. The American Journal of Economics and
Sociology, (45:1), 4344.
29. "There was a lawyer, an engineer and a politician..."(ht
tp://www.economist.com/node/13496638). The
Economist. 2009. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
30. Andrews, Joel (1995)."Rise of the Red Engineers"(htt
p://www.havenscenter.org/files/Red%20Engineers--exc
erpts.pdf) (PDF). Stanford University Press. Retrieved
2017-03-11.
31. The life of Thorstein Veblen and perspectives on his
thought, Wood, John (1993). The life of Thorstein
Veblen and perspectives on his thought. introd.
Thorstein Veblen. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-
07487-8. "The decisive difference between Marx and
Veblen lay in their respective attitudes on socialism.
For while Marx regarded socialism as the ultimate goal
for civilization, Veblen saw socialism as but one stage
in the economic evolution of society."
32. Daniel Bell, "Veblen and the New Class",American
Scholar, V. 32 (Autumn 1963) (cited in Rick Tilman,
Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 18911963,
Princeton University Press (1992))
33. Beverly H. Burris (1993).Technocracy at work (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=I-k0hgtaiCcC&pg=P A
31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22Continental+Committee%22+
on+Technocracy+Inc.&source=bl&ots=KC-yu_Uu5g&
sig=9YefoXvlt-vqEiLUgrdMwFrxgA4&hl=en&ei=Hw
cCS-DPEMOUkAWmjrjwCw&sa=X&oi=book_result
&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=one
page&q=%22Continental%20Committee%22%20on%
20Technocracy%20Inc.&f=false)State University of
New York Press, p. 32.
34. Frank Fischer (1990).Technocracy and the Politics of
Expertise, Sage Publications, p. 86.
35. Nelson, Daniel; Akin, William E. (March 1978).
"Technocracy and the American Dream: The
Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941"(http://www.jstor.o
rg/stable/2701484). Reviews in American History. The
Johns Hopkins University Press.6 (1): 104.
doi:10.2307/2701484 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2701
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ttp://hope.dukejournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/10/4/682),
History of Political Economy, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1978, p.
682.
Wikiquote has quotations
 William Henry Smyth, Technocracy Part I., Human Instincts in related to: Technocracy
Reconstruction: An Analysis of Urges and Suggestions for Their
Direction., [1]
William Henry Smyth, Technocracy Part II., National Industrial Wikimedia Commons has
Management: Practical Suggestions for National Reconstruction., media related to
[2] Technocracy.
William Henry Smyth, Technocracy Part III., "Technocracy" -
Ways and Means To Gain Industrial Democracy., [3]
William Henry Smyth, Technocracy Part IV., Skill Economics for Industrial Democracy., go to page 9 of
38
William Henry Smyth, Technocracy Parts I-IV., Working Explosively, A Protest Against Mechanistic
Efficiency. Working Explosively Versus Working Efficiently. at archive.org
Technocracy: An Alternative Social System Arvid Peterson (1980) on YouTube
Marion King Hubbert, Howard Scott, Technocracy Inc., Technocracy Study Course Unabridged, New
York, 1st Edition, 1934; 5th Edition, 1940, 4th printing, July 1945.
Stuart Chase, Technocracy: An Interpretation [4]
Technocracy and Socialism, by Paul Blanshard.

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