THE



TECHNOLOGICAL



SOCIETY



JACQUES ELLUL



With an Introduction by Robert K. Merton



A penetrating analysis of our technical

civilization and of the effect of an increasingly

standardized culture on the future of man

A Vintage Book



THE



TECHNOLOGICAL



SOCIETY



BY



JACQUES ELLUL



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOHN WILXINSON



&



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT K. MERTON,



PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY



VINTAGE BOOKS

A Division of Random House



NEW YORK



/f\	•	.1	.	-jn.oi v *ir i i t-_r t *11	-



w v^upyugm, ±w*t, uy rvuicu n. xvnupi, jlihj. .rvn i ignis ic-



served under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. Distributed in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto.



Originally published in French as La Technique ou Venjeu

du sidcle by Librairie Armand Colin. Copyright, 1954, by

Max Leclerc et Cie, Proprietors of Librairie Armand Colin.

Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.



MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



1 3 5 7 9D8 6 4 2



VINTAGE BOOKS



are published by

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Random House, Inc.



Statement from the Publisher



I would never have heard of this book and its author were it not

for my friend W. H. Ferry, Vice-President of the Center for the

Study of Democratic Institutions of the Fund for the Republic, Inc.,

at Santa Barbara, California.



Sometime in 1961, Robert M. Hutchins and Scott Buchanan told

Aldous Huxley of the Center's interest in technology and asked his

opinion about contemporary European works on the subject. Huxley

recommended above all Ellul's La Technique, which had been pub-

lished in Paris by Armand Colin in 1954 without having attracted

much attention. At any rate the copies of the French original which

the Center hastened to procure were from the first edition, as was

also the copy I secured after my old friend Ferry had written me

about it.



I couldn’t possibly read Ellul's French, which apart from the

matters with which he deals is very difficult, but since Scott Bu-

chanan and Columbia's distinguished sociologist Robert K. Merton

both said the book deserved publication in English, and since Mr.

Buchanan had a translator at hand in John Wilkinson of the Center

staff, who was willing to tackle this difficult and almost sure to be

thankless job, I committed our firm to an undertaking that I soon

began to call “Knopf's folly."



Members of the Center met Ellul in Greece in 1961, where he at-

tended a conference as the Center's guest and read a paper he had

written at their request. They later paid him for a new introduction

he had written for the American edition of La Technique. And

the Center also helped to defray some extraordinary expenses in-

curred by Professor Wilkinson in the course of his work.



I wish belatedly to thank the Center publicly for ail they did to

help us with one of the most difficult editorial tasks Alfred A. Knopf,

Inc., has ever undertaken. This note should have appeared in our

first printing and I am sorry it did not.







Foreword



In The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul formulates a compre-

hensive and forceful social philosophy of our technical civilization.

Less penetrating than Thorstein Veblen’s The Engineers and the

Price System, it nevertheless widens the scope of inquiry into the

consequences of having a society pervaded by technicians. Ellul’s

book is more colorful and incisive than Oswald Spengler’s Man and

Technics—which by contrast seems faded and unperceptive—and

it is more analytical than Lewis Mumford’s trilogy—although Ellul

handles the historical evidence much more sparingly and with less

assurance than Mumford. And it is more far-ranging and system-

atic than Siegfried Giedion’s Mechanization Takes Command,

which, of all the books overlapping Ellul’s subject, comes close to

giving the reader a sense of what the dominance of technique

might mean for the present and the future of man. In short, what-

ever its occasional deficiencies. The Technological Society requires

us to examine anew what the author describes as the essential

tragedy of a civilization increasingly dominated by technique.



Despite Ellul’s forceful emphasis upon the erosion of moral

values brought about by technicism, he has written neither a latter-

day Luddite tract nor a sociological apocalypse. He shows that he

it thoroughly familiar with the cant perpetuated by technophobes



Vi)



and for the most part manages to avoid their cliches. Indeed, he

takes these apart with masterly skill to show them for the empty

assertions they typically are. Neither does he merely substitute a

high moral tone or noisy complaints for tough-minded analysis.

His contribution is far more substantial. He examines the role of

technique in modern society and offers a system of thought that,

with some critical modification, can help us understand the forces

behind the development of the technical civilization that is

distinctively ours.



Enough of Ellul's idiosyncratic vocabulary has survived the

hazards of transoceanic migration to require us to note the special

meanings he assigns to basic terms. By technique, for example, he

means far more than machine technology. Technique refers to any

complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined

result. Thus, it converts spontaneous and unreflective behavior into

behavior that is deliberate and rationalized. The Technical Man is

fascinated by results, by the immediate consequences of setting

standardized devices into motion. He cannot help admiring the

spectacular effectiveness of nuclear weapons of war. Above all, he

is committed to the never-ending search for “the one best way” to

achieve any designated objective.



Ours is a progressively technical civilization: by this Ellul means

that the ever-expanding and irreversible rule of technique is ex-

tended to all domains of life. It is a civilization committed to the

quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends.

Indeed, technique transforms ends into means. What was once

prized in its own right now becomes worthwhile only if it helps

achieve something else. And, conversely, technique turns means

into ends. “Know how” takes cn an ultimate value.



The vital influence of technique is of course most evident in the

economy. It produces a growing concentration of capital (as was

presciently observed by Marx). Vast concentrations of capital re-

quire increasing control by the state. Once largely confined within

the business firm, planning now becomes the order of the day for

the economy as a whole. The dominance of technique imposes

centralism upon the economy (despite comparatively inconsequen-

tial efforts to decentralize individual industrial firms), for once

technique develops beyond a given degree, there is no effective



Foreword



(t)ii



alternative to planning. But this inevitable process is impersonal.



Only the naive can really believe that the world-wide movement

toward centralism results from the machinations of evil statesmen.



The intellectual discipline of economics itself becomes techni-

cized. Technical economic analysis is substituted for the older po-

litical economy included in which was a major concern with the

moral structure of economic activity. Thus doctrine is converted

into procedure. In this sphere as in others, the technicians form a

closed fraternity with their own esoteric vocabulary. Moreover,

they are concerned only with what is, as distinct from what ought

to be.



Politics in turn becomes an arena for contention among rival

techniques. The technician sees the nation quite differently from

the political man: to the technician, the nation is nothing more

than another sphere in which to apply the instruments he has de-

veloped. To him, the state is not the expression of the will of the

people nor a divine creation nor a creature of class conflict. It is an

enterprise providing services that must be made to function effi-

ciently. He judges states in terms of their capacity to utilize tech-

niques effectively, not in terms of their relative justice. Political

doctrine revolves around what is useful rather than what is good.

Purposes drop out of sight and efficiency becomes the central con-

cern. As the political form best suited to the massive and un-

principled use of technique, dictatorship gains in power. And this

in turn narrows the range of choice for the democracies: either they

too use some version of effective technique—centralized control

and propaganda—or they will fall behind.



Restraints on the rule of technique become increasingly tenuous.

Public opinion provides no control because it too is largely oriented

toward “performance” and technique is regarded as the prime in-

strument of performance, whether in the economy or in politics, in

art or in sports.



Not understanding what the rule of technique is doing to him

and to his world, modem man is beset by anxiety and a feeling of

insecurity. He tries to adapt to changes he cannot comprehend.

The conflict of propaganda takes the place of the debate of ideas.

Technique smothers the ideas that put its rule in question and filters

out for public discussion only those ideas that are in substantial



v I ii)



accord with the values created by a technical civilization. Social

criticism is negated because there is only slight access to the techni-

cal means required to reach large numbers of people.



In Ellul’s conception, then, life is not happy in a civilization domi-

nated by technique. Even the outward show of happiness is bought

at the price of total acquiescence. The technological society requires

men to be content with what they are required to like; for those

who are not content, it provides distractions—escape into absorp-

tion with technically dominated media of popular culture and

communication. And the process is a natural one: every part of a

technical civilization responds to the social needs generated by

technique itself. Progress then consists in progressive de-humani-

zation—a busy, pointless, and, in the end, suicidal submission to

technique.



The essential point, according to Ellul, is that technique pro-

duces all this without plan; no one wills it or arranges that it be so.

Our technical civilization does not result from a Machiavellian

scheme. It is a response to the ‘‘laws of development” of technique.



In proposing and expanding this thesis, Ellul reopens the great

debate over the social, political, economic, and philosophical mean-

ing of technique in the modem age. We need not agree with Ellul

to learn from him. He has given us a provocative book, in the

sense that he has provoked us to re-examine our assumptions and

to search out the flaws in his own gloomy forecasts. By doing so,

he helps us to see beyond the banal assertion that ours has become

a mass society, and he leads us to a greater understanding of that

society.



Robert K. Merton



Columbia University

January 1964



Translator s Introduction



Jacques Ellul

as the Philosopher of the Technological Society



Ernst Jiinger once wrote that technology is the real metaphysics of

the twentieth century. The irreversible collectivist tendencies of

technology, whether it calls itself democratic or authoritarian, were

already apparent to him, at the end of World War I. It is this so-

ciety, in all its forms, which Jacques Ellul, of the Faculty of Law

of Bordeaux, seeks to analyze.



Professor Ellul, unlike most of the other surviving leaders of the

French Resistance, still functions as a voice of conscience for a

France which seems to feel itself in danger of being overwhelmed

from literally every point of the compass by the materialistic values

of the cold war—consumer society. Greater influence is enjoyed

by others such as Malraux and Sartre; but Malraux is in the service

of the welfare state (albeit one with Gallic flourishes) and Sartre

is growing rich by dispensing absinthe morality in the cellars of

the Left Bank. “I sometimes wonder," says Ellul in a related con-

nection, "about the revolutionary value of acts accompanied by

such a merry jingle of the cash register."



*)



Ellul’s principal work, this book, appeared under the title La

Technique and the subtitle L’enjeu du siecle. The subtitle, which

means literally “the stake of the century/* is a characteristically dark

and difficult Ellulian phrase which may or may not refer to a kind

of “Pascal wager” put on technology by twentieth-century man.

The Technique of the title, however, lends itself more easily to in-

terpretation, although, characteristically, it too is used in a sense

it does not usually enjoy. Technique, the reader discovers more or

less quickly, must be distinguished from the several techniques

which are its elements. It is more even than a generalized mechani-

cal technique; it is, in fact, nothing less than the organized ensemble

of all individual techniques which have been used to secure any

end whatsoever. Harold Lasswell’s definition comes closest to

Ellul’s conception: “The ensemble of practices by which one uses

available resources to achieve values.” This definition has the merit

of emphasizing the scope of technique; but Ellul’s further account

makes it clear that it does not go far enough, since technique has

become indifferent to all the traditional human ends and values by

becoming an end-in-itself. Our erstwhile means have all become an

end, an end, furthermore, which has nothing human in it and to

which we must accommodate ourselves as best we may. We cannot

even any longer pretend to act as though the ends justified the

means, which would still be recognizably human, if not particularly

virtuous. Technique, as the universal and autonomous technical

fact, is revealed as the technological society itself in which man is

but a single tightly integrated and articulated component. The

Technological Society is a description of the way in which an

autonomous technology is in process of taking over the traditional



-1.....-f ..



ViliUCS Ui. CVCii.j'	VYicAiv/cic	uwii,	ouuvwuug	aiiu	oim-



pressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture

in which all nontechnological difference and variety is mere ap-

pearance.



The technical malaise so deeply felt in non-Communist Europe

at the imminent takeover has brought forth in recent years an as-

tonishingly large number of literary, philosophic, and sociological

analyses of the technical phenomenon. One of the great merits of

Ellul’s book arises from the fact that he alone has pushed such

analysis to the limit in all spheres of human activity and in the

totality of their interrelatedness. It may be added that what some



Translators Introduction



(xi



authors feel to be the book’s demerits arise from the same source;

they maintain that society more often than not refuses to be pushed

to that reductio ad absurdum which is the inevitable end point of

every thoroughgoing analysis. The books of such authors generally

end on a note of optimism. A final chapter always asks: “What is to

be done?” Unfortunately, their answers to the question are either

inefficacious myths which confront reality with slogans, or only too

efficacious technical solutions to technical problems which end

only in subjecting man the more thoroughly to technology. The

former are exemplified by most modern religions, philosophical

systems, and political doctrines; the latter by schemes for mass

education or mass cultivation of leisure, which, in Ellul’s analysis,

are themselves highly impersonal and technicized structures hav-

ing much more in common with the assembly line than with what

mankind has traditionally designated by these names.



The technological malaise seems to have been much less acutely

felt in the United States. Individuals such as Aldous Huxley, Paul

Tillich, and Erich Fromm, who have raised their voices in protest,

are of European origin and received their education in Europe.

Technolaters such as Professors B. F. Skinner of Harvard and most

other American professors represent the familiar type of the Ameri-

can intellectual caught in an ecstatic technical vertigo and seldom

proceeding beyond certain vague meditations on isolated problem

areas such as the “population explosion,” if indeed he considers

the real problems posed by technology at all. Ellul holds the Ameri-

cans to be the most conformist people in the world, but in fairness

it must be objected that, in his own analysis, the Soviets seem

better to deserve this dubious honor since they have made even

politics into a technique. The Americans, apart from technicizing

the electoral process, have left at least the sphere of politics to the

operations of amateurish bunglers and have thereby preserved a

modicum of humanity. It may be added that France, too, has been

taken into the technological orbit with a speed which must have

astonished Ellul. De Gaulle's plans for his new France contem-

plate the complete technicization of French society in nine years

instead of the quarter century of grace which Ellul predicts in his

book.



Since the religious object is that which is uncritically wor-

shipped, technology tends more and more to become the new god.



xii)



This is true for all modern societies, but especially so for Com-

munist societies, since Marxism, in Ellul’s analysis of it, consciously

identifies the material infrastructure, upon which the social super-

structure is raised, with technology.1 The expression of technologi-

cal malaise in the Soviet Union or in Red China, where technolatry

has become the new Establishment, would be blasphemy in the

strictest sense of the word.



In composition and style, Ellul’s book is certain to be an enigma,

and even a scandal, to many. It is not sociology, political economy,

history, or any other academic discipline, at least as these terms are

usually understood. It will not even appear to be philosophy to a

generation whose philosophic preoccupations are almost exclu-

sively analytic. Ellul himself is in doubt about the value of the

designation philosopher. But, if we think back to the dialectical

philosophies of the whole of thinkers such as Plato and Hegel,

Ellul’s book is philosophy. If an American specialist, say, in eco-

nomics, with his “terribly linear” logic and his apparently un-

shakable conviction that his arbitrarily delimited systems can and

should be studied in isolation from all others, were to flip open

Ellul’s book to those sections which treat of matters economic, it is

conceivable that he would be repelled by what he found. But if this

same specialist could somehow or other implausibly be persuaded

to persevere in the attempt to see with Ellul economics in the light

of the whole of modern technical culture, it is likewise conceivable

that he would gain important insights, not perhaps into the fine-

structure of academic economic problems, but in the border region

where his subject abuts on other disciplines, in that area where

basic discoveries in economics (and everything else) are always

made by gifted amateurs, who faute de mieux must be called

philosophers.



Ellul’s admittedly difficult style is not to be referred to that

style heurte affected by so many postwar French existentialists.

An element of this is doubtless present, but it would be much more

accurate to say that, in an essentially dramatic work such as the

present book must be deemed to be, the transitions and turns of

thought must have a character entirely different from those to be



1 Ellul once again showed much prescience. Marxist publications of the last few

years have come to speak of the “technical-material infrastructure” instead of the

‘'material infrastructure."



Translators Introduction



(x Hi



encountered in the ultra-respectable academic texts which have

taken over from mathematics certain linear and deductive modes

of presentation; modes, which, whatever their pedagogic value may

be, serve, even in mathematics, only to obscure the way in which

truth comes into being. To its dramatic presentation of what are,

after all, well-known facts, Ellul's book owes its high persuasive

quality.



This dramatic character would have been clearly evident if the

book had been written as a dialogue. Indeed, a reader could easily

cast it into this form by representing to himself the various thinkers

who are introduced by name as the dramatis personae, and by

treating the nameless “On the one hands'* and “On the other

hands'* in the same way. In this way the "successive recantations’*

of some positions and the development of others in the light of a

guiding concept of the whole become clear, and the book’s essen-

tial affinity to a Platonic dialogue like the Republic is evident. (No-

where is this successive recantation more evident than in the

first chapter's search for definitions.) Even clearer is the similarity

of the book to Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes, the last work of

Western philosophy with which, in the translator's opinion, the

present work bears comparison. The Technological Society is not a

“phenomenology of mind" but rather a “phenomenology of the

technical state of mind." Like Hegel’s book, it is intensely his-

trionic; and like it, it shows, without offering causal mechanisms,

how its subject in its lowest stage (technique as machine tech-

nique) develops dialectically through the various higher stages

to become at last the fully evolved phenomenon (the technical

phenomenon identical with the technical society). Again, as with

Hegel, what the philosopher J. Loewenberg has called the “his-

trionic irony" of statement must drive the literal-minded reader

mad.



The Danish historian of philosophy, Harald Hoeffding, says of

Hegel's Phenomenology:



The course of development described in this unique work is at

once that of the individual and of the race; it gives at the same

time a psychology and a history of culture—and in the exposition

the two are so interwoven that it is often impossible to tell which of

the two is intended.



xi v)



With the stipulation that Ellul is treating of culture in the sense

of the technological society, Hoeffding s penetrating remark holds

as well for Elluls book.



In such a work it is impossible to separate method from content.

Yet, in another sense, and especially for a translator, it is impera-

tive to do so. Although, after the time of Descartes, French savants

in general were preoccupied with clarifying problems of method,

it has been almost impossible in the twentieth century to extort

from French writers on sociology and economics an adequate ac-

count of their procedures. Some of them have doubtless been over-

sensitive to Poincares famous jibe concerning the sciences "with

the most methods and the fewest results.” In Elluls case, however,

disinclination to discuss methodology specifically is almost cer-

tainly due in large part to his pervasive distrust of anything at all

resembling a fixed doctrine. Nevertheless, throughout the book are

scattered a large number of references to method, and it is possible

and necessary to reconstruct from them a satisfactory account of

the author’s methodology.



Ellul first “situates” the “facts” of experience in a general context,

and then proceeds to “focus” them. This figure of speech, drawn

from, or at least appropriate to, descriptive astronomy, appears

over and over again in connection with each supervening stage of

complexity of the subject matter. The final result of the procedure

is to bring to a common focal point rays proceeding from very

difft;ieiil 5plicicj», The reader should be warned that it is only pos-

sible to approximate in English the mixed metaphors and the

studied imprecisions of each new beginning of the process, which

are gradually refined to yield at the focus a precise terminology.

The lianslalox was always uncomfortably aware of too little pre-

cision, or too much, in his choice of English words. The reader seri-

ously interested in these nuances has no recourse but to consult the

original. The translator can do little more for him than to call his

attention to the problem. Anyone familiar with similar “dialectic

moments” in the works of Hegel or of Max Weber will understand

at once what is meant.



Ellul repeats again and again that he is concerned not to make

value judgments but to report things as they are. One might be

tempted to smile at such statements in view of the intensely per-

sonal and even impassioned quality of a work in which one is never



Translators Introduction



( xv



for a moment unaware where the author's own sympathies lie.

Nonetheless, on balance, it seems clear that he has not allowed his

own value judgments to intrude in any illegitimate way on ques-

tions of fact. "Fact" is very important to Ellul, but only as ex-

perienced in the context of the whole. Facts as they figure in un-

interpreted statistical analyses of a given domain, or as they may

be revealed by opinion polls and in newspapers, are anathema to

him; and he permits himself many diatribes against this kind of

“abstract,” disembodied fact which is so dear to the hearts of

Americans, at least as Ellul imagines them to be. With this proviso,

Ellul can echo the dictum of Hegel’s Phenomenology that the only

imaginable point of departure of philosophy is experience.



The insistence on rendering a purely phenomenological account

of fact, without causal explanation of the interrelation of the sub-

ordinate facts, may seem distasteful to some readers. Since Aristotle

it has been a common conception of science that we have knowl-

edge only when we know the Why. Admittedly, whenever causal

knowledge is available, it is indeed valuable. But it ought not to be

forgotten that such knowledge is increasingly hard to come by, and,

in fact, hardly makes its appearance at all in modem physics, say,

where one must, for the most part, be content with purely func-

tional (that is, phenomenological) equations, which dispense with

any appeal to mechanism but which are nonetheless adequate for

prediction and explanation, and which have the enormous addi-

tional advantage of containing no hidden concepts unconfront-

able by experience. The important questions concerning the techno-

logical society rarely turn for Ellul on how or why things came to

be so, but rather on whether his description of them is a true one.



Ellul’s methodology is fundamentally dominated by the prin-

ciple which has come to be called Engel’s law, that is, the law

asserting the passage of quantity into quality. To give a common-

place example, the city, after it reaches a certain threshold of

population, is supposed to pass over into a qualitatively different

type of urban organization. Unfortunately, both the popular and

the usual philosophical accounts of Engel’s law are incomplete, to

use no worse word.



First, it is incorrect to speak at all of a “threshold” of quantity

which, having been transcended, gives rise to a change of quality

and to a new set of laws and explanatory principles. In dialectical



xvi)



logic, every change of quantity is simultaneously a change of

quality; and the discernment of a “threshold” quantity is partly a

psychological fact of awareness, and partly an illicit attempt to try

to import back into a dialectical logic some of the unequivocalness

of the ordinary either/or logic. Now, Ellul's explanation of the

technical takeover is based fundamentally on the fact that the ma-

terial (that is, technical) substratum of human existence, which

was traditionally not allowed to be a legitimate end of human ac-

tion, has become so “enormous,” so “immense,” that men are no

longer able to cope with it as means, so that it has become an

end-in-itself, to which men must adapt themselves. But, with a

better understanding of the illusory nature of the “threshold quan-

tity,” we are able to turn aside the objections which are always

raised by those who rightly but extraneously urge that historical

societies have always had to struggle with the possibility of a ma-

terial takeover and that the present state of affairs is therefore not

something new. The answer, of course, is that the objection is ir-

relevant. Ellul could not mean to assert that men in the past have

not had to contend with material means which threatened to ex-

ceed their capacity to make good use of them, but that men in the

past were not confronted with technical means of production and

organization which in their sheer numerical proliferation and ve-

locity unavoidably surpassed man’s relatively unchanging biologi-

cal and spiritual capacities to exploit them as means to human

ends.



Second, Engel's law must never be taken to imply a one-way

transition of quantity into quality. In dialectical logic the trans-

formation of quality into quantity is a necessary concomitant



q£ th'* rAvArciW** franc form qfirm of mianHfv info rmalitv. Tf is in



~~	-w -----~	   --	1-	/	A	’	/	*



fact, the essence of technique to compel the qualitative to become

quantitative, and in this way to force every stage of human activity

and man himself to submit to its mathematical calculations. Ellul

gives examples of this at every level. Thus, technique forces all

sociological phenomena to submit to the clock, for Ellul the most

characteristic of all modern technical instruments. The substitution

of the tempos mortuum of the mechanical clock for the biological

and psychological time “natural” to man is in itself sufficient to

suppress all the traditional rhythms of human life in favor of the

mechanical. Again, genuine human communities are suppressed by



Translator9s Introduction



(xvii



the technological society to form collectivities of “mass men* in*

capable of obeying any other law than the statistical “law of large

numbers,* All the technical devices of education, propaganda,

amusement, sport, and religion are mobilized to persuade the hu-

man being to be satisfied with his condition of mechanical, mind*

less “mass man,* and ruthlessly to exterminate the deviant and the

idiosyncratic.



The reduction of everything to quantity is partly a cause, and

partly an effect, of the modem omnipresence of computing ma*

chines and cybernated factories.



It should not be imagined, however, that the universal concentra*

tion camp which Ellul thinks is coming into being in all technical

societies without exception will be felt as harsh or restrictive by its

inmates. Hitler's concentration camps of hobnailed boots were

symptoms of a deficient political technique. The denizen of the

technological state of the future will have everything his heart ever

desired, except, of course, his freedom. Admittedly, modem man,

forced by technique to become in reality and without residue the

imaginary producer-consumer of the classical economists, shows

disconcertingly little regard for his lost freedom; but, according to

Ellul, there are ominous signs that human spontaneity, which in

the rational and ordered technical society has no expression except

madness, is only too capable of outbreaks of irrational suicidal de-

structiveness.



The escape valves of modem literature and art, which technique

has contrived, may or may not turn out to be adequate to the harm*

less release of the pent-up “ecstatic” energies of the human being.

Technique, which can in principle only oppose technical and quan-

titative solutions to technical problems, must, in such a case, seek

out other technical safety valves. It could, for example, convince

men that they were happy and contented by means of drugs, even

though they were visibly suffering from the worst kind of spiritual

and material privation. It is obvious that all such ultimate technical

measures must cause the last meager “idealistic* motifs of the whole

technical enterprise to disappear. Ellul does not specifically say

so, but it seems that he must hold that the technological society,

like everything else, bears within itself the seeds of its own destruc-

tion.



It must not be imagined that the autonomous technique ea*



xviii)



visioned by Ellul is a kind of “technological determinism,” to use a

phrase of Veblen. It may sometimes seem so, but only because all

human institutions, like the motions of all physical bodies, have a

certain permanence, or vis inertiae, which makes it highly probable

that the near future of statistical aggregations will see them con*

tinue more or less in the path of the immediate past. Things could

have eventuated in the technological society otherwise than as they

have.



Technique, to Ellul, is a “blind” force, but one which unfortu-

nately seems to be more perspicacious than the best discernible

human intelligences. There are other ways out, Ellul maintains, but

nobody wants any part of them.



Ellul’s insistence that the technical phenomenon is not a de-

terminism is not weakened by the enumeration (in the second

chapter) of five conditions which are said to be “necessary and

sufficient” for its outburst in the recent past, since the sufficient con-

ditions for the conditions (for example, the causes of the popula-

tion explosion) are not ascertainable.



The inertia of the technical phenomenon guarantees not only the

continued refinement and production of relatively beneficial arti-

cles such as flush toilets and wonder drugs, but also the emergence

of those unpredictable secondary effects which are always the re-

sult of ecological meddling and which today are of such magnitude

and acceleration that they can scarcely be reconciled with even

semis table equilibrium conditions of society. Nuclear explosions

and population explosions capture the public’s imagination; but I

have argued that Ellul’s analysis demands that all indices of mod-

em technological culture are exploding, too, and are potentially

just as dangerous to the continued well-being of society, if by well-

being we understand social equilibrium.



Reference to the vis inertiae of technique should not obscure the

fact that technique has become the only fully spontaneous activity

of the modem world. Art and science are mentioned as other hu-

man activities by Ellul. But art, though it is concrete, is subjective;

and science, though objective in its description of reality, is ab-

stract. Only technique is at once both concrete and objective in

that it creates the reality it describes. Ellul must conclude that

trom among the data of science technique legislates those which it

deems most efficient and reiects the rest Economic and social



Translators Introduction



(xix



"model builders” those assiduous technocratic apes, may seek to

soften the violence of this description by pointing out that all

sciences "specify a universe of discourse.” It remains unfortunately

true, however, that such "specification” proceeds by way of elimina-

tion of the human.



Ellul is no machinoclast like the partisans of the weak-minded

Ludd seeking to wreck the stocking frames. He has no doctrinal de-

lusions at all, a fortiori none like those of Rousseau and certain of

his disciples, who imagined that man would be happy in a state

of nature.



In view of the fact that Ellul continually apostrophizes technique

as "unnatural” (except when he calls it the “new nature”), it might

be thought surprising that he has no fixed conception of nature

or of the natural. The best answer seems to be that he considers

"natural” (in the good sense) any environment able to satisfy man's

material needs, if it leaves him free to use it as means to achieve

his individual, internally generated ends. The necessary and suffi-

cient condition for this state of affairs is that man's means should

be (qualitatively and quantitatively) "at the level” of man's ca-

pacities. Under these dubiously realizable circumstances, Ellul

apparently thinks of techniques as so many blessings.



Since men are unwilling to acknowledge their demotion to the

status of joyous robots, and since they demand justification for their

individual and collective acts as never before in history, it is easy

to understand why the modern intellectuals (and their forcing-

house, the university) have become veritable machines for the in-

vention of new myths and the propagation of old ones. It would

be easy to compile a list of all the things which Ellul must deem

"myth.” Such a list would quite simply contain all philosophical,

historical, religious, and political doctrines known to man, except

insofar as such doctrines have technological components. The

Western democracies, for example, are out after money and the

Eastern Communists are out after power; otherwise they share an

identical view of life, and the epiphenomenal variant ideologies

which accompany identical acts can only be described as a cruel

hoax.



It is disconcerting in the extreme to contemplate the possibility

that cherished democratic institutions have become empty forms

which have no visible connection with the acts of democratic na



XX )



tions, except perhaps to render these acts technically less efficient

than they otherwise need have been. But the fact that they have no

connection is, paradoxically, a powerful reason for their survival.

Ellul evidently contemplates a long future in which sclerotic rival

ideologies will carry on their sham polemics.



Ellul, in agreement with much of Greek philosophy, seems to

think that the distinction usually drawn between thought and ac-

tion is a pernicious one. To him, to bear witness to the fact of the

technological society is the most revolutionary of all possible acts.

His personal reason for doing so is that he is a Christian, a fact

which is spelled out in his book La Presence. His concept of the

duty of a Christian, who stands uniquely (is '‘present”) at the point

of intersection of this material world and the eternal world to come,

is not to concoct ambiguous ethical schemes or programs of social

action, but to testify to the truth of both worlds and thereby to

affirm his freedom through the revolutionary nature of his religion.



It is clear that many people who will accept Ellul's diagnosis of

the technical disease will not accept his Christian therapy. The is-

sue is nevertheless joined: if massive technological intervention is

the only imaginable means to turn aside technology from its head-

long career, how may we be sure that this intervention will be

something other than just some new technical scheme, which, more

likely than not, will be catastrophic?



John Wilkinson



Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Santa Barbara, California

January 1964



Contents



NOTE TO THE READER	XXV



FOREWORD TO THE REVISED AMERICAN EDITION	XXVii



AUTHORS PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION	XXXV



charter I—Technique*



SITUATING THE TECHNICAL PHENOMENON



Machines and Technique	3



Science and Technique	7



Organization and Technique	11



Definitions	13



Technical Operation and Technical Phenomenon	19



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT



Primitive Technique	*3



Greece	27



Rome	29



Christianity and Technique	32



The Sixteenth Century	38



The Industrial Revolution	42



xxii)



chapter 11—The Characterology of Technique



TECHNIQUE IN CIVILIZATION



Traditional Techniques and Society	64



The New Characteristics	77



CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN TECHNIQUE



Automatism of Technical Choice	79



Self-augmentation	85



M onism	94



The Necessary Linking Together of Techniques	111



Technical Universalism	116



The Autonomy of Technique	133



chapter 111—Technique and Economy



THE BEST AND THE WORST



The Influence of Technique on the Economy	149



Economic Consequences	153



THE SECRET WAY



The Economic Techniques of Observation	163



The Economic Techniques of Action	171



Planning and Liberty	177



THE GREAT HOPES



Economic Systems Confronted by Technique	183



Progress	190



Centralized Economy	193



The Authoritarian Economy	200



The Antidemocratic Economy	208



ECONOMIC MAN



chapter iv—Technique and the State



THE STATE’S ENCOUNTERS WITH TECHNIQUE



Ancient Techniques	229



New Techniques	233



Contents	(xxiii



Private and Public Techniques	239



The Reaction of the State to Techniques	243



REPERCUSSIONS ON THE STATE



Evolution	248



The Technical Organism	252



The Conflict Between the Politicians and the Technicians 255

Technique and Constitution	267



Technique and Political Doctrines	280



The Totalitarian State	284



SUMMUM JUS: SUMMA INJURIA

REPERCUSSION ON TECHNIQUE



Technique Unchecked	301



The Role of the State in the Development of Modern Tech-

niques	307



Institutions in the Service of Technique	311



chapter v—Human Techniques



NECESSITIES



Human Tension	319



Modification of the Milieu and Space	325



Modification of Time and Motion	328



The Creation of the Mass Society	332



Human Techniques	335



REVIEW



Educational Technique	344



The Technique of Work	349



Vocational Guidance	358



Propaganda	363



Amusement	375



Sport	382



Medicine	384



ECHOES



Techniques, Men, and Man	387



Jhomme-machine	395



The Dissociation of Man

The Triumph of the Unconscious

Mass Man



TOTAL INTEGRATION



Technical Anesthesia



Integration of the Instincts and of the Spiritual

The Final Resolution



chapter vi—A Look at the Future



A Look at the Year 2000



BIBLIOGRAPHY



398



402



4<>5



41*



415



418



43*



INDEX



437



follow* page 450



Note to the Reader I



I think the task of the reader will be lightened if at the outset I at-

tempt a definition of technique. The whole first chapter is devoted

to making clear what constitutes technique in the present-day

world, but as a preliminary there must be a simple idea, a defini-

tion.



The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, tech-

nology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our

technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally

arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of de-

velopment ) in every field of human activity. Its characteristics are

new; the technique of the present has no common measure with

that of the past.



This definition is not a theoretical construct. It is arrived at by

examining each activity and observing the facts of what modern

man calls technique in general, as well as by investigating the dif-

ferent areas in which specialists declare they have a technique.



In the course of this work, the word technique will be used with

varying emphasis on one or another aspect of this definition. At one

point, the emphasis may be on rationality, at another on efficiency

or procedure, but the over-all definition will remain the same.



Finally, we shall be looking at technique in its sociological aspect;



xxvi)



that is, we shall consider the effect of technique on social relation-

ships, political structures, economic phenomena. Technique is not

an isolated fact in society (as the term technology would lead us

to believe) but is related to every factor in the life of modem man;

it affects social facts as well as all others. Thus technique itself is a

sociological phenomenon, and it is in this light that we shall study

it.



June J963



Jacques Ellul



Author s Foreword to the

Revised American Edition



At the beginning I must try to make clear the direction and aim

of this book. Although descriptive, it is not without purpose, I do

not limit myself to describing my findings with cold objectivity in

the manner q£ a research worker reporting what he sees under a

microscope. I am keenly aware that I am myself involved in

technological civilization, and that its history is also my own. I may

be compared rather with a physician or physicist who is describing

a group situation in which he is himself involved. The physician

in an epidemic, the physicist exposed to radioactivity: in such

situations the mind may remain cold and lucid, and the method

objective, but there is inevitably a profound tension of the whole

being.



Although I have deliberately not gone beyond description, the

reader may perhaps receive an impression of pessimism. I am

neither by nature, nor doctrinally, a pessimist, nor have I pessimis-

tic prejudices. I am concerned only with knowing whether things

are so or not. The reader tempted to brand me a pessimist should

begin to examine his own conscience, and ask himself what causes

him to make such a judgment. For behind this judgment, I believe,

will always be found previous metaphysical value judgments, such



xxviii)



as: “Man is free"; “Man is lord of creation"; “Man has always over-

come challenges" (so why not this one too?); “Man is good." Or

again: “Progress is always positive"; “Man has an eternal soul, and

so cannot be put in jeopardy." Those who hold such convictions

will say that my description of technological civilization is in-

correct and pessimistic. I ask only that the reader place himself on

the factual level and address himself to these questions: “Are the

facts analyzed here false?" “Is the analysis inaccurate?” “Are the

conclusions unwarranted?" “Are there substantial gaps and omis-

sions?" It will not do for him to challenge factual analysis on

the basis of his own ethical or metaphysical presuppositions.



The reader deserves and has my assurance that I have not set out

to prove anything. I do not seek to show, say, that man is deter-

mined, or that technique is bad, or anything else of the kind.



Two other factors may lead the reader to the feeling of pessi-

mism. It may be that he feels a rigorous determinism is here de-

scribed that leaves no room for effective individual action, or that

he cannot find any solution for the problems raised in the book.

These two factors must now engage our attention.



As to the rigorous determinism, I should explain that I have tried

to perform a work of sociological reflection, involving analysis of

large groups of people and of major trends, but not of individual

actions. I do not deny the existence of individual action or of some

inner sphere of freedom. I merely hold that these are not discerni-

ble at the most general level of analysis, and that the individual’s

acts or ideas do not here and now exert any influence on social,

political, or economic mechanisms. By making this statement, I

explicitly take a partisan position in a dispute between schools of

sociology. To me the sociological does not consist of the addition

and combination of individual actions. I believe that there is a col-

lective sociological reality, which is independent of the individual.

As I see it, individual decisions are always made within the frame-

work of this sociological reality, itself pre-existent and more or less

determinative. I have simply endeavored to describe technique as

a sociological reality. We are dealing with collective mechanisms,

with relationships among collective movements, and with modifi-

cations of political or economic structures. It should not be sur-

prising, therefore, that no reference is made to the separate, inde-



Author*s Foreword to the Revised American Edition (xxix



pendent initiative of individuals. It is not possible for me to treat

the individual sphere. But I do not deny that it exists. I do not

maintain that the individual is more determined today than he has

been in the past; rather, that he is differently determined. Primi-

tive man, hemmed in by prohibitions, taboos, and rites, was, of

course, socially determined. But it is an illusion—unfortunately

very widespread—to think that because we have broken through

the prohibitions, taboos, and rites that bound primitive man, we

have become free. We are conditioned by something new: techno-

logical civilization. I make no reference to a past period of history

in which men were allegedly free, happy, and independent. The

determinisms of the past no longer concern us; they are finished

and done with. If I do refer to the past, it is only to emphasize that

present determinants did not exist in the past, and men did not

have to grapple with them then. The men of classical antiquity

could not have found a solution to our present determinisms, and it

is useless to look into the works of Plato or Aristotle for an answer

to the problem of freedom.



Keeping in mind that sociological mechanisms are always sig-

nificant determinants—of more or less significance—for the indi-

vidual, I would maintain that we have moved from one set of

determinants to another. The pressure of these mechanisms is

today very great; they operate in increasingly wide areas and pene-

trate more and more deeply into human existence. Therein lies the

specifically modern problem.



This determinism has, however, another aspect. There will be a

temptation to use the word fatalism in connection with the phe-

nomena described in this book. The reader may be inclined to say

that, if everything happens as stated in the book, man is entirely

helpless—helpless either to preserve his personal freedom or to

change the course of events. Once again, I think the question is

badly put. I would reverse the terms and say: if man—if each one

of us—abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each

of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological

civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his

sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making

a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as

I have described it, and the determinants will be transformed into

inevitabilities. But, in describing sociological currents, I obviously



XXX )



cannot take into account the contingent decisions of this or that

individual, even if these decisions could modify the course of social

development. For these decisions are not visible, and if they are

truly personal, they cannot be foreseen. I have tried to describe the

technical phenomenon as it exists at present and to indicate its

probable evolution. Fatalism is not involved; it is rather a question

of probability, and I have indicated what I think to be its most

likely development.



What is the basis for this most likely eventuality? I would say

that it lies in social, economic, and political phenomena, and in

certain chains of events and sequences. If we may not speak of

laws, we may, at any rate, speak of repetitions. If we may not

speak of mechanisms in the strict sense of the word, we may speak

of interdependencies. There is a certain logic (though not a formal

logic) in economic phenomena which makes certain forecasts pos-

sible. This is true of sociology and, to a lesser degree, of politics.

There is a certain logic in the evolution of institutions which is

easily discernible. It is possible, without resorting to imagination

or science fiction, to describe the path that a social body or institu-

tional complex will follow. An extrapolation is perfectly proper

and scientific when it is made with care. Such an extrapolation is

what we have attempted. But it never represents more than a

probability, and may be proved false by events.



External factors could change the course of history. The probable

development I describe might be forestalled by the emergence of

new phenomena. I give three examples—widely different, and de-

liberately so—of possible disturbing phenomena:



1)	If a general war breaks out, and if there are any survivors,



-■••.Till	nr\	rt..p «	n-r-xr-	nf	m	ri	i	m!



U1C ucauuuuuu mu uv ju uuuiiuvuj, »uu uiv> wuutuv/ua ui iiuiutiu



so different, that a technological society will no longer exist.



%) If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the

threat the technological world poses to man's personal and spiritual

life, and if they determine to assert their freedom by upsetting the

course of this evolution, my forecast will be invalidated.



3) If God decides to intervene, man's freedom may be saved by

a change in the direction of history or in the nature of man.



But in sociological analysis these possibilities cannot be con-

sidered. The last two lie outside the field of sociology, and confront

us with an upheaval so vast that its consequences cannot be as-



Author*s Foreword to the Revised American Edition	( xxxi



sessed. But sociological analysis does not permit consideration of

these possibilities. In addition, the first two possibilities offer no

analyzable fact on which to base any attempt at projection. They

have no place in an inquiry into facts; I cannot deny that they may

occur, but I cannot take them rationally into account. I am in the

position of a physician who must diagnose a disease and guess its

probable course, but who recognizes that God may work a miracle,

that the patient may have an unexpected constitutional reaction, or

that the patient—suffering from tuberculosis—may die unex-

pectedly of a heart attack. The reader must always keep in mind

the implicit presupposition that if man does not pull himself to-

gether and assert himself (or if some other unpredictable but

decisive phenomenon does not intervene), then things will go the

way I describe.



The reader may be pessimistic on yet another score. In this study

no solution is put forward to the problems raised. Questions are

asked, but not answered. I have indeed deliberately refrained

from providing solutions. One reason is that the solutions would

necessarily be theoretical and abstract, since they are nowhere ap-

parent in existing facts. I do not say that no solutions will be

found; I merely aver that in the present social situation there is

not even a beginning of a solution, no breach in the system of tech-

nical necessity. Any solutions I might propose would be idealistic

and fanciful. In a sense, it would even be dishonest to suggest solu-

tions: the reader might think them real rather than merely literary.

I am acquainted with the “solutions* offered by Emmanuel Mou-

nier, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ragnor Frisch, Jean Fourastie,

Georges Friedmann, and others. Unfortunately, all these belong to

the realm of fancy and have no bearing on reality. I cannot ration-

ally consider them in analyzing the present situation.



However, I will not make a final judgment on tomorrow before it

arrives. I do not presume to put chains around man. But I do

insist that a distinction be made between diagnosis and treat-

ment. Before a remedy can be found, it is first necessary to make a

detailed study of the disease and the patient, to do laboratory re-

search, and to isolate the virus. It is necessary to establish criteria

that will make it possible to recognize the disease when it occurs,

and to describe the patient’s symptoms at each stage of his illness.



xxxii)



This preliminary work is indispensable for eventual discovery and

application of a remedy.



By this comparison I do not mean to suggest that technique is a

disease of the body social, but rather to indicate a working proce-

dure. Technique presents man with multiple problems. As long as

the first stage of analysis is incomplete, as long as the problems are

not correctly stated, it is useless to proffer solutions. And, before

we can pose the problems correctly, we must have an exact descrip-

tion of the phenomena involved. As far as I know, there is no

over-all and exact description of the facts which would make it

possible to formulate the problems correctly.



The existing works on the subject either are limited to a single

aspect of the problem—the effect of motion pictures on the nerv-

ous system, for example—or else propose solutions without the req-

uisite preliminary study. I offer these pages as a first effort in lay-

ing the necessary ground; much more work will have to follow

before we can see what man's true response is to the challenge be-

fore him.



But this must not lead the reader to say to himself; “All right,

here is some information on the problem, and other sociologists,

economists, philosophers, and theologians will carry on the work, so

I have simply got to wait.” This will not do, for the challenge is not

to scholars and university professors, but to all of us. At stake is our

very life, and we shall need all the energy, inventiveness, imagina-

tion, goodness, and strength we can muster to triumph in our pre-

dicament While waiting for the specialists to get on with their

work on behalf of society, each of us, in his own life, must seek

ways of resisting and transcending technological determinants.

Each man must make this effort in every area of life, in his profes-

sion and in his social, religious, and family relationships.



In my conception, freedom is not an immutable fact graven in

nature and on the heart of man. It is not inherent in man or in so-

ciety, and it is meaningless to write it into law. The mathematical,

physical, biological, sociological, and psychological sciences reveal

nothing but necessities and determinisms on all sides. As a matter

of fact, reality is itself a combination of determinisms, and freedom

consists in overcoming and transcending these determinisms. Free-

dom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity,

unless it represents victory over necessity. To say that freedom



Author s Foreword to the Revised American Edition ( xxxiii



is graven in the nature of man, is to say that man is free because he

obeys his nature, or, to put it another way, because he is condi-

tioned by his nature. This is nonsense. We must not think of the

problem in terms of a choice between being determined and be-

ing free. We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is in-

deed determined, but that it is open to him to overcome necessity,

and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not static but dynamic;

not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won. Hie mo-

ment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to deter-

minism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably

settled in freedom.



In the modem world, the most dangerous form of determinism

is the technological phenomenon. It is not a question of getting rid

of it, but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it How is this to

be done? I do not yet know. That is why this book is an appeal to

the individual's sense of responsibility. The first step in tbe quest,

the first act of freedom, is to become aware of the necessity. The

very fact that man can see, measure, and analyze the determinisms

that press on him means that he can face them and, by so doing,

act as a free man. If man were to say These are not necessities; I

am free because of technique, or despite technique,* this would

prove that he is totally determined. However, by grasping the real

nature of the technological phenomenon, and the extent to which

it is robbing him of freedom, he confronts the blind mechanisms as

a conscious being.



At the beginning of this foreword I stated that this book has a

purpose. That purpose is to arouse the reader to an awareness of

technological necessity and what it means. It is a call to the sleeper

to awake.



Jacques Ellul



Le Marierre, Pessae, Gironde, France

January 1Q64



Author s Preface to the

French Edition * I



Let us, first of all, clear up certain misunderstandings that inevitably

arise in any discussion of technique.



It is not the business of this book to describe the various tech-

niques which, taken together, make up the technological society.

It would take a whole library to describe the countless technical

means invented by man; and such an undertaking would be of

little value. Moreover, quite enough elementary works describing

the various techniques are already available. I shall frequently

allude to some of these techniques on the assumption that their

applications or their mechanics are familiar to the reader.



I do not intend to draw up a balance sheet, positive or negative,

of what has been so far accomplished by means of these tech-

niques, or to compare their advantages and disadvantages. I shall

not repeat what has so often been stated, that through technology

the work week has been materially shortened, that living stand-

ards have risen, and so forth; or, on the other side of the ledger,

that the worker has encountered many difficulties in adapting to

the machine. Indeed, no one is capable of making a true and item-

ized account of the total effect of existing techniques. Only frag-

mentary and superficial surveys are possible.



xxxvi)



Finally, it is not my intention to make ethical or aesthetic judg-

ments on technique. A human being is, of course, human and not

a mere photographic plate, so that his own point of view inevitably

appears. But this does not preclude a deeper objectivity. The sign

of it will be that worshippers of technique will no doubt find this

work pessimistic and haters of technique will find it optimistic.



I have attempted simply to present, by means of a comprehen-

sive analysis, a concrete and fundamental interpretation of tech-

nique.



That is the sole object of this book.



J. E.



1954



THE TECHNOLOGICAL

SOCIETY



CHAPTER



CO



TECHNIQUES



No social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of tech-

nique in the modem world. And yet no subject is so little under-

stood. Let us try to set up some guideposts to situate the technical

phenomenon.



Situating the Technical Phenomenon



Machines and Technique. Whenever we see the word technology

or technique, we automatically think of machines. Indeed, we

commonly think of our world as a world of machines. This notion—

which is in fact an error—is found, for example, in the works of

Oldham and Pierre Ducasse. It arises from the fact that the ma-

chine is the most obvious, massive, and impressive example of tech-

nique, and historically the first. What is called the history of tech-

nique usually amounts to no more than a history of the machine;

this very formulation is an example of the habit of intellectuals of

regarding forms of the present as identical with those of the past.



Technique certainly began with the machine. It is quite true

that all the rest developed out of mechanics; it is quite true also that

without the machine the world of technique would not exist. But



4 )	TECHNIQUES



to explain the situation in this way does not at all legitimatize it. It

is a mistake to continue with this confusion of terms, the more so

because it leads to the idea that, because the machine is at the

origin and center of the technical problem, one is dealing with the

whole problem when one deals with the machine. And that is a

greater mistake still. Technique has now become almost com-

pletely independent of the machine, which has lagged far behind

its offspring.



It must be emphasized that, at present, technique is applied out-

side industrial life. The growth of its power today has no relation

to the growing use of the machine. The balance seems rather to

have shifted to the other side. It is the machine which is now en-

tirely dependent upon technique, and the machine represents only

a small part of technique. If we were to characterize the relations

between technique and the machine today, we could say not only

that the machine is the result of a certain technique, but also that

its social and economic applications are made possible by other

technical advances. The machine is now not even the most impor-

tant aspect of technique (though it is perhaps the most spectac-

ular); technique has taken over all of man’s activities, not just his

productive activity.



From another point of view, however, the machine is deeply

symptomatic: it represents the ideal toward which technique

strives. The machine is solely, exclusively, technique; it is pure

technique, one might say. For, wherever a technical factor exists, it

results, almost inevitably, in mechanization: technique transforms

everything it touches into a machine.



Another relationship exists between technique and the machine,

and this relationship penetrates to the very cor* of the problem of

our civilization. It is said (and everyone agrees) that the machine

has created an inhuman atmosphere. The machine, so characteris-

tic of the nineteenth century, made an abrupt entrance into a soci-

ety which, from the political, institutional, and human points of

view, was not made to receive it; and man has had to put up with it

as best he can. Men now live in conditions that are less than human.

Consider the concentration of our great cities, the slums, the lack

of space, of air, of time, the gloomy streets and the sallow lights

that confuse night and day. Think of our dehumanized factories,

our unsatisfied senses, our working women, our estrangement from



The Technological Society	(	5



nature. Life in such an environment has no meaning. Consider our

public transportation, in which man is less important than a parcel;

our hospitals, in which he is only a number. Yet we call this prog-

ress. . . . And the noise, that monster boring into us at every hour

of the night without respite.



It is useless to rail against capitalism. Capitalism did not create

our world; the machine did. Painstaking studies designed to prove

the contrary have buried the obvious beneath tons of print. And,

if we do not wish to play the demagogue, we must point out the

guilty party. "The machine is antisocial," says Lewis Mumford. "It

tends, by reason of its progressive character, to the most acute

forms erf human exploitation." The machine took its place in a social

milieu that was not made for it, and for that reason created the in-

human society in which we live. Capitalism was therefore only one

aspect of the deep disorder of the nineteenth century. To restore

order, it was necessary to question all the bases of that society—

its social and political structures, its art and its way of life, its com-

mercial system.



But let the machine have its head, and it topples everything that

cannot support its enormous weight. Thus everything had to be re-

considered in terms of the machine. And that is precisely the role

technique plays. In all fields it made an inventory of what it could

use, of everything that could be brought into line with the ma-

chine. The machine could not integrate itself into nineteenth-

century society; technique integrated it. Old houses that were not

suited to the workers were tom down; and the new world tech-

nique required was built in their place. Technique has enough of

the mechanical in its nature to enable it to cope with the machine,

but it surpasses and transcends the machine because it remains in

close touch with the human order. The metal monster could not

go on forever torturing mankind. It found in technique a rule as

hard and inflexible as itself.



Technique integrates the machine into society. It constructs the

kind of world the machine needs and introduces order where the in-

coherent banging of machinery heaped up ruins. It clarifies, ar*

ranges, and rationalizes; it does in the domain of the abstract what

the machine did in the domain of labor. It is efficient and bring*

efficiency to everything. Moreover, technique is sparing in the usa

of the machine, which has traditionally been exploited to conceal



TECHNIQUES



«)



defects of organization. "Machines sanctioned social inefficiency

says Mumford. Technique, on the other hand, leads to a more

rational and less indiscriminate use of machines. It places ma-

chines exactly where they ought to be and requires of them just

what they ought to do



This brings us to two contrasting forms of social growth. Henri

Guitton says: "Social growth was formerly reflexive or instinctive,

that is to say, unconscious. But new circumstances (the machine)

now compel us to recognize a kind of social development that is ra-

tional, intelligent, and conscious. We may ask ourselves whether

this is the beginning not only of the era of a spatially finite world but

also of the era of a conscious world.” All-embracing technique is

in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world.



Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational

events. Man is not adapted to a world of steel; technique adapts him

to it. It changes the arrangement of this blind world so that man

can be a part of it without colliding with its rough edges, without

the anguish of being delivered up to the inhuman. Technique thus

provides a model; it specifies attitudes that are valid once and for

all. The anxiety aroused in man by the turbulence of the machine is

soothed by the consoling hum of a unified society.



As long as technique was represented exclusively by the ma-

chine, it was possible to speak of "man and the machine.” The ma-

chine remained an external object, and man (though significantly

influenced by it in his professional, private, and psychic life) re-

mained none the less independent. He was in a position to assert

himself apart from the machine; he was able to adopt a position

with respect to it.



But when technique enters into every area of life, including the

human, it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very sub-

stance. It is no longer face to face with man but is integrated with

him, and it progressively absorbs him. In this respect, technique is

radically different from the machine. This transformation, so obvi-

ous in modem society, is the result of the fact that technique has

become autonomous.



When I state that technique leads to mechanization, I am not

referring to the simple fact of human adaptation to the machine. Of

course, such a process of adaptation exists, but it is caused by the ac-



The Technological Society	(	7



tion of the machine. What we are concerned with here, however, is

a kind of mechanization in itself. If we may ascribe to the machine

a superior form of “know-how," the mechanization which results

from technique is the application of this higher form to all domains

hitherto foreign to the machine; we can even say that technique is

characteristic of precisely that realm in which the machine itself

can play no role. It is a radical error to think of technique and ma-

chine as interchangeable; from the very beginning we must be on

guard against this misconception.



Science and Technique. Almost immediately we come up against

a second problem. It is true that it is another pons asinorum; one

hesitates even to mention it since the question has been so often

discussed. The relation between science and technique is a stand-

ard subject for graduate theses—in all the trappings of nineteenth-

century experimental science. Everyone has been taught that tech-

nique is an application of science; more particularly (science being

pure speculation), technique figures as the point of contact between

material reality and the scientific formula. But it also appears as

the practical product, the application of the formulas to practical

life.



This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only

a single category of science and only a short period of time: it is

true only for the physical sciences and for the nineteenth century. It

is not possible therefore to base a general study on it nor, as we are

attempting to do here, an up-to-date review of the situation.



A few simple remarks suffice to destroy our confidence in these

views. Historically, technique preceded science; even primitive man

was acquainted with certain techniques. The first techniques of

Hellenistic civilization were Oriental; they were not derived from

Greek science. Thus, historically speaking, the relationship between

science and technique ought to be reversed.



However, technique began to develop and extend itself only after

science appeared; to progress, technique had to wait for science.

Bertrand Gille has rightly said, in this historical perspective: “Tech-

nique, by means of repeated experiments, posed the problems,

derived general notions and the four primary elements; but it had

to wait for the solutions"—which science provided.



In the present era, the most casual inspection reveals an entirely



TECHNIQUES



«)



different relationship. In every instance, it is clear that the border

between technical activity and scientific activity is not at all sharply

defined.



When we speak of technique in historical science, we mean a cer-

tain kind of preparatory work: textual research, reading, collation,

study of monuments, criticism, and exegesis. These represent an

ensemble of technical operations which aim first at interpretation

and then at historical synthesis, the true work of science. Here,

again, technique comes first.



Even in physics, in certain instances, technique precedes science.

The best-known example is the steam engine, a pure achievement of

experimental genius. The sequence of inventions and improvements

of Solomon De Caus, Christian Huygens, Denes Papin, Thomas

Savery, and so on, rest on practical trial and error. The scientific

explanation of the various phenomena involved was to come much

later, after a lapse of two centuries, and even then it was not easy to

formulate. There is still no automatic link between science and

technique. The relation is not that simple; there is more and more

interaction between them. Today all scientific research presupposes

enormous technical preparation (as, for example, in atomic re-

search). And very often it is some simple technical modification

which allows further scientific progress.



When the technical means do not exist, science does not advance.

Michael Faraday was aware of the most recent discoveries concern-

ing the constitution of matter, but was unable to formulate precise

theories because techniques for the production of vacua did not yet

exist. Scientific results had to await high-vacuum techniques. The

medical value of penicillin was discovered in 1912 by a French

physician, but he had no technical means of producing and con-

serving penicillin; misgivings therefore arose about the discovery

and led to its eventual abandonment.



The majority of investigators in a laboratory are technicians who

perform tasks far removed from what is commonly imagined to be

scientific work. The research worker is no longer a solitary genius.

As Robert Jungk says: “He works as a member of a team and is will-

ing to give up his freedom of research as well as personal recognition

in exchange for the assistance and equipment a great laboratory

offers him. These two tilings are the indispensable conditions with-

out which he cannot even dream of realizing his projects. . . .*



The Technological Society	( 9



Pure science seems to be yielding its place to an applied science

which now and again reaches a brilliant peak from which new

technical research becomes possible. Conversely, certain technical

modifications—in airplanes, for instance—which may seem simple

and mechanical, presuppose complex scientific work. The problem

of reaching supersonic velocities is one. The considered opinion of

Norbert Wiener is that the younger generation of research workers

in the United States consists primarily of technicians who are un-

able to do research at all without the help of machines, large teams

of men, and enormous amounts of money.



The relation between science and technique becomes even less

clear when we consider the newer fields, which have no boundaries.

Where does biological technique begin and where does it end? In

modern psychology and sociology, what can we call technique,

since in the application of these sciences everything is technique?



But it is not application which characterizes technique, for, with-

out technique (previous or concomitant), science has no way of

existing. If we disown technique, we abandon the domain of science

and enter into that of hypothesis and theory. In political economy

(despite the recent efforts of economists to distinguish the bounda-

ries between science and economic technique), we shall demon-

strate that it is economic technique which forms the very substance

of economic thought.



The established foundations have indeed been shaken. But the

problem of these relations, in view of the enormity of the technical

world and the reduction of the scientific, would seem to be an aca-

demic problem of interest only to philosophers—speculation with-

out content. Today it is no longer the frontiers of science which are

at issue, but the frontiers of man; and the technical phenomenon is

much more significant with regard to the human situation than

with regard to the scientific. It is no longer in reference to science

that technique must be defined. We need not pursue philosophy of

science here, or establish, ideally or intellectually, what may be the

relations between action and science. What we must do is look about

us and note certain obvious things which seem to escape the all too

intelligent philosophers.



It is not a question of minimizing the importance of scientific ac-

tivity, but of recognizing that in fact scientific activity has been

superseded by technical activity to such a degree that we can no



TECHNIQUES



10)



longer conceive of science without its technical outcome. As Charles

Camichel has observed, the two are closer than ever before. The

very fact that techniques advance with great rapidity demands a

corresponding scientific advance, and sets off a general accelera-

tion.



Moreover, techniques are always put to immediate use. The in-

terval which traditionally separates a scientific discovery and its

application in everyday life has been progressively shortened. As

soon as a discovery is made, a concrete application is sought. Capi-

tal becomes interested, or the state, and the discovery enters the

public domain before anyone has had a chance to reckon all the

consequences or to recognize its full import. The scientist might act

more prudently; he might even be afraid to launch his carefully cal-

culated laboratory findings into the world. But how can he resist

the pressure of the facts? How can he resist the pressure of money?

How is he to resist success, publicity, public acclaim? Or the gen-

eral state of mind which makes technical application the last word?

How is he to resist the desire to pursue his research? Such is the

dilemma of the researcher today. Either he allows his findings to be

technologically applied or he is forced to break off his research.

Such is the drama of the atomic physicists who saw that only the

laboratories at Los Alamos could provide them with the technical

instruments necessary to the continuation of their work. The state,

then, exercises a very real monopoly, and the scientist is obliged to

accept its conditions. As one of the atomic scientials put it: “What

keeps me here is the possibility of using for my work a special mi-

croscope which exists nowhere else” (Jungk). The scientist is no



longer able to hold out: “Even science, especially the magnificent

science of cur o%vn day, has become an element Oi iec unique, a

mere means” (Mauss). There we have, indeed, the final word:

science has become an instrument of technique.



Later, we shall consider how it has come about that scientific

utilitarianism has gained such momentum from technique that a

disinterested piece of research is no longer possible. It has always

been necessary to have a scientific substructure, but today it is

scarcely possible to effect a separation between scientific and techni-

cal research. Indeed, our omnivorous technique (and this repre-

sents in part Einstein’s thought) may in the end make science

sterile.



The Technological Society	(11



I shall often use the term technique in place of the more com-

monly used term science, and designate as techniques work that is

usually termed scientific. This is due to the close association of

technique and science which I have pointed out and which I shall

discuss more fully later on.



Organization and Technique. A third element will help us formu-

late our problem more clearly. I have already pointed out that we

must understand the term technique in a broader sense. But some

authors, not wishing to deviate from traditional linguistic usage,

prefer to keep to its current meaning and seek another term to

designate the phenomena we are describing here.



According to Arnold Toynbee, history is divided into three pe-

riods, and it is on the point of passing from the technical period

into the period of organization. I agree with Toynbee that mechani-

cal technique no longer characterizes our times. However important

and impressive mechanical technique remains, it is only accessory

to other factors which are much more decisive, if less spectacular.

I have in mind the vast amount of organization in every field, the

recognition of which led James Burnham to write The Managerial

Revolution.



But I cannot agree with Toynbee in his choice of terms or in the

line he draws between the technical period and the period of or-

ganization. In his sketchy conception of technique, for which he

has been severely criticized, the confusion between machine and

technique remains. He has limited the realm of technique to what

it was in the past, without considering what it is now.



In reality, what Toynbee calls organization, and Burnham calls

managerial action, is technique applied to social, economic, or ad-

ministrative life. What but technique is the “organization” defined

in the following? “Organization is the process which consists in

assigning appropriate tasks to individuals or to groups so as to at-

tain, in an efficient and economic way, and by the coordination

and combination of all their activities, the objectives agreed upon”

(Sheldon). This leads to the standardization and the rationaliza-

tion of economic and administrative life, as Antoine Mas has well

shown. “Standardization means resolving in advance all the prob-

lems that might possibly impede the functioning of an organization.

It is not a matter of leaving it to inspiration, ingenuity, nor even

intelligence to find a solution at the moment some difficulty arises;



TECHNIQUES



12)



it is rather in some way to anticipate both the difficulty and its

resolution. From then on, standardization creates impersonality, in

the sense that organization relies more on methods and instructions

than on individuals.” We thus have all the marks of a technique.

Organization is a technique—and Andre L. A. Vincent had good

reason to write: “To approach the optimum combination of factors,

or the optimum dimension is ... to accomplish technical prog-

ress in the form of a better organization.”



It will no doubt be asked: What is the point of discussing these

terms, since, at bottom, you are in agreement with Toynbee? But

these discussions are important: Toynbee separates centuries and

phenomena which ought to remain united. He would have us be-

lieve that organization is something other than technique, that man

has in a way discovered a new field of action and new methods,

and that we must study organization as a new phenomenon, when

it is nothing of the sort. I, on the other hand, insist on the con-

tinuity of the technical process. It is this process which is taking on

a new aspect (I would say, its true aspect) and is developing on a

world-wide scale.



What are the consequences? The first is that the problems cre-

ated by mechanical technique will be heightened to a degree as

yet incalculable, as a result of the application of technique to ad-

ministration and to all spheres of life, Toynbee believes that this

organization which is succeeding technique is in some way a coun-

terbalance to it, and a remedy (and that is a comforting view of

history). But it seems to me that the exact opposite is true, that this

development adds to the technical problems by offering a partial

solution to old problems, itself based on the very methods that

created the problems in the first place. This is the age-old proce-

dure of digging a new hole to fill up an old one.



A second consequence: If what we are witnessing is only an ex-

tension of the domain of technique, what was said above about

mechanization is understandable. Toynbee writes of organization

as a phenomenon whose effects cannot yet be seen. However, we

can be confident that the final result will be that technique will

assimilate everything to the machine; the ideal for which technique

strives is the mechanization of everything it encounters. It is clear,

therefore, that my opposition to Toynbee, even if it appears to be

merely verbal, is significant. The technical age continues to ad-



The Technological Society	(13



vance and we cannot even say that we are at the peak 0£ its ex-

pansion. In fact, some decisive conquests remain to be made—

man, among others—and it is hard to see what is to prevent

technique from making them. Thus, even if this is not a question

of a new factor, it is at least clear now what the phenomenon in-

volves and what it signifies.



Definitions. Once we stop identifying technique and machine, the

definitions of technique we find are inadequate to the established

facts. Marcel Mauss, the sociologist, understands the problem ad-

mirably, and has given various definitions of technique, some of

which are excellent. Let us take one that is open to criticism and,

by criticizing it, state our ideas more precisely: “Technique is a

group of movements, of actions generally and mostly manual, or-

ganized, and traditional, all of which unite to reach a known end,

' for example, physical, chemical or organic.”



This definition is perfectly valid for the sociologist who deals

with the primitive. It offers, as Mauss shows, numerous advantages.

For example, it eliminates from the realm of techniques questions

of religion or art (magic, however, ought to be classified among

techniques, as we shall see later). But these advantages apply only

in a historical perspective. In the modern perspective, this defini-

tion is insufficient

Can it be said that the technique of elaboration of an economic

plan (purely a technical operation) is the result of such movements

as Mauss describes? No particular motion or physical act is in-

volved. An economic plan is purely an intellectual operation,

which nevertheless is a technique.



When we consider Mauss’s statement that technique is restricted

to manual activity, the inadequacy of his definition is even more

apparent. Today most technical operations are not manual

Whether machines are substituted for men, or technique becomes

intellectual, the most important sphere in the world today (because

in it lie the seeds of future development) is scarcely that of manual

labor. True, manual labor is still the basis of mechanical operation,

and we would do well to recall Jijnger's principal argument

against the illusion of technical progress. He holds that the more

technique is perfected, the more it requires secondary manual

labor; and, furthermore, that the volume of manual operations

increases faster than the volume of mechanical operations. This



TECHNIQUES



may be so, but the most important feature of techniques today is

that they do not depend on manual labor but on organization and

on the arrangement of machines.



I am willing to accept the term organized, as Mauss uses it in

his definition, but I must part company with him in respect to his

use of the term traditional. And this differentiates the technique of

today from that of previous civilizations. It is true that in all civiliza-

tions technique has existed as tradition, that is, by the transmission

of inherited processes that slowly ripen and are even more slowly

modified; that evolve under the pressure of circumstances along

with the body social; that create automatisms which become

hereditary and are integrated into each new form of technique.



But how can anyone fail to see that none of this holds true today?

Technique has become autonomous; it has fashioned an omnivo-

rous world which obeys its own laws and which has renounced all

tradition. Technique no longer rests on tradition, but rather on

previous technical procedures; and its evolution is too rapid, too

upsetting, to integrate the older traditions. This fact, which we

shall study at some length later on, also explains why it is not

quite true that a technique assures a result known in advance. It

is true if one considers only the user: the driver of an automobile

knows that he can expect to go faster when he steps on the ac-

celerator. But even in the field of the mechanical, with the advent

of the technique of servo-mechanisms,1 this axiom does not hold

true. In these cases the machine itself adapts as it operates; this

very fact makes it difficult to predict the final result of its activity.

This becomes clear when one considers not use but technical

progress—although, at the present time, the two are closely asso-

ciated. It is less and less exact to maintain that the user remains

for very long in possession of a technique the results of which he

can predict; constant invention ceaselessly upsets his habits.



Finally, Mauss appears to think that the goal attained is of a

chemical or a physical order. But today we recognize that tech-

niques go further. Psychoanalysis and sociology have passed into

the sphere of technical application; one example of this is propa-



1 Mechanisms which involve so-called “feedback,''* in which information measuring

the degree to which an effector (e.g., an oil furance) is in error with respect to

producing a desired value (e.g., a fixed room temperature) is “fed back" to the

effector by a monitor (e.g., a thermostat). (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(15



ganda. Here the operation is of a moral, psychic, and spiritual

character. However, that does not prevent it from being a tech-

nique. But what we are talking about is a world once given over

to the pragmatic approach and now being taken over by method.

We can say, therefore, that Mauss’s definition, which was valid for

technique until the eighteenth century, is not applicable to our

times. In this respect Mauss has been the victim of his own socio-

logical studies of primitive people, as his classification of tech-

niques (food gathering, the making of garments, transport, etc.)

clearly shows.



Further examples of inadequate definition are those supplied by

Jean Fourastie and others who pursue the same line of research as

he. For Fourastie, technical progress is “the growth of the volume

of production obtained through a fixed quantity of raw material or

human labor”—that is, technique is uniquely that which promotes

this increase in yield. He then goes on to say that it is possible to

analyze this theorem under three aspects. In yield in kind, tech-

nique is that which enables raw materials to be managed in order

to obtain some predetermined product; in financial yield, tech-

nique is that which enables the increase in production to take place

through the increase of capital investment; in yield of human labor,

technique is that which increases the quantity of work produced

by a fixed unit of human labor. In this connection we must thank

Fourastie for correcting Jiinger’s error—Jiinger opposes technical

progress to economic progress because they would be, in his opin-

ion, contradictory; Fourastie shows that, on the contrary, the two

coincide. However, we must nevertheless challenge his definition

of technique on the ground that it is completely arbitrary.



It is arbitrary, first of all, because it is purely economic and

contemplates only economic yield. There are innumerable tradi-

tional techniques which are not based on a quest for economic

yield and which have no economic character. It is precisely these

which Mauss alludes to in his definition; and they still exist.

Among the myriad modern techniques, there are many which have

nothing to do with economic life. Take, for example, a technique of

mastication based on the science of nutrition, or techniques of

sport, as in the Boy Scout movement—in these cases we can see a

kind of yield, but this yield has little to do with economics.



In other cases, there are economic results, but these results are



1 6 )	TECHNIQUES



secondary and cannot be said to be characteristic. Take, for ex-

ample, the modem calculating machine. The solving of equations

in seventy variables, required in certain econometric research, is

impossible except with an electronic calculating machine. How-

ever, it is not the economic productivity which results from the

utilization of this machine by which its importance is measured.



A second criticism of Fourastie’s definition is that he assigns an

exclusively productive character to technique. The growth of the

volume of production is an even narrower concept than yield. The

techniques which have shown the greatest development are not

techniques of production at all. For example, techniques in the care

of human beings (surgery, psychology, and so on) have nothing

to do with productivity. The most modern techniques of destruc-

tion have even less to do with productivity; the atomic and hydro-

gen bombs and the Germans’ Vi and V2 weapons are all examples

of the most powerful technical creations of mans mind. Human

ingenuity and mechanical skill are today being exploited along

lines which have little reference to productivity.



Nothing equals the perfection of our war machines. Warships and

warplanes are vastly more perfect than their counterparts in ci-

vilian life. The organization of the army—its transport, supplies,

administration—is much more precise than any civilian organiza-

tion. The smallest error in the realm of war would cost countless

lives and would be measured in terms of victory or defeat.



What is the yield there? Very poor, on the whole. Where is the

productivity? There is none.



Vincent, in his definition, likewise refers to productivity: 'Tech-

nical progress is the relative variation in world production in a

given sphere between two given periods.” This definition, useful of

course from the economic point of view, leads him at once into a

dilemma. He is obliged to distinguish technical progress from

progress of technique (which corresponds to the progression of

techniques in all fields) and to distinguish these two from “techni-

cal progress, properly speaking,” which concerns variations in

productivity. This is an inference made from natural phenomena,

for, in his definition, Vincent is obliged to recognize that technical

progress includes natural phenomena (the greater or lesser richness

of an ore, of the soil, etc.) by definition the very contrary of tech-

nique!



The Technological Society	(17



These linguistic acrobatics and hairsplittings suffice to prove the

inanity of such a definition, which aims at a single aspect of techni-

cal progress and includes elements which do not belong to tech-

nique. From this definition, Vincent infers that technical progress

is slow. But what is true of economic productivity is not true of

technical progress in general. If one considers technique shorn of

one whole part, and that its most progressive, one can indeed assert

that it is slow in its progress. This abstraction is even more illusory

when one claims to measure technical progress. The definition

proposed by Fourastie is inexact because it excludes everything

which does not refer to production, and all effects which are not

economic.



This tendency to reduce the technical problem to the dimensions

of the technique of production is also present in the works of so

enlightened a scholar as Georges Friedmann. In his introduction to

the UNESCO Colloquium on technique, he appears to start out

with a very broad definition. But in the second paragraph, without

warning, he begins to reduce everything to the level of economic

production.



What gives rise to this limitation of the problem? One factor

might be a tacit optimism, a need to hold that technical progress

is unconditionally valid—which leads to the selection of the most

positive aspect of technical progress, as though it were its only one.



This may have guided Fourastie, but it does not seem to hold

true in Friedmann’s case. I believe that the reasoning behind Fried-

mann’s way of thinking is to be found in the turn of the scientific

mind. All aspects—mechanical, economic, psychological, socio-

logical—of the techniques of production have been subjected to

innumerable specialized studies; as a result, we are beginning to

learn in a more precise and scientific way about the relationships

between man and the industrial machine. Since the scientist must

use the materials he has at hand; and since almost nothing is known

about the relationship of man to the automobile, the telephone, or

the radio, and absolutely nothing about the relationship of man to

the Apparat or about the sociological effects of other aspects of

technique, the scientist moves unconsciously toward the sphere of

what is known scientifically, and tries to limit the whole question

to that.



There is another element in this scientific attitude: only that is



TECHNIQUES



18)



knowable which is expressed (or, at least, can be expressed) in

numbers. To get away from the so-called “arbitrary and subjec-

tive,” to escape ethical or literary judgments (which, as everyone

knows, are trivial and unfounded), the scientist must get back to

numbers. What, after all, can one hope to deduce from the purely

qualitative statement that the worker is fatigued? But when bio-

chemistry makes it possible to measure fatigability numerically, it

is at last possible to take account of the worker’s fatigue. Then

there is hope of finding a solution. However, an entire realm of

effects of technique—indeed, the largest—is not reducible to num-

bers; and it is precisely that realm which we are investigating in

this work. Yet, since what can be said about it is apparently not

to be taken seriously, it is better for the scientist to shut his eyes

and regard it as a realm of pseudo-problems, or simply as non-

existent. The “scientific” position frequently consists of denying

the existence of whatever does not belong to current scientific

method. The problem of the industrial machine, however, is a

numerical one in nearly all its aspects. Hence, all of technique is

unintentionally reduced to a numerical question. In the case of

Vincent, this is intentional, as his definition shows: "We embrace in

technical progress all kinds of progress . . . provided that they

are treatable numerically in a reliable way.”



H. D. Lasswell’s definition of technique as “the ensemble of prac-

tices by which one uses available resources in order to achieve

certain valued ends” also seems to follow the conventions cited

above, and to embrace only industrial technique. Here it might be

contested whether technique does indeed permit the realization

of values. However, to judge from Lasswell’s examples, he con-

ceives the terms of his definition in an extremely broad manner.

He gives a list of values and the corresponding techniques. As

values, for example, he lists riches, power, well-being, affection;

and as techniques, the techniques of government, production,

medicine, the family, and so on. Lasswell’s conception of value

may seem somewhat strange; the term is obviously not apt. But

what he has to say indicates that he gives techniques their full

scope. Moreover, he makes it quite clear that it is necessary to

show the effects of technique not only on inanimate objects but

also on people. I am, therefore, in substantial agreement with this

conception.



The Technological Society	(19



Technical Operation and Technical Phenomenon. With the use

of these few guideposts, we can now try to formulate, if not a full

definition, at least an approximate definition of technique. But we

must keep this in mind: we are not concerned with the different in-

dividual techniques. Everyone practices a particular technique,

and it is difficult to come to know them all. Yet in this great di-

versity we can find certain points in common, certain tendencies

and principles shared by them all. It is clumsy to call these common

features Technique with a capital T; no one would recognize bis

particular technique behind this terminology. Nevertheless, it takes

account of a reality—the technical phenomenon—which is world-

wide today.



If we recognize that the method each person employs to attain

a result is in fact, his particular technique, the problem of means

is raised. In fact, technique is nothing more than means and the

ensemble of means. This, of course, does not lessen the importance

of the problem. Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization

of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem,

are more important than the ends. Any other assessment of the

situation is mere idealism.



Techniques considered as methods of operation present certain

common characteristics and certain general tendencies, but we

cannot devote ourselves exclusively to them. To do this would lead

to a more specialized study than I have in mind. The technical

phenomenon is much more complex than any synthesis of char-

acteristics common to individual techniques. If we desire to come

closer to a definition of technique, we must in fact differentiate

between the technical operation and the technical phenomenon.



Tke technical operation includes every operation carried out in

accordance with a certain method in order to attain a particular

end. It can be as rudimentary as splintering a flint or as compli-

cated as programming an electronic brain. In every case, it is the

method which characterizes the operation. It may be more or less

effective or more or less complex, but its nature is always the same.

It is this which leads us to think that there is a continuity in techni-

cal operations and that only the great refinement resulting from

scientific progress differentiates the modern technical operation

from the primitive one.



Every operation obviously entails a certain technique, even the



TECHNIQUES



20)



gathering of fruit among primitive peoples—climbing the tree,

picking the fruit as quickly and with as little effort as possible, dis-

tinguishing between the ripe and the unripe fruit, and so on. How-

ever, what characterizes technical action within a particular ac-

tivity is the search for greater efficiency. Completely natural and

spontaneous effort is replaced by a complex of acts designed to im-

prove, say, the yield. It is this which prompts the creation of tech-

nical forms, starting from simple forms of activity. These technical

forms are not necessarily more complicated than the spontaneous

ones, but they are more efficient and better adapted.



Thus, technique creates means, but the technical operation still

occurs on the same level as that of the worker who does the work.

The skilled worker, like the primitive huntsman, remains a techni-

cal operator; their attitudes differ only to a small degree.



But two factors enter into the extensive field of technical opera-

tion: consciousness and judgment. This double intervention pro-

duces what I call the technical phenomenon. What characterizes

this double intervention? Essentially, it takes what was previously

tentative, unconscious, and spontaneous and brings it into the

realm of clear, voluntary, and reasoned concepts.



When Andre Leroi-Gourhan tabulates the efficiency of Zulu

swords and arrows in terms of the most up-to-date knowledge of

weaponry, he is doing work that is obviously different from that of

the swordsmith of Bechuanaland who created the form of the

sword. The swordsmith’s choice of form was unconscious and

spontaneous; although it can now be justified by numerical calcu-

lations, such calculations had no place whatever in the technical

operation he performed. But reason did, inevitably, enter into the

process because man spontaneously imitates nature in his activi-

ties. Accomplishments that merely copy nature, however, have no

future (for instance, the imitation of birds’ wings from Icarus to

Ader). Reason makes it possible to produce objects in terms of

certain features, certain abstract requirements; and this in turn

leads, not to the imitation of nature, but to the ways of technique.



The intervention of rational judgment in the technical operation

has important consequences. Man becomes aware that it is possible

to find new and different means. Reason upsets pragmatic tradi-

tions and creates new operational methods and new tools; it

examines rationally the possibilities of more extensive and less rigid



The Technologiccd Society	(21



experimentation. Reason in these ways multiplies technical opera-

tions to a high degree of diversity. But it also operates in the op-

posite direction: it considers results and takes account of the fixed

end of technique—efficiency. It notes what every means devised

is capable of accomplishing and selects from the various means at

its disposal with a view to securing the ones that are the most

efficient, the best adapted to the desired end. Thus the multiplicity

of means is reduced to one: the most efficient. And here reason

appears clearly in the guise of technique.



In addition, there is the intervention of consciousness. Conscious-

ness shows clearly, and to everybody, the advantages of technique

and what it can accomplish. The technician takes stock of alterna-

tive possibilities. The immediate result is that he seeks to apply

the new methods in fields which traditionally had been left to

chance, pragmatism, and instinct. The intervention of conscious-

ness causes a rapid and far-flung extension of technique.



The twofold intervention of reason and consciousness in the

technical world, which produces the technical phenomenon, can

be described as the quest of the one best means in every field. And

this “one best means” is, in fact, the technical means. It is the

aggregate of these means that produces technical civilization.



The technical phenomenon is the main preoccupation of our

time; in every field men seek to find the most efficient method But

our investigations have reached a limit. It is no longer the best

relative means which counts, as compared to other means also in

use. The choice is less and less a subjective one among several

means which are potentially applicable. It is really a question of

finding the best means in the absolute sense, on the basis of nu-

merical calculation.



It is, then, the specialist who chooses the means; he is able to

carry out the calculations that demonstrate the superiority of the

means chosen over all others. Thus a science of means comes into

being—a science of techniques, progressively elaborated.



This science extends to greatly diverse areas; it ranges from the act

of shaving to the act of organizing the landing in Normandy, or to

cremating thousands of deportees. Today no human activity es-

capes this technical imperative. There is a technique of organiza-

ticyi (the great fact of organization described by Toynbee fits very

well into this conception of the technical phenomenon), just as



2 2)	TECHNIQUES



there is a technique of friendship and a technique of swimming.

Under the circumstances, it is easy to see how far we are from

confusing technique and machine. And, if we examine the broader

areas where this search for means is taking place, we find three

principal subdivisions of modern technique, in addition to the

mechanical (which is the most conspicuous but which I shall

not discuss because it is so well known) and to the forms of in-

tellectual technique (card indices, libraries, and so on).



1)	Economic technique is almost entirely subordinated to pro-

duction, and ranges from the organization of labor to economic

planning. This technique differs from the others in its object and

goal. But its problems are the same as those of all other technical

activities.



2)	The technique of organization concerns the great masses and

applies not only to commercial or industrial affairs of magnitude

(coming, consequently, under the jurisdiction of the economic) but

also to states and to administration and police power. This organi-

zational technique is also applied to warfare and insures the power

of an army at least as much as its weapons. Everything in the

legal field also depends on organizational technique.



3)	Human technique takes various forms, ranging all the way

from medicine and genetics to propaganda (pedagogical tech-

niques, vocational guidance, publicity, etc.). Here man himself be-

comes the object of technique.



We observe, in the case of each of these subdivisions, that the

subordinate techniques may be very different in kind and not

necessarily similar one to another as techniques. They have the

same goal and preoccupation, however, and are thus related. The

three subdivisions show the wide extent of the technical phenome-

non* In fact, nothing at all escapes technique today. There is no

field where technique is not dominant—this is easy to say and is

scarcely surprising. We are so habituated to machines that there

seems to be nothing left to discover.



Has the fact of technique no intrinsic importance? Does it spring

merely from the march of time? Or does it represent a problem pe-

culiar to our times? Our discussion of the biology of technique will

bring us face to face with this question. But first we must survey in

detail the vast field which the technical phenomenon covers, in

order to become fully cognizant of what it signifies.



The Technological Society



(*3



Historical Development



Primitive Technique. It is scarcely possible to give here a his-

tory of technique in its universal aspect, as we have just defined it.

We are only now beginning to know a little of the history of me-

chanical technique. It is enough to recall the works of Andre

Leroi-Gourhan, Richard Lefebvre des Noettes, Marc Bloch, and

others. But the full history of technique has yet to be written. My

book is not a history. I shall speak in a historical vein only when it is

necessary to the understanding of the technical problem in soci-

ety today.



Technical activity is the most primitive activity of man. There is

the technique of hunting, of fishing, of food gathering; and later of

weapons, clothing, and building. And here we face a mystery.

What is the origin of this activity? It is a phenomenon which ad-

mits of no complete explanation. By patient research, one finds

areas of imitation, transitions from one technical form to another,

examples of penetration. But at the core there is a closed area—

the phenomenon of invention.



It can be shown that technique is absorbed into man’s psychol-

ogy and depends upon that psychology and upon what has been

called technical motivation. But we have no explanation of how an

activity which once did not exist came to be.



How did man come to domesticate animals, to choose certain

plants to cultivate? The motivating force, we are told, was

religious,2 and the first plants were cultivated with some magical

end in mind. This is likely, but how was the selection made? And

how did it happen that the majority of these plants were edible?

How did man come to refine metals and make bronze? Was it

chance, as the legend of the discovery of Phoenician glass has it?

This is obviously not the answer.



One is left with an enigma; and there is some point in emphasiz-

ing that there is here the same mysterious quality as in the appear-

ance of life itself. Each primitive operation of man implies the

bridging of such an enormous gulf between instinct and the techni-



* See, for example, Pierre Deffontaiaes* Geographic des religions.



TECHNIQUES



*4)



cal act that a mystic aura hovers about all subsequent develop-

ment Our modern worship of technique derives from man's

ancestral worship of the mysterious and marvelous character of

his own handiwork.



It has not been sufficiently emphasized that technique has

evolved along two distinct paths. There is the concrete

technique of homo faber—man the maker—to which we are

accustomed, and which poses the problems we have normally

studied. There is also the technique, of a more or less spiritual

order, which we call magic.



It may seem questionable; nevertheless, magic is a technique

in the strictest sense of the word, as has been clearly demonstrated

by Marcel Mauss. Magic developed along with other techniques as

an expression of man's will to obtain certain results of a spiritual

order. To attain them, man made use of an aggregate of rites,

formulas, and procedures which, once established, do not vary.

Strict adherence to form is one of the characteristics of magic;

forms and rituals, masks which never vary, the same kind of prayer

wheels, the same ingredients for mystical drugs, for formulae for

divination, and so on. All these became set and were passed on:

the slightest variation in word or gesture would alter the magical

equilibrium.



There is a relationship between the ready-made formula and a

precise result. The gods being propitiated obey such an invocation

out of necessity; all the more reason that they be given no oppor-

tunity to escape compliance because the invocation is not correctly

formulated. This fixity is a manifestation of the technical character

of magic: when the best possible means of obtaining the desired

result has been found, why change it? Every magical means, in

the eyes of the person who uses it, is the most efficient one.



In the spiritual realm, magic displays all the characteristics

of a technique. It is a mediator between man and ‘‘the higher

powers,” just as other techniques mediate between man and matter.

It leads to efficacy because it subordinates the power of the gods

to men, and it secures a predetermined result. It affirms human

power in that it seeks to subordinate the gods to men, just as tech-

nique serves to cause nature to obey.



Magic clearly displays the characteristics of primitive technique,

as Leroi-Gourhan indicates when he says that technique is a



The Technological Society	(55



cloak for man, a kind of cosmic vestment. In his conflict with mat-

ter, in his struggle to survive, man interposes an intermediary

agency between himself and his environment, and this agency has

a twofold function. It is a means of protection and defense: alone

man is too weak to defend himself. It is also a means of assimilation:

through technique, man is able to utilize to his profit powers

that are alien or hostile. He is able to manipulate his surroundings

so that they are no longer merely his surroundings but become a

factor of equilibrium'and of profit to him. Thus, as a result of tech-

nique* man transforms his adversaries into allies.



These characteristics of material technique correspond perfectly

to the characteristics of magical technique. There, also, man is in

conflict with external forces, with the world of mystery, spiritual

powers, and mystical currents. But there, too, man erects a

barrier around himself, for he would not know how to defend him-

self by his own unaided intellect. He uses any means that will

serve him both for defense and for adjustment. He turns to his

own profit the hostile powers, which are obliged to obey him by

virtue of his magical formulas. Masson-Oursel, in a recent study,

confirms this. He shows that magic is basically a "scholasticism of

efficiency” which man employs as an instrument against his en-

vironment; that magic is pragmatic, yet has a precision that must

be called objective; and that its efficiency is demonstrated only in

certain “consecrations or disqualifications.” Masson-Oursel rightly

believes that magic preceded technique—in fact, that magic is the

first expression of technique.



Plainly, we have had two streams of technique from the very be-

ginning. How does it happen that we never take cognizance of the

second? There are a number of reasons. We can leave aside the

causes that come from modem psychology. Because we are ob-

sessed with materialism and do not take magic seriously, it has

little interest for us, and we are unaware even today, as we study

technique—the techniques that relate to men—that we are draw-

ing on the great stream of magical techniques.



But this neglect is due as well to objective causes: in relation to

purely material factors, it has been demonstrated that every milieu

resists imitating the techniques of another social or ethnic group.

Surely, this resistance was much stronger in the realm of magical

techniques. Here were all the taboos and prohibitions, the im-



TECHNIQUES



26)



mense strength of magical conservatism. Then, too, whereas ma-

terial techniques are relatively distinct and independent of one

another, magical techniques are rapidly elaborated into a rigid

system. Everything is of a piece, everything is dependent upon

everything else; consequently, nothing can be meddled with, noth-

ing modified without threat to the whole structure of beliefs and

activities. Hence, their weak expansive power and their strong

power of defense against alien magical techniques.



The realm of magical practice is limited, and there is little or no

diffusion. Propagation begins with “spiritualist” religions which are

not bound to special magical rites. There is, then, no possibility of

choice between different rival magical techniques; yet expansion

and choice are decisive factors in technical progress. There is no

real progress in the realm of magic; here lies its fundamental dif-

ference. There is no progress in space, no progress in time; indeed,

the tendency of magic is to regress. And because magical technique

is tied to one ethnic group, to one given form of civilization, it dis-

appears completely when that group or civilization disappears.



When a civilization dies, it transmits to its heirs its material but

not its spiritual apparatus. Tools, houses, and methods of manu-

facture live on and, more or less reincarnated, are to be met with

again. There may be a temporary material regression in periods of

great destruction, but the lost ground is recovered, as if a collective

historical memory made possible the recovery of what had been

lost several generations before. But magical techniques, rites, for-

mulas, and sacrificial practices disappear irremediably. The new

civilization will fashion its own new stock of magic, which has

little in common with the old. Only a set of generalizations so broad

as to mean nothing, and overhasty analogies, create the belief that

magical forms are perpetuated and renewed. Indeed, they live on

only in the minds of the “initiates” and not in any human or social

reality.



Consequently, a magical technique that is not passed on in

time or space does not follow the same evolutionary curve as ma-

terial technique. There is not a progression of discoveries built

one upon the other; rather, discoveries remain side by side and do

not affect one another.



There is another factor in the regression of magical techniques:

the problem of evidence. In material techniques, choice is relatively



The Technological Society	(27



simple. Since every technique is subordinate to its immediate result,

it is only a question of choosing the one that produces the most

satisfactory result; and, in the material domain, that result can

readily be seen. That one form of axe is superior to another is a

judgment not beyond a normal man (in spite of the extreme diffi-

culty primitive man experienced when faced with such a choice).

But with magical techniques the same certainty or force of evi-

dence does not exist. Who can judge their relative efficiency?

Magical efficiency is not always to be measured by a clear material

result such as making rain fall, but may have to do with some

purely spiritual phenomena or even with material phenomena

over a long period of time. Here matters are not clear nor the choice

easy; the difficulty becomes even more acute when we think about

the uncertainty of the reasons for failure. Was the magical tech-

nique really inefficient? Or was the one who used it incompetent?

The common reaction is to blame the magician rather than the

technique, and here again we see an element of immobility in

magic.



The two great streams of technique which we have traced from

their beginnings evolved in completely different ways. In manual

technique we observe an increase and later a multiplication of dis-

coveries, each based on the other. In magic we see only endless

new beginnings, as the fortunes of history and its own inefficiency

call its procedures into question.



Explanation becomes even more difficult when we note that in

the magical domain too our own era has achieved an overwhelming

superiority; our magical techniques have become really effective.

These techniques obviously must not be confused with religious

life or anything of that kind. This is purely a social phenomenon,

both in aim and in form. However, the two aspects of technique,

although both are social, are sharply separated, and would seem

to have interacted very little anywhere.



Greece. Technique is essentially Oriental: it was principally in the

Near East that technique first developed, and it had very little

in the way of scientific foundation. It was entirely directed toward

practical application and was not concerned with general theories,

which alone can give rise to scientific movements. This predomi-

nance of technique in the East points up an error which is found

throughout Western thought: that the Oriental mind is turned



TECHNIQUES



*«>



toward the mystical and has no interest in concrete action, whereas

the Western mind is oriented toward "know-how* and action, and

hence toward technique. In fact, the East was the cradle of all

action, of all past and primitive technique in the present sense of

the word, and later of spiritual and magical technique as well.



The Greeks, however, were the first to have a coherent scientific

activity and to liberate scientific thought. But then a phenomenon

occurred which still astonishes historians: the almost total separa-

tion of science and technique. Doubtless, this separation was less

absolute than the example of Archimedes has led historians to

believe. But it is certain that material needs were treated with con-

tempt, that technical research was considered unworthy of the in-

tellect, and that the goal of science was not application but con-

templation. Plato shunned any compromise with application, even

in order to forward scientific research. For him, only the most ab-

stract possible exercise of reason was important. Archimedes went

even further. True, he rationalized practice and even made “appli-

cations” to a certain degree; but his machine was to be destroyed

after it had demonstrated the exactness of his numerical reckon-

ings.



Why did the Greeks adopt this Malthusian attitude toward ac-

tivity? There are two possible answers: either they were not willing

or they were not able. And it is likely that both are true. Abel Rey

has devoted the fifth volume of his Science Technique to the

Greeks. According to him, Greece in her decline became “in-

capable of sustaining the ideal of hard, disinterested labor (the

ideal of an essentially contemplative intelligence disdainful of all

utility). She then fell back on the techniques of the East She

was involved in them by her own techniques, for she had none the

less sought to satisfy men's vital needs, in spite of the contempt in

which she held them.” Confronted with technical necessity, Greece

lost her inventive genius and turned to Eastern technique. She did

not know, says Abel Rey, how to find the bridge between “know-

how” and “know-why.”



This is true for the period of decadence, the second and first

centuries b.c., but it does not seem to be the case in the preceding

period; in the fifth century b,c., Greece experienced rapid technical

development, although later it came to an abrupt halt.



In their golden age of science, the Greeks could have deduced



The Technological Society	(



the technical consequences of their scientific activity. But they did

not wish to. Walter asks: “Did the Creeks, obsessed with harmony,

check themselves at the very point at which inquiry ran the risk of

going to excess and threatened to introduce a monstrosity into their

civilization?"



This was the result of a variety of factors, most of which were of

a philosophic nature. For one thing, theirs was a conception of life

which scorned material needs and the improvement of practical

life, discredited manual labor (because of the practice of slavery),

held contemplation to be the goal of intellectual activity, refused

the use of power, respected natural things. The Greeks were

suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of

brute force and implied a want of moderation. Man, however

humble his technical equipment, has from the very beginning

played the role of sorcerer’s apprentice in relation to the machine.

This feeling on the part of the Greeks was not a reflection of a

primitive man’s fear in the face of something he does not under-

stand (the explanation given today when certain persons take fright

at our techniques). Rather, it was the result, perfectly mastered

and perfectly measured, of a certain conception of life. It repre-

sented an apex of civilization and intelligence.



Here we find the supreme Greek virtue, lypkrt4* (self-control).

The rejection of technique was a deliberate, positive activity in-

volving self-mastery, recognition of destiny, and the application of

a given conception of life. Only the most modest techniques were

permitted—those which would respond directly to material needs

in such a way that these needs did not get the upper hand.



In Greece a conscious effort was made to economize on means

and to reduce the sphere of influence of technique. No one sought

to apply scientific thought technically, because scientific thought

corresponded to a conception of life, to wisdom. The great

occupation of the Greeks was balance, harmony and moderation;

hence, they fiercely resisted the unrestrained force inherent in

technique, and rejected it because of its potentialities. For these

same reasons, magic had relatively little importance in Greece.

Rome. Social technique was still in its infancy. Doubtless, there

had been some attempts at social organization—those of certain

Pharaohs, and those of the Persian empire, were not neglibible.

But such organizations could be maintained only by police power.



TECHNIQUES



3«)



whereas the exact opposite is true of genuine social organization.

By the very fact of its existence, coercion demonstrates the ab-

sence of political, administrative, and juridical technique; for this

reason the great empires of the past are of little importance to our

study. Correlatively, an army (even the army of the Chaldeans,

who advanced the art of war furthest) was a fairly inorganic crew

whose aim was pillage and which applied no social technique. The

army of Alexander made use of genuine strategy, but this was al-

most exclusively military and had no sociological foundations or

attributes. It was the expression not of a people but of a state—and

therefore lacked the substance necessary to technique.



In Rome, however, we pass on, at one step, to the perfection of

social technique, both civil and military. Everything in Roman so-

ciety was related to Roman law in its multiple forms, both public

and private.



To characterize the technique of this law in the period during

which it flourished (from the second century b.c. to the second

century a.d.), we can say first of all that it was not the fruit of ab-

stract thought, but rather of an exact view of the concrete situation,

which the Romans attempted to turn to account with the fewest

possible means. This realism respected justice and acknowledged

history and necessity. From this concrete, experimental view,

which the Romans held consciously, their administrative and judi-

cial technique developed. And a kind of discipline appeared: the

use of a minimum of means. This discipline, which probably had

its foundations in religion, is one of the secrets of the whole de-

velopment. To the degree that the Roman had to respond to neces-

sity, and at the same time not permit himself excessive luxury, it

was necessary to refinp pvery means, to bring it to perfection, to

exploit it in every possible way, and to give it free rein, without

shackling it with exceptions and secondary rules. No social situa-

tion developed which did not immediately find its response in or-

ganization. Nor could this response be the creation of a new means,

but rather the perfection of an old means. Indeed, the proliferation

of means is thought even today to denote technological weakness.



A second element in the Roman development of organization

was the search for an equilibrium between the purely technical

factor and the human factor. Judicial technique did not begin as a

substitute for man. In Roman judicial technique there was no



The Technological Society	(31



question of eliminating initiative and responsibility, but rather of

allowing them to operate and to assert themselves. It was not until

the third century a.d. that judicial technique attempted to deal

with the details of life, to regulate everything, to foresee everything,

thereby leaving the individual in a state of complete inertia. But

the great judicial era of Rome was one of equilibrium: the law

laid down the framework and supplied the means that men could

use in following their own initiative. Of course, this presupposed

a civic sense corresponding to the technical conception. The

equilibrium between the two was evident in the system of pro-

cedure we call bureaucracy; in it is found, with an almost dis-

concerting simplicity, the perfect type of procedure. And there we

find that one of the conditions of technique is respect for the in-

dividual, who is not yet considered apart from society.



A third characteristic of Roman technique was that it was di-

rected toward a precise end: the internal coherence of society. This

technique was not self-justifying, it did not have as its raison (Tetre

its own self-development, and it was not imposed from the out-

side. It was not a kind of scaffolding which held independent ele-

ments together; it sought rather to promote cohesion. The founda-

tion of society was not the police; it was an organization which

enabled society to make the least possible use of the police. A

wide variety of techniques—religious, administrative, and finan-

cial—were obviously needed to execute this design, but in no case

was there recourse to force. When it appeared that the state

would be compelled to use force, the organizational sense of the

Romans led them to abandon a given project rather than attempt

to maintain it by force. Force is never economical, and Rome was

economical in all things.



This social coherence was the first judicial technique the world

had known. It was also the basis for the Roman military system,

which was a direct expression of civil society in that it had the same

respect for efficiency and economy. From it came the development

of organs of transport, food supply, and so on; and the Roman con-

ception of mass strategy and their refusal to create heroes: combat

was thus reduced to its most utilitarian level.



A fourth element was continuity. The judicial technique of the

Romans was constantly being readapted in accordance with a his-

torical plan. It involved a policy of watchful waiting while circum-



3* )	TECHNIQUES



stances were not propitious, at the same time making preparations

for the right moment, and when that moment came, carrying out

the plan decisively.



As regards material techniques, the Romans did not develop

them as brilliantly. From the fourth to the first century b.c., and

after the second century a.d., there was almost total stagnation—

tools and armaments no longer evolved. But from the first century

b.c. to the first century a.d., a technical revival took place. Practical

necessity (on the economic and military levels and with regard to

transport) was met by the production of animal-powered ma-

chines (forges, water wheels, pumps, plows, the screw press,

cord-operated ballistic engines, etc.).



The Romans possessed a remarkable understanding of applica-

bility. Their judicial system could be applied always and every-

where (in the Empire); it was adapted to an unfailing continuity.

And these were totally new phenomena which Rome introduced.

Later, Rome was allowed to drift into a technical vertigo; the end

was near.



Christianity and Technique. The East: passive, fatalist, contemptu-

ous of life and action; the West: active, conquering, turning nature

to profit. These contrasts, so dear to popular sociology, are said

to result from a difference in religion: Buddhism and Islam on the

one hand; on the other, Christianity, which is credited with having

forged the practical soul of the West.



These ideas are hardly beyond the level of the rote repetitions

found even in the works of serious historians. It is not for me to

examine religious doctrines in themselves or as absolute if unreal-

ized dogma, but rather to interpret them sociologically. After all, I

am not writing theology; I am writing history. And there is a world

or difference between dogma and its sociological application. (I

shall not touch upon the personal interpretation of religion, which

concerns the relationship between the individual and God.)



This being the case, it is obvious that certain statements call for

modification. For example, the assertion that as a consequence of

the teachings of Mohammed, the Islamic conquests of the seventh

century are evidence of passivism. This might also be said of the

determined Islamic resistance to Western encroachments during

the last two centuries. We attribute to Buddhist indifferentism the

remarkable artistic, political, and military development in India



The Technological Society	(33



from the second to the fifth century. In fact, however, these civili-

zations were little advanced technically, though they had de-

veloped in many other areas.



Christianity in Russia, on the other hand, gave rise to a mystical

civilization which was indifferent to material life and had no

technical drive and no interest in economic exploitation. “Ah, yesT

is the reply. “But Christianity in Russia had Eastern overtones . .

Here, then, indifference to technique would appear to be a ques-

tion of temperament and not of religion.



Another embarrassing fact: when in her decline Greece applied

herself to technical inquiry and the development of industry, she

looked to the East for methods. And in the first century, when

Rome—the perfect example of the technical spirit in antiquity—

took up industry, she too turned to the East for industrial tech-

niques—the refining of silver and gold, glassmaking, the tempering

of weapons, pottery, ship construction, and so on. All these tech-

niques came to Rome from the East, either early, through the

Etruscans, or much later, after the conquests. We are far indeed

from being able to support this traditional cleavage between East

and West. In fact, during classical antiquity it was the East which

possessed the concrete, inventive mind that grasps the truth and

exploits it.



The West is making a prodigious advance in technique at the

present, and the West is traditionally Christian. Nor can it be main-

tained that Christianity is a negligible factor in that advance. How-

ever, there were several distinct historical periods in the West. The

West was officially Christian until the fourteenth century; there-

after, Christianity became controversial and was breached by other

influences. What do we find, from a technical standpoint, in the

so-called Christian era, the period from the fourth to the fourteenth

centuries, the “sociological moment”? First, we observe the break-

down of Roman technique in every area—on the level of organiza-

tion as well as in the construction of cities, in industry, and in

transport. From the fourth to the tenth centuries, in fact, there was

a complete obliteration of technique, a condition so deplored that

it became a focus of anti-Christian polemic, and rightly so. It was

because the Christians held judicial and other technical activity in

such contempt that they were considered the “enemies of the hu-

man race”—and not only because they opposed Caesar. The re-



TECHNIQUES



34)



proach of Celsus was not without truth. After the Christian triumph

in Rome, there was not one great jurist left who could guarantee

the life and the value of the Roman organization. Decadence? No

—complete disinterest in such activity. Saint Augustine devoted

much of his De Civitate Dei to justifying the Christians in this

respect, and to denying that their influence was detrimental. “They

are good citizens,” he proclaimed. That may have been so, but

their focus of interest was nevertheless on something other than

the state and practical activity. I shall show later on that the

technical state of mind is one of the principal causes of technical

progress.



It is not a coincidence that Rome declined as Christianity tri-

umphed. The Emperor Julian was certainly justified in accusing

the Christians of ruining the industry of the Empire.



After this period of decadence (for which, of course, Christianity

was not solely responsible), what does the historian find? The res-

toration, under Christian influence, of an active civilization—

methodical, exploiting the riches of the world as a gift given by

God to be put to good use? Not at all. The society which developed

from the tenth to the fourteenth century was vital, coherent, and

unanimous; but it was characterized by a total absence of the tech-

nical will. It was “a-capitalistic” as well as “a-technical.”



From the point of view of organization, it was an anarchy in the

etymological sense of the word—and it was completely nontechni-

cal. Its law was principally based on custom. It had no social or

political organization based on reasoned, elaborated rules. In all

other areas—for example, in agriculture and industry—there was

the same nearly total absence of technique. This was also true with

regard to the military, the principal activity of the time. Combat

was reduced to its most elementary—to charging in a straight line

and to hand-to-hand engagement. Only architectural technique

developed and asserted itself; but this was prompted not by a

technical state of mind but by religious impulse.



Little effort was made to improve agricultural or industrial prac-

tices. There was no effort at useful creation—evidence of the re-

markable practical genius of the Christian religion! And when at

the beginning of the twelfth century, at first very feebly a technical

movement began to take form, it developed under the influence of

the East.



The Technological Society	(	35



The technical impetus of our civilization came from the East, at

first through the intermediacy of the Judaei3 and the Venetians,

and later through the Crusades. But even so, it limited itself to

imitating what it had seen—except in art. Certain autonomous dis-

coveries did take place, especially as a result of commercial neces-

sity; but this development was no more intense than it had been

under the Roman Empire.



In fact, the Middle Ages created only one new, complete tech-

nique, an intellectual technique, a mode of reasoning: scholasti-

cism. The very name evokes its mediocrity. With its gigantic ap-

paratus, it was in the end nothing but an extremely cumbersome

formalism; it wandered for centuries in intellectual blind alleys,

notwithstanding the prodigious intellects of the men who used it

and were deformed by it. The balance sheet shows no triumphs,

even on the historical plane.



The technical movement of the West developed in a world which

had already withdrawn from the dominant influence of Christian-

ity. A point can doubtless be made of the effects of the Reformation,

but the economic consequences of this movement have been singu-

larly exaggerated. In any case, this is not the place to take up this

question.



Although, practically speaking, it seems clear that Christianity

was scarcely an important cause of technical progress (not to men-

tion regression), it is nevertheless customary to hold that Chris-

tianity, from the theological point of view, paved the way for

technical development.



Let us consider the two arguments advanced for this point of

view. First, and most important, it is held that Christianity sup-

pressed slavery, the great obstacle to technical development. The

moment men are free, they supposedly turn toward technique to be

delivered from the misery of labor. Slavery was thus a hindrance

to technique because no attempt was made either to relieve the

miserable condition of the slave or to replace him by some other

motive force. The second argument is more intelligent: that an-

tiquity was possessed of a holy fear of nature, and dared not lay

hand on the secrets which to the ancients were gods. They dared

not make use of natural forces, which for them were supernatural.



A particular kind of trader. (Trans.)



TECHNIQUES



36)



Christianity secularized nature: with Christianity nature once

again became simply nature and no one scrupled to exploit it.

Unfortunately, however, neither of these arguments is quite ac-

curate.



There was in fact greater technical progress in civilizations where

slavery was prevalent (for example, Egypt) than in others where

that institution was practically unknown (for example, Israel).

There was greater technical progress in the slaveholding period of

Homan history than in the period when slaves were freed whole-

sale. And the liberation of the slaves during the era of the barbarian

invasions produced no technical improvement, even at long term;

almost seven centuries elapsed between the suppression of slavery

and the beginning of even a feeble technical advance. The rela-

tion between technique and the absence of slavery is in no sense

absolute; as Bertrand Gille has rightly pointed out, human trans-

port by means of slaves was not known in Roman antiquity; yet

the harnessing of animals had not been developed.



We have here one of those facile, impressive, and altogether

antihistorical explanations which theorists are so fond of. The

slave, in fact, represented capital which it was not in the owner's

interest to lose or to use haphazardly. And, as the elder Cato indi-

cates, had it been possible to make the slave's labor more efficient

and less fatiguing, his master had every interest in doing so. More-

over, it did not cost anything to make use of the free men who lived

on the vast domains of the public treasury or the limes or the

Marches/ and later, on the ecclesiastical and seignorial lands.

Certainly, it was not respect for human life which prompted the

Romans to spare these people. And the people themselves scarcely

possessed the freedom of mind or the material possibilities to im-

prove their techniques. Gille has shown admirably that in Athens

the Greek slaves may have had greater value than the free work-

men.



The second argument is no more applicable. It is true that Chris-

tianity secularized nature. But did this benefit technique? We

have noted, in passing, the religious origin of many forms of tech-

nique; indeed, nature, as the theater of spiritual forces, gives rise

to one particular teclinique already mentioned: magic. One of the *



* The limes designated the Empire’s boundary regions to the north; the Marches,

the Scottish and Welsh border areas. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(37



goals of magic is to render the gods propitious to practical action

and to put the “powers'* at the service of material technique. The

representation of nature as inhabited by the gods was itself a

potent act, and favorable, if not to all applications, certainly to

technique itself. Taboos applied only to certain concrete applica-

tions which were determined by ideas of right and wrong. Man

thus felt that his actions were justified by the help given him by

the gods of nature. Christianity, however, deprived him of this

justification.



What was the doctrinal position of early Christianity regarding

practical activity, from the very beginning? On the moral plane,

Christianity condemned luxury and money—in short, everything

that represented the earthly city, which was consecrated to Satan

and opposed to the City of God. This was the era of the anchorite,

of the renunciation of city life, of cenobitism presented as an ideal.

The tendency was toward the restriction of economic life. On the

theological plane, there was the conviction that the world was ap-

proaching its end, that it was useless to strive to develop or cultivate

it, for the Lord was soon to return. It was wiser to be concerned

with eschatology than with worldly affairs.



At the beginning of the medieval period, these doctrines lost

some of their hold (although they persisted under other guises—

the feeling about death, for instance). But another element of

Christianity remained which was opposed to technical develop-

ment: the moral judgment which Christians passed on all human

activities.



Technical activity did not escape Christian moral judgment The

question “Is it righteous?" was asked of every attempt to change

modes of production or of organization. That something might be

useful or profitable to men did not make it right and just. It had to

fit a precise conception of justice before God. When an element

of technique appeared to be righteous from every point of view,

it was adopted, but even then with excessive caution. Only inven-

tions (representing a choice among techniques made by individ-

uals versed in Greek or Latin) judged worthy were applied or

even allowed to become known. It was within this narrow compass

that certain monks propagated and improved technical instru-

ments. The spread of the hydraulic mill by the Cistercians is well

known; likewise the many specialized mills to be found at the



TECHNIQUES



38)



Abbey of Royaumont (the smith’s mill, the fuller’s mill, etc.). But

these exceptions were few.



The search for justice before God, the measuring of technique

by other criteria than those of technique itself—these were the

great obstacles that Christianity opposed to technical progress.

They operated in the Middle Ages in all areas of life, and made

history coincide with theology.



The age of the Reformation, in its effort to return to the most

primitive conception of Christianity, broke down many barriers.

But, even then, it was not so much from the influence of the new

theology as from the shock of the Renaissance, from humanism

and the authoritarian state, that technique received a decisive im-

petus.



The Sixteenth Century. In the period from the sixteenth to the

eighteenth century the absence of technique in all areas but the

mechanical is striking. There was an absence of human reasoning

concerning action, of efforts directed toward simplification and

systematization, and of concern for efficiency. Certain important

technical achievements were made—for example, guns and gun

factories—and there was some agricultural research. But it is sig-

nificant that histories of technique (Pierre Ducasse’s, for ex-

ample) leap from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth

century. Indeed, the period which followed the Renaissance and

the Reformation was much less fertile in invention than the period

which had preceded them.



Printing, the nautical compass, gunpowder (also copied from

the East), all date from the fifteenth century. It would not do to

minimize the importance of these inventions. For Norbert Wiener,

they “constitute the lorn? of an industrial revolution which pre-

ceded the principal industrial revolution.” Wiener, in a remarkable

way, relates the principal inventions of this period to navigation,

which, he proposes, was the propulsive force behind research.

Alongside these major inventions, this period also saw a multitude

of discoveries and new applications in banking, armaments, ma-

chinery, architecture (for example, the discovery of a new system

for constructing the dome, as applied to Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs),

and in agriculture and the making of furniture.



The fifteenth century, in addition, is notable for a number of

technical manuals from southern Germany and northern Italy



The Technological Society	(39



(written at the beginning of the century and printed and circulated

at the end of it). These show a general interest in these problems, a

technical preoccupation on the part of the men of the times. The

great voyages were probably a consequence rather than a cause of

this technical progress.



But this technical drive slackened during the sixteenth century,

which became poorer and poorer in technique, and technical weak-

ness persisted through the seventeenth century and into the be-

ginning of the eighteenth. This poverty of technical achievement,

which lasted two centuries, leads us once more to question the

influence of the Reformation. What caused this slowdown of tech-

nical progress after the fifteenth century, which had been so rich

in discoveries of all kinds?



An uninitiated reader who opens a scientific treatise on law, econ-

omy, medicine, or history published between the sixteenth and the

eighteenth centuries is struck most forcibly by the complete ab-

sence of logical order. The materials are treated successively with-

out any connection, progression of thought, development, or show

of proof. The reader is apparently to be guided only by the au-

thor’s fancy. Every chapter in a scientific work, say, of the sixteenth

century, is a self-contained unit which justifies and proves itself.

A mere affirmation by the author generally serves as proof. And he

lets himself go in a free association of ideas which are in no way

pertinent to the subject; his thoughts often wend off to matters

completely unconnected with the subject of the book.



Purely personal reflection and private experience form the foun-

dations of these books; in no sense do they represent an effort at

common inquiry, reciprocal control, or search for the best method,

all of which are indispensable for technique. The plan of a book

was not laid out with the reader in mind; it was not based on

subject matter, but rather on the personal fancy of the author, or

on more obscure reasonings. Even men of powerful intellect such

as Jean Bodin did not escape these failings.



A second characteristic of this scientific literature is that it at-

tempts to set down in one book the whole realm of knowledge. It

is not rare to find, in works on law in the sixteenth or seventeenth

centuries, extended treatments of archaeology, theology, psy-

chology, and linguistics, not to mention history and literature. En-

tire chapters concerned with magical practices or Peruvian soci-



TECHNIQUES



40)



ology may interrupt the course of a book devoted to revenues or to

the jurisprudence of the Parliament of Bordeaux.



This amalgam of reflections and miscellaneous bits of knowledge

is found in the works of the best authors; it demonstrates the ab-

sence of intellectual specialization. The intellectual ideal was uni-

versality, and it was a rare thing for a judge, say, to be ignorant

of alchemy, or a historian, of medicine. This was, in effect, an

extension by humanism of the universalism to which medieval

theology aspired.



In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries every intellectual had

perforce to be a universalist. He had to have complete knowledge,

and when he wrote on a given subject he felt constrained to put

into the work everything he knew, pertinent or not. This was by

no means a sign of muddleheadedness but rather of the prevailing

search for a synthesized, universal system of knowledge. Every

author sought to put his whole self into his work, even in the case

of a technical book. Not the subject but the author dominated the

work: this tendency itself is contrary to technical inquiry. The

search was not for practical knowledge but for a comprehensive

explication of phenomena. Thus Descartes, after having established

an impeccable method of reasoning, gives himself over to the out-

pourings of his imagination in order to explain—to take a single

example—the movements of the tides.



This explains another characteristic of the books written after

the century of humanism: their lack of convenience. We find few

tables of contents, no references, no division into sections, no

indices, no chronology, sometimes not even pagination. The ap-

paratus standard for scientific works today is not found even rudi-

mentarily in the most perfect works of the period; and its absence

is characteristic of the absence of intellectual technique. The books

of the time were not written to be used, along with hundreds of

others, to locate a piece of information accurately and quickly, or

to validate or invalidate an experiment, or to furnish a formula.

They were not written to be consulted. They were written to be

read patiently in their entirety and to be meditated upon. Again,

this goes back to the ideal of universality.



The presentation of a book as an author's entire self, as a per-

sonal expression of his very being, supposes that the reader sought

in it not the solution of a given difficulty or the answer to a given



The Technological Society	(	41



problem, but rather to make personal contact with the author. It

was more a question of a personal exchange than of taking an ob-

jective position.	\



This applies to every other field of endeavor until the eighteenth

century. Thus, in the simpjest technical form, the mechanical, no

decisive progress was made during this time (unless Pascal were to

be considered the sole exception; but even Pascal merely extended

already known techniques). The same holds true for financial, ad-

ministrative, and military techniques, in spite of what Vauban says

to the contrary.



Then an intermediate situation developed. But despite the efforts

at co-ordination and systematization made by such great techni-

cians as Richelieu and Colbert, the only result was a greater com-

plication of the system, without much gain in efficiency. On the ad-

ministrative and political level, all the new organs (each valuable

in itself and without doubt efficient, but representing only an addi-

tion to what already existed) had to take into consideration every

other organ already functioning in the same field. New complicated

departments, jurisdictions, and hierarchies unceasingly weighed

down the machinery. On the financial plane, the same monstrous

growth occurred—for valid reasons—but it resulted in enfeeble-

ment beneath a seeming efficiency. There was no change in finan-

cial technique, in spite of all the efforts of Colbert, who saw what

should be done. There was no change in the technique of recruit-

ment, supply, and administration of the army, in spite of the efforts

of Louvois, who saw just as clearly what had to be done. Louis XIV

was an impotent monarch, despite his authority, because of the

absence of technical means.



Society was at a crossroads. More and more the need was felt to

create new means; even the structure these must take was clearly

perceived. But the framework of society, the ideas in currency, the

intellectual positions of the day were not favorable to their realiza-

tion. It was necessary to employ technical means in a framework

foreign to them; these techniques were powerless to force a deci-

sion or to eliminate outmoded means. They ran up against the

profound humanism, issue of Renaissance humanism, which still

haunted the seventeenth century—it believed not only in knowl-

edge and respect for the human being but in the genuine su-

premacy of man over means. This humanism, bound up with the



4 2 )	TECHNIQUES



idea of universalism, did not allow techniques to grow. Men re-

fused to conform to any uniform law, even when it operated for

their own good. This refusal was found in all strata of society: in

the most complex way when finance directors and parliamentary

counselors refused to utilize new and precise techniques of ac-

counting and legislative supremacy; in the most summary way

when the peasants rejected new and rational methods of recruit-

ment proposed for the army.



The world had to wait for the eighteenth century to see techni-

cal progress suddenly explode in every country and in every area

of human endeavor.



The Industrial Revolution. The term industrial revolution is ap-

plied exclusively to the development of machinery, but that is to

see only one side of it. In actual fact, the industrial revolution was

merely one aspect of the technical revolution. It is preposterous

that a specialist such as Lewis Mumford can write that he has found

in the various modes of exploiting energy the key to the evolution

of technique and the moving force behind its transformations. In

his view, a first period, which lasted until about 1750, knew only

hydraulic energy; a second period, from 1750 to 1880, is the age

of coal; and a third, that of electricity. (The use of nuclear energy

has only recently appeared; it is perhaps to be reckoned as part

of the age of electricity.)



Mumford’s thesis is incomprehensible unless technique is re-

stricted to the machine; Mumford actually makes this identifica-

tion. His distinction is then valid as a plan for the historical study

of machines, but it is totally invalid for the study of technical

civilization. When technical civilization is considered as a whole,

this classification and explanation are shockingly summary and

superficial. Norbert Wiener likewise rejects the classification

founded on the different sources of energy. For him there has been

only one industrial revolution, and that consisted in the replace-

ment of human muscle as a source of energy. And, he adds, there

is a second revolution in the making whose object is the replace-

ment of the human brain. Of this last we have as yet only prepara-

tions and indications. We are not yet there. What we are witnessing

at the moment is a rearrangement of the world in an intermediate

stage; the change is not in the use of a natural force but in the

application of technique to all spheres of life.



The Technological Society	(43



The technical revolution meant the emergence of a state that was

truly conscious of itself and was autonomous in relation to anything

that did not serve its interests—a product of the French Revolu-

tion. It entailed the creation of a precise military technique (Fred-

erick the Great and Napoleon) in the field of strategy and in the

fields of organization, logistics, and recruitment; the beginning of

economic technique with the physiocrats, and later the liberals. In

administration and police power, it was the period of rationalized

systems, unified hierarchies, card indices, and regular reports.

With Napoleon particularly, there was a tendency toward mecha-

nization which resulted from the application of technique to more

or less human spheres of action.



The revolution also entailed the exertion and the regrouping of

all the national energies. There were to be no more loafers (under

the French Revolution, they were imprisoned), no more privileged

persons, no special interests. Everyone must serve in accordance

with the strictures of technique.



From the judicial point of view, the technical revolution entailed

the great systematization of law in the Napoleonic codes and the

definitive suppression of spontaneous sources of law; for example,

custom. It involved the unification of legal institutions under the

iron rule of the state and the submission of law to policy. And

throughout Europe, except in Great Britain, the nations, amazed

by such an efficient operation, abandoned their traditional judicial

systems in favor of the state.



This systematization, unification, and clarification was applied

to everything—it resulted not only in the establishment of budget-

ary rules and in fiscal organization, but in the systematization of

weights and measures and the planning of roads. All this repre-

sented technique at work. From this point of view, it might be said

that technique is the translation into action of mans concern to

master things by means of reason, to account for what is subcon-

scious, make quantitative what is qualitative, make clear and pre-

cise the outlines of nature, take hold of chaos and put order into it.



In intellectual activity the same effort was evident, particularly in

the creation of an intellectual technique for history and biology.

The principles established by Descartes were applied and resulted

not only in a philosophy but in an intellectual technique.



These phenomena are so far from being sources of energy that it



44)



can scarcely be maintained that mechanical transformation

brought about all the rest. In fact, the widespread mechanical de-

velopment, spurred by the exploitation of energy, came after most

of these other techniques. It would almost seem that the order was

reversed, that the appearance of these other techniques was nec-

essary to the evolution of the machine—which certainly had no

greater influence on society than, say, the organization of the

police.



The revolution resulted not from the exploitation of coal but

rather from a change of attitude on the part of the whole civiliza-

tion. Here we are faced with a most difficult question: Why, after

such slow progress for centuries, did such an eruption of technical

progress take place in a century and a half? Why, at a certain

moment in history, did something become possible which had not

seemed possible before? We must confess that the ultimate reason

escapes us. Why did inventions suddenly burst forth in the second

half of the eighteenth century? We cannot say. Here we are at the

center of the mystery of invention, which strangely came to life for

this brief moment.



The inventions of the nineteenth century are much more easily

explained. A kind of chain reaction was set up: the discoveries

made at the beginning of the century generated those that followed.

There was a logical and foreseeable succession of events, once the

first steps had been taken.



But why were the first steps taken? We will never know, and, in

any case, that is not the purpose of this investigation. We ask

rather why technical inventions have proliferated so radically and

developed to the point where they threaten to engulf society. Why

did the limitless applicability of the sciences become a reality

when hitherto it had been restrained and equivocal? The Greeks

knew that machines could be utilized; why did it devolve upon the

nineteenth century to utilize them? The question, indeed, is why

the nineteenth century not only made applications but did so on

such a grand scale. Leonardo da Vinci invented a prodigious num-

ber of useful devices (the alarm clock, the silk-winder, a machine

for carding textile fabrics, and so on), and proposed many technical

improvements (double-hulled ships, the universal joint, conical

gears, etc.). Why did none of his inventions and improvements

find practical application?



The Technological Society	(45



There are a number of general answers. One can relate everything

to scientific progress, for example. The eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries saw advances in application, not in pure knowledge or in

speculation. It is useless to recount the scientific evolution of thi*

period or to enumerate the sensational series of principles and laws

formulated and applied at this time. Parenthetically, it might be

noted that the scientific revolution began as early as the first half

of the seventeenth century. Experiments were then performed to

prove the exactness of quantitative hypotheses. Moreover, a psy*

chological transformation occurred which led to the consideration

of phenomena as worthy of study in themselves. This prepared the

way for technical progress, but it cannot explain it. These scientific

discoveries represent necessary conditions—but not imperatives.

It is evident that applications are impossible without principles, but,

once principles have been established, applications do not neces-

sarily follow. Applications may be made out of simple curiosity, as

among the Greeks or among the makers of automatons in the

eighteenth century. (These automatons were not without experi-

mental value. Research in cybernetics today likewise ends in the

making of automatons.)



The close link between scientific research and technical inven-

tion appears to be a new factor in the nineteenth century. Accord-

ing to Mumford, “the principal initiatives came, not from the

inventor-engineer, but from the scientist who established the gen-

eral law.” The scientist took cognizance both of the new raw ma-

terials which were available and of the new human needs which

had to be met. Then he deliberately oriented his research toward a

scientific discovery that could be applied technically. And he did

this either out of simple curiosity or because of definite commercial

and industrial demands, Pasteur, for instance, was encouraged in

his bacteriological research by wine producers and silkworm grow-

ers.



In the twentieth century, this relationship between scientific re-

search and technical invention resulted in the enslavement of

science to technique. In the nineteenth century, however, science

was still the determining cause of technical progress. The society of

the eighteenth century was not yet mature enough to allow the sys-

tematic development of inventions. As Siegfried Giedion says, die

France of that period was a testing ground. Ideas proliferated but



46)	TECHNIQUES



could take no final form until society had undergone a transforma-

tion.



What distinguishes the eighteenth century is that applications

were made for reasons of utility; soon the only justification of science

was applicability. Most historians of technique content themselves

with invoking philosophy to explain this.



The philosophy of the eighteenth century did indeed favor tech-

nical applications. It was naturalistic and sought not only to know

but also to exploit nature. It was utilitarian and pragmatic. It con-

cerned itself with easing human life, with bringing more pleasure

into it and simplifying its labor. For the eighteenth century, man's

life was narrowly confined to the material; it seemed evident that

the problem of life would be resolved when men were able to work

less while consuming more. The goal of science thus appeared to

be fixed by philosophy.



This philosophy was concrete; it was bound up with material re-

sults. What cannot be seen cannot be judged, and this explains this

century’s judgment of history: that the foundation of civilizations

is technique, not philosophy or religion.



For these admirable philosophers, technique had the enormous

superiority of manifesting itself in a concrete way and of leaving its

tracks for all to read. Voltaire and Diderot were its principal ex-

ponents. But I am unable to give this philosophy the highest place

in the history of the development of techniques. It played a role,

but it was not the prime force behind the technical movement.

To say it was would be to exaggerate the force of these philosophic

ideas and systems, which affected only a small minority of French-

men and a minute elite abroad. The technical movement was a

European movement; the ideas of these philosophic minorities

could scarcely have penetrated Europe in such a way as to make

evident to everyone the excellence of technical progress. We have

only to recall popular reactions to machinery—for example, to

Vaucanson’s loom, to the first steamboat, and to the first blast fur-

naces. These philosophic ideas scarcely suffice to explain the re-

markable mobilization of all human forces in the nineteenth cen-

tury.



It is even questionable whether this philosophy was universally

accepted. At other times there have been utilitarian currents in

philosophy, but they represented only one branch of philosophy



The Technological Society	( 4 7



among several and did not lead to such a radical transformation of

society.



The optimistic atmosphere of the eighteenth century, more than

this philosophy, created a climate favorable to the rise of technical

applications. The fear of evil diminished. There was an improve-

ment in manners; a softening of the conditions of war; an increasing

sense of mans responsibility for his fellows; a certain delight in

life, which was greatly increased by the improvement of living

conditions in nearly all classes except the artisan; the building of

fine houses in great numbers. All these helped persuade Europeans

that progress could only be achieved by the exploitation of natural

resources and the application of scientific discoveries.



This state of mind created, in the second half of the eighteenth

century, a kind of good conscience on the part of scientists who de-

voted their research to practical objectives. They believed that hap-

piness and justice would result from their investigations; and it is

here that the myth of progress had its beginning.



It is clear that this atmosphere was favorable to technical de-

velopment. But, in itself, it was not enough. How, then, are we to

explain the sudden blossoming of technique in the nineteenth cen-

tury? (The eighteenth century was only the preliminary phase of

technical application; the nineteenth century is the really interest-

ing period.) I feel that this transformation of civilization can be

explained by the conjunction in time of five phenomena: the frui-

tion of a long technical experience; population expansion; the suit-

ability of the economic environment; the plasticity of the social

milieu; and the appearance of a clear technical intention.



The first of these factors must not be neglected: every modem

technical application had ancestors. Arthur Vierendeel and Lewis

Mumford have analyzed these preparations. Every invention has

its roots in a preceding technical period, and every period bears in

itself “not only the trivial residue but also the valuable survivals of

past technologies, and the nuclei of new ones.” What appears to be

genuinely new is the formation of a “technical complex,” which, ac-

cording to Mumford, consists of a series of partial inventions that

combine into an ensemble. This unit begins to function when the

greatest number of its constituents have been assembled, and its

trend is toward continuous self-perfection. From 1000 to about

1750, there had been a slow fermentation which had no immediate



<*)



consequences but which had amassed materials in every area of

life. They had only to be drawn on for the technical miracle to take

place. This continuity has been analyzed by Vierendeel in particu-

lar; and Wiener emphasizes it when he writes: “It is interesting to

reflect on the fact that every tool possesses a genealogy and is the

result of the tools which served to make it.” This enormous sum of

experiments, of apparatus, of inquiries was put to use abruptly at

the end of an evolutionary period which had lasted for nearly ten

centuries without social catastrophe. Continuity of this kind was

important because it made unnecessary the transmission of the

technical legacy from one civilization to another, an operation

which inevitably involves the loss of a part of it, especially a part

of the social forces that apply to nontechnical areas. This continuity

is found in all fields of technique, from finance to transport. If

technical progress does not appear at a given moment, it is only

because the social milieu is not completely favorable. But it is

ripening underground; it is self-perpetuating even while it is dor-

mant, as in the seventeenth century. This long preparation was

necessary as support and foundation for the structure the nine-

teenth century was to build; it represented what Charles Moraze

in his Essai sur la civilisation & Occident calls “collective incuba-

tion” This incubation, consisting of millions of accumulated ex-

periments, was the preparation for the moment of formulation, of

expression.



A second factor was equally necessary: the population expansion.

Here again we find ourselves face to face with a familiar problem.

For two decades population studies in relation to the development

of civilization have demonstrated that there is a close link between

technique and population: the growth of population entails a

growth of needs which cannot be satisfied except by technical de-

velopment. From another viewpoint, a population expansion offers

favorable grounds for research and technical growth by furnishing

not only the necessary market but also the requisite human ma-

terial.



The third condition has been analyzed by Vincent. If technical

progress is to take place, the economic milieu must combine two

apparently contradictory traits: it must be at once stable and in

flux. The foundations of economic life must be stable so that

primary technical research can be devoted to well-defined objects



The Technological Society	(49



and situations. But at the same time this milieu must be capable of

great change, so that technical inventions can be absorbed into the

economy, and research stimulated. A rigid economy brings with it

fixed customs which stifle the inventive faculty. Studies of the eco-

nomic situation in the second half of the eighteenth century show

that it had precisely these two opposed characteristics. But this is

well known. I shall do no more than point it out and shall devote

greater space to the last two conditions, which are usually neg-

lected.



The fourth condition is possibly the most decisive. It is the

plasticity of the social milieu, which involves two factors: the dis-

appearance of social taboos and the disappearance of natural social

groups.



The first of these appears in various forms, depending on the

society involved. In the Western civilization of the eighteenth cen-

tury there are two large categories: the taboos resulting from

Christianity, and sociological taboos. The first category takes in all

religious and moral ideas, judgments concerning action, the prevail-

ing conception of man, and the ends proposed for human life.

These were, theoretically and factually, opposed to technical de-

velopment. When faith had been translated into prejudice and

ideology, and personal religious experience incorporated into a so-

cial institution, a hardening of moral positions took place which

corresponded to the creation of genuine taboos. The natural order

must not be tampered with and anything new must be submitted

to a moral judgment—which meant an unfavorable prejudgment.

This was the popular mentality created by Christianity, particu-

larly during the seventeenth century. Closely related to these were

sociological taboos, in particular the conviction that a natural

hierarchy exists which nothing can modify. The position of the

nobility and the clergy, and above all of the king, could not be

questioned. When in the middle of the eighteenth century these be-

gan to be questioned, the reaction of the people was that sacrilege

was being committed; the stupor that accompanied the execution

of Louis XVI was a religious stupor. In fact, regicide was seen as

deicide. This constitution of society, which everyone relied on and

recognized as the only one possible, was an obstacle to technique

within it; technique was held to be fundamentally sacrilegious.

The natural hierarchy operated against the practice of the mechani-



TECHNIQUES



50)



cal arts, which would only bring conveniences to the lower

classes. And since the lower classes too believed in the natural

hierarchy, they could only be submissive and passive; they did not

try to better their lot. The important point here was not the reality

of the facts or the existence of the hierarchy; it was belief in its

natural and sacred character which stood in the way of technique.



The very structure of society—based on natural groups—was

also an obstacle. Families were closely organized. The guilds and

the groups formed by collective interests (for example, the Uni-

versity, the Parliament, the Confraternities and Hospitals) were

distinct and independent. The individual found livelihood, patron-

age, security, and intellectual and moral satisfactions in collectives

that were strong enough to answer all his needs but limited enough

not to make him feel submerged or lost. They sufficed to satisfy

the average man who does not try to gratify imaginary needs if

his position is fairly stable, who opposes innovation if he lives in a

balanced milieu, even though he is poor. This fact, which is so

salient in the three millennia of history we know, is misunderstood

by modern man, who does not know what a balanced social en-

vironment is and the good he could derive from it.



Man himself may feel less need to improve his condition. In ad-

dition, the very existence of natural groups is an obstacle to the

propagation of technical invention. For primitive peoples, inven-

tion spreads in certain geographical areas within certain groups

according to existing social bonds. Exterior diffusion, however, the

crossing of a sociological frontier, is extremely difficult. This phe-

nomenon exists in every society. Division into closely constituted

groups is an obstacle to the propagation of inventions. The same

holds for guilds. Guilds act not only spontaneously



and as socio-

logical units, but also voluntarily and according to the lawful con-

stitution of each. This is also true of religious groups. Consider, for

example, the manufacturing secrets jealously guarded by the

French Protestants in the seventeenth century. The diffusion of

every technique tends to be checked by these social divisions.



These obstacles disappeared at the time of the French Revolu-

tion, in 1789. With the disappearance of religious and social taboos

came the creation of new religions, the affirmation of philosophic

materialism, the suppression of the various hierarchies, regicide,

and the struggle against the clergy. These factors acted powerfully



The Technological Society	(51



upon the popular consciousness and contributed to the collapse of

the belief in these taboos.



At the same time (and this is the second factor which made for

the plasticity of the social milieu) a systematic campaign was

waged against all natural groups, under the guise of a defense of

the rights of the individual; for example, the guilds, the com-

munes, and federalism were attacked, this last by the Girondists.

There were movements against the religious orders and against the

privileges of Parliament, the Universities, and the Hospitalers.

There was to be no liberty of groups, only that of the individual.

There was likewise a struggle to undermine the family. Revolu-

tionary legislation promoted its disintegration; it had already been

shaken by the philosophy and the fervors of the eighteenth century.

Revolutionary laws governing divorce, inheritance, and paternal

authority were disastrous for the family unit, to the benefit of the

individual. And these effects were permanent, in spite of temporary

setbacks. Society was already atomized and would be atomized

more and more. The individual remained the sole sociological unit,

but, far from assuring him freedom, this fact provoked the worst

kind of slavery.



The atomization we have been discussing conferred on society

the greatest possible plasticity—a decisive condition for technique.

The breakup of social groups engendered the enormous displace-

ment of people at the beginning of the nineteenth century and

resulted in the concentration of population demanded by modem

technique. To uproot men from their surroundings, from the rural

districts and from family and friends, in order to crowd them into

cities still too small for them; to squeeze thousands into unfit lodg-

ings and unhealthy places of work; to create a whole new environ-

ment within the framework of a new human condition (it is too

often overlooked that the proletariat is the creation of the indus-

trial machine)—all this was possible only when the individual was

completely isolated. It was conceivable only when he literally had

no environment, no family, and was not part of a group able to

resist economic pressure; when he had almost no way of life left.



Such is the influence of social plasticity. Without it, no technical

evolution is possible. For the individual in an atomized society, only

the state was left: the state was the highest authority and it became

omnipotent as well. The society produced was perfectly malleable



5*)



and remarkably flexible from both the intellectual and the material

points of view. The technical phenomenon had its most favorable

environment since the beginning of history.



At the same time, by a historical coincidence (whether fortuitous

or not, I shall not undertake to say), what I have called a clear

technical intention came into being. In all other civilizations there

had been a technical movement—more or less extensive work of

this kind—but not a mass intention, clearly understood and de-

liberately guiding the whole society in a technical direction.



Giedion says of the period from 1750 to 1850: “Invention was a

part of the normal course of life. Everyone invented. Every entre-

preneur dreamed of more rapid and economical means of fabrica-

tion. The work was done unconsciously and anonymously. No-

where else and never before was the number of inventions per

capita as great as in America in the 6o’s of that century”



It is possible that a similar phenomenon took place in prehistoric

times when technique appeared out of sheer necessity. Pressed on

all sides, man reacted by creating technique. In historical times the

situation changed, however. Homo sapiens had by then established

his supremacy over the other mammals with respect to natural

forces. Some technical efforts had been pursued, now in one field,

now in another; for example, in the military art of the Assyrians or

in the art of construction of the Egyptians. There were always in-

dividuals who possessed a clear vision of technical supremacy; say,

Archimedes in mechanics, or Loyola in spiritual technique. But we

almost never find the distinctive characteristic of our time—a precise

view of technical possibilities, the will to attain certain ends, ap-

plication in all areas, and adherence of the whole of society to a

conspicuous technical objective. All these, taken together, con-

stitute what I have termed a clear technical intention.



Whence arose this intention? Many causes conspired to produce

it, among them the influence of the philosophy of the eighteenth

century, reinforced by the philosophy of Hegel and later that of

Marx. But there were other factors which were as important. What

really produced the general movement in favor of technique was

special interest.



This technical movement has been studied by men as different

as Descartes and Mare. But it was only when industrial self-inter-



The Technological Society	(53



est, for the sake of efficiency, demanded a search for the "one best

way to do work” that research was begun by Gilbreth in the field of

technique, with the amazing results we see today.



Special interest was and is the great motive force behind the de-

velopment of technical consciousness—but not necessarily any par-

ticular interest; say, the capitalistic interest or the moneyed inter-

est. The state interest was the first to become conscious in France,

at the time of the Revolution. The state developed political and in-

dustrial technique, and later, with Napoleon, military and judicial

technique, because it found them to be potent forces against its

enemies within and without. The state protected "the arts and the

sciences” (in reality, techniques) not out of greatness of spirit or

concern for civilization, but out of the instinct for power. After the

state, it was the bourgeoisie who discovered how much profit could

be extracted from a consciously developed technique. In fact, the

bourgeoisie has always been more or less involved with technique.

They were the initiators of the first financial techniques and, later

on, of the modern state. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,

they saw the possibilities of drawing huge profits from this system,

especially as they were favored by the crumbling "of morals and

religion” and felt themselves free, in spite of the idealistic smoke

screen they raised, to exploit individuals. This class put the interests

of technique before the interests of individuals, who had to be

sacrificed in order that technique might progress. It is solely be-

cause the bourgeoisie made money, thanks to technique, that tech-

nique became one of their objectives.



This alliance is well known and we need recall but a few facts.

James Watt, his steam engine perfected, was ruined and at a

dead end. It was a bourgeois, Matthew Boulton, who grasped the

industrial and financial possibilities of Watt's invention and de-

cided to apply it. Two further facts are pertinent: commercial

capitalism preceded industrial capitalism; industry owed its rise to

the accumulation of capital originating from commerce. And where

did industrialization first occur and become most widespread? In

England, because capitalism was more highly developed there and

the bourgeoisie more at liberty to act than anywhere else. This is

well known. The union between the bourgeoisie and technique

was expressed not only in the development of factories, but much



TECHNIQUES



54)



more subtly in the fact that the majority of technicians came from

this class. It was the bourgeoisie which promoted the advance of

science.



Moreover, the bourgeoisie were so well aware of the relation be-

tween economic success and the scientific foundations of that suc-

cess that they kept in their own hands, almost as a monopoly, the

instruction which was the only means of access to the great schools

and faculties that trained the technicians of science and the tech-

nicians of society.5



Technical progress is a function of bourgeois money. Yet today

the Marxists claim that the bourgoisie either have attempted to

restrain technical progress or make it serve the purposes of war.

Their claim, however, does not prevent history from contradicting

their theories. Marx himself would never have made such state-

ments; what is true today was not true in his time.



However, this self-interest of the bourgeoisie was not enough to

carry the whole of society along with it—witness the popular re-

actions against technical progress. As late as 1848, one of the de-

mands of the workers was the suppression of machinery. This is

easily understood. The standard of living had not risen, men still

suffered from the loss of equilibrium in their lives brought about by

a too rapid injection of technique, and they had not yet felt the in-

toxication of the results. The peasants and the workers bore all the

hardships of technical advance without sharing in the triumphs.

For this reason, there was a reaction against technique, and so-

ciety was split. The power of the state, the money of the bour-

geoisie were for it; the masses were against.



In the middle of the nineteenth century the situation changed.

Karl Marx rehabilitated technique in the eyes of the workers. He

preached that technique can be liberating. Those who exploited it

enslaved the workers, but that was the fault of the masters and not

of technique itself.



Marx was perhaps not the first to have said this, but he was the

first to convince the masses of it. The working class would not be

liberated by a struggle against technique but, on the contrary, by

technical progress itself, which would automatically bring about

the collapse of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism. This reconcilia- *



* The author includes here not only faculties such as the Ecole Polytechnique, but

also administrative tribunals such as the Conseil d’Etut. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	( 55



tion of the masses to techniques was decisive. But it would not

have been sufficient to result in a clear consciousness of the tech-

nical objective, the new consensus omnium, had it not appeared

simultaneously with a second historical fact, namely, the diffusion

of the so-called benefits of techniques among the masses. These

benefits included, for example, the conveniences of daily life, the

progressive shortening of the work day, facilities for public trans-

portation and medicine, new possibilities of making one’s fortune

(in the United States and in the colonies), housing improvements,

and so forth. A prodigious upheaval took place between 1850 and

1914 which convinced everyone of the excellence of a technical

movement that could produce such marvels and alter human life.

All this, Marx explained, presaged even better things and pointed

to the road to follow. Fact and theory were for once in agreement.

How could public opinion resist?



Drawn by self-interest (the ideal of comfort, for instance), the

masses went over to the side of technique; society was converted.

A common will developed to exploit the possibilities of technique

to the maximum, and groups of the most conflicting interests

(state and individual, bourgeoisie and working class) united to

hymn its praises. Literally everyone was agreed on its excellence.

True, after 1914, certain criticisms came from the intellectuals, but

these were ineffective because they were usually beside the point

—manifestations of vague idealism or of sentimental humanitar-

ianism.



In the middle of the nineteenth century, when technique had

hardly begun to develop, another voice was raised in prophetic

warning against it. The voice was Kierkegaard’s. But his warnings,

solidly thought out though they were, and in the strongest sense of

the word prophetic, were not heeded—for very different reasons.

They were too close to the truth.



This analysis applies chiefly to the countries where the technical

movement first developed—England and France. In England

events took a somewhat different course than in France, but they

had the same scope and profound significance. The historical se-

quence varied, but the orientation in both countries was toward

technical development. Social plasticity developed in England by

different paths and at a different time than in France. Sociological

taboos were broken at an early date. The regicide of Charles I by



$6 )	TECHNIQUES



Cromwell gave the initial and primary impulse to social plasticity;

as all writers agree, after this date a rigid social hierarchy no longer

existed in England. The supreme value was productive and efficient

labor which permitted the industrious to rise high on the social

ladder (William Pitt is a good example). The king no longer rep-

resented divine authority, nor was he able to resist the nation. No

longer was there sociological rigidity based on the royal person or

on the power of money. It would be an error to interpret sociologi-

cally the England of the eighteenth century in accordance with

the stability which is discernible in the nineteenth, and which was

achieved after the technical revolution, when society had entered

new paths. In the eighteenth century, England was essentially

mobile and unstable in all its structures. Christianity itself was not

the conservative force it proved to be on the Continent. Two great

currents divided English society before the advent of Methodism:

the Church of England and the Puritans. The Puritans, even after

their political failure, were the predominant influence. In keeping

with the trend the Reformation set, they exploded all prevailing

religious taboos and developed a practical and utilitarian mental-

ity that emphasized the use and even the exploitation of the good

things of this world given by God to men. The relationship of this

trend to the development of capitalism is well known. The Church

of England had favored tolerance since the end of the eighteenth

century and had adopted as its leading principle Bishop War-

burton’s idea of social utility. Here, too, there was a kind of secular-

ization of religion. Religion is no longer the framework of society;

it can no longer impose its taboos or forms upon it. Rather, it inte-

grates itself into society, adjusts to it, and adopts the notion of social

utility as criterion and justification. At the same time the disintegra-

tion and atomization of English social groups occurred—brought

about not so much by the influence of the state (as in France) as

by the destruction of peasant society which began in the early

eighteenth century and of which Defoe and Swift were such elo-

quent witnesses.



The peasant commune and the peasant family were slowly

ruined in the eighteenth century. The historian notes the collapse,

relentless and more rapid than in France, of a whole society which

had been in equilibrium until then. The struggle between the

landed and the moneyed interests ended with the victory of the



The Technological Society	(5	7



moneyed interests. It is not important here to detail the ways a new

peasant society, based on the moneyed interest, came into being.

Newly rich entrepreneurs bought up the great estates and took the

place of the old gentry, but that is not our concern. Our concern is

the merchants whose influence changed the organic structure of

the traditional world. The small landowners and the yeomen were

eliminated or reduced to an agricultural proletariat, or they were

forced to migrate to the city. The rural corporations were ruined,

the communes passed almost completely into the hands of the new

landlords and ceased to constitute coherent sociological units. The

movement was accelerated by the application of new agricultural

methods, which were accepted much more rapidly than in France.

The enclosure of the commons, which in France took place chiefly

after 1780, began in England in 1730. The new agricultural tech-

niques were plainly so superior that it was not possible to preserve

the old “open field” system—the commons, the pastures, and the

forests; thus the final blow was dealt to the old, organic, peasant

society. The peasant could not survive as such, and with him, the

whole of society entered into a state of flux. The plasticity we refer

to came about in England as a result of this evolution in the use of

land, which furnished the technical movement with the necessary

manpower: apathetic, vacant, and uprooted. Not only was this

manpower necessary for the development of industry; the masses

thus created were indispensable to faith in techniques and the

spread of techniques.



To summarize: social plasticity came about earlier in England

than in France, and the technical movement developed along with

it. Moreover, the state, which was dominant in French society, did

not have the same influence in Great Britain.



This applies too to the development of a clear technical con-

sciousness. In Great Britain this consciousness appeared as a bour-

geois interest. The spirit behind the introduction of new techniques

in the rural districts was very different from that which character-

ized France a short time later. The technical movement in France

was launched by the monarchy and took a scientific form: the

academies and the research institutes propagated the new tech-

niques throughout the country; and the nobles applied them, very

often disinterestedly. In England, profit was from the very begin-

ning the prime motive. And empiricism was the dominant factor



TECHNIQUES



5« )



because technique was more efficient. Techniques were developed

because it paid to develop them; commercial activity found them

advantageous. This was true in agriculture as well as in industry.



The English technical movement was marked by the fact that all

the different financial systems (banks, stock exchanges, insurance

companies) were perfected. The clear consciousness of the value

of technique expressed itself primarily in terms of money, and was

located at the center of the systems of distribution. And the accel-

eration of invention in this area influenced all other techniques.

The British state attained this clear technical consciousness at a

comparatively last date, and then only when it saw that techniques

were to its immediate interest.



This phenomenon of technical clarity sometimes came about

through an association of the interests of the state and the interests

of private individuals. In steelmaking, for example, the fact that

Henry Cort was supplier to the Admiralty was decisive, in 1780, for

the application and development of steel puddling. The state

found in this procedure an excellent means of improving its naval

vessels. However, it was competition with the Napoleonic empire

that started His Majesty's government down the road of tech-

nique.



Thereafter, both governments understood that only technical

efficiency in all governmental relations and enterprises could com-

mand the paths of peace as well as the affairs of war. The English

state henceforth had the same influence on the development of

techniques as the French revolutionary state had exerted through

the establishment of a clear technical consciousness. The way had

already been paved in England by the emergence of the British

bourgeoisie. Whatever the differences in its development in Eng-

land and France, however, the technical consciousness that ap-

peared was identical in both countries.



In the United States this took place at the beginning of the nine-

teenth century. Until then, the society of this country was inor-

ganic. But at that time the American social milieu was favorable;

moreover, the Americans profited from the technical conscious-

ness evolved in Europe, and so they arrived immediately at a

model for technique. Giedion has noted that the Americans began

by mechanizing complex operations, which produced the assembly

line, whereas die Europeans tended to mechanize simple opera-



The Technological Society	(59



tions, such as spinning. This American accomplishment was the

result of the exceptional flexibility of the American milieu.



These conditions were not found in the other European coun-

tries: Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia. In these nations the

social structures remained as they were and the social hierarchy

was not attacked. The taboos of religion were fanatically respected,

and those of society were not questioned. The Inquisition and the

Tribunal of the Empire jealously guarded the spiritual and socio-

logical divisions of society. This world was already undermined,

ruined, and emptied of content, but its rigid forms were univer-

sally accepted as good. There were few changes in the cities and

none at all in the rural areas. The traditional organism remained

intact. And when enlightened despotism began to create some ex-

citement, this world was so little prepared that it exhausted itself

in the struggle against the old social structures. Consider, for ex-

ample, the fate of Peter the Great, Joseph II, and the melancholy

and celebrated Marquis de Pombal.



Great inventions may have been made in Germany and Russia

during this period. Everyone is familiar with the claims of Hitler,

and later of Stalin, that all important discoveries were made in

their respective countries. Allowing for exaggeration, there is per-

haps some truth in these claims. But the discoveries were not

applied, and only application counts in the rise of technique.

Application did not take place because the felicitous combination

of factors we have discussed was lacking. The social milieu of these

countries, their spiritual tendencies, group psychology, sociological

structures, and past history were all unfavorable to the rise of tech-

nique. The state in some countries, principally Prussia, was fav-

orable to it; but a clear technical consciousness on the part of the

state alone was obviously insufficient to open the door to the great

mobilization of men and things necessary for this multiform prog-

ress.



The joint occurrence of the five factors we have briefly analyzed

explains the exceptional growth of technique. Never before had

these factors coincided. They are, to summarize: (1) a very long

technical maturation or incubation without decisive checks before

the final flowering; (2) population growth; (3) a suitable eco-

nomic milieu; (4) the almost complete plasticity of a society mal-



TECHNIQUES



6o)



leable and open to the propagation of technique; (5) a clear tech-

nical intention, which combines the other factors and directs them

toward the pursuit of the technical objective. Some of these condi-

tions had existed in other societies; for example, the necessary tech-

nical preparation and the destruction of taboos in the Roman Em-

pire in the third century. But the unique phenomenon was the

simultaneous existence of all five—all of them necessary to bring

about individual technical invention, the mainspring of everything

else.



What else can history teach us? Only the vanity of believing we

can impose our theories on history. Any philosophy which asserts

that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.



CHAPTER



Da



THE



CHARACTEROLOGY

OF TECHNIQUE



In discussing technique today it is impossible not to take a position.

And the position we take is determined by a historical choice, con*

scious or unconscious.



Acknowledging that the technical phenomenon is a constant of

human history, is there anything new about its present aspect?

There are two distinct positions on this question. The first main*

tains that there is no more real technical innovation in the modem

world than there was in the Stone Age. Jean Fourastie asks hu-

morously whether prehistoric man, the first time he saw a bronze

sword used, did not feel as menaced by it as we feel by the atom

bomb. It would seem, then, that technical innovations have al-

ways had the same surprising and unwelcome character for men.

(This is an inexhaustible source of jokes for motion pictures and

cartoons.) If we become frightened, we are merely obeying ances-

tral instincts. There is no more real reason to be frightened by the



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



62)



atomic bomb than by any invention thousands of years old—which,

as we see, has not destroyed the human race. The technique of to-

day has the same characteristics as all preceding techniques. This

normal development, however rapid and surprising, cannot be of

danger to us.



In opposition to this resolutely optimistic position, there is an-

other which maintains that we are confronted with a genuinely new

phenomenon. There is nothing in common between the modern

technical complex and the fragments of it which are laboriously

sought out in the course of history to demonstrate that there has al-

ways been technique. For those who hold this viewpoint, the techni-

cal phenomenon represents a complete change, not only of degree,

but of kind. Modern society is confronted with a transition (her-

alded by Marx and particularly by Engels) which involves change

of quality as a consequence of change of quantity. This postulate,

which Engels applied to physical phenomena, holds true for so-

ciological phenomena as well. Beyond a certain quantity, the phe-

nomenon, even though in a sense it remains the same, does not

have the same quality, is not of the same nature.



One cannot choose between these two theses in a subjective

and a priori manner. It is necessary to examine the objective char-

acteristics of technique to determine whether there has really been

a change. But what characteristics shall we examine? Not the in-

trinsic ones; these do not change. If we consider intrinsic charac-

teristics, the first position is right. The mental operation by means

of which Archimedes constructed certain engines of war is iden-

tical with that of any modern engineer who improves a motor. And

the same instinct impels a man to catapult stones and to construct

a machine gnn Likewise, the same laws of propagation of techni-

cal invention operate, no matter what the stage of technical evolu-

tion. However, these identities are not at all convincing.



Many men who have studied the problems posed by different

techniques admit that there is a radical difference between the tra-

ditional situation and the situation we face today. On the basis of

intrinsic characteristics, these men have established a distinction be-

tween (a) the fundamental techniques which, as Ducasse says,

“sum up all man’s relations with his environment,” and (b) the

techniques which are the results of applied science. The first group

is composed of techniques which, although seldom identical in



The Technological Society	(63



method and form, are identical in intrinsic characteristics. They

constitute the complex of fundamental techniques which sociolo-

gists such as LeRoi-Gourhan usually study and on the basis of

which they elucidate the laws of technique. Primitive techniques

have no reality in themselves; they are merely the intermediary be-

tween man and his environment.



The techniques which result from applied science date from the

eighteenth century and characterize our own civilization. The new

factor is that the multiplicity of these techniques has caused them

literally to change their character. Certainly, they derive from old

principles and appear to be the fruit of normal and logical evolu-

tion. However, they no longer represent the Same phenomenon. In

fact, technique has taken substance, has become a reality in itself.

It is no longer merely a means and an intermediary. It is an object

in itself, an independent reality with which we must reckon.



However, this often admitted difference does not seem to me to

characterize conclusively the singularity of the technical situation

today. The characterization can be challenged because it does not

rest upon deep historical experience. It is not enough simply to de-

clare, by drawing on everyone’s experience of the disparity be-

tween our technique and the limited needs of our bodies, that

technique is a reality in itself. We may keep this in mind, but we

must also recognize that it is incomplete and not altogether con-

vincing.



It is not, then, the intrinsic characteristics of techniques which

reveal whether there have been real changes, but the characteristics

of the relation between the technical phenomenon and society. Let

us take a very simple comparison. A shell explodes and the explo-

sion is normally always the same. Any fifty shells of the same cali-

ber when exploded display approximately the same objective char-

acteristics from a physical or chemical point of view. The sound,

light, and projection of fragments remain nearly identical. The in-

trinsic characteristics of the fifty explosions are the same. But if

forty-nine shells go off in some remote place and the fiftieth goes off

in the midst of a platoon of soldiers, it cannot be maintained that

the results are identical. A relation has been established which en-

tails a change. To assess this change, it is not the intrinsic character

of the explosion which must be examined, but rather its relation to

the environment. In the same way, to learn if there has been, for



THE



OF TECHNIQUE



*4)



man, a change in modem technqiue in relation to the old, we must

assess, not the internal characteristics of the technique, but the ac-

tual situation of technique in human society.



To go beyond this and to imagine, for example, what might nave

been the psychological reaction of primitive men when faced with

technical invention is pure fantasy. The question put by Jean

Fourastie, strictly speaking, has no meaning. The working of the

mind varies according to place and time, and we cannot project our-

selves with any assurance into the mind of primitive man. In

order to remain within the limits of what can be known,

we must be content to study the relation between technique and

society, a relation which has the advantage of being meaningful.



Technique in Civilization



Traditional Techniques and Society. What was the position of

technique in the different societies which have preceded ours?

Most of these societies resembled one another in their technical

aspects. But it is not enough to say that technique was restricted.

We must determine the precise characteristics of the limitations,

which are four in number.



First, technique was applied only in certain narrow, limited areas.

When we attempt to classify techniques throughout history, we find

principally techniques of production, of war and hunting, of con-

sumption (clothing, houses, etc.), and, as we have said, magic. This

complex of techniques would seem to modem man to represent a

rather considerable domain and, indeed, to correspond to the

whole of life. What more could there be than producing, consum-

ing, fighting, and practicing magic? But we must look at these

things in perspective.



In so-called primitive societies, the whole of life was indeed en-

closed in a network of magical techniques. It is their multiplicity

that lends them the qualities of rigidity and mechanization. Magic,

as we have seen, may even be the origin of techniques; but the pri-

mary characteristic of these societies was not a technical but a reli-

gious preoccupation. In spite of this totalitarianism of magic, it

is not possible to speak of a technical universe. Moreover, the im-

portance of techniques gradually diminishes as we reach historical



The Technological Society	(	65



societies. In these societies, the life of the group was essentially

nontechnical. And although certain productive techniques still ex-

isted, the magical forms which had given a technique to social rela-

tions, to political acts, and to military and judicial life tended to

disappear. These areas ceased to respond to techniques and became

subject instead to social spontaneities. The law, which had tradi-

tionally expressed itself in certain customs, no longer had any char-

acter of technical rigor; even the state was nothing but a force

which simply manifested itself. These activities depended more on

private initiative, short-lived manifestations or ephemeral tradi-

tions, than on a persevering technical will and rational improve-

ments.



Even in activities we consider technical, it was not always that

aspect which was uppermost. In the achievement of a small eco-

nomic goal, for example, the technical effort became secondary to

the pleasure of gathering together. "Formerly, when a New Eng-

land family convoked a ‘bee* (that is, a meeting for working in

common), it was for all concerned one of the most pleasurable

times of the year. The work was scarcely more than a pretext for

coming together."1 The activity of sustaining social relations and

human contacts predominated over the technical scheme of things

and the obligation to work, which were secondary causes.



Society was free of technique. And even on the level of the indi-

vidual, technique occupied a place much more circumscribed than

we generally believe. Because we judge in modern terms, we be-

lieve that production and consumption coincided with the whole

of life.



For primitive man, and for historical man until a comparatively

late date, work was a punishment, not a virtue. It was better not

to consume than to have to work hard; the rule was to work only

as much as absolutely necessary in order to survive. Man worked

as little as possible and was content with a restricted consumption

of goods (as, for example, among the Negroes and the Hindus)—

a prevalent attitude, which limits both techniques of production

and techniques of consumption. Sometimes slavery was the answer:

an entire segment of the population did not work at all and de-

pended on the labor of a minority of slaves. In general, the slaves



1 George G Homans, quoted by Jerome Scott and It F. Lyntoa.



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



66)



did constitute a minority. We must not be misled by Imperial

Rome, Greece under Pericles, or the Antilles in the eighteenth

century. In most slaveholding nations, slaves were in a minority.



The time given to the use of techniques was short, compared

with the leisure time devoted to sleep, conversation, games, or, best

of all, to meditation. As a corollary, technical activities had little

place in these societies. Technique functioned only at certain pre-

cise and well-defined times; this was the case in all societies before

our own. Technique was not part of man's occupation nor a subject

for preoccupation.



This limitation of technique is attested to by the fact that in

the past technique was not considered nearly as important as it is

today. Heretofore, mankind did not bind up its fate with technical

progress. Man regarded technical progress more as a relative in-

strument than as a god. He did not hope for very much from it.

Let us take an example from Giedion’s admirable book, in which

he elucidates the small importance technique had traditionally.



In our day, we are unable to envisage comfort except as part of

the technical order of things. Comfort for us means bathrooms, easy

chairs, foam-rubber mattresses, air conditioning, washing ma-

chines, and so forth. The chief concern is to avoid effort and pro-

mote rest and physical euphoria. For us, comfort is closely asso-

ciated with the material life; it manifests itself in the perfection of

personal goods and machines. According to Giedion, the men of

the Middle Ages also were concerned with comfort, but for them

comfort had an entirely different form and content. It represented

a feeling of moral amd aesthetic order. Space was the primary ele-

ment in comfort. Man sought open spaces, large rooms, the possi-

bility of moving about, of seeing beyond his nose, of not con-

stantly colliding with other people. These preoccupations are alto-

gether foreign to us.



Moreover, comfort consisted of a certain arrangement of space.

In the Middle Ages, a room could be completely “finished,” even

though it might contain no furniture. Everything depended on pro-

portions, material, form. The goal was not convenience, but rather

a certain atmosphere. Comfort was the mark of the man's personal-

ity on the place where he lived. This, at least in part, explains the

extreme diversity of architectural interiors in the houses of the pe-

riod. Nor was this the result of mere whim; it represented an



The Technological Society	(	6	7



adaptation to character; and when it had been realized, the man of

the Middle Ages did not care if his rooms were not well heated

or his chairs hard.



This concept of comfort, closely bound up with the person,

clearly takes death for granted, as did man himself; man’s aware-

ness of death likewise profoundly influences his search for an ade-

quate milieu. Giedion’s study is convincing. Medieval man did not

dream for an instant, that technique had any influence at all, even

on objects which today we consider completely material and con-

sequently of a technical order.



This limitation of the sphere of action of technique was in-

creased even more by the limitation of the technical means em-

ployed in these fields. There was no great variety of means for

attaining a desired result, and there was almost no attempt to per-

fect the means which did exist. It seems, on the contrary, that a

conscious Malthusian tendency prevailed. It was expressed, for

example, in the regulations of the guilds concerning tools, and in

Roman law, by the principle of the economy of forms. Man tended

to exploit to the limit such means as he possessed, and took care

not to replace them or create other means as long as the old ones

were effective. From the judicial point of view, the principle of

the economy of forms led to the creation of the fewest possible legal

instruments. Laws were few, and so were institutions. Man used

the utmost ingenuity to obtain a maximum of results from a mini-

mum of means at the price of fictions, transpositions, applications

a pari and a contrario, and so on. This was also true industrially.

Society was not oriented toward the creation of a new instrument

in response to a new need. The emphasis was rather on the applica-

tion of old means, which were constantly extended, refined, and

perfected.



The deficiency of the tool was to be compensated for by the

skill of the worker. Professional know-how, the expert eye were

what counted: man’s talents could make his crude tools yield the

maximum efficiency. This was a kind of technique, but it had none

of the characteristics of instrumental technique. Everything varied

from man to man according to his gifts, whereas technique in the

modem sense seeks to eliminate such variability. It is understand-

able that technique in itself played a very feeble role. Everything

was done by men who employed the most rudimentary means. The



68)	THE CHARACTEROLOCT OF TECHNIQUE



search for the “finished," for perfection in use, for ingenuity of ap-

plication, took the place of a search for new tools which would

have permitted men to simplify their work, but also would have

involved giving up the pursuit of real skill



Here we have two antithetical orders of inquiry. When there is

an abundance of instruments that answer all needs, it is impossible

for one man to have a perfect knowledge of each or the skill to use

each. This knowledge would be useless in any case; the perfection

of the instrument is what is required, and not the perfection of the

human being. But, until the eighteenth century, all societies were

primarily oriented toward improvement in the use of tools and

were little concerned with the tools themselves. No clean-cut divi-

sion can be made between the two orientations. Human skill, hav-

ing attained a certain degree of perfection in practice, necessarily

entails improvement of the tool itself. The question is one of tran-

scending the stage of total utilization of the tool by improving it.

There is, therefore, no doubt that the two phenomena do inter-

penetrate. But traditionally the accent was on the human being

who used the tool and not on the tool he used.



The improvement of tools, essentially the result of the prac-

tice of a personal art, came about in a completely pragmatic way.

For this reason, we can put in the first category all the techniques

we have classified with regard to intrinsic characteristics. A small

number of techniques, not very efficient: this was the situation in

Eastern and Western society from the tenth century b.c. to the

tenth century a.d.



The world of technique had still a third characteristic prior to

the eighteenth century: it was local. Social groups were very strong

and closed to outsiders. There was little communication, materially

speaking, and even less from the spiritual point of view. Technique

spread slowly. Certain examples of technical propagation are al-

ways cited; the introduction of the wheel into Egypt by the Hyksos;

the Crusades; and so on. But such events took millennia and were

accidental. In the majority of cases, there was little transmission.

Imitation took place very slowly and mankind passed from one tech-

nical stage to the next with great difficulty. This is true of material

techniques, and even more so of non-material techniques.



Greek art remained Greek in industrial projects such as pottery-

making, even when imitated by the Romans. Roman law did not



The Technological Society	(6 9



extend beyond the Roman borders, whereas the Napoleonic code

was adopted by Turkey and Japan. As for magic, that technique re-

mained completely secret.



Every technical phenomenon was isolated from similar move-

ments elsewhere. There was no transmission, only fruitless grop-

ings. Geographically, we can trace the compass of a given tech-

nique, follow the zones of its influence, imitation, and extension; in

almost every case we find how small was the extent of its radiation.



Why was this so? The explanation is simple: technique was an

intrinsic part of civilization. And civilization consisted of numerous

and diversified elements—natural elements such as temperament

and flora, climate and population; and artificial elements such as

art, technique, the political regime, etc. Among all these factors,

which mingled with one another, technique was only one. It was

inexorably linked with them and depended on them, as they de-

pended on it. It was part of a whole, part of the determinate so-

ciety, and it developed as a function of the whole and shared its

fate.



Just as one society is not interchangeable with another, so tech-

nique remained enclosed in its proper framework; no more would

it become universal than the society in which it was embedded.

Geographically there could be no technical transmission because

technique was not some anonymous piece of merchandise but

rather bore the stamp of the whole culture. This entails much more

than the existence of a simple barrier between social groups.

Technique was unable to spread from one social group to another

except when the two were in the same stage of evolution and ex-

cept when civilizations were of the same type. In the past, in other

words, technique was not objective, but subjective in relation to

its own culture.



It is understandable, therefore, that technique, incorporated in

its proper framework, did not evolve autonomously. On the con-

trary, it depended on a whole ensemble of factors which had to

vary with it. It is not accurate to conceive the movement in the

oversimplified manner of Marxism, as first the evolution of tech-

nique, and subsequently the alignment of the other factors. This

veiw is accurate for the nineteenth century but it is false for history

as a whole. Certain important covariations traditionally existed,

and these factors, covariant with technique, changed according



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



70)



to the type of civilization. There was, for example, the association

of technique and the state among the Egyptians and the Incas; of

technique and philosophy in Greece and China. Francastel has

shown how technique could be “absorbed and directed by the

arts," as happened, say, in the fifteenth century, when it was sub-

ordinated to a plastic vision of the world, which imposed on it

limits and demands. At that time, there existed a whole “civiliza-

tion well provided with technical inventions, but which deliber-

ately undertook to use them only to the degree in which these in-

ventions would allow it to realize an imaginative construction."

Thereafter, we find a complicated “art technique” and, as else-

where, we almost never find technique in a pure state.



The consequence was an extreme local diversity of techniques

for attaining the same result. No comparison or competition existed

yet between these different systems; the formulation: “The one best

way in the world" had not yet been made. It was a question of the

“best way" in a given locality. Because of this, arms and tools took

very different forms, and social organizations were extremely di-

verse.



It is impossible to speak of slavery as all of a piece. Roman slav-

ery, for example, had nothing to do with Teutonic slavery, or Teu-

tonic slavery with Chaldean. We habitually use one term to cover

very different realities. This extreme diversity divested technique

of its most crucial characteristic. There was no single means

which was judged best and able to eliminate all others by virtue of

its efficiency. This diversity has made us believe that there was an

epoch of experimentation, when man was groping to find his way.

This is a false notion; it springs from our modern prejudice that the

stage we find ourselves in today represents the highest level of

humanity. In reality, diversity resulted not from various experimen-

tal attempts on the part of various peoples, but from the fact that

technique was always embedded in a particular culture.



Alongside this spatial limitation of technique, we find a time

limitation. Until the eighteenth century, techniques evolved very

slowly. Technical work was purely pragmatic, inquiry was empiri-

cal, and transmission slow and feeble. Centuries were required

for: (a) utilization of an invention (for example, the water mill);

(b) transition from a plaything to a useful object (gunpowder,

automatons); (c) transition from a magical to an economic opera-



The Technological Society	(	71



tion (breeding of animals); (d) simple perfecting >r instru-

ment (the horse yoke and the transition from the simple stick plow

to the train plow). This was even more true for abstract techniques.

Abstract techniques, I maintain, are almost nontransmissible in

time from a given civilization to its successor. We must be some-

what skeptical, and in any case prudent, when the evolution of

techniques is presented as an evolution of inventions; actually this

development was never more than potential. There is nothing to

prove that true technique existed heretofore, that is, in the sense of

generalized application. It is possible to compile a fine catalogue of

seventeenth-century inventions, and to deduce from it that a great

technical movement was in force at that time. Many writers have

fallen into this error—among them, Jean Laloup and Jean N'elis. It

is not because Pascal invented a calculating machine and Papin

a steam engine that there was a technical evolution; nor was it

because a “prototype” of a power loom was built; nor because the

process of the dry distillation of coal was discovered. As Gille has

very judiciously noted: “The best-described machines in the eight-

eenth century Encyclopedic are possibly better conceived than

those of the fifteenth century, but scarcely constitute a revolution”

The initial problem was to construct the machine, to make the in-

vented technique actually work. The second consisted in the diffu-

sion of the machine throughout the society; and this second step

proceeded very slowly.



This divergence between invention and technique, which is the

cause of the time lag we have spoken of, is correctly interpreted

by Gille in these words: “There was a discontinuity of technical

progress but there was probably a continuity of research.” Gille

shows clearly that technical progress develops according to a dis-

continuous rhythm: “It is tied up with demographic or economic

rhythms and with certain internal contradictions.” This discontinu-

ity still contributes to evolutionary lag today.



Slowness in the evolution of techniques is evident throughout

history. Very few variations seem to have occurred in this constant.

But it cannot be maintained that this slowness was completely uni-

form. Yet, even in periods that appear rather fertile, it is clear that

evolution was slow. For example, Roman law, which was particu-

larly rich in the classical period, took two centuries to find a perfect

form. Moreover, the number of applied inventions was sharply re-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



7*)



stricted. The fifteenth century, in spite of its importance, produced

no more than four or five important technical applications. The

natural consequence of this evolutionary slowness was that tech-

nique could be adapted to men. Almost unconsciously, men kept

abreast of techniques and controlled their use and influence. This

resulted not from an adaptation of men to techniques (as in mod-

em times), but rather from the subordination of techniques to men.

Technique did not pose the problem of adaptation because it was

firmly enmeshed in the framework of life and culture. It developed

so slowly that it did not outstrip the slow evolution of man himself.

The progress of the two was so evenly matched that man was able

to keep pace with his techniques. From the physical point of view,

techniques did not intrude into his life; neither his moral evolu-

tion nor his psychic life were influenced by them. Techniques en-

abled man to make individual progress and facilitated certain

developments, but they did not influence him directly. Social

equilibrium corresponded to the slowness of general evolution.



This evolutionary slowness was accompanied by a great irra-

tional diversification of designs. The evolution of techniques was

produced by individual efforts accompanied by a multitude of scat-

tered experiments. Men made incoherent modifications on instru-

ments and institutions which already existed; but these modifica-

tions did not constitute adaptations. We are amazed when we

inspect, say, a museum of arms or tools, and note the extreme di-

versity of form of a single instrument in the same place and time.

The great sword used by Swiss soldiers in the sixteenth century had

at least nine different forms (hooked, racked, double-handed, hex-

agonal blades, blades shaped like a fleur-de-lis, grooved, etc.). This

diversity was evidently due to various modes of fabrication peculiar

to the smiths; it cannot be explained as a manifestation of a techni-

cal inquiry. The modifications of a given type were not the out-

come of calculation or of an exclusively technical will. They re-

sulted from aesthetic considerations. It is important to emphasize

that technical operations, like the instruments themselves, almost

always depended on aesthetic preoccupations. It was impossible to

conceive of a tool that was not beautiful. As for the idea, fre-

quently accepted since the triumph of efficiency, that the beautiful

is that which is well adapted to use—assuredly no such notion

guided the aesthetic searchings of the past No such conception of



* The Technological Society	(73



beauty (however true) moved the artisan who carved a Toledo

blade or fabricated a harness. On the contrary, aesthetic considera-

tions are gratuitous and permit the introduction of uselessness into

an eminently useful and efficient apparatus.



This diversity of forms was manifestly conditioned by vainglory

and pleasure—the vainglory of the user, the pleasure of the artisan.

Both caused changes in the classic type. And why not include as

well that pure fantasy which runs through all the creations of

Greece and the Middle Ages?



All this led to a modification of the given type. The search for

greater efficiency likewise played a role, but it was one factor

among several. The different forms were subject to trial and error,

and certain forms were progressively stabilized and imitated, either

because of their plastic perfection or because of their usefulness.

The final result was the establishment of a new type derived from

its predecessor.



This diversity of influences, which operated on all technical

mechanisms, explains in part the slow tempo of progress in these

areas. To obey a multiplicity of motives and not reason alone seems

to be an important keynote of man. When, in the nineteenth cen-

tury, society began to elaborate an exclusively rational technique

which acknowledged only considerations of efficiency, it was felt

that not only the traditions but the deepest instincts of humankind

had been violated. Men sought to reintroduce indispensable factors

of aesthetics and morals. Out of this effort came the unprecedented

creation of certain aspects of style in the 1880's: the tool with ma-

chine-made embellishments. Sewing machines were decorated

with cast-iron flowers, and the first tractors bore engraved bulls'

heads. That it was wasteful to supply such embellishments soon

became evident; their ugliness doubtless contributed to the realiza-

tion. Moreover, these flourishes represented a wrong road, techni-

cally speaking. The machine can become precise only to the degree

that its design is elaborated with mathematical rigor in accordance

with use. And an embellishment could increase air resistance,

throw a wheel out of balance, alter velocity or precision. There

was no room in practical activity for gratuitous aesthetic preoccu-

pations. The two had to be separated. A style then developed based

on the idea that the line best adapted to use is the most beautiful.



Abstract techniques and their relation to morals underwent the



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



74)



same evolution. Earlier, economic or political inquiries were inex-

tricably bound with ethical inquiry, and men attempted to main-

tain this union artificially even after they had recognized the inde-

pendence of economic technique. Modern society is, in fact, con-

ducted on the basis of purely technical considerations. But when

men found themselves going counter to the human factor, they re-

introduced—and in an absurd way—all manner of moral theories

related to the rights of man, the League of Nations, liberty, jus-

tice. None of that has any more importance than the ruffled sun-

shade of McCormick's first reaper. When these moral flourishes

overly encumber technical progress, they are discarded—more or

less speedily, with more or less ceremony, but with determination

nonetheless. This is the state we are in today.



The elimination of these evolutionary factors and of technical

diversification has brought about a transformation of the basic

process of this evolution. Technical progress today is no longer

conditioned by anything other than its own calculus of efficiency.

The search is no longer personal, experimental, workmanlike; it is

abstract, mathematical, and industrial. This does not mean that the

individual no longer participates. On the contrary, progress is made

only after innumerable individual experiments. But the individual

participates only to the degree that he is subordinate to the search

for efficiency, to the degree that he resists all the currents today

considered secondary, such as aesthetics, ethics, fantasy. Insofar

as the individual represents this abstract tendency, he is permitted

to participate in technical creation, which is increasingly independ-

ent of him and increasingly linked to its own mathematical law.



It was long believed that rational systematization would act to

reduce the number of technical types: in the measure that the fac-

tors of diversification were eliminated, the result would be fewer

and more simple and precise types. Thus, during the latter part of

the nineteenth century—in the mechanical, medical, and adminis-

trative spheres—-exact instruments wrere available from which fan-

tasy and irrationality had been totally eliminated. The result was

fewer instruments. As further progress was made, however, a new

element of diversification came into play: in order that an instru-

ment be perfectly efficient, it had to be perfectly adapted. But the

most rational instrument possible takes no account of the extreme

diversity of the operational environment. This represents an essen^



The Technological Society	(	75



tial characteristic of technique. Every procedure implies a single,

specific result. As Porter Gale Perrin puts it: “Jus* as a word evokes

an idea which exactly corresponds to no other word/* so a fixed

technical procedure generates a fixed result. Technical methods are

not multipurposive, or adaptable, or interchangeable. Perrin has

demonstrated this in detail with reference to judicial technique, but

it also holds for everything else. Take the well-known example,

cited by Pierre de Latil, of a machine, brought to the highest possi-

ble pitch of perfection, the purpose of which was to produce from

cast iron, at a single stroke, cylinder heads for aircraft engines.

The machine was 28 meters long and cost $100,000. But the mo-

ment the required type of cylinder head was changed, the machine

became good for nothing; it was unadaptable to any new operation.

A judicial system may function perfectly adequately in France but

not in Turkey. For true efficiency, not only must the rational aspect

of the machine be taken into account, but also its adaptation to

the environment. A military tank will have a different form de-

pending on whether it is to be used in mountainous terrain or in

rice paddies. The more an instrument is designed to execute a sin-

gle operation efficiently and with utmost precision, the less can it be

multipurposive. A new diversification of technical apparatus thus

appears: today instruments are differentiated as a result of the con-

tinually more specialized usage demanded of them.



The field of aviation gives us one of the best examples of this.

Aircraft are described by the use to which they are put. We have,

correspondingly, extremely precise and more and more diversified

types. The list of French military aircraft, consisting at the present

of five great categories, is as follows: (1) strategic bombers,

(2) tactical bombers, (3) pursuit planes, (4) reconnaissance

planes, and (5) transport planes. These five categories are sub-

divided further; there are altogether thirteen different subtypes,

none of which are interchangeable with one another. Each has very

different characteristics resulting from more and more refined tech-

nical adaptations.



The same extensive differentiation is found in much less impor-

tant areas. A recent brochure of the world's largest refiner of lubri-

cating oils lists fifteen different kinds of lubricants designed exclu-

sively for automobiles. Each type corresponds to a definite use, each

possessing specific qualities, and all equally necessary.



76 )	THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



A fourth characteristic of technique, which results from the

characteristics just enumerated, is the possibility, reserved to the

human being, of choice. Inasmuch as all techniques were geo-

graphically and historically limited, societies of many different

types were able to exist. For the most part, there was an equilib-

rium between two major types of civilization—the active and the

passive. This distinction is well known. Some societies are oriented

toward the exploitation of the earth, toward war, conquest, and ex-

pansion in all its forms. Other societies are inwardly oriented; they

labor just enough to support themselves, concentrate on them-

selves, are not concerned with material expansion, and erect solid

barriers against anything from without. From the spiritual point of

view, these societies are characterized by a mystical attitude, by a

desire for self-dissolution and absorption into the divine.



Human societies are variable, however. A group which has

hitherto been active might become passive. The Tibetans, for in-

stance, were conquerors and believers in magic until their conver-

sion to Buddhism. Thereafter they became the world’s most pas-

sive and mystical people. The reverse can also take place.



The two types of society coexisted throughout history; indeed,

this seemed necessary to the equilibrium of world and man. Until

the nineteenth century, technique had not yet excluded one of them.

Moreover, man could isolate himself from the influence of tech-

nique by attaching himself to a given group and exerting influence

on this group. Of course, other constraints acted on him; the indi-

vidual was never completely free with respect to his group, but

these constraints were not completely decisive or imperative in

character.



Whether we are considering unconscious sociological cohesion

or the power of the state, we find these forces always necessarily

counterbalanced by the existence of other neighboring groups and

other loyalties. There was no irrefutable constraint on man, because

nothing absolutely good in respect to everything else had been dis-

covered. We have noted the diversity of technical form and the

slowness of imitation. But it was always human action which was

decisive. When several technical forms came into contact, the indi-

vidual made his choice on the basis of numerous reasons. Efficiency

was only one of them, as Pierre Deffontaines has demonstrated in

his work on religious geography.



The Technological Society	(77



Although the individual existing in the framework of a civiliza-

tion of a certain type was always confronted with certain tech-

niques, he was nevertheless free to break with that civilization and

to control his own individual destiny. The constraints to which he

was subject did not function decisively because they were of a non*

technical nature and could be broken through. In an active civili-

zation, even one with a fairly good technical development, the in-

dividual could always break away and lead, say, a mystical and

contemplative life. The fact that techniques and man were more or

less on the same level permitted the individual to repudiate tech-

niques and get along without them. Choice was a real possibility

for him, not only with regard to his inner life, but with regard to

the outer form of his life as well. The essential elements of life were

safeguarded and provided for, more or less liberally, by the very

civilization whose forms he rejected. In the Roman Empire (a

technical civilization in a good many respects), it was possible for

a man to withdraw and live as a hermit or in the country, apart

from the evolution and the principal technical power of the Em-

pire. Roman law was powerless in the face of an individual's deci-

sion to evade military service or, to a very great degree, imperial

taxes and jurisdiction. Even greater was the possibility of the indi-

viduals freedom with respect to material techniques.



There was reserved for the individual an area of free choice at

the cost of minimal effort. The choice involved a conscious decision

and was possible only because the material burden of technique

had not yet become more than a man could shoulder. The existence

of choice, a result of characteristics we have already discussed, ap-

pears to have been one of the most important historical factors gov-

erning technical evolution and revolution. Evolution was not, then,

a logic of discovery or an inevitable progression of techniques. It

was an interaction of technical effectiveness and effective human

decision. Whenever either one of these elements disappeared,

social and human stagnation necessarily followed. Such was the

case, for example, when effective technique was (or became) rudi-

mentary and inefficacious among the Negroes of Africa. As to the

consequences of a lapse in the second element, we are experiencing

them today.



The New Characteristic*. The characteristics of the relationship

of technique, society, and the individual which we have analyzed



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



78)



were, I believe, common to all civilizations up to the eighteenth

century. Historically, their existence admits of little discussion.

Today, however, the most cursory review enables us to conclude

that all these characteristics have disappeared. The relation is not

the same; it does not present any of the constants recognizable

until now. But that is not sufficient to characterize the technical

phenomenon of our own day. This description would situate it in a

purely negative perspective, whereas the technical phenomemon is

a positive thing; it presents positive characteristics which are pe-

culiar to it. The old characteristics of technique have indeed dis-

appeared; but new ones have taken their place. Today’s technical

phenomenon, consequently, has almost nothing in common with

the technical phenomenon of the past I shall not insist on demon-

strating the negative aspect of the case, the disappearance of the

traditional characteristics. To do so would be artificial, didactic,

and difficult to defend. I shall point out, then, in a summary fash-

ion, that in our civilization technique is in no way limited. It has

been extended to all spheres and encompasses every activity, in-

cluding human activities. It has led to a multiplication of means

without limit. It has perfected indefinitely the instruments available

to man, and put at his disposal an almost limitless variety of inter-

mediaries and auxiliaries. Technique has been extended geo-

graphically so that it covers the whole earth. It is evolving with a

rapidity disconcerting not only to the man in the street but to the

technician himself. It poses problems which recur endlessly and

every more acutely in human social groups. Moreover, technique

has become objective and is transmitted like a physical thing; it

leads thereby to a certain unity of civilization, regardless of the en-

vironment or the country in which it operates. We are faced with

the exact opposite of the traits previously in force. We must, there-

fore, examine carefully the positive characteristics of the technique

of the present.



There are two essential characteristics of today’s technical phe-

nomenon which I shall not belabor because of their obviousness.

These two, incidentally, are the only ones which, in general, are

emphasized by the “best authors.”



The first of these obvious characteristics is rationality. In tech-

nique, whatever its aspect or the domain in which it is applied, a

rational process is present which tends to bring mechanics to bear



The Technological Society	(79



on all that is spontaneous or irrational. This rationality, best exem-

plified in systematization, division of labor, creation of standards,

production norms, and the like, involves two distinct phases: first,

the use of “discourse” in every operation; this excludes spontaneity

and personal creativity. Second, there is the reduction of method

to its logical dimension alone. Every intervention of technique is,

in effect, a reduction of facts, forces, phenomena, means, and in-

struments to the schema of logic.



The second obvious characteristic of the technical phenomenon

is artificiality. Technique is opposed to nature. Art, artifice, artifi-

cial: technique as art is the creation of an artificial system. This is

not a matter of opinion. The means man has at his disposal as a

function of technique are artificial means. For this reason, the com-

parison proposed by Emmanuel Mounier between the machine

and the human body is valueless. The world that is being created

by the accumulation of technical means is an artificial world and

hence radically different from the natural world.



It destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world, and

does not allow this world to restore itself or even to enter into a

symbiotic relation with it. The two worlds obey different impera-

tives, different directives, and different laws which have nothing in

common. Just as hydroelectric installations take waterfalls and lead

them into conduits, so the technical milieu absorbs the natural. We

are rapidly approaching the time when there will be no longer any

natural environment at all. When we succeed in producing artificial

aurorae boreales, night will disappear and perpetual day will reign

over the planet.



I have given only brief descriptions of these two well-known

characteristics. But I shall analyze the others at greater length; they

are technical automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism,

and autonomy.



Characteristics of Modern Technique



Automatism of Technical Choice. “The one best way”: so runs the

formula to which our technique corresponds. When everything has

been measured and calculated mathematically so that the method

which has been decided upon is satisfactory from the rational point



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



8o)



of view, and when, from the practical point of view, the method i*

manifestly the most efficient of all those hitherto employed or those

in competition with it, then the technical movement becomes self-

directing. I call the process automatism.



There is no personal choice, in respect to magnitude, between,

say, 3 and 4; 4 is greater than 3; this is a fact which has no personal

reference. No one can change it or assert the contrary or personally

escape it Similarly, there is no choice between two technical meth-

ods. One of them asserts itself inescapably: its results are calculated,

measured, obvious, and indisputable.



A surgical operation which was formerly not feasible but can now

be performed is not an object of choice. It simply is. Here we see

the prime aspect of technical automatism. Technique itself, ipso

facto and without indulgence or possible discussion, selects among

the means to be employed. The human being is no longer in any

sense the agent of choice. Let no one say that man is the agent of

technical progress (a question I shall discuss later) and that it is

he who chooses among possible techniques. In reality, he neither

is nor does anything of the sort. He is a device for recording effects

and results obtained by various techniques. He does not make a

choice of complex and, in some way, human motives. He can decide

only in favor of the technique that gives the maximum efficiency.

But this is not choice. A machine could effect the same operation,

Man still appears to be choosing when he abandons a given method

that has proved excellent from some point of view. But his action

comes solely from the fact that he has thoroughly analyzed the re-

sults and determined that from another point of view the method

in question is less efficient. A good example is furnished by the

attemnts to deconcentrate our industrial plants after we had



1	o	jr



concentrated them to the maximum possible degree. Another ex-

ample would be the decision to abandon certain systems of high

production in order to obtain a more constant productivity, al-

though it might be less per capita. It is always a question of the

improvement of the method in itself.



The worst reproach modem society can level is the charge that

some person or system is impeding this technical automatism. When

a labor union leader says: "In a period of recession, productivity is

a social scourge,’* his declaration stirs up a storm of protest and con-

demnation, because he is putting a personal judgment before the



The Technological Society	(Si



technical axiom that what can he produced must be produced. If a

machine can yield a given result, it must be used to capacity, and it

is considered criminal and antisocial not to do so. Technical autom-

atism may not be judged or questioned; immediate use must be

found for the most recent, efficient, and technical process.



Communism’s fundamental criticism of capitalism is that finan-

cial capitalism checks technical progress that produces no profits;

or that it promotes technical progress only in order to reserve for

itself a monopoly. In any case, as Rubinstein points out, technical

progress occurs under capitalism for reasons which have nothing to

do with technique, and it is this fact which is to be criticized. Since

the Communist regime is oriented toward technical progress, the

mark of the superiority of Communism is that it adopts all technical

progress. Rubinstein concludes his study by remarking that this

progress is the goal of all efforts in the Soviet Union, where it is said

to be possible to allow free play to technical automatism without

checking it in any way.



Another traditional analysis supplements Rubinstein’s. This seri-

ous study, carried out by Thorstein Veblen, maintains that there is

a conflict between the machine and business. Financial investment,

which originally accelerated invention, now prolongs technical in-

activity. Capitalism does not give free play to technical activity,

the goal of which is that a more efficient method or a more rapidly

acting machine should ipso facto and automatically replace the pre-

ceding method or machine. Capitalism does not give free play to

these factors because it inadmissibly subordinates technique to ends

other than technique itself, and because it is incapable of absorbing

technical progress. The replacement of machines at the tempo of

technical invention is completely impossible for capitalist enter-

prise because there is no time to amortize one machine before new

ones appear. Moreover, the more these machines are improved, and

hence become more efficient, the more they cost.



The pursuit of technical automatism would condemn capitalist

enterprises to failure. The reaction of capitalism is well known:

the patents of new machines are acquired and the machines are

never put into operation. Sometimes machines that are already in

operation are acquired, as in the case of England’s largest glass fac-

tory in 1932, and destroyed. Capitalism is no longer in a position

to pursue technical automatism on the economic or social plane. It



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



82)



is incapable of developing a system of distribution that would per-

mit the absorption of all the goods which technique allows to be

produced. It is led inevitably to crises of overproduction. And in the

same way it is unable to utilize the manpower freed by every new

technical improvement. Crises of unemployment ensue.



Thus we return to the old schema of Marx: it is the automatism

of technique, with its demand that everything be brought into line

with it, that endangers capitalism and heralds its final disappear-

ance. This is an accurate criticism, and reveals two things. First,

that we are correct in speaking of automatism. If the situation of

capitalism is indeed as described, it is so because technical progress

acts automatically. The choice between methods is no longer made

according to human measure, but occurs as a mechanical process

which nothing can prevent. Capitalism, in spite of all its power,

will be crushed by this automatism. Second, that for the men of

our time, this automatism is just and good. If Communism can

make this critique of capitalism a successful springboard for propa-

ganda, it is only because the criticism is valid. And it is valid be-

cause everything can be called into question (God first of all), ex-

cept technical progress. There is nothing left to do but wonder at a

mechanism that functions so well and, apparently, so tirelessly. But,

above all else, no finger must be laid upon it, nor its automatism in-

terfered with. It is in this that the headway of technical progress

becomes automatic; when modern man renounces control over it

and cannot bring himself to raise his hand against it so as to make

the choice himself.



This, then, is the first aspect of technical automatism. Inside the

technical circle, the choice among methods, mechanism, organiza-

tions, and formulas is carried out automatically. Man is stripped of

his faculty of choice and he is satisfied. He accepts the situation

when he sides with technique.



Let us examine the second aspect of automatism. When we leave

the technical domain proper, we find a whole ensemble of nontech-

nical means; among them a kind of preliminary process of elimina-

tion is taking place. The various technical systems have invaded all

spheres to the point that they are everywhere in collision with

modes of life which were heretofore nontechnical. Human life as a

whole is not inundated by technique. It has room for activities

that are not rationally or systematically ordered. But the collision



The Technological Society	(	8 3



between spontaneous activities and technique is catastrophic for the

spontaneous activities.



Technical activity automatically eliminates every nontechnical

activity or transforms it into technical activity. This does not mean,

however, that there is any conscious effort or directive will.



From the point of view which most interests modern man, that of

yield, every technical activity is superior to every nontechnical

activity. Take, for example, politics. It used to be said that politics

was an art, consisting of finesse, aptness, a particular kind of ability,

even genius; in short, of personal qualities which seemed to operate

by chance. If politics was to become a technical activity, chance

must be eliminated. The results to be obtained must be certain. Un-

predictability, which all men share to a greater or lesser degree,

must also be eliminated. Rules had to be established for this par-

ticularly unstable game if certainty of result was to be achieved.

The difficulty was great, but not greater, perhaps, than the difficulty

involved in harnessing atomic energy.



It was Lenin who established political technique. He did not suc-

ceed in formulating a complete set of principles for it, but from the

beginning he attained a twofold result. Even a mediocre politician,

by the application of the “method,” was able to achieve a good aver-

age policy, to ward off catastrophes, and to assure a coherent politi-

cal line. Moreover, the method was far superior to nontechnical

policy; the same result could be obtained with fewer resources and

with much less expense.



On the military plane, the technique applied by Hitler (and it

was a technique, not military genius as with Napoleon—although it

is a mark of genius to develop a technique for war or for politics)

not only enabled him to achieve what was not necessarily a direct

result of his technique but, more important, it enabled him to resist

for three years an adversary who possessed approximately a fivefold

superiority in all areas—in numbers of men and military machines,

in economic power, and so on. This capacity to resist resulted from

the remarkable military technique of the Germans and from the per-

fectly developed relationship they worked out between nation and

army.



In the same way, the political technique of Lenin’s school made,

and is making, possible the achievement of successes over all other

political forms, even when these political forms are able to bring



THE



OF TECHNIQUE



««)



infinitely superior resources to bear. The tide of Leninian policy

retreats for certain periods before the superior weight of the enor-

mous politico-economic machines of the opponents. But to such a

political technique only another political technique can be opposed;

and since the American political technique, for example, is so in-

ferior, it must deploy instead an enormous expenditure of resources.

The superiority of a technique to enormous but inefficiently used

resources and machinery means that the point at which technique

inserts itself becomes a real turning point. The milieu into which a

technique penetrates becomes completely, and often at a stroke, a

technical milieu. If a desired result is stipulated, there is no choice

possible between technical means and nontechnical means based on

imagination, individual qualities, or tradition. Nothing can compete

with the technical means. The choice is made a priori. It is not in the

power of the individual or of the group to decide to follow some

method other than the technical. The individual is in a dilemma:

either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use

traditional, personal, moral, or empirical means, thereby entering

into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious

defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to

accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself be the

victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In

effect he has no freedom of choice.



We are today at the stage of historical evolution in which every-

thing that is not technique is being eliminated. The challenge to a

country, an individual, or a system is solely a technical challenge.

Only a technical force can be opposed to a technical force. All else

is swept away. Serge Tchakotin reminds us of this constantly. In

the face of the psychological outrages of propaganda, what reply

can there be? It is useless to appeal to culture or religion. It is use-

less to educate the populace. Only propaganda can retort to propa-

ganda, or psychological rape to psychological rape. Hitler formu-

lated this long before Tchakotin. He writes, in Mein Kampf:

"Unless the enemy learns to combat poison gas with poison gas, this

tactic, which is based on an accurate evaluation of human weak-

nesses, must lead almost mathematically to success



The exclusive character of technique gives us one of the reasons

for its lightning progress. There is no place for an individual today

unless he is a technician. No social group is able to resist the pres-



The Technological Society	(8 $



sures of the environment unless it utilizes technique. To be in pos-

session of the lightning thrust of technique is a matter of life or

death for individuals and groups alike; no power on earth can with-

stand its pressures.



Will the technical phenomena of today be able to maintain itself,

or must it suffer in its turn impairment or even liquidation? It is

difficult to see ahead, and, in any case, this is not the place to try to

do so. Doubtless, technique has its limits. But when it has reached

these limits, will anything exist outside them? Its limits are presup-

posed by its object and its method. But is it not succeeding in under-

mining everything which is outside it? Beyond its precise and lim-

ited compass, whatever its size, will there remain anything in exist-

ence? We shall be answering this question all through this book.

Within the technical circle nothing else can subsist because tech-

nique's proper motion, as Jiinger has shown, tends irresistibly to-

ward completeness. To the degree that this completeness is not yet

attained, technique is advancing, eliminating every lesser force.

And when it has received full satisfaction and accomplished its

vocation, it will remain alone in the field. Technique thus reveals

itself at once destroyer and creator, and no one wishes or is able to

master it.



Self-augmentation• The self-augmentation of technique also has

two aspects. At the present time, technique has arrived at such a

point in its evolution that it is being transformed and is progressing

almost without decisive intervention by man. Modern men are so

enthusiastic about technique, so assured of its superiority, so im-

mersed in the technical milieu, that without exception they are

oriented toward technical progress. They all work at it, and in every

profession or trade everyone seeks to introduce technical improve-

ment. Essentially, technique progresses as a result of this common

effort. Technical progress and common human effort come to the

same thing. Vincent analyzes with great subtlety the multitude of

factors which intervene, each in its small way, in technical pro-

gress: the consumer, accumulation of capital, research bureaus and

laboratories, and the organization of production, which acts “in

some sense mechanically.* Technical progress appears to Vincent

to be “the resultant* of all these factors. In one sense, technique

indeed progresses by means of minute improvements which are the

result of common human efforts and are indefinitely additive until



86)	THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



they form a mass of new conditions that permit a decisive forward

step. But it is equally true that technique sharply reduces the role

of human invention. It is no longer the man of genius who discovers

something. It is no longer the vision of a Newton which is decisive.

What is decisive is this anonymous accretion of conditions for the

leap ahead. When all the conditions concur, only minimal human

intervention is needed to produce important advances. It might

almost be maintained that, at this stage of evolution of a technical

problem, whoever attacked the problem would find the solution.



The example of the steam engine and its manifold successive

small alterations is well known. This example is being repeated

today in all fields.



The accretion of manifold minute details, all tending to perfect

the ensemble, is much more decisive than the intervention of the

individual who assembles the new data, adds some element which

transforms the situation, and thus gives birth to a machine or to

some spectacular system that will bear his name.



This is the way progress takes place in the field of education, too.

After the general direction given by initiators (like Decroly or

Montessori), it is the findings of thousands of educators which

ceaselessly nourish the improvement of technique. In fact, educa-

tional systems are completely transformed as a result of practice—

without any one’s being quite aware of it. In industrial plants, the

discovery of details is utilized in another way; to create interest on

the part of the worker in hia work. The worker is asked not only to

use the machine he operates, but also to study it to find flaws in its

operation, then to find remedies against these faults, and in addition

to determine how its productivity might be improved. The result is

the “suggestion box” by means of which workers may indicate their

ideas and plans for improvement.



This collective, anonymous research advances techniques almost

everywhere in the world by a like impulse, a striking result of self-

augmentation. It is noticeable that identical technical inventions are

produced simultaneously in many countries. To the degree that

science is taking on a more and more technical aspect, these dis-

coveries are made everywhere at the same time—a further indica-

tion that scientific discoveries are, in reality, governed by technique.



The smashing of the atom and the atomic bomb are characteris-



The Technological Society	(87



tic of this simultaneity. In Germany, Norway, the U.S.S.R., the

United States, and France, research had reached almost the same

point in 1939. But circumstances upset European technical evolu-

tion and gave superiority to the United States. Among these circum-

stances were the invasion of Norway and France, the collapse of

Germany several months after the discovery, and the lack of means

and raw material in the U.S.S.R. What is true of scientific inventions

is much more true of technical inventions. Only lack of means halts

progress in certain countries. The more advanced a country is in the

employment of technique, the more material is required, whether

in numbers of men, raw materials, or complexity of machines. A

country must be wealthy to exploit techniques to a maximum. And

when the country is able to do this, technique returns a hundredfold

increase in its wealth. This is another element in self-augmenta-

tion.



It is still necessary to justify the term self-augmentation, since it

appears to be contradicted by what I have just been saying. If

technical advance is assured by the joint effort of thousands of

technicians, each of whom makes his contribution, it would seem

impossible to speak of self-augmentation. But there is another as-

pect which must be brought to light.



There is an automatic growth (that is, a growth which is not

calculated, desired, or chosen) of everything which concerns

technique. This applies even to men. Statistically, the number of

scientists and technicians has doubled every decade for a century

and a half. Apparently this is a self-generating process: technique

engenders itself. When a new technical form appears, it makes

possible and conditions a number of others. To take a plain and

elementary example: the internal-combustion engine made possible

and conditioned the techniques of the automobile, the submarine,

and so on. In the same way, once a technical procedure has been

discovered, it is applicable in many fields other than the one for

which it was primarly invented. The techniques of 4 operational

research,” for example, were devised to help make certain military

decisions. But it was immediately noted that they could be ap-

plied wherever any decision had to be made. As Barache, a special-

ist in these techniques, says: 44The nature of the problems them-

•elves was secondary . . the methods of approach and the tech-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



88)



niques employed proved to have a general scope.” The same could

be said for the techniques of organization. There is, therefore, a self*

augmentation of the areas of application.



This does not necessarily mean an infinite or indefinite augmen-

tation of technique. I do not wish at this point to enter the realm of

prognosis, but predictions of the more or less rapid extinction of

technical progress seem to me to be contradicted by the facts.

Whether it be Lewis Mumford, say, declaring that the era of

mechanical progress is almost at an end, or Colin Clark announc-

ing the transition of secondary mechanical activities to tertiary ac-

tivities, they are exhibiting what can only be termed a dangerous

confidence.



Lewis Mumford shows that certain of our inventions cannot be

improved, that the possible domain of mechanical activity cannot

be extended, and that mechanical progress is limited by the nature

of the physical world. This last is true. But we are far from knowing

the total possibilities of the physical world. And after Mumford had

written that statement fifteen years ago, servomechanisms, radar,

and atom smashing were discovered. It is obvious that the augmen-

tation of machines cannot be unlimited. But, so as not to rest our

hopes on an alleged stagnation, it will be enough for this progress

to continue for another century.



What is true of mechnical techniques is also true of economic

techniques. I agree fully with the remarks of Leon Hugo Dupriez

when he points out the error of the "stagnation's”—of Wolf, for

example, who writes: "The law of the limit of technico-economic

development is that past progress closes the door to future progress.

For future progress there remains in every case only a ®iargih, only a

fraction, indeed only a small fraction, of past progress.” Dupricz’s

exposure of the error of statements like this seems to me so con-

vincing that I shall content myself with referring the reader to his

work.



On the other hand, Lewis Mumford shows (and, from another

perspective, this is also Colin Clark’s thought) that the best organi-

zation will tend to reduce the use of certain machines. This is

rigorously exact. But this "best organization” is precisely technique

itself and, moreover, it comprises a mechanical element as well.

When Fourastie announces an augmentation of the tertiary, non-

mechanized sector, the extraordinary progress of administrative



The Technological Society	(8$



mechanization of the last ten years must be considered. This mecha-

nization completely modifies the conditions of human work by

what has been termed *the replacement of the organic and the

psychological by the mechanical.” It is certain that this fact will

entail the same social crisis of unemployment as in the '‘secondary”

sector. To take an example, the tabulator adds and prints 45,000

numbers an hour (as compared with 1,500 for a trained employee).

It reads, calculates, analyzes, and prints 150 lines a minute. A

punching machine, attached to it, produces the punched cards

which recapitulate the results. The Gamma (a magnetic-drum

machine) has a '‘memory” with a capacity for 200,000 individual

items of data. A 1960-model calculating machine can handle 40,000

operations a second. The machine, along with organizational devel-

opment, is now the means of reducing both the number of em-

ployees and expenses, and also of reducing, on the collective plane,

the tertiary sector of manpower.



We can hardly agree that mechanical augmentation is decelerat-

ing. We are simply in another phase of technical progress: the

phase of assimilation, organization, and conquest of the other areas.

Here the progress to be made seems limitless, and consists primarily

in the efficient systematization of society and the conquest of the

human being. All that can be said is that, at best, technical activity

has changed its field of operation; it cannot be said that it has slowed

down.



Moreover, nothing argues that subsequently technical activity

will not again turn toward the world of machines with renewed

vigor. On the whole, it is the principle of the combination of tech-

niques which causes self-augmentation.



Self-augmentation can be formulated in two laws:



1.	In a given civilization, technical progress is irreversible.



2.	Technical progress tends to act, not according to an arith-

metic, but according to a geometric progression.



The first of these laws—and we base our conviction on the whole

of history—makes us certain that every invention calls forth other

technical inventions in other domains. There is never any question

of an arrest of the process, and even less of a backward movement

Arrest and retreat only occur when an entire society collapses. In

the transition to a successor, a certain number of technical proce

dures are lost. But, in the framework of the same civilization,



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



.90)



technical progress is never in question. Later I shall examine the

reasons for this. Technical progression is of the same nature as the

process of numbering; there is no good ground for halting the pro-

gression, because after each number we can always add 1. In tech-

nical evolution also, it seems that limits no longer exist. Improve-

ments that result from the application of technique to the matter

at hand (whether it be physical or social) can be added uninter-

ruptedly; there is no reason for arresting the process. In arguing

thus, the qualification must be made that this can be said only of the

ensemble of techniques, of the technical phenomenon, and not

of any particular technique. For every technique taken by itself

there apparently exist barriers that act to impede further progress,

barriers to the addition of new inventions—but these can sometimes

be cleared, as the sound barrier has been for aircraft. For the tech-

nical phenomenon in its ensemble, however, a limitless progress is

open. This progress, as Wiener has shown, is a necessity. Since

techniques, proportionally to their development, exhaust the re-

sources of nature, it is indispensable to fill the vacuum so created

by a more rapid technical progress. Only inventions perpetually

more numerous and automatically increasing can make good the

unheard-of expenditures and the irremediable consumption of raw

materials such as wood, coal, petroleum, and even water.



What is it that determines this progression today? We can no

longer argue that it is an economic or a social condition, or educa-

tion, or any other human factor. Essentially, the preceding tech-

nical situation alone is determinative. When a given technical

discovery occurs, it has followed almost of necessity certain other

discoveries. Human intervention in this succession appears only as

an incidental cause; and no one man can do tills by himself. But

anyone who is sufficiently up-to-date technically can make a valid

discovery which rationally follows its predecessors and rationally

heralds what is to follow.



Two points must be made more precise here. First, the tech-

nical consequences of a technical improvement are not necessarily

of a kind. Thus, a purely mechanical discovery may have repercus-

sions in the domain of social techniques or in that of organizational

techniques. For example, machines that use perforated cards affect

statistics and the organization of certain business enterprises. Con*



The Technological Society	(91



versely, some kind of social technique (for instance, full employ-

ment) may entail an improvement in the techniques of economic

production.



Here we note the interdependence of techniques which is stated

in the second law of self-augmentation: technical progress tends to

be brought about according to a geometric progression. A technical

discovery has repercussions and entails progress in several branches

of technique and not merely in one. Moreover, techniques combine

with one another, and the more given techniques there are to be

combined, the more combinations are possible. Thus, almost with-

out deliberate will, by a simple combination of new data, incessant

discoveries take place everywhere; and whole fields are opened up

to technique because of the meeting of several currents. Material

techniques of communication, psychological techniques, commer-

cial techniques, techniques of authoritarian government, all com-

bine to produce the important phenomenon of propaganda, which

represents a new technique independent of all the rest and neces-

sarily produced as a consequence of the preceding phenomena.



This second law of self-augmentation explains a characteristic of

the technical movement which has engaged the attention of con-

temporary sociologists. This is the unevenness of technical develop-

ment. Enormous disparities exist not only in the various global areas

of technical expansion but also in each field within the various sec-

tors. Technique progresses more rapidly in one branch than in

another—and certain retrogressions are always possible. To Franlcel

this unevenness of development is the key to the disturbances of

equilibrium and the social difficulties that the technical phenom-

enon provokes. According to Frankel, if all branches evolved in the

same rhythm, there would be no problem. FrankeFs view, certainly

too simple, is probably not inexact. However, it explains little. In

fact, these clashing rhythms cannot be altered because of tech-

nical automatism.



Fourastie is right in arguing that technical progress is unpredict-

able. It cannot be known with certainty even a short time in advance

in what quarter the new technical invention will be produced,

precisely because such inventions are, for the most part, the result

of self-augmentation. (Of course, a distinction must be made be-

tween invention and discovery.) Short of halting progress by force



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



9*)



in an advanced sector, there are no means of bringing these rhythms

back into harmony; and the role of the individual is progressively

weakened.



The final point to make in discussing self-augmentation is that

technique, in its development, poses primarily technical problems

which consequently can be resolved only by technique. The present

level of technique brings on new advances, and these in turn add to

existing technical difficulties and technical problems, which de-

mand further advances still. This is a concrete problem in town

planning. A large city supposes a concentration of the means of

transport, air control, traffic organization, and so on. Each of these

permits the city to grow even larger and promotes new technical

advances. For example, to make housework easier, garbage-disposal

units have been put into use which allow the garbage to run off

through the kitchen sinks. The result is enormous pollution of the

rivers. It is then necessary to find some new means of purifying the

rivers so that water can be used for drinking. A great quantity of

oxygen is required for bacteria to destroy these organic materials.

And how shall we oxygenate rivers? This is an example of the way

in which technique engenders itself.



The mechanization of administrative work in business offices

raises the problem of a necessarily different kind of organization.

It is not merely a question of replacing human beings with machines

or of speeding up the work (of bookkeeping, for example), but

rather of effecting operations of a new type which must be inte-

grated into a new kind of organization. For example, the organiza-

tion of the whole system of inventory analysis (with its four func-

tions of entering, grouping, totaling, and comparing) becomes

necessary. An ensemble of new techniques must be elaborated with-

out which the machine in question would be good for nothing,

resulting only in what Mas terms “pseudo-systematization,*



The implications of self-augmentation become clearer: the in-

dividual’s role is less and less important in technical evolution.

The more factors there are, the more readily they combine and the

more evident is the urgent need for each technical advance.

Advance for its own sake becomes proportionately greater and

the expression of human autonomy proportionately feebler.



Human beings are, indeed, always necessary. But literally anyone



The Technological Society	(	9	3



can do the job, provided he is trained to it. Henceforth, men will be

able to act only in virtue of their commonest and lowest nature,

and not in virtue of what they possess of superiority and individ-

uality. The qualities which technique requires for its advance are

precisely those characteristics of a technical order which do not

represent individual intelligence. And here we enter into another

area, the nature of the technician.



In this decisive evolution, the human being does not play a part.

Technical elements combine among themselves, and they do so

more and more spontaneously. In the future, man will apparently

be confined to the role of a recording device; he will note the effects

of techniques upon one another, and register the results.



A whole new kind of spontaneous action is taking place here, and

we know neither its laws nor its ends. In this sense it is possible to

speak of the “reality” of technique—with its own substance, its own

particular mode of being, and a life independent of our power of

decision. The evolution of techniques then becomes exclusively

causal; it loses all finality. This is what economists such as Alfred

Sauvy mean when they say that “by a slow reversal . . . produc-

tion is more and more determined by the wishes of individuals in

their capacity as producers, than by their decisions as consumers."

In reality, it is not the “wishes” of the “producers" which control,

but the technical necessity of production which forces itself on the

consumers. Anything and everything which technique is able to

produce is produced and accepted by the consumer. The belief

that the human producer is still master of production is a dangerous

illusion.



Technique is organized as a closed world. It utilizes what the

mass of men do not understand. It is even based on human igno-

rance. As Charles Camichel says: “The worker cannot understand

the workings of modern industry.” The individual, in order to make

use of technical instruments, no longer needs to know about his

civilization. And no single technician dominates the whole com-

plex any longer. The bond that unites the fragmentary actions and

disjointedness of individuals, co-ordinating and systematizing their

work, is no longer a human one, but the internal laws of technique.

The human hand no longer spans the complex of means, nor does

the human brain synthesize man’s acts. Only the intrinsic monism



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



94)



of technique assures cohesion between human means and acts.

Technique reigns alone, a blind force and more clear-sighted than

the best human intelligence.



This phenomenon of self-augmentation gives technique a

strangely harsh aspect. It resembles nothing other than itself. What-

ever the domain to which it is applied, man or God, technique

simply is; it undergoes no modifications in the movement which

is its being and essence. It is the only locus where form and

being are identical. It is only a form, but everything conforms to it.

Here technique assumes the peculiar characteristics which make it

a thing apart. A precise and well-defined boundary surrounds it:

there is that which is technique, and there is everything else, which

is not. Whoever passes this boundary and enters into technique is

constrained to adopt its characteristics. Technique modifies what-

ever it touches, but it is itself untouchable. Nothing in nature, or in

social or human life, is comparable with it. The intelligence of art or

war comes nowhere near that of technique, no more than does the

industry of ants or bees. A hybrid but not sterile being, and capable

of self-generation, technique traces its own limits and fashions its

own image.



Whatever the adaptations nature or circumstances demand of it,

technique remains self-identical in its characteristics and its course.

Hindrances seem to compel it to become, not something else, but

even more itself. Everything it assimilates strengthens it in its

traits. There is no hope of seeing it change into a fine and gracious

being: it is neither Caliban nor Ariel, but it has been able to take

Ariel and Caliban into the unconditioned circles of its universal

method.



Monism* The technical phenomenon, embracing all the

separate techniques, forms a whole. This monism of technique was

already obvious to us when we determined, on the basis of the

evidence, that the technical phenomenon presents, every-

where and essentially, the same characteristics. It is useless to look

for differentiations. They do exist, but only secondarily. The

common features of the technical phenomenon are so sharply



* The French word is unicttt or instcabUiti. I have adopted “monism” as the Eng-

lish equivalent. “Holism” might have been betfer. In any case, the accumulated

philosophical baggage of both these terms must be rejected and the meaning of the

term understood contextually. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(95



drawn that it is easy to discern that which is the technical phenom-

enon and that which is not. The difficulties experienced in the study

of technique arise partly from the method to be used and partly

from terminology. They do not arise from the phenomenon itself,

which is eminently simple to fix.



To analyze these common features is tricky, but it is simple to

grasp them. Just as there are principles common to things as dif-

ferent as a wireless set and an internal-combustion engine, so the

organization of an office and the construction of an aircraft have

certain identical features. This identity is the primary mark of that

thoroughgoing unity which makes the technical phenomenon a

single essence despite the extreme diversity of its appearances.



As a corollary, it is impossible to analyze this or that element out

of it—a truth which is today particularly misunderstood. The great

tendency of all persons who study techniques is to make distinc-

tions. They distinguish between the different elements of technique,

maintaining some and discarding others. They distinguish between

technique and the use to which it is put. These distinctions are

completely invalid and show only that he who makes them has

understood nothing of the technical phenomenon. Its parts are

ontologically tied together; in it, use is inseparable from being.



It is common practice, for example, to deny the unity of the

technical complex so as to be able to fasten one's hopes on one or

another of its branches. Mumford gives a remarkable example of

this when he contrasts the grandeur of the printing press with the

horridness of the newspaper. “On the one side there is the gigantic

printing press, a miracle of fine articulation ... On the other the

content of the papers themselves recording the most vulgar and

elementary emotional states . . . There the impersonal, the co-

operative, the objective; here the limited, the subjective, the recalci-

trant, the ego, violent and full of hate and fear, etc. . . .” Unfortu-

nately, it did not occur to Mumford to ask whether the content of

our newspapers is not really necessitated by the social form imposed

on man by the machine.



This content is not the product of chance or of some economic

form. It is the result of precise psychological and psychoanalytical

techniques. These techniques have as their goal the bringing to the

individual of that which is indispensable for his satisfaction in the

conditions in which the machine has placed him, of inhibiting in



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



9$)



him the sense of revolution, of subjugating him by flattering him.

In other w ords, journalistic content is a technical complex expressly

intended to adapt the man to the machine.



It is certain that a press of high intellectual tone and great moral

elevation either would not be read (and then one would scarcely

see the wherefore of these beautiful machines) or would provoke

in the long run a violent reaction against every form of technical

society, including the machine. This reaction would come about not

because of the ideas such a press would disseminate, but because

the reader would no longer find in it the indispensable instrument

for releasing his repressed passions.



In a sound evaluation of the problem, it ought never to be said:

on the one side, technique; on the other, the abuse of it. There are

different techniques which correspond to different necessities. But

all techniques are inseparably united. Everything hangs together

in the technical world, as it does in the mechanical; in both, the

advisability of the isolated means must be distinguished from the

advisability of the mechanical "complex.* The claims of the me-

chanical "complex" must prevail when, for example, a machine too

costly or overrefined threatens to wreck the ensemble.



There is an attractive notion which would apparently resolve

all technical problems: that it is not the technique that is wrong, but

the use men make of it. Consequently, if the use is changed, there

will no longer be any objection to the technique.



I shall return more than once to this conception. Let us examine a

single aspect of it now. First, it manifestly rests on the confusion

between machine and technique. A man can use his automobile to

take a trip or to kill his neighbors. But the second use is not a use; it

is a crime. The automobile was not created to kill people, so the fact

is nut important I know, of course, that killing people is not what

those w!ho explain things in this way have in mind. They prefer to

say that man orients his pursuits in the direction of good and not of

evil. They mean that technique seeks to invent rational therapies

and not poison gases, useful sources of energy and not atomic

bombs, commercial and not military aircraft, etc. This leads them

straight back to man—man who decides in what direction to orient

his researches. (Must it not be, then, that man is becoming better?)

But all this is an error. It resolutely refuses to recognize technical

reality. It supposes, to begin with, that men orient technique in a



The Technological Society	(	9 7



given direction for moral, and consequently nontechnical, reasons.

But a principal characteristic of technique (which we shall

study at length) is its refusal to tolerate moral judgments. It is

absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its

domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral

and immoral use. It tends, on the contrary, to create a completely

independent technical morality.



Here, then, is one of the elements of weakness of this point of

view. It does not perceive technique's rigorous autonomy with

respect to morals; it does not see that the infusion of some more or

less vague sentiment of human welfare cannot alter it. Not even the

moral conversion of the technicians could make a difference. At

best, they would cease to be good technicians.



This attitude supposes further that technique evolves with some

end in view, and that this end is human good. Technique, as I

believe I have shown, is totally irrelevant to this notion and pursues

no end, professed or unprofessed. It evolves in a purely causal

way: the combination of preceding elements furnishes the new

technical elements. There is no purpose or plan that is being pro-

gressively realized. There is not even a tendency toward human

ends. We are dealing with a phenomenon blind to the future, in a

domain of integral causality. Hence, to pose arbitrarily some goal or

other, to propose a direction for technique, is to deny technique and

divest it of its character and its strength.



There is a final argument against this position. It was said that

the use made of technique is bad. But this assertion has no meaning

at all. As I have pointed out, a number of uses can always be made

of the machine, but only one of them is the technical use. The use of

the automobile as a murder weapon does not represent the tech-

nical use, that is, the one best way of doing something. Technique is

a means with a set of rules for the game. It is a “method of being

used” which is unique and not open to arbitrary choice; we gain no

advantage from the machine or from organization if it is not used as

it ought to be. There is but one method for its use, one possibility.

Lacking this, it is not a technique. Technique is in itself a method

of action, which is exactly what a use means. To say of such a

technical means that a bad use has been made of it is to say that no

technical use has been made of it, that it has not been made to

yield what it could have yielded and ought to have yielded. The



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



9*)



driver who uses his automobile carelessly makes a bad use of it.

Such use, incidentally, has nothing to do with the use which

moralists wish to ascribe to technique. Technique is a use. Moralists

wish to apply another use, with other criteria. What they wish, to be

precise, is that technique no longer be technique. Under the cir-

cumstances, there are no further significant problems.



There is no difference at all between technique and its use.

The individual is faced with an exclusive choice, either to use the

technique as it should be used according to the technical rules, or

not to use it at all. It is impossible to use it otherwise than according

to the technical rules.



Unfortunately, men today accept this reality only with difficulty.

Thus, when Mumford makes the statement: “The army is the

ideal form towards which a purely mechanical industrial system

must tend,” he is unable to restrain himself from adding: “But the

result is not ideal.” What is the “ideal” doing here? The ideal is not

the problem. The problem is solely to know whether this mode of

organization responds to technical criteria. Mumford is able to

show that it is nothing of the kind, because he limits techniques to

machines. But if he were to accept the role of human techniques in

the organization of the army he could account for the fact that the

army indeed remains the irreproachable model of a technical

organization, and its value has nothing to do with an ideal. It is

infantile to wish to submit the machine to the criterion of the ideal.



It is also held that technique could be directed toward that which

ia puMlive, constructive, and enriching, omitting that which is

negative, destructive, and impoverishing. In demagogic formula-

tion, techniques of peace must be developed and techniques of

war rejected. In a less simple-minded version, it is held that means

ought lo be suughi which palliate, without increasing, the draw-

backs of technique. Could not atomic engines and atomic power

have been discovered without creating the bomb? To reason thus is

to separate technical elements with no justification. Techniques of

peace and alongside them other and different techniques of war

simply do not exist, despite what good folk think to the contrary.



The organization of an army comes to resemble more and more

that of a great industrial plant. It is the technical phenomenon

presenting a formidable unity in all its parts, which are inseparable.

The fact that the atomic bomb was created before the atomic



The Technological Society	(99



engine was not essentially the result of the perversity of technical

men. Nor was it solely the attitude of the state which determined

this order. The action of the state was certainly the deciding factor

in atomic research (I shall take up this point later). Research was

greatly accelerated by the necessities of war and consequently

directed toward a bomb. If the state had not been oriented toward

the ends of war, it would not have devoted so much money to

atomic research. All this caused an undeniable factor of orientation

to intervene. But if the state had not promoted such efforts, it would

have been the whole complex of atomic research which would have

been halted without distinction between the uses of war and

peace.



If atomic research is encouraged, it is obligatory to pass through

the stage of the atomic bomb; the bomb represents by far the sim-

plest utilization of atomic energy. The problems involved in the

military use of atomic energy are infinitely more simple to resolve

than are those involved in its industrial use. For industrial use, all

the problems involved in the bomb must be solved, and in addition

certain others, a fact corroborated by J. Robert Oppenheimer in

his Paris lecture of 1958. The experience of Great Britain between

1955 and i960 in producing electricity of nuclear origin is very

significant in this respect.



It was, then, necessary to pass through the period of research

which culminated in the bomb before proceeding to its normal

sequel, atomic motive power. The atomic-bomb period is a transi-

tory, but unfortunately necessary, stage in the general evolution

of this technique. In the interim period represented by the bomb,

the possessor, finding himself with so powerful an instrument, is

led to use it. Why? Because everything which is technique is

necessarily used as soon as it is available, without distinction of good

or evil. This is the principal law of our age. We may quote here

Jacques Soustelle’s well-known remark of May, i960, in reference

to the atomic bomb. It expresses the deep feeling of us all: “Since

it was possible, it was necessaryReally a master phrase for all

technical evolution.



Even an author as well disposed toward the machine as Mumford

recognizes that there is a tendency to utilize all inventions whether

there is need for them or not. “Our grandparents used sheet iron

for walls although they knew that iron is a good conductor of



2 O 0 )	THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



heat . . . The introduction of anesthetics led to the performance

of superfluous operations. . . * To say that it could be otherwise

is simply to make an abstraction of man.



Another example is the police. The police have perfected to an

unheard of degree technical methods both of research and of action.

Everyone is delighted with this development because it would seem

to guarantee an increasingly efficient protection against criminals.

Let us put aside for the moment the problem of police corruption

and concentrate on the technical apparatus, which, as I have

noted, is becoming extremely precise. Will this apparatus be ap-

plied only to criminals? We know that this is not the case; and we

are tempted to react by saying that it is the state which applies this

technical apparatus without discrimination. But there is an error

of perspective here. The instrument tends to be applied everywhere

it can be applied. It functions without discrimination—because it

exists without discrimination. The techniques of the police, which

are developing at an extremely rapid tempo, have as their neces-

sary end the transformation of the entire nation into a concentra-

tion camp. This is no perverse decision on the part of some party or

government. To be sure of apprehending criminals, it is necessary

that everyone be supervised. It is necessary to know exactly what

every citizen is up to, to know his relations, his amusements, etc.

And the state is increasingly in a position to know these things.



This does not imply a reign of terror or of arbitrary arrests. The

best technique is one which makes itself felt the least and which

represents the least burden. But every citizen must be thoroughly

known to the police and must live under conditions of discreet

surveillance. All this results from the perfection of technical meth-

ods.



The police cannot attain technical perfection unless they have

total control. And, as Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt has remarked, this

total control has both an objective and a subjective side. Sub-

jectively, control satisfies the desire for power and certain sadistic

tendencies. But the subjective aspect is not the dominant one. It is

not the major aspect, the expression of what is to come. In reality,

the objective aspect of control—more and more, that is to say, the

pure technique which creates a milieu, an atmosphere, an environ-

ment, and even a model of behavior in social relations—dominates

more and more. The police must move in the direction of anticipat-



The Technological Society	(101



ing and forestalling crime. Eventually intervention will be useless.

This state of affairs can come about in two ways: first, by constant

surveillance, to the end that noxious intentions be known in advance

and the police be able to act before the premeditated crime takes

place; second, by the climate of social conformity which we have

mentioned. This goal presupposes the paternal surveillance of every

citizen and, in addition, the closest possible tie-in with all other

techniques—administrative, organizational, and psychological. The

technique of police control has value only if the police are in close

contact with the trade unions and the schools. In particular, it is

allied with propaganda. Wherever the phenomenon is observed,

this connection exists. Propaganda itself cannot be efficient unless

it brings into play the whole state organization, and particularly the

police power. Conversely, police power is a genuine technique only

when it is supplemented by propaganda, which plays a leading role

in the psychological environment necessary to the completeness of

the police power. But propaganda must also teach acceptance of

what the police power is and what it can do. It must make the police

power palatable, justify its actions, and give it its psychosociological

structure among the masses of the people.



All this is equally true for dictatorial regimes in which police

and propaganda concentrate on terror, and for democratic regimes

in which the motion pictures, for example, show the good offices

of the police and procure it the friendly feeling of the public. The

vicious circle mentioned by Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt (past terror

accentuates present propaganda, and present propaganda paves

the way for future terror) is as true of democratic as of dictatorial

regimes, if the term terror is replaced by efficiency.



This type of police organization is not an arbitrary prospect. It is

maintained by every authoritarian government, where every citizen

is regarded as a suspect ignorant of his own capabilities. It is the

tendency in the United States, and we are beginning to see the first

elements of it in France. The administration of the French police

was oriented, in 1951, toward an organization of the system “in

depth.” This took place, for example, at the level of the Record

Office. Certain elements of this are simple and well known: finger-

print files, records of firearms, application of statistical methods

which allow the police to obtain in a minimum of time the most

varied kinds of information and to know from day to day the current



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



102)



state of criminality in all its forms. Other elements are somewhat

more complicated and new. For example, a punched-card mechan-

ical index system (Recherches) has been installed in the Criminal

Division. This system offers four hundred possible combinations

and permits investigations to begin with any element of the

crime: hour of commission, nature, objects stolen, weapons used,

etc. The combination obviously does not give the solution but a

series of approximations.



The most important item in this catalogue of police techniques is

the creation of the so-called “suspect files,” which show whether the

police ever suspected any individual for any reason or at any time

whatsoever, even though no legal document or procedure ever

existed against him (from the press conference of M. Baylot, Pre-

fect of Police, 1951). This means that any citizen who, once in his

life, had anything to do with the police, even for noncriminal rea-

sons, is put under observation—a fact which ought to affect, speak-

ing conservatively, half the adult male population. It is obvious

that these lists are only a point of departure, because it will be

tempting, as well as necessary, to complete the files with all observa-

tions which may have been collected.



Finally, this technical conception of the police supposes the

institution of concentration camps, not in their dramatic aspects,

but in their administrative aspects. The Nazi's use of concentration

camps has warped our perspectives. The concentration camp is

based on two ideas which derive directly from the technical con-

ception of the police: preventive detention (which completes pre-

vention), and re-education. It is not because the use of these terms

has not corresponded to reality that we feel it necessary to refuse to

see in the concentration camp a very advanced form of the system.

Nor is it because the so-called methods of re-education have, on the

whole, been methods of destruction that we feel we must consider

such a concept of “re-education” an odious joke. The further we

v advance, the more will the police be considered responsible for the

re-education of social misfits, a goal that is a part of the very order

which they are charged with protecting.



We are experiencing at present the justification of this develop-

ment. It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result

of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The

whole structure of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mo-



The Technological Society	(	2 03



bilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the

more do we require order, which today represents the highest value.

To deny this is to deny the whole course of modern times. This

order has nothing spontaneous in it. It is rather a patient accretion

of a thousand technical details. And each of us derives a feeling of

security from every one of the improvements which make this

order more efficient and the future safer. Order receives our com*

plete approval; even when we are hostile to the police, we are, by a

strange contradiction, partisans of order. In the blossoming of

modern discoveries and of our own power, a vertigo has taken hold

of us which makes us feel this need to an extreme degree. After all,

it is the police who are charged, from the external point of view,

with insuring this order which covers organization and morals. How

then can we possibly deny to the police indispensable improve-

ments in their methods? ‘



We in France are still in the preparatory phase of this develop-

ment, but the organization of police power has been pushed very

far in Canada and New Zealand, to take two examples. Technical

necessity imposes the national concentration camp (which, I must

point out, does not involve the suffering usually associated with it).

Let us take another example. A new machine of great productive

power put into circulation "releases” a great quantity of work; it

replaces many workers. This is an inevitable consequence of tech-

nique. In the crude order of things, these workers are simply thrown

out of work. Capitalism is blamed for this state of affairs and we

are told that technique itself is not responsible for technological

unemployment and that the establishment of socialism would set

things right. The capitalist replies: “Technological unemployment

always dies out of itself. For example, it creates certain new activi-

ties which will in the long run create employment for qualified

workers,” This appears to be a dreadful prospect because it implies

a readaptation in time and a more or less lengthy period of un-

employment. But what does socialism propose? That the “liberated”

worker will be used somewhere else and in some other capacity.

In the Soviet Union the worker is either adapted to a new skill

by means of vocational training or he is sent to another part of the

country. In the Beveridge Plan the worker is employed wherever

the state opens a plant of any sort. This socialist solution involves

readaptation in space. But this solution, too, appears to be com-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



104)



pletely alien to human nature. Man is not a mere package to be

moved about, an object to be molded and applied wherever there is

need. These two forms of readaptation, the only ones possible,

are both inhumane. The New Work Code promulgated in the

(East) German Democratic Republic in November, i960, shows

this inhumanity in operation in the socialist camp. And none of

these adaptations can be separated from the machine which re-

places human labor. They are its necessary and inevitable conse-

quence. Of course, idealists will speak of the reduction of the work

week. But this reduction can only be effected when equivalent

technical improvements are produced in all fields of work. Accord-

ing to Colin Clark, it seems that this reduction, too, must “ceiling

out** before long. But this consideration passes over into the area

of economics.



I could cite innumerable examples, but the ones I have given

suffice to show that technique in itself (and not the use made of it,

or its non-necessary consequences) leads to a certain amount of

suffering and to social scourges which cannot be completely sepa-

rated from it. This is its very mechanism.



Of course, a technique can be abandoned when it proves to have

evil effects which were not provided for. From then on, there will

be an improvement in the technique. A characteristic example is

furnished by J. de Castro in The Geography of Hunger. De Castro

shows in detail, with regard to Brazil, what was already known

superficially about other countries, that certain techniques of ex-

ploitation have proved disastrous. According to de Castro, certain

regions were deforested in order to grow sugar cane. But only the

immediate technical productivity was considered. In a further

work, de Castro seeks to show that the hunger problem was created



aODlicatiO"	ormil-oltet-	polnniali*:!-	tn	fl(Tr{ntltur#».



J ir-------	—-------r----------------------j---------- o-------



His reasoning, however, is correct only to a very limited extent. It

is true that when an agriculture of diversified crops is replaced by

a single-crop economy for commercial ends (tobacco and sugar

cane), capitalism is to blame. But most often crop diversification is

not disturbed. What happens is that new areas are brought under

cultivation, producing a population increase and also a unilateral

utilization of the labor forces. And this is less a capitalist than a

technical fact. If the possibility of industrializing agriculture exists,

why not use it? Any engineer, agronomist, or economist of a hun-



The Technological Society	(i o $



dred years ago would have agreed that bringing uncultivated

lands under cultivation constituted a great advance. The applica-

tion of European agricultural techniques represented an incom-

parable forward step, when compared, for example, to Indian

methods. But it involved certain unforeseen consequences: the re-

sulting deforestation modified hydrographic features, the rivers

became torrents, and the drainage waters provoked catastrophic

erosion. The topsoil was completely carried away and agriculture

became impossible. The fauna, dependent on the existence of the

forest, disappeared. In this way, the food-producing possibilities of

vast regions vanished. The same situation is developing as a result

of the cultivation of peanuts in Senegal, of cotton in the South of

the United States, and so on. None of this represents, as is com-

monly said, a poor application of technique—one guided by selfish

interest. It is simply technique. And if the situation is rectified “too

late” by the abandonment of the old technique, it will only be as a

consequence of some new technical advance. In any case, the first

step was inevitable; man can never foresee the totality of conse-

quences of a given technical action. History shows that every tech-

nical application from its beginnings presents certain unforeseeable

secondary effects which are much more disastrous than the lack of

the technique would have been. These effects exist alongside those

effects which were foreseen and expected and which represent

something valuable and positive.



Technique demands the most rapid possible application; the

problems of our day are evolving rapidly and require immediate

solutions. Modern man is held by the throat by certain demands

which will not be resolved simply by the passage of time. The

quickest possible counter-thrust, often a matter of life or death, is

necessary. When the parry specific to the attack is found, it is used.

It would be foolish not to use the available means. But there is

never time to estimate all the repercussions. And, in any case, they

are most often unforeseeable. The more we understand the inter-

relation of all disciplines and the interaction of the instruments,

the less time there is to measure these effects accurately.



Moreover, technique demands the most immediate application

because it is so expensive. It must “pay off,” in money, prestige,

or force (depending on whether the regime is capitalist, Com-

munist, or Fascist, respectively). There is no time for precautions



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



106)



when the distribution of dividends or the salvation of the prole-

tariat is at stake. Nor can we permit ourselves to say that these

motives are no affair of technique. If none of them existed, there

would be no money for technical research and there would be no

technique. Technique cannot be considered in itself, apart from its

actual modes of existence.



We are brought back, then, to serious facts of this order: in

certain agricultural research in England, antiparasitic agents called

systemics were applied. An injection was made into a fruit tree,

which as a consequence was infected with the agent from its

roots to its leaves. Every parasite died. But nothing is known of the

effects on the fruit, or of the effects on man, and in the long run of

the effects on the tree. All that is known is that the agent is not an

immediate deadly poison for the consumer. Such products are al-

ready commercially available, and it is probable that they will

shortly be used on a large scale. What we have said about systemics

holds for the specific insecticide, D.D.T. It was announced origi-

nally that this insecticide was completely harmless for warm-

blooded animals. Subsequently, D.D.T. was widely used. But it

was noted in 1951 that D.D.T. in fatty solution (oily or otherwise)

is actually a poison for warm-blooded animals and causes a whole

complex of disturbances and diseases, in particular, rickets. This

fatty solution may be produced entirely by accident, as when cows

treated with this chemical produce milk containing D.D.T. Rickets

has been detected in calves nourished with such milk. And several

international medical congresses since 1956 have drawn attention

to the grave danger to children.



But the real question is not the question of error. Errors are

always possible. Two facts alone concern us: it is impossible to

foresee ail the consequences of a technical action; and technique

demands that everything it produces be brought into a domain that

affects the entire public.



The weight of technique is such that no obstacle can stop it. And

every technical advance is matched by a negative reverse side. An

excellent study of the effect of petroleum explorations in the Sahara

(1958) concludes with the observation that the most serious prob-

lem is the increase in the wretchedness of the local population. The

causes of this growing misery, among others, are: the supplanting of

caravan traffic by motor vehicles; the disappearance of the date



The Technological Society	(107



palms (diseased through widespread chemical wastes); and the

disappearance of cereal grains because of nonmaintenance of the

irrigation works. This complex seems to represent a typical example.



The human being is delivered helpless, in respect to life’s most

important and most trivial affairs, to a power which is in no sense

under his control. For there can be no question today of man’s con-

trolling the milk he drinks or the bread he eats, any more than of his

controlling his government. The same holds for the development of

great industrial plants, transport systems, motion pictures, and so

on. It is only after a period of dubious experimentation that a tech-

nique is refined and its secondary consequences are modified

through a series of technical improvements. Henceforth, someone

will say, it will be possible to tame the monster and separate the

good results of a technical operation from the bad. That may be.

But, in the same framework, the new technical advance will in its

turn produce further secondary and unpredictable effects which are

no less disastrous than the preceding ones (aithough they will be of

another kind). De Castro declares that the new techniques of soil

cultivation presuppose more and more powerful state control, with

its police power, its ideology, and its propaganda machinery. This

is the price we must pay.



William Vogt, surveying the same problem, is still more precise:

in order to avoid famine, resulting from the systematic destruction

of the topsoil, we must apply the latest technical methods. But con-

servation will not be put into practice spontaneously by individuals;

yet, these methods must be applied globally or they will not amount

to anything. Who can do this? Vogt, like all good Americans, asserts

that he detests the authoritarian police state. However, he agrees

that only state controls can possibly produce the desired results. He

extols the efforts made by the liberal administration of the United

States in this respect, but he agrees that the United States continues

“to lose ground literally and figuratively,” simply because the

methods of American agricultural administration are not authori-

tarian enough.



What measures are to be recommended? The various soils must

be classified as to possible ways to cultivate them without destroy-

ing them. Authoritarian methods must be applied in order (a) to

evacuate the population and to prevent it from working the im-

periled soil; and (b) to grow only certain products on certain type*



108)	THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



of soil. The peasant can no longer be allowed freedom in these

respects. This evolution is to be facilitated by centralization of the

great land holdings. In Latin America there are today from 20 to 40

million ecologically displaced persons, persons occupying lands

which ought not to be under cultivation. They are living on hillsides

from which it is absolutely necessary to drive them if the means of

existence of their countries are to be saved from destruction. It will

be difficult and costly to relocate these people, but Latin America

has no choice. If she does not solve this problem, she will be re-

duced to the most miserable standard of living.



All experts on agricultural questions are in fact in fundamental

agreement De Castro (although hostile to the ideas of Vogt) and

Dumont (critical of de Castro on certain points) come to the con-

clusion that only strict planning on a world scale can solve the prob-

lems of agriculture, and that only human relocation and collective

distribution of wealth can solve the problem of famine. This can

only mean that man, if he is to improve the traditional agricultural

techniques and be rid of their drawbacks, will be obliged to apply

extremely rigorous administrative and police techniques. Here again

we have a good example of the interconnection of different elements

and of the unpredictability of the secondary effects.



It was believed for a long time that the TVA was a praiseworthy

response to certain problems raised by technique. Today, however,

certain major flaws have become apparent. For example, the correct

application of methods of reforestation and animal reproduction

were not understood. Flood control was not carried out by retention

of the water in the soil but by submerging permanently a good part

of the lands which have been saved to protect others. Man, we

repeat, is never able to foresee the totality of effects of his tech-

nique. No one could have foreseen that regulating the Colorado

River for irrigation purposes would lead the Pacific Ocean to en-

croach upon the coast of California, or that it would endanger

the valleys (which had been “regulated”) by the removal of up to

500 tons a day of sand and rock. It is likewise impossible to foresee

the effect of techniques intended to control the weather, dispel

clouds, precipitate rain or snow, and so on. In another area,

Professor Lemaire, in a study of narcotic drugs, shows that tech-

nique permits the manufacture of synthetic narcotics with greater

and greater ease and in increasing quantities. But, according to



The Technological Society	(109



Lemaire, the control of these drugs is thereby rendered more and

more difficult because "we cannot predict whether they will or

will not be dangerous. The only proof is their habitual use by

addicts. But to obtain this proof requires) ears of experience."



There is scarcely need to recall that universal famine, the most

serious danger known to humanity,* is caused by the advance of

certain medical techniques which have brought with them good and

evil inextricably mixed. This is not a question of good or bad use.

No more so is the problem, posed by atomic techniques, of the dis-

posal of atomic waste. Atomic explosions are not the real problem.

The real problem continues to be that of the disposal of the

ceaselessly accumulating waste materials, despite the reassuring

but unfortunately partisan explanations of some atomic scientists.

The International Agency for Atomic Energy recognized, in 1959,

that these wastes represent a deadly peril and that there is no sure

way of avoiding it, except perhaps by means of the difficult process

of “vitrification” being undertaken in Canada. And all this involves

the peaceful use of the atom!



In every case, what can really be foreseen more or less clearly is

the need of state intervention to control the effects of technical

applications. But by the time a technique is modified in the light

of these effects, the evil has already been done. When it is proposed

to "choose” between effects, it is always too late. It is doubtless still

possible to modify any given element, but only at the price of

secondary repercussions. Again, it is doubtless possible to produce,

by means of rational exploitation of natural resources, enough food

to nourish five billion human beings. But this can be accomplished

only at the price of forced labor and a new kind of slavery. What-

ever point we choose to examine, we always perceive this inter-

relation of techniques. In i960, the World Congress for the Study of

Nutrition considered the problem of how modem nutrition is viti-

ated by the use of chemical products which are themselves sig-

nificant contributory causes of the so-called diseases of civilization

(cancer, cardiovascular illnesses, etc.). But the Congress's studies

indicate that the solution can no longer be a return to a "natural"

nutrition. On the contrary, a further step must be taken which

involves completely artificial alimentation, so-called rational ali-



* That this problem can be solved seem* doubtful to most recent congresses, the

Vevey Congress of i960 among them.



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OP TECHNIQUE



110 )



mentation. It will not be sufficient merely to control grains, meat,

butter, and so forth. The stage at which this would have been

feasible has been passed. New technical methods must be found.

But can we be assured that this new alimentation will in its turn

present no danger?



Every rejection of a technique judged to be bad entails the appli-

cation of a new technique, the value of which is estimated from the

point of view of efficiency alone. But we are always unaware of the

more remote repercussions. History shows us that these are seldom

positive, at least when we consider history as a whole instead of

contenting ourselves with examining disconnected phenomena such

as the population increase, the prolongation of the average life

span, or the shortening of the work week. These are symptoms

which perhaps would have meaning if man were merely an animal,

but which have no conclusive significance if man is something more

than a production machine.



However, it is not my intention to show that technique will end in

disaster. On the contrary, technique has only one principle: efficient

ordering. Everything, for technique, is centered on the concept of

order. This explains the development of moral and political doc-

trines at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Everything which

represented an ordering principle was taken in deadly earnest. At

the same time the means destined to elaborate this order were

exploited as never before. Order and peace were required for the

development of the individual techniques (after society had

reached the necessary stage of disintegration). Peace is indispensa-

ble to the triumph of industrialization. It will be hastily concluded

from this that industrialization will promote peace. But, as always,

logical deductions falsify reality, j. U. Nef has shown admirably

that industrialization cannot act otherwise than to promote wars.

This is no accident, but rather an organic relation. It holds not only

because of the direct influence of industrialization on the means of

destruction but also because of its influence on the means of ex-

istence. Technical progress favors war, according to Nef, because

(a) the new weapons have rendered more difficult the distinction

between offense and defense; and (b) they have enormously re-

duced the pain and anguish implied in the act of killing.



On another plane, the distinction between peaceful industry and

military industry is no longer possible. Every industry, every tech-



The Technological Society	(in



nique, however humane its intentions, has military value. “The

humanitarian scientist finds himself confronted by a new dilemma;

Must he look for ways to make people live longer so that they are

better able to destroy one another?” Nef has described all this

remarkably well. It is no longer a question of simple human be-

havior, but of technical necessity.



The technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a

way as to retain the good and reject the bad. It has a “mass” which

renders it monistic. To show this we have taken only the simplest,

and hence the most easily debatable, examples. To enable the

reader to grasp fully the reality of this monism, it would be neces-

sary to present every problem with all its implications and ramifi-

cations into other fields. The case of the police, for example, cannot

be considred merely within its specific confines; police technique

is closely connected with the techniques of propaganda, adminis-

tration, and even economics. Economics demands, in effect, an

increasing productivity; it is impossible to accept the nonproducers

into the body social—the loafers, the coupon-clippers, the social

misfits, and the saboteurs—none of these have any place. The police

must develop methods to put these useless consumers to work. The

problem is the same in a capitalist state (where the Communist is

the saboteur) and in a Communist state (where the saboteur is the

internationalist in the pay of capitalism).



The necessities and the modes of action of all these techniques

combine to form a whole, each part supporting and reinforcing the

others. They constitute a co-ordinated phenomenon, no element of

which can be detached from the others. It is an illusion, a perfectly

understandable one, to hope to be able to suppress the “bad” side

of technique and preserve the “good.” This belief means that the

essence of the technical phenomenon has not been grasped.



The Necessary Linking Together of Techniques. We have seen

how the two technical characteristics, self-augmentation and

monism, combine. Now we must consider the historical, necessary

linking up of all the different techniques. This analysis will complete

my discussion of these two characteristics.



Machine technique appeared after 1750. The technical state of

mind was first manifested in the application of the principles of

science. We already know how this necessity arose (it is emphasized

in all textbooks). The flying shuttle of 1733 made a greater pro-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



lii)



duction of yam necessary. But production was impossible without

a suitable machine. The response to this dilemma was the invention

of the spinning jenny by James Hargreaves. But then yam was

product in much greater quantities than could possibly be used

by the weavers. To solve this new problem, Cartwright manu-

factured his celebrated loom. In this series of events we see in its

simplest form the interaction that accelerates the development of

machines. Each new machine disturbs the equilibrium of pro-

duction; the restoration of equilibrium entails the creation of one

or more additional machines in other areas of operation.



Production becomes more and more complex. The combination

of machines within the same enterprisers a notable characteristic of

the nineteenth century. It is impossible, in effect, to have an isolated

machine. There must be adjunct machines, if not preparatory ones.

This need, which is not clearly evident in the textile industry (a

loom is relatively self-sufficient), is singularly well defined in the

metallurgical industry. Fabrication in this area consists of multiple

inseparable operations. For each of these operations, one or more

machines are needed. This gives rise to a complex enterprise which

demands the application of the organization of production. The

need for organization of machines is found even in the textile

industry. A large number of looms must be grouped together in

order to utilize the prime mover most effectively, since no indi-

vidual loom consumes very much energy. To obtain maximum yield,

machines cannot be disposed in a haphazard wav. Nor can produc-

tion take place irregularly. A plan must be followed in all technical

domains. And this plan, which becomes more and more inflexible in

proportion to increasing production, is the product of a technique

of organization and of operation.



Organizational technique was still very sketchy at the beginning

of the nineteenth century. But with the increase in the number of

manufactured products, new commercial methods had to be

created. Capital, labor, producers, and consumers had to be found.

Three new kinds of technique emerged: commercial, industrial,

and transportational. Commercial techniques developed at the

beginning of the nineteenth century with the same velocity as

industrial techniques. These commercial techniques exploited all

the old systems which had previously existed sporadically and



The Technological Society	( 113



without much vigor. Bills of exchange, banks, clearing houses,

double-entry bookkeeping, and the like, were further developed.



The need to distribute manufactured goods thus acted to produce

a powerful commercial technique, which, however, proved to be

incapable of assuring proper distribution. The accumulation of

capital (produced by the machine and also necessitated by it) be-

came the source of an international financial organization, with

its systems of great firms, insurance, credit, and the corporation

with limited liabilities. The corporation was indispensable in view

of die magnitude of the commercial traffic generated by sheer

concentration.



But the two systems, commercial and financial, were only able

to function at full capacity if they were in a position to dispose of

their merchandise at the most favorable point, as determined by

commercial techniques. This implied the rapid, regular, and certain

transport of merchandise. Hence, systems of transport had to be

assured if financial and commercial techniques were to be able to

operate. A new technique came into being, transport, which was

not a direct result of the machine. It was a separate branch; and

organization played a greater role in it than the machine itself (in

railway routes and timetables, problems of eminent domain, etc.).



At the period this technical torrent was emerging from industrial

enterprise, a crowd of human beings began to gather about the

machine. A great number of individuals were necessary to service

it; an equally great number were required to collect about it to com-

sume its products. The first great change consisted in forcing the

consumer to come to the machine, inasmuch as adequate means of

transportation were to come fifty years too late. With this develop-

ment came the hitherto unknown phenomenon of the big city.

At the beginning, the big city engendered no particular technique;

people were merely unhappy in it. But it soon appeared that mega-

lopolis represented a new and special kind of environment, calling

for special treatment. The technique of city planning made its ap-

pearance. At first, urban planning was only a clumsy kind of adap-

tation which was little concerned, for example, with slums (despite

the efforts of the utopian planners of the middle of the century).

Somewhat later, as big city life became for the most part intolera-

ble, techniques of amusement were developed. It became indis-



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



pensable to make urban suffering acceptable by furnishing amuse-

ments, a necessity which was to assure the rise, for example, of a

monstrous motion-picture industry.



This phase of development was still dominated by the machine,

and corresponded to what Mumford has called the paleotechnical

period. During this period the instruments of the power mentality

developed. It became apparent that mechanical improvements

alone do not suffice to yield socially valuable results. This was

clearly a period of transition in which inventions had not yet com-

pletely overthrown the older institutions. And they had not yet

touched human life, except indirectly. It was a period of disorder.

And the most glaring manifestation of this disorder was man's ex-

ploitation of man. This disorder, however, led to a strenuous search

for order, which developed first in the economic field. For some

time it had been possible to believe that the increasing flow of

merchandise would be absorbed automatically. But the illusions

of liberalism collapsed very quickly. Little by little, the liberal

system broke down before the profusion of goods which the ma-

chine blindly poured forth. It was inescapable that only technical

methods of distribution would be able to cope with the problems

created by technical methods of production. There was no way

around it. A mechanism of distribution and consumption was nec-

essary, as precise as the mechanism of production, which itself was

not yet sufficiently precise, merely because it was mechanical. It

was imperative that the different parts of the productive mecha-

nism be adjusted and that the goods produced correspond exactly

to the need, in quantity as well as in quality. It was no longer suffi-

cient to organize enterprise. The entire production had to be

organized in all its details. And if production were completely or-

ganized, there could be no question of allowing consumption

(which had, in the meantime, become mechanized) to operate

without its own world-wide organization. These logical interac-

tions, which emerged first on the national level, were soon found

on the international level as well.



The development of this mechanism inevitably implied the most

perfect possible economic technique. This economic technique in

turn would permit the utilization of new machines. Reciprocally,

certain other instruments would facilitate the improvement of the

economic technique. Moreover, nothing could be left to chance.



The Technological Society	(115



in this kind of organization; the labor supply in particular could not

be entrusted to the whim of the individual. Economic organization

presupposes a technique of labor. (The precise form of this tech-

nique is of little consequence to us here. We are interested only in

the principle.) Labor had to be systematized; it had to become

scientific. Thus, of necessity a new technique was added to the pre-

ceding ones. But at the same time it became mandatory to com-

pensate the workers for the fatigue generated by technical labor.

Here we meet again the necessity for additional mass amusement

—a necessity which the existence of the big city had already pro-

voked. The cycle was inevitable.



The whole edifice was constructed little by little, and all its indi-

vidual techniques were improved by mutual interaction. Before

long, however, the need for still another instrument appeared. Who

was to co-ordinate this multiplicity of techniques? Who was to

build the mechanism necessary to the new economic technique?

Who was to make binding the decisions necessary to service the

machines? The individual is not by himself rational enough to ac-

cept what is necessary to the machines. He rebels too easily. He

requires an agency to constrain him, and the state had to play this

role—but the state now could not be the incoherent, powerless, and

arbitrary state of tradition. It had to be an effective state, equal to

the functioning of the economic regime and in control of every-

thing, to the end that machines which had developed at random

should become “coherent.” To this end, the state itself must be

coherent. Thus, the techniques of the state—military, police, ad-

ministrative, and political—made their appearance. Without them,

all the rest would have been no more than faint hopes unable to at-

tain maximum development. They intermingled, necessitating one

another, and all of them necessitated by the economy.



It soon became evident that such external action was insufficient.

A great effort was required of the individual, and this effort he

could not make unless he was genuinely convinced, not merely

constrained. He must be made to yield his heart and will, as he had

yielded his body and brain. And so the techniques of propaganda,

education, and psychic manipulation came to reinforce the others.

Without them, man could scarcely have been equal to his organiza-

tions and his machines. Without them, technique could not have

been completely certain of its operation. To the degree that material



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OP TECHNIQUE



116)



techniques became more precise, intellectual and psychic tech-

niques became more necessary. By these means man acquired the

conviction and strength needed to make possible the maximum

utilization of the others. So the edifice was completed.



It is impossible to amputate a part of the system or to modify it

in any way without modifying the whole. The system was not built

through whim or personal ambition. Its factors were all reciprocally

engendered.



In this description we have constantly encountered the term

necessity; it is necessity which characterizes the technical uni-

verse. Everything must accommodate itself to it with mathematical

certainty. Every successive technique has appeared because the

ones which preceded it rendered necessary the ones which fol-

lowed. Otherwise they would have been inefficacious and would

not have been able to deliver their maximum yield.



It is useless to hope for modification of a system like this—so com-

plex and precisely adjusted that no single part can be modified by

itself. Moreover, the system perfects and completes itself unremit-

tingly. And, except in print, I see no sign of any modification of the

technical edifice, no principle of a different social organization that

would not be founded on technical necessity.



Technical Universalisnu This characteristic of the technical phe-

nomenon manifests itself under two aspects, the first geographic

and the second qualitative.



From the geographic point of view, it is easy to see that tech-

nique is constantly gaining ground, country by country, and that

its area of action is the whole world. In all countries, whatever

their degree of “civilization,” there is a tendency to apply the same

technical procedures. Even when the population of a given country

is not completely assimilated technically, it is nevertheless able to

use the instruments which technique puts into its hands. The peo-

ple of these countries have no need to be Westernized. Technique,

to be used, does not require a “civilized” man. Technique, what-

ever hand uses it, produces its effect more or less totally in propor-

tion to the individual's more or less total absorption in it.



Vogt emphasizes this fact, for example, when he shows that in

the domain of agriculture the most up-to-date techniques have be-

come universal. Never before, says Vogt, has man destroyed his

natural environment “with the inexorableness of an armored divi-



The Technological Society	(117



sion. These ‘civilized' forces of destruction, which have been de-

veloped under our influence, have conquered the entire globe to

such a degree that Malays, Hottentots and Ainos are spreading the

plague."



In the course of history there have always been different princi-

ples of civilization according to regions, nations, and continents.

But today everything tends to align itself on technical principles.

In the past, different civilizations took different “paths”; today all

peoples follow the same road and the same impulse. This does not

mean that they have all reached the same point, but they are situ-

ated at different points along the same trajectory. The United

States represents the type that France will represent in thirty years,

and China in possibly eighty. All the business of life, from work

and amusement to love and death, is seen from the technical point

of view. The number of “technical slaves" is growing rapidly, and

the ideal of all governments is to push as fast as possible toward

industrialization and technical enslavement.



I am well acquainted with the perfectly valid arguments which

turn on economic necessity and the misery of the so-called “back-

ward" peoples. But the problem is not the process involved; it is

simply to note that different societies are adopting Western tech-

nique. The Vevey Congress of i960 forcefully emphasized this

point. Although, understandably, the primary problem of the un-

derdeveloped peoples is undernourishment, obsession with tech-

nique has befuddled them to such a point that what they are de-

manding, and what we are offering, is the very industrialization

that will aggravate the evil. Technique is the same in all latitudes

and hence acts to make different civilizations uniform. This tend-

ency arises directly from technique itselfThe Oriental, Russian,

and South American societies were by no means historically pre-

pared, as was ours, to favor technical development



The best sociologists have noted that technique involves the

same effects everywhere. R. P. Lynton writes; “The industrializa-

tion of a community of Europe or America, on the one hand; or of

Siam, Nigeria, Turkey, or Uruguay, on the other, poses the same

problems." If the technical movement had had its inception in one

of these “backward” countries, it would have aborted. But these

societies are presented with a technical movement in full vigor and

in all its expansive power. No longer is there any question as to



1 l8)	THE	CHARACTEROLOGY	OF	TECHNIQUE



whether circumstances favorable to its flowering exist. The tech-

nical movement is strong enough to impose itself and to break down

all barriers to its progress.



But why does this expansion exist at all? Until now it was gen-

erally accepted that very similar social environments were neces-

sary if propagation of techniques were to occur. This is no longer

true. Today technique imposes itself, whatever the environment.

This expansive force can be explained by a whole ensemble of

historical reasons (more or less superficial, though true), and by

one profound reason (to be examined later on).



The historical reasons are bound up with two great currents

which have occasioned the technical invasion: commerce and war.

Colonial war opened the door to those European nations that

possessed the whole complex of technical means. The conquering

nations exported their machines and their organization through

their armies. The vanquished peoples, in a state of mind com-

pounded of admiration and fear, adopted the machines, which

came to replace their gods. Not only were the machines the means

their conquerors had used to subdue them, but the machines repre-

sented the possible means for liberation from these conquerors. In

these colonies traffic in arms and in all the instruments of power

began to flourish as a means of provoking insurrection. At first,

rebellion was incoherent, but to the degree that these peoples be-

came better organized and technicized, rebellion became a national

affair.



War also involved the backward peoples globally. I have in

mind not so much the direct effects of colonial war as the effects of

wars among so-called civilized nations. The colonies of Germany

and France became involved in the war between these nations.

Later on, China and Siberia came in. Yakuts rode in tanks in the

front line of the Red Army. War provokes the sudden and stupefy-

ing adaptation of the “savage” to machinery and discipline.



The second factor governing technical invasion is commerce. It

was mandatory for the Western powers to conquer the markets

necessary for Western industry and technical life. No barrier could

oppose this necessity; and primitive peoples were literally

swamped by the products of modem technique. In 1945 the Ameri-

cans sent tons of individual military rations to the Bulgarians, who

had no desire at all to adapt themselves to a new kind of butter and



The Technological Society	(119



to other substitutes. But their resistance necessarily yielded to tech-

nical adaptation and, very rapidly, to plain abundance. The exces-

siveness of the means broke down all traditional and individual

desires.



After consumer goods came an invasion of productive tech-

niques. Technical invasion is a question not only of colonialism but

also, for the less powerful countries, of simple technical subordina-

tion. This, and this only, explains the formation of the two blocs

today. All political or economic explanations are superficial and

ridiculous. There are two great technical powers, the United States

and the Soviet Union. Every other country must subordinate itself

to one or the other of the two simply because of their technical

superiority. Technical invasion is not exclusively colonial in-

vasion but assumes other forms as well.



The phenomenon of present-day decolonialization is closely re-

lated to the possibilities of the technical development of peoples

who, up to now, have lived in symbiosis with colonial powers. From

the very moment of “independence,” these peoples are constrained

to appeal for assistance to the two major powers; after all, they can-

not possibly be self-sufficient on the technical plane. The major

powers then equip them in a “disinterested” way. In fact, of course,

the major powers have no choice if they cherish any hope at all that

the poverty of these new “free” nations will not make them theatres

of endemic war (not to mention the fact that the major powers are

themselves in competition). Thus, the best and most moral inten-

tions (as, for example, Harry S. Truman’s Point Four aid to colonial

lands) lead to a rapid technicization of the world; and every polit-

ical phenomenon accelerates this technicization, which necessarily

assumes a Western look.



The expensive factors are clearly favored by the elementary

technical facts. Consider, for example, the speed and thoroughness

of the means of communication, which permit technical products

to be transported anywhere in the world soon after their appear-

ance in the country of origin. The result of this must be speedy

unification.



The very means of communication presuppose such unification.

Great ocean-going vessels necessitate continually improved port

installations everywhere. Railroads demand identical roadbeds in

all countries. Aviation requires a whole technical substructure.



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



120)



which is becoming more important day by day and which must be-

come ever more uniform as tonnage and speed increase.



The creation of the port of Lavera, near Port-de-Bouc, is a case

in point. To construct a harbor for oil tankers to meet the de-

mands of the French market, it was necessary to conform exactly

to the international requirements of petroleum shipping. These de-

mands are wholly technical: depth of channel for modem tank-

ers of more than 30,000 tons, special docks, relay reservoirs fitted

with technical improvements exactly adapted to the tankers, and

so on. It was clearly impossible to continue to do without these

facilities. In French home ports today, the petroleum brought in

by the large tankers must first be discharged by small lighters to

plants which are either floating installations or of insufficient pump-

ing capacity. This results in loss of time and excessive handling.

Every ton of crude oil bears an extra burden of approximately

three dollars. These factors are clear and are leading to the accept-

ance of the most modern procedures—which reciprocally contrib-

utes to world-wide technical unification.



There is still another element in the mechanism of technical

expansion: the export of technicians. This is not only a question of

German technicians going, for example, to the United States or to

Russia. (This exodus, incidentally, was accompanied by a certain

technical flowering which rendered German technique truly in-

ternational. ) There is the same diffusion of American technique to

underdeveloped countries by the application of President Truman's

Point Four Program. Academicians are supplied who are charged

with blueprinting the future of underdeveloped peoples. (This

form of technical assistance assimilates intellectually the inhabi-

tants of the countries in question.) In addition, the United States

directly supplies the necessary technicians for exploiting the natu-

ral resources of these countries. The immediate purpose is to raise

the standard of living of the population, beginning with a realistic

appraisal of the possibilities of the given country, and the final ob-

jective is a perfectly humanitarian one; we can refrain from passing

judgment on whether American imperialism is involved. Neverthe-

less, this leads to a diffusion of techniques throughout the world in

an accelerated tempo, and at the same time it leads to technical

identity in all countries.



A certain educational unity is also involved here. Every citizen



The Technological Society	(121



of an underdeveloped country must become adept in the use of

the new techniques. This leads to the extension of European-style

education, allows the colored peoples to participate actively in

scientific progress, and provokes as a consequence a kind of a

priori adhesion to technical diffusion. Since 1956 we have been

witnessing the sante diffusion of technicians from the Soviet Union,

and more recently from China, to Syria, Guinea, Ghana, and Cuba.

Without entertaining political suspicions of these acts, let us bear

in mind only that these factors, among others, are an active aid to

technical invasion.



Technical invasion does not involve the simple addition of new

values to old ones. It does not put new wine into old bottles; it

does not introduce new content into old forms. The old bottles are

all being broken. The old civilizations collapse on contact with the

new. And the same phenomenon appears under every possible cul-

tural form. Take, for example, religion. We have seen one religion

disappear under our very eyes as a result of a technical fact: Mi-

kado worship vanished after the bomb was dropped at Hiroshima.

We are witnessing the collapse of Buddhism under Communist

pressure in Tibet and China. And, according to recent studies,

Buddhism is vanishing for technical reasons, not because of the

ideological effect of Communism. The phenomenon is due, on the

one hand, to a brutal and massive infusion of industrial techniques

and, on the other, to the use of propaganda techniques which en-

tail the abandonment of religion by the ever growing population.

In a certain sense these religious people are not left without reli-

gion. To their transcendental religion a “social” religion is opposed,

a religion which is but an expression of technical progress.



Even the most classically oriented sociologists today recognize

that the impact of techniques is producing a collapse of the non*

Western civilizations. This involves the collapse of cultural as well

as of economic forms, and of the traditional psychological and

sociological structures.



UNESCO has been greatly preoccupied with these questions,

and both the Bulletin of the Social Sciences and the reports of Dr.

Margaret Mead strike an alarming note. Investigators find, in effect,

that it is easy to transfer technical procedures, but that the elabora-

tion of sociological and psychological methods of controlling them

is slow, difficult, and laborious.



12 2)	THE	CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



One is always running up against the simple-minded tendency

to say, as Charles F. Frankel puts it, that “it is sufficient to give

technical procedures and their accumulated blessings to the back-

ward peoples in order to put them on their feet, as one might give

an injection to a sick man.” This kind of injection may conceivably

help. But in giving it, we destroy the traditional ways of life. Tech-

nique does not, of itself, carry its own equilibrium. The opposite is

nearer the truth. We have seen in the West how technique des-

troyed communities and brought the relevance of the human being

into question, even though technique was bom in the Western

milieu and grew only slowly. How much more formidable are its

effects when it is suddenly implanted in a foreign environment, ap-

pearing in all its power at a single stroke. In Africa the worker is

separated from his family and, as S. Herbert Frankel says, “his

social ego remains attached to the rural group while he himself has

been transplanted into an industrial milieu. When his family comes

to the city they are completely unprepared for urban life and are

destroyed in that environment morally and sociologically.” In

Australia we find the same collapse of the traditional way of life.

A. P. Elkin says: “In the tribe, authority belonged to the eld-

ers .. . but it is now in process of passing to the corral boss,

or to the ranch owner. . . . The mysterious rites, which are asso-

ciated with the succession of the seasons and with the search for

food, and which in the past occupied a great deal of time, are tend-

ing to lose their meaning.” It would bp easy enough to give many

more examples.



Every culture must be considered as a whole. The transformation

of a given element through the effect of technique produces shocks

in all areas. All the peonies of the world today live in a cultural



JL	JL	J



breakdown provoked by the conflicts and the internal strife re-

sulting from technique. Over and above this—as Margaret Mead

points out—since every human being incorporates in his own per-

son the cultural environment in which he lives, its disagreements

and incoherences are to be met with again in each individual

personality.



Moreover, we are poorly equipped to respond to this cultural

collapse. We have few studies of the mentality and the needs of

these peoples, and even fewer studies of their psychological reac-

tions to technique. We have no studies of the social and adminis-



The Technological Society	(123



trative measures that might meet their needs, or of their changes

in aptitudes. We never send along with our technique any civilized

environment or adaptable value capable of replacing what is being

destroyed. This, at any rate, is the diagnosis of UNESCO, an

agency generally characterized by optimism.



The situation is being studied now, but for the most part we are

too late. All the instruments ought long since to have been pre-

pared, for no natural adaptation or spontaneous reorganization can

be counted upon. No hope of this exists. We have no instruments

ready. And while the problem is being studied, the ravages of

technique are making steady inroads. We are in a veritable race,

but it is evident that we are beaten before we begin. The effects of

technique are already too far advanced for us to begin again at

the beginning. There is no doubt that all the traditional cultures

and sociological structures will be destroyed by technique before

we can discover or invent social, economic, and psychological

forms of adaptation which might possibly have preserved the

equilibrium of these peoples and societies.



In the political sphere the phenomenon takes the form of the

brutal transition from elementary forms of society to the fully

developed modern dictatorship. A major part of the world’s popu-

lation has passed in a few years from serfdom or feudalism to the

most punctilious dictatorial state, by virtue and necessity of pro-

ductive and administrative techniques. The Soviet Union, Turkey,

and Japan are well-known examples.



The problem of dictatorship is likewise posed by decolonializa-

tion. Either one succeeds in organizing the country and in estab-

lishing a centralized authoritarian state (as has occurred in

Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sudan) or anarchy reigns (as in the

Belgian Congo, Cameroon)^ Halfway liberal successes (as, for

example, Tunisia) are infinitely rare and fragile.



As to economics, it seems scarcely necessary to discuss these

problems. All the traditional economic structures of production and

distribution in Africa and Asia are exploding in the presence of the

new technical means. Up to the time of Western intervention, life

on the Asiatic continent was highly stable; populations and envi-

ronments were in equilibrium. Of course, things were far from be-

ing perfect; undernourishment, for example, was always a danger.

But certain civilizations were harmonious enough; some of them



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



endured much longer than our own. Everyone, I believe, agrees

that the tribulations of modem Asia stem in part from the com-

plexity that the West has imposed on it, the complexity and density

of structure provoked by the indispensable application of tech-

niques.



In all areas, then, technique is producing the rapid collapse of

all other civilizations. When we speak of the collapse of these civili-

zations, we are speaking only of sociological forms. Even the weak-

est civilizations preserve certain values which, in Roger Bastide’s

words, permit them to “maintain a mental equilibrium which cul-

tural shock might shatter. . . . The social situation allows the old

complexes to remain alive which, not being fulfilled any longer

through ancestral customs, create for themselves new defense

mechanisms.” But it is very probable that this situation is only

temporary; even these psychological reserves will be attacked and

absorbed by technique when the so-called human techniques

(those which have man for their object) are applied to them.



Obviously, the effect of technique on these groups will not be

the same everywhere. Detailed sociological studies have been

made of the various phenomena of assimilation, regrouping, func-

tioning, and marasmus or progressive dissolution. According to

these studies, there has not been comparable and identical pro-

gression in every case. However, behind this diversity is to be

noted an absolute incompatibility between the technical type of

civilization and all the others. Technicians have not willed this

outcome; no one seeks consciously to destroy a civilization. This

is simply the proverbial collision between the earthenware pot and

the iron pot. What happens, happens, despite the best possible

intentions of the iron pot.



It might be said: This is not necessary. Why should the simple

fact of bringing more well-being to India ruin the Hindu civiliza-

tion?” I do not know if it is necessary, but nevertheless it is so. A

civilization which is collapsing cannot be re-created abstractly.

It is too late to turn back and enable these worlds to live. What

has been given them is not simply well-being. This well-being pre-

supposes a transformation of all of life: work where there had been

only laziness; machines and their accessories, organs of co-ordina-

tion and rational administration, and internal adherence to the

regime.



The Technological Society	(115



Technique cannot be otherwise than totalitarian. It can be truly



efficient and scientific only if it absorbs an enormous number of

phenomena and brings into play the maximum of data. In order to

co-ordinate and exploit synthetically, technique must be brought to

bear on the great masses in every area. But the existence of tech-

nique in every area leads to monopoly. This is noted by Jacques

Driencourt when he declares that the technique of propaganda is

totalitarian by its very nature. It is totalitarian in message, meth-

ods, field of action, and means. What more could be required?



One could require more. Totalitarianism extends to whatever

touches it, even things which seem, at first sight, very remote from

it. When technique has fastened upon a method, everything must

be subordinated to it. There are no longer any neutral objects or

situations. Claude Munson forcefully demonstrates that psychologi-

cal technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial

plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves psycholog-

ical adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods,

supervision of family life, and training family life for military or

industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a

civilization. Everything is its concern.



It will be objected: “If these transformations do take place, tech-

nique alone is not responsible. Many other factors have contrib-

uted; for example, the intellectual superiority of the white race, the

corruption of these other civilizations, and the population growth.*

In fact, all these factors refer back to the problems of techniques.

Indeed, Western intellectual superiority is only manifested in the

technical domain. And the alleged corruption of the Chinese and

Islamic civilizations depends solely on the criteria by which they

are judged. In making die objection, we are in effect judging solely

on the basis of technical criteria.



Again, it will be objected: “Granting all this, is it not the case

that coexistence, and even synthesis, has been possible between

these two kinds of life? After all, when the Barbarians invaded the

Roman Empire, a successful synthesis eventually took place." But

the historical situation was clearly not the same then as it is to-

day. In fact, it was the Roman civilization which, being technical,

endured. The civilizations threatened today by our own can offer

no effective resistance because they are nontechnical.



The decisive factor which leads me to reject the three objections



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



126)



just stated is that our technique, which is destroying all other civili-

zations, is more than a simple mechanism: it is a whole civilization

in itself.



We have analyzed the combination of circumstances that

favored technical development in the West and guaranteed its

easy diffusion. Since technique has engulfed civilization, a very

remarkable effect has been observed—in fact, a complete reversal.

When technique penetrates a new milieu, it tends to reproduce in

this milieu the circumstances which, in a fortuitous way, it found

favorable to itself in the nineteenth century in France and Eng-

land. At least, it reproduces those features which it is possible and

necessary to reproduce. It is of small importance for technique to

hit upon a long cultural experience or a favorable demographic

situation. On the contrary, social plasticity and a clear technical

consciousness are the general terms which it forcibly imposes in

every area of the world. It dissociates the sociological forms, des-

troys the moral framework, desacralizes men and things, explodes

social and religious taboos, and reduces the body social to a collec-

tion of individuals. The most recent sociological studies (even

those made by optimists) hold that technique is the destroyer of

social groups, of communities (whatever their kind), and of

human relations. Technical progress causes the disappearance, as

Jerome Scott and R. P. Lynton put it, of that “amalgam of attitudes,

customs and social institutions which constitute a community!*

Communities break up into their component parts But no new

communities form. The individual in contact with technique loses

his social and community sense as the frameworks in which he op-

erated disintegrate under the influence of techniques. This fact is

established beyond question by the disappearance of responsibili-

ties, functional autonomies, and social spontaneities, the absence of

contact between the technical and the human environment, and so

forth. In the area of industrial labor, for example, sociologists point

out the physical separation between the industrial plant and the

social group in which the plant is situated (the city, say). In tra-

ditional societies, the social and the economic aspects of life were

inextricably meshed into a social whole. But in a technical society

the two aspects are strictly separated; this in itself brings about

the dissolution of the entire group. Related activities such as pro-

duction and social relations cannot be separated without ruining



The Technological Society	(127



the whole society. However, to the degree that production is tech-

nique and social relations is not, the two are of necessity dissociated.

This is the conclusion reached by innumerable detailed studies of

social groups at the point at which technique begins to function.

The conclusion is equally true of the industrialized milieus of Eu-

rope, America, Asia, and Africa. The situation cannot be otherwise.

The technicians themselves are very clear on this point. For exam-

ple, an official report of 1958 on the perspectives of economic devel-

opment in Algeria indicated that this development can only be

brought about by changing the Algerians* whole way of life, in

particular, by putting the still seminomad masses to work. Develop-

ment involves economic planning, displacement of populations,

mobilization of the local economy, acceptance of authoritarian po-

litical power, modification of local moral habits and traditional

mentalities; in short, a New Deal of the Emotions! These are the

conditions proposed and (and considered normal) for technical

progress in the 'Third World.”* Technique makes its sociological

compost pile where it does not find one already made. And it pos-

sesses sufficient power and efficiency today to succeed. Before long,

it will produce everywhere that clear technical consciousness which

is the easiest of its creations to bring about, and which man falls in

with so willingly. The world that technique creates cannot be any

other than that which was favorable to it from the very beginning.

In spite of all the men of good will, all the optimists, all the doers

of history, the civilizations of the world are being ringed about

with a band of steel. We in the West became familiar with this

iron constraint in the nineteenth century. Now technique is me-

chanically reproducing it everywhere as necessary to its existence.

What force could prevent technique from so acting, or make it be

otherwise than it is?



Technique has progressively mastered dll the elements of civiliza-

tion. We have already pointed this out with regard to mans eco-

nomic and intellectual activities. But man himself is overpowered

by technique and becomes its object. The technique which takes

man for its object thus becomes the center of society; this extraordi-

nary event (which seems to surprise no one) is often designated

as technical civilization. The terminology is exact and we must fully



Sauvy, Balandier, et al.: Le Tiers Monde.



THE C



128 )



OIjOCY or TECHNIQUE



grasp its importance. Technical civilization means that our civili-

zation is constructed by technique (makes a part of civilization only

what belongs to technique), for technique (in that everything in

this civilization must serve a technical end), and is exclusively

technique (in that it excludes whatever is not technique or reduces

it to technical form).



We can see that this is actually the case in certain phenomena

considered essential to a civilization, for example, art and litera-

ture. These activities in modem society are tightly subordinated

in different ways to technical necessities by the direct interference of

technique. Take, for example, the motion pictures, radio, and tele-

vision. These media require great capital investments. As a result,

artistic expression is subordinated to a censorship of money or of

the state. This censorship most often takes the form of indirect in-

fluences, which, again, may assume different guises. Personal music

is supplanted by the radio; and painting, threatened by photogra-

phy, is obliged to modify itself by becoming abstract so as not to

be a mere substitute for reproduction. Modem art and literature

manifest in all points their subordination to the technique which

has extended its power over all activity, and hence over all culture.



Herein lies the inversion we are witnessing. Without exception in

the course of history, technique belonged to a civilization and was

merely a single element among a host of nontechnical activities.

Today technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Certainly,

technique is no longer the simple machine substitute for human la-

bor. It has come to be the “intervention into the very substance

not only of the inorganic but also of the organic.”



This intervention into the inorganic world is represented, for ex-

ample, by the exploration of the atom and its use for purposes as

yet unknown. But the world which is most clearly taking on a tech-

nical form is the organic. In this realm the necessity of production

penetrates to the very sources of life. It controls procreation, influ-

ences growth, and alters the individual and the species. Death,

procreation, birth, habitat; all must submit to technical efficiency

and systematization, the end point of the industrial assembly line.

\yhat seems to be most personal in the life of man is now techni-

cized. The manner in which he rests and relaxes becomes the object

of techniques of relaxation. The way in which he makes a deci-

sion is no longer the domain of the personal and voluntary; it has



The Technological Society	(129



become the object of the techniques of “operations research." As

Giedion says, all this represents experimentation at the very roots

of being.



How is it possible, then, not to believe that all of civilization is

affected and engulfed when the very substance of man is ques-

tioned? The essence of civilization is thus absorbed.



Concerning art, Giedion goes on to say: “What happened to art

in this period gives us the most intimate vision possible of the pene-

tration in depth of the human being by mechanization. Ban's re-

vealing selections in his Cubism and Abstract Art show us how the

artist, who reacts like a seismograph, expresses the influence of full

mechanization . . . Mechanization has penetrated into the sub-

conscious of the artist. Chirico expresses it in a remarkable way in

the mixture he makes of man and machine . . . The anxiety, the

solitude of man forms a melancholy architecture of the preced-

ing epoch and its mechanical dolls, painted in the smallest details

with a tragic expression."



We have the large-scale frescoes of Leger which construct the

image of cities out of signs, traffic signals, and machine parts. Even

the Russians and Hungarians, who in 1920 were far from mechani-

zation, were inspired by his creative power. In the hands of Du-

chanu and others, the machine, marvel of efficiency, was trans-

formed into an irrational object, charged with irony. At the same

time, a new aesthetic language was introduced.



To free themselves from a corrupt art and the prevailing taste,

artists have recourse to objects such as machines and mechanisms

because these objects contain an objective truth. What is true of

the plastic arts is likewise true of music. Preoccupation with “ob-

jectivity" is prevalent there, too. Igor Stravinsky writes: “My work

is architectonic and not anecdotal; objective construction and not

descriptive." These are the words of a man unconsciously steeped

in the technical milieu. Since Stravinsky wrote this, music has been

still further transformed by means of techniques which were not

originally musical techniques, that is, neither musical methodology

nor instrument construction. I have in mind Schaeffer s “concrete

music," Ussachewsky’s “music for tape," and Eimert's electronic

music, all of which make use of technical means that are not a

priori musical. In none of these types of music is there any longer

the need for a performer. The ancestral musical structures disin-



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



130)



tegrate and are atomized and we have a phenomenon that is funda-

mentally new. We shall doubtless see ever more refined and ex-

acting research into musical technique, and the dominant

musical structure and rhythm will undoubtedly correspond en-

tirely to the technical environment.



The external structures imposed by technique can no longer, by

themselves, modify the components of a society; here the internal

influence of technique on the human being becomes decisive.

Henceforth, every component of civilization is subject to the law

that technique is itself civilization. Civilization no longer exists of

itself. Every activity—intellectual, artistic, moral—is only a part of

technique. This fact is so enormous and unpredictable that we

are simply unable to foresee its consequences. Most of us, blinded

by traditional and well-established situations, are unable to grasp

its meaning. Henceforth, there will be no conflict between contend-

ing forces among which technique is only one. The victory of tech-

nique has already been secured. It is too late to set limits to it

or to put it in doubt. The fatal flaw in all systems designed to

counterbalance the power of technique is that they come too late.



Under these circumstances, it is understandable that technique,

in all the lands it has penetrated, has exploded the local, national

cultures. Two cultures, of which technique is one, cannot coexist.

This does not mean, of course, that uniformity prevails. There are

still great differences from region to region. But for the most part

these differences are due to the fact that the vestiges of a civiliza-

tion lake a long time to disappear completely. Technique has al-

ready gained its victory over Buddhism. It is clear, however, that it

will take two or three generations to modify the mode of life and

thought engendered by Buddhism. A certain diversity will per-

sist while this mode or life is weakening. Technique does not lead

to general uniformity. In fact, it creates a certain diversity. Its ob-

jectives are always the same, and so is its influence on man. But

though it is axiomatic that the one best way will prevail, this one

best way will vary with climate, country, and population. The more

technique is refined, the more it varies its means of action. There-

fore, we shall continue to have the appearance of different civili-

zations in India and in Greenland. They will indeed be different in

certain aspects. But their essence will be identical; they will be

techniques. And what differences there are will result from the cold



The Technological Society	(131



calculation of some technician, instead of being the result of the

profound spiritual and material effort of generations of human be-

ings, Instead of being the expression of man’s essence, they will be

the accidents of what is essential: technique.



The differences which exist today are therefore without impor-

tance in relation to the fact of technical identity. The differences

to come will bear upon the most diverse activities and give the

illusion of liberty. But they will nevertheless be no more than the

expression of the monism of technique. Geographically and quali-

tatively, technique is universal in its manifestations. It is devoted,

by nature and necessity, to the universal. It could not be otherwise.

It depends upon a science itself devoted to the universal, and it is

becoming the universal language understood by all men. We need

not belabor the fact, which everyone recognizes, that science is uni-

versal. And this fact in turn leads of necessity to the technical uni-

versalism which stems from it.



The second of the two elements we referred to (production and

social relations) requires more explication. In his relation to the

world, man has always made use of multiple means, none of which

were universal because none were objective. Technique is a means

of apprehending reality, of acting on the world, which allows us to

neglect all individual differences, all subjectivity. Technique alone

is rigorously objective. It blots out all personal opinions. It effaces

all individual, and even all collective, modes of expression. Today

man lives by virtue of his participation in a truth become objective.

Technique is no more than a neutral bridge between reality and

the abstract man.



Technique, moreover, creates a bond between men. All those

who follow the same technique are bound together in a tacit

fraternity and all of them take the same attitude toward reality.

There is no need for them to converse together or to understand

one another. A team of surgeons and assistants who know the tech-

nique of a given operation have no need to address one another in

order that the necessary motions be correctly performed at the right

moment.



Industrial labor likewise tends more and more to dispense with

orders and personal contact. This was pushed to an extreme in the

concentration camps, where men of different nations were mixed

together so that they should have no contacts and yet be able to



THE



or TECHNIQUE



perform collective work. It was hasty and superficial work, to be

sure, but a little more rigor could easily make this labor really pro-

ductive (as seems to be the case in the Soviet Union). One cannot

speak merely of isolation. These men work in teams, but there is

no need for them to know or understand one another. They need

only understand the technique involved and know in advance what

their teammate will do. It is not necessary for the crew to under-

stand one another in order to run an aircraft. The indicator panel

controls the actions to be performed; and every crew member, sub-

mitting by necessity and conscience to the automatic indications,

obeys for the safety of all. Each man's actions are dictated by the

conditions of life and its preservation. This is clear in the case of

flying an aircraft. But it is equally clear in every other situation in-

volving technique—and this encompasses the most important areas

of life. Men do not need to understand each other in order to carry

out the most important endeavors of our times.



Technique is of necessity, and as compensation, our universal

language. It is the fruit of specialization. But this very specializa-

tion prevents mutual understanding. Everyone today has his own

professional jargon, modes of thought, and peculiar perception of

the world. There was a time when the distortion of overspecializa-

tion was the butt of jokes and a subject for vaudeville. Today the

sharp knife of specialization has passed like a razor into the living

flesh. It has cut the umbilical cord which linked men with each

other and with nature. The man of today is no longer able to under-

stand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the

technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed

universe. He no longer understands the vocabulary of the others.

Nor does he comprehend the underlying motivations of the others.

Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and

man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges

the specializations because it produces a new type of man always

and everywhere like his duplicate, who develops along technical

lines. He listens to himself and speaks to himself, but he obeys

the slightest indications of the apparatus, confident that his neigh-

bor will do the same. Technique has become the bond between

men. By its agency they communicate, whatever their languages,

beliefs, or race. It has become, for life or death, the universal lan-

guage which compensates for all the deficiencies and separations it



The Technological Society	(133



has itself produced. This is the major reason for the great impetus

of technique toward the universal.



The Autonomy of Technique* The primary aspect of autonomy is

perfectly expressed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, a leading tech-

nician. He takes, as his point of departure, the view that the in-

dustrial plant is a whole in itself, a "closed organism,” an end in

itself. Giedion adds*. "What is fabricated in this plant and what is

the goal of its labor—these are questions outside its design.” The

complete separation of the goal from the mechanism, the limita-

tion of the problem to the means, and the refusal to interfere in

any way with efficiency; all this is clearly expressed by Taylor and

lies at the basis of technical autonomy.



Autonomy is the essential condition for the development of tech-

nique, as Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt’s study of the police clearly

indicates. The police must be independent if they are to become ef-

ficient. They must form a closed, autonomous organization in or-

der to operate by the most direct and efficient means and not be

shackled by subsidiary considerations. And in this autonomy, they

must be self-confident in respect to the law. It matters little whether

police action is legal, if it is efficient. The rules obeyed by a techni-

cal organization are no longer rules of justice or injustice. They are

“laws” in a purely technical sense. As far as the police are con-

cerned, the highest stage is reached when the legislature legalizes

their independence of the legislature itself and recognizes the pri-

macy of technical laws. This is the opinion of Best, a leading Ger-

man specialist in police matters.



The autonomy of technique must be examined in different per-

spectives on the basis of the different spheres in relation to which

it has this characteristic. First, technique is autonomous with re-

spect to economics and politics. We have already seen that, at the

present, neither economic nor political evolution conditions tech-

nical progress. Its progress is likewise independent of the social

situation. The converse is actually the case, a point I shall develop

at length. Technique elicits and conditions social, political, and eco-

nomic change. It is the prime mover of all the rest, in spite of any

appearance to the contrary and in spite of human pride, which pre-

tends that man’s philosophical theories are still determining influ-

ences and man’s political regimes decisive factors in technical

evolution. External necessities no longer determine technique.



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



134)



Technique's own internal necessities are determinative. Technique

has become a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws

and its own determinations.



Let us not deceive ourselves on this point. Suppose that the

state, for example, intervenes in a technical domain. Either it inter-

venes for sentimental, theoretical, or intellectual reasons, and the

effect of its intervention will be negative or nil; or it intervenes for

reasons of political technique, and we have the combined effect of

two techniques. There is no other possiblity. The historical experi-

ence of the last years shows this fully.



To go one step further, technical autonomy is apparent in respect

to morality and spiritual values. Technique tolerates no judgment

from without and accepts no limitation. It is by virtue of technique

rather than science that the great principle has become established:

chacun chez soi. Morality judges moral problems; as far as techni-

cal problems are concerned, it has nothing to say. Only technical

criteria are relevant. Technique, in sitting in judgment on itself, is

clearly freed from this principal obstacle to human action.

(Whether the obstacle is valid is not the question here. For the

moment we merely record that it is an obstacle.) Thus, technique

theoretically and systematically assures to itself that liberty which

it has been able to win practically. Since it has put itself beyond

good and evil, it need fear no limitation whatever. It was long

claimed that technique was neutral. Today this is no longer a use-

ful distinction. The power and autonomy of technique are so well

secured that it, in its turn, has become the judge of what is moral,

the creator of a new morality. Thus, it plays the role of creator of a

new civilization as well. This morality—internal to technique—is

assured of not having to suffer from technique. In any case, in re-

spect to traditional morality, technique affirms itself as an inde-

pendent power. Man alone is subject, it would seem, to moral judg-

ment. We no longer live in that primitive epoch in which things

were good or bad in themselves. Technique in itself is neither, and

can therefore do what it will. It is truly autonomous.



However, technique cannot assert its autonomy in respect to

physical or biological laws. Instead, it puts them to work; it seeks

to dominate them.



Giedion, in his probing study of mechanization and the manu-

facture of bread, shows that “wherever mechanization encounters



The Technological Society	(135



a living substance, bacterial or animal, the organic substance deter-

mines the laws.” For this reason, the mechanization of bakeries was

a failure. More subdivisions, intervals, and precautions of various

kinds were required in the mechanized bakery than in the non-

mechanized bakery. The size of the machines did not save time;

it merely gave work to larger numbers of people. Giedion shows

how the attempt was made to change the nature of the bread in

order to adapt it to mechanical manipulations. In the last resort,

the ultimate success of mechanization turned on the transformation

of human taste. Whenever technique collides with a natural obsta-

cle, it tends to get around it either by replacing the living organism

by a machine, or by modifying the organism so that it no longer

presents any specifically organic reaction.



The same phenomenon is evident in yet another area in which

technical autonomy asserts itself: the relations between techniques

and man. We have already seen, in connection with technical self-

augmentation, that technique pursues its own course more and

more independently of man. This means that man participates less

and less actively in technical creation, which, by the automatic

combination of prior elements, becomes a kind of fate. Man is re-

duced to the level of a catalyst. Better still, he resembles a slug in-

serted into a slot machine: he starts the operation without partici-

pating in it.



But this autonomy with respect to man goes much further. To the

degree that technique must attain its result with mathematical pre-

cision, it has for its object the elimination of all human variability

and elasticity. It is a commonplace to say that the machine replaces

the human being. But it replaces him to a greater degree than has

been believed.



Industrial technique will soon succeed in completely replacing

the effort of the worker, and it would do so even sooner if capital-

ism were not an obstacle. The worker, no longer needed to guide or

move the machine to action, will be required merely to watch it

and to repair it when it breaks down. He will not participate in the

work any more than a boxers manager participates in a prize fight.

This is no dream. The automated factory has already been realized

for a great number of operations, and it is realizable for a far greater

number. Examples multiply from day to day in all areas. Man indi-

cates how this automation and its attendant exclusion of men op-



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



*3«)



erates in business offices; for example, in the case of the so-called

tabulating machine. The machine itself interprets the data, the ele-

mentary bits of information fed into it. It arranges them in texts

and distinct numbers. It adds them together and classifies the re-

sults in groups and subgroups, and so on. We have here an ad-

ministrative circuit accomplished by a single, self-controlled ma-

chine. It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the astounding growth of

automation in the last ten years. The multiple applications of the

automatic assembly line, of automatic control of production opera-

tions (so-called cybernetics) are well known. Another case in point

is the automatic pilot. Until recently the automatic pilot was used

only in rectilinear flight; the finer operations were carried out by

the living pilot. As early as 1952 the automatic pilot effected the

operations of take-off and landing for certain supersonic aircraft

The same kind of feat is performed by automatic direction finders

in anti-aircraft defense, Man's role is limited to inspection. This

automation results from the development servomechanisms which

act as substitutes for human beings in more and more subtle opera-

tions by virtue of their "feedback" capacity.



This progressive elimination of man from the circuit must Inexo-

rably continue. Is the elimination of man so unavoidably necessary?

Certainly 1 Freeing man from toil is in itself an ideal. Beyond

this, every intervention of man, however educated or used to ma-

chinery he may be, is a source of error and unpredictability. The

combination of man and technique is a happy one only if man has

no responsibility. Otherwise, he is ceaselessly tempted to make un-

predictable choices and is susceptible to emotional motivations

which invalidate the mathematical precision of the machinery. He

is also susceptible to fatigue and discouragement. All this disturbs

the forward thrust of technique.



Man must have nothing decisive to perform in the course of

technical operations; after all, he is the source of error. Political

technique is still troubled by certain unpredictable phenomena, in

spite of all the precision of the apparatus and the skill of those in-

volved. (But this technique is still in its childhood.) In human re-

actions, howsoever well calculated they may be, a "coefficient of

elasticity" causes imprecision, and imprecision is intolerable to

technique. As far as possible, this source of error must be elimi-

nated. Eliminate the individual, and excellent results ensue. Any



The Technological Society	(13 7



technical man who is aware of this fact is forced to support the

opinions voiced by Robert Jungk, which can be summed up thus:

“The individual is a brake on progress.” Or: “Considered from the

modem technical point of view, man is a useless appendage.” For

instance, ten per cent of all telephone calls are wrong numbers, due

to human error. An excellent use by man of so perfect an apparatus!



Now that statistical operations are carried out by perforated-

card machines instead of human beings, they have become exact.

Machines no longer perform merely gross operations. They perform

a whole complex of subtle ones as well. And before long—what

with the electronic brain—they will attain an intellectual power of

which man is incapable.



Thus, the “great changing of the guard” is occurring much

more extensively than Jacques Duboin envisaged some decades

ago. Gaston Bouthoul, a leading sociologist of the phenomena of

war, concludes that war breaks out in a social group when there

is a “plethora of young men surpassing the indispensable tasks of

the economy.” When for one reason or another these men are not

employed, they become ready for war. It is the multiplication of

men who are excluded from working which provokes war. We

ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual

decrease in human participation in technical operations.



However, there are spheres in which it is impossible to eliminate

human influence. The autonomy of technique then develops in an-

other direction. Technique is not, for example, autonomous in re-

spect to clock time. Machines, like abstract technical laws, are

subject to the law of speed, and co-ordination presupposes time

adjustment. In his description of the assembly line, Giedion writes:

“Extremely precise time tables guide the automatic cooperation of

the instruments, which, like the atoms in a planetary system, consist

of separate units but gravitate with respect to each other in obedi-

ence to their inherent laws.” This image shows in a remarkable way

how technique became simultaneously independent of man and

obedient to the chronometer. Technique obeys its own specific

laws, as every machine obeys laws. Each element of the technical

complex follows certain laws determined by its relations with the

other elements, and these laws are internal to the system and in no

way influenced by external factors. It is not a question of causing

the human being to disappear, but of making him capitulate, of in-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



138)



during him to accommodate himself to techniques and not to ex-

perience personal feelings and reactions.



No technique is possible when men are free. When technique

enters into the realm of social life, it collides ceaselessly with the

human being to the degree that the combination of man and tech-

nique is unavoidable, and that technical action necessarily results

in a determined result. Technique requires predictability and,

no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique

prevail over the human being. For technique, this is a matter of life

or death. Technique must reduce man to a technical animal, the

king of the slaves of technique. Human caprice crumbles before

this necessity; there can be no human autonomy in the face of tech-

nical autonomy. The individual must be fashioned by techniques,

either negatively (by the techniques of understanding man) or

positively (by the adaptation of man to the technical framework),

in order to wipe out the blots his personal determination introduces

into the perfect design of the organization.



But it is requisite that man have certain precise inner charac-

teristics. An extreme example is the atomic worker or the jet pilot.

He must be of calm temperament, and even temper, he must be

phlegmatic, he must not have too much initiative, and he must be

devoid of egotism. The ideal jet pilot is already along in years

(perhaps thirty-five) and has a settled direction in life. He flies

his jet in the way a good civil servant goes to his office. Human

joys and sorrows are fetters on technical aptitude. Jungk cites the

case of a test pilot who had to abandon his profession because

“his wife behaved in such a way as to lessen his capacity to fly.

Every day, when he returned home, he found her shedding tears of

joy. Having become in this way accident conscious, he dreaded

catastrophe when he had to face a delicate situation/' The individ-

ual who is a servant of technique must be completely unconscious

of himself. Without this quality, his reflexes and his inclinations are

not properly adapted to technique.



Moreover, the physiological condition of the individual must an-

swer to technical demands. Jungk gives an impressive picture of

the experiments in training and control that jet pilots have to

undergo. The pilot is whilred on centrifuges until he “blacks out”

(in order to measure his toleration of acceleration). There are cata-

pults, ultrasonic chambers, etc., in which the candidate is forced



The Technological Society	(139



to undergo unheard-of tortures in order to determine whether he

has adequate resistance and whether he is capable of piloting the

new machines. That the human organism is, technically speaking,

an imperfect one is demonstrated by the experiments. The suffer-

ings the individual endures in these “laboratories” are considered

to be due to “biological weaknesses,” which must be eliminated.

New experiments have pushed even further to determine the re-

actions of “space pilots” and to prepare these heroes for their roles

of tomorrow. This has given birth to new sciences, biometry for

example; their one aim is to create the new man, the man adapted

to technical functions.



It will be objected that these examples are extreme. This is cer-

tainly the case, but to a greater or lesser degree the same prob-

lem exists everywhere. And the more technique evolves, the more

extreme its character becomes. The object of all the modern “hu-

man sciences” (which I will examine later on) is to find answers

to these problems.



The enormous effort required to put this technical civilization

into motion supposes that all individual effort is directed toward

this goal alone and that all social forces are mobilized to attain the

mathematically perfect structure of the edifice. (“Mathematically”

does not mean “rigidly.” The perfect technique is the most adapta-

ble and, consequently, the most plastic one. True technique will

know how to maintain the illusion of liberty, choice, and individ-

uality; but these will have been carefully calculated so that they

will be integrated into the mathematical reality merely as appear-

ances!) Henceforth it will be wrong for a man to escape this

universal effort. It will be inadmissible for any part of the individ-

ual not to be integrated in the drive toward technicization; it will be

inadmissible that any man even aspire to escape this necessity of

the whole society. The individual will no longer be able, materially

or spiritually, to disengage himself from society. Materially, he will

not be able to release himself because the technical means are so

numerous that they invade his whole life and make it impossible

for him to escape the collective phenomena. There is no longer an

uninhabited place, or any other geographical locale, for the

would-be solitary. It is no longer possible to refuse entrance into

a community to a highway, a high-tension line, or a dam. It is vain

to aspire to live alone when one is obliged to participate in all col-



THE CHARACTEBOLOCT OF TECHNIQUE



140)



lective phenomena and to use all the collective’s tools, without

which it is impossible to earn a bare subsistence. Nothing is gratis

any longer in our society; and to live on charity is less and less

possible. “Social advantages" are for the workers alone, not for “use-

less mouths." The solitary is a useless mouth and will have no ration

card—up to the day he is transported to a penal colony. (An at-

tempt was made to institute this procedure during the French Rev-

olution, with deportations to Cayenne.)



Spiritually, it will be impossible for the individual to disassociate

himself from society. This is due not to the existence of spiritual

techniques which have increasing force in our society, but rather to

our situation. We are constrained to be “engaged," as the existen-

tialists say, with technique. Positively or negatively, our spiritual

attitude is constantly urged, if not determined, by this situation.

Only bestiality, because it is unconscious, would seem to escape

this situation, and it is itself only a product of the machine.



Every conscious being today is walking the narrow ridge of a

decision with regard to technique. He who maintains that he can

escape it is either a hypocrite or unconscious. The autonomy of

technique forbids the man of today to choose his destiny. Doubt-

less, someone will ask if it has not always been the case that social

conditions, environment, manorial oppression, and the family con-

ditioned man’s fate. The answer is, of course, yes. But there is no

common denominator between the suppression of ration cards in

an authoritarian state and the family pressure of two centuries ago.

In the past, when an individual entered into conflict with society,

he led a harsh and miserable life that required a vigor which ei-

ther hardened or broke him. Today the concentration camp and

death await him; technique cannot tolerate aberrant activities.



Because of the autonomy of technique, modern man cannot

choose his means any more than his ends. In spite of variability and

flexibility according to place and circumstance (which are charac-

teristic of technique) there is still only a single employable tech-

nique in the given place and time in which an individual is situ-

ated. We have already examined the reasons for this.



At this point, we must consider the major consequences of the

autonomy of technique. This will bring us to the climax of this

analysis.



Technical autonomy explains the “specific weight" with which



The Technological Society	(141



technique is endowed. It is not a kind of neutral matter, with do

direction, quality, or structure. It is a power endowed with its own

peculiar force. It refracts in its own specific sense the wills which

make use of it and the ends porposed for it. Indeed, independently

of the objectives that man pretends to assign to any given technical

means, that means always conceals in itself a finality which cannot

be evaded. And if there is a competition between this intrinsic final-

ity and an extrinsic end proposed by man, it is always the intrinsic

finality which carries the day. If the technique in question is not

exactly adapted to a proposed human end, and if an individual pre-

tends that he is adapting the technique to this end, it is generally

quickly evident that it is the end which is being modified, not the

technique. Of course, this statement must be qualified by what has

already been said concerning the endless refinement of techniques

and their adaptation. But this adaptation is effected with reference

to the techniques concerned and to the conditions of their applica-

bility. It does not depend on external ends. Perrot has demon-

strated this in the case of judicial techniques, and Giedion in the

case of mechanical techniques. Concerning the over-all problem of

the relation between the ends and the means, I take the liberty

of referring to my own work, Presence au monde modeme.



Once again we are faced with a choice of “all or nothing.'* If

we make use of technique, we must accept the specificity and

autonomy of its ends, and the totality of its rules. Our own desires

and aspirations can change nothing.



The second consequence of technical autonomy is that it renders

technique at once sacrilegious and sacred. (Sacrilegious is not used

here in the theological but in the sociological sense.) Sociologists

have recognized that the world in which man lives is for him not

only a material but also a spiritual world; that forces act in it which

are unknown and perhaps unknowable; that there are phenomena

in it which man interprets as magical; that there are relations and

correspondences between things and beings in which material con-

nections are of little consequence. This whole area is mysterious.

Mystery (but not in the Catholic sense) is an element of man’s life.

Jung has shown that it is catastrophic to make superficially clear

what is hidden in man’s innermost depths. Man must make allow-

ance for a background, a great deep above which lie his reason and

his clear consciousness. The mystery of man perhaps creates the



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



14a)



mystery of the world he inhabits. Or perhaps this mystery is a real-

ity in itself. There is no way to decide between these two alterna-

tives. But, one way or the other, mystery is a necessity of human

life.



Man cannot live without a sense of the secret The psychoana-

lysts agree on this point But the invasion of technique desacralizes

the world in which man is called upon to live. For technique noth-

ing is sacred, there is no mystery, no taboo. Autonomy makes this so.

Technique does not accept the existence of rules outside itself, or

of any norm. Still less will it accept any judgment upon it. As a

consequence, no matter where it penetrates, what it does is per-

mitted, lawful, justified.



To a great extent, mystery is desired by man. It is not that he

cannot understand, or enter into, or grasp mystery, but that he does

not desire to do so. The sacred is what man decides unconsciously

to respect. The taboo becomes compelling from a social standpoint,

but there is always a factor of adoration and respect which does not

derive from compulsion and fear.



Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single

role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by ra-

tional use to transform everything into means. More than science,

which limits itself to explaining the “how,” technique desacralizes

because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through

use and not through books) that mystery does not exist. Science

brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred.

Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it. The sacred cannot

resist. Science penetrates to the great depths of the sea to photo-

graph the unknown fish of the deep. Technique captures them,

hauls them up to see if they are edible—but before they arrive on

deck they burst. And why should technique not act thus? It is au-

tonomous and recognizes as barriers only the temporary limits of its

action. In its eyes, this terrain, which is for the moment unknown

but not mysterious, must be attacked. Far from being restrained by

any scruples before the sacred, technique constantly assails it.

Everything which is not yet technique becomes so. It is driven on-

ward by itself, by its character of self-augmentation. Technique

denies mystery a priori. The mysterious is merely that which has

not yet been technicized.



Technique advocates the entire remaking of life and its frame-



The Technological Society	(i4 3



work because they have been badly made. Since heredity is full of

chance, technique proposes to suppress it so as to engender the kind

of men necessary for its ideal of service. The creation of the ideal

man will soon be a simple technical operation. It is no longer neces-

sary to rely on the chances of the family or on the personal vigor

which is called virtue. Applied biogenetics is an obvious point at

which technique desacralizes;6 but we must not forget psycho-

analysis, which holds that dreams, visions, and the psychic life in

general are nothing more than objects. Nor must we forget the pene-

tration and exploitation of the earth’s secrets. Crash programs, par-

ticularly in the United States, are attempting to reconstruct the soil

which massive exploitation and the use of chemical fertilizers have

impaired. We shall soon discover the functions of chlorophyll and

thus entirely transform the conditions of life. Recent investigations

in electronic techniques applied to biology have emphasized the

importance of DNA and will possibly result in the discovery of the

link between the living and the nonliving.



Nothing belongs any longer to the realm of the gods or the super-

natural. The individual who lives in the technical milieu knows very

well that there is nothing spiritual anywhere. But man cannot live

without the sacred. He therefore transfers his sense of the sacred

to the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to tech-

nique itself. In the world in which we live, technique has become

the essential mystery, taking widely diverse forms according to

place and race. Those who have preserved some of the notions of

magic both admire and fear technique. Radio presents an inex-

plicable mystery, an obvious and recurrent miracle. It is no less

astonishing than the highest manifestations of magic once were,

and it is worshipped as an idol would have been worshipped, with

the same simplicity and fear.



But custom and the recurrence of the miracle eventually wear

out this primitive adoration. It is scarcely found today in European

countries; the proletariat, workers and peasants alike, with their

motorcycles, radios, and electrical appliances, have an attitude of

condescending pride toward the jinn who is their slave. Their ideal

is incarnated in certain things which serve them. Yet they retain

some feeling of the sacred, in the sense that life is not worth the



8 See, in this connection, the previous note.



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



144)



trouble of living unless a man has these jinns in his home. This

attitude goes much further in the case of the conscious segment of

the proletariat, among whom technique is seen as a whole and not

merely in its occasional aspects. For them, technique is the instru-

ment of liberation for the proletariat. All that is needed is for tech-

nique to make a little more headway, and they will be freed pro-

portionately from their chains. Stalin pointed to industrialization

as the sole condition for the realization of Communism. Every

gain made by technique is a gain for the proletariat. This represents

indeed a belief in the sacred. Technique is the god which brings

salvation. It is good in its essence. Capitalism is an abomination

because on occasion it opposes technique. Technique is the hope

of the proletarians; they can have faith in it because its miracles are

visible and progressive. A great part of their sense of the mysterious

remains attached to it. Karl Marx may have been able to explain

rationally how technique would free the proletariat, but the prole-

tariat itself is scarcely equal to a full understanding of this “how.”

It remains mysterious for them. They retain merely the formula

of faith. But their faith addresses itself with enthusiasm to the

mysterious agent of their liberation.



The nonintellectual classes of the bourgeoisie are perhaps less

caught up in this worship of technique. But the technicians of the

bourgeoisie are without doubt the ones most powerfully taken with

it. For them, technique is sacred, since they have no reason to

feel a passion for it. Technical men are always disconcerted when

one asks them the motives for their faith. No, they do not expect to

be liberated; they expect nothing, yet they sacrifice themselves

and devote their lives with frenzy to the development of industrial

plants and the organization of banks. The happiness of the human

race and Suchlike nonsense are the commonplaces they allege. But

these are no longer of any service even as justifications, and they

certainly have nothing at all to do with man's passion for technique.



The technician uses technique perhaps because it is his profes-

sion, but he does so with adoration because for him technique is

the locus of the sacred. There is neither reason nor explanation in

his attitude. The power of technique, mysterious though scientific,

which covers the whole earth with its networks of waves, wires,

and paper, is to the technician an abstract idol which gives him a



The Technological Society	i145



reason for living and even for joy. One sign, among many, of the

feeling of the sacred that man experiences in the face of technique

is the care he takes to treat it with familiarity. Laughter and humor

are common human reactions in the presence of the sacred. This is

true for primitive peoples; and for the same reason the first atomic

bomb was called “Gilda,” the giant cyclotron of Los Alamos

'‘Clementine,” the atomic piles “water pots,” and radioactive con-

tamination “scalding.” The technicians of Los Alamos have banned

the word atom from their vocabulary. These things are significant.



In view of the very different forms of technique, there is no

question of a technical religion. But there is associated with it the

feeling of the sacred, which expresses itself in different ways. The

way differs from man to man, but for all men the feeling of the

sacred is expressed in this marvelous instrument of the power in-

stinct which is always joined to mystery and magic. The worker

brags about his job because it offers him joyous confirmation of his

superiority. The young snob speeds along at 100 m.p.h. in his

Porsche. The technician contemplates with satisfaction the gradi-

ents of his charts, no matter what their reference is. For these men,

technique is in every way sacred: it is the common expression of

human power without which they would find themselves poor,

alone, naked, and stripped of all pretentions. They would no longer

be the heroes, geniuses, or archangels which a motor permits them

to be at little expense.



What shall we say of the outburst of frenzy when the Sputnik

went into orbit? What of the poems of the Soviets, the metaphysical

affirmations of the French, the speculations on the conquest of the

universe? What of the identification of this artificial satellite with

the sun, or of its invention with the creation of the earth? And, on

the other side of the Atlantic, what was the real meaning of the ex-

cessive consternation of the Americans? All these bore witness to a

marked social attitude with regard to a simple technical fact.



Even people put out of work or ruined by technique, even those

who criticize or attack it (without daring to go so far as to turn

worshippers against them) have the bad conscience of all icono-

clasts. They find neither within nor without themselves a compen-

sating force for the one they call into question. They do not even

live in despair, which would be a sign of their freedom. This bad



THE CHARACTEnOLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



146)



conscience appears to me to be perhaps the most revealing fact

about the new sacralization of modern technique.



The characteristics we have examined permit me to assert with

confidence that there is no common denominator between the tech-

nique of today and that of yesterday. Today we are dealing with an

utterly different phenomenon. Those who claim to deduce from

man’s technical situation in past centuries his situation in this one

show that they have grasped nothing of the technical phenomenon.

These deductions prove that all their reasonings are without

foundation and all their analogies are astigmatic.



The celebrated formula of Alain has been invalidated: “Tools,

instruments of necessity, instruments that neither lie nor cheat, tools

with which necessity can be subjugated by obeying her, without the

help of false laws; tools that make it possible to conquer by obey-

ing.” This formula is true of the tool which puts man squarely in

contact with a reality that will bear no excuses, in contact with mat-

ter to be mastered, and the only way to use it is to obey it. Obedi-

ence to the plow and the plane was indeed the only means of domi-

nating earth and wood. But the formula is not true for our

techniques. He who serves these techniques enters another realm

of necessity. This new necessity is not natural necessity; natural

necessity, in fact, no longer exists. It is technique’s necessity, which

becomes the more constraining the more nature’s necessity fades

and disappears. It cannot be escaped or mastered. The tool was

not false. But technique causes us to penetrate into the innermost

realm of falsehood, showing us all the while the noble face of ob-

jectivity of result. In this innermost recess, man is no longer able to

recognize himself because of the instruments he employs.



The tool enables man to conquer. But, man, dost thou not know

there is no more victory which is thy victory? The victory of our

days belongs to the tool. The tool alone has the power and carries

off the victory. Man bestows on himself the laurel crown, after the

example of Napoleon III, who stayed in Paris to plan the strategy

of the Crimean War and claimed the bay leaves of the victor.



But this delusion cannot last much longer. The individual obeys

and no longer has victory which is his own. He cannot have ac-

cess even to his apparent triumphs except by becoming himself the

object of technique and the offspring of the mating of man and



The Technological Society	(147



machine. AH his accounts are falsified. Alain’s definition no longer

corresponds to anything in the modem world. In writing this, I

have, of course, omitted innumerable facets of our world. There are

still artisans, petty tradesmen, butchers, domestics, and small agri-

cultural landowners. But theirs are the faces of yesterday, the more

or less hardy survivals of our past. Our world is not made of these

static residues of history, and I have attempted to consider only

moving forces. In the complexity of the present world, residues do

exist, but they have no future and are consequently disappearing.



Only the things which have a future interest us. But how are we

to discern them? By making a comparison of three planes of civili-

zation which coexist today: India, Western Europe, and the United

States. And by considering the line of historical progression from

one to the other—all of this powerfully reinforced by the evolution

of the Soviet Union, which is causing history to boil.



In this chapter we have sketched the psychology of the tyrant.

Now we must study his biology: the circulatory apparatus, the

state; the digestive apparatus, the economy; the cellular tissue, man.



CHAPTER



pa



TECHNIQUE

AND ECONOMY



There is a certain na*ivet6 in wishing to treat the problem of eco-

nomic technique in a few pages, and it seems completely useless

to take up once again a question so frequently studied. But, as in

the book as a whole, I do not mean to address myself exclusively to

those aspects of the problem which are traditionally considered,

that is, to the facts. The facts, figures, statistics (well or little

known) form the background and foundation of my inquiry. It

seems unnecessary to reiterate them. They can be found in many

books, so 1 shall continue with the “cursive” method I have hitherto

employed. By encircling the facts, I shall emphasize their impor-

tance; and on the basis of the data given, I shall seek to derive

new aspects and “lines of force” for new studies. It might be asked

whether, this has not already been done and is hence unnecesary.

But this inquiry presupposes that we have escaped not only from

sole preoccupation with brute facts but from formal logic as well.

Neither gives an account of reality. The point is to let oneself be

guided by a kind of logic internal to facts and things. It is useless

to speak of “laws.” I am opposed to the attitude, represented for ex-



The Technological Society	(149



ample by the works of Fourasti6, which combines elements on the

basis of pure logic, yielding a terribly linear and inhuman result.

I am likewise opposed to the attitude, characteristic of the majority

of Western intellectuals, which, having taken account of the facts,

denies them forthwith by avowals of hope and assertions of the cer-

tainty of human freedom—which is anything but scientific. This

attitude can be reduced to the conviction that the reality of things

is simply too frightful to behold. Instead of guiding themselves by

reality, most investigators of the problem adopt an attitude flatly

contradicted by all the events of modern times. This attitude might

be summarized as follows: '‘The facts are the elements of a game

of patience which is amorphous and has no form of its own. The

individual is perfectly at liberty among these facts to arrange the

pieces of the game as he will and to elaborate a voluntary and hu-

mane economy/*



I take an extreme view but one that I believe is closer to reality.

I see that the facts have their form and their specific weight. They

respect neither freedom of the individual nor formal logic. I am

striving in this essay to find their special consistency and their com-

mon tendencies, and to discover whether man still has a place in

this tangle; whether he still has any authority among these colossal

masses in movement; whether he still can exert any force whatever

on the statistics which are slipping from his hands into the abstract

and the unreal. Can he have a place, authority, and the pos-

sibility of action oil a better basis than ill-founded declarations of

hope or blind acts of unreasonable faith?



The Best and the Worst



The Influence of Technique on the Economy. Let us consider first

the aspect of the relation between technique and economy which

is traditionally studied, particularly by Marx. Technique, or rather

techniques, appears as the motive force and the foundation of the

economy. Without them, there is no economy. For this reason, a

distinction can be made in economics between dynamic force,

which is technical invention, and static force, the organization of

the economy, Marx distinguishes between the system of production

and the system of distribution: the former revolutionary, the latter



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



15°)



necessarily conservative. It is self-deception to put economics at the

base of the Marxist system. It is technique upon which all the rest

depends. But the distinction made by Marx must be revised, for

it is no longer true that technique plays its role in the realm of pro-

duction alone. Distribution, too, is to a great degree modified by

techniques. Indeed, no area of economic life is today independent

of technical development. It is to Fourastie’s credit that he pointed

out that technical development controls all contemporary economic

evolution, from production operations to demography. (There is no

doubt that world population growth is related to the increase in

consumption.) Even more abstract spheres are shown by Four-

astie to be dominated by technical progress; for example, the price

mechanism, capital evolution, foreign trade, population displace-

ment, unemployment, and so on.



This invasion of all economic activity by technique seems today

indisputable. Of course the problem had been raised by economists

before Fourastie, if not in full, at least to a certain degree. In an ef-

fort to explain crises, Gottfried Haberler, in Prosperity and De-

pression, ascribed their existence to inequality of technical develop-

ment in different branches of economic activity. The success of a

technique leads to its full development; technique will tend to reach

the limits of its possible development in a given area. The result is,

first, an inequality of power in the various areas of the economy,

which provokes an unblancing of the whole system; and second,

a diminution of plasticity of the economic milieu. Technical prog-

ress entails stasis in one part or other of the system; the economy

is strained to the full and loses all possibility of adaptation, bar-

ring, of course, a complete breakdown. The crisis then results from

the fact that the system cannot progress, economically, at the same

tempo in all its parts.



Henri Guitton returns to this idea when he notes that the adap-

tive mechanisms which were active during the nineteenth century

have become more and more hampered. This disturbance seems to

be attributable to the loss of structural elasticity. A structure suita-

ble to simplified mechanisms, lighter, so to speak (the old world had

not accumulated as many innovations as the new), is no longer

adapted to the exigencies of growth of a world no longer young.



In an altogether different field, John Maynard Keynes has also

shown in his work, General Theory, that technical progress is an



The Technological Society	(151



indispensable factor in the economy. The economic world cannot

remain stationary. It is unceasingly called on to evolve. In particu-

lar, the importance of technical progress is central to the theory of

investment. All the possibilities of labor must be utilized at any

price. It is necessary constantly to uncover new possibilities of in-

vestment. For, says Keynes, the more numerous the consumers’

goods—the production of which has been provided for in advance

—the more difficult it is to find corresponding new needs—which

must likewise be anticipated and which call for new investments.

What Keynes in fact fears is that there will not be sufficient new

possibilities of investment. There is only one way to ensure limit-

less possibilities. These possibilities have nothing to do with spon-

taneous human needs, but involve technical discovery and applica-

tion, which create new products to replace the old, and also stimu-

late the need for these products. Technical progress is therefore a

decisive factor in the progression of investment. The epicentric po-

sition of the theory of investment in Keynes’s system is well known.

If a Byzantine phase of technical arrest were to occur in the eco-

nomic realm, it would represent not only an arrest of economic

evolution but a regression as well, with a resultant series of deep

crises.



In a closely related sense, a great importance is attached to tech-

nique both by those who hold and by those who reject the theory

of economic maturity. According to this theory, only ceaseless tech-

nical progress can compensate for the causes of depression which

become manifest in an economy that has arrived at maturity.

These causes of depression are decline in the rate of population

growth and limitation of geographic expansion—two factors which

entail a decrease in the rate of investment. Technical progress could

remedy this but, according to the initiator of the theory, technique

shares in the decrease, not absolutely, but relatively. Technical

progress no longer occurs rapidly enough to compensate for the

other factors. Not even the opponents of this theory repudiate the

importance of the technical factor, and that is what interests us

here.



Yet another element of economic life ought not to be neglected:

agricultural production. In this case, too, the upheaval brought

about by techniques is a radical one. We have already noted the

danger to the earth itself. As to the benefits and the penetration of



Z 5* )	TECHNIQUE	AND ECONOMY



technique into farm labor, it suffices to refer the interested reader to

Giedion’s work. But I must insist on one point: as a result of the

influence of techniques, the modem world is faced with a kind of

“unblocking of peasant life and mentality.” For a long time peasant

tradition resisted innovation, and the old agricultural systems pre-

served their stability. Today technical transformation is an estab-

lished fact; the peasant revolution is in process or already com-

pleted, and everywhere in the same direction. The actual extent of

the progress of this revolution is of small importance; what counts

is the first step, which permits the barriers of tradition to be hur-

dled. The peasant becomes conscious of the inferiority of his tradi-

tions; the usual justifications are held in contempt and the peasant

world passes from the irrational to the rational. Once again we en-

counter the notion that technique destroys traditional forms of civi-

lization and introduces instead a global unity. What does this un-

blocking mean for the future? In the years to come we shall witness

an acceleration of technical progress in rural life, and an accelera-

tion of already perceptible phenomena: peasant emigration, agri-

cultural specialization, deforestation, and the growth of agricultu-

ral production in general. These events are of major importance in

view of the fact that agricultural production still remains the basis

of economic life; and that the countries of the world most depend-

ent on industry, Great Britain and Japan, have not reached as high

a standard of living as the United States because of the lack of suf-

ficient cultivable lands. The economic repercussions of this type of

technical progress ai e easily grasped.



These examples, chosen arbitrarily from different social areas,

show that the influence of technique on economic life is much more

widespread and profound than classical manuals of economics

w culd have \is beiieve.



Moreover, all this is implied in the elementary observation that

the progress of production closely depends on technical progress.

It is at the present a truism to say that a new, general economic

organization corresponds to certain new forms of production.



This dependence of the economy on techniques and primarily

on machines has come about in an irrational way. It is not the ac-

tion of clear and certain causes which have produced this interde-

pendence. Veblen asks whether machines do not squander more



The Technological Society	(153



effort and material than they save; whether they do not cause grave

economic losses by the developments they bring about in means of

transport, etc. The same questions are put by Bertrand Russell and

still more emphatically by Gaston Bardet, who points to the enor-

mous waste of human forces, of time, work, and capital, occa-

sioned by the social structures conditioned by the machine. These

are indeed simple questions, but important ones.



We see, then, that the influence of technique on the economy

does not arise from an indisputable economic superiority of the ma-

chine. Ideas and theories no longer dominate, but rather the power

of production. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century

resulted immediately from the technical advances of that time; this

relation has not changed. Marx was unquestionably right with re-

spect to the period from about 1830 to the present; the motive force

of all economic evolution has indeed been technical development.

However, Marx was not necessarily right with respect to other pe-

riods of history. Technical progress has not always been the basic

principle. We have already shown the contrary. Moreover, this does

not mean that the consequences Marx draws from his contention

are true. All we need do is note that Marx's observation is correct:

the more we advance into the new world, the more is economic life

dependent on technical development.



Economic Consequences. As Jean Marchal says, “the accumula-

tion of machines transforms the economy." We know that technique

is not equivalent to the machine, and Marchal’s statement is even

truer when technique is considered in my more general sense.

Furthermore, his formula, which historically is more or less exact,

tends to appear all the more exact in view of the economic dis-

turbances caused, for example, by automation. A simplistic view of

the automated economy proclaims ease and abundance for all

men, thanks to technique. But, unfortunately, this is not so sim-

ple. We are, in fact, confronted with a phenomenon which will

produce a veritable economic mutation. None of the economic

modalities (salaries, distribution, reduction of the work week, trans-

fer of the labor force from one area to another, disturbance of the

balance of production in the various areas) seems capable of reso-

lution in the present state of affairs. Even the socialist economic

structure is not adapted to receive the massive effects of automa-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



iS4)



tion. This has been avowed by the Soviet economists themselves in

their research into the effects of automation in the light of Marxism.



Returning to Marchal’s formula, we might ask in what direction

this transformation acts. If we consider certain traits of technical

progress of concern to the economy, we note that they all move in

the same direction. Let us recall that technical means are becom-

ing more and more enormous and costly. Consider, for example,

(a) the ever more numerous machines that are necessary to pro-

duction, which act more rapidly, are always being improved upon,

and are subject to frequent replacement because of constant inven-

tive progress; (b) the organization of labor, which implies more

and more numerous and costly personnel, which, although indis-

pensable, is not always immediately forthcoming; (c) publicity

techniques. In all these economic means the same fact is to be

noted, the investment of enormous amounts of nonproductive capi-

tal. Capital in such amounts can no longer be owned by a single per-

son and economic activity is beyond the range of individual possi-

bilities. But technical progress cannot do without the concentration

of capital. An economy based on individual enterprise is not con-

ceivable, barring an extraordinary technical regression. The neces-

sary concentration of capital thus gives rise either to an economy of

corporations or to a state economy.



A concentration of enterprise corresponds to this concentration

of capital. This fact can hardly be denied today, especially in view

of the power of these enterprises. Two examples from the United

States: In 1939, 52 per cent of all industrial capital was held by

0.1 per cent of the total number of enterprises; and in 1944, 62 per

cent of all workers were employed in 2 per cent of American enter-

prises. A similar concentration of banking facilities exists. Of 30.000

banks in the United States in 1920, only 15,000 were left in 1956.

There were 350 mergers in 1955 alone. The situation became so evi-

dent that in 1956 the Federal Reserve Board undertook a campaign

against this concentration.



This tendency toward concentration is confirmed daily, as Joseph

Lajugie shows. The important thing is to recognize the real motive

force behind it. The human and social effects of this concentration

are, on the whole, evil. In a great corporation, the workers are

more than ever enslaved and scarcely in a position to act in a dis-

tinctively human way. Even the consumer is frequently imposed



The Technological Society	(155



upon. The integration of the individual into the technical complex

is more complete than ever before.



From the purely economic point of view, the value of the results

is highly debatable. It would seem, from the point of view of the

market economy, that concentration should be a markedly favora-

ble factor. It involves, for example, suppression of competition and

a tendency to raise prices. But, more striking still, concentration does

not result in growth of profits. In many branches of production,

profit growth is arrested or even declines when the transition is

made from the medium-size enterprise to the large corporation.



What, then, is the motive force behind this concentration? Tech-

nique alone. A number of elements in technique demand concen-

tration. Mechanical technique requires it because only a very large

corporation is in a position at the present to take advantage of the

most recent inventions. Only the large corporation is able to apply

normalization, to recover waste products profitably, and to manu-

facture byproducts. Technique applied to problems of labor effi-

ciency requires concentration because only through concentration

is it possible to apply up-to-date methods which have gone far be-

yond the techniques of the former efficiency and time-study experts

(for instance, the application of techniques of industrial relations).

Finally, economic technique demands both vertical and horizontal

concentration, which permits stockpiling at more favorable prices,

accelerated capital turnover, reduction of fixed charges, assurance

of markets, and so on.



Technical progress thus entails concentration. But this concen-

tration represents real advantages only in the technical domain. The

impulse to concentrate is so strong that it takes place even contrary

to the decisions of the state. In the United States and in France,

the state has often opposed concentration, but ultimately it has

always been forced to capitulate and to stand by impotently while

the undesired development occurs. This confirms my judgment con-

cerning the decisive action of technique on the modern economy.



What is more, the technique of organization renders the inter-

vention of the state indispensable.



The necessity of normalizing products is no longer debated today.

It is one of the conditions of economic progress. This normalization

is based on technical research. But here, as everywhere else in a

capitalist or semiliberal economy, the technical result is in conflict



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



15*)



with certain interests. In order to apply it, the good will of the pub-

lie cannot be counted on. It then becomes indispensable to sanction

normalization in some other way. And only the state can apply this

sanction. The result is the creation of arbitration commissions armed

with public powers to deal with normalization.



Technical necessity calls for state intervention in order to organ-

ize the electric power network. Later on I shall discuss the inter-

relation of the network and the purely technical motives which

prompt it. It is not the regulation of opposed interests, but the ne-

cessity of a higher organization embracing the local organizations,

which, in this case, brings about the appeal to state power. The

technical organism called a combine is of the same order. Whether

it be the TVA or a Soviet Kombinat, it is perfectly illusory to claim

that such combines represent autonomous organisms. In fact, the

technical necessity which brought them into being gains force and

value only through state intervention. Doubtless, when the organ-

ism is constituted, it may receive a certain independence from the

state. But we must not forget who the real parent is. Nor must we

overlook the fact that this parentage represents a profound inter-

vention in the economy on the part of the state, an intervention,

moreover, not dictated by a theory or a will to power, but by the

technical manifest.



The necessity of utilizing certain goods also tends in the same

direction. It has long been recognized that technical progress is

effected more rapidly in the creation of the means of production.

From this fact comes a kind of hypertrophy of machine-producing

industries. The well-known Hoover Committee for the elimination

of waste found, for example, that the production of the American

clothing industry was 45 per cent greater than necessary. The ca

pacity ot the shoe industry was double its real production; and the

printing industry was overequipped by 100 per cent. The excess

production of home appliances and automobiles is well known.

None of this overproduction would represent a waste, if one were

judging on the basis of world needs. But, in the present situation,

overproduction produces disequilibrium with respect to revenues,

investment, and consumption possibilities, and so on. There is no

absolute need to halt technical growth in any given area (say, in

heavy industry). But there is a need to find markets for this over-

production. At present, only the state is in a position to sustain the



The Technological Society	(	15 7



tempo of technical progress in this direction, a heavy burden in-

deed.



Economics even intervenes in politics—consider the expansion

of systematic “planning," which proceeds by waves, so to speak.

Here there is a transition from the microeconomy to the macro-

economy which it would be interesting to study in a detailed way.

I shall simply point out that the application of planning on the

scale of the enterprise leads to a nationwide application of planning

in which all enterprises obey a like rule.



The establishment of production norms or of a plan becomes

rational and technically necessary when the method is already ex-

tended to the national field. I could easily give additional examples;

for instance, in the development of financial and banking tech-

niques. Let us bear in mind that atomic energy, say, when put to

work will suppose state control of all sources of energy. It is incon-

ceivable that an individual could have at his disposal the sources

of atomic power. Not doctrinal but technical reasons today render

economic life inseparable from the state. This does not mean that

the economy necessarily becomes collectivist or totalitarian. For the

moment let us simply note the indissoluble relation.



This relation is admitted by many economists. Is it the resuk

of chance or of choice? Of neither exclusively. Nor is it the result of

a managed economy. As Robert Moss6 writes: “With the develop-

ment of the managed economy, it has become very difficult to trace

a boundary between politics and economics ..." In reality, it is a

necessity resulting from the advance of technique. Technique plays

an important role in economic life; but it has the same effect with

reference to economic science. A relation is being established be-

tween technical progress in economic life and technical progress

in science or method. The two converge and end in identical

results.



Before examining this transformation of method, we must briefly

recall that political economy has changed its object, and almost its

nature, as a consequence of the enormous accumulation of eco-

mic facts. Economic facts have been rendered more numerous and

more enormous—and this is not the least effect of technique in

economic life. The definition of economic science has hence be-

come more and more complex and comprehensive. Without seek-

ing to note all the points of the curve, let two definitions suffice for



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



15*)



comparing the distance between the extremes. The first was given

in 1850, the second in 1950. In the first, economic science was de-

fined as the “science of wealth/’ Its object was primarily acquiring

wealth and disposing of it. It was therefore an individual and pri-

vate matter. The objective of political economy is conceived in

such a way today that it is virtually impossible to encompass it in a

formula. As Marchal shows, we have the problem of satisfying the

needs of humanity, co-ordinating the available means of produc-

tion, modifying existent institutions, and even transforming human

needs. These problems must all be studied not on the plane of the

individual but on the plane of the social group, and an effort made

to disengage the laws of these social groups.



There is no need to go to the extreme and substitute for the or-

ganization of production the organization of distribution alone, as

Robert Mosse appears to be doing when he writes: “From the mo-

ment production becomes sufficient, the essential thing is to dis-

tribute goods and leisure.” Without going that far, it is easy, as

Lange has done, to see the difference between a science of the pro-

duction of wealth and a science of administration of scarce goods.

More and more, the economic fact covers all human activity. Every-

thing has become function and object of the economy, and this has

been effected by the intermediacy of technique. To the extent that

technique has demanded complete devotion of man or brought to

light a growing number of measurable facts, or rendered economic

life richer and more complex, or enveloped the human being in a

network of material possibilities that are being gradually realized,

it has transformed the object of the economy. The economy now

becomes obliged to take into account all human problems. The

development of techniques is responsible for the staggering phe-

nomenon of the absorption by economics of all social activities.



The Secret Way



But another relation between technique and economy exists: the

formation of an economic technique. Not only has economic science

changed its object and its nature, but it has produced a technique

which is simultaneously a method of knowledge and a method of



The Technological Society	(15 9



action. Political economy has not renounced its claim to being

normative. It seeks not only to grasp reality but also to modify it.

But the real relation of these two aspects of economic technique

is obvious. The method of scientific knowledge as such reacts on the

economic milieu and tends to shape it; but this technique is not

“neutral.” It does not merely stand ready to do the bidding of any

random doctrine or ideology. It behaves rather with its own

specific weight and direction. It is not a mere instrument, but

possesses its own force, which urges it into determined paths, some-

times contrary to human wishes.



Economists, not understanding this, want to disengage their

technique from its “neutrality” and to bring it into the service of

their ends. They reject the definition; “Economics is the science

[technique!] of efficient choices.” But when they seek to humanize

the economy, they learn quickly enough that such attempts lead

directly to the subjugation of the ends to techniques. Those who

pose the problem of ends and propose a humane economy as their

goal are the very persons who develop techniques further and en-

hance their specific weights, as Jacques Aventur has shown. But

whereas the overpowering phenomenon of the machine strikes

home to everyone and makes plain its influence on economic life,

the ways of economic technique are secret and everyone remains

convinced of its innocuousness and docility.



In order to grasp the nature of economic technique, it is first of all

necessary to grasp the reasons for its rise. One of its causes is so

simple that I shall mention it only in passing. This is the evolution

of the sciences in general.



The sciences in general, in the twentieth century, have passed

through a crisis of growth characterized by the appearance of cer-

tain problems of methodology and technique. Economic science

is likewise abandoning dogmatic positions and deductive methods

in order to establish exact procedures. This may have taken place

before the first gropings of the infant science had borne definitive

results. Many economists believe that the ideal science, which must

serve all others as model, is physics, and that economic method

must approximate the method of physics taken as general type but

not as specific means.



At the same time economists feel, as a kind of challenge, the in-



16 O )	TECHNIQUE	AND ECONOMY



effectiveness of their system. Nothing has exposed the vanity of

political economy better than their contradictory diagnoses and

therapies for economic crises. For some the cause of crisis is an un-

saleable surplus of goods; for others, insufficiency of production.

For some it is an excess of savings; for others, a lack of them. And

as far as the proposed remedies are concerned, some economists

would raise the discount rate and others would lower it. Some hold

that wages must be stabilized and others demonstrate that they

must be lowered. Such contradictions can only arise from a defect

of method. And the economists bitterly resent the ironical attitude

the public has toward them. One of them recently wrote: "The

public believes in the physicist, but it has no confidence in the

economist.** Policymakers absolutely cannot rely on what the econo-

mists say, nor follow their contradictory counsels with respect to

action. All this, then, made it mandatory to replace the regime of

theories, which gave birth to nothing but opinion, with a rigorous

method which "sticks’* to facts.



The need to stick to the facts became more imperative as the facts

themselves became more complex. Here again the effect of tech-

niques made itself felt. The facts of economic life could be grasped

directly when economic life was still relatively simple, when eco-

nomic phenomena (for example, at the end of the eighteenth cen-

tury) presented a picture which, in magnitudes and elements, was

compatible with direct experience. But the enormous growth of the

economic milieu has made direct apprehension impossible and

brought about the decline of corresponding modes of reasoning.

Everyday logic cannot embrace more than a very limited number

of data. It was therefore necessary to invent a method correspond-

ing to the increasing complexity and amplitude of economic phe-

nomena. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a "technical

state of mind” appeared which developed mightily toward mid-

century. This state of mind was characterized, first of all, by an

effort to make a hard and fast separation between what is and

what should be. The doctrinal character of economics was com-

pletely repudiated. The sole interest was in matters of fact. The

goal was simply to know scientifically, to accumulate facts, to put

them in mutual relation, and, if possible, to explain them by means

of one another.



The Technological Society	(161



Political economy is no longer a moral science in the traditional

sense. It has become technique and has entered into a new ethical

framework, which I shall define later on. This represents a de-

cisive step for the creation of a technique. The technical state of

mind is likewise evident in the creation of a precise method (which

more and more consists in the application of mathematics to eco-

nomics) and in the precise delimitation of a sphere of action. In

effect, in order for technique to exist, method must be applied to a

fixed order of phenomena. In the transition of doctrine to technique,

the central idea was the distinction between microeconomics and

macroeconomics, as in the work of Francis Perroux, a leader in

this inquiry in France.



We have here a decisive situation. Microeconomics studies

economic phenomena at the human level where the relatively hu-

mane traditional methods can be applied, where individual de-

cision is respected, but where the complete application of the tech-

nical apparatus is not permitted, either with respect to method or

with respect to action. The observation of facts on the microeco-

nomic level does not ipso facto entail action, and to promote action

is one of the principal characteristics of techniques. Even if

microeconomic inquiry is useful and congenial, it nevertheless ap-

pears to have no future because it pertains to the limited world of

the individual



Macroeconomics, on the other hand, opens all roads to technical

research and application. Technical application presupposes, as we

have already noted, measurable magnitudes, elimination of errors

of judgment, and amplitudes of movement wide enough for tech-

nique to have an understandable object. These are precisely the

characteristics of macroeconomic inquiry. There is no doubt that

the methods of macroeconomics are still somewhat uncertain, and

many phenomena are recalcitrant to it (for example, scientific tech-

niques applicable to revenues). Nevertheless, this is the domain a

priori of technique and we can be assured, as a consequence, that

this is where the really effective forces will be concentrated. We are

likewise assured that microeconomics, far from being an element in

the foundation of macroeconomics, or a complementary element to

it, will be absorbed. It will lose its reason for existence to the extent

that macroeconomics develops surer techniques. We are heading



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMt



1 62 )



toward a society in which knowledge of microeconomic phenomena

will be the result of simple deduction from knowledge of macro-

economic phenomena.



The technicians in these new disciplines all have one trait in

common: the joy of constituting a closed group in which the lay-

man has no part at all. This represents an unconscious tendency; but

we observe it among many modern economists in the form of a se-

cret technique, an esotericism, a certain contempt for whatever

does not belong to its new world of means.



This “pride of youth” always appears among technicians when

they are convinced that their new method is unassailable and that

their discoveries are becoming the center of things. The authority

in which they clothe themselves takes the form of a secret vocabu-

lary which is incomprehensible to the outsider even when it is em-

ployed, as often happens, to enunciate the most obvious facts.

Technique always creates a kind of secret society, a closed frater-

nity of its practitioners. It is a new thing in the milieu of economics

to note a kind of studied incommunicability. Up to now, every man

with a little education was able to follow the works and theories of

the economists. To be able to follow them today, one would have to

be both a specialist and a technician. The technique itself is difficult

and the necessary instruments cannot be managed without previ-

ous education. And there is that caprice of many economists to

constitute themselves a closed society. These two factors coincide,

indicating the grave consequence of excluding the public from the

technical life. Yet it can scarcely be otherwise.



Technique as a general phenomenon (as we shall see when we

study the political milieu) always gives rise to an aristocracy of

technicians who guard secrets to which no outsider has access. De-

cisions which have a serious basis take on the appearance of arbi-

trary and incomprehensible decrees. A cleavage like this, which is

inevitable in the advance of technique, is decisive for the future of

the democracies. Economic life, not in its content but in its direc-

tion, will henceforth entirely elude popular control. No democracy

is possible in the face of a perfected economic technique. The de-

cisions of the voters, and even of the elected, are oversimplified, in-

coherent, and technically inadmissible. It is a grave illusion to be-

lieve that democratic control or decision-making can be reconciled

with economic technique. Little by little the elements necessary to



The Technological Society	(16 3



the creation of this technique are taking shape; and soon they will

be perfected.



The Economic Techniques of Observation. I do not intend to

describe these instrumentalities; I am concerned here solely with

exhibiting them as an ensemble.



The principal instruments which have been developed are: statis-

tics, accounting procedures, the application of mathematics to eco-

nomics, the method of models, and techniques of research into

public opinion. It is evident that these elements reciprocally con-

dition one another.



At the base of the structure lies statistics, the instrumentality for

determining the raw facts of economics. At one time statistical data

were ridiculed on the ground that they were misleading. But this

stage lies behind us, and nowadays a large measure of confidence

rests in the precision of such data. This change has resulted, in part,

from a change in the state of mind of the statisticians themselves.

They are immersed in a “statistical atmosphere” and comply with

the quantitative and numerical practices of the modern world. To

statisticians, statistics is no longer a mere game; it is an essential

operation of society. This represents a change not only in perspec-

tive and in seriousness, but also in basic position. For a long time

statistics was the work of amateurs; today it is a complex organiza-

tion of specialists. It has become a profession and, as a conse-

quence, is practiced much more earnestly. Moreover, the statisti-

cians have at their disposal increasingly precise instruments. Among

these instruments (which have transformed administrative as well

as statistical technique) are the calculating machine, the punched-

card machine, and microfilm. Not only has the speed of operation

been prodigiously accelerated, but also its precision and its dimen-

sions. By means of microfilm, hitherto uncombinable elements can

be combined; and by means of the electronic brain, operations can

be effected which the human brain could never perform.



The statistician is, materially speaking, in a position to perform

convincingly. This is even more evident in the utilization of statisti-

cal data. As we shall see, the combination of the elements is essen-

tial, and this combination becomes feasible largely through the

intermediacy of the machine.



A final element increases the professional seriousness of the statis-

ticians: their responsibility. In democratic countries, it lies in the



164)	TECHNIQUE	AND	ECONOMY



realm of private enterprise; the various organs concerned with sta-

tistical data in effect sell their studies to the great corporations

which must know precisely, for example, the course of a market. If

the information proves inexact, the statistician can be sued in

civil court, at least in the United States. In countries under authori-

tarian rule, responsibility is a public matter; in the Soviet Union the

statistician who gives false information is regarded as a saboteur.



These elements together make modern statistical data more and

more precise. The great scope of statistical operations and of the

organs involved generally escapes the nonspecialist. To give a sin-

gle example, there are in the United States fifty-six federal agencies,

each of which specializes in one or several statistical categories. Al-

together, twelve categories of weekly statistics are published. One

of these, the category of price, takes in four elements. One of these

(gross price) comprehends 1,690 weekly quotations combined

in 890 series. This indicates the extreme complexity of the opera-

tion. It must become even more complex when interpretation is

undertaken.



All this work is not motivated by pure scientific interest. It is

oriented toward action. Permanent inquiry of this sort is no longer

instituted to construct or support doctrines but rather to relate in-

formation to action. In order to succeed in effecting this connection,

interpretation is necessary, and this is the principal task of the tech-

nical discipline called econometrics.



Econometrics is distinct from mathematical economics. It is much

more theoretical. Its principal operations on statistical data are two-

fold: (1) analysis, comprising operations such as simplification or

dissociation of statistical data; and {%) comparison, which can be

applied to different kinds of elements. Magnitudes can be com-

pared by establishing what are called equations of regression,

which express a constant relation between two magnitudes of the

economic domain. Variations can also be compared; here a correla-

tion index is established, according to which two economic phe-

nomena vary in direct or in inverse proportion but with the same

velocity. Within the same realm, the econometrician tries to estab-

lish certain relations: no fact in the economic domain can be re-

garded as due to chance; and not satisfied with simply noting and

giving the correlation formula, the econometrician goes further and



The Technological Society	(165



establishes the causal relation between two phenomena, a proce-

dure which leads into the future.



Until recently, economists operated on concrete data alone. But,

for the purposes of action, they must make predictions. A distinction

must be drawn between predictions which are made according to

the system of covariations, and causal explanations of phenomena.

Here the economist leaves the purely technical realm. An equation

no longer provides the solution; there is a certain subjectivity, a cer-

tain personal judgment. To be sure, it is present in the various

other operations, but to a lesser degree.



Economic technique has taken over a variety of other means; for

example, stochastics, the application of the calculus of probabilities

to economic phenomena. This technique is extraordinarily difficult

to handle. It does not operate on raw figures but on statistical data,

on data furnished by econometrics (as, for example, the coefficients

of elasticity), and on the data furnished by public-opinion research

institutes. In connection with the third element, it is evident that

economic phenomena are not mechanical; opinion plays a role. In

a very simplified way, it might be said that stochastics seeks to es-

tablish a law of probability, or of the frequency, of a given event,

starting with a very large number of observations. Stochastics,

therefore, represents an instrument of prediction which gives the

direction of the most probable evolution of the situation.



This stochastic calculus is limited only by the nature of the eco-

nomic and social milieu. For example, if a given law is exact, the

public which is informed of it tends to react in the inverse sense.

But sometimes it reacts by conforming to the law. The act of predic-

tion is thus in a sense self-falsifying. But the public, by so reacting,

falls under the influence of a new prediction which is completely

determinable. The economist is able to establish laws of probability

for all deviations of opinion. It must be assumed, however, that

one remains in the framework of rational behavior. The system

works all the better when it deals with men who are better inte-

grated into the mass, men whose consciousness is partially para-

lyzed, who lend themselves willingly to statistical observations and

systematization. The results obtained by this technique are impres-

sive, even though the technique is still immature.



Much more classical, and of a different order, is the whole com-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



166)



plex of accounting techniques. These techniques have been much

modified and no longer belong merely to the realm of enterprise

but rather to that of economics. The accountant is no longer a mere

agent for registering the movement of funds in an enterprise. Ac-

cording to the Lutfalla report published by the Conseil Economique,

1948, he has become a veritable “profits engineer.” His operations

encompass not only money but all the elements of production. He

is oriented toward the past and also toward the future. The more

complex manufacturing operations become, the more necessary it

is to take adequate precautions and to use foresight. It is not possi-

ble to launch modern industrial processes lightly. They involve too

much capital, labor, and social and political modifications. De-

tailed forecasting is necessary. We shall meet this question again

when we discuss planning, but it is appropriate here to call atten-

tion to the so-called “input-output” techniques Leontieff has

pointed out. These represent a method designed to establish in a

precise, numerical way the interconnections among all sectors of

production techniques. They determine for each sector what is

bought from and sold to the others. This method makes it possible

to establish in detail what raw materials, instruments, tools, and

machines are required to produce a given product. Under present

conditions, one can no longer fix magnitudes approximately or be

content with mastering certain key subjects. For even a very ordi-

nary commodity, two or three hundred basic elements must be

taken into account. Exact quantities, weights, and times must be

fixed. The necessary calculations can only be performed with the

help of computing machines. With this method the well-known and

hackneyed formula—that everything is reciprocally dependent—

becomes a rigorous reality. But it is the technical elements which

are reciprocally dependent, welded together by a common neces-

sity and expressed in certain new techniques.



What holds for the private accountant is even more true for the

public accountant who works on a nationwide scale. There are

certain differences between the two insofar as enterprise has pri-

vate profit as its end. As a consequence of the profit motive, the pri-

vate accountant must comply with the rules of capitalist manage-

ment. The public accountant (who becomes an accountant of

initiative) draws up balance sheets and future revenue potentials

for a complex organism whose reactions are slow and of great am-



The Technological Society	(16 7



plitude when referred to the impulses at their origin. If public en-

terprise behaves in any way like capitalist enterprise, its internal

dynamism complies with certain laws. The role of the accountant

is to discover these laws. The effects of this new revenue-calculating

economic technique, which relates economic effects to their causes,

are easily seen in fields such as the liquor industry, housing, trans-

portation, and so on. It is clear that this calculated revenue poten-

tial bears not merely on money but also on human capital. France

does not yet have a central accounting service which could com-

pletely exploit this technique and establish a measurement of social

needs, means of production, movement of capital, national income,

and demographic change, etc.



Returning to the methods of pure economic technique, we find

the method of models. It is extremely difficult to experiment in eco-

nomic matters. But experimentation is indispensable in all sciences

and even more so in techniques. As Vincent puts it, a model is a

“simplified but complete representation in its numerical aspect of

the economic evolution of a society; for example, a nation during a

given period.” A model is a reproduction in miniature of a certain

economic ensemble in the form of mathematical equations. It is im-

possible, obviously, to put all economic phenomena into a model; a

certain arbitrariness is called for. The primary act is therefore a

choice, founded on some theoretical decision, of the constants and

variables to be put into the model. This theoretical decision, how-

ever, is not arbitrary. It is guided by certain principles, in particular

the necessity of linking observation to action. Once the constants

and the variables of the system have been selected (and they may

be numerous), the relations between them are established. Some

of these relations are evident in the sense that they are purely

quantitative; others are more unstable and subjective and must be

established by the economic technician himself. They are empirical

relations, verified or proven false by experiment. Finally, the en-

semble of these relations must be put in the form of equations by

insertion of the time factor. Then, by solving the equations, it

is possible to study the evolution of the system and its incidences.

This facilitates the study of the evolution of certain mechanisms

determined by a social group, or of the incidence of some ex-

terior intervention into an economic system, or of the influence

and importance to the whole of every element in an ensemble.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



168)



Models can be purely theoretical or historical, as when the data

arise from statistics (in which case they must be tested against

the actual evolution of society). Or they can be predictive, as when

the attempt is made to forecast the future. These predictive models

are the object of great interest in the study of economic complexes.



The last of these new economic techniques which I wish to de-

scribe in this brief review is public-opinion analysis. Everyone is ac-

quainted with the Gallup Institute, which has branches in almost

every country of the world. Various systems (soundings, sam-

plings, inquiries) are used to establish periodically the feelings of a

given class or category of the population*, about any important

question. Certainly, there is strong skepticism about these methods.

No one believes that he thinks and acts like his neighbor. No one is

sympathetic to the notion that he is a mere number in some list or

series; and this unconscious rejection makes for skepticism. None-

theless, the results of such samplings must be deemed valid, in

spite of the seeming (but easily explainable) setbacks they suffer,

as, for example, in the well-known case of the American presiden-

tial elections of 1948. The results reflect various phenomena: soci-

ological currents, ethical preferences, and political opinions with

which we here are not concerned. But other results reflect eco-

nomic currents: opinions concerning prices and wages, commer-

cial choices, urgent economic needs (to the extent that they are

measurable), and so on. In sum, anything in the nature of an opin-

ion which can be grasped by a good observer or reporter will hence-

forth be numerically measured and followed scientifically during

all stages of its development. This method represents a great revo-

lution; it permits the integration of opinion in the technical world

in general and in economic technique in particular. This system

brings into the statistical realm measures of things hitherto unmeas-

urable. It effects a separation of what is measurable from what is

not. Whatever cannot be expressed numerically is to be eliminated

from the ensemble, either because it eludes numeration or because

it is quantitatively negligible. We have, therefore, a procedure for

the elimination of aberrant opinions which is essential to the

understanding of the development of this technique. The elimi-

nation does not originate in the technique itself. But the investi-

gators who utilize its results are led to it of necessity. No activity

can embrace the whole complexity of reality except as a given



The Technological Society	(169



method permits. For this reason, this elimination procedure is

found whenever the results of opinion probings are employed in

political economy.



The economist is thus provided with an arsenal of technical

means which enable him to observe and sometimes to predict eco-

nomic reality in detail. Then the following question is unavoidable:

Will these techniques remain simple techniques of observation, of

pure knowledge? We grant that their creators had no ulterior mo-

tives. The means are there simply to be of assistance to economic

science. But will this motive be adhered to? Let us consider the

position of the economist as J. U. Nef has described it. The econo-

mist, more or less stricken with an inferiority complex in regard to

the public, “abandoning the hope of affecting policy by objective

thinking, seeks refuge by becoming an expert and counselor on

questions of technology or practical politics/' Economists cherish

the hope of influencing reality. The technique of knowledge the

economist is now acquiring allows him, through the state, to exer-

cise this influence. We note this in all countries, no matter what

their type of economy or form of government. It has been called the

reign of the experts, but it is in actual fact the reign of the techni-

cians. Economists today have the means of being technicians near

the seat of state power. But even without wishing to take account

of this tendency, we know that these means of observation of reality

will not remain inert. Like all techniques, they possess specific

weights and direction. The reasons are very simple.



An organization for establishing statistical data is extremely

costly and cannot continue without profits. One way of making

a profit is to sell statistical products to a capitalist clientele, which

will utilize them to guide its business into certain channels. A

statistical bureau then becomes a counseling bureau. But the

use of statistical data in a semiliberal capitalist economy is re-

stricted and cannot be developed to its full effectiveness. This

incapacity of capitalism correctly to employ techniques appears

time and again. Mumford says: “One of the most flagrant faults of

capitalism is not to have known how to make use of existing lab-

oratories, for example, the Bureau of Standards, to determine

norms from which the whole body of consumers would have bene-

fited/’ The tendency of technological society is to determine the

movements of the macroeconomy; yet it is striking to note that sta-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



170 )



tistics, once established, tend to revert to the level of the micro-

economy and individual decision, and to find employment only on

this level. This is obviously insufficient; the economists are in a

position to lay claim to something better than a clientele which,

in any case, seldom enables them to cover their costs. They must

address themselves to the state. Certain semipublic corporations

finance the operations, but it is clear that the state demands its

quid pro quo. If the state is to pay for statistical research, it must

get something in return: assistance in directing national affairs.

The state requires the economist, on the basis of statistics, to seek

out methods of intervention either directly or by subtle means

such as those advocated by John Maynard Keynes. When the

great private corporations or the state ask the economist for a

method to influence reality, they are addressing the economist's

own invincible longing, which in the beginning engendered the

improvement of these scientific means. Suppose that we have ac-

cumulated enormous quantities of facts, have encompassed the

whole of reality, and possess the means to follow the mechanism of

economic phenomena and even to a certain degree to predict them.

Shall this accumulated force, then, serve no purpose? The 1952

report of the American Bureau of Labor Statistics shows clearly

that this ensemble of means leads inevitably to planning.



We confess that we are unable to follow Closon’s reasoning

when he declares that the operations of the Compabilite Nationale

are not a threat to freedom because, in fact, they are not applied.

Once the trends of the economy have been recognized and re-

duced to numerical form, will it be tolerated that no intervention

be undertaken when the catastrophic consequences of some de-

cision or other have been clearly perceived?



On a more modest but still significant plane, what meaning has a

detailed accounting of all the needs of a thoughtless worker (in-

cluding the number of springs in his mattress and the number of

razor blades he uses annually), undertaken in order to establish a

minimum wage, if he can spend his money haphazardly? Mere pre-

diction would plainly be absurd. The irrationality of the individual

keeps him from living on the amount he could live on according to

calculations. He would die of hunger on a subsistence minimum,

unless an authoritarian education made him conform.



Let us grant that this represents no more than a temptation to



The Technological Society	(171



the economist. But it would require superhuman strength not to

yield to this temptation once action becomes possible; the more so

because the informational techniques described are closely con-

nected to techniques of action, as are the establishment of norms or

of accounting plans. We have distinguished somewhat arbitrarily

between knowledge and action in order to present in the most ob-

jective way possible the normal development of economics pro-

duced by the creation of these techniques. Even when they serve

solely for the purposes of knowledge, it is clear by how many routes

they end in intervention. Econometrics is only to be understood if

it issues in its normal end, the establishment of economic plan-

ning. Without this, econometrics is inefficient, and efficiency is the

very law of technique. Like a horse chafing at the bit, the tech-

niques of economic science await the signal to intervene more com-

pletely than ever before in the reality they have come to under-

stand.



The Economic Techniques of Action. At the same time that the

economist has created a technique for knowing, he has created a

technique for acting. A new world is awakening, an economic mu-

tation is being effected. Among these techniques of intervention we

shall consider only two: plan and norms.



The establishment of norms by the economist has become neces-

sary, Dieterlen tells us, simply in order to follow and understand

economic development. (A good example of the transition from

techniques of understanding to techniques of action.) It is not

sufficient merely to follow the course of statistical data. It is neces-

sary to erect in advance a system of norms of progression of the

elements of a given economic system which will permit us at any

moment to estimate the divergence of a given element of the sys-

tem from the norm. Even in a nondirected economy, it is possible

to determine (a) a certain relation among the different economic

components; (b) a “normal” tendency for the evolution of each of

these elements; and, consequently, (c) a “normal” evolution of

their relation. When such a scheme has been established, it is then

possible to say whether one of the elements is progressing too rap-

idly or too slowly, a fact which, in Dieterlen’s opinion, should

serve to reveal the causes of an economic crisis.



But if we thus establish certain norms of progression, we are con-

fronted with two facts. First, the necessity of intervention: once



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



17*)



the norm has been set and a condition which diverges from it has

been observed, it would be folly to permit a dangerously abnormal

phenomenon to develop. Second, the possibility of extending such

an establishment of norms. Why should inquiry be limited to a

given system? Once a calculus of norms is possible, it ought to be

extended throughout the economy. This legislative tendency

will operate not merely in the area of the organization of labor. A

bureau for setting standards, or a service of industrial analysis, is no

longer limited to the co-ordination, say, of wages and of the scien-

tific organization of labor. These operations transcend the level of

private enterprise and attain the level of the general. They har-

monize the complementary activities of wide economic sectors. We

are then completely within the technique of intervention; the tran-

sition from the one to the other has been imperceptible.



If the term norm is taken in its exact meaning, it is evident that

the application of the system of norms orients us in a unique direc-

tion. Under capitalism, norms are fundamental to the planning of

enterprise, but the tempo of production remains a function of mar-

ket conditions. In a planned economy, norms are fundamental to

all economic calculations. They determine the quantities to be pro-

duced and measure the degree to which the plan is realized in the

market (Fedotov). The technique of normalization can only have

full scope in a planned economy. It tends, in proportion to its devel-

opment, to imply a planned economy, simply because it tends to

pass from private planning and an atomized economy to a global

economy and general planning (the fundamental condition of its

application). A global economy is more exact to the degree that

both these aspects of planning are subject to the law and control of

the machine, as Mas indicates.



Ail this represents a tendency rather than an accomplished fact

As soon as industrial normalization intervenes, it brings with it

this tendency which inevitably devalues the older economic types

and the older industrial organizations.



Norms mutually entail each other and presuppose certain syn-

chronizations. It is almost impossible to conceive of localized

norms. If it is asked what the motive force behind this tendency is,

once again we must answer: efficiency. The logic of norms was

clearly evident in the application in Britain in 1940 of the National

Research Project. Research on the measure of production and its



The Technological Society	(17 3



practical consequences spread like a slick of oil and brought the

whole of industry into line. It has been praised as “political econ-

omy entering into action,*



This “chain reaction* is also only a tendency at the moment. It is

claimed that counteracting factors, economic and human, will pre-

vent it from becoming a reality. But these other factors are not tech-

nical. The competition is between divergent forces, the one techni-

cal, the others not. And in our society the technical factor must pre-

vail over the others. I therefore believe that in this area, too, the

logic of norms will impose itself everywhere. And if in my analysis

of this development I seem to have isolated the technical factor,

this is not because I choose to neglect or fail to recognize the others.

But, as I have already demonstrated, the technical factor is at pres-

ent the decisive one. In addition, most of the other developmental

factors are well known and almost universally studied, whereas

the technical factor remains, in general, obscure.



As soon as norms become essential because of their obvious util-

ity, they appear to complement the plan. There is no better means

of co-ordinating them or permitting them their full efficiency than

to integrate them into a plan. This is what I mean by the logic of

norms.



Another technique of intervention which has recently become

essential (and which I shall only mention) is so-called operational

research. Its basic characteristics, its objectives, and its meaning are

identical with those of norms. But the problem here is a problem of

decision. Norms and operational research are today the two means

by which the plan is executed.



Planning represents a second aspect of the economic technique

of intervention. Everyone has an approximate idea of what plan-

ning means: the state decides everything and regulates everything

in advance. We must analyze at least the characteristics of the plan-

ning operation, if not its details. Economic planning is a variety of

technique, not a form or a system or an economic theory. Not a

single economy of any type whatsoever has been constructed by

means of planning. We think otherwise because the Russian ad-

venture has always appeared to us in such a guise. “It was desired

to build an economy of the collective type and to succeed in this a

plan was elaborated.* But the Russian plan assumed its own mean-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



174)



ing independently of all theoretical ideas. In reality, the plan is a

technique and ipso facto indifferent to doctrines and opinions; it is

least of all concerned with principles of action. In Germany no one

had any very clear concept of the economic form that should be

adopted, but planning was accepted as an efficient means. In our

own day, it is even more true that plans develop in all countries

without any foundation of economic doctrine. This, in one sense, is

very reassuring. People constantly say: “If we remain true to our

old doctrine and the plan is only an instrument, we remain what

we were. If planning has sometimes functioned as a socialist in-

strument, it was only because it was in the service of socialist doc-

trines." This is, as consolation, illusory. But it is at least founded on

the truth that planning is not connected with any particular doc-

trine. System or not, however, it perhaps implies a certain definite

form of economy.



A second observation leads us to insist on the importance of

“ways and means” in the establishment of the plan. The plan is not

merely a set of commands or some general orientation. There are

two focuses in the plan. There is the choice of objectives, the direc-

tion to give to an economic system in its ensemble. There is also the

most concrete possible anticipation of the means needed to reach

these objectives. Economic choice of objectives and the establish-

ment of corresponding means—such is the plan. But this choice and

these means are elaborated in the most rational possible way, and a

whole complex of techniques of application enables the user to

avoid arbitrariness. With regard to the techniques of the forma-

tion of a plan, we refer the reader to the works of Charles Bettel-

heim.



Now let us consider a great difficulty which is an important point

of discussion in modern planning: prices and wages. Until now, the

plan has been more or less tied to “real” prices and wages. Plan-

ning, if not actually established by the market, was at least fixed in

temporal or spatial relation to market prices and wages. But this

situation could not last long. The intention of the third Soviet

plan was precisely to fix prices and wages in a purely abstract, but

not arbitrary, way by certain econometric methods, independently

of the laws of the market. It would seem from the various wage

manipulations which took place in 1949, and the repudiation of

Vosnessenski, that this attempt was not a success. However, we



The Technological Society	(175



must consider it a s the only logical way i n which planning could

then have been undertaken. And this approach may vevy well be

eliminated by new improvements in economic technique. This

would set to rest the objections of Francois Perroux, for whom the

plan was thereby deprived of all “economic rationality.”



A plan is executed in accordance with two constant principles:

efficiency and social need. The plan first answers the constant

search for the most efficient use of mechanical means, natural

riches, and disposable forces. The problem is to organize, co-ordi-

nate, and normalize these elements in such a way that each instru-

ment produces its maximum yield. Planning has been criticized on

all fronts, from the philosophic to the economic. But no one has yet

questioned the fundamental efficiency of planning, except at the

beginning. This criticism had its origin in two things, the gropings

of the planners and the ignorance of the critics. Everyone has since

become convinced that the mechanism is efficient—with allowances

for a certain bluff that up to now has accompanied planning experi-

ments. As far as technique is concerned, judgment is based solely

on efficiency, and planning appears fully justified in this respect.



The second of the two principal criteria of planning is the satis-

faction of social needs. The initial difficulty is to determine just

what these needs are at a given moment. How shall we effect the

balance between social needs and production? Theoretically these

are insoluble questions (I say theoretically advisedly). The pro-

posed means (opinion polls, ration cards, obligatory absorption by

the buyer of whatever is produced) indicate that the question as it

is usually posed is abstract. If one says: “In planning, the consumer

is in command,” one is making abstraction from the fact that the

plan, a sociological phenomenon, answers to social need and not to

individual need. At the same time one is thinking of an abstract

man (a kind of fixed image of man), and this, too, renders the pro-

posed question inoperative. The social man envisaged by the plan

is a man integrated more and more into modern technical society.

His needs are more and more collectivized, not indeed by direct

pressure, but by publicity, standardization of goods, intellectual

uniformity, and so on. It is well-known that “to the standardization

of production corresponds a standardization of taste which gives to

social life its collective character.” Moreover, mass consumption

corresponds spontaneously to mass production. There is no need



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



176)



for repressive measures. The adaptation of the public occurs of it-

self. The average man becomes the norm in the most liberal system

in the world because only the products necessary to the average

man are offered on the market In fact, the problem of understand-

ing social needs is complicated only if planning technique is sepa-

rated from all the other techniques. These other techniques spon-

taneously lead men to feel certain social needs conformable to

certain data. When the plan is reinserted into its true framework, it

is evident that there is no need of forcing social needs. They are

prepared in advance, so that the plan is in a position to correspond

exactly to them, after a more or less difficult period of adaption.



The whole evolution of human needs, in their “sociologism,"

tends toward the plan. There is almost no necessity any longer to

exert pressure on these needs. They are already what they should

be, provided that we abandon human misfits to their miserable lot,

a procedure which is, in any case, the course of all techniques.

When it is a question of dominating the world, one cannot stop to

consider Kirgiz shepherds or Bantu huntsmen who will not accept

th#4aws of the determining forces.



Planning does not pretend to produce an immediate response to

all social needs. As I have said, there is choice. It is choice which

can render certain persons unhappy but not hopeless, because the

plan is inserted into a dynamic conception of the economy. The

equilibrium between production and consumption is neither static

nor does it exist at present It is to come, and will constantly re-

new itself. The choice effected at a given moment is placed in a

general perspective which makes this choice relative, and at the

same time subordinate, to subsequent foreseeable development. It

is necessary therefore to consider both the future of realization

and the mechanism of uniformization of needs (which I have al-

ready mentioned). This leads the two lines to come together con-

stantly. This is an element of the dialectical view of the economy,

which is the only one admissible today. During the realization of a

plan, a constant readaptation of means and ends is simultaneously

effected, assuring a greater cohesion of the ensemble, if not a

greater certainty of realization.



Finally, it seems to me important, in connection with the plan

itself, to emphasize the need for utilizing the labor force efficiently.

It would appear that full employment is an internal necessity, not



The Technological Society	(17 7



merely a momentary circumstance, of the plan. Charles Bettelheim

has demonstrated that without full employment there is no possi-

ble satisfaction of the totality of social needs. In this connection,

wages change their character and become a part of the social

product. The plan ought, therefore, to provide for both full employ-

ment and the assignment of the labor force in accordance with the

requirements of the production plan. It becomes indispensable to

extend the plan to the whole labor force. Without this, the mecha-

nism cannot function. And this then poses the question of the

place, of the limitation, of the characteristics of planning.



One need not yield to the puerile enthusiasm that considers plan-

ning a panacea, a polyvalent remedy like penicillin. But it is nec-

essary to put the plan into a different perspective. Whatever the

remedies or proposed reforms for resolving injustice and incoher-

ence in the modern economy, everything occurs through the agency

of the plan. The plan in itself is no solution. But it is the indispensa-

ble instrument of all solutions. Even if one starts with Knut Wicksell

or John Maynard Keynes, one meets again and again the urgency

of planning.



In Mumford’s proposals to release man from the clutches of tech-

nique, there is an interesting project for an economic regionalism

on a world-wide plane. But this regionalism can, in fact, only be

based on the exceedingly complete and rigid planning of produc-

tion and distribution.



Planning and Liberty. Everybody, or almost everybody, is con-

vinced today of the effectiveness of the two techniques of interven-

tion, norm and plan. And, in fact, in view of the challenges which

not only nations but political and social systems hurl at one another,

and even more, in view of the challenge that man is making to

misery, distress, and hunger, it is difficult to see how the use of the

means provided by planning could be avoided. In the complexity

of economic phenomena arising from techniques, how could one

justify refusal to employ a trenchant weapon that simplifies and re-

solves all contradictions, orders incoherences, and rationalizes the

excesses of production and consumption? And since the techniques

of economic observation, if they are to have their full scope, issue

directly in the technique of planning, and since there can be no

question of renouncing the youthful vigor of these mathematical

methods, how is it possible not to see them through to the end?



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



178 )



Yet a certain disquiet has appeared among those who cherish

human freedom and democracy. They ask if planning is not an all-

consuming force. They seek to set three kinds of limits to its power,

represented by: (a) flexible planning, (b) the system of limited

planning, and (c) the separation of the planning agency from the

state (in short, what is usually called the reconciliation of liberty

and socialism). No one accepts Friedrich August von Hayek’s

proposition (in his Road to Serfdom) that planning is essentially

evil. Conscientious economists are unable to renounce technical

discovery. They seek a middle term.1 Is it to be a limited plan? But



1 See a compendium of ideological illusions concerning planning and liberty con-

tained in a recent special number devoted to this question in the Indian Journal of

Political Science. Ten or so articles attempt to demonstrate that planning is indeed

indispensable but that it presents no danger at all to freedom. A complete unreality

characterizes these articles. The position of the authors can be summarized as

follows.



First, they express the hope of saving freedom through liberal and partial plan-

ning. (However, other authors in the same volume show that this hope is absurd

and ineffective.) Second, the articles contain other formulas, equally absurd and

without content. “Planning should have as its object the realization of freedom’';

“The more rational planning becomes, the greater the freedom of the people." These

are mere affirmations, and one would seek in vain for corresponding realities or for

a possible content.



Some of these authors rely for proof of their propositions on a series of simple

syllogisms. For example: “(1) Planning increases production, (a) Production allows

the satisfaction of more needs. (3) The satisfaction of needs is the condition of

freedom. Hence, planning is the condition of freedom.” This reasoning is faulty for

two reasons. It is linear and takes no account of the complexity of the facts (for

example, put a man in prison, give him everything he needs: he is nonetheless

free). It derives its conclusion partly from an economic premise (the first) and

partly from an ethical premise (the third), without attempting to distinguish the

logical planes on which these premises lie. The third premise is, in any case, wholly

questionable from a spiritual or ethical point of view. (I shall return later to a

discussion of this.)



But for these authors the principal hope of saving freedom, in this amazing theory,

in the claim that an enlightened public opinion has the Dower to direct the

decision of the planners toward the satisfaction of its real needs. In this case, one

would indeed have democratic planning, collectivism on a voluntary base. But to

reason like this is surely to move in a world of dreams. The good faith of these

intellectuals compels one to think seriously of pathology.



Can anyone really believe that, if public opinion wanted pastry shops, planning

could be oriented toward these institutions, if, in addition, the other uses of flour

had to be sacrificed? Can anyone really believe that public opinion would receive

any satisfaction if it demanded footgear when tractors were needed? Such beliefs

are simple nonsense. It will be maintained that public opinion does not really know

what it needs . . . But then the technician makes the decision. We are familiar

enough with the mechanism: first producer goods, then consumer goods. Of course,

public opinion will be “consulted” after the technician has made his decision: “You

would have preferred woolen goods? Technically impossible; we had to make them

of cotton. Green? Unfortunately, there is no aniline. But you can choose between



The Technological Society	(179



then the problem is posed: where lies the limit? For some econo-

mists, planning is a purely economic question bearing on key in-

dustries. But the debate has lasted a century and no decision has

been reached as to which industries are key industries. The deci-

sion becomes even more difficult as categories change with time

(the extraction of uranium, for example, was not a key industry

twenty years ago) and as the interpenetration of economic activi-

ties becomes greater and greater. It is becoming extremely diffi-

cult to analyze the factors involved in production. Every part of the

system is, directly or indirectly, dependent on all the others through

financial repercussions or through the structure of labor. How,

then, is it possible to set up a planned sector of the economy along-

side an unplanned sector? When one rereads what was published

on this problem only ten years ago, it is clear that these studies

are completely out of date and have been rendered null and void

by subsequent technical improvements. Let us assume that a plan

has been made for a five-year period. If now the attempt is made

to limit it to economics by allowing the greatest possible freedom

outside this area (for example, by having no planning in the social

domain), how can this economic plan possibly be viable?



The problem of financing is necessarily raised even by a flexible

and limited plan. It was clear, at the time of the discussion of the

new phase of the Monnet plan (September, 1950), that bank credit,

the appeal to private financing, was insufficient. It was necessary

to turn to public financing. But this represented an enormous un-

dertaking, even for the state. The state was obliged to concern it-

self with the planning of its finances according to the more or less



light red and dark red. See what freedom you have!” In effect, these authors

seek to baptize obedience to technical necessity with the name freedom. They

attempt to hide the real compulsions and write either out of blindness or hypocrisy.



Only one of these articles is valid. Suda declares: "So much the worse for freedom.

We can sacrifice it. In any case, on the plane of values, dedication to the common

good is a higher ideal than freedom.” I cannot agree with this, but at least it allows

us honestly to assess our situation. We encounter the same attempt at justification

(in general, better supported but as unconvincing) in Entre la planification et la

liberty, in which Dutch, French, Norwegian, and American authors study the prob-

lem from very varied viewpoints (Revue Economique, March, 1953).



These illusions are contradicted by Tibor Mende himself (India After 12 Years,

1959)- He shows that Indian agricultural planning (the communal projects of the

villages) collapsed because it was not comprehensive and authoritarian. His com-

arison of India with China is a clear demonstration that, in accordance with the

criteria of yield and efficiency (the sole justified criteria of any planning), the most

authoritarian methods are the most profitable.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



l80 )



new totalitarian financial conception, which assumes control of the

whole national revenue and affects every citizen.



In order for the plan to be realized, the use of the labor force

must also be integrated into it This is recognized by Great Britain,

for example, in its conception of full employment. The application

of the plan likewise presupposes planning of housing and of voca-

tional guidance, apprenticeships, and schools. Moreover, it quickly

becomes clear that there is a need too for social security (a neces-

sary psychological and sociological element if full employment is

to function without too violent a shock to human nature). This in-

terrelation is not imaginary and gratuitous. Internal necessity con-

nects the elements of the plan, and it is folly to think of breaking its

links.



Thus the plan, once adopted as method, tends perpetually to

extend to new domains. To limit it would be to put the method in

a position in which it cannot function—exactly as though one were

to construct efficient automobiles but refuse to build adequate

roads. The car could indeed run on narrow, rutted, and sandy roads,

but it would not give the results for which it had been designed.

Certain complementary given elements become proportionately

more numerous as planning improves and modern society becomes

more complicated. These mutual relationships render limited plan-

ning impossible. The plan engenders itself, unless technique itself

is renounced.



The same situation holds if the planner aspires to adopt a flexi-

ble plan or one independent of the state. In such a case the fun-

damentals of the plan are not obligatory. The plan appears as mere

advice concerning what would be desirable; the producers remain

independent, the consumers have free choice, and the attitude of the

individual prevails over the social. The flexible plan is subject to

constant revisions and readjustments demanded by universal per-

sonal freedom. The same holds true if the attempt is made to refer

the organization of the plan to agencies other than the state: to

narrower organisms, such as administrative divisions of specialized

economic; organizations; or to organizations of wider scope, as, for

example, international organizations. The appeal to international

bodies is designed to vitiate the criticism of such writers as Hayek

concerning the dangers of totalitarianism which arise when the

state is in charge of the plan.



The Technological Society	(181



These different proposals are extremely deceptive. The flexible

plan has only one defect; but that defect is crucial: the plan cannot

be realized. The reason is simple. If the plan corresponds to the

real nature of planning, it ought to fix objectives, which normally

would not be attained by the play of self-interest and a modicum of

effort. It must stretch productive forces to the maximum, arouse

energies, and exploit existing means with the maximum of effi-

ciency. (That planners do not always succeed, that administrative

errors occur, and that not all planning invariably acts with the maxi-

mum efficiency is no more a criticism of the system than errors of

calculation are a criticism of mathematics.) But if the individual is

allowed freedom of decision and there is no plan, he will not make

the maximum effort required of him. If the industrialist is allowed

to retain full independence, he will seek out other arrangements

and not arrive at the objectives proposed. Hence, the plan, in or-

der to be realized, must be paired with an apparatus of sanctions.

This appears to be a veritable law of economics; planning is in-

separably bound up with coercion.



The individual does not realize spontaneously what is most ef-

ficient. Nor do the workers conform spontaneously to Gilbreth’s

'‘movements.*' The following alternative presents itself. Either the

plan is flexible but is not realized, as experience shows: in spite of

the propaganda about the Monnet plan, its objectives were only 70

per cent realized. The flexible plan of the Bulgarians (1947) was

37 per cent realized. The Monnet plan, which ought to have been

completed in 1950, was actually completed in 1953, having taken

twice the proposed time. In Vaction psychologique (1959), Mai-

gret restudies the effect on the breakdown of the plan of the ab-

sence of propaganda (which would have rendered the plan psy-

chologically compulsory). It is useless to expend the great amount

of labor which goes into a plan only to reach a stalemate. Or the

plan must be realized, but at the cost of loading it with sanctions

so that it becomes more rigid. Those who count on the good will

of mankind display a delirious, idealistic optimism. Centuries of his-

tory, despite the facts, have not been able to convince them of the

contrary; reason certainly will not change them. But they are so

far removed from reality that their opinion is negligible.



The problem of sanctions brings planning into relation with the

state. Anyone who claims that planning and the state are separable.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



182 )



or that local plans can be carried out (the TVA is always cited), has

forgotten that local plans must be guaranteed by the state or they

come to nothing. And this suffices to give back to the state all its

prerogatives. It is evident (and Russia and Germany were no ex-

ceptions) that it is not the state itself which creates the plan, but

rather some specialized organism more or less dependent on it.

As to the TVA, the source of this enterprise was the Roosevelt

government, which performed operations of expropriation, made

means available, and assured sanctions.



How, then, is it possible to retain a belief in the independence

of the plan? The bond between planning and the state is organic

and not due to chance. At the minimum, the power of the state is

required for a general examination of available resources and to put

all the national forces to work. I do not use the word planning in

the technical sense, as when one points to school-construction pro-

grams or traffic-signal installations. Local entities are of course able

to execute such programs. But they do not represent planning any

more than does dike construction in the Netherlands. If they did,

the "planning” of a house by an architect would have to fall under

this category. As to international decisions (which might be cited

as a proof of the separation of the plan from the state), these do

not represent plans in the proper sense of the term (for instance,

the Bretton Woods agreements). The sole hope of realization of

international plans—for example, in Europe—rests, as we clearly

see today, on the existence of a European state. This kind of plan-

ning acquires substance only to the degree that such a state is con-

stituted. This fact corroborates our thesis. Only a supranational state

would be able to convince both the national states and the trusts

to co-operate in a common economic operation. The Dawes and

Young plans ended in failure because they had no means for genu-

ine sanctions and no political power to support them. Conversely,

we note that the Marshall Plan (which became the EC A) is im-

perceptibly producing a political system. The Atlantic Pact is a cor-

relative to the Marshall Plan, and Europe will begin to organize

itself only in the event that the ECA is seen to be completely use-

less unless it is applied to a politically ordered world.



The Americans understood perfectly that the only alternative to

a useless expenditure of money in the ECA was a European politi-

cal organization. Unification, or even economic co-ordination, can-



The Technological Society	(18 3



not be conceived of independently. Mere understanding or good in-

tentions can scarcely result in real planning. Again we are back at

the necessary conditions for the realization of a planned economy.



That in an ideal society the connection between plan and state is

unnecessary, just as the need for penalties disappears in the case of

the individual as he exists in himself, I am willing to admit. But

that does not make me believe in such an ideal and take it as a

reality. In fact, I note that techniques of knowledge engender and

necessitate techniques of action, and techniques of action presup-

pose certain conditions and developments in accordance with a

true law which might be called the law of the extension of planning.



This extension of planning does not necessarily bring about a so-

cialist society. Private ownership of the means of production need

not be modified in order to have a planned economy. Likewise,

planning does not necessarily bring about a dictatorial state. The

use of sanctions and propaganda can be accommodated to forms

other than dictatorships. But when a technique invades a certain

domain, in connection with planning, the technique effects its

whole operation with completeness. It is useless to try to set limits

to it or to seek some other mode of procedure.



The Great Hopes



Economic Systems Confronted by Technique. Jean Marchal is

right in reducing to three systems the economic solutions presently

recommended. Marchal’s three systems are; corporatism, planning,

and liberal interventionism. But after having correctly observed

that the system of planned economy is at bottom no more rational

than the system of the market economy, he is wrong in adding that

“the choice between the two systems follows more from philosophic

preferences than from truly scientific considerations”; and that “nei-

ther of these systems can pretend to a total rationality.”



It is not philosophical preferences which weigh one system

against the other, or which lead to the choice between them. If I

ask myself which of the two ought logically to prevail, I am not

referring to the “philosophical” choice of the masses. It is efficiency

and success that lead history to adopt a certain direction—not man

who in some sense makes a decision. The problem does not concern



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



l84)



personal decision or preference; it is a question of discerning what

seems most probable. At the present moment, what system is most

efficient? I insist on the phrase at the present moment. It means

nothing to explain that liberal capitalism was extraordinarily effi-

cient a century ago. The statement is true and we do not wish to

deny it. But what of the present moment? If we accept the idea that

different human systems of action ought to correspond to different

social, political, and economic circumstances, can we uphold the

thesis that the past efficiency of liberal capitalism is a pledge of

present efficiency? Let us remember that from the point of view

of efficiency the Russian and German planned economies were

successes. And the United States adopted a planned regime when

it was challenged by war—it may be added, with all the care and

precaution presupposed by the critical democratic sensibility of the

Anglo-Saxons.



Shortly after reconversion, in 1950, however, the Americans were

obliged to embark on a new program. It was not merely an arma-

ments program (which had certain advantages in connection with

full employment), but a sound program encompassing a group of

countries, as indicated by Truman’s Point Four. These programs

presupposed a planned economy.



It would seem that we are today unable to escape the facts. And

the facts direct us toward the planned economy, regardless of our

theoretical judgments in the matter. It is also often asked whether,

after long periods of planned economy, the trend could be reversed.

But this is another problem.



We must ask why these fixed and rigid programs (which emerge

in a planned economy) are adopted on a wider and wider scale,

irrespective of doctrines and intentions. The only reply is that plan-

ning permits us to do more quickly and more completely wliaievei

appears desirable. Planning in modem society is the technical

method. It does not necessarily represent the best economic solu-

tion, but it does represent the best technical solution. We must de-

mand of planning what it is able to do, and nothing else. Marchal,

therefore, is right in saying that the planned economy is not more

rational than the market economy. It is not at all certain that it will

result in any greater savings. I understand that one of the pre-

occupations of economic science is whether a result has been at-

tained in the most economical manner possible. But this is possibly



The Technological Society	(185



only an abstract point of view and, in any case, is secondary. The

same problem arises in war between one general who hesitates to

sacrifice human life and another general who desires victory at any

cost and is willing to sacrifice everything to gain it Unfortunately,

our experience since the eighteenth century has been that the gen-

eral who hesitates to make the sacrifice is always defeated. The

same problem is posed by “dumping.” In speed, intensity, and co-

herence, the technique of the plan proves superior. There may be

waste. This is not completely certain. But it ought not to be for-

gotten that the charge of waste was one of the keenest criticisms

leveled against liberalism. It is possible that waste will be mitigated

through an improvement of the technique. We are not presently

in a position to say one way or the other.



These observations might be summed up in the statement that

in one case technique exists and in the other it does not. But things

are not so simple. It is standard practice to set up in opposition

the possible solutions; for example, corporatism and planning. But

we should guard against the possibility that the contrast is com-

pletely artificial. We should guard against abandoning ourselves

to the judgment of the specialists. The important question is one of

perspective. Every system is composed of different elements. We

can put these elements in different perspectives and thereby arrive

at different judgments. The specialist will fasten on certain specific

elements. Either he will envisage a given system sub specie aeter-

nitatis, in which case his judgment will be that the planned econ-

omy and the corporate economy are clearly not identical. Or he

will envisage the system from the viewpoint of practical realization

in all the facets of its achievements. In this case the structure of a

corporation (or the systems of corporative production) will again

be judged not to be the same as the structure of the planned econ-

omy in genuinely concrete details.



These elements of a given system, which are important in their

specificity, lose importance, however, if, instead of isolating the

system, we try to reintegrate it into the complex of society and

into the general course of history. What then takes on importance

are the elements in their relation. Relations are of the highest im-

portance, not mere internal consistency. It is the connections be-

tween the economic system and the state (with its technical

means, different classes, and structures in national form) which be-



l86)	TECHNIQUE	AND	ECONOMY



come characteristic. And we do not mean here theoretical connec-

tions, but real ones resulting from the internal necessity of the re-

gime. From this point of view, the corporate economy and the

planned economy come singularly close together, to the degree

that both systems (a) take a firm hold on the economy, (b) man-

age it on the basis of exact mathematical methods, (c) integrate it

into a Promethean society which excludes all chance, (d) centralize

it in the frameworks of nation and state (the corporate economy to-

day has no chance of success except as a state system), (e) cause

it to assume an aspect of formal democracy to the total exclusion of

real democracy, and (/) exploit all possible techniques for con-

trolling men. The kinship of the two systems is obvious in spite of

differences in material structure.



The end pursued by both the corporate economy and the planned

economy, and the means adopted to reach this end, are identical.

Only the outward forms change. It is useless to compare these

forms. History will decide which form is best—best adapted to the

common end.



It does not seem to me to be exact, therefore, to hold that there

are three possible economic pathways. There are only two. And

only one of them entails the exploitation of these techniques; the

other one ascribes the chief place to nature. (Here again is the old

opposition between the natural and the artificial, the artificial repre-

senting the expression of art: technS.) The complete identity,

rather than the resemblance, between corporatism and planning

ought to be noted. Corporatism is adapted to a traditional, culti-

vated, bourgeois mentality; planning, to an innovating, proletarian,

pseudo-scientific mentality. But the attitude of the two is funda-

mentally the same. And, speaking objectively, the result, insofar as

the real structure of human society is concerned, will be identical.

As to the choice between the two, the system that can best utilize

the techniques proposed by the economists will prevail. Up to

now, there is no doubt that the planned society seems better able

than the corporate society to utilize these techniques. The cor-

porate society brings to bear a whole complex of nontechnical

considerations (sentimental or doctrinaire) which the planned

society rejects.



It may be objected that in the planned society politics intervene

on a major scale and that this is not technique. I would then ask



The Technological Society	(18 7



what kind of politics is meant. As we shall see, politics have tended

to become technical in the countries that have adopted planning.



The serious study of the opposition between politics and eco-

nomics, and of the relations between them, dates back perhaps

twenty years. This opposition has tended to become less and less

real as the two have found a common denominator in technique.

When the economy and the political milieu are simultaneously sub-

jected to technical method, the problem of the interference of

politics in the economy ceases to have major importance. It no

longer has the same significance as personal influence, private inter-

est, or moral judgments. The alignment of the two has not yet been

fully completed—and this constituted the particular weakness of

Hitler’s Germany—but it takes more than a decade to overcome

technically great political and economic machines.



All these considerations attest to the fundamental likeness of the

corporate economy and the planned economy. Only these two eco-

nomic attitudes are left. They should not be considered, however,

in their extreme aspects. A planned society does not imply that

every detail is integrated into the plan. Nor does the plan provide

for the humblest means. Liberalism, likewise, cannot be understood

in its entirety. One scarcely speaks any longer of a “liberal inter-

ventionism” in which the distinction is made between the policy of

structure (improvement of distribution, etc.) and the policy of pros-

perity (influence on the economy itself of certain means which have

been decided upon; for example, money). The state no longer

leaves the economy to itself; but state intervention is flexible enough

to allow the entrepreneurs some initiative and grant (controlled)

freedom to the market. This is the attitude of the best minds in

France. They are guided not only by a desire for equilibrium and

a traditional confidence in the “middle of the road,” but also by a

preoccupation with human and nonconformist elements. I do not

deny that these elements are desirable, or that attributing a strategic

role to the state (while reserving tactical freedom to the citizens)

is a tempting concept. But I am searching for the possible here.

Would such an economic orientation really satisfy technical condi-

tions? Is it realizable in depth? The answer is certainly yes, if we

abstract it from reality. But when we come back to reality, it is

immediately evident that the liberal orientation represents the most

difficult of the possible alternatives. The equilibrium we seek be-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



188)



tween technique and freedom and between state and private enter-

prise is not stable. It is continually being put to the test and must

be ceaselessly re-established. The tension required of the individual

in this struggle seems to me to raise a grave question. Is it feasi-

ble to obtain from the individual ceaseless effort to establish the

very framework of his activity? And will his activity within this

framework be sustained? In other words, is this equilibrium the best

possible condition for economic development? Will not the energy

employed to secure the structural framework be dissipated in some

other quarter? One must take account, after all, of human nature.

This is even more true of a liberally supervised economy than of a

totally planned economy, precisely because the former entails a

certain degree of freedom for the individual. The human being,

left to his own devices, will not choose the most difficult paths or

the tightest situation. He will choose the line of least resistance. I

am speaking of the man of the twentieth century, the product of

the society based on ease, security, and comfort.



The average man like myself, or the entrepreneur of my acquaint-

ance, has no great desire to maintain his equilibrium at the expense

of a ceaseless re-creating of a failing virtue. Under these conditions,

he finds that things go badly. He far prefers a simple solution,

summary, no doubt, and brutal, but assuring him an easy road.

Since means of direct intervention are available, the average person

prefers that they be used (unless private interests lead him to prefer

the freedom of the great beasts of the jungle). The partisans of di-

rect intervention present two conditions as necessary to its realiza-

tion: first, a reform of the state, which is henceforth to transcend

all private interests and be endowed with competent organisms for

flexible and concealed intervention: second, a precise and complete

economic theory dealing with the sequence of economic events and

the means of intervention. These two conditions amount, however,

to a single condition: the primacy of technique. But then the same

problems recur. There is the difficulty of preventing technique from

going to the limit of its potentialities. There is the difficulty pre-

sented by the conjunction of economic and political techniques

which mutually reinforce one another. And so on. Is it credible that

a state which has become really technical (we shall study its char-

acteristics in the following chapter) will be satisfied with half meas-

ures? Nothing of the kind. The seeds of destruction are in the very



The Technological Society	( 18$



conditions proposed for the establishment of the economic form

represented by liberal interventionism. Thence the fundamental in-

stability which renders the attempt to establish such an economic

form not a final solution but merely an intermediate stage.



This development (that is, from liberal interventionism to the

fully planned society) is the more certain because liberal interven-

tionism has usually corresponded neither to the general tendencies

of society nor to the historical situation. I certainly do not wish to

imply that such an economic form, from the standpoint of economic

science, is not valid or justified. But when considered in the frame-

work of today's reality, it loses its validity.



The general tendencies of modern society are too well known for

me to dwell on the contradictions they offer to liberal intervention-

ism. It is said that this solution, which allows for concessions and

would abandon certain values it believes cannot be saved, in order

to preserve certain others, represents an underhanded way of es-

tablishing collectivism. My answer is that the problem is essen-

tially spiritual. The economic orientation called liberal interven-

tionism presupposes a spiritual revolution that has not yet even

begun.* Again, the historical situation is eminently unfavorable to

the philsophy of the “middle of the road." Herein lies the chal-

lenge that is made both in war and in peace to peoples seeking to

orient themselves in this direction.



The simple presence of the Soviet Union acts as a catalyst and

transforms the internal situation of the semiliberal countries,

whether they have direct economic relations with the Soviets or not.

Here we have a planned economic system in competition with cer-

tain other systems. As Marchal has shown, when contact is estab-

lished, the capitalistic countries, out of commercial necessity, are

obliged to align themselves with the Soviet system. In other words,

planning technique forces the competitors to imitation.



This effect has been brilliantly analyzed by Gottfried Haberler.

He demonstrates that the development of state socialism and col-

lectivism is reflected in the whole economic complex and results in

a generalized nationalization of economic activity and in state mo-

nopolies of foreign commerce. A country engaged in planning its

economic activity will establish quantitative controls over foreign



* I refer the interested reader to my book Presence au monde modeme.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



190)



trade in order to adapt it to the general national planning. Quotas

and exchange controls are established which are then necessarily

reflected in the commerce of nations that aspire to free activity.

Haberler astutely notes that measures of international commerce

taken by free nations in response to other countries with planned

economies in turn result (if they are co-ordinated and planned) in

a marked degree of internal economic planning. State monopolies of

international commerce cannot result in multilateral and nondis-

criminatory commerce. Haberler shows also that commercial agree-

ment on a liberal basis is not possible between nations with a

planned economy and nations with a nonplanned economy.



In view of the disturbance from abroad, then, how is it possible

to maintain the delicate mechanisms of the policy of prosperity

based on individual enterprise?



The planned economy seems to represent the most probable solu-

tion imposed by economic technique and desired by the greater

part of modem society, not only of men but of powers.



The real problem is not to judge but to understand.



Progress. Technique, in its action on the economy, awakened vast

hopes in human hearts. And certainly there is no question of deny-

ing these hopes. The machine and all that came with it, all it

brought in the way of progress, would put into human hands riches

perhaps different but as impressive as those of legend. These riches

would not be piles of gold or precious stones reserved for the dar-

lings of the gods, but comfort and pleasure for everyone. And if the

carved palaces, the chests encrusted with coral and enamel, the

scultpures and objects of gold, the precious table services, the arms

with handles of emerald and pearl were all fated to disappear, in

compensation every man was promised decent glassware and porce-

lain, a house in which he could be warm, abundant nourishment,

and, little by little, comfort and hygienic surroundings that would

assure him physical and mental harmony. Everyone was to have

in full measure the wherewithal to live. And, more than that, new

needs would arise which would no longer be the rare pleasures of

initiates but simply the human condition. To drink chilled bever-

ages in the summer or to be warm in the winter would no longer be

the costly fancy of a prince.



Poverty was retreating and, with it, man’s suffering. The machine

was taking over. The time devoted to work remained time wasted;



The Technological Society	(1 g i



but it was constantly decreasing and no one imagined that this

process would ever stop.



This extreme view of things developed so rapidly that by the

end of the nineteenth century people saw in their grasp the moment

in which everything would be at the disposal of everyone, in which

man, replaced entirely by the machine, would have only pleasures

and play. We have had to lower our sights. In practice, things have

not turned out to be so simple. Man is not yet relieved of the

brutal fate which pursues him. What appeared so near has again

been postponed. Yet two wars, two “accidents,” have in no way af-

fected our glorious conception of progress. Spiteful actions of fate,

human errors—call them what they will—men refuse to see in

them anything that essentially affects the marvelous progress that

opens before them. In spite of accidents, they believe that the road

is still free. The man of the mid-twentieth century preserves in his

heart exactly the same expectations as his grandfather had.



No doubt he has repudiated what he thought was naive. And

perhaps a certain distrust keeps him from enjoying the full life to

the extent that he might have expected. Even if he is unaware of

it, the average man preserves in his collective consciousness the

obscure feeling that he has been duped. He had believed so com-

pletely in the takeover by the machine, and in plenty, and he does

not wish to fall into a trap again. Nevertheless, hope persists wher-

ever tomorrows beckon; say Hitler's Thousand Years, or the bour-

geois’s stupid notion of progress. The hope is still the same, but the

human being (model 1950) tells himself that he can only attain

Paradise through the destruction of his enemies. His feeling of frus-

tration—occasioned by the abrupt loss of what was possible and

even within reach—is one of the elements behind the atrocities of

modern wars. When man finds the foe who stands in his way and

who alone has barred Paradise to him (be it Jew, Fascist, capitalist,

or Communist), he must strike him down, that from the cadaver

may grow the exquisite flower the machine had promised.



All myths directly or indirectly go back to the myth of Paradise;

and the technical productivity man is witnessing seems to have

spurred a proliferation of myths. Psychologists and sociologists have

observed the appearance of new myths; and many theories have

been advanced to account for this return of man to the sacred

world. But such explanations are unsatisfactory because they lack



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



192)



a material basis. That material basis is, in fact, the enormous tech-

nical progress of the modern world This progress restores to man

the supernatural world from which he had been severed, an in-

comprehensible world but one which he himself has made, a world

full of promises that he knows can be realized and of which he is

potentially the master. He is seized by sacred delirium when he sees

the shining track of a supersonic jet or visualizes the vast granaries

stocked for him. He projects this delirium into the myth through

which he can control, explain, direct, and justify his actions . . .

and his new slavery. The myth of destruction and the myth of ac-

tion have their roots in this encounter of man with the promise of

technique, and in his wonder and admiration.



If we consider the theses of the economists, we find that they,

too, affirm the same hope. They locate it elsewhere and prescribe

conditions and modalities to it, but the foundation is the same.

Technique is for them, too, the only means of abundance and lei-

sure. Fourastie is right in putting the case numerically to dramatize

the shortening of the work week and the enormous transformation

in living standards and in the qualitative nature of life. The case

is indeed simple if 1950 is compared with 1815. But it is no

longer quite so simple if 1950 is compared with 1250. It is impor-

tant to consider, for labor, not only time but intensity. It is possi-

ble to make a meaningful comparison between the fifteen-hour

workday of a miner in 1830 and the seven-hour workday of 1950.

But there is no common denominator between the seven-hour day

of 1950 and the fifteen-hour day of the medieval artisan. We know

that the peasant interrupts his workday with innumerable pauses.

He chooses his own tempo and rhythm. He converses and cracks

jokes with every passer-by.



Exactly the same holds true for the qualitative nature of life.

If a whole people is oriented toward the search for justice or purity,

if it obeys in depth the primacy of the spiritual, it does not suffer

from the lack of material things, just as we today do not feel the

inverse need of the spiritual. Such preferences depend on personal

judgment and on the society concerned.



We cannot say with assurance that there has been progress from

1250 to 1950. In so doing, we would be comparing things which

are not comparable. Certainly, an airplane which, after all, exists

concretely seems like progress, compared with dim historical mem-



The Technological Society	(193



ories. Therefore, it is advisable to limit ourselves to saying that

there has been progress since the beginning of the industrial era,

which was founded on the breakup and destruction of the non-

comparable and vanished old order. For modern man with his pe-

culiar orientation—which has material possessions and “stomach’*

as the central values—the period of great hopes indeed arrived.

And these hopes are the same (even if the forms differ) for a man

met at random and for a great economist.



However, as it is said in England, “you get nothing for nothing,

and not much for sixpence.’* In spite of leisure and abundance,

supposing that leisure and abundance come in the way men expect

them, there is a great difference between this state and Paradise.

The difference has to do with the cost. The old dream that has

tempted man from the beginning, the medieval legend of the man

who sells his soul for an inexhaustible purse, which recurs with an

enticing insistence through all the changes of civilization, is per-

haps in process of being realized, and not for a single man but for

all. I say perhaps. Modern man never aks himself what he will have

to pay for his power. This is the question we ought to be asking.

(And we shall do so later, after we have completed our descrip-

tion of the technical phenomenon.)



Centralized Economy. We are now in a position to trace certain

characteristics that technique imposes on the economy of the mod-

em world. We must recall that there is no accommodation with

technique. It is rigid in its nature and proceeds directly to its

end. It can be accepted or rejected. If it is accepted, subjection

to its laws necessarily follows.



What are the effects of these laws on the economic world? The

first trait that can be clearly perceived is the connection between

the economic mechanism and the state. This connection exists not

by virtue of socialist doctrines, nor because the state wills to inter-

vene, but because there is no other way of proceeding when tech-

nical development is present.



Technique always supposes centralization. When I use gas, or

electricity, or the telephone, it is no plain and simple mechanism

which is at my disposal, but a centralized organization. A central

telephonic or electrical station gives substance to the whole electric

network and to every individual piece of apparatus. The technical

“central* is the normal expression of every application. A coexist-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



194)



ence of these centrals is implied: a completely centralized organi-

zation which ultimately encompasses all human activities. Techni-

cal centralization is one of the major realities of our time. The ques-

tion is whether these centralized organs can exist independently of

one another. Can each develop in its own specific and autono-

mous way? Jiinger, who poses this question, is correct in stressing

that the system is not hierarchical, that every technical body is in-

dependent of its neighbor, and that there is no subordination among

them. Economically and politically, however, the risk is very great.

Each of the centralized bodies must be put into its proper position

and relation with respect to the others. This is a function of the

plan, and only the state is in a position to supervise the whole com-

plex and to co-ordinate these organisms in order to obtain a higher

degree of centralization.



The idea of effecting decentralization while maintaining techni-

cal progress is purely utopian. For its own centralization, technique

requires interrelated economic and political centralization. And we

are speaking here of mechanical technique alone, without going

into the motives of political technique.



The state, which by its very nature is the organ of centralization,

is at the same time the organ of choice of the technical centraliza-

tion. Anyone who believes statesmen are malevolent in willing cen-

tralization demonstrates thereby only his own naivet6. The state is

forced to realize the plan for exclusively technical reasons.



We have already seen how the necessity of sanctions brings about

a relation between the plan and the state. This relation can also

be envisaged as the administrative framework of the state, which

supports the techniques of planning and assures them freedom of

operation and a certain stability. I must insist on this last charac-

teristic.



The techniques set up by the plan must envisage economic real-

ity and its probable development as faithfully as possible. In order

to elaborate a plan, however, it is necessary to consider certain ele-

ments as stable and fixed, and not take all elements as simulta-

neously variable. But there is no guarantee that these elements

will really be fixed. The same difficulty arises when it becomes sub-

stantially impossible to forecast the development of some factor or

other in economic life. In such a case, either a hypothetical evolu-

tion of the factor will be posed, or the factor will be fixed arbi-



The Technological Society	(i g 5



trarily. This is a problem in a five-year plan and, much more

acutely, in a plan of longer duration in which production must be

projected far into the future. An excellent example is the ground-

work for the electrification of France. Should it be based on steam

plants or hydroelectric plants? To decide this, inquiry must be

made, among other factors, into the relative cost price of each sys-

tem for a given amount of electrical power produced. These plants

would be designed to last for a long time; but how long? Let us

suppose the period to be the mean duration of a waterfall, a hun-

dred years. The calculation would then proceed on this basis,

subject to three fundamental factors: the cost of the initial estab-

lishment, the capitalization of the maintenance charges for a hun-

dred years, and the cost of coal for a hundred years. The third of

these factors can be calculated roughly; but what of the second?

It depends on the interest rate, which cannot be predicted that far

i* advance. There is yet another factor: monetary developments.

How then can the plan be established? There is only one way: to re-

quire state guarantees; to obtain from the political power the as-

surance that for the realization of the plan the interest rate of the

loans will not vary.



It may be noted in passing (and this confirms our thesis of the

unity of the technical phenomenon) that the improvement of sta-

tistics makes it necessary for the state to intervene in economic

technique: the publication of statistics may be of great utility to

the intelligence services of some eventual enemy. Stuart Arthur

Rice gives examples of statistics in foreign commerce which con-

tributed to sabotage operations. Hence, the state must centralize all

statistics and either make available only statistics of interest to a

given category of businessmen or manufacturers or keep completely

secret whatever might be of interest to the enemy. This surveil-

lance was entrusted, in 1950, in the United States to the Bureau of

the Budget. It must be noted that American public opinion is not

content with this compromise. It tolerates badly the “indecision”

imposed by the cold war. However, a strong minority desires a total

blackout of statistics, as in the Soviet Union. The state would then

have indirect, but nevertheless complete, control of economic ac-

tivity, inasmuch as it alone would know the full economic situation.



A bond is thus established between the state and the economy

whereby technical progress is not possible without the interven-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



196)



tion of the state. This does not mean that the whole economy is in

the hands of the state. We ought, on the whole, to abandon the idea

of a ravaging and dictatorial state. Let us think only of the cold

and impersonal mechanism that holds all sources of energy in its

hands. What is production without energy? What is the economy?

Does not the agent that controls the supply of energy also direct the

economy? Technically speaking, the control of energy can no longer

be in the hands of any agent but the state. This is true even in

the United States, as has recently been shown.



If statistics are to be given their full scope, it is necessary to co-

ordinate the actions of different organisms to avoid useless repeti-

tion, and also to pay the bill, since centers for statistical research

do not pay for themselves. When statistical data have been col-

lected, what agency but the state is in a position to exploit them

fully and make them yield their total practical value? It is scarcely

necessary to recall that the very different factors that result from

technique (trusts, atomic energy, capital concentration, the hyper-

trophic enlargement of the means of production, and many more)

all entail state action. The relation established by technical facts,

which become the common denominator between state and econ-

omy, is neither chance nor fleeting. There is no possibility of re-

versing the movement, as certain idealistic anti-interventionists

would have us believe. Neither is there any hope, short of certain

extraordinary transformations, that the conjunction of state and

economy is transitory, as the Communists would have us believe.



Certainly, if production were to become sufficiently great, if the

system of distribution were perfect (and, once fixed, were not sub-

ject to variation), and if, above all else, men were to become an-

gels (an indispensable condition), the conjunction between state

and economy might disappear. The same would be true if modem

technique were to vanish. But it is advisable to think in more re-

alistic terms.



The fact that the economy and the state are reciprocally joined

is technically founded in such a way that the two tend to become

aspects of the same phenomenon, a phenomenon which, moreover,

is not the the result of a simple accretion of previous phenomena.

It seems to me particularly important to emphasize this new charac-

ter. Because of the existence of techniques, we are beyond the

problems of ordinary Etatism or of socialism. It is not the simple



The Technological Society	i197



phenomenon of the growth of power or the struggle against capi-

talism which is decisive here. We are witnessing the birth of a new

organism, the technical state, which makes economic life more se-

cure in proportion as it becomes more technical. It is no longer

even possible to say: “It could be done otherwise.” In the abstract

as well as in the concrete, all technical evidence attests to the con-

trary. What is involved is in fact the logical development of the

nation-state.



This double relation (the state assuring the national life, and

whatever pertains to the nation converging toward the state) be-

comes more specific, stronger, and more rigid when technical

elements come into play. What was mere tendency becomes frame-

work, what was talk becomes means, and the relation of adminis-

tration to population becomes organization. And because the econ-

omy is an aspect of the nation, it, too, comes into the system. The

state, too, changes its aspect on contact with technical elements.

The principal goals of the economy are at first modified, but its

elements of pride and power, potentially always there, emerge sub-

sequently in a more brutal way. Humble humanitarian motives are

no longer important. Technique is too neutral and the state too

powerful for either to encumber itself with such things. It is no

longer even a question of wealth or distribution; in the technical

synthesis, the economy becomes again the servant, when (after

Marx) it had been thought the master.



The duel of politics and economics culminates in a synthesis in

which politics disappears and economics is forced into submission.

This synthesis, to be sure, has not yet been fully realized. France,

one of the older nations, is not even completely conscious of what

is happening. But the Soviet Union is already very close to this

synthesis, and the United States is being oriented in this direction

very rapidly as a result of the large-scale economic maneuvers

into which it is being forced. And, above all, new nations such as

Australia and New Zealand are spontaneously constructing this syn-

thetic complex. How could Africa even hope to refashion its society

rapidly (as its new independence requires) if it did not resolutely

embrace technical synthesis? Nasser, Mohammed V, and Castro

are all attempting precisely this,



I remarked above that this is not socialism. With the disappear-

ance of humanitarian goals, socialism is rendered unfeasible by



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



i98)



the sheer weight of techniques. The ownership of the means of

production ceases to be the central problem. Social equality be-

comes a myth as a result of the emergence of an aristocracy of

technicians; and the proletariat is necessarily extended (to no

one’s dissatisfaction), instead of disappearing. Certain elements of

socialism continue to exist; for example, social security, the redis-

tribution of the national income, and the suppression of individual

profit. But they exist as isolated fragments, and not as a system. It

is not even certain that these elements will be found in all the syn-

theses now being created. Their continued existence depends on

whether they are judged to be efficient. They cannot escape this

judgment. An excellent example of fragmentary socialism, based on

anything but socialistic motives, is given by Fourasti6. He demon-

strates (correctly, I believe) that capital decreases in importance

in proportion as technique increases in importance. “In a period of

technical progress, the wage value of capital tends toward zero,

whereas the physical product of capital constantly increases.”

Clearly, it is not a question of the absolute value of capital. Yet the

capitalist sees his assets lose value in direct proportion to the de-

velopment of technical progress. I shall not repeat Fourastie s rea-

soning—it seems to me convincing. His conclusion, moreover, is

of the first importance: that the center of the economic problem is

shifting. The legal question of ownership is no longer important.

The debate no longer concerns who owns the means of produc-

tion, or who will take the profits. The crux of the economic problem

has moved to the extreme point of technical development. The real

debate concerns who will be in a position to support, absorb, and

integrate technical progress and to furnish optimal conditions for

its development.



It is contrary to the nature of technique to be compatible with

anarchy in any sense of the word. When milieu and action become

technical, order and organization are imposed. The state itself, pro-

jected into the technical movement, becomes its agent. Technique

is, therefore, the most important factor in the destruction of capi-

talism, much more so than the revolt of the masses. Human revolt

can only accompany the destruction of capitalism and philosophize

about it. As to socialism, the final result is still indiscernible and no

prediction, except of a negative nature, is possible.



The T echnological Society	(1	g g



Economic centralization has been criticized on humane grounds.

Jean Francis Gravier has attacked the movement on purely techni-

cal grounds and has attempted to show that decentralization (at

least of the population) is necessary if society is to remain in equi-

librium. His thesis is as follows: Technique permits the diffusion of

the population over a wide area with as well developed economic

potentialities as the great cities. Diffusion would not be subject to

present health hazards, oppressive costs to communities (a resident

of Paris costs the state five times as much as a resident of Vendee),

and so on. This thesis, then, is based on new technical development.

But there are three objections: First, decentralization is not possible

unless there is a powerful planned organization for decentraliza-

tion. Such an organization usually operates on the level of the in-

dividual, not of the economic organism. Second, population diffu-

sion could lead to an urbanization of the countryside rather than

to a true diffusion of the population into a rural milieu. Third, the

thesis represents a mere theoretical possibility and not a necessary

movement.



It must be admitted that actual experience seems to contradict

the thesis. Since 1955 a serious and concerted movement has been

under way to decentralize Paris and its industrial complex. The re-

sult so far is that six hundred industrial plants have left the area.

But only four thousand wage earners have been resettled in the

provinces, whereas, when the plants in question achieve full op-

eration, they will employ seventy-five thousand wage earners re-

cruited locally. Moreover, half of these six hundred plants have

been settled in the vicinity of Paris. During the five-year period in

question, fifty thousand new jobs have been created each year in

Paris alone and the population of the city has risen by nearly a

million.



Decentralization, then, has experienced a radical setback. Econo-

mists who have analyzed this setback conclude that in order to de-

centralize industrially it is necessary to effect total decentralization,

including administrative, financial, and cultural decentralization.

Total action, however, would be difficult to achieve; precise and

adequate technical motives for it do not exist. Furthermore, it

would have to be implemented by authoritarian measures. The

state would have to act to constrain the citizens with authoritarian



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



200)



penalties corresponding to authoritarian decisions. It is easily seen

that the proposed decentralization would have to rest upon a ma-

jor aggrandizement of centralized authority.



The Authoritarian Economy. An economy completely founded on

technique cannot be a liberal economy. (This is not entirely the

same as the preceding idea.) Technique is, in reality, opposed to

liberalism, a social form which is unable to absorb and utilize

modern techniques. It seems clear that economic liberalism is not

in itself a technique. In fact, the attitude represented by laissez-

faire, however much mitigated it may have become, is a renuncia-

tion of the use of techniques; techniques suppose conscious human

action, not abstention from action.



When liberalism requires men to put their trust in the obscure

alchejny of certain natural “laws/* it in effect restrains them from

making use of the technical means at their disposal. These means

permit men to intervene in the order of nature, to adjust its “laws**

to their purposes, and to exploit them, as in the physical order. They

also permit intervention that would appear to contradict natural

laws and modify the order of nature. It is clear, then, that they are

not really “laws’* at all. In view of this, technique does not accord

these nonexistent laws the respect recommended by liberalism.

Therefore, when technique develops, both the liberal attitude and

its doctrine become impossible. I have posed the problem at its

most acute by placing it at the point of contact between liberalism

and the economic techniques of intervention (which are the very

negation of liberalism). But my thesis is just as true for the simple

techniques of production which influence the economy. As I have

already shown, every mechanical technique supposes a correspond-

ing organization. And organization is the diametrical opposite of

free enterprise; and the organizational state of mind is the diametri-

cal opposite of the liberal state of mind.



It will doubtless be pointed out, by way of refutation, that pro-

duction techniques were developed during the ascendancy of lib-

eralism, which furnished a favorable climate for their development

and understood perfectly how to use them. But this is no counter-

argument. The simple fact is that liberalism permitted the develop-

ment of its executioner, exactly as in a healthy tissue a constituent

cell may proliferate and give rise to a fatal cancer. The healthy

body represented the necessary condition for the cancer. But there



The Technological Society	(201



was no contradiction between the two. The same relation holds be-

tween technique and economic liberalism.



Here, then, is the locus of the conflict between technique and

the liberal economy, which Jiinger, among others, has studied.

Technique is inevitably opposed to the liberal economy because the

end of technique is efficiency and rationality, and the end of lib-

eralism is money profit. Technique requires of the liberal econ-

omy nonprofitable decisions and risks. For example, when expen-

sive new machines are developed before the old ones have been

amortized, the industrialist is forced to liquidate the old machines

or he runs the risk of being eliminated from the market. This con-

flict holds good on all levels.



When the state controls the economy, it faces similar problems.

But such problems affect every economy. In this perspective, plan-

ning is criticized as wasteful. Yet the very criticism shows that the

liberal mentality is still in force.



Even in a capitalist context, however, judgments concerning

wastefulness are modified with time and according to the sector.

In a report, the ILO has compared ordinary mechanization with

the mechanization of offices: “The mechanization of labor in offices

will often, against standard practice, be considered justified from

the viewpoint of profits, even if it increases the expenses of the

office. This is the case when mechanization increases the yield of

the productive unit of which the office forms the administrative sec-

tion” (Mas). But even taking into consideration such partial ex-

ceptions, it remains true that conflict between technique and the

liberal economy is inevitable because the liberal economy is essen-

tially based on profit. It does not exist without profit. To a planned

economy, however, profit is not the highest value. Certainly, the

planned economy does not neglect the profit motive completely,

but profit represents only one element in its calculations. The prin-

cipal criterion of the planned economy is rationality (or effi-

ciency): in a word, technique.



In the conflict between technique and the liberal economy, tech-

nique, then, is victorious over the liberal economy and bends it to

its laws. The process is furthered, as I have shown, by the fact that

the liberal economy, insofar as it is thought out, itself becomes

technique. The unity between economy and technique is thus re-

stored, but liberalism is eliminated. Economists may seek to justify



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



202 )



this by speaking of "public service" or the "common good," but

such talk represents no more than a justification a posteriori, an

ideological smoke screen. It is, as such, not without value, but it is

not comparable in importance with the major fact of technical in-

vasion.



Liberalism is softened and progressively eclipsed in direct pro-

portion to the growth and imposition of techniques. The relation

between the degradation of liberalism and the development of

these techniques is unavoidable. The oft-heard assertion that lib-

eralism is capable of production but incapable of distribution rep-

resents the broadest view of the matter. How is it that liberalism is

capable of producing? The answer is that, in free enterprise, pro-

duction is not a part of the liberal framework. It is, rather, subject

to extensive planning, and it could not well be otherwise. What is

specifically liberal is the passage of consumer goods and their dis-

tribution in the various consumer sectors; and it is precisely the dis-

tributive process which works so poorly and which is constantly be-

ing hampered, since technique throws such enormous unmeasured

quantities of ill-considered products onto the market.



The same is true of the tendency toward monopolies and trusts.

In all sectors of the economy, this tendency is the plague and the

destruction of liberalism. It ends either in a straightforward mo-

nopoly with no competitive freedom (whether the monopoly is pri-

vate or of the state, the result of the contest between state control

and liberalism is the same), or monopolistic competition, which is

no less ruinous than outright monopoly because of the waste it

causes. It is technique alone, in two different aspects, which gives

rise to these facts. First, financial techniques are encouraged, which

permit the establishment of institutions such as trusts and concerns

(this would be unthinkable without a prodigious development of

means) and assure the flexibility of these institutions on the level

of banks and stock exchanges. Second, competition is encouraged,

which, when it becomes established among several enterprises un-

der a liberal regime, is in reality a competition of techniques in

the microeconomic phase. To the extent that techniques remain

static, different enterprises are able to exist side by side, each with

its own clientele for its own products. Some of the enterprises may

be powerful and some weak, but the weak ones are nonetheless

still able to subsist. It is not magnitude of enterprise which destroys



The Technological Society	(203



the equilibrium, but technical progress. The moment an enterprise

applies new procedures (for example, new public-relations tech-

niques, machines that increase yield and decrease unit cost, busi-

ness organization that makes labor more efficient, financial modali-

ties that assure greater stability), it finds that these technical

elements give it an advantage over its competitors and allow it to

eliminate or absorb them.



Competition is thus an incitement to such technical progress as

will bring victory over the competitor. This means that competition

tends to destroy liberalism. It will be objected that competition does

not destroy the liberal economy completely because all the com-

petitors will adopt technical development. (In practice, certain sec-

tors of the economy are completely monopolistic.) In reply to the

objection, I reiterate that technique engenders itself and that any-

one who succeeds in making a headstart in the technical domain in-

creases his advantage without limit.



For these reasons I am unable to agree completely with Vincent’s

position. For Vincent, as for me, technique and liberalism are in-

compatible. But, it seems, his reasoning does not take account of

all the facts. Vincent's thesis can be summarized as follows: “How

will the advantages of technical progress be divided in a pure lib-

eral regime, supposing perfect competition and nonintervention of

the state? It is clear that in this hypothetical case the producers who

have achieved technical progress would not be able to benefit

from it, since, by hypothesis, competitors will arise to bring sales

price to the level of decreased cost price.” We conclude that only

the consumer would be in a position to benefit from technical prog-

ress. This implies an unexpected conclusion: since progress would

bring no special advantage, no one could be expected to want or

seek it The affirmation is inescapable that pure liberalism in es-

sence compels stagnation.



This way of putting the problem is rather hypothetical and ab-

stract. Vincent himself admits it. But, even so, the reasoning is not

convincing in itself. It is too easy to reply (and the liberals will

not fail to do so) that the application of such simon-pure liberalism

has never been an issue. What is important to liberals is a liberalism

adapted to economic conditions and then stabilized. This liberal-

ism would permit technical progress.



Vincents arguments are convincing only in regard to one side of



104 )	TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMT



the following dilemma: either liberalism remains true to itself, and

is forced to challenge technical progress according to the arguments

given above; or it adopts technical progress, and is obliged to repu-

diate itself. But the first alternative, that is, to stabilize the limita-

tions on liberalism, is impossible. The second alternative will be

the actual issue. The more technical progress advances, the more

constricted'will be the role of liberalism.



Could we not pass between the horns of the dilemma by means

of the less and less likely possibility of competition? Just as techni-

cal progress never attains the absolute, so freedom of competition

will doubtless never disappear absolutely. But there is a point at

which it is no longer possible to speak of liberalism. In the most

authoritarian regime, some freedom remains. It is nonetheless an

authoritarian regime. The perspective changes depending on the

time and the psychology; the point at which we stop saying “lib-

eralism” and say “controlled economy” also varies. But the process

cannot be checked. No personal choice is possible. Certainly, it is

not that a strict automatism comes into play. To clinch the system

and complete the process, human decision and intervention are nec-

essary.



It might nevertheless be objected that economic laws have ex-

istence insofar as they are understood—that a choice is possible be-

tween technical intervention and a return to the free operation of

economic laws. Unfortunately, illusions and hopes are more tena-

cious than realistic considerations. When technical progress inter-

venes, it modifies not only the application of economic laws but

also the essence of the laws. We may consider this in two ways.

First, economic laws are not eternal like the laws received by

Moses on Mt Sinai. Our economic laws are valid only for a certain

type or form of economy. When technical progress occurs, it is

integrated into the economic system not as a foreign element but

organically. Technical progress is a part of the essence of an eco-

nomic system, not a mere accidental event. When some chemical

substance changes the metabolism of a body, the result is a new

situation which follows certain laws that did not hold for the pre-

ceding situations. The chemist studies a new combination from

which he must extract new laws. When the facts change, the con-

stants, as well as the laws, are modified.



Second, even if we insist on making value judgments, on declar-



The Technological Society	( 20	5



ing a certain state to be normal and the laws that control it alone

to be just, if, in other words, we want economic laws to be as

rigorous and eternal as the laws of physics, the situation does not

change. The laws of physics are known to be relative; the laws of

microphysics in force today are not the laws we learned from our

schoolbooks. The situation is exactly the same in economics. A

change of scale is not merely a change of magnitude; it is a modifi-

cation of nature. In fact, technique has modified the scale of human

economy, and the laws that held for the average economic system

at the beginning of the nineteenth century no longer apply in the

new scale of the economy we know today. Liberalism is only con-

ceivable if technical progress is choked off so that the system re-

mains at a fixed stage of equilibrium and of middling force.



The antinomy between liberalism and technique is further ac-

centuated when we consider that technique can give rise to noth-

ing but a mass economy. We refer here not only to the fact that the

expanding and developing economy embraces an ever increasing

number of human individuals and that demographic growth re-

quires such an expansion. Here we are not using the word mass in

the sense of great numbers, but in the usual sociological sense of

mass opposed to community. It is recognized that our civilization is

becoming a mass civilization. But we generally neglect the twofold

fact that technique is one of the important factors of this “massifica-

tion” and that the eiconomy takes from it a particular form. Tech-

nique makes the economy a mass economy, that is to say, the econ-

omy taken as a whole to which we give the name macroeconomy.

(This hypothesis is necessary in order to account for the free play

of economic techniques.) Economic problems must be posed in

global terms, in terms of global income, global employment, global

demand, and so on. This global, macroeconomic conception cor-

responds to mass society, which is extremely differentiated, as we

know. Just as technique breaks down the barriers between eco-

nomic sectors, so an economy based on technique tends to burst

asunder the traditional sociological frameworks.



The macroeconomy is only a framework and an element of an

economic technique. It is indifferent to free enterprise and to the

concept of the nation, which it destroys, not voluntarily but indi-

rectly. It has no personal, private goal. It does not seek at all to

modify a given social or economic reality. Nevertheless, the break-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



206 )



down of all the traditional particularisms occurs in economics (as I

have already described). The result of the macroeconomic method,

to the degree that it proves itself efficient, will be to smoothe out

economic contradictions and to encompass within the artificial what

previously belonged to the natural. To the degree that macroeco-

nomics brings us to think in global and statistical terms, it leads to

the suppression of the causes of fractionation, for example, na-

tional frontiers.



The macroeconomic movement toward universalism will be

stronger the more it is reinforced by other, convergent factors. The

first step is the constitution of an intercontinental economy (which

technique, in any case, renders inevitable for other reasons). The

movement toward an intercontinental economy leads to a mass

economy.



A second characteristic of this “massification” is summarized in

Sartre's profound remark that “statistics can never be dialectics."

There is an opposition (even a mutual exclusion) between statistics

and dialectics. They differ not merely in their mode of explaining

but also in their very mode of apprehending the world and action.

Statistics is necessarily a univocal method that expresses an aspect

of reality which is uncombinable with any other (except other sta-

tistics ) and which cannot tolerate contradiction or evolutionary de-

velopment. Statistics conceives evolution only in its formal aspect,

fastening on its strictly numerical element and proceeding dis-

cretely along the number continuum which it connects by extrapo-

lation. It sets up this linear formulation as the very essence of evolu-

tion. But it is incapable of grasping in any degree the internal and

continuous mechanism of evolution and the interplay of negations

involved in the affirmations. Statistics (and every technique) can

proceed only by affirmation, by exclusion of negations, refusal, and

destruction. It implies and prescribes a logical evolution, but not

a dialectic evolution. An economics founded on this method is of

necessity antidialectical; it is one of the profound betrayals of

Marxism on the part of modem Communism.



The movement of masses is likewise univocal and antidialectical.

(The interested reader is referred to Reiwald's L* Esprit des

masses.) There is therefore a fixed connection between statistics

and the economics of mass society. But only opposition exists be-

tween statistics and organic society: the life of an organic, dialectic



The Technological Society	(207



society cannot be completely enclosed in a technical operation like

statistics. Statistics even implies a mass society. Economically, this

technical operation presupposes that all members of society partici-

pate, privately and without concern for the whole, in the economic

system that techniques progressively elaborate. It is not only that

everyone is inescapably a consumer and producer and as such par-

ticipates in economic life. More important, all members of society

(not each member) are integrated in the mass into a pre-established

system. It is the facts of “all” and “pre-established,” required by the

use of technique, which involve the mass.



The “all” is involved because technique yields results and de-

mands effort to such a degree that no individual can remain out-

side. But if technique demands the participation of everybody, this

means that the individual is reduced to a few essential functions

which make him a mass man. He remains “free,” but he can no

longer escape being a part of the mass. Technical expansion re-

quires the widest possible domain. In the near future not even the

whole earth may be sufficient.



The “pre-established” is involved because technique has its laws

and its motives (which I have already outlined) and fashions the

frameworks that are most auspicious to it. We are experiencing this

in the modern world. Despite the preoccupations of humanist

economists, the economic mechanism tends to become stricter, ad-

hering to reality through its technique but, at the same time, ab-

sorbing it Men must enter into a pre-established framework. Tech-

nique cannot act otherwise than to “pre-establish” them too; if it

did not act so, it would not even exist itself.



We now see why the social complex, on contact with technique,

becomes mass, rather than a community or an organism. Technique

demands for its development malleable human ensembles. We

have already encountered this characteristic in our discussion of

technical expansion, and we find it again (in a very typical way) in

our study of the influence of technique on the economy. The econ-

omy, oriented in this direction, supposes mobile masses of men

available to needs which are simultaneously economic and tech-

nical.



Every undertaking involving a real community is necessarily anti-

technical on the economic level, not only because it is relatively

static but because of its particularism. If genuine communities were



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



208 )



to develop, no further economic technique would be possible. I am,

of course, speaking here of true communities, not of counterfeit

communities such as the corporations have represented since 1935.

We conclude, then, that the social form most auspicious to economic

technique is the mass. In this form, the calculus of probabilities and

planning both have free play.



The Antidemocratic Economy, All this being so, we touch upon

a new characteristic of economic technique: it is inevitably anti-,

democratic. At first glance, this comment sounds surprising, even

shocking. After all, technique does bring the masses of men into the

economic circuit, allowing them to participate in it as they never

did before. In the technical affirmation of the present, we can point

to the fact that we are witnessing the forward movement of social-

ism: management committees, autonomous administration of social

security, profit sharing, workers* councils (which exist not only in

the Soviet Union), and the achievement of recognized status by the

labor unions, which thus can play a positive (not merely a revolu-

tionary) role.



How, under these circumstances, is it possible to speak of the

technical economy as antidemocratic? In reply, it would be easy to

show that all these different kinds of "progress** become feasible

only to the degree that men are subjected in advance to the action

of technique. The opposition men manifest to this slavery (and it

is a kind of slavery) is merely superficial, a matter of self-interest,

and is not due to any basic revolutionary orientation. Men are un-

able to exert genuine influence on the direction of the economy.

They can change certain modalities of wages. They can alter the

direction of enterprise and intervene in certain economic forms to

compensate for certain mechanical drawbacks; and they can give

opinions on fabrication, procedures, and financial methods. None

of these is negligible and I have no desire to minimize their impor-

tance. But they do not add up to economic democracy.



Collective ownership of the means of production (from the point

of view of nationalization, collectivization, or state socialism) is an

abstraction, an even greater abstraction than political democracy.

We well know to what degree of abstraction political democracy

has been pushed and how little the vote of the citizens actually

counts despite all the talk about "popular sovereignty.** The means



The Technological Society	(209



of production arc said to be the property of the people. But can the

people do with them what they wish? Can they actually nominate

their leaders? These are the real questions. If the people directly

concerned in some business affair (for example, the workers in an

industrial plant) were to decide to exploit the plant in some other

way, or not to exploit it at all, or even to destroy the machinery,

would anyone listen to them? If no one listened, under the pretext

that the decisions in question were senseless, the real reason would

be that there are criteria superior to the popular will according to

which popular will is judged. Popular will can only express itself

within the limits that technical necessities have fixed in advance.

Can the people select engineers? Or accountants, or organizers?

Can they pass judgment about methods of work? If they could, it

would amount to the system (which has actually been attempted)

in which judges are elected by the governed, tax collectors by the

taxpayers, generals by the privates. Such a system would represent

the only truly democratic method. Why is the democratic method

not applied in the areas cited, whereas we do elect politicians. For

the simple reason that the functions of judge, general, and engineer

are considered to be functions of technicians, but the politician is

deemed to be a nontechnical functionary: good for everything,

good for nothing.



The Russian and French Revolutions introduced popular elec-

tion of judges and generals: this was consistent with their con-

cept of democracy. But the results were so disastrous that it was

soon necessary to repeal this procedure.



Technique is the boundary of democracy. What technique wins,

democracy loses. If we had engineers who were popular with the

workers, they would be ignorant of machinery. In our time, tech-

nique is the court of last appeal. The worker is master neither of

his factory nor of his bosses.



The democracy of popular '‘control” is purely formal. The situa-

tion in this respect is the same in all representative democracies in

which all things technical are taken out of the control of the elec-

tors, who must thenceforth repose their faith in an ideology of

political function superior to all others and encompassing every

human activity. By its intermediacy, the elector would still be

master of his destiny. Unfortunately, when the politician intervenes



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



210)



to advance the cause of his constituents, he succeeds only in dis-

turbing the proper functioning of technique, in making everyone

discontented, and ultimately in losing his powers.



Are we, then, to believe today that by some secret alchemy the

workers, who hold title to a purely abstract property, really inter-

vene in the economic game? Were it really so, it could only be on

condition that they had to do with an extraordinarily flexible, not

to say slovenly, economy. It would certainly be nontechnical. If

such an economy were even conceivable, it would be a noncapital-

ist liberalism, that is to say, anarchy.



When the economy becomes exact and technical, it cannot toler-

ate the intervention of the working man’s desires. Certainly, there is

such a thing as benevolent and rational regulation of labor, human

industrial relations, hygiene, and so forth. But this is the internal

regulation that a good technique supposes and requires. The only

possibility of obtaining a high, continuous, and profitable produc-

tivity is by taking adequate account not only of immediate, bare

yield but also of the conservation of human material, which also

represents a kind of capital. At present the working man’s wishes

happen to coincide well with the imperatives of a rather exact and

profound technique. This is the only reason his wishes are taken

into account. The real function, then, of the worker’s desires is to

advance and improve technique, and not at all to enhance his free-

dom. This fact has a political parallel: in elections under authori-

tarian regimes, ballots may be cast only for the regime. Although

the authority of the government is thereby increased, the elector

draws material advantages from his vote, for the government,

officially relying on the people, will commit itself to great efforts in

their behalf.



There can be no doubt that this kind of democratization leads to

a certain improvement in the lot of the people. But it is an improve-

ment brought about not by the people themselves, who are mere

servitors, but by technique, to the degree and according to the con-

ception of life dictated by technique.



It is possible to envisage the democratic effect of technique in

another perspective, that of consumption. It is currently argued

that technique eliminates social privileges and suppresses pre-

existing social distinctions (although we must recognize that it

establishes certain others in their stead). The Italian economist



The Technological Society	(211



Bertolino gives a good example of this argument in his study of

standardization. Standardization produces certain democratic ef-

fects, according to this economist, for two reasons. First, it reduces

prices; consequently consumption is increased, welfare is more

widely distributed, and living standards are equalized. Second, it

reduces the types of available merchandise; there is less diversity

on the market and choice is limited. These two factors tend toward

democratic equalization. The search for what is “distinctive,” which

is based on a diversity of economic powers, is rendered impossible.

Hence, technique should operate in the direction of democracy.



This argument represents exactly the same attitude as that of a

Henry Ford driven by democratic sentiment to mass-produce auto-

mobiles so that everyone might benefit from this luxury article.

But the mass production of automobiles required the employment

of tens of thousands of workers on the assembly line. Bertolino

passes very lightly over the disadvantages thus occasioned, but

we must pay close attention to them. For example, there is the

danger of unemployment. In case of substantial unemployment,

there is no increase in the public welfare even though prices de-

cline. Bertolino's argument does not seem to me to be decisive.



No more decisive is the argument that technique produces social

equality. To argue, as Mumford does, that social equality exists be-

cause the poor man's electric light is identical with the rich man’s,

whereas in the middle ages an enormous difference existed be-

tween a pitch pine torch and a luxurious candle, is to risk proving

the exact opposite of what was intended. The life of the lord of the

manor was in many ways closer to that of a serf than the life of a

modem industrialist is to that of a worker. The serf and the lord

shared the same nourishment and the same discomfort. There is

certainly at least as much difference between the poor man's

cheap radio and the rich man's Telefunken, or between a motor

scooter and a Chrysler, as between the pine torch and the candle.

We could adduce an endless number of such comparisons.



The question may be asked: what is the price we must pay for

standardization? Bertolino indicates this price very clearly. In

the first place, it is essential that cost reduction not be expressed in

wage reduction or unemployment. The state must intervene to see

to this. In the second place, cost reduction must be translated into

reduction in sales price. The state must enforce obligatory reduc-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



212)



tions in sales prices. In the third place, standardization must be

applied in its totality; it must not be merely of limited effect It

must be applied to a whole industry, and if the industry is suffi-

ciently important this will inevitably lead to the standardization of

related and complementary industries. Here again the state must

intervene with either persuasive or coercive measures.



It is already clear that standardization, as a “democratic” effect,

implies extremely authoritative state action, extensive controls, a

more and more forced centralization, and a pronouncedly undemo-

cratic state of mind. Moreover, one cannot fail to be somewhat sur-

prised to learn that the reduction of “types” is a democratic process.

Bertolino says that this reduction leads sometimes to a single type

and, one must suppose, the consequent nullification of choice. But

until now it has seemed that the very essence of democracy was

precisely the choice among several solutions, several types, several

doctrines, and that, moreover, this choice was left freely to the

people. The exercise of democracy was the exercise of choice.

Where there is no longer any choice, dictatorship exists.



But we must analyze this notion of choice further. We often say:

“It is not democratic that certain persons are excluded by poverty

from certain blessings, which deprives them of any possibility of

choice. If we extend well-being by standardization, we will im-

prove the democratic conditions of the poor.” Unfortunately, this

is not the case. If we admit the fact (which is certainly true) that

the absence of choice occasioned by poverty is antidemocratic, it is

not by removing the more or less great freedom of choice—which

the majority still possess—that we will have democracy. In all coun-

tries the majority still have some choice, and to take this away from

them is to consecrate the opposite of democracy. Bertolino is aware

of this: he attempts to compensate for his risky assertion in two

ways. First, he tells us that standardization must be accompanied

by inquiry into human tastes and desires, a procedure which will

reintroduce personal choice within standardization, so to speak.

The proposal appears to be completely utopian. Standardization

implies a certain investment of funds over long periods. But, clearly,

these investments will never be seriously questioned just because

the public taste changes. Furthermore, technical development fol-

lows its own proper laws, not the tastes of the public. It was not the

public which demanded air travel and television. Technical prog-



The Technological Society	(213



ress created these things, and they were technically diffused and

imposed on the public. The mechanism of standardization is identi-

cal with that of every technique.



Second, Bertolino supposes standardization to be democratic in-

sofar as it represents the conviction of the individuals who accept

it. It is not sufficient that it be egalitarian in fact. It must be accom-

panied by the popular consciousness that an egalitarian situation

and a more complete equality are being realized through its agency

and that the people are thus making progress toward a social de-

mocracy. If a regime is sanctioned by the people, it can indeed be

maintained that it is democratic. But, of course, that is precisely

what Hitler said of his regime. We must not lose sight of the fact

that today popular support can be secured with great ease by

means of certain precise techniques. But this point does not matter

much here. What is important is the fact that Bertolino’s desire to

show at any price that technique is democratic leads to a strange

conception of democracy. We may best illustrate this by means of

two quotations: “Democracy is the adhesion of each citizen individ-

ually to the opinion of the majority. This majority opinion becomes

an irrefragable and indisputable line of conduct. The individual

is duty bound to look upon the line (economic or political) dictated

by the majority as the best for society. The individual becomes

democratic in this way. . . ." “Democracy consists in the practice

of regarding and using certain goods in a common way. Democracy

supposes that the individual transcends himself in order to realize

social values with the others, and in the same way as the others.’*

These textual citations recall some strange speeches we have

heard. The transition of the majority to a condition of unanimity

through the adhesion of the individual, who renounces his in-

dividuality to meld with the collectivity, is precisely the transition

from democracy to dictatorship. It is true that standardization

demands this kind of democracy and that it could not be reconciled

with any other democratic form. But democracy in this case is

only a name superimposed on the reality of dictatorship. Whatever

aspects of economic technique we examine, we always find this

opposition between technique and democracy.



The conflict between technique and democracy appears clearly

in Soviet planning. The Soviets maintain that the Five-Year Plan

(in its second phase) moves from the base to the summit, and that



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



214)



the decision of the base is decisive. However, the following ques-

tion cannot be avoided: since technicians establish both norms and

details, how is it possible to reconcile production directives, which

originate at the summit, with the desires of the workers* cells at

the base? Soviet studies maintain that this antinomy can be re-

solved by so-called “production conferences.** But what we wit-

ness in fact is a technical centralization of wages and norms. Par-

ticularly instructive and worthy of note is the history of the plan

of 1955. Khrushchev, in denouncing the errors of Stalin, declared

that until then planning had been “bureaucratic,” “authoritarian,**

“based on mere statistics*’—and, moreover, that the plan of 1950

had been fulfilled by only 30 per cent of enterprises. He said that it

was necessary to democratize the plan because the “active partici-

pation of the workers was indispensable. . . .** What, in fact, has

been the result of Khrushchev’s good intentions? (1) The workers

have been given latitude to increase the goals set by the plan, but

not to decrease them; (2) the workers have had freedom to study

ways and means to obtain maximum productivity; (3) a propa-

ganda campaign for increasing productivity has been launched

which has turned out to be the most intensive since the original

introduction of five-year plans. In this campaign the slogan is re-

peated ceaselessly: “The State Plan is the law for every enterprise.”

Democratic freedom is clearly discernible in all this!



The decisive point in the development of these “production con-

ferences” is the necessity of technical progress, which may not be

held back by the desires of the workers.3 A workers* committee can-

not regulate the complexity of technical problems. Moreover, a

view of the whole (which the worker certainly cannot have) is

necessary in order to unify wages and norms on the plane of the

macroeconomy. Without this, social inequality and economic dis-

equilibration would be inevitable. Along the same line, a stringent

control of production tempos and distribution of revenues is man-

datory—whatever the efficiency of the plan.



All this leads, both for the elaboration of the plan and for its

execution, to the primacy of technical demands imposed authorita-

tively on all democratic orientations. All that is demanded of the

man who carries out the plan is that he adapt himself to its norms



See Kerblay’s Les Normes dans VSconomie sovietique.



The Technological Society	(215



and that he find a stimulus to his productivity in the overfulfil-

ment of these norms. All that can be conceded to him is sufficient

time to adapt himself to the norms. To save face, there is endless

talk about psychological climate, environment, and socialist rivalry.

(We shall study this point in detail in the last chapter.) It suffices,

for the present, to make the following comparison: a soldier who

takes part in an attack because he is forced to do so and a soldier

who is moved by patriotic enthusiasm do not share the same psy-

chological climate. But both bring themselves to kill in the same

way. As far as efficiency and collective results are concerned, psy-

chological methods have been discovered and elaborated which

give the first soldier a belligerence equivalent to the patriotic ardor

of the second. Democracy has nothing to do with the matter.



Democracy did not enter either into the theorem (conceded by

the majority of economists) that full employment, which is neces-

sary to the sound development of economic technique, demands an

authoritarian method of worker placement. As Fourastie indicates,

technique implies a transformation that makes “production due to

human labor the very foundation of social progress; so that no social

progress can occur without transference of the working popula-

tion.” But where is the democratic element in displacing the

human being from his familiar surroundings, separating him from

his traditions and from his human and geographic milieu? I know

that the uprooting of human beings counts for little in respect to

economic law and that where economic necessity exists (for ex-

ample, in the struggle against unemployment) all other human

needs are unimportant and must vanish. I am, moreover, cognizant

of the seeming truth that where there is nothing to eat there is no

longer a stable milieu. This new version of the primum vivere in a

materialist form is only an apparent truth. But even if it were

true, we would have to say then that the human being is con-

strained by economic necessity, and this is the exact opposite of

democracy.



This method presupposes the destruction of our social structures

and, in reality, deprives a civilization of any chance to give itself

form. The primary element in any civilization is a stable relation

between man and his environment. When man becomes the play-

thing of abstract decisions, a civilization can no longer be created.

Here we have, on the economic plane, the same effect of technique



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



216)



which we previously studied in a more general way. Man indeed

participates in the economy, but technique causes him to participate

not as a man but as a thing.



It is in the realm of economic technique that we experience most

clearly the great and dramatic process of modem times, in which

both chance and natural laws are transformed into decisions of

accountants, rules of planning, and decrees of the state. It is exactly

at this point that technique begins to be concerned with natural

fact—with the fact of total human behavior, with man's spontane-

ous obedience to so-called sociological currents, with his conformity

to certain general types, with his responses (almost everywhere the

same) to given stimuli. Whether the question is one of understand-

ing public opinion, or of stochastics, or of statistics as a whole, the

technical starting point is always the human behavior of the major-

ity. From this behavior, technique draws a number of consequences

and modes of action, erecting on it the system into which it will

necessarily insert itself. Moreover, it makes this behavior obliga-

tory. It allows certain minor modifications (we shall not concern

ourselves with the problem of aberrants), but its real problem is to

transform a law spontaneously obeyed into a law made con-

sciously obligatory. In no other domain is this procedure of tech-

nique as clear-cut as in the present forward movement of the econ-

omy. The effects of technique in other areas are not as evident; for

example, the effects of “human techniques” such as propaganda

have not yet been rendered obligatory to the same degree as tech-

nique in the economic field.



Thus, economic techniques, despite their still rudimentary na-

ture (often more pronounced in this respect than mechanical, psy-

or judicial techniques), ricvcrtlickos express better than

any others the transition, implied by every technique, from the

natural to the artificial. It is not that economic techniques are better

developed than the others, but that here, more than elsewhere, the

artificial evolves from the natural.



Every technique tends, more or less, to constrain nature; accord-

ingly, the artificial is opposed to the natural. There is a struggle,

but whether it be expressed in terms of man against nature or in

terms of the conflict of systems, the desideratum is a mastery that

excludes, eliminates, and replaces the natural. Thus, for example.



The Technological Society	(21 7



the directed and planned economy replaces liberalism. But we

note in this domain another more subtle, integrative movement.

Economic technique tends less to eliminate the natural than to inte-

grate it. (In this sense it approaches the mode of action of physical

techniques. And Francois Perroux's criticism of planning, relative

to its “lack of rationality,” rests on the fact that planning suppresses

the free mechanism of the economy instead of adhering to it and

interpreting it. The latter, for Perroux, should be the ideal of eco-

nomic technique.)



But when the natural is integrated, it ceases to be natural. It be-

comes part of the technical ensemble. It is an element of the mecha-

nism, an element which must play its role, and no more. The role

may be plotted in advance. Even when, as in the case of servo-

mechanisms, the improvement of technique introduces unforeseen

elements and leaves a large part of the operation in the realm of

the natural, it is nonetheless integrated.



I will be asked whether there is anything evil in this integration.

I make no value judgments; I merely note that the human being

who acts on his own personal decisions, following what is in essence

a common tendency, a sociological current, acts freely, but that the

same tendency, once integrated into a system, becomes essen-

tially and expressly obligatory.



It might be asked whether man had not lost his freedom even be-

fore this integration, since he was obeying an already existing al-

though hidden imperative, now revealed by modem techniques.

Is man more constrained than formerly merely because this impera-

tive is recognized and written down in textbooks? This does not

seem clearly evident. Even without reference to the danger rep-

resented by monopoly of the secrets of our actions on the part of a

few (and it is always the few who succeed in gaining control of the

instruments of technique), the simple act of writing it down

changes human obligation. In the sociological and economic world,

the result is comparable to the long-recognized transition from

morals to law. There, too, sanctions appear to have been decisive.

What is the sanction against violating the moral law, or refusing

to follow a sociological tendency, or disobeying natural economic

law? And what is the sanction against a challenge of the law of the

state and the plan? Is not the difference clear? What is at stake

here is all of man's liberty, the liberty to take chances, even to



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



2 2$)



gamble with the death penalty. We see in this loss of liberty the

downward path into which technique is leading us.



Economic Man



Let us not overdramatize; it is not the goal of the technical move-

ment to drive men to the death penalty. Happily, its goal is more

subtle. The death penalty is only a straw, the existence of which

testifies to the fact that technique is in a transitory phase.



The transformation of natural law into technical law is accom-

panied by the shaping of the human being; he is adapted and made

to harmonize w ith what is to be. Social individualism corresponded

to economic liberalism. The economic man corresponds to the

planned economy.



I am aware that economic man was a creation of the liberal

period and the first economic doctrinaires, but the question is to

understand the problem. The term economic man generally re-

ferred to a purely theoretical concept. For the liberals, economic

man was an abstraction created to satisfy the demands of economic

inquiry. The conception was a working hypothesis. It was framed

by omitting certain human characteristics, which man undeniably

possesses in order to reduce him to his economic aspect of producer

and consumer. The abstraction corresponded to a complete anthro-

pology, current at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which

can only be characterized as dichotomous.



This conception of man has had a changing history. The studies

of Jean Merigot on economic man undertook to demonstrate that,

in terms of the doctrine and economic theory of the present, this

abstract simplification is no longer admissible, for two reasons.

First, the human being is a whole and this whole changes in the

very act of being analyzed; and second, economic phenomena act

and react correctively to the totality of the human being. Conse-

quently, Merigot asserts, it is impossible to be satisfied with this

one-sided view. But all this remains on a purely intellectual plane

and the ‘"progress” he describes is to be found only in textbooks of

political economy. The great satisfaction manifested by certain au-

thors that the homo economicus is dead remains purely theoretical.



I should like for my part to note another set of developments.



The Technological Society	(219



Technique, and especially economic technique, does not en-

counter man in textbooks but in the flesh. One of the facts which

seems to me to dominate the present epoch is that the further eco-

nomic technique develops, the more it makes real the abstract con-

ception of the economic man. What was merely hypothesis tends to

become reality incarnate. The human being is changing slowly un-

der the pressure of the economic milieu; he is in process of becom-

ing the uncomplicated being the liberal economist constructed. The

transition of the purely theoretical image to its incarnation is what

concerns us here. It is occurring at a time when the theoretical

economist is beginning to take account of the real complexity of

man, a complexity which, however, man is in process of losing (if

he has not already lost it altogether). The result is that the modern

economist still runs the risk of theorizing about an abstraction be-

cause he is speaking either of a man philosophically conceived

or of some historical and traditional image. He is not speaking of the

man of today, the man we do not dare to recognize because we can-

not bear to find in him our own faces or to meet in him the prefigur-

ing of our own destiny.



The economic man, that reduced schema of economic activity,

was formulated in the second half of the nineteenth century by a

twofold movement. The first was the absorption, to a greater and

greater extent, of the entire man in the economic network. The

second was the devaluation of all human activities and tendencies

other than the economic. Thence arose the validation of the pro-

ducing-consuming part of man, while all his other facets were grad-

ually erased. This reduction of man is the first movement to come

to completion under the reign of the triumphant bourgeoisie. It is

hardly necessary at this point, by way of explanation, to recall the

predominant importance that money assumed during this period.

Everything happened through its agency, in the economic and

social structure, in the business world, in private life. Nothing hap-

pened without money; everything happened by means of it. All

values were reduced to money values, not only by the theoreticians

but by practice. The only important human occupation seemed to

be to make money. And this became, in fact, the symbol of human

submission to economies, an internal submission more serious than

the external. For primitive man, hunting likewise represented eco-

nomic submission, but this submission was more a magical and



2 20)	TECHNIQUE	AND ECONOMY



virile act The bourgeois domination of the nineteenth century was a

rational domination. It excluded all romantic enthusiasm. It sought

not paradise but temporal power, and marveling at what had come

to pass, it took the newly discovered economic forces as its instru-

ments of choice. But to use these instruments meant submission to

them. The bourgeoisie itself submitted and compelled everyone

else to submit. The world was divided into two classes: those who

created the economy and amassed its rewards, and those who sub-

mitted to it and produced its riches. Both classes were possessed by

it. The bourgeoisie, in a two-pronged attack, constructed an eco-

nomic morality which exhausted the totality of its values and sub-

ordinated men to economic power. A new spiritual situation was

created that was ultimately destined to make the new bourgeois

morality collapse, leaving intact the primacy of the economic.



The bourgeois morality was and is primarily a morality of work

and of metier. Work purifies, ennobles; it is a virtue and a remedy.

Work is the only thing that makes life worthwhile; it replaces God

and the life of the spirit. More precisely, it identifies God with

work: success becomes a blessing. God expresses his satisfaction by

distributing money to those who have worked well. Before this

first of all virtues, the others fade into obscurity. If laziness was

the mother of all the vices, work was the father of all the virtues.

This attitude was carried so far that bourgeois civilization neglected

every virtue but work.



It is understandable that for the adult bourgeois the only im-

portant thing became the exercise of a metier, and for the youth,

the choice of an occupation and preparation for it. A kind of eco-

nomic predestination was established in the great families. Human

destiny seemed to revolve about the making of money or the fail-

ure to make it. Such was, and is, the viewpoint of the bourgeois.



For the proletariat the result was alienation, which likewise rep-

resented the grip of the economic on the human being. In the pro-

letariat, we see human beings emptied of all human content and

real substance, and possessed by economic power. The proletarian

was alienated not only because he was the servant of the bourgeois

but because he became a stranger to the human condition, a sort of

automaton filled with economic machinery and worked by an eco-

nomic switch. But human nature cannot long tolerate such a condi-

tion. In creating it, the bourgeoisie signed the death warrant of its



The Technological Society	(221



own system. The spiritual situation of alienated man implies revo-

lution, and his subordination without hope demanded the creation

of the revolutionary myth. It might be thought that the primacy of

the economy over man (or, rather, the possession of man by the

economy) would have come into question. But unfortunately, the

real, not the idealized, proletarian has concentrated entirely on

ousting the bourgeoisie and making money. The proletarian instru-

ment for winning this revolution is the labor union. And the union

subordinates its members even more closely to the economic func-

tion in the process of satisfying their revolutionary will and ex-

hausting their will with regard to purely economic objects.



The bourgeois himself is losing ground, but his system and his

conception of the human being is gaining. For the proletariat, as

for the bourgeoisie, man is only a machine for production and

consumption. He is under obligation to produce. He is under the

same obligation to consume. He must absorb what the economy

offers him. Indeed, in the face of a historically unparalleled con-

sumption of goods, it is ridiculous to explain crises of overproduc-

tion as crises of underconsumption.



The counterpart of the necessary reduction of human life to

working is its reduction to gorging. If man does not already have

certain needs, they must be created. The important concern is not

the psychic and mental structure of the human being but the unin-

terrupted flow of any and all goods which invention allows the

economy to produce. Whence the measureless trituration of the

human soul, the true issue of which is propaganda. And propa-

ganda, reduced to advertising, relates happiness and a meaningful

life to consumption. He who has money is the slave of the money he

has. He who has it not is the slave of a mad desire to get it. The first

and great law is consumption. Nothing but this imperative has any

value in such a life.



This summary description enables us to grasp quickly the sub-

jective and incoherent way in which the human being tends to per-

mit himself to be reduced to the two closely related variables of

the economic man. All other dimensions are excluded in this ideal-

ized concept. Money is the principal thing; culture, art, spirit, mo-

rality are jokes and are not to be taken seriously. On this point, there

is once again full agreement between the bourgeoisie and the Com-

munists.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



222 )



The phenomenon we witness here is the birth in reality of the

economic man the classical economists postulated. Man is not essen-

tially homo economicus. But the concept is relatively simple; and

the pressure of economic events, greater than ever before, has

made it necessary to put man through this rolling-mill in order to

obtain the indispensable material substratum. The operation has

not always been easy. Sometimes the machine has gotten stuck.

The bourgeoisie did not succeed entirely in eliminating the life of

the spirit. In the working class, a true spiritual life developed about

the turn of the century. Literature with Rimbaud and painting

with Van Gogh were enormously attractive in comparison with the

rolling-mill. Man remained, if not whole, at least dissatisfied with

his castration, the more so as the promises which had been made

were not kept and economic crises continually endangered the

new blessings.



The second phase of this development was the attempt of the

human being to find spiritual satisfaction within the economic

sphere itself. Karl Marx carried out the encircling maneuver, taking

over from the bourgeoisie and continuing its work. On the plane

of the human and of spiritual life, Marx was—in a deep and not

merely formal sense—a faithful representative of bourgeois

thought. He did not represent the official thought of the bour-

geoisie in the manner of Thiers or Guizot. But he did represent the

current thought of the average man, which ideologically was ma-

terialistic and in practice was even more so Marx sought to make

a going concern of what, he was convinced, the bourgeoisie was in

the process of losing. To the spiritual force of the emergent prole-

tariat, he added economic force. He integrated the revolution, as

well as all life, into the economic world. He consecrated, theoreti-

cally and scientifically, the common sentiment of all the men of his

century and furnished it with the prestige of dialectic. Proudhon

and Bakunin had placed spiritual forces in rivalry with the eco-

nomic order. Against them, Marx upheld the bourgeois order of the

primacy of the economic, not, however, as a merely historical pri-

macy but as a primacy in human hearts. If economic conditions

are changed, men are changed. Marx made a success of the terrible

confiscation. The spiritual resources released from oppression were

to be put at the service of the oppressor, not, indeed, the bourgeois

oppressor but the economic one. (In my Presence au monde mod-



The Technological Society	(223



erne I have studied in detail this mutation of the revolutionary

idea.)



The second prong of this double movement (the subordination

of men to economic power) did not apply to all men, only to those

who ventured to escape from the subjective creation represented

by the homo economicus. We have been studying how this con-

cept was slowly and circuitously brought into being by certain

modes of thought, social conditions, and doctrines. Its progress was

insidious and sometimes groping. But the individual still had cer-

tain possibilities of escaping it. The escape hole was narrow and

growing narrower. Sometimes escape was found only in dreams.

Poetry is useful to this end. Rostand, for example, faithfully served

to satisfy the homo economicus by giving him an illusion of the

spiritual. And Peguy taught us, not in his writings but in his life,

that the whole man was still possible. In proportion as the milieu

became more restrictive, the economic world approached comple-

tion. It became more and more difficult for anyone to do anything

except work in order to live. But for what? Exclusively for consump-

tion. Leisure was granted to man, but only the leisure of the con-

sumer. Man’s primordial functions of creating, praying, judging

disappeared in the rising tide of material goods. Conditions were

at last ripe for bringing off the decisive operation. Technique com-

pleted its movement of encirclement and put the finishing touch to

the economic man, in accordance with its unchanging procedure

of transforming what is into what ought to be and making out of

mere gropings an irrefutable and simple line. Technique was no

longer a spontaneous movement; it was a concerted action to shape

the economic man it needed.



In order for economic technique (for example, planning) to

succeed, men had to satisfy its requirements. There is no such

thing as technique by and in itself. In its irresistible forward prog-

ress, it forced the human individual, without whom it is nothing,

to accompany it. For this reason economic man, a working hypoth-

esis when economics was only a doctrine, was forced to become

reality when reality became technical. This mutation (which had

been prepared in the manner we have studied) was not completely

a creation of technique, but technique found in it what it required.

Stalin, as well as the liberal economists, considered man as "capi-

tal.” And Jacques Aventur has shown that, from the technical



technique and economy



**4)



point of view, man must be appraised as capital. To recoil before

this conception is merely a sentimental reaction. No efficiency is

possible for economic technique in the absence of exact calculation

of average human production costs and human profit-making abil-

ity. Man is capital, and he must become perfectly adapted to this

role. The actions proposed by technique to educate man for this

role fall into two distinct categories. The first is essentially economic

and does not lead to immediate and direct action on human beings.

The second, however, implies the combination of various special

techniques and their intervention into human life.



In the first category is found the union of the two concepts, pro-

ducer and consumer. Although traditionally a distinction was made

between them, planning brings them together. It is true that man is

thereby restored to a certain unity, but the new reality takes in

everything. All human functions are mobilized in the “production-

consumption” complex. This restoration of unity is, in a certain

sense, a step forward, for it holds that production and consumption

are perfectly adapted to each other and that two correlative and

interdependent functions may no longer be separated, as in liberal

capitalism. But what in one sense restores unity represents in an-

other a circumscribing of the whole human being. To be in tech-

nical equilibrium, man cannot live by any but the technical reality,

and he cannot escape from the social aspect of things which tech-

nique designs for him. And the more his needs are accounted for,

the more he is integrated into the technical matrix. It may seem

paradoxical to hold that man becomes technicized as his needs are

respected. But technique itself teaches him that needs are not in-

dividual, or, put more exactly, that individual needs are negligible.

What technique envisages as needs is social needs as revealed by

statistics. Technique can and will take into consideration only

man’s social requirements. Of course no one denies the existence

of individual needs. But when all human forces are attracted by

the labor of satisfying social needs, when these forces include edu-

cation, orientation, proper environment, and hygiene, when at the

same time the goods necessary to the satisfaction of social needs

are numerous and easy to come by while those satisfying individ-

ual needs are rare and hard to find, it is pure utopian abstraction to

say that nothing prevents the existence of individual needs. On the

contrary, human nature does. Technique entails socialization of



The Technological Society	(22$



needs because it takes only social needs into account. This explains

why technical research is more and more compelled to act on the

basis of objective criteria of value. The measure of value, which has

been made objective, better integrates man into his economic con-

dition. A hierarchy can better be established when precise rules

are,specified which are based on the economic value of the human

being.



A second category of technical actions that are addressed di-

rectly to man and modify him attests strongly to what has just been

said. It is necessary to act upon the individual in his capacity of

producer so as to make him contribute his small share in carrying

out the plan—that part of the operation, negligible in itself but in-

dispensable to the whole, which technique has assigned to him, The

operations of hundreds of workers depend with mathematical rigor

on the work done by a single individual. The joint responsibility of

all the workers subject to the same technique is rigorous. In the

name of this common responsibility, it is binding on every worker

to execute his task strictly with the kind of enthusiasm that calls for

personal devotion. The technical means for compelling this devo-

tion are well known, from human-relations techniques to the differ-

ent kinds of propaganda: shock brigades, Stakhanovism, socialist

rivalry, and so on. The study of these technical means lies outside

our study of the economic sphere. But it may be noted in passing

that they are closely connected with the technique of economics,

which cannot be realized without them.



It is likewise possible to exert pressure upon the individual in

his capacity of consumer. Roughly speaking, the problem here

is to modify human needs in accordance with the requirements of

planning. The constraints that operate on man as consumer are not

as sharp and brutal as those which operate on him as producer. As I

have shown, the “spontaneous” creation of social needs among al-

most all men in our time justifies the application of economic tech-

nique. But although planning must satisfy both needs and the tech-

nical data, it is not at all certain that the correspondence between

the two will be perfect. What is required then is a small adjust-

ment. After all, only social needs are in question here; there is small

cause for us individualists to become upset. A sociological current

is to be modified, but not the conscience of the individual. More-

over, should not the means to this end reassure us? The more tech-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



226 )



niques develop, the more unobtrusive they become. The use of the

police, or even more radical means such as famine, as in the first

years of the Soviet Union, shows a certain technical deficiency and

a want of tact.



The necessary adjustments are effected through price manipu-

lation and public relations. (Psychoanalysis has shown the malle-

ability of needs under the influence of public relations.) The same

influences are here at work on social needs as were operative in the

liberal economy. The only difference lies in the orientation of these

means and in the person who uses them. Scientific, willed utiliza-

tion systematically and definitely creates the economic man, who

ultimately comes to be nothing more than the “needs-yield com-

plex.” But the human being no longer feels any particular distress

at this, because the almost magical results of economic technique

come from perfect adjustment. The man who suffered under capi-

talism because of its spasmodic fits and starts and its spiritual un-

satisfactoriness, the individuals who suffered under a Communist

regime because of fear and restraint, find themselves released from

suffering by this adaptation, when in either regime technique as-

sumes primacy. In both situations, mans spiritual needs are par-

tially gratified by propaganda and, in both, technique demands

active participation of him. It even requires of him that he become

intelligent, the better to serve the organization and the machine.

The stage in which the human being was a mere slave of the me-

chanical tyrant has been passed. When man himself becomes a

machine, he attains to the marvelous freedom of unconsciousness,

the freedom of the machine itself. A spiritual and moral life is re-

quired of him because the machine has need of such a life: no

technique is possible with amoral and asocial men. Man feels him-

self to be responsible, but he is not. He does not feel himself an ob-

ject, but he is. He has been so well assimilated to the economic

world, so well adjusted to it by being reduced to the homo economi-

cus, in short, so well conditioned, that the appearance of personal

life becomes for him the reality of personal life.



Thus, the development of economic techniques does not formally

destroy the spiritual, but rather subordinates it to the realization of

the Great Design. Henceforth, there is no more need for the hy-

pothesis of the economic man. The whole of man's life has be-

come a function of economic technique. In its realization, technique



The Technological Society	(227



itself has far transcended the timid hypotheses of the classical

economists. Man knows himself to be more and more free, for

technique has eliminated all natural forces and in this way has

given him the sense of being master of his fate. The new man being

created before our very eyes, correctly tailored to enter into the

artificial paradise, the detailed and necessary product of the means

which he ordains for himself—that man is I,



CHAPTER



M



TECHNIQUE

AND THE

STATE



The ponderous economic organization described in the preceding

chapter requires the formation of a political technique. Nothing

else could administer the decisions of economic nolicv. T am not



X	s



speaking here merely of economic planning, to which the state

alone can give a direction and a foundation. The whole of eco-

nomic technique is confronted by the following dilemma: either it

receives from the state that sanction which alone can render it

efficacious, or it must remain a mere abstraction, an offer without

a taker. But who believes that such a noble edifice can remain an

abstraction? There is, in any case, one agency which asks nothing

better than to intervene: the state. But then the state itself will be-

come technique.



The Technological Society



(229



The States Encounters with Technique



Ancient Techniques. The state has always exploited techniques to

a greater or lesser degree. This is not new. But the techniques of

the state, corresponding to the limited functions of the state, were

hitherto encountered only in limited domains. Let us consider

briefly the techniques employed by the state on the eve of the

French Revolution.



There was, first of all, a military technique. This technique rep-

resented even then a very advanced system. It had undergone a

great development in many respects and it involved a loosening of

the traditional rigidities. There had been much improvement, for

example, in the art of fortification and, above all, in tactics. Logis-

tics, recruitment, and military hospitals had all experienced im-

provement. In my Memoire sur le recrutement, I have shown that

the study of Le Tellier and Louvois on this subject fails because

they confuse civil and military administration.



In logistics and related fields, France had experienced the high-

est development. Tactics made an extraordinary leap forward in

the eighteenth century and became a technique of extreme preci-

sion under Frederick the Great. According to Frederick's concep-

tion, battles were to be won through the execution of certain

movements, with a minimum of combat and with minimal use of

soldiers. Skill in position and movement would necessarily lead

the enemy to surrender. According to Guglielmo Ferrero, economy

of means and an almost guaranteed success were characteristics

of this technique—already far advanced.



The French Revolution, however, brought about a decisive re-

gression in tactical technique through its introduction of popular

armies and mass levies of soldiers. With the Revolution, tactics

sank little by little into obscurity. Military strategy and its related

services developed and gave rise to innumerable techniques; but

tactical science remained inert. Thus, in modern wars enormous

masses of human and material means are employed, and, more

often than not, are sacrificed to a dubious outcome. To offset this,

medical and supply services have at their disposal a vast apparatus



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



230)



that operates with great efficiency as a result of technical improve-

ments. (The American Army in 1944 was the most remarkable

example of this.) Epidemics, for instance—hitherto the universal

accompaniment of war—claimed no victims in the last two wars

(with the exception of the year 1918-19). Military technique,

taken as a whole and in its various forms, represents a very old

technique which at the present is executed entirely by the state

and devised by its employees.



A financial technique, corresponding to the financial function,

had likewise evolved and by the time of the Revolution was al-

ready of great age and comparatively highly developed. In fact, of

all techniques, financial technique had evolved most rapidly; it had

already arrived at a stage at which no further improvement was

thought necessary. Here, too, the state was the prime mover.

Philip IV had initiated a number of financial techniques which

were completed between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries.

Among Philip’s innovations were double-entry bookkeeping, budg-

etary management and forecasting, separation of the services of

the Budget and the Treasury, and the theory of loan management.



The state, however, did not play an exclusive role in matters re-

lating to financial techniques. There were financiers who were also

merchants and who used for their own ends a merchandising tech-

nique they helped to develop. But although the role of the state

was not exclusive, it was decisive: it was in connection with the

state that these techniques reached their apex. After the progress

that had already been made, the system seemed scarcely suscepti-

ble of further development. Napoleon’s reforms were limited to

certain trivial alterations and to restoring certain features which

had fallen into disorder. By and large, financial technique remained

what it had been. It is true that its objects (taxes) and its organs

(administrations) were profoundly perturbed, but these two ele-

ments did not, properly speaking, represent financial technique,

and the technique itself continued to give satisfaction up to the

beginning of the present century, when a rational and general

systematization began to penetrate this domain. But the technique

itself was still so well articulated that it was and is very difficult to

change. Everyone recognizes that it no longer squares with other

techniques and that its influence is retardatory. But its very power

of resistance shows the excellence of its mechanism. There are two



The Technological Society	(231



necessary conditions for the initiation of a real change; the integra-

tion of the finances into the general economy, and the transforma-

tion of the concept of public finance. These are the problems that

confront us at the moment.



The functioning of justice very rapidly produced a judicial

technique, less certain and rigid than the financial technique be-

cause ideological and human factors have always played an im-

portant role in it. For this reason, judicial technique was never

completely able to take over the law as a whole. A certain conflict

continued, after the Roman era, between justice and technique and,

in the period under consideration, this conflict seems to have be-

come fixed. I shall treat this problem in all its complexity later on.



An administrative technique corresponded to the administrative

function. But this technique was much less clearly defined than

the others I have enumerated. As in the relation between law and

judicial technique, administrative technique represented an un-

certain area because of the human element. The state never pos-

sessed the means, during the course of history, to convert its wishes

into techniques, that is, to make them efficient. Louis XIV assumed

the tone of an absolute monarch, but he did not possess the practical

means to make his subjects obey his will in any well defined way.

He had neither police nor administrative cadres. All he could do

was coerce a few persons and make examples of them. However,

terror is only exceptionally a technical means. The whole French

administrative system was based on mere empiricism. Napoleon

was able to systematize the administration in a rational way and to

create a technical organ. But there were still no means for securing

efficient action. It is difficult to see how there could have been, in

the absence of both material substratum and method. A very simple

example of the material substratum is the means of communication.

It was scarcely possible to have a technicized administration when

orders from the central administration in Paris took at least eight

days to reach Marseille. Every kind of local latitude was encour-

aged by such delay. As to method, it was not known how the ad-

ministration ought to act with respect to the persons administered.

Only constraint by force was recognized, and even that was merely

empirical. Likewise, the choice of the persons upon whom con-

straint was to operate was not made with any rational rigor.



Much more technical rules of organization and administrative



technique and the state



232)



action began to appear toward the end of the nineteenth century;

they formed the content of administrative law. The concepts of

public function, of centralization and decentralization, and so on,

began to assume more precise outlines. But these concepts still

represented a mere theory. Out of it, however, emerged the tech-

nical improvements necessitated by the very existence of great

masses of people. But the actions dictated by this theory still

offered a very great latitude of choice. There was no certainty as

to which method was really the most efficient because experimenta-

tion was possible only on a very limited scale. In this theoretic

domain, all choices and all arguments were still possible. Ad-

ministrative law was still not radically and indisputably the best

system. It may be said, therefore, that at the beginning of the

twentieth century administrative technique did not yet exist.



Finally, the state fulfilled a political function, a function of

general direction into which all the others were combined and

which addressed itself to foreign as well as to domestic affairs.

But on the eve of the Revolution this political function was in its

infancy. There was no political technique of any sort; “secret di-

plomacy” could not possibly have been called a technique. Policy

was delivered over to the whims of a Minister of the Interior, or an

ambassador, or a Chamber of Deputies, or a dictator. There was

nothing but flair, personal ability, special interest, routine. Political

theories never gave rise to any realistic practical application, only

to bad copies of historical situations and to political circumstances

which had to be endured with fortitude. In spite of the frequent

mention of Machiavelli’s Prince, the truth is that until the beginning

of the twentieth century no one ever drew the technical conse-

quences of that work. What existed, then, was a kind of original

chaos in which the niau of genius always outclassed his adversar-

ies because they never had at their disposal a technique which

sufficed to redress the balance. The beginnings of a political

technique had to await the appearance of Lenin. And even Lenin’s

political technique in many respects had to be based on certain

other techniques which he did not havt at his disposal; for example,

techniques for obtaining scientific knowledge of the masses and

the modes of action applicable to them, techniques of temporal

and spatial co-ordination, techniques of strategy, and social tech-



The Technological Society	( 233



niques on a global scale. All these are only today in the process of

being elaborated.



The most important technical activity of the state remained

completely empirical until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Nevertheless, the state did press into service a certain number of

other techniques which we have already examined. However, the

techniques used by the state had one characteristic in common:

all of them were limited both in their objects and in their means.

They referred to particular questions and did not extend beyond

the framework of the particularities. Moreover, they were merely

co-ordinated and were only sporadically applied. Nevertheless,

there were, in the immense field of state activity, certain technicized

points which offered some degree of permanence. Whatever real

relation these sustained to one another was effected by the organism

common to them all, the state.



New Techniques. The state was fated sooner or later to come into

contact with other methods. Since the end of the eighteenth century

it has gradually encountered all techniques and finally the technical

phenomenon itself. From the political, social, and human points of

view, this conjunction of state and technique is by far the most

important phenomenon of history. It is astonishing to note that no

one, to the best of my knowledge, has emphasized this fact It is

likewise astonishing that we still apply ourselves to the study of

political theories or parties which no longer possess anything but

episodic importance, yet we bypass the technical fact which ex-

plains the totality of modern political events, and which indicates

the general line our society has taken much more surely than some

painful revival of Marx (who was not acquainted with the techni-

cal fact) or some spiritualistic theory. These so-called "explana-

tions” are mere utopias and flourish only as utopias flourish.



This ignorance of the technical phenomenon springs perhaps from

an obdurate traditionalism which causes us always to live in the

past and explain the present without understanding it. Thereby,

our grasp of social events lags by half a century. Or it may spring

from an unconscious repression. We simply will not to see whatever

is too difficult for us to bear or whatever bulks too large for our

understanding. However the case may be, it is striking to note

that such political thinkers as Max Glass interpret the facts of the



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*34>



present by means of concepts that date from the turn of the

century. At best, they talk about “technical barbarism’' without

taking into account that such terms do not represent anything

real and that the term barbarism in this domain can only come out

of the decadent society of 1900. If one quits this kind of tradi-

tionalism, one falls straightway into an extravagant metaphysic,

such as that of the Jesuit Father Teillard de Chardin, which has no

more substance.



We take it, then, that in the present century the state has en-

countered the technical phenomenon in a far different framework

from the traditional. How has this encounter been effected? There

are a multiplicity of causes. We shall not concern ourselves with

general causes such as the diffusion of ideas, demography, national-

ism and colonialism, the influence of finance on the state, and so

on. All these factors are well known and are dealt with in numer-

ous textbooks. We shall apply ourselves here to those causes which

stand in direct relationship to technique.



The first cause is the rapid extension of techniques formerly em-

ployed only by individuals into domains which the state had never

before penetrated. Among these techniques were those of trans-

port, education, aid to the helpless and indigent, and even spiritual

techniques (as represented by the Congregation “de Propaganda

Fide” or the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola). The use of

these techniques had two effects: on the one hand, they produced

clearer and more distinct results so that they attracted the attention

of the state; and on the other, they allowed a considerable exten-

sion of the field of activity to which they were applied. For exam-

ple, they were able to reach the masses of men. But the moment

they proved themselves able to operate efficiently on the masses,

they ceased to be purely private. The state could no longer remain

disinterested.



When instruction was imparted by a few masters on the Pont

des Arts, or in a small number of episcopal colleges, there were

only a handful of students—and de minimis non curat praetor.1 By

the time the technique of organization and pedagogy permitted

the creation of the university, however, the state’s attention was



1 A Roman legal maxim: “The praetor [the state] has no concern for trifles.” (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(	235



inevitably attracted by this much more grandiose phenomenon. It

was impossible for the state not to feel directly concerned, espe-

cially when in the eighteenth century certain ecclesiastics such as

Jean-Baptiste de la Salle aspired to make education free and com-

pulsory by way of a new pedagogy which could be directly ad-

dressed to all children.



Put another way, these techniques, because they were applicable

to the masses, allowed individual persons to transform their sphere

of activity from a private to a public one. These techniques seemed

designed for this very purpose. And to the degree that their in-

fluence increased, they had to come into contact with the state

itself, since they collided with the fundamental principles of state

power. In any case, the private persons who had developed these

techniques gradually ceased to be able to utilize them because

they came to exceed the possibilities of any individual. When ap-

peal was not made to the state, it was necessary, for their exploita-

tion, to set up organisms as vast and powerful as the state itself.

Thus, trusts and corporations were rendered necessary by the

technical apparatus. This occurred even in the absence of the

profit motive, after wealth had become incommensurable with the

individual and therefore abstract. The prime purpose of state or

corporation might even be to rob and despoil the individual by

the exploitation of these techniques. I repeat that it could not have

been otherwise. From a certain degree of development onward,

every technique concerns the collectivity of men.



It would be unthinkable for us today to leave in private hands

really efficient instruments such as atomic energy. In 1949 a report

was presented to the Congress of the United States emphasizing

the fact that the study and production of atomic energy must re-

main in the public domain. It would likewise be unthinkable that

a private citizen have the radio at his disposal in order to unleash

a campaign of agitation on a world scale. In every country the

radio is at least under the supervision of the state, whether it is

under direct state control or in private hands. No matter how

liberal the state may be, it is obliged by the mere fact of technical

advance to extend its powers in every possible way.



The second cause of the interrelation of state and technique is

directly related to the first: the application of techniques is ex-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*3® )



tremely expensive. Whatever realm we survey, we note that it

becomes gradually impossible for personal or familial capital, how-

ever concentrated, to answer technical requirements.



Modern research in nuclear physics implies that the state must

pay the bill. No private person could support the cost of cyclotrons

and their auxiliary apparatus. Once a certain degree of technical

progress has been achieved, continual improvements give rise to

instrumentation so complex and large that the cost price is inacces-

sible to the individual. The present growth of cost price in all

technical domains is unparalleled, even in recent history. The pub-

lic has gained some faint conception of this through the prices of

some of the recently discovered “wonder drugs” such as strepto-

mycin. But it fails to realize the magnitude of the growth of other

cost figures. For example, one hour of flight in a B-17 bomber (com-

parable to the larger commercial passenger aircraft) cost 60,000

francs in 1944. The B-36, which replaced the B-17, cost 400,000

francs per flight hour in 1950. There is a comparable growth in the

cost of the machines themselves. The B-17 cost 120 million francs;

the B-36, 1 billion 600 million. These cost prices, officially recog-

nized in 1951, have been far surpassed. Thus, the prototype of the

B-52 cost, on the day of its commissioning, 40 billion francs. An

analogous growth of cost price applies to all techniques. The prices

indicated are virtually the same for commercial aviation, equipped

with the latest technical improvements. Private companies no

longer exist which are able to support such expense. A blast furnace

for a modern steel plant costs 8 billion francs; a hot rolling-mill,

12 billion; a cable mill, 7 billion. Altogether, a plant capable of

producing a million tons of steel annually requires a primary in-

vestment of 125 billion francs. It is impossible not to appeal to the

state to make up with subventions the insufficient resources of

private enterprise. We have already noted the alternative: the slow-

down of technical progress occasioned by private capitalism. Such

a slowdown would be regarded as intolerable, and could not last

very long.



The problem has nothing to do with debates about “nationaliza-

tion.” No more relevant is the allegation that the state frequently

applies techniques with “less ability” than private enterprise, or that

it “wastes money.” What I am emphasizing here is that the prin-

cipal menace to capitalistic individualism is not some theory or



The Technological Society	(*	37



other, but technical progress. To take another example, it is clear

that, as city-planning techniques develop, they will give rise to

more extended and precise urban research, to urgent reconstruc-

tion plans, and to a new and completely indispensable conception

of the city. It is impossible to go on indefinitely contemplating

these plans on paper; a technique must be applied. The only ques-

tion is: who shall apply it?



Electrical networks may remain for some time independent of

one another. But this situation cannot last when it is found that

independence gives rise to general costs of no inconsiderable

magnitude, difficulties in arranging the courses of the lines, and

even practical difficulties in electrical technique. The interconnec-

tion of electrical networks is demanded by all technical men.

Again, the only question is: who will execute it? And it is immedi-

ately clear that only the state is in a position to do so. The problem

is even more acute when it is a question of the interconnection of

the lines of several nations, not merely the domestic lines of a single

country. (An international European network is already pro-

jected. )



Whatever the area of interest, problems are raised by technology

which demand technical solutions but which are of such magni-

tude that they cannot be solved by private enterprise: for example,

pollution of water supplies and of the urban atmosphere. These

phenomena, which have assumed such proportions that they

threaten the whole of city life, are of purely technical origin. Only

rigorous and authoritarian measures of general control can solve

these problems if they are to be solved at all. That is to say, appeal

to dictatorial state action is indispensable.



These problems all exceed the powers of private individuals.

Technique, once developed to a certain point, poses problems that

only the state can resolve, both from the point of view of finance

and from that of power.



The third cause of the interrelation of state and technique is the

transformation of the role of the state and of its conceptions of its

role. The state takes on increasingly extended and numerous ac-

tivities. It considers itself the ordainer and preceptor of the nation.

It takes charge of the national life and becomes the nation-state.

The phenomenon of the nation-state has appeared as a result of

the coincidence of a variety of circumstances upon which it is



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



238)



useless to insist here. Let us simply note, first, that the state seeks

to organize national life and to govern its various collectivities,

most often because natural communities have disappeared and it is

necessary to create new ones. Second, the state seeks to fashion the

"individualist” society (the role the twentieth century has elected

to play) and to penetrate into men’s private lives on the ground

that they are no longer able materially to manage their own af-

fairs. Finally, all kinds of theories, both socialist and nonsocialist,

are influential; but, whatever their nature, they all appeal to the

state to secure a greater degree of justice and equality. In all these

ways the state assumes functions which were formerly the province

of private groups. And in performing these functions, the state

encounters techniques hitherto employed by individuals.



When, for example, the state takes charge of education, it en-

counters two technical elements originally developed by private

persons: a complete educational organization and a pedagogy. The

state, in taking over any activity, encounters the techniques of that

activity and sees its technical potential augmented thereby. The

augmentation of potential reciprocally brings the state into closer

relation with the technique. Nowhere is this relation clearer than

in the economic field. When the state establishes itself as producer

and consumer, it enters the older domain of exploitation by indi-

viduals. It is confronted with a complete technical system the

broad outlines of which have already been drawn and focused.

But basically the state enters this domain because productive and

economic techniques, the development of which we have already

studied, render such action indispensable. Thus, we have a two-

way street: technical development inevitably brings about state

intervention in the economic world: and, reciDrocallv. when the



a.	J	'



state intervenes it finds a technical apparatus which it develops

further.



The economy, to a greater or lesser degree, conditions the creation

of the nation-state. Alternative explanations—political and intel-

lectual—are given for the creation, let us say, of the Fascist state.

But the most profound cause of this phenomenon was the economic

impasse in which Italy and Germany found themselves. The

nation-state was primarily a response to the cessation of economic

evolution. That there were other causal factors is clear, but we are

seeking to locate the central cause. The problem of the adaptation



The Technological Society	(239



of the whole of society to the economic movement in all its ramifi-

cations is not to be solved by economics alone. It is a technical

problem. The economy, with its enormous productive capacity,

volume of trade, mobilization of society, and economic techniques

which thirst to be applied, is no longer a closed circle, a single

activity among others. It engages the life of the whole society and

of all men in it.



Economic problems are now problems of the whole of society.

The relation between the economy and all other human activities

can no longer be merely empirical. Liberalism sufficed for the

economy of a century and a half ago. Today it has no meaning.

No economic theory is eternally valid; every period demands its

own. The problem of the adaptation of society to economy (and it

is in this sense rather than in the inverse, traditional sense that the

problem must be posed) is a technical problem. That is to say, the

problem has a solution only in a certain arrangement, through

the mediation of the social apparatus and social mechanisms. This

supposes an adaptative intervention having as its object the whole

of society and conscious of end and methods. Only a superior

power, limited by nothing and possessing all instrumentalities, is

in a position to proceed to this adaptation. This is what will bring

about the mobilization of all means by the state; in our day it is

completing the encounter between state and techniques which was

already necessitated by the other factors we have studied.



Private and Public Techniques. The techniques first developed by

individuals and later on encountered by the state present very dif-

ferent characteristics from those of traditional political techniques.

In their origin and development they manifest the following traits:



1)	They are better perfected and better adapted than the

techniques of the state. They represent the inspirations of individu-

als acting out of personal interest or for those higher motives we call

vocation. In either case the individual devotes himself to his task

wholeheartedly and with passion; such a devotion is rarely to be

found among the creators of state techniques. There genuine en-

thusiasm is found only for very limited periods. Thus, the councilors

of Philip IV, the prefects of Napoleon, the Nazi Fiihrer, the

people’s commissars of the Soviet Union alone seem to have been

capable of rivaling the ardor and technical devotion of free workers

who have made technical progress. Isolated individuals working for



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



240)



personal motives seem to display more imagination. When the same

problems are posed simultaneously to the state and to individuals,

the individuals are usually the first to find the correct method and

solution. Whenever it has been of importance to secure acceptance

for some brand of goods, doctrine, product, or action, private per-

sons (businessmen or religious groups) confronted with the same

necessities as the state have tended to respond much more rapidly.

The Church created propaganda; later, private commercial in-

terests created publicity. The state and its propaganda came in a

poor third Even then, it was private persons who applied propa-

ganda long before the great systems of Lenin and Hitler. In France

the Maison de la Presse inaugurated efficient propaganda opera-

tions in 1916. In England, a private organization, The Central

Committee for National Patriotic Organization, performed the

same function. Commercial interests found the most efficient prop-

aganda methods by exploiting the discoveries of psychology and

psychoanalysis.



In the private creation of techniques there is a very great di-

versity of methods. No one acts in accordance with a general

schema. The individual always lives a much more realistic and real

life than a collectivity, especially the state. The individual con-

siders the problem as it really exists in its individuality and, as a

consequence, seeks the method that represents the best solution.

The state, on the other hand, acts on masses of men and on

multiple problems, and it is inevitably drawn to schematize and to

deny the complexity of problems. As a result, it is unable to dis-

cover the technique best adapted to their solution. This is why

techniques created by individuals yield the best output and are

better adapted to their objects, why they are techniques in the

truest sense. We discover the same thing in the following fact:

the individual possesses only limited financial resources and cannot

allow himself the luxury of waste and excess. When he seeks the

solution of a difficulty, expense is a factor. He must find the least

costly mode of action; thus, he is brought around to economy of

means, a characteristic of true technique which we have already

examined. Corroboration of this is found even in domains which

concern the state directly. Thus, the mechanization of state ad-

ministration is a result of experiments made by private banking

houses since 1914 and by German industry since 1926. Only around



The Technological Society	(241



1940 did public administration begin to apply the “new” principles.

The state rarely discovers and applies any true techniques, for the

simple reason that it has too much power and too many financial

resources for its agents to seek out economy of means—the first re*

quirement. Its methods are, generally speaking, ponderous and ex-

pensive and require an enormous apparatus to secure mediocre

results. Its results are obtained, in fact, through the sheer enormity

of die means employed rather than through their technical quality.

(This is evident today in the French insurance industry.) The pri-

vate person, on the other hand, is constrained by pecuniary neces-

sity to develop true techniques. This also applies sometimes in the

case of a poor state. Such was the case in the Third Reich. Another

factor operated in favor of private persons throughout the nine-

teenth century: capitalistic competition. Then techniques had not

yet produced machines and methods exceeding human possibili-

ties; it was therefore mandatory to employ the most efficient tech-

niques so as not to be crushed by the competition. Technical im-

provement usually conferred substantial competitive superiority.

This favored an acceleration of private technical progress right up

to the time when it was no longer possible for the finances of

private entities to keep pace with technical progress.



2)	Techniques elaborated by individuals were the result of

specialization, which operated at first in the scientific domain but

which was introduced into the technical world before long.

During the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries,

specialization was conducive to the development of different tech-

niques along very divergent lines. Every technical branch operated

independently of the others. Few or no relations existed among

them. There was no organ to co-ordinate their efforts. (The situa-

tion was very different with the techniques of the state. Through

the co-ordinating effect of the state’s political function, as we have

noted, these techniques had a certain degree of co-ordination

among themselves.) But it mattered little whether private tech-

niques were or were not co-ordinated, since the majority of them

had as their end money profit, not the improvement of society.

Every individual found his own way to success. This specialization

produced very advanced techniques with which to deal with cir-

cumscribed problems in certain areas but it left large areas barren

and unexplored. This led to the impression, up to about 1930, of



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



242)



a certain incoherence and of an extraordinary inequality of de-

velopment; it also led to the common error, which still persists,

that technique and machine are identical. Undoubtedly it is this

dispersion of technical operations that allows certain writers to

deny that they are dealing with a technical society. These super-

ficial observers do not deny that certain areas of society are affected

by technique; but they assert that inumerable factors are inde-

pendent of it. This is a backward view of things, based on tradi-

tional conceptions of society and completely removed from reality.

But it is true that co-ordination of the different techniques has

still not been completed; and wherever they remain in private

hands they tend to remain specialized and unco-ordinated. How-

ever, technical co-ordination is rapidly being extended, and it is

becoming less and less possible to speak of areas into which tech-

nique has not penetrated.



3)	The techniques created by private individuals, contrary to

those of the state, rarely slacken their pace. They are in constant

forward movement and progressively affect all spheres of human

activity. This has taken place only in the twentieth century, but it

was always of the essence of private activity that its techniques

had expansive power.



We have already studied the step-by-step development of priv-

ate techniques. It must in justice be added that private activity has

also been conducive to technical generalization. When in the past

the state created its techniques, it was satisfied with them as they

were and made no attempt at further progress, although this is no

longer the case today. However, private activity has never wearied

of the struggle, particularly since it has become necessary to exploit

all possibilities in order to survive. The population explosion, for

example, has encouraged the proliferation of private research. Sud-

denly there were too many people. It was impossible to employ all

the new workers, and even industrial production could not absorb

the extra manpower. It became a matter of prime necessity to dis-

cover new industries and to utilize new work forms. Technique

proved to be just the right means for exploring the possibilities.

The extension of the factory system, along with technical applica-

tion in certain new domains, was the (unconscious) means of

employing the surplus workers. Simultaneously, however, it pre-

cipitated crises of unemployment. (The two facts are intimately



The Technological Society	(243



related.) Thus, techniques rapidly came to be employed every-

where to a certain extent. They have taken over not only all work-

ing life but also man’s diversions, which have been transformed into

industrial enterprises. Very soon man himself became the object of

technique, a mere means to the end of profitmaking. Among the

most notable techniques developed and applied in this area are

public relations and human relations, which have as their goal to

associate, adapt, and integrate the human individual into the tech-

nical milieu in such a way that he will not suffer from it.



Private initiative, then, took the decisive step in the application of

techniques to man. State action could never have brought this to

pass. The state was too content with its coercive power to apply

precise techniques.



The Reaction of the State to Techniques. When, as a conse-

quence of the circumstances we have studied, the state comes into

contact with the techniques elaborated by individuals, when it

encounters a private sphere of action which techniques have trans-

formed into a sphere of public interest, it reacts by taking over this

sphere as well as the techniques which brought about the mutation.



Sometimes the state enters a field of action for very different

reasons than the ones I have so far mentioned. The state will adopt

techniques simply because it finds them already functioning. How-

ever evident this fact may be, it is necessary to emphasize it; to

neglect it is to occasion many misunderstandings. The state will

not act otherwise than as individuals have already acted. Insurance

companies have developed insurance techniques; when these com-

panies are nationalized, the state retains the old mechanism. After

all, there are only a limited number of ways of using actuaries or

establishing a police force. When an automobile manufacturing

enterprise passes under state control, the tempo of the operations

and the assembly line are not modified. This is particularly clear

with regard to material techniques, because techniques seem to us

the more constraining the more they are material. But, in fact, im-

material techniques display exactly the same characteristics.



When the French Revolution tried to suppress the systems of edu-

cation and of charities that the old regime had established through

the efforts of private persons, the attempts miscarried lamentably.

The effort to create a system of public assistance (hospitals and

homes for the elderly, for abandoned children, and for the poor)



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*44)



and a system of state education was a major enterprise of the Con-

vention and of the Constituent Assembly. But these systems were

failures. Excessive systematization and theoretical precision some-

times represent the exact opposite of a good technique. In these

instances, the state encountered an organization which was indeed

imperfect but which was, after the technical improvements of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, very nearly sufficient. Con-

fronted by these institutions, the state, for theoretical reasons, set

out to destroy and to re-create on paper systems of education and

of public assistance which corresponded to the theoretical deci-

sions and doctrines of the Convention, although they turned out to

be neither efficient nor technically sound. (In the realm of educa-

tion, the state sought to break the power of the Church and estab-

lish a wholly laicized system. In public assistance, the state set the

concept of justice in opposition to that of charity and desired to

give its support only to citizens.) The new systems, unfortunately,

were never able to function. With the Directory and the Consulate,

a backward movement set in. The revolutionary innovations made

with such difficulty were repudiated and the techniques that had

preceded them were restored. The university and the colleges were

reorganized in nearly the same way as the schools of the eight-

eenth century. The pedagogical system created by the Jesuits was

restored; hospices and hospitals were reconstituted as they had

been before the Revolution. And since it was difficult to secure

new specialized personnel, the old personnel, monks and nuns,

were restored to duty. The great difference was that now all the

institutions were under the control of the state. But although they

functioned as organizations belonging to the state, they were in

fact identical with the earlier private organizations. The arbitrary

creations ot the Revolution having failed, it was necessary to use

already existing technical creations.



The same phenomenon appeared in the realm of finance under

the Third Reich. Hitler’s revolution claimed to have done away

with all the classical methods of finance; it wanted to be revolu-

tionary in the management of nationalized enterprises, in the or-

ganization of commerce and monetary relations, and even in finan-

cial technique. Insofar as National Socialism was a party, it

emphasized the struggle against capitalism. Feder’s program pro-

vided for a complete transformation of economic and financial life;



The Technological Society	(245



manipulation of money, prices, and wages would lead to the dis*

appearance of capitalism, and to this end completely new financial

forms were recommended. But, little by little, financial necessity

in its most traditional form reasserted itself: to accomplish reforms,

money was needed. In 1938 Schacht reaffirmed the old position

that only the orthodox financial technique of capitalism was capa-

ble of furnishing the funds necessary to the Nazi state. Rejection

of inflation, short-term financing, refusal to use currency for financ-

ing—all these were traditional principles of financial technique. The

financial machinery of the Third Reich was nearly identical with

that of the Empire in 1914. All this is characteristic of the sub-

mission of state and revolutionary doctrine to enemy principles

through the effects of techniques, which, when they are efficient,

are necessarily common to both. In essence, the Nazis turned from

technically untenable inventions back to an efficient financial tech-

nique, a technique identical with the one that dominated in the

capitalistic countries and in the Soviet Union. At a given moment

and in a given framework, there are only a limited number of tech-

niques for attaining a given result.



The technical phenomenon is not modified when an organization

passes under state control. According to Simone Weil, this explains

why a system of industrial rationalization, which ought normally

to develop into socialism, in fact can only exacerbate the worker’s

condition. Fourastie agrees (perhaps involuntarily) when he

writes: “If technical development has been intensive, then, what-

ever the nature of judicial conditions, profits, unearned income and

even political regime, there has been improvement in consumer

purchasing power. This is the essential source of the social progress

brought about by the last century and a half.” This amounts to

saying that technical progress breaks down all barriers and tech-

nique imposes its structures and social progress. This forward

motion of technique is a constant, whatever the variables of the

question may be.



The state cannot modify technical rules; and should it attempt

to do so for doctrinal reasons, it suffers an inevitable setback. For

this reason, the transition of the economy to state control can create

only state capitalism, not socialism. Socialism implies the suppres-

sion of the state. (We shall see further on what it implies with

respect to technique.) Insofar as the state continues to exist, noth-



246)	TECHNIQUE	AND	THE	STATE



ing prevents it from calling itself socialist, but in reality nothing

has changed. It is only a sleight-of-hand trick to say that the same

institution with the same rules, applied in the same way and having

the same results, is socialist when it is at the service of the people

and capitalist when it is at the service of capitalist institutions.

What does it mean to be at the “service of the people”? Such an

expression can only designate the service of a state which calls

itself socialist, although it does not proceed democratically from

the people. But what does it mean to be socialist under these con-

ditions? It means to be at the service of the people. We are going

around in a circle. One of the gravest symptoms of our times is

that technique has little by little emptied socialism of any con-

tent. Beyond evident facts—such as the relation of Stakhanovism

to Taylorism, or the identity of police methods in the Soviet Union

and in Fascist countries—a major example is the persistence of the

capitalist’s so-called “surplus value” (in reality, profit) in socialistic

regimes. The financial system of the Soviets is based, to the extent

of 80 per cent, on the difference between wages paid to the work-

ers and the value of their product. This profit, which the socialist

regime professes to have eliminated, has actually been extended.

The only difference is that it goes into the coffers of the state in-

stead of the corporation’s cash box. But in capitalist regimes the

corporation tends to become a public entity. Mikoyan, in his speech

of October 17, 1953, declared: “Capitalist commerce has certain

technical features that we ought to study. By reason of competition

and the difficulty of attracting customers, capitalist countries have

developed exact methods of commercial organization. These ought

to be applied in those areas of the Soviet Union where they are

likely to prove efficient.”



I could go on and show that all technical rules and institutions

are identically reproduced in the socialist state. This means that

there are no longer any specifically socialist institutions. Nor are

there any adminisrative or economic organizations which are pe-

culiarly the result of socialism. The socialist state, because it is

efficient, has been obliged to adopt the technical principles of

capitalism. Hence, in order to distinguish the socialist situation

from the others, socialism always falls back on that vaguest of all

concepts, teleology. Capitalism, it is said, has regard only for itself;

it seeks but to preserve itself. Socialism, on the other hand, is a



The Technological Society	( *47



constructive force on the march. But nothing warrants the belief

that the means employed will result in socialism. Teleology can

only create a stir for a short time as an instrument of propaganda;

but it is far from certain that such propaganda can give character

to socialism, which more and more is losing its specific reality as

a result of technique.



The state, by taking possession of all technical spheres and in-

strumentalities, becomes of necessity a capitalist state, substituting

itself for private capitalists. And when it has come to understand

its real interest, it adds nothing and modifies nothing that, techni-

cally speaking, pre-existed. When the state realizes the use it can

make of techniques, when it understands the usefulness of tech-

niques in all spheres, it moves deliberately to appropriate them.



In the past (and to a certain degree today), circumstances led

the state to appropriate a given technique. The fortuitous develop-

ment of some political trend, the encounter of technique with the

state—these led the state, a bit haphazardly, to adopt a technique.

But instances of premeditated action on the part of the state in this

direction are beginning to be discernible; for example, the exploita-

tion of propaganda and atomic research. We must expect this

movement to gain greater and greater amplitude, for when the

state has once undertaken some action, it generally goes on to the

end.



Repercussions on the State



The conjunction of state and technique is not a neutral fact For

many it is not surprising and implies nothing but a growth of state

power. They ask whether, after all, it is not a good thing that the

state perform its functions as well as possible and be well equipped

to this end. We have indeed known a state which had only a

laughable police force, powerless and incapable of checking crimi-

nals. It is a good thing for technical progress in this sphere to

collate all other techniques, thus enabling the state to perform its

role of arresting crime. These techniques, when utilized by the

state, enable it to restore order, to guarantee certain liberties, and

even perhaps to master its political destiny. This is how current

opinion interprets the conjunction of technique and the state. I be-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



248)



lieve that such attitudes are superficial and inaccurate. Technique,

in its present state of development, is no longer merely a passive

instrument under state control, as it was under the control of cer-

tain individuals. The question now is what we see when we ex-

amine contemporary facts instead of antiquated principles.

Evolution, The first consequence of the conjunction of state and

technique is the progressive transformation of the old techniques of

the state after they have come in contact with the new techniques—

formerly private but now becoming public. When a comparison

is made between private and public techniques, it is noted that

private techniques are incomparably more efficient. (I have al-

ready indicated certain reasons for this.) To the extent that tech-

niques remain private, they lie outside the framework of the state.

When they come under state control, however, the question in-

evitably arises why these techniques should not be incorporated

into the traditional framework of the state. But private techniques

seem to have been created to answer different requirements; they

have different dimensions, and this poses a problem. Private meth-

ods are intimately connected with their objectives, and these of-

jectives are of human dimensions. Consequently, they are not

adaptable to the much more extended needs of the state. This in-

compatibility ceases to be true, however, as private business begins

to assume dimensions equal to and sometimes greater than those

of the state. It is clear that enterprises such as Citroen or Bata

are of such dimensions that their administrations are comparable to

the administration of the state. Standard Oil has international in-

terests of such magnitude that its international policy is like that

of a state. The financial power of the Insurance Trust is such

that a parallel can be drawn between its financial system and that

of a stale. It appears that, starting with a certain critical mass,

sociological and technical laws are identical for private and public

enterprises.



We may exclude from the technical framework states such as

Luxembourg and San Marino. And we may soon be forced to ex-

clude nations which do not prepare themselves quickly enough to

face up to technical demands, such as Belgium, Holland, and Den-

mark. These three have already been obliged to combine in order

to meet modern technical problems. European nations in general

are being compelled to renounce political sovereignty and form



The Technological Society	( *49



associations designed to realize certain, far-reaching technical op-

erations, as, for example, research projects in atomic energy (1958),

the exploitation of the Sahara (1958), the launching of an artificial

satellite (i960). Conversely, we must include in the technical

framework the great private enterprises, whose technical princi-

ples are identical with those of the state. Indeed, it may be said

in general that the state lags behind the great corporations in this

respect and that it is compelled to modify and rationalize its ad-

ministrative, judicial, and financial systems on the model of the

great commercial and industrial enterprises. This is the point that

Hrant Pasdermaidjan makes in his book about the government of

great organizations. He shows in particular that all administra-

tions—civil or military, state or industrial—must rest on identical

principles of technical organization if they would be efficient. If

these principles are not followed, the administration is condemned

to being overtaken and passed by private enterprises. In this re-

spect, France is alarmingly backward. Because our administrative

and financial system was the world’s best a century ago, we care-

fully persist in maintaining it, whereas the plain truth is that cer-

tain techniques would guarantee much better results. Even our

newly created administrations, such as Social Security, refuse to be

guided by well-known technical rules. This is not the case in the

so-called progressive countries, in which the administrative and

financial systems are aligned very rapidly (too rapidly, perhaps,

when the social order is not on the same plane as the technical or-

ganization ) with industrial and commercial techniques.



This new organization of administration results in part from the

creation of a technique of administration and in part from the in-

troduction of the machine into all organizations. The two are re-

lated, not only because mechanization entails, as I have already

pointed out, a reorganization of administrative units but also be-

cause mechanization solves the major problem of administration,

the problem of paper work. All organizations are founded on paper

work. And when paper work transcends human capacities by virtue

of sheer quantity and complexity, the problem of what to do about

it arises. The machine is the solution.



To get some idea of the magnitude of this mechanization, let us

consider the two over-all categories of office machines, accounting

and statistical. The first category is divided into seven major types



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*5°)



and their subdivisions. The second is divided into four types and

fourteen species. The operations effected by these machines in-

volve a modification of the administrative structure: administra-

tive tasks must comply with mechanical requirements. Mas says

that “the operations cannot be carried out except by breaking them

down into homogeneous tasks and functions so that they can be

committed to mechanical organs.” The operations may be grouped

by cycles as a function of the end sought; or they may be brought

together into a single task combining all operations of the same

technical nature. This last is the so-called functional grouping,

which results in an administration divided into “performance func-

tion,” “arrangement function,” “interpretation function,” and “con-

trol function.” It is easily seen how far removed all this is from

the traditional type of office and from the customary division of

administrative tasks.



What is true in administration is also true in finances. The tradi-

tional principles of public accounting, such as the separation of

the funcions of comptroller and accountant, the control of monies

paid out, etc., have clearly been affected. A tremendous leap was

necessary for the Cour des Comptes, twenty years in arrears with

its inspection of finances, to deliver in 1948 the results for 1944

and 1945. The guiding principle of finance today is that security

is sacrificed to speed. Finance no longer represents, as it did in

the nineteenth century, the rule, the criterion, and the check. It

has become the instrument of an efficient general policy. It must

never act as an obstacle to a decision which is technically valid.

Its traditional role as a check and constraint has been rendered

questionable through the adoption of new techniques in imitation

of private enterprise.



The financial regime of a modern state is highly reminiscent of

commercial affairs. The rules of accounting are modified by the ap-

plication of business machines, for example, punched-card ma-

chines. Here machine intervention directly voids an older ad-

ministrative technique. A certain flexibility is necessary but is

rarely found in state structures, which are, for various reasons,

rigid. Nothing less than revolution brings about the adaptation of

political regimes to the technical improvements which have be-

come mandatory as a result of private enterprise. This is only a

corollary of what I have been saying—namely, that political moti-



The Technological Society	(251



vations do not dominate technical phenomena, but rather the re-

verse. The state is usually unable for doctrinal reasons to revolu-

tionize the techniques of public finance. But when technical

progress makes this revolution mandatory, the state is obliged to

capitulate.



This is clear enough with respect to army, police, administra-

tion, and finance, but it is perhaps less clear with respect to law.

Here is one of the major problems contemporary jurists ought to

be considering; but all too often they waste their time in textual

subtleties. The judicial regime is simply not adapted to technical

civilization, and this is one of the causes of its inefficiency and of

the ever greater contempt felt toward it.



Law is conceived as a function of a traditional society. It has not

registered the essential transformation of the times. Its content is

exactly what it was three centuries ago. It has experienced only a

few fragmentary transformations (such as the corporation)—no

other attempts at modernization have been made. Nor have form

and methods varied any more than content. Judicial technique has

been little affected by the techniques that surround us today; had

it been, it might have gained much in speed and flexibility.



Faced with this importance of the law, society passes to the oppo-

site extreme and burdens administration with everything that is the

product of the times in the judicial sphere. Administration, because

it is better adapted from the technical point of view, continually

enlarges its sphere at the expense of the judicial, which remains

centered on vanishing problems such as codicils, community re-

versions, and the like. These last, and all similar problems that are

the exclusive concern of our law, are problems that relate to an

individualistic society of private property, political stability, and

judicial subtlety.



Law is radically vitiated by its backwardness. We ought to be

concerned not only with making laws but with rediscovering judi-

cial principles that might possibly put into some kind of order the

constructions made necessary by modem technique. All the tradi-

tional legal principles are collapsing; for example, the principle of

the nonretroactivity of laws or that of the personalite des delits

et des peines. This is not due to the particular evil of our society,

but simply to the fact that the law, insofar as it is a system, is not

adapted to absorb necessary innovations. This is the resistance to



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



2S2)



social upheaval of a long-tested and traditional technique. And in

the judicial sphere, unlike the others, there is no fund of private

experiment to render it more efficient. As I have pointed out, priv-

ate experiment remains the principal source of the advance of

technique, even when technique has passed into the hands of the

state.



Another striking example of this is found in pedagogy. Educa-

tional method was stabilized after the state nationalized education

and adopted the Jesuits* technique. But the pedagogic movement

dating from the turn of the century is at present rendering the

whole edifice questionable. The older framework was coherent, but

the combined technical discoveries of psychologists, physicians,

and educators have given birth to a new system which is progres-

sively penetrating the educational milieu. The state is moving in

the direction of these discoveries. It has created the so-called new

classes, which do not yet correspond exactly to the principles of

modern pedagogy but which do represent the first step of integra-

tion into the body of the state of a method worked out by private

persons. Once again we see the traditional techniques of the state

being modified by the influence of private techniques, subject to a

certain lag and to difficulties that result from the enormity of the

operations, which concern not a few individuals but millions.



The Technical Organism. A second consequence of the penetra-

tion of the state by techniques is that the state as a whole becomes

an enormous technical organism. Thus, nationalization of certain

industrial plants not only makes the state an industrial “boss” or

technician, but also compels it to revise its techniques of organiza-

tion and administration. Indeed, in Great Britain, France, and

even the United States the dimensions of the newer industrial or-

ganizations of the state far surpass those of private enterprise. We

are witnessing the creation of technical bureaus of a new character

and the creation of hitherto unknown types of organizations de-

signed to redistribute power internally on the different levels. All

this, unbeknown to the public, doubtless produces repercussions

on the structure of the state, the effects of which are decisive but

will only make themselves felt some years hence. It may be added

that these changes are much more widespread in Great Britain

than in France.



In order to gain some conception of the full range of techniques



The Technological Society	(*53



applied by the modem state, consider the following enumeration

of techniques which lie outside the traditional domains already

examined:



Industrial and commercial techniques of all orders (the state be-

coming state-boss to an ever greater degree)



Insurance and banking techniques, including social security,

family allotments, and nationalized banks



Organizational techniques, including co-ordinating commissions

among all services, and new inspection systems



Psychological techniques, including services of propaganda, vo-

cational guidance, and psychotechniques

Artistic techniques, including radio, television, a more or less

official motion-picture industry, city planning, and controlled tour-

ism



Scientific techniques, including the various centers of scientific

research



Planning techniques (with arbitrary objectives), including gen-

eral economic planning, transport planning, and city planning

Biological techniques (already a reality, although rare), includ-

ing human stud-farms, euthanasia, obligatory vaccination and

medical inspection, and social assistance

Sociological techniques (for the management of the masses and

the study of public opinion)



Each of these comprises various subsidiary techniques, complex

mechanisms, and specialized methods. The state, since it applies

these methods where necessary, can itself no longer be anything

other than technical. Persons who become panic-stricken before

such administrative proliferation and aggrandizement of state ac-

tivities, who criticize social security, for example, because it em-

ploys too many civil servants, who hold that a return to liberalism

would suppress this proliferation, show thereby that they have not

understood the development of modern times. No deliberate choice

on the part of the state, no theoretical decision, has brought about

this growth of technique; its causes were independent of the per-

sonal or collective. The modern state could no more be a state

without techniques than a businessman could be a businessman

without the telephone or the automobile. The businessman does

not employ these objects because he is particularly enamored of

progress. The state does not employ propaganda or planning be-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*54)



cause it is socialist. The circumstances are such that the state can-

not be other than it is. Not only does it need techniques, but tech-

niques need it. It is not a matter of chance, nor a matter of

conscious will; rather, it is an urgency which expresses itself in the

growth of the technical apparatus around a rather slight and feeble

“brain." The motive force behind the state does not develop in

proportion to the state apparatus. This motive force (theological

interpretations aside) is man. And man has no more capacity to

function when he is at the center of the technical organization than

when he is a simple citizen lost in the machinery. In other words,

the politician is demoted to minority status by the enormity of the

techniques the state has at its disposal. The state is no longer the

President of the Republic plus one or more Chambers of Deputies.

Nor is it a dictator with certain all-powerful ministers. It is an

organization of increasing complexity which puts to work the sum

of the techniques of the modem world. Theoretically our politi-

cians are at the center of the machinery, but actually they are being

progressively eliminated by it. Our statesmen are impotent satel-

lites of the machine, which, with all its parts and techniques, ap-

parently functions as well without them. The state machine is, to

be sure, not yet well adjusted, but we are only at the beginning,

and its adjustment is already good enough to give the unmistakable

impression that it will tolerate no outside influence.



I know there are some who believe the political factor to be

predominant. These people will cite the sovereign authority of men

such as Stalin, who for political reasons modified the technical or-

ganization by excluding certain techniques and retaining others.

Some will cite the authority of Hitler, which was exercised for

doctrinaire, not technical reasons. In these cases, and in many

others, it would seem that politicians make real political decisions

which coerce and determine the technical machinery. Were this

true, the state would not be primarily technical. But we must not

be taken in by appearances. Gabriel Ardant has clearly shown that

today the search for efficiency is the law of the state’s administra-

tions and services. Where purely administrative technique is not

the chief goal, government is no longer possible. It is not sufficient

to improve one or another governmental service, or to create iso-

lated new organisms. The whole structure and methodology must



The Technological Society	( 2 55



be considered; in this process the politician does not count for

much.



The Conflict Between the Politicians and the Technicians. The



intrusion of techniques into the machinery of the state involves the

conflict of politicians and technicians. “Let the technicians speak”

is a leitmotiv of all the journals of the opposition. Dardenne, in his

Troismois chez les pay sans noirs, concludes his African inquiry by

noting the necessity of allowing the "era of the technicians to suc-

ceed the era of authoritarian administrators.” He sees in this the

solution of all the human problems of the Negro peasantry. For ex-

ample, he contrasts the political decisions of administrators to build

barracks and strategic military roads with the technical decisions

of agronomists and economists to develop the African cotton in-

dustry and to furnish cheap cotton goods to the natives. But

Dardenne overlooks the fact that the first decision was not made

by politicians, but technicians: the military. He holds too firmly

to the idea that technician means engineer. He neglects the tech-

nical character of both the army and the air force, and sometimes

even of the administration.



This oversight, which is widespread, often leads to a misinter-

pretation of certain well-known conflicts of interest. In 1938 many

people insisted that there was hostility between the Nazi Party and

the technicians (and even the army). But this "conflict” came to

nothing, unless it was the attempt on Hitler—which was made in

1944 after his power had been effectively broken. A. Ciliga and

Stolypine report that a similar situation exists in the Soviet Union.

According to Ciliga, alongside the Communist bureaucracy which

holds the political power through its mass organizations and labor

unions, there is a “technical intelligentsia,” the ITR, which is

strongly organized and nonpartisan and which has created its own

corporative organization. All technicians belong to the ITR, and its

role has become more important in proportion as the economic

structure is increasingly based on the activities of technicians. The

five-year plan implies a technical framework without parallel. An

alleged conflict exists between the Communist Party and the ITR;

the ITR seeks to turn out the Party on the grounds that the Party

(a) hampers technical development, (b) provokes discontent

among the workers, and (c) intrudes into its decisions certain



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



256)



motives which the technicians cannot accept. It is possible that

such a conflict exists. Certain signs suggest it. The Communist

Party's fear of the saboteur is doubtless not just propaganda. But

there are not enough signs to enable us to form a judgment.



Moltchanowski presents another aspect of this alleged conflict. He

writes of a class of very bureaucratic and backward technicians,

incapable of modifying their methods to adapt them to technical

developments. Preoccupied with the realization of the plan, they

ignorantly increase the number of workers or the hours of work,

instead of increasing efficiency. The insistence on the old methods

of work paralyzes the new mechanical means and diminishes yield

even further in view of the magnitude of the labor force employed

in the upkeep of equipment. The problem then becomes: Who

ought to take responsibility for adapting the worker to the ma-

chine? Who is to educate the worker? The answer is: the local

branches of the Communist Party.



The complexity of the elements of this conflict is evident; and

it is difficult to accept without reservation the image of the tech-

nician-archangel sallying forth to do battle with the megalomaniac

and rotten politician. Nevertheless, it is probable that in the Soviet

Union, as in Nazi Germany, there is a conflict between the two

classes. But this conflict cannot be counted on to bring about a

change in the regime. As C. Wright Mills has shown, the managers

under any regime whatsoever are never anything but executive

agents. They are never in a position, publicly or institutionally, to

assert themselves against their masters. Conversely, the masters

become totally powerless without the complex (and secretly all-

powerful) managerial cadre.



In democratic regimes, there is indeed a conflict between politi-

cian and technician, but it is apparently much less acute. Two

questions arise. First, how does it come about that the conflict is

greater in the dictatorships? Second, how does it come about that

the technicians do not take the upper hand in a democracy and

overwhelm the politicians, who possess no serious means of resist-

ance? The answer to the second question enables us to dispose once

and for all of the idea that there is a natural and inevitable hostility

between politicians and technicians. As for the first question, there

is an easy reply: in a dictatorship the politician is more demanding

and makes his weight felt more heavily, so that the technicians find



The Technological Society	( 2 57



his decisions rather difficult to tolerate. But then how to explain

the fact that dictatorships make the most of the technician, sul>

mitting everything to his judgment and integrating everything into

the technical system? How to explain the fact that the ITR takes

its meaning from the five-year plan, the plan itself being a product

of politicians? How to explain the prodigious technical rise of the

Soviet Union and Nazi Germany under the sway of the politicians?

The orientation of both these regimes was technical. Why do the

technicians complain?



The answer is that the conflict is not between politicians and

technicians but among technicians of different categories. In the

dictatorships, the politician aims, successfully or unsuccessfully, to

comply with the demands of a political technique. In democratic

systems, the politician complies only with the requirements of a

technique for getting himself elected; he has an altogether inade-

quate grasp of the various technical services. He has no direct

relation to any of the innumerable technical activities. The politi-

cian in a dictatorial system, on the other hand, tends to become a

technician and ipso facto collides with other techniques.



The new political technique claims to be concerned with aU

techniques, indeed to effect a synthesis among them. Synthesis is

very likely its real function. But synthesis cannot be achieved at

the first attempt, and the claim is not easily accepted by the other

technicians. We are witnessing a crisis of adaptation. Political

technique is far from realization; it is only in its first stammering

stages. Yet it claims to be the science of synthesis, as did theology

in the Middle Ages or philosophy in the eighteenth century. When

the engineer protests against the politician's decisions, he may be

justified on the grounds that the politician is deceiving himself and

in reality is quite ignorant. But the engineer may also be ignorant

of the technical motives behind the politician's decision; the en-

gineer has no conception of the elements necessary to judge politi-

cal technique on the plane of synthesis. This is indeed a crisis of

adaptation; but precisely because adaptation is involved, the con-

flict does not lead to the overthrow of the regime.



A similar crisis, practically speaking, does not exist in democratic

systems where the attempt to form a political technique has just

begun. The English, however, have wanted for a long time to in-

troduce technique into governmental operations and thus to resolve



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*58)



conflicts between politicians and technicians before they become

acute. Since the eighteenth century the English have been pre-

occupied with the technique of lawmaking. In the nineteenth cen-

tury, with Arthur Seymonds and Bellanden Ken, their express goal

was the rationalization and systematization of legislative opera-

tions. Their motto was: Codification, Consolidation, Purification.

Their technical reforms resulted in the creation of offices for the

technical editing of legal projects, in uniformity of method, in the

use of marginal notes, and in the editing of resumes and tables.

This effort has been resumed in the last few years in Great Britain

on the ministerial level; to be able to compete with the techni-

cians, the politicians have undertaken governmental reorganization

on the Cabinet level, with a view to greater efficiency. They have

divided up their work systematically by developing numerous so-

called “standing committees,” each of which has its rigorously de-

fined specialty. The co-ordination of these committees is assured

by the Cabinet Office, an organ of great originality. The cabinet

office consists of a small group of highly trained civil servants under

the direction of a permanent secretary. Its function is to prepare

the agenda of the Cabinet and its committees and to take minutes

of the meetings. It is interesting to note that the importance of this

office is growing. The technical function which it assumes gives

it a kind of supremacy over the whole political complex.



Similarly, the United States has shown a desire to establish a

truly independent corps of political technicians as opposed to poli-

ticians, and to separate completely the political organ of decision

from the technical organ of preparation. The task of the expert is to

furnish the politician with information and estimates on which he

can base a decision. A clearly defined division of responsibility

corresponds to this functional division: that is, the expert has no

responsibility. The problem is, above all else, to maintain the in-

dependence of the technician; he must avoid pressures, involve-

ment in contests of influence, and the personal quarrels of the

members of the administration. When the technician has completed

his task, he indicates to the politicians the possible solutions and

the probable consequences—and retires.



Unfortunately, the Americans do not consider the inverse prob-

lem, which is, objectively speaking, becoming more important.

When the expert has effectively performed his task of pointing out



The Technological Society	(259



the necessary ways and means, there is generally only one logical

and admissible solution. The politician will then find himself

obliged to choose between the technician's solution, which is the

only reasonable one, and other solutions, which he can indeed try

out at his own peril but which are not reasonable. At such a moment

the politician is gambling with his responsibility since there are

such great chances of miscarriage if he adopts technically deviant

solutions. In fact, the politician no longer has any real choice; deci-

sion follows automatically from the preparatory technical labors.

Jungk even claims that in the United States, on very advanced

technical levels, unchallengeable decisions have already been

made by “electronic brains” in the service of the National Bureau

of Standards; for example, by the EAC, surnamed the “Washington

Oracle.” The EAC is said to have been the machine which made

the decision to recall General MacArthur after it had solved equa-

tions containing all the strategic and economic variables of his

plan. This example, which must be given with all possible reserva-

tions, is confirmed by the fact that the American government has

submitted to such computing devices a large number of economic

problems that border on the political. Even admitting that we are

not yet at this stage, we must recognize that every advance made

in the techniques of inquiry, administration, and organization in

itself reduces the power and the role of politics.



Consequently, the opposition between technicians and politi-

cians places the politician squarely before a truly decisive di-

lemma. Either the politician will remain what he is in a democracy,

in which case his role is fated to become less and less important in

comparison to the role of technicians of all sorts (a state of affairs

already evident in the financial sphere); or the politician will take

the road of political technique, in which case the crisis of adapta-

tion will inevitably arise. If the politician really wishes to continue

to exist, he must choose the second solution as the only possible

one. The existence of techniques in all other spheres forces him to

this choice. Even so, little by little he is being stripped of any real

power and reduced to the role of a figurehead. These tech-

niques entail for him both the possibility and the obligation to

devolve a political technique. This does not mean dictatorship,

which is a provisional, trial form. It means, as we shall see, an

inevitable and radical transformation of the political perspective.



260 )	TECHNIQUE	AND	THE	STATE



The Nazi dictatorship and Stalin’s regime ought not to be com-

pletely identified. I have already stated that Lenin was the first

man to create a political technique. For Lenin—and Stalin under-

stood this in a remarkable way—the politician was neither a

theoretician nor a chief of state in the traditional sense, but a

technician.



Lenin’s concept makes politics a technique like the others, but

actually superior to them since it is basically charged with co-

ordinating the other spheres of activity. Political decisions are

taken by virtue of technical motives, and it is this fact which dif-

ferentiates this kind of politics both from the purely doctrinaire

Communism of the left and from the older opportunism that makes

its decisions on the basis of subjective motives, impressions, and

reasonings bearing on the immediate situation and varying with

circumstance. When Stalin modified a given organization or

changed the content of a plan, he did so not under pressure of facts

but as a function of facts, by applying a precise technique. Of

course, it is possible to apply the technique badly; certain errors

may persist because the technique has not yet been fully de-

veloped. But the important thing is that the politician is forced to

follow the line laid down by the technician. This is the tendency

which has become classical in Communism. According to this

tendency, Marxism is not a doctrine but a method, a method of

thought as well as of action. This political technique is not well

understood and may not even be recognized—above all because

its ends are not clear. Is it directed toward Communism as a whole?

Or must the distinction be made, with Lenin, between strategy

(which is indeed directed toward Communism) and tactics (rep-

resenting the more specifically technical part, in which immediate

political problems are resolved in relation to strategy). Tactical

decisions are all made rationally to satisfy all possible technical

data arising from all co-ordinative bureaus and organisms. The

distinction between strategy and tactics enables us to understand

the most sensational zigzags of the party line; for example, the 1937

stand against the older Communism, the 1940 pact with Nazism,

the admission in 1943 of the Church into the Communist frame-

work, the 1947 stand against "formalism,” that of 1949 against the

authors of the plan. These tactical changes can all be explained on

the basis of technical reasons of great precision; they do not repre-



The Technological Society	(	a	61



sent arbitrary decisions of hard-pressed politicians. The growing

influence of technicians was further emphasized in 1953 by the

selection of five technicians to be the five vice-presidents of the

Council of Ministers.



The problem posed by Hitlerism was very different. Hitler was

a politician who made his decisions without the advice of techni-

cians, and often even despite their advice. His decisions were moti-

vated by subjective, internally generated impulses. This attitude

was the more extraordinary in that the Nazi apparatus appeared

to be among those which had best understood and applied the

fusion between state and technique. It utilized all techniques to the

maximum possible degree, reducing them unconditionally to its

service, with the exception of the borderline case of politics. Even

so, it is not always correct to assume that politics intervened hap-

hazardly. Very often, the firmest doctrines of Nazism had to

yield to technical necessities. Thus, the Nazi propaganda tech-

nique twice resorted to actions which were publicly popular but

which were at the same time completely contrary to Nazi doctrine.

One such instance was the great propaganda drive of 1935, at the

time ot the “confirmation” plebiscite: “We are more democratic

than the democracies.” The plebiscite was intended to show that

the Fiihrer was the true incarnation of the people and that, conse-

quently, the Nazi regime was a real democracy, not an artificial

one, as France’s was. The second instance was the great propa-

ganda campaign in behalf of liberty: “We are defending the

liberty of European man.” These two themes, widely used but

formally opposed to the Hitler doctrine, arose from the technical

necessities of propaganda. It is also known that the financial tech-

nique of the Nazis often led them to act contrary to doctrine; for

example, in the case of Jews who were made “honorary Aryans,”

or in the case of certain capitalists who became mainstays of the

regime and were integrated into the financial organism of the

Third Reich. However, the personal political decisions of Hitler

frequently did upset the techniques of the state. The conflict was

particularly keen between Hitler and the general staff; but it also

existed with the Geheim Polizei and with the organs of foreign

trade. Hitler ordered the adoption of certain measures the tech-

nicians disapproved, and after the fall of Nazism, they blamed

every difficulty and misfortune on these arbitrary decisions. In any



262 )	TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



case, it can certainly be said that the majority of Hitler's personal

decisions were unfortunate, notably from the military point of

view.



It is clear that the future belongs not to Hitler's kind of political

action but to Stalin's. Some important political chieftains may still

bypass these techniques; but their situation appears more and more

precarious.



In the conflict between politician and technician, corruption is

a much more serious matter. Political milieus are very generally

corrupt. The fact is indisputable, both in democratic regimes such

as France and the United States and in authoritarian systems such

as Fascism, Francoism, and Nazism. We cannot really speak about

the Soviet Union. The vertigo of power and the opportunity to

become rich corrupt politicians very quickly. To the degree that

the state becomes more and more technical, there is increasing

contact between politicians and technicians. Though technique

tends more and more to have primacy over politics, and technical

decisions seem unassailable by parliaments, the takeover of tech-

nique can be arrested by corruption. The technician is a man, and

in contact with corrupt men he may well allow himself to be cor-

rupted. He can sidetrack his technique, annul the decisions de-

manded by its strict application, and grant some favor or special

privilege which perverts technical action. In such an instance,

general interests (the only true objects of politics) no longer con-

trol technique; particular interests (which are much more efficient

in checking technical action) do. Pure technique represents the

general interests, the true politics, and is opposed to the politician

who represents the corrupting element for private, and hence

politically nonexistent, reasons. The corruption of politicians is the

only factor which can retard the total transformation of the state

into a gigantic, exclusively technical apparatus. Even so, the im-

petus of this movement of transformation is being intensified; and

public opinion is oriented towards its success. Public opinion, which

counts for a great deal even in authoritarian regimes, is almost

unanimously favorable to technical decisions as opposed to politi-

cal ones, which are usually described as either “partisan” or “ideal-

istic.” One of the current reproaches made against politics is that

it fetters the normal activity of techniques, which the public gen-

erally considers good in themselves. Citizens become angry, for



The Technological Society	(	263



example, when they see the state holding back the development of

aviation. In case of a conflict between politician and technician, the

technician has public opinion behind him. A characteristic instance

was furnished by Spain. Spanish Fascism ought clearly to have

been censured by the democracies in 1945, as was Italian Fascism.

There were political, sentimental, and doctrinal reasons for doing

so. But the military technicians proclaimed that this would be a

disaster, and the economic technicians agreed. The United States

and Great Britain let Franco survive, and France was ridiculed

for closing the frontier. Public opinion, which, particularly after

1944, was sharply anti-Fascist, ought to have reacted favorably to

this action of the French government. Indeed, the first impulse

was to condemn Spain. But after the technicians had shown that

such a move would be harmful economically and financially (on

the plane of foreign commerce), public opinion began to shift. A

callous comparison was made between an ideological action, a

noble gesture which yielded nothing, and the judgment of the

technicians, who were demonstrating the stupidity of such an

ideology. Public opinion wavered for a time, only to turn, after

about six months, in the direction of the technicians.



Can it be said that this was a matter of personal interest? The

overwhelming majority of Frenchmen had no direct interest in the

matter; yet, it ought not to be forgotten that adherence to a tech-

nical decision is always a matter of personal interest. As for the

technicians, it may be asked why they made the judgment they

did. Clearly because they were applying their technical instru-

ment, in which generous or sentimental motives had no place. The

technicians as technicians told us that the closing of the frontier

was disastrous; as men, they might have approved of the action

for ideological reasons. It is not at all certain that technicians are

still capable of making humane judgments; that, however, is an-

other question.



The transformation of the state and the consequent predomi-

nance of technicians involves two elements. First, the technician

considers the nation very differently from the politician. For the

technician, the nation is essentially an affair to be managed, for

(rightly) he remains imbued with the private origin of technique;

as a consequence, the private and the public spheres are poorly

delimited. All that the technician can take into account is the ap-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



264)



plication of his instruments—whether in the service of the state or

of something else is of small importance. For him, the state is not

the expression of popular will, or a creation of God, or the essence

of humanity, or a modality of the class war. It is an enterprise with

certain services which ought to function properly. It is an enter-

prise which ought to be profitable, yield a maximum of efficiency,

and have the nation for its working capital.



The influence of the technician on the state does not reside solely

in the conditions he imposes through his administrative decisions

or in the schema of good organization he draws up. It resides also

in the judgments he makes concerning governmental and adminis-

trative efficiency. I have discussed the transformation of the system

of public accounting. A new and remarkable example of this is

furnished by the Netherlands. The problem there is to evaluate the

efficiency of governmental services as a function of their cost

prices. Every organization, we are told, must in principle establish

a valid relation among men, ends, and means in respect to their

productive efficiency. Productivity, which seemed heretofore to be

a purely economic concept, has made its appearance in the last

few years in the political framework. It is necessary to evaluate

the cost of every administrative operation and to apply the law of

marginal yield. Funds are assigned to each department on the

basis of a standard cost established through service. By introducing

modern double-entry bookkeeping, it is possible to carry out a

constant inspection of activities on every level and to establish the

relation between actual and standard expenses. In this way, the

law of the technician transforms the administrative perspective.

Every administration becomes an object, as formerly the worker

became an object in Taylor’s hands. Politics assigns the goal; but

the technician dictates the means to the last dot. We have a detailed

description of this orientation in Gabriel Ardant’s book.



The entire administration is only a machine whose operations

must become more and more rigorous. In this way, that ideal theo-

retical situation is attained in which, to use the words of James K.

Feely, Jr., the “margin of chance between intention and realization”

is almost nil. For, according to Feely, the smaller this margin be-

comes, the more a check on execution appears possible, and the

more the coefficient of predictability is increased. Such a situation

would give maximum security in all the different administrative



The Technological Society	( 2 65



units, and what Feely proposed as a theoretical ideal becomes prac-

tical. The only price tag on its attainment is the conversion of the

administration into an apparatus, the civil servants into objects,

and the nation into a supplier of working capital.



The nation becomes the object of the technical state in that it

furnishes all the different kinds of material substratum: men,

money, economy, and so on. The state becomes a machine de-

signed to exploit the means of the nation. The relation between

state and nation is henceforth completely different from what it

had been before. The nation is no longer primarily a human, geo-

graphic, and historical entity. It is an economic power whose re-

sources must be put to work, and to which a “yield” must be re-

turned. In connection with this yield, the older technicians used

the term maximum but the newer ones use the term optimum.

Maximum yield is yield that exhausts and debases the resources

of the state in a short interval of time; optimum yield is yield that

attempts to safeguard substance and vitality, the typical example

being the TV A. However this may be, we must regard the nation

as an entity whose total resources are to be brought into action

precisely because all the different techniques, mutually condition-

ing one another, have come into play. Once the technician has

commenced his operations, he cannot recognize any limits. He

cannot esteem or respect anything in the nation except the “nature

of things.” This promotes the greater coherence of the state-nation

which is so characteristic of our times.



What is true on the national level is also true on the level of

international organization. In view of the radical setbacks experi-

enced by the political organisms designed to foster international

agreement, it was decided to entrust further exploration along these

lines to a group of technicians. It was believed that international

consideration of the areas to be exploited, rather than purely na-

tional interests, would be more propitious to an entente. Thus, in

1949 a great assemblage consisting of 550 scientists and technicians

opened its deliberations at Lake Success to consider how best to

exploit the world’s natural resources. International projects of this

kind are much less advanced than similar intranational projects,

and the reactions of politicians to the technicians are correspond-

ingly more enthusiastic. This was evident at the 1949 Strasbourg

assembly of the Organisation Europeenne de Cooperation £co-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



266)



nomique, a purely technical group. The Americans were of the

opinion that this organization did not progress as quickly as the

technical situation permitted. We are witnesses at the inception,

on the international level, of the same “takeover” by the technicians

which we have already observed on the national level.



The second element implied in the transformation of the state

and the predominance of the technician is the progressive suppres-

sion of ideological and moral barriers to technical progress. The

old techniques of the state were a compound of purely technical

elements and moral elements such as justice. The moral elements

are not completely negligible even today, although they by no

means occupy the place of honor accorded them in official dis-

course. The techniques employed by private persons are usually

techniques in a pure state, and contain no admixture of moral ele-

ments. (We shall see later on that this is no random fact, but the

result of the very nature of technique.) The state is charged not

only with maintaining respect for law and order but also with

establishing just relations among its citizens. It therefore imposes

limits on the pure technique of private persons. Thus, from the

beginning, the liberal state forbade the free manufacture of ex-

plosives and substances pernicious to health. On a higher plane, it

struggled by means of antitrust laws (as in The United States)

against the trust, an economic organization notorious for social

injustice. It also established labor legislation limiting the abuse of

the workers by mechanical techniques. In the area of justice, the

state has been a barrier and a check against private technical

abuses. But when technique became state technique, when techni-

cal instrumentalities passed into the hands of the state, did the

state adhere to its old wisdom? Experience must answer in the

negative. The techniques, to which the state opposed checks when

they were in the hands of private persons, become unchecked for

the state itself. There is no self-limitation in this respect.



The English state forbade traffic in narcotics but made wide use

of them in India and China. An omnipotent state, Fascist or Com-

munist, ceases to respect laws made for the protection of labor.

(The Communist state proclaims this to be a provisional solution

pending the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat;

but we can make no judgment of future events.) This is not merely



The Technological Society	(2®7



a case of princeps legibus solutus est * but something much more

profound. The state is the only barrier between men and the

techniques of individuals, but it ceases to be a barrier when tech-

nique, increasing geometrically, encounters the ancient raison

d’etat.3 This last, which perhaps has nothing to do with the nature

of the state, has nevertheless existed almost continuously through-

out history. But the raison detat never possessed the means to

express itself. It operated sporadically and incoherently and its

decisions often miscarried. It remained more an intention than a

reality but was always latently there. Primarily, it represented the

justification by the state of itself. It was the negation of morality

by the state. But the means at the disposal of the state were them-

selves subject to a strong moral influence. They were consequently

neither technically nor morally adapted to the raison d’etat, which

was deprived of any force without these arms.



The French Parliament under absolute monarchy, or the French

administration under the Restoration, for example, were not

adapted to this objective. But when new techniques refined the

old ones, the old ones lost their internal curbs. The state then found

itself in possession of means agreeable to the raison d’etat. As soon

as it had these means, it applied them without hesitation because

it entertained no doubts at all as to the excellence of its ends. At

the same time other techniques, the result of the activity of indi-

viduals and until then restrained by the state, came into the hands

of the state, which well understood their usefulness for realizing

its constant objective. How could the state be expected not to

exploit a judiciary without independence and a police without any

faculty of judgment? But the most noteworthy fact in this compli-

cated development is that henceforth the raison detat could only

be the expression of the multiplicity of techniques which it had

employed to realize itself.



Technique and Constitution. French administration remained, un-

til about 1940, as Napoleon had created it in 1800. It had, of

course, undergone certain modifications in detail; there had even

been certain reversions to pre-Napoleonic practices. But no serious



* “The prince is not bound by the laws.” (Trans.)



8 The state’s “higher” interests, which may be invoked as an excuse for state action

contrary to justice or its own laws. (Trans.)



2	6 8 )	TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



changes had taken place either in orientation or in structure.

Constitutional monarchy, monarchy with absolutistic tendencies,

bourgeois and socialist republics, the Empire—these French re-

gimes all accepted or suffered Napoleon’s instrument because it

was a good one. There is no doubt that one of the gravest prob-

lems of the Third Republic, if one seldom explicitly considered,

was that an administration created by and for an authoritarian

state should be in the service of a state which wished to be thought

liberal. This is the situation of the state today in all areas. Only

with difficulty can the technical apparatus be varied; only with

difficulty can it be employed in one way rather than in another.



To take a simple example: it matters little, in driving an automo-

bile, whether the regime be republican or Fascist. Techniques are

becoming less and less material, and really important differences

from state to state tend to fade progressively away. A given state

technique must be exercised on its own terms, though the political

opinions of successive ministers differ. This continuity can be ex-

pressed in terms of the dictatorship of bureaus. It explains the

often-noted fact that socialist ministers, once in power, act in all

countries very much as did their nonsocialist predecessors. This

is the result not of so-called Marxist treachery or of weakness of

character, but of the specific weight of techniques. Ardant, in his

book on the technique of the state, emphasizes that there is a tech-

nique of state that no regime, whatever its nature, can do without.



Every statesman is faced with the dilemma, cither he must apply

these techniques on their own invariable terms, or he must re-

nounce them and forego the results they tend to produce. We

must not lose sight of the fact that techniques furnish the best

possible means, each in its own sphere. A country’s economic min-

ister will be forced to plan the economy or abandon it to anarchy.

We have already studied the unfeasibility of a half-planned econ-

omy or of planning which contents itself with making recommenda-

tions. Technique will not tolerate half measures.



What is true of a political personality—a minister, for example—

is in part true of a political regime. It makes little difference

whether or not the constitution provides for a separation of powers,

for one or more chamber, or for a democracy on the model of East

or of West. From the technical point of view the results will be

very nearly the same. Any type of administration other than that



The Technological Society	( *69



which is technically the most efficient is impossible. A different

financial regime is also an impossibility. In the case of taxes, for

example, it is said that a rightist regime will favor indirect taxes

that bear hardest on the general population because this popula-

tion represents the “masses,” but that a socializing regime will

favor direct taxes that bear hardest on the great fortunes. This only

shows that a scientific tax technique is not being applied. It seems

incontestable that such a rigorous technique, in view of the yields

it can produce, will in the end carry the day. There is an optimum

tax structure which can be completely determined. It gives the best

yield to the state, and at the same time equalizes the fortunes of

the citizens and saves the fiscal substance. There is no valid reason

for not implementing it. This optimal system is making headway

in all states and is gradually overcoming the associated and ad-

ventitious ideological motives.



In the same way, planning imposes itself little by little on every

regime. It is ideologically puerile to profess to see differences be-

tween Soviet and Nazi planning. Planning is not reserved to au-

thoritarian states. Democratic states which tend toward socialism,

such as France or Britain after 1945, or nonsocializing democratic

states such as Denmark, today employ the system of planning.

Even states which are completely liberal, such as South Africa, are

engaged in planning. This does not mean that the whole economy

is necessarily planned; it means that the technique of planning is

making headway even in political systems unfavorable to it

Whether it is a question of an immigration plan, an export plan, a

transport plan, or a city-planning operation, the same technique

is involved.



Planning is being extended to all domains of political life as well

as to all state regimes. In 1951, Chancellor Adenauer declared

that German youth had not responded to the efforts of the regime,

that the youth were anarchic and disorganized, that it was impos-

sible to have any hopes for them, and that planning represented

the sole means of reintegrating this wayward youth into the Ger-

man community. He announced that a German Youth Plan was

being elaborated to cope with the necessity of bringing youth into

rigid organizations, giving youth an ideal and a collective soul,

discipline and a fixed way of life. Adenauer went on to say that

all this had to be planned. In a way, he was suggesting a return



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



270)



to totalitarian methods. France in 1952 took steps to provide plan-

ning for scholarships and tourism. In 1956 it planned youth or-

ganizations, and in i960 sports. It is to be noted that planning is

becoming more and more widespread in the United States, where

there is a tendency to apply it not only to economic problems but

also to social (for example, city planning) and political questions.

Indeed, American planning is becoming a basic element; it is no

longer an accidental fact or a mere adjunct. In the United States

there are nearly two thousand planning organisms in the service

of the various states, not to mention national organisms, some of

which are public (The Council of Economic Advisors) and some

private (The National Planning Association).



We must not lose sight of the fact that nations are more and

more closely connected. Moreover, when one nation engages in

planning, there is an inevitable repercussion on the others; they are

more or less obliged to engage in planning too. And the planning

of one element implies first the understanding, then the mastery of

many others, and little by little the planning of these others. It is

not possible to establish a plan for a small comer of the economy

and permit all the rest of the economy to remain free. Gaston

Bardet has shown that good city planning requires the mobiliza-

tion of the entire economy. Then, it will be said, the best thing is

not to do any city planning at all. But planning cannot possibly

be avoided; the explosive increase in t^e population means that

no one will have any living space unless the area at our disposal

is organized rationally. Moreover, certain inconveniences of urban

life are daily becoming more serious; for example, traffic density,

air pollution, and excessive noise. None of these problems can be

effectively resolved except by means of a truly regulative plan.

In the last few years, numerous medical and administrative con-

gresses have of necessity been concerned with this cluster of prob-

lems.



Similar problems are raised by immigration. No country is today

in a position to allow free movement in or out: free movement

would result in excessive population displacement in the direction

of countries with high wages or political stability. Conversely,

countries with dictatorial regimes would see their populations

dwindle, a state of affairs they would not welcome since it means

diminution of power. Democratic countries would see an exag-



The Technological Society	(271



gerated rise in their populations, which they certainly do not de-

sire because of the danger to their economic equilibrium and the

risk of a fifth column. What is to be done? Put a complete stop to

population displacement? Such a solution is neither possible nor

desirable for reasons of manpower and colonization. But this pre-

supposes a plan for immigration, subject moreover to international

agreement. Immigration planning will be identical whether we

have to do with a dictatorship or a democracy. It will require

identical police, economic, and administrative mechanisms. Present-

day democracies cannot escape these technical necessities.



These examples help us grasp the fact that the structures of the

modern state and its organs of government are subordinate to the

techniques dependent on the state. If we were to consider in turn

each of the indispensable services of the modern state, we would

find that they are becoming more and more alike, regardless of the

theories of government under which they operate. We must insist

on the more and more; the final identity has not yet been achieved.

There is no greater similarity among the techniques of the state

than among mechanical techniques. There are backward countries

with respect to both. But the direction of the evolution is plain,

and there is, practically speaking, no way of arresting it. We shall

see why.



The supremacy of technical instruments is a result of their exact

correspondence to social necessities. When society did not have

constantly to appeal to the state, when problems of all kinds were

not as numerous or acute as they are today, the state was relatively

free with respect to its instruments. In spite of all the worthy per-

sons who reassure themselves by saying that all historical epochs

are alike, that the crises of the fourth century resembled those of

the ninth, and so on, the fact is that no one ever before saw world

economies, world wars, or world and national populations which,

on the average, double every forty-five years. The state is no longer

in a position to reject the most efficient means possible. Its prob-

lems are more difficult and complicated than any ever encountered

before. If the state desires to have an effect on society (and it has

no alternative), there is only one way to have this effect. Parlia-

mentary discussions, the hesitance of theoreticians, the protesta-

tions of humanists, democratic elections—all of these signify very

little. The state has no more real choice than the worker on the



2J2 )	TECHNIQUE	AND THE STATE



assembly line; it is led to the technical society by the very terms

of the problem.



Let us consider two examples. The concentration camp is gen-

erally taken as characteristic of dictatorial and Fascistic regimes.

Such institutions undeniably exist in the Soviet Union, Poland, and

Bulgaria. But they existed in France under the Third Republic and

in England during the Boer War. We must not be misled by dif-

ferences in name. Work camps, re-education camps, refugee camps

—all represent the same fact. And we are only too aware of how

important the use of concentration camps was in Algeria. We are

speaking here of the concentration camp in its pure form, which

has nothing to do with crematoria or hanging up the inmates by

the thumbs. Such tortures are imputable to men, not to technique.

The camp as an institution is making its appearance everywhere,

under the most varied political regimes, as a result of the conjunc-

tion of social problems and police technique. The terms of the

problem can be enumerated in this way: given the nationalistic

organization and conversely the existence of fifth columns, given

the administrative character of the supervision of territory and the

population expansion, it is absolutely necessary to establish a police

power based not on individuals but on categories of individuals.

There is no way of escaping the establishment of police power by

categories—which implies, for example, preventive arrest, con-

centration of masses of innocent persons not for judging but for

sorting, and so forth. To effect sorting and checking operations,

highly perfected systems have been developed, as, for example,

the MVD in the Soviet Union, the FBI in the United States, and

the CIC in occupied Germany. Such systems, obviously, often re-

quire a considerable length of time for their operations. Suspects

may be detained for years before the system finishes its investiga-

tions. Its precision and rigor cause it to move slowly. The technical

system of concentration camps has proved so efficient and satis-

factory to the state that it is increasingly being incorporated into

our society. It no longer represents the activity of aberrant dicta-

tors, but rather the activity of every good administrator.



The concentration-camp system of today is closely linked to the

nationalistic state. But it fits so well into administrative systems in

general that there is no chance of its disappearing, even if the

nationalistic structure of the modern world were to change. Certain



The Technological Society	(273



categories of undesirables would remain, social misfits for whom

the camp is the ideal solution, at least until a more efficient tech-

nique allows the resolution of the problem at even less expense.

But it is highly improbable that this will happen in the near future.



The second example is the system of sales engineering, originally

conceived in the United States to facilitate private commerce

within the country. Now the system exists on the level of inter-

national commerce under state direction. There are firms which

specialize in psychological and sociological prospecting of markets.

The products of one nation cannot be sold on the markets of

others unless they meet certain conditions, not only of manufacture

but of design and usefulness. It would be clearly inefficient to ship

products abroad which one knew in advance would not sell. It is

said that there is not a single American firm which would dare

launch a new product, even a hairpin, and itself assume responsi-

bility for design, color, etc. The firm takes its problem to one of the

three or four large industrial-design consultants whose job it is to

give to the object in question its optimum external appearance,

that is, the appearance which best suits the public taste.



This approach to consumer research is recognized by American

producers as the only correct one. It is nevertheless freely chosen.

As soon as commerce becomes international, however, it enters

more or less into the province of the state. The problem might

then be how a nation with a foreign trade deficit could wipe it out.

To accomplish this, it must comply with the law of the creditor's

market. One of the organizations described would have to be con-

sulted, and what was hitherto choice based on interest then be-

comes obligatory. Once more we see that a technically backward

nation is forced to model itself after the most advanced nation as

soon as organic relations are established between the two. The

situation is not due to American desire to dominate or to American

pride. It is a technical situation. There is one and only one efficient

method for establishing a system of international commerce, and

it is necessary to comply with this method, no matter what the

view of the state. Of course, the state could conceivably choose

to go bankrupt. ...



I have taken two examples as different as possible in order to

emphasize the degree to which technical facts act upon the state

in all areas.



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*74)



But the facts lead us further. State constitutions do not alter the

use of techniques, but techniques do act rather rapidly on state

structures. They subvert democracy and tend to create a new

aristocracy. Almost all sociologists are in agreement here; it is suffi-

cient to refer to the writings of Georges Friedmann to be con-

vinced of the unanimity which exists on this point even among

sociologists with the most pronouncedly democratic and socialist

leanings. Political equality becomes a myth—unattainable through

the agency of technique. On the contrary, technique, to an ever

greater degree, produces on the technical level a majority of serv-

ants and a minority of governors. Friedmann has studied the matter

scientifically and has shown in a completely nonpartisan way that

the worker-slaves are reduced to the lowest possible human

value when their functions are specialized to completely particular

tasks. We see in this phenomenon of specialization what technique

makes of man in the aggregate. For example, the precision of police

mechanisms makes it possible to train a good policeman in a few

weeks. But the man so trained has no knowledge at all of the

techniques within which he works. Men are shifted unceasingly

from job to job, never attaining a true calling; they are vocationally

downgraded by technique. But a vocation is a major part of life

and culture. Under these circumstances, even a pervasive culture

rapidly disappears.



We must also consider the influence of agricultural techniques

which result in the exhaustion of certain types of soils while medi-

cal techniques lead to overpopulation. The interaction of these two

factors brings about the creation of masses of underdeveloped hu-

man beings who are considered by some as unfit for democracy

because they are incapable of reacting with the necessary speed

to the problems of life.



In contrast to this mob there is a limited elite that understands

the secrets of their own techniques, but not necessarily of all tech-

niques. These men are close to the seat of modern governmental

power. The state is no longer founded on the “average citizen** but

on the ability and knowledge of this elite. The average man is al-

together unable to penetrate technical secrets or governmental or-

ganization and consequently can exert no influence at all on the

state.



The Technological Society	(27 5



Friedmann, in order to do something constructive about this

downgraded and overspecialized manpower, has put his hopes in

the evolution of socialism, which, by giving man the feeling of

socialist brotherhood and the consciousness of working for the

common good, would give him pleasure in his work. But this psy-

chological remedy (whose value I am not trying to deny) could

do nothing at all to bridge the gap between the intellectual in-

capacity of the mob of specialized workers on the one hand and

the monopoly of technical means by a technical elite on the other.

The new elite is an elite even when it is popular with the people.

This split is obvious in all domains. For example, in the administra-

tive domain, the intervention of a technique of organization and

mechanization results in the creation, as Mas puts it, “of two classes

very far removed from one another. The first, numerically small,

understands the means to conceive, organize, direct and control;

the second, infinitely more numerous, is composed of mere execu-

tants . . .” The latter are hacks who understand nothing of the

complicated techniques they are carrying out. It is not conceivable

that the normal operation of democracy would be acceptable to

those who exercise this technical monopoly—which, moreover, is

a hidden monopoly in the sense that its practitioners are unknown

to the masses.



Technique shapes an aristocratic society, which in turn implies

aristocratic government. Democracy in such a society can only be

a mere appearance. Even now, we see in propaganda the premises

of such a state of affairs. When it comes to state propaganda, there

is no longer any question of democracy.



Let us consider ordinary propaganda as it occurs in republican

countries. It is innocently said that since there is a plurality of

parties and propaganda machines they counterbalance one an-

other. The elector is therefore free to make a real choice between

rival candidates. However, certain persons, perhaps no less in-

nocently, claim to be able to mathematicize everything. Specifi-

cally, the propaganda which is most technical, the most skillful

and urgent, gets the greatest number of votes. As far as I am con-

cerned, neither of these positions in itself perverts democracy.

What does is the very accumulation of propaganda techniques, the

very deployment of technical means for exerting pressure. It is not



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



276)



true that two opposed propaganda apparatuses cancel each other

out Or rather, it may be true politically, but it is false psycho-

logically.



The real problem lies in the psychological situation of the in-

dividual assailed by a number of equally skillful propagandas act-

ing upon his nervous system, and now, with the discovery of new

methods, probing and disturbing his unconscious, working over

his intelligence, and exacerbating his reactions. The individual can

no longer live except in a climate of tension and overexcitement.

He can no longer be a smiling and skeptical spectator. He is indeed

“engaged,” but involuntarily so, since he has ceased to dominate his

own thoughts and actions. Techniques have taught the organizers

how to force him into the game. He has been stripped of his power

of judgment. If he has not been “fixed” in advance, he oscillates

at random, in obedience not to his own power of judgment but to

the law of large numbers. The intensive use of propaganda de-

stroys the citizen's faculty of discernment In a truly democratic

regime, everything rests on judicious choice and free will. But it

is precisely in democracies that propaganda machines proliferate.

Where only a single propaganda machine exists, that of the state,

it conditions individuals directly and could not be really intensive

since there is no competition. In the so-called democracies, propa-

ganda must become more and more intense in order to dominate

its rivals. It becomes thereby more and more insidious.



Thus, technique disturbs immediately the operation of a democ-

racy. It leads public opinion in one direction only, because the

means at the disposal of a state directed by a technical aristocracy

are generally more powerful than those at the disposal of parties.

The very presence of technique, therefore, poses a grave problem.



But for every political system a further problem arises: the

changing variety of available machines, which entails the disor-

dering of traditional strategic and tactical military conceptions. It

is of course possible to concoct grand theories on the art of war

and strategic doctrines, to organize armies in accordance with

philosophic principles, and so on. But one factor always upsets

everything: the machine. The machine has in fact conditioned

modern strategy. Hitler, because he understood this, achieved cer-

tain successes. The technical problem can be simply stated: given

a certain machine, how can it be used most efficiently? What ac-



The Technological Society	{*77



tions concerning logistics, liaison, and co-ordination of weapons

must be taken? What plan must be created to make optimal use of

the machine? And so on. For example, the tank conditioned com-

bat between 1939 and 1943. Today aircraft, guided missiles, and

intercontinental rockets are of major inportance. But beyond the

effect of technique on strategy, the changing machinery of war

forces political choice. The United States, in a Congressional re-

port (1949), recognized that because of the rapid advance of

technique it was no longer in a position to pay for complete arma-

ment—for a land army with an unlimited number of vehicles of

every type, plus a navy and an air force. The military aircraft of

1946 were already out of date by 1949. It seemed impossible to

continue the construction of machines by the thousands which

would never see service and would so soon be outmoded. A politi-

cal choice had to be made.



Similarly, Britain abandoned most of its prototypes in order to

devote itself to constructing a unique kind of army judged to be

decisive. The fact of forced political choice was confirmed by the

distribution of military tasks among continental Europe, the United

States, and Great Britain as a consequence of the Atlantic Pact.

With further developments, it became necessary to seek new

modes of financing to support the burden of a military technique

distributed as described. This reminds us of the interdependence

of techniques in general and in particular of the influence of tech-

nique on military concepts and through this on political choice. In

this connection, recall Bevan’s biting remark in one of his last lec-

tures: “The techniques of modem war have destroyed democ-

racy.” This is precisely our point.



Let us reason by analogy. In the same way that military machines

condition strategy, organizational and other techniques condition

the structure of the modem state. Wiener was not speaking idly

when he said that the different systems of broadcasting and air-

transport networks make a world state inevitable. Technique puts

the question, not whether a given state form is more just, but

whether it permits more efficient utilization of techniques. The

state is no longer caught between political reality and moral theo-

ries and imperatives. It is caught between political reality and

technical means. The problem is to find the state form most ade-

quate to the application of the techniques the state has at its dis-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



378)



posal. Doubtless, it is free to prefer a certain doctrine and to look

with disfavor on a given technique. It is free to dream of the reali-

zation of a certain kind of justice rather than to make use of tech-

nical means. But then it must expect almost inevitable retribution

such as the French Army suffered in 1940. Our generals had their

doctrine and their military conceptions, but they neglected the in-

fluence of the machine—a heroic example, it was said, of getting

yourself killed at the outposts of progress. Face to face with techni-

cal efficiency, the state owes it to itself to give this efficiency free

rein. Ardant has written: “Good methods bring about good struc-

tures.”



These factors doom parliamentary government, which is bur-

dened with considerable excess baggage which hinders technical

progress: the numerous persons involved in decision making, the

ponderousness and slowness of democratic mechanisms, the com-

plete inability of a representative assembly to apply political tech-

nique, the frequent turnover in parliamentary personnel in contrast

to the stability of the technicians in the service of the administra-

tion, etc. As a result of these factors, technical advance gradually

invades the state, which in turn is compelled to assume forms and

adopt institutions favorable to this advance. The importance of

“commissions” in French parliamentary life is already recognized,

and, it might be added, these commissions have clearly got out of

hand. In the United States the system of lobbyists (a group of in-

dividuals who hang about the corridors of Congress) assures liai-

son between the legislative organ and the technical organ. All the

great American corporations and technical groups have representa-

tives accredited to Washington who are charged with looking after

the interests (not necessarily in the capitalist sense) of the groups

they represent in the legislative branch. The system is perfectly

legal in the United States and allows the retention of some connec-

tion between politicians (who are more and more detached from

reality) and the technical conditions of life. Such institutions rep-

resent very weak modes of adaptation. It is certain that the mod-

ern state will eventually be compelled to total adaptation. Total

adaptation may come about through a revolution, such as the one

which created the Hitler state. It may be, however, that the con-

stitution will not undergo even the slightest of alterations and that

the whole problem will be reduced to the elimination of political



The Technological Society	( 2 7 9



powers, which will have become purely formal, a mere matter of

show. The conclusion seems unavoidable that this is the road upon

which our democracies have already entered.



But if the state adapts itself completely to technical necessities

and becomes nothing but a huge machine, will it still be recogniz-

ably a state? Let us first of all remark that the question in no sense

presupposes a theory of a technological state. Things happen today

in the political sphere without the benefit of the minutest theory.

There is no longer any question of a state in the classic sense. To

think otherwise is a laughable error on the part of the majority of

those who talk about the state, be they philosophers, theologians,

publicists, politicians, or professors of constitutional law. They are

speaking of the state in terms and forms appropriate to the state of

the nineteenth century, or to that of Napoleon. The situation today

is radically different.



The political power is no longer precisely a classical state, and it

will be less and less so. It is an amalgam of organizations with a

greatly reduced organism for making decisions, reduced because,

in the interplay of techniques, decision making has less and less

place. The situation is comparable to the elimination by an auto-

matic machine of the individual, who retains no function except

that of inspecting the machine and seeing that it remains in work-

ing order; the political power is like any well-adjusted organization

which functions with a minimum of decision making. Such an or-

ganization is not too rigid and knows of itself how to adapt to cur-

rent problems. We are admittedly not yet in this situation, but we

are rapidly approaching it* This is the state form which Lenin

forecast for the socialist world. “The state,” he said, “will be re-

duced to census taking and statistics.” Lenin of necessity described

the future role of the state in a very summary fashion; the tech-

niques of organization were not yet developed in 1920. But what

he discerned is exactly what we observe in outline today behind 4



4 We shall not consider here “machines tor evaluating military situations and de-

termining the best action.” These machines are no mere fantasy. Wiener, Shannon,

and Morgen,stern—among the elite of American mathematicians—are working on

such a machine and speak of it as “imminent.” Wiener even thinks that this will

lead to a machine to evaluate political situations. Cybernetic devices will make

the state conduct politics as one plays a game of chess. If this apocalyptic possibility

is realized, we clearly cannot foresee the consequences for the state. We therefore

shall not consider the hypothesis.



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



l80 )



the old-fashioned republican mask. It is not necessary that such a

society be socialist. What seems to be important is that the state

Lenin foresaw and the purely technological state which modern

organizations imply are in fact identical.



That such a state is socialist is debatable. That it is technical (a

statement not intended a s a theory) i s not debatable. At this very

moment, technical synthesis could bring about the total elimination

of the state in the traditional sense. The framework in which society

exists could get along well enough without the traditional state, and

perhaps even do better without it. The technological state corre-

sponds directly to modem society itself since it is technically con-

structed and exists in the very soul of men who worship efficiency,

order, and speed. The classical state corresponds to vanished forces

of an entirely different nature.



Technique and Political Doctrines. The structure of the state is

not the only thing modified by technique; political doctrines are

modified too.



We note, first of all, that the same thing holds for political doc-

trines as for political structures, that some are adapted to technical

usage and some are not. In general, the new doctrines (those, for

example, of the people's democracies, which it would be stupid to

lump together naively as “Stalinist") are so adapted. “No freedom

for the enemies of freedom"; “Only the worker is a citizen”; “the

state guarantees freedom; the stronger the state, the more freedom

is guaranteed.” These slogans are representative of an idea which is

becoming prevalent. Doctrinal elements coincide exactly with the

development of state techniques; doctrine expresses the social

situation exactly and is therefore vital. It is believed in by a large

number of citizens; it tends toward effective application and pos-

sesses a contagious force. On the other hand, the doctrines of tra-

ditional democracy—the rights of man, the abstract conception of

the citizen, equality in voting, the clash between power and liberty

—are not adapted to modern social reality. For this reason, we are

witnessing the rapid sclerosis and obsolescence of these doctrines;

and it is becoming harder and harder to defend them. Public opin-

ion no longer holds with them, except possibly among the Ameri-

cans, who seem still to believe in individual freedom, a somewhat

theoretic concept. But democratic peoples as a whole are more at-

tached to traditions than to precise doctrines. Democratic doctrine



The Technological Society	(281



is, in any case, unadapted to technical progress, a fact which robs

it of any compelling force or power to make new conquests.



Documents such as the United Nations Declaration of Human

Rights mean nothing to a mankind surrounded by techniques. It is

our responsibility to study man's situation vis-a-vis techniques and

not vis-a-vis some no longer existent force. No one gets worked up

about declarations which may be violated with impunity, whether

by private enterprise (as exemplified by the attitude of employers

on the subject of strikes in 1948) or by the state itself (as in the

case of the law of September 15, 1948, concerning war crimes, a di-

rect violation of the declaration of rights).



Technique has rendered traditional democratic doctrines obso-

lete. This should be regarded as a normal situation, for no political

doctrine is eternal. When situations change, doctrines must change

too. Evolution is necessary, whether it takes place under the in-

fluence of technique or in some other way. But one fact does seem

new: what is in question is not merely a change of doctrine; politi-

cal doctrine is being called upon to play a fundamentally different

role. In the nineteenth century, political doctrine was strongly pre-

scriptive and constitutive; this was consonant both with the whole

idealist and romantic movement and with the belief in progress.

Men were convinced of the omnipotence of ideas and were pre-

pared to put into action doctrines which appeared to them to be

just. Doctrinal motives played a role of prime importance in the

Revolution of 1789. Napoleon I was disgraced because of his lack

of doctrine, a deficiency which Napoleon III sought to overcome.

Republics and even monarchies were anxious to apply that doc-

trine which was most just. Political doctrine, whatever its content,

established an end to be attained. It represented the best form of

government, founded in reason (rather than in history) and in phi-

losophy. The problem was to realize the ideal. Doctrine was the

criterion of action; it was the judge not so much of whether the ac-

tion was well or ill done as of whether the action was valid with re-

spect to the doctrine itself. Even Marx was of this mind; for him

also, doctrine represented the end and criterion of action. Mani-

festly, doctrine dominated political life; it was no mere conceit but

a reality.



With the introduction of technical development into the life of

the state, the situation becomes completely different; doctrine is



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



282 )



merely explicative and justifying. It no longer represents the end;

the end is defined by the autonomous operation of techniques. It is

no longer the criterion of action; the sole criterion of action consists

in knowing whether or not technique has been correctly used, and

no political theory can tell us that.



Political doctrine, since about 1914, works in this way: the state

is forced by the operation of its own proper techniques to form its

doctrine of government on the basis of technical necessities. These

necessities compel action in the same way that techniques permit

it. Political theory comes along to explain action in its ideological

aspect and in its practical aspect (frequently without indicating its

purely technical motives). Finally, political doctrine intervenes to

justify action and to show that it corresponds to ideals and to moral

principles. The man of the present feels a great need for justifica-

tion. He needs the conviction that his government is not only effi-

cient but just. Unfortunately, efficiency is a fact and justice a

slogan.



We conclude that the political doctrine of today is a rationalizing

mechanism for justifying the state and its actions and is the source

of the dangerous intellectual acrobatics indulged in by official jour-

nalists and statesmen. Sometimes the preoccupation of these gen-

tlemen is to square some totally unjust action with democratic

principles. A good example of this was the British intervention of

1944 in Greece as a function of the Yalta agreements. This interven-

tion resulted in the crushing of a popular movement (represented

by EL AS and EAM) under the pretext of organizing a Western-

style democracy. Sometimes the aim of these men is to create a

judicial doctrine in order to justify purely pragmatic action. The

masterpiece of this species of rationalization was the theory of

“trusteeship.” Judicially, the theory was extremely well constructed,

but its application led the United States inevitably to occupy the

Japanese islands while forbidding the Soviet Union to occupy any

enemy colony whatever. The direction of this “theory” is clearly

visible. All the theories concerning “crimes against humanity” are

of this order; the charge of genocide is in fact the judicial justifica-

tion of the need to condemn the vanquished as war criminals.



The French Constitution of 1958 is another example of this tend-

ency; it was devised to justify a de facto situation. The Commu-

nists, however, are the real virtuosi of this genre. They have re-



The Technological Society	(283



moved all the bones from Marxist doctrine and reduced it to a

method. Once this is achieved, no contradiction between doctrine

and action is possible. Take, for instance, the Soviet doctrine of

the necessity of the “national stage” in the development of all

peoples, a doctrine intended to justify Soviet intervention in Africa.

All Soviet actions are a consequence of their method, which, being

at the same time a doctrine, serves to justify action.



The only real problem, then, is to know whether action has been

effective by virtue of the correct application of method. The prob-

lem thus becomes purely technical. In ordinary democratic govern-

ments, the unity of doctrine and method resolves all contradictions

that show themselves as bad conscience. Nowadays, it is enough if

fidelity to method is assured—this fidelity, as all techniques, is

tested by results—for justification to be assured also. Justification,

no doubt, only in the eyes of those who already believe in the doc-

trine. It is illusory to think that political doctrine can justify action

in an objective way, erga omnes. The adversary is never really

taken in by this “justification,” although he may well accept it, since

he uses it himself.



This transformation of the role of political doctrine demonstrates

the complete vanity of pfesent-day political theories. When we see

such theoreticians as Max Glass or Ropke proposing a new world

structure to resolve all problems, or a new political regime to satisfy

all exigencies, we stand confounded before such innocence (in the

etymological sense of the word). These political innocents always

suppose that theories have educational force, that mobs can bestir

themselves to apply principles, and that ideal doctrines will be-

come ends. The plain truth is that such opinions have been over-

taken and left behind.



The role of doctrines is fixed with precision by political technique,

and since nothing else can stem the tide of history or of techniques,

there is no room for the supposition that political doctrines will

change roles in the near future. Because of the vanity of their pre-

tentions, our political theoreticians cannot be taken seriously. How

could we possibly take seriously, on the political level, anyone who

does not even know how to view fundamental events? Or who takes

as fundamental what he reads in the newspaper?



In many ways this profound transformation of political doctrines

is perhaps not very new. What was new was the attention paid to



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



**4)



doctrine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before that

time, political theories incontestably played the role of justifiers,

as they do today. Thus, the counselors of Philip IV, armed with the

whole apparatus of Roman law, used it for the sole purpose of lend-

ing an appearance of legitimacy to the acts of their king. The same

applies to Richelieu and to the theory of the divine right of kings.

(I purposely do not cite Machiavelli because his theories were

never applied.) In reality the brutal reversal we are witnessing at

present is essentially a return to a long tradition. Power is power;

but it cannot be exercised without at least the appearance of justice.

Doctrine is charged, therefore, with the task of furnishing power

with this semblance of justice. We repeat, it has not always been so.

But since, at present, power is technique, these intellectual con-

structs no longer have any usefulness beyond supplying justifica-

tion.



The Totalitarian State. Finally, technique causes the state to be-

come totalitarian, to absorb the citizens’ life completely. We have

noted that this occurs as a result of the accumulation of techniques

in the hands of the state. Techniques are mutually engendered and

hence interconnected, forming a system that tightly encloses all our

activities. When the state takes hold of a single thread of this net-

work of techniques, little by little it draws to itself all the matter

and the method, whether or not it consciously wills to do so.



Even when the state is resolutely liberal and democratic, it can-

not do otherwise than become totalitarian. It becomes so either

directly or, as in the United States, through intermediate persons.

But, despite differences, all such systems come ultimately to the

same result. I shall not repeat these facts since I believe that I have

sufficiently emphasized them.



Technique engenders totalitarianism by another expedient: its

mode of action. Let us take a simple example, that of total war.

There has been a theory of total war, and consequently, it would

seem, some will and choice in the matter. But the action of tech-

niques nowadays makes war of necessity total. The use of guided

missiles such as the Vn weapons and rockets which had an error of

about nine miles in three hundred, presupposed that the great

majority of them would fall among the civilian population. The

same holds for the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile: one ICBM is

capable of destroying all life over very considerable areas. Auto-



The Technological Society	(18 5



matic steering mechanisms can give great precision to the flight of

antiaircraft missiles. But precision of aim has no meaning when

targets are terrestrial objects closely grouped together. A formation

of bombers is isolated in the sky, and a missle fired at them neces-

sarily hits a military target. But this is not so on the ground.



The situation is even more acute with an H-bomb which can de-

stroy everything within a radius of thirty miles. Despite any and

all possible precautions, the H bomb would destroy civilians and

nonmilitary structures. There is no need here to decide whether or

not to make total war. Even if one wished to limit it, war is total be-

cause the means are totalitarian.



The same applies to civilian techniques. It is no longer possible

to limit their effects even if there is a desire to do so. Censoring

films may sometimes limit their subject matter, give them a con-

formist tone or a moral content; but it does not touch the essential,

that is, the psychic modification of the individual by means of the

violent impression films make upon him. The emotion he inevitably

feels modifies the psychological tonus of the individual and tends

to make him a component of a mob. Such effects lie outside the

range of possible means of rectification. Or, put more precisely,

new means of rectification will be invented. One might, for ex-

ample, try psychoanalysis or one might limit the number of per-

formances each week. But such measures only represent a new at-

tack on the human soul or a new limitation of freedom.



It would be possible to consider in turn every element of state

technique and to show that each one, pushed to the limit, leads to

totalitarianism. Jacques Driencourt has unwittingly done this for

propaganda and Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt for police techniques.



Driencourt attempts to show that propaganda is consistent with

democracy, but he recognizes parenthetically that democratic gov-

ernment is obliged to integrate propaganda into its institutions for

reasons outside its own principles. He recognizes that democracy

is obliged to exploit the same practices, the same violation of hu-

man conscience, and the same encouragement of conformism as

does totalitarianism. He has, in fact, shown that propaganda is ii*

itself totalitarian. And when he asserts that propaganda is demo-

cratic if it is not a monopoly, he forgets what he proved at the be-

ginning of his book, that propaganda always tends to monopoly.

The fact is that when the state employs a complete and technical



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



286)



propaganda system, it inevitably becomes totalitarian. Driencourt

notes with surprise that “the country which boasts of being most

liberal [that is, the United States] is the country in which the tech-

nique of thought direction is, by its perfection, the closest to totali-

tarian practices; and is the country in which people, accustomed

to living in groups, are most inclined to leave it to the experts to

fk lines of spiritual conduct/"



As for the police power, it is to be noted that when it becomes

technical, it assumes the leading position in the state and becomes

a fundamental institution, not merely a supplementary one. It af-

firms itself as the "essence of the state.” It appears as a mysterious

entity which evades all laws and assumes complete autonomy. As

Hamel says: "It is the irrational nucleus which escapes all defini-

tion and limitation by the sovereignity of the state.” In fact, we

might as well have an undisguised totalitarianism which controls

everything, since the simple use of techniques produces a totalitar-

ian structure of the state, as it does in the economy.



Why is this so? The answer is that technique is a mass instru-

ment. One can think of technique only in terms of categories.

Technique has no place for the individual; the personal means

nothing to it. We certainly cannot deny in theory that every individ-

ual is particular; we even concede him his particularity willingly.

But in the case of rules of organization and action we are unable to

take this particularity into account. It must remain carefully con-

cealed; the particular is identical with the subjective and is not

allowed to show. If it could appear it would have to do so by way

of technique, and in technique there is no particular. Technical

procedures, therefore, abstract from the individual and seek traits

common to masses of men and mass phenomena. Without these com-

mon traits, neither statistics nor the use of the law of great numbers

nor the Gaussian curve—indeed, no organization—would be pos-

sible. Abstraction from the individual is doubtless intended only

as a formal procedure for the convenience of reasoning. But the

formal has become terribly real. It has produced the world which

constrains man on every side, which leaves him no outlet to that

realm which was ostensibly excluded merely for the convenience

of reasoning. There no longer exists any form in which the particu-

lar can be concretely incarnated because form has become the

domain of technique. Technique, in the form of psychotechnique,



The Technological Society	( 2.8 7



aspires to take over the individual, that is, to transform the qual-

itative into the quantitative. It knows only two possible solutions:

the transformation or the annihilation of the qualitative. It is pre-

cisely by way of the former that technique is totalitarian; and

when the state becomes technical, it too becomes totalitarian; it has

no alternative.



The words the totalitarian state inevitably evoke cliches and

passionate opinions. But these no longer represent anything but

historical reminiscences. The totalitarian state we are discussing

here is not the brutal, immoderate thing which tortured, deformed,

and broke everything in its path, the battleground of armed bullies

and factions, a place of dungeons and the reign of the arbitrary.

These things did certainly exist; but they represented transient

traits, not real characteristics of the totalitarian state. It might even

be said that they were the human aspects of the state in its inhu-

manity. Torture and excess are the acts of persons who use them as

a means of releasing a suppressed need for power. This does not in-

terest us here. It does not represent the true face of the completely

technical, totalitarian state. In such a state nothing useless exists;

there is no torture; torture is a wasteful expenditure of psychic

energy which destroys salvageable resources without producing

useful results. There is no systematically organized famine, but

rather a recognition of the pressing necessity of maintaining the

labor force in good condition. There is nothing arbitrary, for the

arbitrary represents the very opposite of technique, in which every-

thing “has a reason” (not a final but a mechanical reason). Irra-

tionality might appear to exist—but only for the person who

knows nothing of technique; it is like trying to tell a man who does

not know the radio that there is music all around him although he

cannot hear it.



The totalitarian state does not necessarily have totalitarian theo-

ries, nor does it necessarily even desire them. On the contrary, what

we call totalitarian doctrines litter up the clear line of the technical

state with aberrant elements such as “race,” “blood,” “proletariat.”

The technical state is the technical state only because it exploits

certain technical means.



There is, however, a great difference between the democracies

and the so-called totalitarian states. All are following the same road,

but dictatorial states have become conscious of the possibilities of



2 8 8 )	TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



exploiting technique. They know and consciously desire whatever

advantage can be drawn from it. The rule, for them, is to use means

Without limitation of any sort. The democratic states, on the other

hand, have not attained to this consciousness and are consequently

inhibited in their development. Scruples concerning tradition,

principles, judicial affirmations, the maintenance of a fa9ade of

public and private morality—all these still exist in the democratic

state. It may be going too far to say that scruples concerning hu-

man beings also exist in democratic states; the democratic state is

preoccupied most of all with a very special type of man: the voter.



All these scruples, in any case, are without force or reality. They

are merely verbal smokescreens, and the democracies disregard

them every time it is necessary to do so. This fagade no longer

corresponds in any way to a real community; it represents only

vestiges of a community. Nevertheless, however without substance

such talk may be, it still has great importance in democratic life,

especially as it acts to prevent democratic governments from

launching themselves along the road of technique without some

other justification. Here, more than anywhere else, justification is

necessary. Even so, democracies have a bad governmental con-

science which no one has succeeded in dispelling. The state has

not taken the decisive step of affirming that only technical neces-

sity counts; it has therefore failed to do two things: to become con-

scious (of what the state can accomplish by exploiting tech-

niques) and to sow its wild oats (by deciding that there are no

compelling moral reasons to get in its way). Thus, at present every

time the democratic state exploits a given technique, it must begin

all over again to justify itself, to debate the necessity of the pro-

posed measure, and to question everything. In the long run it will

have to capitulate, but in the meantime its scruples act as a drag on

it, if not in the actual application of techniques (which would, in

any case, be impossible), at least in its enterprise. In order to force

the democratic state to come to any decision there must always be

a “present danger," some direct competition with the dictatorial

state, in which action becomes a matter of life or death.



The superiority of dictatorship stems wholly from its massive ex-

ploitation of techniques. Democracy has no choice in the matter:

either it utilizes techniques in the same way as the enemy, or it will



The Technological Society	(2 8 9



perish. It is clear enough that the first term of this proposition will

prevail. For this reason, wars always bring about a prodigious

advance in the use of certain techniques in democratic societies.

The democracies are, of course, careful to assert that they are using

these techniques only because of the state of war. But there are al-

ways wars of one kind or another: war preparations, cold war, hot

war, new cold war, and so on, ad infinitum.



Indeed, cold war is as productive as hot war in forcing the

democracies to imitate the dictatorships in the use of technique.

The officers of the French Army, for example, have been obliged to

engage in psychological activity and subversive war to counter the

enemy’s use of these. Here is a good example of technical imitation

of a dictatorship by a democracy.



Up to this point we have contrasted the democratic state with the

dictatorial state. But we have not distinguished among the different

forms assumed by the dictatorships. There are two major lines

followed by these states, represented, respectively, by Commu-

nism and Fascism. The question might be put whether or not these

two are identical. A superficial, bourgeois survey will immediately

come up with an affirmative answer, on the basis of certain massive

facts of the present day. It might be noted, for example, that both

sides have concentration camps, enormous police apparatuses,

torture, ration cards, economic and other kinds of planning, plebi-

scites in place of elections, a single party (Nazi or Communist)

dominating the state, a single individual exercising plenary pow-

ers, and so on. This adds up to a complex of identical forms; as a

consequence, the regimes are alike. The intellectuals, however,

will protest against such a hasty assimilation of the two; and in a

deeper sense, the differences are real.



In Communism, despite its methods, there is an indubitable will

to human liberation. It has the genuine support of millions of

poverty-striken persons and, consequently, a humane aspect which

Fascism never possessed. It recruits its adherents from many dif-

ferent parties—on the one hand from the true proletariat and on the

other from the “Lumpen-proletariat,” that is to say, a sub-proletar-

iat without positive value. Communism has the honesty not to

affirm bogus spiritual values or make pacts with international cap-

italism. In addition, the fact that Nazism was anti-Semitic has a



2Q0 )	TECHNIQUE	AND	THE	STATE



special significance for Christians—a point which Karl Barth has

emphasized. Communism as such does not imply this, even though

it may become anti-Semitic for short periods.



Upon closer analysis, however, we find a similarity between the

two: a comparable attitude toward techniques. This relation may

appear to some a bit thin, but it is the very essence of the twin

movement represented by Communism and Fascism, both of

which owe their origin to techniques, and uniquely so. Communism

emerges when the development of certain techniques endangers

the very society which has allowed them to flourish. Communist

dialectic makes its appearance as an explanation of the way in

which technical progress first produced a society, then transcended

that society's economic and political forms, finally provoking their

inevitable decline. Marxism orders this succession of events into a

precise doctrine. It furnishes the key to an understanding of the

modern world and at the same time ties its own fate to that of tech-

nique. Recall in this connection the famous remark of Lenin con-

cerning socialism and electrification. Marxism is, in fact, nothing

but an epiphenomenon of technical development, a phase of the

painful marriage of man and technique. “Neither with thee, nor

without thee.” It is an attempt at dialectic reconciliation, so to

speak.



Fascism stands in exactly the same relation to technique. It can be

stated without exaggeration (in spite of the scandalous character

of such an affirmation) that both Fascism and Nazism are approxi-

mations derived from Marx for the adaptation of man to his tech-

niques. They represent that part of Marxism which is centered on

the narrower problem of the state and technique, whereas Marx-

ism itself is a broader theory encompassing the totality of the prob-

lem of society and technique. Nazism, however, far from being

opposed to Marxism, completes it and confirms it. It gives the solu-

tion to numerous problems of adaptation. Hitler’s methods stem

directly from Lenin’s precepts; and conversely, Stalinism learned

certain lessons about technique from the Nazis.



If we suppress the episodic in order to get at the essential, we

find in the two fraternal enemies the same phenomenon of awe at

the power to be had from technique, and the same enthusiastic pur-

suit of the same objective. The Guelphs and the Ghibellines made

merciless war on each other to decide which party was to exercise



The Technological Society	(292



world supremacy. But they had the same objective: the greatest

possible power of the state whose sovereignty had no limits, the

earthly hope of all whom feudal anarchy had exhausted.



The dictatorial state has efficiency as its goal. It submits to the

law of techniques, for it understands that only by giving tech-

niques free rein can it hope to derive the maximum profit from

them. Whatever techniques are involved—human or physical, eco-

nomic or educational—the state musters around it all available

technical instruments. This occurs spontaneously, by chance; but

in dictatorial states it is voluntary, calculated, studied (and there-

fore the process occurs more rapidly). It is the end sought by all

forms of state. The Communist knows that technical progress

means the progress of the proletariat. The Nazi knows that he is the

instrument of state power; he cannot conceive that anyone would

allow its limitation.



Nazism gave its goals an ideological veneer, but this veneer was

futile insofar as it was not an instrument of propaganda and pro-

ceeded too rapidly. Communism, in its fusion of technique and

state, proved much more prudent and in that sense more humanis-

tic. It was in this way closer to reality and less shocking to the con-

science of the average man. Hitlerism caused the essential barbar-

ism of the thing to explode in men’s faces. Behemoth showed his

true face, and it proved to be too terrifying for the man of 1930,

who still sought to hold on to some of his illusions and to preserve

for himself at least the semblance of freedom. In this, Nazism com-

mitted a grave error which the Communists knew well enough how

to exploit. However, both Nazism and Communism were working

toward the total exploitation of the means which man had created

to vanquish necessity.



Summum Jus; Summa Injuria



The function of justice provokes an unending major debate be-

tween the claims of justice and those of judicial technique.



Judicial technique is in every way much less self-confident than

the other techniques, because it is impossible to transform the

notion of justice into technical elements. Despite what philosophers

may say, justice is not a thing which can be grasped or fixed. If one



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



392)



pursues genuine justice (and not some automatism or egalitarian-

ism ), one never knows where one will end, A law created as a func-

tion of justice has something unpredictable in it which embar-

rasses the jurist. Moreover, justice is not in the service of the state;

it even claims the right to judge the state. Law created as a function

of justice eludes the state, which can neither create nor modify it.

The state of course sanctions this situation only to the degree that it

has little power or has not yet become fully self-conscious; or to the

degree that its jurists are not exclusively technical rationalists and

subordinated to efficient results. Under these conditions, technique

assumes the role of a handmaiden modestly resigned to the fact that

she does not automatically get what she desires.



A certain equilibrium is established between the pursuit of jus-

tice and the judicial technique which flourishes in a period of natu-

ral law.5 Judicial technique has a place, but in many respects it is

not easily defined.



There are indeed very different definitions of the role of judicial

technique. For Saleille, judicial technique constitutes the arrange-

ment of judicial concepts, the reduction of rules to a coherent sys-

tem. This limits it to a highly theoretical notion, essentially an in-

tellectual operation. The same holds for Sa vigny’s contention that

judicial technique is concerned with the scientific elaboration of

law by jurists, as opposed to the spontaneous creation of law by the

people. This is doubtless not inexact, but Savigny is referring rather

to the consequences of judicial technique. It is true that when

judicial technique develops, the spontaneous creation of law de-

clines and dies; that the popular source of law is sterilized by

learned law; and that this gives the jurists a free hand. But then,

Savigny is describing an aspect of judicial technique, not the pur-

pose of judicial technique. We come much closer to actuality with

Kohler, who assigns to judicial technique the role of adapting legal

texts to practice. And it is Kohler’s concept which has guided the

major authors who have studied the problem of judicial technique,

albeit with individual differences (Geny, Dabin, Haesaert, Per-

rot).



In this context, judicial technique consists in setting reality in a

framework of means through legal decisions and in rendering these 9



9 On these points, see my Fondement theologique du droit.



The Technological Society	(* g 3



decisions effective. It can then be reasonably argued that political

function and judicial technique are complementary. Political func-

tion consists in supplying the substance of the rules, that is, the

goal to be attained, the political or social ideal which the law is to

realize. By its laws the state will also indicate ways and means of

reaching the political goal, and in so doing will approach reality

to a sufficient degree, without, however, grappling with it directly.

It is the task of the jurists to give form to the instructions and de-

cisions of the law, not only by rendering them systematic but by

implementing them. Legal form is clearly not a mere verbal, ex-

ternal matter, but a means of effecting something. It has a broader

scope than Perrot suggests when he defines legal technique as an

“operational procedure meant to secure the goal sought by the

will by causing the will to enter onto the legal plane."



But this exclusive relation between technique and will, which

leaves out the whole judicial expression of social and economic

reality, is far too restricted. Judicial technique is not merely a

technique of adaptation but one of creation of law in its entirety.



The great task of judicial technique then is to arrange the ele-

ments furnished it by the political function in order that the law

not be merely % verbalism, a dead letter. And this takes a whole

arsenal of proofs, civil and penal sanctions, guarantees, in short,

the whole detailed mechanism created to secure the realization of

the ends of the law.



Haesaert seems to me to have defined this judicial technique ex-

cellently as “the ensemble of means by which the subjects of law

are induced to take, in the social system in which they exist, the

legal attitude," the active or passive behavior judged necessary. It

is really, therefore, a question of obedience, and this is in fact the

end toward which judicial technique aims.



For the technician of the law, all law depends on efficiency.

There is no law but in its application. A law which is not applied

is not a law. Obedience to rule is the fundamental condition of its

being. Legal abstraction is unreal. The whole technical apparatus

(expression of legal norms, publication of laws, applications in

jurisprudence or doctrine, voluntary or forced realization) has but

one end: the application of the law. And this complex corresponds

exactly to the notion of technique in general, that is, an artificial

search for efficiency. In this definition, efficiency is taken in its



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



294)



pure state; we are forced to admit that law does not exist without

it. The term artificial is used in the same way; law is no longer

obeyed spontaneously, and the popular consciousness which origi-

nally created law does not adhere spontaneously and naturally to

this system. Application of law no longer arises from popular ad-

hesion to it but from the complex of mechanisms which, by means of

artifice and reason, adjust behavior to rule.



This technical creation of law is, then, requisite and gains its

scope through two operations:



1)	By means of the first the judicial element is separated from

the law as such. The judicial element (which becomes principally

organization) is no longer charged with pursuing justice or creating

law in any way whatsoever. It is charged with applying the laws.

This role can be perfectly mechanical. It does not call for a phi-

losopher or a man with a sense of justice. What is needed is a good

technician, who understands the principles of the technique, the

rules of interpretation, the legal terminology, and the ways of de-

ducing consequences and finding solutions. The removal of law

from the concrete is a great step forward in the process of tech-

nicization. The judicial element is charged with certain practical

questions but, as we have said, not with making law. It is in a

position to become technical in detail because the problem of

justice is no longer one of its concerns. It does not have to be judge

of the rules which it is commissioned to apply.



2)	The dissociated judicial element gains more efficiency to the

degree that it is made completely technical. It becomes possible to

divorce judicial reasoning from a “dangerous empiricism, by con-

fining the infinite diversity of judicial situations to a limited num-

ber of conceptual frameworks.” Fundamental legal institutions

thereby derive simplicity and vigor because they are more directly

based in the techniques which give them their logical foundation.

This logical foundation is doubtless compensated by a certain

sclerosis of the legal framework and by a certain stiffness of judicial

will. If, moreover, because of the invasion of techniques the judicial

factor exists apart from concrete problems, it comes under state

control.



There is, in addition, another problem: the perpetual problem of

justice. Justice is no longer conceived of as a practical requirement

vis-a-vis individual problems, but rather as a mere idea, an abstract



The Technological Society	(	*	9	5



notion. Then it becomes simple to discard it entirely. Even so, men

of law have certain scruples and are unable to eliminate justice

from the law completely without twinges of conscience. But it is

not possible to retain it because of the difficulties it involves, the

uncertainty of operation and unpredictability it entails. In a word,

judicial technique implies that bureaucracy cannot be burdened

any longer with justice.



But, in that case, how shall another and newer meaning be given

to the law? It is a remarkable fact that all societies which have

arrived at a certain degree of state control and legal evolution

have found the same answer to this question. In Egypt, in Rome

in the fourth century after Christ, in fifteenth-century France, and

in all of twentieth-century Western civilization, the concept of or-

der and security is substituted for justice as the end and foundation

of law when judicial technique becomes sufficiently developed.



The formula then becomes: "Better injustice than disorder." The

notions of order and security are at least as easily reduced to tech-

nique as is the impossible notion of justice. One knows exactly what

measures must be taken to achieve order. The definition of order

may vary, but the means are always the same. One knows and is

in a position to specify the conditions of legal security. Even though

these means imply injustice, it is impossible to object, in view of the

changeable character of the concept of justice. The more explicit

judicial technique becomes, the more the law tends to ensure or-

der. This is, moreover, one of the major objectives of the state.

Therefore, the law and the police become identical, for the law is

no longer anything but an instrument of the state. At such a price

judicial technique blossoms and yields its consequences. Today we

are in a position to study this phenomenon in all its vigor.



At most, a possible inconsistency in the laws (to which the need

for order constrains the state) might trouble the conscience of

jurists. But since there is no longer any foundation of law in justice,

legal inconsistency cannot have any very far-reaching effects or

endanger the judicial technique.



The schematism I have described is found over and over again

behind the complexity of modem legal phenomena. Under such

conditions the traditional equilibrium between the technical and

human elements is quickly lost. In affirming that there is no law

without efficiency, we in fact announce the implicit sacrifice of jus-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



*9«)



tice and the human being to efficiency. With this lack of equi-

librium, the door is wide open to further technical invasion. We are

witnessing the result—the takeover of law by technique—among

nations which have a less firmly rooted legal sense than the French.



Until now I have been speaking of judicial technique still as a

recognizable part of the world of law. The jurist, although turned

technician, adhered to a general line which prevented technique

from reaching a ‘‘pure* state. But once the pure technical men-

tality, technique-in-itself, has penetrated the legal world, legal

technique, which no longer has its roots in law but in the physical

sciences or perhaps even in biology, brings about certain decisive

upheavals in social life. The technician rejects both the school of

natural law and the historical school, so that, according to

F. Junger, the law becomes merely a complex of technical norms.

The demands of conscience, as well as those of society (to use the

traditional language), become subordinated to normative tech-

nique. It is no longer considered necessary to secure popular ad-

herence to law or to be limited to legal means in order to secure

the application of law. The enormous simplicity of technique has

deprived the whole ensemble of judicial mechanisms of meaning—

mechanisms which had as their end to guarantee the law and to

cause it to be obeyed without excessive use of force. The whole

apparatus of devices such as penalties, distraints, and the like, no

longer makes sense. There is no need of such finesse. Adherence and

obedience are secured by extralegal means (among which the po-

lice are very often the most innocuous).



We are today in the process of transcending the traditional posi-

tion. That is to say, law ensures order instead of justice. Hans

Kelsen represents the culmination of this development; and it was

expressed in certain of the legal forms of huzisiii. me i\azis recog-

nized that a science of human behavior would make it possible to

dispense with many legal rules. If the people to be administered

were “persuaded,’* if they were made to understand by sufficiently

powerful means that the observation of the rule was in their own

interest, that rule would become more and more useless. If a suf-

ficiently functional, realistic, and coherent pattern is established for

the organized human milieu (and the technique of organization can

furnish such a plan in short order), a great part of the administra-

tive apparatus is rendered superfluous. In this way society is di-



The Technological Society	(297



rected toward a progressive emptying of legal forms and a conse-

quent gain in the human techniques which render a gendarmery

useless.



A further consequence of the technicization of the law is that the

distinction between political technique and judicial technique dis-

appears, for all practical purposes. The subject and object of the

law are no longer social, but rather technical, exigencies. The

technician approves of proceeding in this way: the very matter of

law becomes his object. He has good reason to desire such a situa-

tion. He is no longer burdened with absurd methods of procedure.

His judgments become completely rational since he understands

the social necessities and the economic situation and can take them

into account in his calculations. But it should not be thought that

the technician merely translates these necessities into law. Above

all, he elaborates them, and they are essentially subordinate to him

and his technique.



This explains the enormous proliferation of laws. The technician

analyzes and predicts; he cannot endure the indeterminate or tol-

erate any initiative which upsets order. These two traits explain the

multiplicity of laws. In the past, this multiplicity was attributed

to inefficiency. The repeated promulgation of a law, or the indefi-

nite multiplication of laws, accentuated the fact that laws were

going unobserved. Legal multiplicity today is something else

again. Whatever a technician believes is true must be made into

law. But his inferences only concern details. His analytic spirit

leads him to perceive, understand, and affirm strictly localized

truths; and thus strictly delimited, they then become the objects

of law. There must be a law for each fact; whence the indefinite

proliferation of the legal apparatus.



The modern proliferation of laws can also be explained by the

legal technician’s complete antipathy to the notion of a doctrinal

law, to a jurisprudence of “concepts.” A legal system which merely

establishes principles and lays down general lines of procedure

entrusts to the judge the creation of the living law under the

maxim praetor viva vox juris civilis.* Such a state of affairs is in-

tolerable to the technician, who dreads above all else the arbitrary,



•"The magistrate is the real voice of the civil law." M. Ellul points out elsewhere

to what a degree Roman law depended on the magistrate’s interpretation of very

general, not to say vague, legal maxims. (Trans.)



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



29S)



the personal, and the fortuitous. The technician is the great enemy

of chance; he finds the personal element insupportable. For that

reason he finds it advisable to enclose the judge or the administrator

in a tighter and tighter technical network, more and more hedged

about with legal prescriptions, in such a way that the citizen will

understand exactly where he is heading and just what conse-

quences are to be expected.



Law, then, must provide for every contingency, so that man can-

not disturb its operation. The traditional development of law in-

volved a kind of competition between judges and crooks; but with

the progress of technique, this is no longer the case. Society,

through the application of extralegal means, is beginning to guar-

antee public obedience to the law. Its real problem now is to

restrain the activities of those who would apply the law only to

distort it, from the judge down to the lowest prison guard.



The smallest detail must therefore be invested with the majesty of

the law: after all, law concerns an organized society. The law of

persons, for example, is now the law of persons technically or-

ganized. Even property law has been profoundly modified by the

disturbances to which technique has subjected property owner-

ship. We see once more that all the fundamental technical data

verify and reinforce one another.



As to the consequences, I believe they may be reduced to two:

law becomes a mere instrument of the state; and, in the end, law

disappears. The first of these statements is in no way connected

with a general theory of law. I am not saying that the essence of

law is reduced to the will of the state. I confine myself to the ob-

servation of facts. When the law becomes technical, it must be

formulated on the basis of technical methods; it is necessary to

propound an “edict” from some center (exactly as in the Latin

e-dicere). Technical law implies a close relation with the state;

and the more technical the law becomes, the more this relation be-

comes exclusive of all but technical content. The movement is rein-

forced by the fact that the state simultaneously becomes technical

too.



This concordant development results in an actual identification

(apart from any doctrinal position) of the expression of the law

with some purely administrative proceeding. It is always possible,

of course, to affirm the supremacy of aspects of the law other than



The Technological Society	(299



its actual expression; they are completely detached from reality,

being separated from it by a formidable arsenal of strictly adminis-

trative texts and the specific turn of the technical mentality. The

law at present is an affair of the state. The state, whenever it ex-

presses itself, makes law. There are no longer any norms to regulate

the activity of the state; it has eliminated the moral rules that

judged it and absorbed the legal rules that guided it. The state is

a law unto itself and recognizes no rules but its own will. When, in

this way, technique breaks off the indispensable dialogue between

the law and the state, it makes the state a god in the most theologi-

cally accurate sense of the term; a power which obeys nothing but

its own will and submits to no judgment from without. This godlike

will of the state is for modern man the most precise expression of

technique.



In the second place, we are witnessing the disappearance of the

law in the legal proliferation described. This dissolution is notable

in two things, the loss by the law of its end and of its domain.



In connection with the first point, law, whether we like it or

not, is dependent on justice. This is no arbitrary affirmation; fur-

ther, I do not have in mind a justice which is subject to all manner

of intellectual tortures. When law is detached from justice, it be-

comes a compass without a needle. The substitution of order for

justice, useful though this may be for the purpose of making law

technical, itself quickly becomes a contributory factor in this dis-

sociation. For what does order signify? In effect, the same thing as

efficiency. Law must assure order. Order is the application of the

will of the state. Law must be efficient. Efficiency is itself order.

Once more we witness a general transformation of means into ends.

Law thus becomes an activity without any end and without any

meaning. It is efficient for efficiency's sake; and individual laws are

conceived solely with a view to being efficient. The whole func-

tional theory of law is in accord with this. The idea that every man

has a function in society, that the law exists to give him the means

of fulfilling this function and to see to it that he does fulfill it, rep-

resents justice in abstracto. The idea is not new; it dominated the

whole of medieval law. What is new (and is in process of com-

pletely changing the meaning of the idea of function) is the rela-

tion between function and technique. Law no longer poses the

problem of the finality of man's functions. Law no longer co-



3	00)	TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



ordinates man’s functions in their relation to justice. As soon as that

function is keyed to technique, it becomes valid in and of itself.

Everyone’s function, once it has become technical, finds in tech-

nique its meaning and validity; its proper results and destiny are of

little importance. The law has become a mere organizer of indi-

vidual functions. It thus constitutes only a part of the larger science

of social relations and connections.



This development is clearly taking place today in property law,

contract law, and so on; similarly it is contributing to the dissolu-

tion of the law. Traditionally, there was a specific domain of law

which could easily be defined, for example, by comparing different

legal systems, present and past. Legal domain always remained

the same; today, however, the frontiers have expanded. It is no

longer possible to distinguish between what is law and what is

not. Every application of technique to the social sphere becomes

part of the domain of law. A clear example of this is the problem

of planning: the true legal domain, today, is that of planning.

Everything affected by planning must be transformed into law.

The domain of law is therefore no longer defined by object or by

end, but by method.



This transition represents a triumph of technique. No longer is the

preoccupation of the law and justice its measure. The law's con-

cern is to apply new means to all accessible areas. The very being

of the law is thus dissolved. In itself the law has come to represent

nothing but a terminology and a travesty on tradition which hap-

pens to be useful to the new lords and masters. People who today

hold the law in contempt are at least not deceived by false im-

pressions. Nevertheless, in consenting to be robbed in this way,

man renounces one of his highest vocations.



Repercussion on Technique



It is not merely the state which is being transformed by the techni-

cal movement. For the past thirty-odd years, when the encounter

between the state and technique has become more explicit, tech-

nique has developed with greater rapidity than ever before, not

only according to its own internal logic but also with the aid of

the power and support of the state. The advantages of private



The Technological Society	(	3°1



and public techniques have complemented each other in such a

way as virtually to cancel out the inconveniences of either. We

have seen, for example, that the immobility to which the technique

of the state tends is compensated for by the activities of private

techniques—initiative remaining with the individual even when

private technique has become state technique.



But we must admit that the state’s appropriation of technique

has dispelled much of technique’s familiar magical appeal. Man

is gradually losing his illusions about technique and his bedazzle-

ment with it. He is becoming aware that he has not created an in-

strument of freedom but a new set of chains; this appears with

compelling clarity when the state exploits technical instruments.

Man, however, is still not willing to believe in the reality of this

new situation; he tends to reject, above and beyond bad techni-

cal uses and doctrines, the results of this conjunction between

state and technique.



But this rejection is the result of an oversimplification. It is tech-

nique itself which has changed. Either that, or it has followed its

own law, a law man was ignorant of at the beginning of this glo-

rious era. In any case, man sees that technique has changed, but

he is unwilling to examine it too closely for fear of losing his last

hopes.



Technique Unchecked. At present there is no counterbalance to

technique. In a society in equilibrium, every new cultural tend-

ency, every new impulse, encounters a certain number of obstacles

which act as the society’s first line of defense. This is not due to

the interplay of conservative and revolutionary forces in general,

nor in particular to the play between the means of production and

the organs of consumption. It is rather due to the simple fact that

every new factor must be integrated into the cultural framework,

and this process requires a certain period of time because it en-

tails modifications of the two interacting elements. It is never

initially clear that the new factor will be acceptable to the cultural

complex. On one hand is a kind of process of selection and, on

the other, a resistance that gradually abates. A number of different

forces play this restraining role. I shall discuss four of them.



The first is morality. Every civilization has rules of precise con-

duct, which are covered by the term morality in either its French

or its Anglo-Saxon meaning. They may be conscious and thought



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



302)



out, or unconscious and spontaneous. They determine what is good

and what is bad and, consequently, admit or reject a given in-

novation.



Very close to morality, public opinion comprises a set of much

more irrational reactions which are not necessarily related to good

and evil. For reasons still poorly understood, public opinion may

be impelled in a certain direction under the influence of a given

impulse, or it may remain refractory. Obviously, public opinion

is decisive in the interaction between morality and a new factor.

It can render morality obsolete or lead it to triumph.



A third restraining force is social structure, which includes both

social morphology and economic or legal structure. The social

structure reacts strongly whenever new factors threaten to modify

it. (This, incidentally, is the only one of the four factors retained

by Marxism.) Systems or ideas are no longer the sole operative

factors; economic relations or sociological factors can disturb the

equilibrium even of a situation the stability of which was pre-

viously thought assured.



Finally, there is the state, the special organ of defense of a

society, which reacts with every means at its disposal against all

disturbing forces.



We may now ask what position we are in today with respect to

these factors insofar as technique is concerned. Let us put aside

the problem of morality and concern ourselves with public opin-

ion It is completely oriented in favor of technique; only technical

phenomena interest modern men. The machine has made itself

master of the heart and brain both of the average man and of the

mob. What excites the crowd? Performance—whether perform-

ance in sports (the result of a certain sporting technique) or

economic performance (as in the Soviet Union), in reality these

are the same thing. Technique is the instrument of performance.

What is important is to go higher and faster; the object of the

performance means little. The act is sufficient unto itself. Modem

man can think only in terms of figures, and the higher the figures,

the greater his satisfaction. He looks for nothing beyond the mar-

velous escape mechanism that technique has allowed him, to off-

set the very repressions caused by the life technique forces him

to lead. He is reduced, in the process, to a near nullity. Even if



The Technological Society	(303



he is not a worker on the assembly line, his share of autonomy and

individual initiative becomes smaller and smaller. He is constrained

and repressed in thought and action by an omnivorous reality

which is external to him and imposed upon him. He is no longer

permitted to display any personal power. Then, suddenly, he

learns that the airplane his factory manufactures has flown at 700

miles an hour! All his repressed power soars into flight in that

figure. Into that record speed he sublimates everything that was

repressed in himself. He has gone one step further toward fusion

with the mob, for it is the mob as a whole that is moved by a

performance that incarnates its will to power. Every modem man

expresses his will to power in records he has not established him-

self.



Public opinion is all the more important in that it is a two-

pronged element. In the first place, there is modem mans col-

lective worship of the power of fact, which is displayed in every

technique and which is manifested in his total devotion to its over-

whelming progress. This adoration is not passive but truly mys-

tical. Men sacrifice themselves to it and lose themselves in the

search for it. In this sense Mussolini was right in speaking of men

realizing themselves in and through the state, the collective in-

strument of power. The martyrs of science or of the air force or

of the atomic pile give us the most profound sense of this worship

when we see the deference the crowd pays them. "I have faith

in technique,” declared Henry Wallace, the former Secretary of

Commerce of the United States. His faith indeed dwells in men’s

hearts. Man is scandalized when he is told that technique causes

evil; the scourges engendered by one technique will be made good

by still other techniques. This is society’s normal attitude.



In the second place, there is the deep conviction that technical

problems are the only serious ones. The amused glance people

give the philosopher; the lack of interest displayed in metaphysi-

cal and theological questions (“Byzantine” quarrels); the rejec-

tion of the humanities which comes from the conviction that we

are living in a technical age and education must correspond to it;

the search for the immediately practical, carrying the implication

that history is useless and can serve no practical ends—all these are

symptomatic of that “reasonable” conviction which pervades the



304)	TECHNIQUE	AND THE STATE



social hierarchy and is identical for all social classes. “Only tech-

nique is not mere gab.” It is positive and brings about real achieve-

ments.



In these two ways, the mystic and the rational, public opinion is

completely oriented toward technique. And at present another pre-

cise technique molds public opinion with reference to any given

question. This technique has never been fully exploited because

public opinion is favorable enough to technique without it. But if

a sudden change should occur and public opinion should turn

against technique, we would see the propaganda machinery set into

motion to re-create a favorable atmosphere, for the whole social

edifice would be at stake.



As to the third traditional restraining force—the social structure

—the question is whether the social structure of our world acts as a

brake on technical evolution. By way of answer, I have shown that

progress has been rapid only because social morphology has fa-

vored it. This phenomenon has not fluctuated very much; and at

present we are witnessing the penetration of social structure by

techniques. The life of the modern world is to an ever greater

degree dominated by economics, and economics in turn is more and

more dominated by technique. The whole of the material world in

which we live rests on this technical base. (It is a commonplace of

science-fiction writers to imagine what would happen if the use of

technical instruments were to be suddenly stopped.) Likewise, our

analysis has led us to recognize that as technique progresses in a

given society, it tends to reproduce in that society the social struc-

tures that gave birth to it.



The individualist and atomized society of the nineteenth cen-

tury was, from the sociological point of view, favorable to technical

development. Today we are witnessing a kind of technical recon-

stitution of the scattered fragments of society; communities and

associations flourish everywhere. Men seem overjoyed at this crea-

tion of new social frameworks independent of the state. The social

solidification of today contrasts sharply with the fluidity of the

nineteenth century. Does this phenomenon then present an effec-

tive opposition to techniques? The answer must be in the negative.

If we examine these new sociological forms in detail, we find them

all organized as functions of techniques. We hardly need to ex-

amine industrial associations, but the same applies to all other



The Technological Society	(305



twentieth-century associations. They may be associations for sport

or for culture, the goal of which is clearly recognizable (Dickson).

They may be labor unions, which have their characteristic relation

to life through the economy, this last being conditioned by tech-

nique. They may be communities like the Kibbutzim, whose object

is to exploit techniques while allowing man a normal life. In every

kind of modern society there is a predominance of techniques. The

social morphology of these societies indeed differs radically from

that of traditional societies. Traditional societies were centered

upon human needs and instincts (for example, in family, clan,

seignory). Modern societies, on the other hand, are centered on

technical necessity and derivatively, of course, on human adher-

ence. Man, in modern societies, is not situated in relation to other

men, but in relation to technique; for this reason the sociological

structure of these societies is completely altered. There is no

longer any question of autonomous collectivities or groups with

specific values and orientations. Modern collectivities and groups

have no existence beyond technique—they are representative of

the major tendency of our time.



In the transition from the individualist to the collectivist society,

there are then two stages of evolution, both of which are favorable

to technique, not two different attitudes of society toward tech-

nique. Comparably, it is clear that collectivist society cannot be

established, or even conceived of, except as growing out of an ex-

treme technical development. This might not be true in a com-

munal society (although the communities that exist today are

markedly dependent on technique); but we do not seem to be mov-

ing in the direction of such societies.



Hence, we must conclude that our social structures, viewed m

any light whatsoever, are unanimously favorable to technique and

could hardly act as a check upon it.



Only the state remains, then, as a possible brake upon technique.

But we have already seen that the state has abdicated this function,

renouncing its directive role in favor of technique. Indeed, since

the nineteenth century every social element which traditionally

acted as a restraint on innovating forces has been overthrown as far

as technique is concerned. Inverted might be a better term; the

factors which formerly acted as hindrances have today become

powerful auxiliaries to technique. (We have only to reflect on pub-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



306)



lie opinion and the expansion of the economy to realize this.) Tech-

nique, therefore, encounters no possible obstacles or checks to its

progress. It can advance as it will, since it encounters no limiting

factors other than its own powers (which seem unlimited and in-

exhaustible ).



A technique without limits is not in itself disquieting. If we look

at our technical society without our idealist spectacles, what seems

most disquieting is that the character of technique renders it inde-

pendent of man himself. We do not mean by this that the machine

tends to replace the human being; that fact is already well-known.

The important thing is that man, practically speaking, no longer

possesses any means of bringing action to bear upon technique.

He is unable to limit it or even to orient it. I am well acquainted

with the claims of those who think that society has technique

under firm control because man is always inventing it anew. I

know too of the hopes of those who are always prescribing reme-

dies for this sorcerer’s apprentice whom they feel free to invoke

without discernment. But these claims and hopes are mere words.

The reality is that man no longer has any means with which to

subjugate technique, which is not an intellectual, or even, as some

would have it, a spiritual phenomenon. It is above all a sociological

phenomenon; and in order to cure or change it, one would have to

oppose to it checks and barriers of a sociological character. By

such means alone man might possibly bring action to bear upon

it. But everything of a sociological character has had its character

changed by technique. There is, therefore, nothing of a sociologi-

cal character available to restrain technique, because everything

in society is its servant. Technique is essentially independent of the

human being, who finds himself naked and disarmed before it.

Modern man divines that there is only one reasonable way out: to

submit and take what profit he can from what technique otherwise

so richly bestows upon him. If he is of a mind to oppose it, he finds

himself really alone.



It has been said that modern man surrounded by techniques is in

the same situation as prehistoric man in the midst of nature. This is

only a metaphor; it cannot be carried very far, even though it is as

exact as a metaphor can be. Both environments give life but both

place him in utter peril. Both represent terrifying powers, worlds

in which man is a participant but which are closed against him. In



The Technological Society	(	3 07



the joy of conquest, he has not perceived that what he has created

takes from him the possibility of being himself. He is like a rich

man of many possessions who finds himself a nonentity in his own

household. The state, man's last protector, has made common

cause with alien powers.



The Role of the State in the Development of Modem Techniques.

The state plays a role of prime importance with respect to tech-

niques. We have noted that until recently different techniques

were unrelated to (me another. This unrelatedness was true of state

techniques because they were localized and their domains were

not contiguous; it held for private techniques because they were

the result of highly uncoordinated activity which, while fruitful,

was also anarchical and was dominated, moreover, by specializa-

tion.



The basic effect of state action on techniques is to co-ordinate the

whole complex. The state possesses the power of unification, since

it is the planning power par excellence in society. In this it plays its

true role, that of co-ordinating, adjusting, and equilibrating social

forces. It has played this role with respect to techniques for half a

century by bringing hitherto unrelated techniques into contact

with one another, for example, economic and propaganda tech-

niques. It relates them by establishing organisms responsible for

this function, as, for example, the simple organs of liaison between

ministries. It integrates the whole complex of techniques into a

plan. Planning itself is the result of well-applied techniques, and

only the state is in a position to establish plans which are valid on

the national level. We are, at present, beginning to see plans on a

continental scale, not only the so-called five-year plans, but the

Marshall Plan and plans for assisting underdeveloped countries.



It is only in the framework of planning that such operations are

arranged and find their exact place. The state appears less as the

brain which orders them organically and more as the relational

apparatus which enables the separate techniques to confront one

another and to co-ordinate their movements. We find concrete

evidence of this again and again; in the co-ordination of rail and

automobile traffic, the co-ordination of the production of steel and

motor vehicles and aircraft, in the co-ordination of the medical

profession and social security, the co-ordination of foreign and

colonial commerce, and of all commerce with finance, and so forth.



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



308)



The more closely related the different sectors, the more does a

discovery in one involve repercussions in the others, and the more

it becomes necessary to create organisms of transmission, cogs and

gears, so to speak, connecting the different techniques. This is an

impossible task for private enterprise, not only because the phe-

nomenon in question is a global one but because the technicians

themselves are specialists. The state alone can undertake the in-

dispensable task of bridging these specializations. The state knows

approximately the available resources in men and techniques and

can undertake the still embryonic function of co-ordinator. Since

discoveries in one technical sector are so useful in others, the role

of co-ordinator is bound to become more and more important.



Consider, for example, the diversity of techniques necessary for

the production of a motion picture. There are financial, literary,

and cinematographic techniques; there are lesser techniques, such

as make-up techniques and the techniques of light and sound.

There are completely new techniques, such as script techniques,

and so on. These cinematic techniques, though complicated, can

be grasped by the brain of a single man, and hence there are still

some cases of one-man management But consider the magnitude

of the task of co-ordinating, on a national scale, even more compli-

cated clusters of techniques which offer active resistance to being

co-ordinated. In such cases the role of organizer, manager, co-

ordinator—whatever it is called—becomes more necessary in pro-

portion as the state takes over that function. Moreover, the state

alone can fulfill it. This state of affairs is already a reality; the state

is already engaged in bridging the isolated technical specialties.

Individual specialized disciplines—for example, those of the biolo-

gist, the engineer, the sociologist, the psychologist—are combined

to yield new techniques such as psychotechniques and industrial

relations. But these individual disciplines are also joined together

in a more organic way, as, for example, when the so-called human

techniques, physics and politics, are combined in propaganda.



In addition to co-ordinating the different techniques, the state

furnishes material means far beyond the power of any individ-

uals to supply. An expedition to the North Pole, which only a half

century ago was within the resources of one or at most a few pri-

vate persons, is no longer possible on a private basis. Formerly all

that was needed was Eskimo equipment, such as a boat, sledges,



The Technological Society	(30	9



dogs—and, above all, courage. Today complicated mechanical

equipment is necessary: airplanes (especially equipped for the

cold and for ice landings), caterpillar trucks, radio and radio

telephones, prefabricated housing, and so on. Every possible means

to lessen danger is available to him who dreams of exploring un-

known territory. It would doubtless be possible to revive old tradi-

tions—by risking one's life. But why reject the new means? Why

endanger one's life when one can do a better job without that?

Obviously, bravado is unreasonable. One must employ the maxi-

mum means to assure optimal results with the least danger. But no

private person has the means to set into motion the enormous

apparatus that is needed. The means must be requisitioned by the

state, which alone is in a position to find indefinite supplies of

cash and to exploit financial techniques forbidden to individuals.

The same applies in submarine exploration. When one leaves the

domain of the merely amateurish and desires to give one's work

status, legal or otherwise, it is necessary to solicit the support of the

state to cover expenses and to resolve administrative problems.



But the state demands something in return for subventions. The

state does not think it important for an individual to go to the

North Pole, either for sport's sake or for honors. The state desires

tangible technical results. It agrees to furnish assistance for pur-

poses of scientific research and for the acquisition of certain rights

it hopes to exploit; for example, mineral resources and aviation.

The result must be the technical aggrandizement of the state; that

is the only condition under which a contract between state and

individual is possible.



That the state acts to promote scientific research is not new; in

the eighteenth century the state offered recompenses to inventors,

and these recompenses had much to do with the discovery of cer-

tain navigational methods (compensating chronometer, mathemat-

ical tables, and so on). The state thereafter seemed to lose interest,

but for the last thirty years it has resumed the policy of recompens-

ing technologists and inventors.



There are multiple examples of this, for the modern state, to a

greater degree than ever before, alone has the means to put to

work what technique has to offer man. It suffices to mention agri-

cultural machinery, automatic threshers and reapers, and so on.

Although in France this machinery is of comparatively small size.



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



310)



it is, even so, far beyond the resources of the average individual

farmer to buy. An intermediary is necessary, either a capitalist

who leases machines to the farmers, or a farmer-co-operative

which buys the machines. Yet both of these hesitate to invest the

requisite capital because large-scale farm machinery is used only

for a small part of the year and is idle the rest of the time. (Such

machinery must therefore be deemed technically backward.)

Airplanes are being used increasingly for sowing, seeding clouds

for rain, distributing chemical substances, and so on. But these

techniques exceed the resources of peasant co-operatives.



There are only two ways to resolve the situation. One is to ex-

propriate the land in favor of capitalist corporations which will ex-

ploit vast areas with the latest technical improvements. The other

is to unite the farmers in state collective farms which would have

at their disposal instruments furnished by the state. A choice is still

possible between the two alternatives. But almost certainly the

balance will swing in favor of state collectives; only through state

collectives can technical progress be fully realized and technical

means exploited without fear of financial setbacks.



The state offers technique possibilities of development which no

other agency could offer. It gives research men the necessary

means to expedite their research, and, as a consequence, to expe-

dite technique. Only the state is in a position to make available to

scientists the results of scientific investigations from other parts of

the world; the state can exploit information techniques which no

lesser agency could possibly exploit. It can buy necessary new

instruments in any country. It even lures foreign scientists into its

laboratories with hard cash (it may even kidnap them into semi-

slavery, as in the case of the German scientists who were "distrib-

uted” among the victorious Allies). Only the state can purchase

essential scientific equipment and, in addition, give the scientist

the indispensable support of its authority.



Technique, as I have remarked, has no meaning if it is not ap-

plied. But in its application it encounters certain concrete difficul-

ties, especially with individuals. This in no way contradicts what

I have already said about public opinion. Public opinion is com-

pletely and resolutely favorable to technical progress. But it is fa-

vorable retrospectively, so to speak. Technical progress is what

we already know. In actual instances, however—in respect to some



The Technological Society	(	3i J



new discovery, for example—the reaction of the public is not so

simple. If a discovery does not concern the public directly, its re-

action is generally enthusiastic, as, for example, in the case of

supersonic aircraft. But if the public is directly affected, if the dis-

covery may in fact be applied to it, enthusiasm is notably dimin-

ished, the more so because there is always a difference of opinion

among the technicians themselves. Here the state intervenes. In

innumerable cases it has had to resolve the quarrels of technicians

and scientists, as formerly it resolved the debates of theologians.

Recall the strife concerning the antitubercular vaccines of Cal-

mette and Guerin; also the reservations of some scientists concern-

ing the “polyvalent vaccination” which is now obligatory in France.

The state alone decided what was to be done in these cases. More-

over, the state clothed its opinion in its authority, which, in a short

time, became the authority of the technician. Where necessary,

authority was reinforced by compulsion. A complicated system

developed. The child who has not been vaccinated cannot be ad-

mitted to school; and the child who does not attend school has no

right to family subsidies. Thus the state overcomes the objections

of individuals to technical progress. Friedmann writes: “It is

clear that in a society in which the psychotechnician’s important

task is not invested with the authority of the state ... his position

is ambiguous and his recommendations do not always have the

weight they should.” And Friedmann goes on to remark that state

authority frees technique from the grip of private persons.

Through the authority of the state, technique is no longer at the

service of private interests; and this gives the state, if not real

freedom, at least additional justification.



The authority with which the state invests technique becomes

a factor in its development. But it ought not to be forgotten that

this state has itself become technical; it does not act on whim.

Institutions in the Service of Technique. The state then proceeds

to create organs to meet the demands of technique, and here arise a

number of possibilities.



The system created in France involves a certain decentralization.

The CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) is fairly au-

tonomous. But it is necessary right off to dispel a misunderstanding.

The name includes the word scientific, but the work of the Center is

Is above all else technical. However, the persons who created and



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



312)



who champion the work of the Center associate the two concepts

very closely. Consider the statement of Louis de Broglie and

Frederic Joliot-Curie: "For France it is not a question of maintain-

ing scientific and technical research in spite of the fact that the na-

tion is poor; it is a question of developing it, precisely because the

nation is poor." This statement, incidentally, confirms my conclu-

sion about the exploitation of the nation by the technicians. Scien-

tific research is justified in a poor country because it produces

certain techniques which permit more complete use of the coun-

try's resources.



This sheds light on the real meaning of scientific work. Science

is becoming more and more subordinate to the search for technical

application. Numerous scientists, who are attached to the labora-

tories of the CNRS and with whom I am personally acquainted,

have confirmed to me its preoccupation with results and its empha-

sis on technical investigations. The CNRS is not an institution for

disinterested and objective research nor is it a purely cultural

entity. It represents a further step toward the union between the

scientific and the technical. We must recognize, however, that the

French state still does not understand exactly what is to be ex-

pected from this union.



The politicians distrust the technicians; the petty war which is

being fought between them over the CNRS is another example of

the competition I have described. Biquard, chef de cabinet of the

Undersecretary of State for Scientific Research, has written that

the reason for which the CNRS ought to remain independent of the

National Ministry of Education is that "The tasks of the CNRS—

recruitment, training, equipment, co-ordination, organization, and

management—are sufficiently heavy to justify the existence of an

administration appropriate to scientific research; an administration

in which scientists ought to play the most important role.”



This quotation discloses two things: first, that this state organ

performs with respect to technique precisely the functions we have

already indicated: co-ordination, organization, and management;

second, that in it technicians must play the principal role, to the

exclusion of politicians represented by the National Ministry of

Education.



But the creation of the CNRS is clearly only a first step. It repre-

sents a commitment; and it is impossible to stop there. The demo-



The Technological Society	(	313



cratic state has proved to be clearly unequal to the task of develop-

ing techniques, and the CNRS does not have the prestige or the

means it would possess in an authoritarian state. In comparison

with the authoritarian state, of course, the CNRS is still relatively

free in its activities and its research. Although its general orienta-

tion is toward the technical application of discoveries, certain pos-

sibilities (incidentally, more and more restricted) are still left men

for pure research which cannot in principle terminate in immedi-

ate application. The well-known margin of unpredictability in

research is thus protected. Which discoveries are susceptible of

applicability is never known in advance. Research is blind; it ad-

vances gropingly and by means of a thousand experiments which

miscarry. One experiment will make a breach and allow an ex-

plosive technical advance. But the thousand fruitless experiments

were nevertheless necessary. We recognize this. But—and this is

the important thing—technical exigence is dead set against science

in this respect, because technique cannot tolerate the gropings and

slowtempoof science.



We have already examined the requirement of immediate appli-

cability; here we meet it again on the state level. The state is not

disinterested any more than private capitalists, but it is concerned

in a different way. The state claims to represent the public interest

and hence to have the duty of being a “good manager,” dispensing

the public revenues only on condition that they mean something,

that they pay off. Disinterested activity on the part of the state is

inconceivable. Some may say that such activity should not be im-

possible; but in fact it is impossible. Neither individuals nor public

opinion nor the structure of the state is oriented toward the ac-

ceptance of the kind of culture pure scientific research would

represent.



The state demands that anything scientific enter into the line of

“normal” development, not only for the sake of the public interest

but also because of its will to power. We have previously noted

that this will to power has found in technique an extraordinary

means of expression. The state quickly comes to demand that tech-

nique keep its promises and be an effective servant of state power.

Everything not of direct interest to this drive for power appears

valueless. Just as financiers seek their interest in money profit, the

state seeks it in power. In neither case is the motivation disinter-



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



3M)



ested; technical discovery must pay off. Capitalists and state alike

become impatient at delays in research, at experiments which a

priori “lead to nothing,” and at the “uncertainty” of the scientist

when he indulges in pure research without knowing in advance

which research will pay off and which will not. Moreover, the

tendency is to eliminate from the legitimate concerns of the state

all sciences that have no immediate practical application: history,

philosophy, grammar, and so on.



In the case of sciences susceptible of practical application, there

is an immediate demand for this application. This is, of course, un-

favorable to science; but it must not be imagined that it is the work

of imbeciles.



The state begins by assigning a precise task to scientific research,

issuing directives to the effect that it must find solutions for certain

pressing problems, for example, a more rapid method to produce a

part of a machine, a jet engine for aircraft, and so on. These direc-

tives are veritable commands to scientific research to summon all

its resources to solve the problems as soon as possible. In a demo-

cratic system there are no sanctions against scientists who fail to

fulfill the state's demands, except suppression of financial support.

A dictatorial regime, however, goes very much further to secure

the compliance of the scientists. Even though it still leaves a rather

broad area to personal initiative, it nevertheless tends more and

more to become specific on this score. This is evident in different

ways both in the Soviet Union and in the United States.



In the Soviet Union the Academy of Sciences appears to be the

state organism which directs research and determines the frame-

work in which scientific activities will be carried out. The Acad-

emy constitutes the “general staff of the army of technicians”

Article 2 of the statutes, definitively fixed in 1935, charged it with

providing for the “progress of the theoretical and applied sciences.”

But the technical sciences administered by the Soviet Academy

have ceaselessly outstripped the theoretical sciences. The Acad-

emy plans the course of research and assigns objectives to the in-

stitutes. On the initiative of the Academy, the education of higher

technicians has been accelerated; in i960 the Soviet Union claimed

to have 7,500,000 technicians of all classes. The Academy directs

more than twenty institutes for research in applied science, em-



The Technological Society	(315



ploying altogether 2,000 researchers. One of its institutes

(the Institute for Information) is charged with collating the tech-

nical publications of the entire world; for this task alone it employs

2,000 people full-time. All this makes it clear that the Academy

plays an important role in technical activities. The system, how-

ever is on the whole poorly understood. It would appear to

be less authoritarian than the Nazi system. But one should not

forget the decision of the state, on the initiative of the Communist

Party, in the Lysenko affair. Here the state, faced with two op-

posed biogenetic theories, decided for scarcely scientific reasons

that Lysenko’s theory was true and ordered its application forth-

with.



The Gosplan,7 whose function is essentially to co-ordinate new

scientific elements, is closely related to the Academy. The Gosplan

is kept informed by the Academy about technical discoveries, and

maintains a central file of all data of economic and statistical tech-

niques. In this way, a systematic and rational evaluation of scien-

tific research is possible, the results of which are then integrated

into the state plan itself. In the reform of 1946, in which co-ordinat-

ing bureaus took the place of the former district offices, a technical

bureau was set up whose function was to plan scientific research.

At present this research is being directed on the basis of the over-all

plan and of the needs of the state, and the whole is evaluated from

the point of view of the individual techniques. The technical bur-

eau channels research by distributing financial credit of great

magnitude; for example, in 1949 it allocated approximately 10

billion rubles to scientific research, a sum equivalent to 20 per cent

of all budgeted industrial investment.



The organization of scientific research in the United States is still

far from complete. There are, in principle, private entities which

perform research in all imaginable domains—such as the various

committees for political research, committees for social research,

and so on. In addition, there are entities for gathering and evaluat-

ing statistics, for polling public opinion, and for the study of policy.

Closer and closer relations are being established among these en-

tities, which for the most part have been set up either by private



T The Soviet State Planning Agency. (Trans.)



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



3*6)



industry or by the state and then attached to the universities.

(Seventy per cent of these entities have been set up by the large

corporations.)



It is standard procedure for public services in need of informa-

tion to have recourse to these research centers. Specialized bureaus

have also been set up to handle relations between research organi-

zations and the public services. These bureaus receive requests in

all areas (agricultural, industrial, and so on) and orient research.

Subsequently, they act as transmission media for discoveries, and

study the possibilities of technical adaptation. Then the appro-

priate administrations are in a position to make contracts with the

industrialists charged with practical implementation.



Technical operations of this kind and scope become more and

more necessary as the state finances technical investigations to a

greater and greater degree. The state is compelled to finance re-

search which exceeds the financial means of, say, the universities.

The state has direct interest, therefore, in such institutions; it will

therefore not leave unexploited the possibilities thus uncovered.

All this means a much freer movement among government, in-

dustry, and technical research centers than would otherwise be the

case.



In addition, the American state has organized research services

of its own. The Bureau of the Census, for example, encompasses

more than fifteen centers of statistical studies. The National Re-

sources Planning Board, which existed from 1923 to 19^3, was an

other such center. There are today other much more specialized

agencies, the most comprehensive of which is the Atomic Energy

Commission. The government owns the laboratories and furnishes

the raw materials and equipment, but the actual research of the

Commission is conducted by universities and by private industry.

The Associated Universities, Inc., operates the Brookhaven National

Laboratories; Union Carbide operates Oak Ridge; the University

of California operates Los Alamos; and General Electric operates

the center at Hanford.



Finally, it might be mentioned that the United States feels a

strong need to co-ordinate the research carried out by the different

agencies. Two associations seem fitted for this operation, the Public

Service Administration and the Government Research Association.

In due course, the work of these agencies will result in the realiza-



The Technological Society	(317



tion of a project which is already underway: the creation of a cen-

ter of scientific research oriented toward technical goals, a Federal

Research Board.



In principle, it is still possible for science to be independent.

But we must take note that the state calls on the best scientists for

its research (in the United States, scientists are eager to work for

the state, in view of the low salaries paid university professors);

that these scientists, in view of the state’s heavy demands, have

little time to do anything else; and that the state employs an ever

increasing number of them. Moreover, the greatest part of the

funds devoted by corporations to research goes into technical re-

search. Only 4 per cent goes into basic scientific research. When,

after the Steelman report of 1947 and certain public statements of

Einstein, it seemed indispensable to promote scientific research, the

state was appealed to, and in 1951 the state created the National

Science Foundation. When, in the wake of the Sputnik, a new

report (the Waterman report) made a new appeal for state inter-

vention, the state responded by creating the post of an adviser to

the President for science and technology, a National Scientific

Committee, and so on. These events imply a greater and greater de-

gree of intervention. Scientific and technical competition between

the United States and the Soviets must inevitably produce centrali-

zation and growth of political power in the United States. It seems

impossible therefore that independent research can survive; a sys-

tem such as Ztveckwissenschaft ('‘practical or purposive science,**

which the Nazis applied too soon) will gradually take over. In it

there is no longer any question of free research. The state mobilizes

all technicians and scientists, and imposes on all a precise and

limited technical objective. It forces them to specialize to a greater

and greater degree, and remains itself the ordering force behind

the specialists. It forbids all research which it deems not to be in

its own interests and institutes only that research which has utility.

Everything is subordinated to the idea of service and utility. Ends

are known in advance; science only furnishes the means.



In Zweckwissenschaft the development of technique reaches its

highest point, to the detriment of science. What is socially most

important is the prohibition of all research other than that willed

by the state. But in view of the conjunction of state and technique,

the situation could hardly have been otherwise, and on the whole.



TECHNIQUE AND THE STATE



318)



it cannot be said that the system has yielded poor results. Argu-

ments to the contrary could doubtless be drawn from the Nazi sup-

pression of research in the area of radar, to take one example. The

Nazi government forbade research on short radio waves because

it thought such inquiry had no future and could not be applied.

Great Britain’s “free” research in this area, however, led to the

creation of radar and represented a great setback for the Nazis*

Zweckwissenschaft, a setback which had important consequences

for the war. On the other hand, the Nazis’ “directed” research

produced impressive results. In the case of tanks, Vi and V2

missiles, and the heavy water bomb, in the fields of surgery, optics,

and chemistry (not to speak of organization or agricultural meth-

ods), Zweckwissenschaft seems to have had rapid and efficient

results. And after the war, the United States and the Soviet Union

took these inventions and profited from them.



The lesson is not lost. We too are advancing progressively to-

ward this conception, which may in the long run prove to be

ruinous despite the dazzling fireworks it produces today.



In view of what has been said, it may be affirmed with confidence

that, in the decades to come, technique will become stronger and

its pace will be accelerated through the agency of the state. The

state and technique—increasingly interrelated—are becoming the

most important forces in the modern world; they buttress and re-

inforce each other in their aim to produce an apparently indestructi-

ble, total civilization.



CHAPTER



pa



HUMAN



TECHNIQUES



The last techniques to make their appearance are those which re-

late directly to the human being. They are today the subject of

great discoveries—and great hopes. We hear everywhere: “They

will save everything/’ Before we study them, let us inquire why

they have appeared.



'Necessities



Human Tension. Never before has so much been required of the

human being. By chance, in the course of history some men have

had to perform crushing labors or expose themselves to mortal

peril. But those men were slaves or warriors. Never before has the

human race as a whole had to exert such efforts in its daily labors

as it does today as a result of its absorption into the monstrous

technical mechanism—an undifferentiated but complex mechanism

which makes it impossible to turn a wheel without the sustained,

persevering, and intensive labor of millions of workers, whether in

white collars or in blue. The tempo of man’s work is not the tradi-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



320)



tional, ancestral tempo; nor is its aim the handiwork which man

produced with pride, the handiwork in which he contemplated and

recognized himself.



I shall not write (after all, so many others already have) about

the difference between conditions of work today and in the past—

how today's work is less fatiguing and of shorter duration, on the

one hand, but, on the other, is an aimless, useless, and callous busi-

ness, tied to a clock, an absurdity profoundly felt and resented by

the worker whose labor no longer has anything in common with

what was traditionally called work.



This is true today even for the peasantry. The important thing,

however, is not that work is in a sense harsher than formerly, but

that it calls for diff erent qualities in man. It implies in him an ab-

sence, whereas previously it implied a presence. This absence is

active, critical, efficient; it engages the whole man and supposes

that he is subordinated to its necessity and created for its ends.



This is the first time in history that man has been so affected in

so many untraditional ways. Carried along by events, he has been

plunged into war at periodic intervals. But today's war is total war,

a unique and unbelievable phenomenon. It is the onus and concern

of all men. It subjects everyone to the same way of life, puts every-

one on a level with everyone else, and threatens everyone with

the same death. Under its sway men have to endure unheard of

sufferings and fatigue. War is now beyond human endurance in

noise, movement, enormity of means, and precision of machines;

and man himself has become merely an object, an object to be

killed, and prey to a permanent panic that he is unable to translate

into personal action. Man is subjected by modem war to a nervous

tension, a psychic pressure, and an animal submission which are

beyond human power to support. But, involved and committed

to the machine, he does contrive to support all this, admirable ma-

chine that he is! In the process, however, he is stretched to the

limit of his resistance, like a steel cable which may break at any

moment.



The conditions of war may still be abnormal and exceptional.

Nevertheless, even four or five years of war are significant in the

life of a man. And the conditions of war eventually become very

nearly his daily state; for the “abnormal” and the “exceptional,”

with a somewhat lesser intensity, are reproduced regularly during



The Technological Society	(321



the course of each day. Man was made to do his daily work with

his muscles; but see him now, like a fly on flypaper, seated fear

eight hours, motionless at a desk. Fifteen minutes of exercise can-

not make up for eight hours of absence. The human being was

made to breathe the good air of nature, but what he breathes is an

obscure compound of acids and coal tars. He was created for a

living environment, but he dwells in a lunar world of stone, cement,

asphalt, glass, cast iron, and steel. The trees wilt and blanch among

Sterile and blind stone facades. Cats and dogs disappear little by

little from the city, going the way of the horse. Only rats and men

remain to populate a dead world. Man was created to have room

to move about in, to gaze into far distances, to live in rooms which,

even when they were tiny, opened out on fields. See him now,

enclosed by the rules and architectural necessities imposed by over-

population in a twelve-by-twelve closet opening out on an anony-

mous world of city streets.



Every man is in this fix, not merely the proletariat, and nothing

can be done about it. What was once the abnormal has become

the usual, standard condition of things. Even so, the human being

is ill at ease in this strange new environment, and the tension de-

manded of him weighs heavily on his life and being. He seeks to

flee—and tumbles into the snare of dreams; he tries to comply—

and falls into the life of organizations; he feels maladjusted—and

becomes a hypochondriac. But the new technological society has

foresight and ability enough to anticipate these human reactions. It

has undertaken, with the help of techniques of every kind, to make

supportable what was not previously so, and not, indeed, by modi-

fying anything in mans environment but by taking action upon

man himself. Psychology is resorted to more and more; everybody

knows how important morale is! Man can support the harshest and

most inhumane living conditions, provided his morale holds. In-

numerable psychological examples and experiments confirm this.



In a world where technique demands the utmost of men, this

maximum cannot be attained, maintained, or surpassed—as some-

times is required—except by a will that is always steady and taut.

Man does not by nature possess such a will. He is by no means

naturally prepared for such a sublime condition, and if he some-

times does attain to it naturally, the exaltation endures only a few

moments. Yet it must be prolonged. Psychological conditions must



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



322 )



be created to enable the individual to give his utmost to war (or

peace) and to resist prostration and discouragement in the face of

the dreadful conditions of life into which technique has forced

him.



At the beginning of 1914, a short war was predicted; the morale

of the troops, it was said, could not endure a long one. The same

prophecy was made in 1941 at the beginning of the all-out bom-

bardment of Germany; human beings, it was said, could not long

endure such a pounding. In 1917 it was announced that the misery

attendant on the Russian Revolution would soon bring about the

collapse of Communism. None of these predictions came true;

morale, and morale alone, sustained human stability. Depending

on the side men adhered to, they glorified faith in Hitler, their

country, Communism. But it was not a question of faith; it was

really a question of an extremely efficient technique of morale

building designed to make the insupportable supportable. Between

the intensive Allied bombardment and the intensive German prop-

aganda, the German propaganda carried the day. The Strategic

Bombing Service of the Americans was forced to conclude that,

despite all the bombardments, there was by 1944 no noticeable

lowering of industrial production and that the German workers

were working with the same enthusiasm as before.



Conversely, when psychological motivation is lacking, industrial

production immediately falls. Man is able to endure famine, dis-

comfort, and the most abnormal conditions; he can make mtemive

and lasting efforts, provided he is psychologically doped. Our so-

ciety places him in a position in which he is always near the break-

ing point and demands just such effort of him. In order that he not

break down or lag behind (precisely what technical progress for-

bids ), he must be furnished with psychic forces he does not have

in himself, which therefore must come from elsewhere. This is

sometimes a very simple matter, as, for example, with the system

of the “self-arresting” production line. When, through fatigue or

discontent, one of the workers lags behind the others who have

finished their operation, the production line comes to a halt and

the other workers are obliged to pause. According to Friedmann,

“the lagging worker sees that he is keeping his fellows from earning

the wages they might earn. He feels guilty toward them, and this

feeling acts as a psychological stimulant which effectively compels



The Technological Society	(323



him to resume the collective tempo in spite of fatigue or discon-

tent.” These psychological stimulants are innumerable and are very

often the spontaneous product of the conditions of life. Ideologies

are a good example. I am not alluding here to political ideologies,

but to a whole complex of ideologies of a much more restricted

kind such as are to be found in the Readers Digest.



Technique, then, brings its own ideology; and every technical

realization engenders its own ideological justifications. A recent

study of the Tennessee Valley Authority by Wengert examines this

phenomenon in detail. The TVA originally was an exclusively tech-

nical program to develop hydraulic power and prevent dangerous

flooding. The program was carried out and the power generated

was duly distributed to neighboring localities. It proved to be a

profitable venture, in spite of what some people may say about it.

In the beginning the TVA did not have cultural implications. But

even before the program yielded concrete results, the myth began

to develop, and today the TVA has become a symbol of regionalism

in the United States. To it is ascribed the function of co-ordinating

and integrating diverse activities; a role in the methodical develop-

ment of natural resources; a task of decentralization affecting pub-

lic and private federal and local institutions; and even a mission of

education. We hear of "democracy on the march” and other such

panegyrics. But nothing in this myth corresponds to facts; it is a

set of ideological constructions which do indeed start from con-

crete, technical, and true facts. But these facts in no way imply

such constructions. Mythical constructions such as these lie in the

realm of those moral fables for which politicians, economists, and

sociologists are often responsible. The press and the radio then

take up these fictions and popularize them; and the public, always

uneasy about its failure to find solutions to the problems perpetually

dinned into its ears, falls eagerly upon what seems to be a solution

and gives it currency.



At such a moment an ideology is born and, in the democratic

countries, becomes public opinion. After the public has taken it up,

other technical schemes are elaborated on the basis of the myth.

Thus, as a function of ideologies in no way implied by the TVA,

corresponding programs were proposed for the Missouri River.

But the correspondence is mere appearance.



Not technique but man is responsible for this wholesale manu-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



3*4)



facture of symbols. Perhaps it is closer to the truth to say that the

contact between man and technique brings this about, of necessity.

It is literally impossible for the public to believe that so much ef-

fort and intelligence, so many dazzling results, produce only ma-

terial effects. People simply cannot admit that a great dam produces

nothing but electricity. The myth of the dam in France springs from

the fact that mass man worships his own massive works and can-

not bring himself to attribute to them a merely material value.

Moreover, since these works involve immense sacrifices, it is neces-

sary to justify the sacrifices (a fact I shall return to in my study of

propaganda). In short, man creates for himself a new religion of a

rational and technical order to justify his work and to be justified

in it. The mechanism of the TVA affords a remarkable example of

this process.



It is thus possible through psychological means to draw from man

his last measure of effort and at the same time compel him to bear

up under the disadvantages with which the new society hinders

him. This is the first goal of psychological techniques. The only

thing that matters technically is yield, production. This is the law of

technique; this yield can only be obtained by the total mobilization

of human beings, body and soul, and this implies the exploitation

of all human psychic forces.



After these reflections, we cannot accept the often quoted state-

ment: “The effort to increase production must cease when the

equilibrium of the whole man is endangered.” This statement

would be acceptable if equilibrium were stable or static. But what

does equilibrium mean when it is possible to re-create it more or

less arbitrarily by purely artificial means? What can limits mean

when psychological devices make it possible to push back all limits?

A fixed structure no longer exists for man. We exact of him what

he would never yield of himself. The machine allows him to com-

ply with the material demands made upon him and psychological

manipulation permits it spiritually. The modification of the human

psyche that results from the interrelation of all techniques makes

nonsense of the statement quoted. The equilibrium of the whole

man? The technical society is capable of re-creating man as a very

different whole from what he was a century ago. It is able to re-

establish “equilibrium” at a higher or lower point (according to the



The Technological Society	(325



criteria employed); but, in any case, to establish it at a different

level from the one maintained before the technical era.



Modification of the Milieu and Space. Technique has penetrated

the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not

only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man’s

very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He

must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe

for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an

hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was

hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock.

He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a

world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and

he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.



Admittedly, the machine has enriched man as it has changed

him. The machine’s senses and organs have multiplied the powers

of human senses and organs, enabling man to penetrate a new

milieu and revealing to him unknown sights, liberties, and servi-

tudes. He has been liberated little by little from physical con-

straints, but he is all the more the slave of abstract ones. He acts

through intermediaries and consequently has lost contact with

reality. The interested reader may wish to consult Friedmann’s

admirable work concerning the separation of the worker from his

material. Man as worker has lost contact with the primary element

of life and environment, the basic material out of which he makes

what he makes. He no longer knows wood or iron or wool. He is

acquainted only with the machine. His capacity to become a me-

chanic has replaced his knowledge of his material; this develop-

ment has occasioned profound mental and psychic transformations

which cannot yet be assessed.



Men with scientific knowledge of materials are found only in

research institutes. But they never use these materials or see them

and have merely an abstract knowledge of their properties. The

men who actually use the materials to produce a finished product

no longer know them. They follow engineering specifications, using

the only object they will ever know firsthand: the machine. Even

so, it cannot be said that man is adapted to the machine. The pilot

of the supersonic aircraft at its maximum velocity becomes, in a

sense, completely one with his machine. But immobilized in a net-



HUMAN



326)



work of tubes and ducts, he is deaf, blind, and impotent. His senses

have been replaced by dials which inform him what is taking place.

Built into his helmet, for example, is an electroencephalographic

apparatus which can warn him of an imminent rarefaction of oxy-

gen before his senses could have told him. We can say he “subsists”

in abnormal conditions; but we cannot say he is adapted to them

in any really human sense. And his situation is not exceptional.



It is not only in work (which takes up a great part of his life)

that man encounters this transformation. His environment as a

whole—everything that goes to make up his milieu, his livelihood,

habitat, and habits—is modified. The machine has transformed

whatever is most immediately connected with him: home, furni-

ture, food. His dwelling place becomes more and more mecha-

nized, like a factory, through an extreme division of labor and the

organization of housework. Catherine Esther BeecherV analysis

of the domestic function caused many people to feel sympathetic

in some degree toward the systematization of housework in the

nineteenth century, even though it seemed strange at first. Since

the thirties, however, the systematic organization of kitchen space

has been completely accepted, with its three “centers” of work (for

preparation, cooking, and washing), along with the “taylorization”

of the motions of cooking. Technical rigor has penetrated into the

domain of the unco-ordinated, the unconsidered, the individual,

and has resulted in the avoidance of motion, steps, time, and

fatigue. It has also put the housewife into a laboratory, into a

minutely ordered network of relentless motions representing slav-

ery a thousandfold more exacting than anything she knew in the

past. It is useless to insist on this point. France is on the threshold

of this transformation; it is already far advanced in the United

States. Even the most superficial observers can see that this trans-

formation of housework by the machine has brought about a com-

pletely different style of living. Wife and children no longer fulfill

their traditional function. A new relation exists between husband

and wife and between parent and child. The “hearth” no longer

has any meaning, and the patient building of family relations no

raison d'etre. A different state of mind necessarily corresponds to 1



1 Miss Beecher (1800-78) wrote extensively on education for women. She held that

woman’s domestic function was paramount and for this reason opposed female

suffrage. (Trans.)



The T echnological Society	(3*7



a radically different state of affairs. But what state of mind? As yet,

no one seems to know. One’s first reaction is simply to say: “No

state of mind.”



The machine is modifying household furnishings to an ever

greater degree. The interested reader is referred to Siegfried

Giedion’s work, which describes not only this modification of

household furniture but also the modification of the whole struc-

ture of housing. Giedion’s conclusion is that mechanization is “tyr-

annizing over housing.” Furniture and housing must of course

comply with the necessities of mass production. Both must undergo

modification because of the mechanization of household interiors;

a house must be conceived less for the comfort of its occupants

than for the accommodation of the numerous mechanical gadgets

to be installed in it.



In a different area of private life, there is the wide range of ef-

fects mechanization has had upon food, for example, through the

various new methods of preservation and storage. I have already

mentioned the profound modification of bread, which has become

a chemical substance of very different composition from that pro-

duced from simple cereal grains. Beginning with Sylvester Gra-

ham’s Treatise on Bread, a number of studies have shown to what

degree the organic structure of bread has been modified by the

machine and by the science of chemistry. The result was a pro-

found modification of taste, as if “the consumers, by an unconscious

reaction, adapted their taste to the type of bread which corre-

sponded exactly to the demands of mass production.” Mechaniza-

tion shattered the age-old character of bread and converted it into a

valueless article of fashion. This statement is not an aesthetic judg-

ment or a lingering romanticism, but rather the result of exact tech-

nical studies, a technical fact established by technicians; this in it-

self presupposes it is not a value judgment. We are registering a fact

and not nostalgia for the old whole-wheat bread of our ancestors.

It is a fact of the same order as the retreat of wine before Coca-

Cola; the ancient “civilization of wine” is becoming obsolescent as

a result of an industrial product.



Just as material surroundings—the nearest, humblest, and most

personal—have been modified, so have the broader and more ab-

stract elements of life. Work, rest, and food, and time, space, and

movement as well, no longer have any connection with traditional



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



328)



forms. It is commonly said that with the new modes of transport

distance no longer exists; and, indeed, man has vanquished space.

He is able to travel about the entire globe. He meets men of other

races. He becomes a cosmopolite and a citizen of the world, less,

it may be added, through his own will and ideals than through the

mechanical fact of easy transport.



But only a small minority of people use airlines, enter into rela-

tions with the world, and see space stretch out before them. For

the overwhelming majority, although space has not remained tra-

ditional, it has undergone an inverse evolution. The world's popula-

tion has increased tenfold in a very short time. In particular, the

population of France has almost trebled in a century and a half,

so that we have, in effect, only one third the amount of room per

capita that we formerly had. No longer are there any lonely moun-

tains and deserted seacoasts. Solitude is no longer possible; space

is at such a premium that men jostle one another everywhere. Quite

apart from the solitude of relaxation, we no longer have even the

normal solitude which implies sufficient space to live other than as

if in a prison cell or at a factory workbench. Living and working

traditionally meant open space, a no man’s land separating a man

from his fellows. But there is no longer any possibility of that.



Man has always known wide horizons. Even the city dweller had

direct contact with limitless plains, mountains, and seas. Beyond

the enclosing walls of the medieval city, was open country. At most

the citizen had to walk five hundred yards to reach the city walls,

where space, fair and free, suddenly extended before him. Today

man knows only bounded horizons and reduced dimensions. The

space not only of his movements but of his gaze is shrinking. The

paradox is characteristic of our times, that to the abstract conquest

of Space by Man (capitalized) corresponds the limitation of place

for men (in small letters). It is scarcely necessary to emphasize

the fact that this diminution of Lebensraum results indirectly from

techniques (through population growth) or directly from them

(through urban and industrial agglomeration).



Modification of Time and Motion. In much the same way tech-

nique has modified human time. That man until recently got along

well enough without measuring time precisely is something we

never even think about, and that we do not think about it shows

to what a degree we have been affected by technique. What means



The Technological Society	(3*9



there were in the past for measuring time belonged to the rich and,

until the fourteenth century, exerted no influence on real time or

on life. Until then, there were mechanical horologia which did not

so much mark the hour as indicate it very approximately by bells

or chimes. The clocktower, with its public clock, made its appear-

ance toward the end of the century. Until then, time had been

measured by life’s needs and events. At most, life had been regu-

lated since the fifth century by church bells; but this regulation

really followed a psychological and biological tempo. The time

man guided himself by corresponded to nature’s time; it was ma-

terial and concrete. It became abstract (probably toward the end

of the fourteenth century) when it was divided into hours, minutes,

and seconds. Little by little this mechanical kind of time, with its

knife-edge divisions, penetrated, along with machinery, into hu-

man life. The first private clocks appeared in the sixteenth century.

Thenceforward, time was an abstract measure separated from the

traditional rhythms of life and nature. It became mere quantity.

But since life is inseparable from time, life too was forced to submit

to the new guiding principle. From then on, life itself was measured

by the machine; its organic functions obeyed the mechanical. Eat-

ing, working, and sleeping were at the beck and call of machinery.

Time, which had been the measure of organic sequences, was

broken and dissociated. Human life ceased to be an ensemble, a

whole, and became a disconnected set of activities having no other

bond than the fact that they were performed by the same indi-

vidual.* Mechanical abstraction and rigidity permeated the whole

structure of being. “Abstract time became a new milieu, a new

framework of existence.” Today the human being is dissociated

from the essence of life; instead of living time, he is split up and

parceled out by it. Lewis Mumford is right in calling the clock

the most important machine of our culture. And he is right too in

asserting that the clock has made modern progress and efficiency

possible through its rapidity of action and the co-ordination it ef-



* Enrico Castelli’s study Le Temps harceUmt extends our observations into the realm

of the psychological. He shows how the man of the technical world lives without

past or future and how the loss of the sense of duration deprives law and language

of their meaning. According to Castelli, modern man lives in a universe in which

technique has divested language of its meaning and value. If this formula seems

exaggerated, I would direct you to Castelli’s book, to see its essential truth.



The book stresses the fact that technique, as a result of the perfection of means

which it has placed at the disposal of modern man, has effectively suppressed the



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



330)



f ects in man’s daily activities. All organization of work and study of

motion is based on the clock.



There is a third general, nonmaterial element of human life

which, along with space and time, has been profoundly modified

by technique; motion. Here, too, we observe the same process.

Motion is the spontaneous expression of life, its visible form. Every-

thing alive chooses of itself its attitudes, orientations, gestures, and

rhythms. There is, perhaps, nothing more personal to a living being

—as far as the observer is concerned—than its movements. In

reality there is no such thing as movement in general; there are

only the movements of individual things.



Technique, however, considers the matter very differently. Gil-

breth’s ingenuity consisted in analyzing the notions of an indi-

vidual and thus rendering them abstract. There was no longer a

being in motion, but a point; not a series of acts, but a curve, a

trajectory in abstract space and time. It is true that human activi-

ties bear certain resemblances to one another, and by synthesizing

them it is possible to arrive at precise laws of their motion. More-

over, every human skill in action is based upon a complex of funda-

mental principles common to all. It is therefore possible to specify

not only the laws which govern them but also their exact trajec

tories. This supposes, first, the abstraction of motion, and second,

its analysis. Motion is dissected into discrete aspects so that its

form appears phenomenally, point by point. The immediate conse-

quence of such analysis is that motion becomes completely dis-

joined from personal and internal life. Technical analysis concen-

trates on the efficient cause of human actions and eliminates as

secondary everything that expresses human personality. Action is

no longer a real function of the person who performs it; it is a

function of abstract and ideal symbols, which become its sole

criteria.



As long as we restrict ourselves to scientific investigation, such at-



respite of time indispensable to the rhythm of life; between desire and the satis-

faction of desire there is no longer the duration which is necessary for real choice

and examination. There is no longer respite for reflecting or choosing or adapting

oneself, or for acting or wishing or pulling oneself together. The rule of life is: No

sooner said than done. Life has become a racecourse composed of instantaneous

variations of the universe, a succession of objective events which drag us along and

lead us astray without anywhere affording us the possibility of standing apart,

taking stock, and ceasing to act



The Technological Society	(	3	31



tempts to analyze motion are completely acceptable. But as far as

concrete reality is concerned, they must be judged futile. However,

these analyses Soon showed their compelling power, and were ap-

plied to an everincreasing degree to the modification of the workers

practical motions. The problem of the regulation of these move-

ments in industry is so well known that I need not refer to it here.

But this type of regulation is gaining ground outside the sphere of

manual labor. All the machines of our technological society pre-

suppose to an ever greater degree the perfect motions Gilbreth

defined in his trajectories. The more rapidly our machines operate,

the more precise they must be, and the less we can allow ourselves

the luxury of using them arbitrarily. This is as true of the machines

we have in our houses as of the machines we meet on the street.

Our movements must approach perfection to the degree that the

machines approach it and continue to increase in number. Our mo-

tions are no longer entitled to express our own personalities. It

suffices to take one look at distracted and panicky elderly people

in the middle of a Paris street to understand that modern velocities

render motion abstract and no longer tolerate imperfect motions

just because they are human.



We still do not know the ultimate effects of these transforma-

tions on the human being. We have only begun to study them.

Precisely what is modified in man by this violent upheaval of

every element of his environment? We do not know. But we do

know that violent modifications have taken place, and we have a

foreboding of them in the development of neuroses and in the new

behaviors with which contemporary literature acquaints us. In

ceasing to be himself, modern man bears testimony to these phe-

nomena not only when he suffers anxiety but even when he is

happy. For the last decade scientific studies have been accumulat-

ing which demonstrate man's psychological, moral, and even bio-

logical incapacity to adapt in any real way to the milieu technique

has created for him. Careful studies have analyzed the nervous

afflictions brought on by industrial work; but contact with other

kinds of machines (for example, automobiles, television) or the

life of the technician in general apparently produce the same ef-

fects. The November i960 issue of Semaines medicales de Paris,

on the basis of information contributed by 4,000 physicians all over

the world, offers a study of a new disease of great complexity which



332 )	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



is brought on by modem city life and which might be called urban-



itis.



Some investigators have already become engrossed in the ques-

tion of a better adaptation of man to his new milieu. For example,

they are concerned with the necessity of giving man the means of

“assimilating the machine,” or of assimilating its lessons, of causing

it to become a part of human life. It is generally agreed that with-

out such assimilation it is impossible to transcend the machine or

to arrive at a new form of society. This assimilation is the prime

objective of the so-called human sciences, the sciences which have

man as their subject.



Furthermore, it is necessary to protect man by outfitting him

with a kind of psychological shock absorber. Only another tech-

nique is able to give efficient protection against the aggression of

techniques. This protection is the second objective of the human

sciences.



We shall examine later on whether it is reasonable to hope to

create a genuinely human civilization by transcending the ma-

chine with the aid of the human sciences. At this point let us

remark merely that it is precisely the need to diagnose and cure

this disease that is offered as both justification and demand for the

creation of new human techniques.



The Creation of the Mass Society. There is a third area in which

human techniques are applied, and it represents a further cause of

disequilibration for the human being seeking to adapt to his new

milieu.



It is a truism to state that contemporary society is becoming a

mass society. The “process of massification,” “the accession of the

masses” have been thoroughly studied and understood. Less well

understood, however, is the fact that the man of the present is not

spontaneously adapted to the new form of society. Previous socie-

ties took their character to a very large degree from the men in

them. Technical or economic conditions imposed certain sociologi-

cal structures, but the human being was in essential agreement with

these structures, and the form society took expressed the psy-

chology of the individual. This is no longer true. The process of

massification takes place not because the man of today is by

nature a mass man, but for technical reasons. Man becomes a mass

man in the new framework imposed upon him because he is unable



The Technological Society	(333



to remain for very long at variance with his milieu. The adaptation

of men to a mass society is not yet an accomplished fact; and recent

research in the field of psychoanalytic sociology has revealed the

gap which still exists between man and the collective society, a

gap which is the cause of disequilibration. Every society has norms

which represent a criterion of the normal. When these norms

change their character, a disturbance of equilibrium ensues and,

for the man who has not kept pace with the changes, neurosis.

There is no doubt that the norms of our civilization have changed

for reasons which are not "human”; men as a whole had no desire

for the changes that occurred nor did they work toward them con-

sciously. Indirect influences have operated on the norms of modern

society, and these norms have been transformed without men

knowing what was happening.



It seems to me that Karen Homey's analysis of this disequilibra-

tion is accurate. According to Horney, our civilization (or so men

believe) still attests to a secularized Christian ideology which sets

the highest value on brotherly relations. But the structures of our

world and its real norms represent diametrically the opposite. The

fundamental rule of the world today is the rule of economic,

political, and class competition—and this competition extends to

the social and human relations of friendship and sex. The dis-

equilibration between the traditional affirmation and the new cri-

terion has produced the climate of anxiety and insecurity charac-

teristic of our epoch and of our neuroses, and corresponds exactly

to the distinction between the individualist society and the mass

society.



The human being does not feel at home in the collective at-

mosphere. This is true of societies that differ in many ways among

themselves; it applies to the primitive sociological collectivism of

Africa, to the individualistic civilization of Europe, and to the col-

lective adaptation of a higher type in the United States. In all these

societies everyone is affected by a certain malaise. The change of

sociological structures is occurring at a very rapid tempo and af-

fects everyone; and the state demands an immediate collective

effort from all the citizens. A sufficient respite is never afforded the

individual to allow him to assimilate all the new criteria.



The process of massification corresponds, moreover, to the dis-

appearance of anything resembling a community. The majority of



HUMAN



334)



American psychosociologists insist on the importance of human

social relations for the individual. As Jerome Scott and R. P.

Lynton put it: “Every man requires emotional and intellectual

satisfactions which alone secure for him his belonging to a com-

munity.” When this need is suppressed, neuroses result. Some ex-

perts even maintain that most obsessive neurosis springs from a

failure of social adaptation and from the suppression of community

relations, for which technical relations are substituted, as Roeth-

lisberger has pointed out.



This new sociological mass structure and its new criteria of

civilization seem both inevitable and undeniable. They are inevita-

ble because they are imposed by technical forces and economic

considerations beyond the reach of man. They are not the result of

thought, doctrine, discourse, will. They are simply there as a con-

dition of fact. All social reforms, all social changes, are located

wholly within this condition of fact, unless they are purely utopian.

When social change is truly realistic, it accepts this condition buoy-

antly, vindicates it, and exploits it. Only two possibilities are left

to the individual: either he remains what he was, in which case he

becomes more and more unadapted, neurotic, and inefficient, loses

his possibilities of subsistence, and is at last tossed on the social

rubbish heap, whatever his talents may be; or he adapts himself to

the new sociological organism, which becomes his world, and he

becomes unable to live except in a mass society. (And then he

scarcely differs from a cave man.) But to become a mass man en-

tails a tremendous effort of psychic mutation. The purpose of the

techniques which have man as their object, the so-called human

techniques, is to assist him in this mutation, to help him find the

quickest way. to calm his fears, and reshape his heart and his brain.



When we look into technical rather than theoretical works on

this subject, the design emerges with great clarity. “It is a question

of strengthening the environment in such a way that, in practice,

all subjects come more or less quickly under its influence,” says

Claude Munson, from a pragmatic American point of view. If inte-

gration proves impossible, it is then necessary to uproot the indi-

vidual from one social environment and place him in another where

adaptation is possible. Somehow provision must be made for the

individual to reach the glorious state of equilibrium so desired by

those who guide human destiny—the state in which the individual



The Technological Society	( 335



is so adapted that his personal difficulties are no different from

those of the collectivity. He is no longer a man in a group, but an

element of the group.



It is remarkable that mass participation distracts the individual

from his miseries and even dispels them. After all, the process of

massification was itself the origin of man’s psychic difficulties!



Another aspect of this adaptation is the adjustment of the in-

dividual to technical instruments. The instruments in our posses-

sion are, in effect, mass instruments, both in the realm of material

action and in that of psychological action. If at present we desire to

exert any influence on man, it is possible to do so only through the

mass media and only to the degree that man is a mass man. I shall

return to this fact with reference to mass education and to propa-

ganda methods, both of which are able to move the mass individual

only by "massifying” him more and more.



The nonspontaneous union of the individual and the collectivity

is one of the essential conditions for the development of techniques

in the special sociological form they take in our society. This union

is, as we shall see, one of the most noteworthy results of the tech-

niques devoted to man. In this connection it is an oversimplifica-

tion to speak of "collectivization” or ‘‘human guidance.” This com-

plete mutation of the human species has not been produced by a

collectivist theory or by someone’s will to power. The cause is

much more profound, at once human and inhuman; inhuman be-

cause it is occasioned by things and circumstances, human because

it answers the heart’s desire of every modem man, without excep-

tion.



We have studied the threefold foundation of the indispensable

human techniques: the superhuman demands made on man by

present-day society, the complete modification of the human en-

vironment, and the alteration of sociological structures. Man, in

fundamental disaccord with his universe, must of necessity be

restored to harmony with it.



Human Techniques. It thus became imperative to rethink the

whole situation of man in his new world. But thinking things

through seemed altogether insufficient; it was necessary to act. Ac-

tion upon the techniques themselves appeared to be impossible.

The question therefore became: Is it not possible to act upon man

himself? To help him resist? To protect him, perhaps; to educate



33*>)	HUMAN TECHNIQUES



him, certainly? The applications of the human sciences were

worked out along these lines of thought.



In our day human techniques offer great hopes to man, sorely

beset by anxiety. Not long ago an extensive survey of the different

scientific disciplines appeared under the title: The Sciences of

Man Re-establish His Supremacy. Man, menaced by his own dis-

coveries and no longer capable of mastering the forces unleashed

by them, is to have his greatness restored by human techniques.

The grounds for hope given in the survey by Georges Fried-

mann, Alain Sargent, Jean Fourastie, Georges Weill, Chombart de

Lowe, J. Gueron, and others are reducible to three elements:



First, the liberation of man, not by technique in general, but spe-

cifically through the agency of human techniques, a liberation

which proceeds as much from within man as from without. With

the help of the human sciences, man will be freed from technocracy

itself. Technique will combat slavery. According to Chombart de

Lowe, research in this area must be completely disinterested and

free from any preoccupation with immediate application. Tech-

niques are in a position to offer man a saner and more balanced

life and to free him from material constraints, whether these arise

from nature or from the actions of other men. The human being

is freer when he is no longer in danger of famine and when he has

some leisure from labor. Technique is in great part the basis of

this freedom. In addition, the human techniques purify and free

the inner man; this, for example, is the grand design of psycho-

analysis. Man, freed and returned to himself, will be much better

adapted to life and to the mastery of the difficulties with which the

modem world confronts him.



The second element is less hackneyed: the world of techniques

is no longer the abstract and mechanical world imagined by its

critics and by the technocrats themselves. We have known for some

time that technique is of little value if it has not been rendered

tractable by man. Humanism, then, has been restored to its place

of honor; to act contrary to the profundities of human nature is to

act irrationally. This represents, for the most part, a merely verbal

and ideological humanism. There may have been some genuinely

humanistic aspects in modem discoveries, but for the most part

they have been primarily technical. A good method applied by an

imbecile does not yield good results; and a technique used by a



The Technological Society	(337



man full of rancor, disgust, or resentment, or by a man who detests

it, will not be very efficient. Research therefore has taken two di-

rections. It has concerned itself with making the interests of man

and technique correspond, thus rendering technique flexible. It

has also attempted to take human nature into account in order to

keep man from being crushed by technique, thereby becoming an

obstacle to technique. On both these counts there has been an un-

ceasing effort to refine our knowledge of human techniques in order

to bridge the gap between man and technique. The claims of the

human being have thus come to assert themselves to a greater and

greater degree in the development of techniques; this is known as

“humanizing the techniques.” Man is not supposed to be merely a

technical object, but a participant in a complicated movement.

His fatigue, pleasures, nerves, and opinions are carefully taken into

account. Attention is paid to his reactions to orders, his phobias,

and his earnings. All this fills the uneasy With hope. From the mo-

ment man is taken seriously, it seems to them that they are wit-

nessing the creation of a technical humanism.



The third element of hope is the fact that these human tech-

niques have tended to reconstitute the unity of the human being

which had been shattered by the sudden and jarring action of

technique. The grand design of human techniques is to make man

the center of all techniques. He has been torn in every direction

by the technical forces of the modem world and is no longer able

of himself, at least on an individual level, to preserve his unity.

But this lost unity can be restored by technique on the abstract

level of science. There is no doubt that technique can counter tech-

nique; and abstractly man can thereby be restored to unity. A

group of techniques is to be formed, therefore, centered on a con-

cept of man and activated by the human techniques.



There is a fourth glorious element: the prospect of the creation

of a “superman.” He will not appear tomorrow. But serious biolo-

gists already speak of the possibilities of chemical conditioning in

the near future, and, more distantly, of parthenogenesis and ecto-

genesis, and embryonic conditioning. It is useless to dwell on these

theories here; they are only remote possibilities. However, it is

instructive to see how many intellectuals hope to find in the crea-

tion of superman the solution of all the otherwise insoluble prob-

lems posed to the common man by the technical world in which



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



338)



he lives. Of course the superman I speak of has nothing to do with

Superman, the American comic-strip character. Man’s power is not

the issue here, but his intellectual and psychic life, to say nothing

of his spiritual life.



It would be idle to deny all reality to such hopes. To a great

degree these auguries are justified. Technical knowledge does give

us new insights into human reality and can serve toward its unifi-

cation.



Among the elements I have summarized, the most important is

undoubtedly the second. The concrete details of man’s life with

respect to technical apparatus must be taken into consideration on

the human plane. The fatigue factor is important; and the indi-

vidual’s labor must be planned to reduce fatigue. It is essential in

constructing machinery to avoid uncomfortable or dangerous situa-

tions for the operator, and to modify the wage earner’s milieu to

give him more pleasure, light, and the freedom and fellow feeling

indispensable to him. It is desirable to show concern for the

worker’s dwelling place, for the comfort of the housewife’s kitchen,

for the lighting of the children’s rooms; in short, for any factor

that will obviously be of advantage to all. Who could believe the

contrary or plead for slums or worker casualties?



However, a certain misunderstanding must be avoided. The

word humanism is often spoken in connection with the situation I

have described. Humanism is essentially a certain conception of

man. And, it develops, this is an astonishing conception of man, a

conception that involves contempt for man’s inner life to the ad-

vantage of his sociological life, contempt of his moral and intel-

lectual life to the advantage of his material life. This position is

admissible for conscious materialists; but I cannot admit it for the

unconscious materialists who are always prating of their spiritu-

ality. The argument that moral development will follow material

development can only be characterized as hypocrisy. Moreover,

it has not always been a voluntary and conscious humanism which

has presided over this progress. If we seek the real reason, we hear

over and over again that there is “something out of line” in the

technical system, an insupportable state of affairs for a technician.

A remedy must be found. What is out of line? According to the

usual superficial analysis, it is man that is amiss. The technician



The Technological Society	(339



thereupon tackles the problem as he would any other. He has a

method which has hitherto enabled him to solve all difficulties, and

he uses it here too. But he considers man only as an object of

technique and only to the degree that man interferes with the

proper function of the technique. Technique reveals its essential

efficiency in discerning that man has a sentimental and moral life

which can have great influence on his material behavior and in pro-

posing to do something about such factors on the basis of its own

ends. These factors are, for technique, human and subjective; but

if means can be found to act upon them, to rationalize them and

bring them into line, they need not be a technical drawback. Of

course, man as such does not count.



When the technical problem is well in hand, the professional

humanists look at the situation and dub it “humanist.” This pro-

cedure suits the literati, moralists, and philosophers who are con-

cerned about the human situation. What is more natural than for

philosophers to say: “See how we are concerned with Man?”; and

for their literary admirers to echo: “At last, a humanism which is

not confined to playing with ideas but which penetrates the facts!”

Unfortunately, it is a historical fact that this shouting of humanism

always comes after the technicians have intervened; for a true

humanism, it ought to have occurred before. This is nothing more

than the traditional psychological maneuver called rationalizing.



Since 1947 we have witnessed the same humanist rationalizing

with respect to the earth itself. In the United States, for example,

methods of large-scale agriculture had been savagely applied. The

humanists became alarmed by this violation of the sacred soil,

this lack of respect for nature; but the technical people troubled

themselves not at all until a steady decline in agricultural pro-

ductivity became apparent. Technical research discovered that the

earth contains certain trace elements which become exhausted

when the soil is mistreated. This discovery, made by Sir Albert

Howard in his thorough investigation of Indian agriculture, led to

the conclusion that animal and vegetable (“organic”) fertilizers

were superior to any and all artificial fertilizers, and that it is es-

sential not to exhaust the earth's reserves. Up to now no one has

succeeded in finding a way of replacing trace elements artificially.

The technicians have recommended more care in the use of fer-

tilizers and moderation in the utilization of machinery; in short.



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



340)



“respect” for the soil. And all nature lovers rejoice. But was any

real respect for the earth involved here? Clearly not. The impor-

tant thing was agricultural yield.



It might be objected: “Who cares what the real causes were if

the result is respect for man or for nature? If technical excess

brings us to wisdom, let us by all means develop techniques. If

man must be effectively protected by a technique that understands

him, we may at least rest assured that he will be better protected

than he ever was by all his philosophies.” This is hocus-pocus. To-

day’s technique may respect man because it is in its interest and

part of its normal course of development to do so. But we have

no certainty that this will be so in the future. We could have a

measure of certainty only if technique, by necessity and for deep

and lasting reasons, subordinated its power in principle to the in-

terests of man Otherwise, a complete reversal is always possible.

Tomorrow it might be in technique's interest to exploit man bru-

tally, to mutilate and suppress him. We have, as of now, no guaran-

tee whatsoever that this is not the road it will take. On the contrary,

we see all around us at least as many signs of increasing contempt

for man as of respect for him. Technique mixes the one with the

other indiscriminately. The only law it follows is that of its own

autonomous development. To me, therefore, it seems impossible

to speak of a technical humanism.



Review



Right at the beginning, let us emphasize that we are studying

technique.



It was thought for a long time that man’s conduct belonged to

the realm of art, and it can certainly be said that Freudian psy-

choanalysis is an art. Behavior based on flair, on intuitive as well

as reasoned knowledge, and on personal relations; the spontaneous

devising of means for influencing heart and mind; the whole-

hearted participation of man in his acts—all these are characteristic

of art. Great leaders, great teachers, and agitators have all been

artists. But art and artistry no longer suffice. We must find solu-

tions to the problems raised by techniques, and only through

technical means can we find them.



The Technological Society	(341



The means of exerting action on men must answer to the fol-

lowing three criteria: (1) Generality. Every man must be reached

in every area of life because everyone is involved. Individual ac-

tion is unimportant. (2) Objectivity. Action, since it is a function

of society itself, cannot be dependent upon the transient and sub-

jective acts of individuals. The means must be rendered independ-

ent of the individual who employs them so as to m^ke them ap-

plicable by anyone at all. This criterion alone would imply the

transition from art to technique. (3) Permanence. Since the techni-

cal challenge to man concerns his whole life, psychic action must

be exerted upon him without letup, from the beginning of his

existence to its end.



Localized intervention by the great or powerful can no longer be

relied upon. And action by fits and starts is not enough; it must be

steady and uniform. Because the transition to practical application

must be effected quickly, it is scarcely possible to speak of science.

The problem is to discover the most effective means; one is there-

fore obliged to call the whole complex technique, in spite of the

lofty tone taken by people who put their faith in the “human

sciences.” When Serge Tchakhotin writes, with reference to prop-

aganda, that “the understanding of the mechanisms of human

behavior entails the possibility of managing them at will”. . . and

that “calculation, prediction, and action according to verifiable

laws are possible,” he is describing human techniques accurately.



Three facts demonstrate the reality of the transition of action

from art to technique. The first is the state of mind common to the

technicians who make use of human techniques. They arbitrarily

select only those scientific data which seem useful and are disdain-

fully condescending toward whatever data are not utilizable. In

psychology and psychoanalysis, for example, vocational counselors

and propagandists make a definite choice. In the field of practical

psychology known as “public relations” (as practiced by, say, Dale

Carnegie or Claude Munson), a certain suspicion of theoretical and

abstract psychology prevails; and certain indispensable simplifica-

tions are made. Munson writes that “the mechanism of morale

building is neither simpler nor less technical than a problem in

mechanics. Both require a clear conception of the objective, the

elaboration of a plan of methodical execution, the knowledge of

all the co-operating factors, a central agent entrusted with the direc-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



343)



tion and verification of the operations, a thorough study of meth-

ods, and so on/' Munson, moreover, calls attention to “a remark-

able unpredictability” for which every technician must make al-

lowance. He writes: “Without being able to point out in advance

the solution for a particular case, one at least knows that the solu-

tion will fit into a determinate type to which certain general prin-

ciples are applicable.” Munson has in mind a program of all the

different forms of deliberate persuasion, a program with technical

precision and flexibility.



A second characteristic of the transition from art to technique is

the extensive application of mathematics. Biometry, psychometry,

sociometry, and cybernetics have become the chief intermediaries

for creating these techniques. It is considered illusory to think it

possible to construct a true system of action from nonquantitative

laws and observations. This was the traditional stumbling block for

psychological techniques. When the attempt was first made to

create a true technique of propaganda, for example, biology, an

exact science, was taken as the basis. Subsequently, other exact

disciplines were called upon; for example, public opinion polls and

statistics. Progress in this and other human techniques came about

only when the human sciences took on the exactitude of mathe-

matics. Only metric methods can analyze and predict efficiently.

It is striking to note, incidentally, that metric methods applied in

different kinds of political regimes by different kinds of technicians

come to the same result. This too is characteristic of techniques.

In this respect, I find a remark made by Paul H. Maucorps very

much to the point. Speaking of American sociometry, Maucorps

says: “It is interesting to observe that this sociometry has the same

practical conclusions as the so-called Stakhanovism.” Rubinstein

makes the same observation from the Soviet point of view.



The third characteristic element in the transition from art to

technique is the appearance of the technical-experimental state of

mind. It is admittedly difficult to test human techniques experi-

mentally. This is so for two reasons. These techniques cannot be

manipulated freely by the experimenter. Moreover, human society

forms a complicated whole, so that it is very difficult to achieve

the two conditions necessary for technical experimentation, isola-

tion of phenomena and analysis of elements.



However, without having recourse to the dangerous and over-



The Technological Society	(343



hasty methods of totalitarian states, experimenters in the field of

human techniques have found a particularly good experimental

field: the army. The army is a singularly favorable environment be-

cause the soldier is away from his customary framework. His social

ties have been severed, and he has been divested of his traditional

personality. He then forms completely new social ties; the resultant

collectivity can be studied from its inception, and isolated from

secondary and complicating influences. Such a collectivity, more-

over, lends itself to study and is easily observed from day to day.

The personality of each man is completely new, for with the new

uniform he assumes a new psychology.



The experiments on the army serve a twofold purpose. First, the

recruits are directly influenced in their actions and carry this in-

fluence back into civilian life, where their behavior will be predict-

able and they themselves will be easily manipulated. The civilian

population, therefore, can be influenced through the intermediacy

of the army, which is connected with the rest of society by links

that are being drawn tighter and tighter. Second, the knowledge

gained through experimentation on soldiers has indirect import-

ance. This knowledge can be applied to other, more complex mi-

lieus which might not lend themselves readily to experimentation,

even though they are similar to the army in kind. Examples which

come to mind are business organizations and, particularly, great

industrial plants. Methods found effective in the army are applied

to the plant; and in the process there is an inevitable tendency to

simplify human relations and to model after the military the indus-

trial collectives in which these techniques are applied. This in-

direct action is only slowly being felt; but the massive displacement

of workers, which is constantly increasing even in liberal coun-

tries, shows that, involuntarily, technique in the form of human

techniques is gradually gaining the upper hand.



Human techniques are of such multiplicity that any attempt to

describe them adequately would require a whole library. Even an

attempt to enumerate them would entail the loss of a cohesiveness

and compactness. There are techniques addressed to man as an

isolated individual and techniques addressed to man as a social

being. Some concern his mind and some his body; others touch his

will; still others that secret place where matter becomes spirit and

soul animates matter. Techniques are addressed to the child and



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



344)



to the man, to the fetus and to the commissioner. They should be

ordered into a system, as in fact they are. In such a system the same

technique would be represented on different levels corresponding

to different ends. For example, psychoanalytic technique enters

into the mechanisms of propaganda, the modern school, and voca-

tional guidance. Here, however, I shall try only to describe as

soberly and briefly as possible the basic themes, subjects, and prin-

ciples of the problem. It would be useless to describe them at

length or in great detail. A condensed description will bring the

facts into sharp relief, and that must suffice.



Educational Technique, All of us who were adult in 1950 in

France preserved a vivid memory of dismal schools where teachers

were enemies and punishment was a constant menace; of narrow,

barred windows, gloomy brown walls, and uncomfortable benches

hollowed out by generations of bored students. The smell of sour

milk, dirtv smocks and snot-nosed kids made a unique impression

that a young instructor would never forget. We well remcml>er

books without illustrations, incomprehensible lessons learned by

rote, discipline, and boredom. We had a healthy fear of the mas-

ters, upon whom we played our tricks. We feared some of our fel-

low pupils too, especially those who sat behind us, against whom

we were unarmed. The students were divided into the weak and the

strong, much like an embryonic political structure where the weak

quickly band together. There was pitiless competition in respect

to studies, marks, and places. Categories were simple then: work

was a curse, the school was a hualile; world, and the greater society

outside its walls seemed to be the same. All superiors were ene-

mies. There were the snivelers who wanted only to get by, and

the tough characters strong enough to dispense with the kind of

success school life offered. All the rest were either cowed or re-

bellious, according to their natures. These were the ancient and

familiar categories of school life which were suddenly overthrown

by the extension of a series of techniques that we call techniques

de VScole nouvelle—progressive education.



Progressive education has as its end the "happiness” of the child.

It entails bright classrooms, understanding teachers, and pleasur-

able work. Its educational formulas are well-known: the child in

school must be "relaxed” and enjoy himself; he must exist in a

“balanced environment,” get rid of his "complexes,” and “play



The Technological Society	(345



while he is learning.” All this represents a perfectly valid program.

It has the elements of genial scholarship derived from the cele-

brated saying of Montaigne to the effect that we must stop cram-

ming children's skulls to pass the baccalaureate; supercharging

their brains with encyclopedic knowledge to the detriment of all

other activities. Education must seek, rather, to develop in a bal-

anced way all their faculties, physical, manual, psychic, and intel-

lectual, and in this last, it must seek to stress personal observation

and reasoning instead of rote learning. Moreover, the whole process

is supposed to take place with the minimum possible use of force.

It is essential to respect the person of the child and to individualize

instruction to the maximum. Instruction is part of total education

and is not addressed to the intelligence alone. Its method, based on

the maieutic8 of Socrates, consists in bringing the child himself

to discover the properties of objects or, starting from facts he him-

self observes, the principles which underlie them. This educational

procedure is, however, a highly refined technique, detailed and

rigorous; and it makes the most exacting demands on the tech-

nician himself, who must indeed be a remarkable pedagogue to

be able to apply it. It is not a mechanical technique that applies

itself almost ipso facto. The same holds for the majority of the

human techniques we shall discuss. The person of the technician

counts for a very great deal, especially since these techniques are in

their infancy.



Clearly, the child so educated will be much better balanced and

in a better position to develop his own personality. It is beside the

point to note how inadequately this program has been applied in

France and how meager have been its results. It has been a prob-

lem, for example, to recruit enough qualified teachers to make it

possible to assign students to classes of no more than fifteen. Diffi-

culties have been experienced in adapting the new methods to the

old-time examination programs, which remain unchanged; this of

course vitiates the system and results in overburdening the child.

There are difficulties with regard to school location and equipment.

But these stumbling blocks seem to me only of secondary impor-

tance. They represent transitional problems of adaptation which. *



* Maieutic (from the Greek word for “midwife"): a term applied by Socrates to his

method of teaching which was designed to bring to clear consciousness what was

already present but hidden in the recesses of the mind. (Trans.)



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



346)



in the normal course of events, will disappear. In a “normalized”

society the new school is the only possible system; and when the

importance of the education it has to offer has been understood,

no sacrifice will be spared to secure the application of its method.

Recall the sacrifices of the Hitler regime and of the Communists in

behalf of education. The new education is a governing principle of

every modern political system and of technique as a whole.



We come here to one of the most important problems raised by

the new method: the child's personality development. The problem

is to put the child in the best possible situation and to prepare him

optimally for the tasks that await him. These are phrases that are

heard everywhere, as for example in the following statement drawn

from a speech of Mme Montessori to UNESCO:



We must awaken the child’s social conscience. I know that it is a

complicated educational question, but the child who will become

the man must be able to understand life and its needs, the funda-

mental reason for all existence, the search for happiness ... He

must know exactly what he must do and what he must not do for

the good of humanity ... To reach these ends, we must prepare

the child to understand the meaning and necessity of the entente

among the nations. The organization of the peace devolves more

on education than on politics. To secure peace practically, we must

envision a humane education, psychopedagogy, which affects not

one nation but all men on earth . . . Education must become a

truly humane science to guide all men to judge the present situ-

ation correctly.



This statement seems to me truly remarkable in that it designates

candidly the end of psychopedagogic technique in the best pos-

sible circumstances, within a liberal and democratic conception of

man, state, and society. (Mme Montessori is a liberal and speaks

for liberal countries.) I have taken Mme Montessori's statement by

way of example; but one could examine the purpose of this tech-

nique in numerous other pedagogical studies published in the past

few years.



We note first of all that this technique must be implemented by

the state, which alone has the means and the breadth to carry it

through. But the rigorous application of the psychopedagogic tech-

nique means the end of private instruction—and therefore of a

traditional freedom.



The Technological Society	13 47



Second, this technique is "pantocrator.”* It must be exercised

over all men. If one man is left who is not trained according to its

methods, there is the danger of his becoming a new Hitler. The

technique cannot be effected unless all children are obliged to par-

ticipate and all parents to co-operate. There can be no exceptions.

If only a minority are educated to comply, this technique can re-

solve none of the problems it is intended to meet. Mme Montes-

sori's statement is therefore neither a metaphor nor an exaggera-

tion; all human beings, without exception, must be reached. We

note again the aggressive character of technique. Mme Montessori

emphasizes the fact that "it is necessary to free the child from the

slavery of school and family” for him to enter the cycle of freedom

proper to this technique. However, this freedom consists in a

profound and detailed surveillance of the child’s activities, a com-

plete shaping of his spiritual life, and a precise regulation of his

time with a stop watch; in short, in habituating him to a joyful

serfdom. The most important aspect of this technique is the forced

(mentation toward it. It is a social force directed toward a social

end.



The education of the child, however, is not directed toward some

merely abstract social end. Concretely, the child must develop a

social conscience, understand that the meaning of life is the good

of humanity, and grasp the need for an entente among all nations.

These ideas are much less vague than one might think. The good

of humanity, for example, is not the obscure notion the philoso-

phers pretend it to be. At most, it varies somewhat with the

political regime; and even this variability is becoming less and less

pronounced. Compare Life magazine with the Soviet News and

you will see that the "good of humanity” is conceived in almost

identical terms in the United States and in the Soviet Union; the

difference lies mainly in the persons charged with securing it In

both cases, the social good can be reduced to a few concrete and

precise factors. The corresponding educational technique, as a

consequence, takes a completely determinate direction. Social con-

formism must be impressed upon the child: he must be adapted to

his society; he must not impair its development. His integration

into the body social must be assured with the least possible friction.



AVantocrator—a Greek word signifying "omnipotent." It was an epithet applied to

Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, and to the Byzantine emperors. (Trans.)



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



348)



This technique of alleged liberation of the child cannot be ori-

ented differently, even if it were so desired. The technique permits

the broadening of the child, the development of his social per-

sonality and happiness, and consequently, of his equilibrium. Op-

position to society, the lack of social adaptation, produces serious

personality difficulties which lead to the loss of psychic equilib-

rium. One of the most important factors in the child’s education

therefore is social adaptation. This means that—despite all the

pretentious talk about the aims of education—it is not the child

in and for himself who is being educated, but the child in and for

society. And the society, moreover, is not an ideal one, with full

justice and truth, but society as it is.



When a society becomes increasingly totalitarian (and I say

“society,” not “state”), it creates more and more difficulties of

adaptation and requires its citizens to be conformist in the same

degree. Thus, this technique becomes all the more necessary. I

have no doubt that it makes men better balanced and "happier.”

And there is the danger. It makes men happy in a milieu which

normally would have made them unhappy, if they had not been

worked on, molded, and formed for just that milieu. What looks

like the apex of humanism is in fact the pinnacle of human sub-

mission: children are educated to become precisely what society

expects of them. They must have social consciences that allow

them to strive for the same ends as society sets for itself. Clearly,

when modem youth are fully educated in the new psychupedagogic

technique, many social and political difficulties will disappear. Any

form of government or social transformation becomes possible with

individuals who have experienced this never-ending process of

adaptation. The key word of the new human techniques is, there-

fore, adaptation, and we shall come upon it repeatedly as we con-

sider each of these techniques separately.



The new pedagogical methods correspond exactly to the role

assigned to education in modem technical society. The Napoleonic

conception that the Lycees must furnish administf&tors for the

state and managers for the economy, in conformity with social

needs and tendencies, has become world-wide in its extent. Ac-

cording to this conception, education no longer has a humanist end

or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians. A



The Technological Society	(349



survey conducted by the newspaper Combat in 1950 appeared

under the headline: Higher Education Has No Relation to Indus-

trial Needs. A survey conducted by Le Monde in 1952 began with

the words: “There are too many half-baked intellectuals and not

enough technicians.” It would be useless to multiply such refer-

ences. They are literally infinite in number since they express every-

body’s feelings in the matter. Instruction must be useful in life.

Today’s life is technique. It follows, then, that instruction must

above all else be technical. This is all very well for the individual

preoccupied with finding a trade or a profession; but we find the

same tendency when we look at society as a whole. Technique has

again effected the reconciliation of individual and society.



Education, even in France, is becoming oriented toward the spe-

cialized end of producing technicians; and, as a consequence, to-

ward the creation of individuals useful only as members of a tech-

nical group, on the basis of the current criteria of utility—individ-

uals who conform to the structure and the needs of the technical

group. The intelligentsia will no longer be a model, a conscience,

or an animating intellectual spirit for the group, even in the sense

of performing a critical function. They will be the servants, the

most conformist imaginable, of the instruments of technique. As

Louis Couffignal puts it, the human brain must be made to conform

to the much more advanced brain of the machine. And education

will no longer be an unpredictable and exciting adventure in

human enlightenment, but an exercise in conformity and an ap-

prenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in a technical world.

The Technique of Work. The day is still a long way off when we

will have at our disposal men educated in accordance with the

new methods. It will be another half century at the earliest before

they mature; time is needed for organizing them. In France we

must count on two decades for generalizing them and breaking

them in and on another two decades for the results to become

evident in the whole generation so educated. The tempo of change

will perhaps be more rapid in the United States and in the Soviet

Union and less rapid in the rest of Europe.



In the meantime, society must continue to function. During the

interim period, another powerful system of adaptation will be put

into effect: the complex of work techniques. This technical complex



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



35°)



includes vocational guidance, the organization of labor, the physi-

ology of work, and so on. Here again we find the assertion that

progress is in the direction of a certain “humanism”



Work techniques began with the world of the machine and dis-

played scant regard for human beings. Machines were invented

and assembled, buildings were put up around them, and men were

put inside. For fifty years the procedure was completely haphazard.

Then it was noted that the worker’s productivity could be markedly

increased by imposing certain rules on him. The result was the sys-

tem associated with the names of the Americans Frederick Winslow

Taylor and Henry Ford. As Georges Friedmann has shown, they

took nothing into consideration beyond the necessities of produc-

tion and the maximum utilization of the machine; they completely

ignored the serfdom these factors entail—with their production

lines, their infinite subdivision of tasks, and so on.



The objection will be raised, and rightly so, that this system was

gradually changed and eventually became concerned not so much

with questions of maximal exploitation as with optimal results.

Worker fatigue (a topic we still don’t know enough about) became

the subject of intense investigations. The importance of the human

factor was recognized. And it even began to be recognized that

this was insufficient, that man was still only one “factor” among

many, and not the most important. It became necessary to recog-

nize the primacy of the whole human being, to adapt the work to

the man, and to take the worker’s psychological equilibrium into

consideration. It goes without saying that the motive force behind

all this was the recognition that human psychology reacts directly

upon productivity. When the worker feels that he is in a hostile

environment and in an economic system opposed to his interests,

he will not work (and this is involuntary) with the same ardor

and skill. All this, according to Friedmann, posed the problem of

the economic regime as a whole. Economic improvement is not of

itself a strong enough tendency to allow the worker as producer

to benefit from technical progress, although he may have benefited

greatly from it as consumer. Purely material transformations in

the conditions of labor are insufficient. They are doubtless neces-

sary to begin with, but physiological adaptation is not the only

kind Hygiene and safety must indeed be improved; the best loca-

tion must be selected, and even music may have to be exploited



The Technological Society	(3 51



to make labor more rhythmic and less disagreeable. But this is still

not enough. The true problem is psychological. The worker is con-

fronted by cut-and-dried procedures that must be carried out in

unvarying sequence in order that work be systematic, rational, and

efficient; he is bored, slowed down, and psychologically con-

strained. It is necessary to arouse in him reflective thought and to

make him participate in the life of the entire plant. He must be

made to feel a community of interest; the idea that his labor has

social meaning must be instilled in him. In short, he must be inte-

grated into the enterprise in which he is working. This integration

will take different forms in different countries. It may take the form

of a manufacturing structure like that of Bata,5 or it may consist of

social, sports, or educational arrangements. Integration may mean

worker participation in finance or management or, in an extreme

case, the application of a thorough system such as “public rela-

tions” or “human engineering.” It suffices here to point out some

of the many techniques of integration without going into their

quite varied mechanisms.



Some excellent results have been achieved along this line. For

example, the tendency to adapt the machine to man and to assert

man’s primacy over the machine has produced a body of respect-

able research. Until recently, very few designers and manufacturers

of machine tools bothered much about the workers who were to use

the tools. It represents enormous progress for them to acknowledge

that machines should be built with the workers in mind, that

the human being ought to be the point of departure. However,

the further they advance in this direction, the more complicated the

problem appears. They were at first concerned primarily with the

elimination of physical fatigue; having succeeded in this, they

find that nervous or mental fatigue is now a problem. Business

machines are highly adapted to the worker from a material point

of view; physical effort has been almost completely reduced by the

progressive elimination of fatigue due to standing, sensory Over-

burdening, and the need for overtime work. But the reduction of

physical effort has only served to increase fatigue due to mental

concentration, reflex attention, and dissymmetry of motion, factors

which rapidly produce nervous exhaustion. It was certainly not *



* Thomas Bata (1876-1932) was a Czech industrialist who made his shoe factories

at Zlin into a federation of independent “studios.” (Trans.)



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



35*)



anticipated that machines designed for man, and well adapted to

him physically, would occasion even more rapid deterioration and

an accelerated aging of their operators. Indeed, worker produc-

tivity markedly decreases after only four years, and, in general,

becomes marked at age twenty-two. The optimum age of an em-

ployee who operates business machines would seem to lie between

sixteen and twenty-two. Now, this last fact comes from the machine

in itself, from its tempo, and so on. The human problem has been

intensified, rather than resolved. It even seems insoluble. The con-

cern for the human being that is evident in these attempts must,

one supposes, be reckoned progress; the same holds for the tech-

nician’s concern with the person of the worker, and the attempts to

furnish him with means for self-improvement by establishing li-

braries or by helping him resolve his personal problems.



But on further consideration, are not these efforts and this in-

terest part of an abstract ideal? What do they really signify? Leon

Walther, the great theoretician of the adaptation of machine to

man, states that this adaptation has as its end “the maximum

productivity with the minimum expenditure of human energy.”

But such a goal represents a primacy of efficiency, with reference

both to man and machine. The greater concern is to make men

work effectively; and, marvelous dispensation, advantages for pro-

duction turn out to coincide with advantages for the individual.



One of the principal creators of libraries for workers has de-

scribed the concept of “practical utility” which ought to govern

such libraries. Books are to be selected on the basis of “their even-

tual moral yield.” If a book enables the worker to escape the direct

control of the bosses, “it ought to be authorized only to the degree

that the subject treated allows the management to exercise control

indirectly.” With this proviso, a book can be an invaluable auxil-

iary, since it introduces personal interest, serves as a source of

initiative, and satisfies curiosity; but on the condition that the

worker is ignorant of what he ought to know and that management

has the “duty” to choose for him.



It might, incidentally, be asked: “Are these ideas capitalist or

Communist?” Anyone who could give an unambiguous answer to

this question would indeed be an expert, for the same conceptions

occur as frequently in one system as in the other. They do not

represent theories, but are the direct expression of the fact that



The Technological Society	(353



work technique necessitates the complete integration of the worker.

It is inadmissible that the worker's reading matter should occasion

slowdowns, rebellion, or displacement of the center of interest

Such things are unthinkable, whatever the regime. Culture must

conform to technique and encourage productivity. Censorship in

this area ought therefore not to be regarded as an evil, but as an

unavoidable condition of objective technique. The same holds for

the surprising creation of the post of “counselors," of which Fried-

mann has written. After it had been observed in certain industrial

plants that the conditions of modem labor provoke psychological

difficulties, psychologists were hired to act as “safety valves” for

employee grievances and dissatisfactions. Employees may express

their feelings to these “counselors" with the assurance that the

counselors will say nothing to management. But the counselors

never actually counsel anything. Their activities have nothing what-

ever to do with a positive cure of the soul, a mission which would

suppose at least the possibility of profound changes, new orienta-

tions, and an awakening consciousness on the worker's part, all of

which are highly dangerous. Nor are the counselors concerned with

investigations of concrete modifications that might be binding on

the company. Their sole duty is to encourage the voicing of com-

plaints and to listen to them. It is well-known that suffering ex-

pressed is suffering relieved. It has been observed that certain

psychological disturbances are provoked simply by being silent

and that rebellions are nourished in secret. To let people talk does

them good and quashes revolt It is dangerous to allow the workers

to talk over their problems among themselves. It is far more

prudent to give them a safety valve in the form of a discreet com-

pany agent, a psychological technician, than to let them air their

grievances in public. These “counselors" play the same role on the

industrial level as the Soviet magazine KrokocM does on the politi-

cal. It is difficult to find a human interest in any of this. The

concern here is primarily with technical development. The pallia-

tion of the human difficulties raised by technique is secondary.

Michel Crozier asserts that this is true also for the technique called

“human engineering."



This situation exists also in other disciplines (for example, in

sociology), which forces us to conclusions that seem in no sense

subjective. Social research establishes the primacy of the socio-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



354)



logical over the human: it is not concerned only with man’s indi-

vidual psychology and physiology, but also with his relation to the

body social. Here the important problem is to make him really

belong to the social group. The problem is the same for a socialized

as for a capitalist economy. A solution may perhaps be more

feasible for a capitalist society, but both are faced with the problem

of convincing man and gaining his allegiance. This gives rise to yet

another human technique, which I shall refer to later on. At this

point let us consider its aims.



In Aspects sociaux de la rationalisation, the 1931 report of the In-

ternational Labor Organization, we read that “it is necessary to

rationalize not only manufacturing, but also employer-employee

relations.” And in 1941 the ILO asserted that “only when industrial

technique succeeds in developing concern for the human being will

American capitalism win the confidence of its workers, customers,

and bond holders, of the public individually and collectively.’* As

Friedmann puts it, the purpose of the scientific organization of

labor, before and after the advent of psychotechnique, industrial

relations, and technical humanism, was and is to “assure maximal

yield with minimal loss of effort or material. But these latter repre-

sent means which are becoming complicated and refined to the

point of transforming little by little the face of the scientific or-

ganization of labor.” The system of human relations which is being

re-created in the industrial framework is constructed, according to

its originators, on the basis of an industrial model. In this respect

the study of W. E. Moore is significant. According to Moore, human

relations must correspond to the functions of individuals engaged

in the production cycle. Moore assigns the following four char-

acteristics to human relations:



First, human relations must be restricted to the technical de-

mands of their vocational role. They must not become deep rela-

tions involving profound ideas, tendencies, and preoccupations.

Individuals who are part of the industrial tempo must remain hu-

man and sustain mutual human relationships, but only those that

relate to technical activity.



Second, human relations must be universal; they must be "based

on criteria which the members of an arbitrary grouping of the

population can satisfy, independently of prior social relations or

prior membership in other groups unconnected with the work in



The Technological Society	(355



hand.” In other words, human relations must not have an extra-

technical basis. The individual’s prior milieu is of little importance;

neither are his prior preferences or tendencies. Technique compen-

sates for everything else. It is therefore reasonable to speak of

technical “universalism.” Technique is the bond between men; it

is both objective and indeterminate; it makes up for individual

deficiencies, admitting no excuses or individual dissociation.



The third characteristic of human relations is rationality. Human

relations are indispensable to the proper functioning of the or-

ganism as a whole. The organism is strictly rational, and relations

integrated into it must be conceived on a rational basis. Emotion or

sentementality must not be allowed to disturb the mechanism.

When the problem of emotion is considered, as, for example, in

“molar microsociological analysis,” it is treated as a function of the

greater rationality of the group and of a more objective equilib-

rium.



In the fourth place, these relations must be impersonal, estab-

lished not on the basis of subjective choice and for personal rea-

sons but on the basis of their optimum validity. Of course, subjec-

tive choice and personal reasons must also be dealt with insofar

as they influence the technician, but they are stripped of spon-

taneous validity; they are only one element in the situation.



Scott and Lynton, in a rather more versatile study made in

1953* confirm Moore’s analysis. According to them, in the technical

complex which our society has become, and which is destroying

every kind of community, it is necessary to compensate for man’s

natural incapacity to sustain human relations in a technical uni-

verse. This must be done not only for man’s sake but also because

human relations are technically indispensable to the progress of

great enterprises. It is necessary, therefore, to organize groups in

these enterprises, groups which are responsible but also sufficiently

directed to serve the common end, productivity. Then it is neces-

sary to reproduce natural conditions artificially, so that human re-

lations can be established. For example, the enterprise can be given

an administrative structure that reproduces a spontaneous organi-

zation.



The technique of so-called human relations, developed to adapt

the individual to the technical milieu, to force him to accept his

slavery, to make him find happiness by the “normalization” of his



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



356)



relations with his group and integrate him into that group to an

ever greater degree—this technique is characteristic of the fakeries

and shams with which men must be provided if the conflicts pro-

voked by life in a technicized environment are to be avoided. As

a remedy it does not amount to much, but as a symptom of techni-

cal reinforcement, it is important. We can say that these personal

relations are also techniques, that they are not a counterweight to

other techniques, but that they bring about the application of tech-

nique in the most personal and immediate area of human activi-

ties: man's relations with other men. They alleviate the rigors of

the human condition—but only by forcing man to submit to them

more completely. They facilitate both human life and the action of

the machinery, improve production while subordinating human

spontaneity to the mathematical calculations of the technicians. In

short, they are a kind of lubricating oil, but scarcely a means by

which men can recover a sense of worth, personality, and authen-

ticity. On the contrary, they are a delusion which desiccate the

individual's desire for anything better. Man is doubtless made more

comfortable by techniques of human relations; but these techniques

are wholly oriented toward compelling man to submit to forced

labor. Machine and productivity are in the driver’s seat.



All I have said concerning the technique of human relations is as

true of a socialist as of a capitalist society. “Socialist rivalry” is only

a psychological tool to force men to work harder. The effort to

integrate man into large-scale enterprises is not restricted to capi

talism; it stems from technical investigations which are universally

valid. The most that can be said is that under capitalism psycho-

logical techniques are concentrated on the problem of integrating

the individual into private enterprise. Under socialism they are

more generalized.



None of this arises from human malevolence, or from some “sys-

tem,” but from the simple fact that other techniques are sought to

answer the problems of industrial mechanization. There is no op-

position between mechanical techniques, on the one hand, and or-

ganizational and psychological techniques, on the other, so that

the latter balance the former. Such a relationship is valid, but only

within the larger technical phenomenon, within the universal

scheme whereby men are determined as objects by the whole tech-



The Technological Society	(357



nical complex with a view to efficiency. Hence, as I have observed

in so many other connections, the instrumentalities which permit

man to survive, and even be happy, subject him as much and even

more than the other techniques to the technical ideal, which is in-

dependent of all real humanism. The correlated growth of machine

and organization prove this point. The organization of work, psy-

chological research, the apparent adaptation of the machine to the

human being—these in fact permit the aggrandizement of the me-

chanical. The greater the aggrandizement, the more society re-

quires that countermeasures be taken; but since the countermeas-

ures are themselves of a technical nature, they allow the sphere of

the mechanical to develop even further in a vicious circle. To be-

lieve that humanist remedies will indeed palliate the drawbacks

of the machine is to think of the machine as a static fact. It is noth-

ing of the kind. The progress of the machine depends on the pro-

posed humanist remedies, and they in turn are rendered obsolete

by each new mechanical development.



I should like to point out one last fact; it touches upon a tender

point, and such a brief treatment may shock some people. Labor

and trade unions made their appearance as the great human pro-

test against the inhuman character of capitalism and its exploita-

tion of the workers. However, in all countries labor unionism has

completely lost its original character and become a purely techni-

cal organization. This seems to be undeniable, whether we study

unionism in its Soviet form as a state organism or in its American

form as an adjunct to production. In both cases trade unionism no

longer represents a fighting force, but rather a technical adminis-

tration. At the moment unionism is still a fighting force in France

and Italy, but in such an impersonal and organized form that the

outcome is clear.



Once again, the result appears to be technical. The worker is be-

coming more and more “organizable.” He is trapped in labor or-

ganizations which are becoming increasingly compulsory and in-

creasingly efficient. He gets habituated to them and even feels a

need for them. Moreover, the modem separation between person-

ality and work favors surrender to organization. The worker easily

yields to the conviction that by contributing to his own organiza-

tion he will be able to modify the broad outlines of the system and



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



358)



alleviate his own discomforts. He does not realize that the organi-

zation he is enrolled in is itself part of the complex of technical

organisms of depersonalization. What we have here is a hoax, in

the Marxist sense of the term. The actual function of unionism is

to support technical progress. It seeks a profound transformation of

the condition of the workers through objective industrial organiza-

tion, independent of the idea of capitalist profit. It finds unorgan-

ized labor insupportable; this is also its attitude toward the inde-

pendent workers who have not felt the burden of the machine on

their life and work. Unionism has no concept of the worker except

in the double framework of factory and union, both in a technical

sense.



When workers are organized, they are complying with the law

of technical progress which requires all forms of human life to

become organized. This explains the facility with which the un-

ions, once they have been tightly constructed, pass into the condi-

tion of total social organization. They continue to constitute an

opposing force to certain men and economic tendencies, but they

no longer represent a revolutionary force with respect to basic

structures. On the contrary, they have become a part of these

structures. The worker thinks that he is organizing freely and ex-

pressing his personality; but in so doing, he is merely yielding to

the technical imperatives to which he is subject through the me-

chanical element in his work.



I have no thought of denying the educational value of the un-

ions or the contributions they have made to the improvement of

the workers’ lot. I have been concerned merely to reflect (on a very

different plane) to what a degree trade unionism has developed

concurrently with technical progress and how it stands in im-

mediate relation to technical imperatives. The worker through his

unions is intensifying his own thralldom to techniques, augmenting

their powers of organization, and completing his own integration

into that very movement from which, it may be, unionism had

originally hoped to free him.



Vocational Guidance. Research on human beings at work has led to

the differentiation of a number of categories of individuals accord-

ing to their greater or lesser aptitudes for adaptation, for example,

to rationalized industrial labor. Some workers adapt themselves

without difficulty to assembly-line production, whereas others be-



The Technological Society	(359



come neurotic. This poses the problem of distinguishing various

human categories of adaptability.



A new technique, vocational guidance, is the answer here. It

claims to be able to reveal every person’s vocational aptitude and to

guide him into the most suitable vocation, the vocation he will be

naturally adapted to, the vocation in which he will do the best

job with the most enjoyment.



Unfortunately, the first-rate work of Pierre Naville concerning

this technique has demonstrated that its claims are not in complete

correspondence with technical reality. I do not wish to consider

the first part of his argument, which is exclusively Marxist. There

are no natural aptitudes, he states; therefore vocational guidance

could not possibly discover them. This point is of course, debat-

able for non-Marxists. The remainder of his argument is inde-

pendent of the first part and self-sufficient.



Before turning to Naville’s work, I would like to add that there is

no question here of denying the value of testing. Tests as a whole

yield trustworthy and worthwhile information. Except for certain

reservations about detail, we can consider this technique efficient.

But in order to estimate its value correctly, we must "situate” it.

Techniques in the modem world cannot be separated from one

another; and as a consequence the technique of vocational guid-

ance must be integrated into the complex of all the other tech-

niques, for example, into the system of political and economic

techniques.



Naville shows with precision that what we call vocational guid-

ance answers the requirements of capitalist economic techniques.

As though by accident, the technique "discovers” in the individ-

uals examined precisely the aptitudes which are essential to the

needs of the capitalist economy. Thus, in France during the period

of unemployment from 1932 to 1937, vocational guidance system-

atically diverted young people from such overcrowed trades as

mechanics, textile work, and so on. The period from 1937 to 1939

witnessed the development of metallurgy, and vocational guid-

ance "discovered” the vocation of metallurgist. In 1940 it was turn-

ing up a great number of agricultural vocations.



This should not be taken to mean that vocational guidance is

the tool of capitalist or governmental whim. Nor does it mean that

vocational guidance is an imprecise technique. It means simply



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



360)



that there is a great flexibility in human potentialities and that

vocational guidance modified these potentialities in accordance

with the suggestions of other techniques.



Consider what would happen if vocational guidance proceeded

to isolate itself from other techniques; for example, if it considered

first and exclusively the aptitude of the individual. The result

would be Otto Neurath’s nonsensical system, which would never-

theless be the only logical system if one were to insist that the

exclusive preoccupation of vocational guidance is to find the best

job for the individual in terms of his aptitudes. Neurath envisages

a kind of plan of three to five years* duration, based on the in-

dividual’s aptitudes as discerned by vocational guidance. The econ-

omy would be founded on these aptitudes. If vocational guidance

discovered no mechanics, machine shops would be suppressed. If,

presumably, it discovered no teachers, the schools would have to

be closed. If, on the other hand, vocational guidance were to un-

cover a supply of mechanics after a number of years, the dis-

mantled machine shops would be reopened. It need scarcely be

said that chaos would reign in the field of economics. But such a

system would be the only logical one if we really were concerned

exclusively with the primacy of the individual. If we really wished

to take into consideration only the individual’s aptitudes, we would

have to tailor the economic system to them. The obvious impos-

sibility of such a system demonstrates that it is senseless to apply

the rule of the primacy of the individual and that vocational guid-

ance cannot be isolated from the other techniques.



Naville, on the other hand, wishes to integrate vocational guid-

ance as far as possible into the technical complex; he maintains

that this can be realized only under socialism. He takes as his

example the Soviet Union, where vocational guidance tries to dis-

cover not so much intrinsic aptitudes as potentialities for adapta-

tion, that is, adaptability. Basically, the Soviets believe it nec-

essary to discover not the individual’s predestination but his

adaptability. Vocational guidance then has the task of adapting

the individual, through education, to planned manpower require-

ments. Vocational guidance is thus subordinated to planning tech-

nique. For example, a five-year plan may require a certain number

of miners for that period. Vocational guidance then has the task^

of seeking out from among the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds the



The Technological Society	(	3	61



ones adaptable to this function. It institutes forthwith a twofold

operation of general education focused on the particular trade

and on the psychic, mechanical, and physiological adaptability of

the candidates. The plan thus obtains the necessary manpower;

the individual candidates are effectively adapted to the required

labor, since they have been recruited at an early enough age and

educated from the beginning in a precise direction. The em-

phasis again is on insuring the happiness of the individual through

adaptation. The assumption is that the individual will be happy

when he is synchronized with his trade.



Soviet orientation toward vocational guidance is identical with

certain recent tendencies which have appeared in America. In a

report to UNESCO on technical education and vocational guid-

ance, Margaret Mead wrote: “Since education must respond, not

to the present but to the future needs of society, it is necessary to

forecast constantly and as far as possible in advance the evolution

of vocational structures." This can only mean that the individual

must be educated and adapted in advance to his future job as a

function of anticipated technical progress. In Mayo’s analyses and

in Lynton’s report to UNESCO, one finds similarly precise expres-

sions of the conditions of community survival in the technical

world. The issue in all these cases is the rigorous adaptation of the

individual to the world of technique, even going as far as the “re-

production of certain modes of action and forms of spontaneous

organization." More precise expression of technical intrusion into

life could scarcely be imagined.



It must not be thought that Naville's version of vocational guid-

ance restricts human potentialities. On the contrary, it is meant to

enlarge the child’s possibilities of adaptation. By means of this

technique, according to Naville, “certain newly acquired habits

will appear, thanks to which the individual will be able to partici-

pate in the whole continuum of social effort . . . His needs will

be guided into a system of new habits which the economic milieu

bequeathes to him . . . Adaptation will no longer be something

natural, but will be acquired at the cost of efforts which will be

of short or long duration depending on the complexity of the

task."



In this connection, we are assured that “vocational guidance

will permit the basic satisfaction of any rational need." I am con-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



362)



vinced that this statement is exact. The individual so educated

will be satisfied. But it is the flimsiest make-believe to pretend that

vocational guidance is in the service of human beings. An arsenal

of preconceptions and undemonstrable formulas would be needed

to sustain such a thesis. These presuppositions are as follows:

(1) The moment the individual finds himself in a socialist system,

his complexes disappear. (2) The moment an institution is inte-

grated into a socialist system, it changes character. (3) The mo-

ment the individual’s needs are satisfied, he becomes happy. (4)

The moment social harmony is established, every man integrated

into that harmonious system realizes his human vocation. (5) The

moment the individual escapes from capitalism, he is free. Such

nonsense is only a way of refusing to consider facts or to look reality

in the face. The facts are clear enough. In isolation from certain

other techniques, vocational guidance is useless. Put back into its

true context, it becomes simply a means for subordinating man to

the requirements of economic technique. Even when the task of

discovering aptitudes is attributed to vocational guidance, as, for

example, in Antoine Mas’s “personnel mechanograph,” there is

nevertheless a substantial consideration of “ad-aptitude,” to use

Naville’s word, and selection is made in terms of it.



Once again we are confronted with a mechanism of adaptation

which deprives man of freedom and responsibility, makes him

into a “thing,” and puts him where he is most desirable from the

point of view of another technique, that is where he |$ most

efficient.



We can also state that a kind of encounter is taking place be-

tween vocational guidance and the “new school.” Vocational guid-

ance is not obligatory in France. It might even he said that it does

not yet exist as a technique. It is still an advisory organ, nothing

more. The trend, however, is unmistakable. The number of children

counseled went from 60,000 in 1944 to 250,000 in 1950, and, it is

estimated, an average of 75 per cent of the parents followed the

advice of the vocational counselor. (The actual figure grew slowly

from 73 per cent in 1944 to 78 per cent in 1950.) As to the long-

term effects of guidance upon those guided, it need only be re-

marked that either the counselor was right or the counseled child,

once embarked on a trade, is faced with an accomplished fact.

Practically speaking, there is no retreat, and in fact, a retreat is



The Technological Society	(363



seldom desired. The statement that vocational guidance, consider-

ing its rate of growth, is not obligatory in reality signifies very

little.



An analysis of the method itself should be made. Although the

tests employed at the moment are not very dangerous, the aim of

vocational guidance is to card-index the individual totally (natu-

rally, for his own good), and it is unlikely that its practitioners will

remain very long content with the common psychotechnical tests.

They will want to go much further, to make systematic investiga-

tions of emotional tendencies and to explore the child’s instinctive

nature, to inquire into the basic elements in the child’s psychic

and moral make-up. Tests like the so-called TAT (“Thematic Ap-

perception Test”) already aim in this direction. Another and balder

way of putting it is that vocational guidance represents a totali-

tarian takeover of the young.



But since such a takeover lies in the logic of the system, I hardly

think it can be prevented. I shall content myself with referring the

interested reader to the excellent critique of the system contained

in William Hollingsworth Whyte’s The Organization Man.

Propaganda. Here we are faced with a new system of human tech-

niques, more complex than the others we have studied, since it

involves techniques of different natures, partly hierarchical and

partly synthetic. We do not even have a term to describe this

system. Propaganda is too limited, but it comes closest to the fact.8

The term supposes state action and also mass action on public

opinion. However, the broader phenomenon we are considering

here includes private action and individualized action as well.



The prime consideration is the union of two very different cate-

gories of technique which yield this new system of human tech-

nique. The first is a complex of mechanical techniques (principally

radio, press, and motion pictures) which permit direct communi-

cation with a very large number of persons collectively, while

simultaneously addressing each individual in the group. These

techniques possess an extraordinary power of persuasion and a

remarkable capacity to bring psychic and intellectual pressure

to bear. The second category consists of a complex of psychological

( and even psychoanalytical) techniques which give access to exact



•Here I am giving the briefest summary. The interested reader may refer to my

book, Propagandes (1962), which will shortly appear in English.



3 4 )	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



knowledge of the human psyche. It can thus be motivated with

considerable confidence in the results.



A number of techniques have here been brought to a common

focus so as to produce a nearly certain result. It is known in ad-

vance that the projected image will almost infallibly produce the

desired reflex. The technical phenomenon under consideration

unites the two categories into an inseparable whole. The question

arises how and why this has come about and whether man has

willed it.



If the press had been devoted exclusively to serial stories, and the

radio to music, it might not have been necessary to bring in psy-

choanalytic methods. But even this is not certain. What could be

more innocent in appearance than comic strips? The deep in-

fluence of these “comics” on the reader is demonstrable, as is their

usefulness from the sociological point of view. And what could

seem more harmless than an American musical comedy film? Yet

we are all aware of their economic importance.



Even if the radio or the press had been exclusively devoted to

amusement, however, there would be this problem: on what basis

could or should these techniques be restricted? The moment they

could be applied to other spheres (politics, for example), they

were applied, and applied guilelessly, without anyone having, at

least in the beginning, any clear idea of their utility. As soon as

they entered the realm of politics, it became evident that they had

to serve not only to educate but also to convince. There is no such

thing as purely objective information. To object that it was man's

fault that technique did not remain objective is tantamount to

stating that it was mans fault to be human. From the moment

these techniques were put to use, they had to operate as efficiently

as possible, which meant that other techniques for understanding

man had to be drawn into the system.



The totalitarian state is very often accused of having originated

the conjunction of techniques. This is Monnerot’s opinion. The fact

is that private capitalism did indeed initiate this conjunction; con-

ditions under capitalism were more propitious than elsewhere. Ad-

vertising, well before propaganda proper, introduced the concep-

tion of efficiency in this field. The problem was to convince a large

number of persons, all typed as “average,” to perform some simple

action, for example, to buy a given object. It was necessary to be



The Technological Society	(365



convincing with limited arguments and few words, which might

well be lost among hundreds of others. Conditions in advertising

were much more favorable to the conjunction of mechanical and

psychological means than, say, political conditions at the beginning

of the twentieth century. At that time attempts at political per*

suasion were addressed only to the elite. There was a multiplicity

of political and doctrinaire arguments, but only a few propagan-

dists means. Propagandists inertia in politics was the result. Po-

litical persuasion had as its aim purely intellectual conviction,

whereas in advertising the end was to produce reflex action.



Large commercial enterprises were the first to supplement me-

chanical techniques with the very efficient means available through

psychological technique. By 1910 this conjunction was an accom-

plished fact. A kind of maladroit political propaganda first came

into use during the First World War. It was often completely inept

because it disregarded psychological laws and was, in effect, pure

hokum. But it became scientific with the Russian Revolution and

then with Hitlerism. Today all states without exception exploit the

system of political propaganda created by the union of the two

technical complexes.



What then are the principal directions taken by propaganda tech-

niques? The system of conditioned reflexes has been exploited on

a large scale. The technique of measuring and producing such

reflexes has been greatly developed. The reduction of political

doctrines to programs, of programs to slogans, of slogans to pic-

tures (the direct reflex-stimulating images) has been studied. Sys-

tematic efforts are available to create conditioned reflexes, either

through education (as, for example, under Nazism or under Com-

munism) or on the basis of already existing, spontaneous reflexes

(for example, the American use of erotic reflexes in war propa-

ganda).



The propaganda mechanisms of the totalitarian states have been

studied in detail by Tchakotin. Propaganda techniques in the

United States have been stressed much less. But that does not

mean that instances of propaganda on a grand scale are lacking

there. It became necessary, for example, to force the American

people to participate in the war and to impress a war psychology

upon them by creating certain reflexes. The Americans, protected

by their two oceans, did not “feer they were at war. War for them



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



366)



was not a living reality and had to be made so. Understandably,

the feeling of war and civilian involvement in it could be produced

only by the enormous pressure of advertising and total propaganda

on the human psyche. It was necessary to use the so-called obses-

sional technique, to subject the citizen to propaganda without

letup, never allowing him to be alone with Jwnself. In the street

he is confronted with posters, loud-speakers, ceremonies, and meet-

ings; at work, with handbills and "industrial mobilization”; in his

amusements, with motion-picture and theatrical propaganda; at

home, with newspaper and radio propaganda. All these means

converge on the same point. All exert the same kind of action on

the individual and are of such overpowering magnitude that he

ceases to be consciously aware of them.



This last is the greatest importance. Propaganda must become as

natural as air or food. It must proceed by psychological inhibi-

tion and the least possible shock. The individual is then able to

declare in all honesty that no such thing as propaganda exists.

In fact, however, he has been so absorbed by it that he is literally

no longer able to see the truth. The natures of man and propa-

ganda have become so inextricably mixed that everything depends

not on choice or on free will, but on reflex and myth. The pro-

longed and hypnotic repetition of the same complex of ideas, the

same images, and the same rumors conditions man for the as-

similation of his nature to propaganda.



In addition, human emotions such as hate and resentment are

exploited. The procedure is not so much obsessional as suggestive,

and depends on the collective fixation of these emotions on a given

adversary. Here we witness the crowning absurdity, a completely

automatic development of emotions. To exploit resentments, it is

sufficient merely to send the individual on his way, equipped with

a very simple set of "directions for use.” Later on, one observes a

reconstitution of the individual personality around the selected

"fixed point” on the basis of the strength of his resentments. Sup-

pose, for example, that the adversary has been designated as the

author of all the individual’s misfortunes and sufferings. (The

bourgeoisie plays this role for the Communists, as the Jews played

it for the Nazis.) After such suggestions have been launched, there

is a surge of human resentment among the people. Like a flock of

sheep, they stampede much further than they had actually been



The Technological Society	(367



commanded to go, in obedience to another instinct which comes

into play and which causes them to hurl themselves on the object of

their resentment like a dog on a cat. Incidentally, this explains

why there is no "criminal” in these cases. Pogroms are seldom

ordered by the authorities. One need only manipulate popular

resentments to bring them about.



The will to self-justification, which is latent in every individual,

can also be exploited. It involves the need for a scapegoat; but

individuals have difficulty finding a personal scapegoat. Propa-

ganda offers them a collective goat to which they are able to trans-

fer evil and sin, thereby feeling justified, authenticated, and puri-

fied. In all countries where this form of propaganda is effective,

crime diminishes (not the least of the boasts of totalitarian regimes,

Communist and Fascist alike). Morality makes headway. We no

longer have to create for ourselves enemies to slay. We have ene-

mies, ready-made for us by propaganda, whom it is lawful to kill.

It is as plain as a pikestaff that to kill a bourgeois is not a crime.

Moreover, the introduction of scapegoats means that conflict is no

longer on a social or political plane but on a moral plane of good

and evil. In exploiting the device of the scapegoat, propaganda

leads people to transfer evil to the adversary. The adversary here

becomes the generalized incarnation of evil, whereas in the ex-

ploitation of resentment the adversary appears as the cause of

misfortune. This incarnation indicates that there is no rational basis

for hate; it results solely from subconscious mechanisms. This ex-

plains a surprising statement made by Hitler in Mein Kampf: "It

is necessary to suggest to the people that the most varied enemies

all belong to the same category; and to lump all adversaries to-

gether so that it will appear to the mass of our own partisans that

the struggle is being waged against a single enemy. This fortifies

their faith in their rights and increases their exasperation against

those who would assail them.” Hitler s statement would have been

completely irrational if it had been made about person-to-person

combat, about personal reasons for conflict. But from the moment

propaganda begins to operate, there is a loss of the sense of reality,

a confusion of motives, an identification of opposites, and an inter-

play of accusations—all of which greatly enhance the operation

of subconscious influences. Everything more or less confusedly

resented as being evil is transferred to the official enemy. Through



368 )	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



the influence of propaganda, a subconscious transference takes

place. But instead of the psychoanalyst who causes the transference

of guilt feelings to himself, there is a propaganda machine which

causes us to make the transference to the generalized enemy.

Technique thus creates a separation between all “absolutely good”

persons, who are collectively justified and who represent political,

social, and historic virtue, and all “absolutely evil” persons, in

whom no worth or virtue is to be found. The phenomenon made a

feeble appearance, on the national plane, in the 1914 “War of Law

and Civilization,” but it was too weak to bring about complete

collective transference. Today we are more successful, but the line

of demarcation between good and evil is less national than social

and political.



Propaganda also manipulates, on a lesser scale, the so-called

Oedipus complex and our emotions conceniing the “father.” These

techniques are still halting, but it is quite probable that they will

become efficient in the near future.



Propagandistic manipulations take place under all forms of gov-

ernment and in all walks of life. It may be said that we live in a

universe which is psychologically subversive. Even so, modem

man has no clear conception of the extent of the phenomenon.

Experience cannot reveal it to him; he would have to be outside

looking in. We in France are fortunate in living in a country

where propaganda is still remarkably inefficient. In addition, we

are acquainted with the technique of “social psychoanalysis ” as

imported by the pre-1938 Berlin Institute of Applied Psychology

and by numerous American institutes and research committees.1

It is scarcely necessary to add that all propaganda technicians in

search of the “one best way” loudly proclaim the value of ex-

ploiting the great subconscious motifs I have described.



It is only fair to wonder what consequences these propagandistic

manipulations will have. The real consequences are not discernible

because the mechanisms have been operating for too short a time.

And, of course, when the consequences finally appear, we still

will not recognize them. We will have been so absorbed and ma-

nipulated, rendered so indifferent that objective knowledge on



T For example. The Committee of Human Development, Chicago; The Institute for

Public Opinion Research, Princeton; The Heller Committee, California; and so on.



The Technological Society	(36$



this score will be impossible. We will no longer even have any idea

of what men might once have been.



Some effects of propaganda, however, are already clear.



1)	The critical faculty has been suppressed by the creation of

collective passions. The well-known phenomenon of “reciprocal

suggestion" has made collective passion a very different force from

individual passion. We know that individual passion is itself in-

imical to the critical faculty, but the critical faculty can still be

exercised if some equilibrium can be established between criti-

cism and passion. In the collective passion created by technique

(of which technique itself is sometimes the object), the critical

faculty, which is peculiar to the intellectual organization of the

individual, is excluded. As Monnerot says flatly: “There is no such

thing as a collective critical faculty." Because technique acts upon

men collectively, the passions it provokes—which exist in every-

body—are amplified. The suppression of the critical faculty—

man's growing incapacity to distinguish truth from falsehood, the

individual from the collectivity, action from talk, reality from

statistics, and so on—is one of the most evident results of the

technical power of propaganda. Human intelligence cannot resist

propaganda’s manipulation of its subconscious.



2)	A good social conscience appears with the suppression of the

critical faculty. Technique provides justification to everybody

and gives all men the conviction that their actions are just, good,

and in the spirit of truth. This conviction is the stronger because it

is collectively shared. The individual finds the same conviction in

his fellow workers and neighbors and feels himself strengthened in

it through the implicit communion of media such as the radio. In

countries where propaganda technique is exploited, there is a de-

crease in neurosis as well as in crime. We can believe the wartime

statistics of the Nazis and the Americans because they fit so well

with everything else we know. Conversely, whenever for some

reason propaganda technique fails to instill a good collective social

conscience, there is a sudden and brutal collapse of the sense of

individual justification, and individual morale falls drastically.

This, among other things, would explain the extraordinary in-

crease in neuroses in the United States after 1945. A similar situa-

tion among the Germans may have other explanations, but I am

convinced that the sudden halting in the Nazi propaganda ma-



HUMAN



370)



chine played a significant role in German postwar neurosis. The

problem in the United States has been so serious that it has led to

the dramatic development of psychoanalytic therapy in the past

few years. This development in reality represents a resumption, on

an individual level, of the activity which collective technique had

abandoned. When a good collective social conscience has been

created, the individual becomes addicted to it, as to a drug. And

when the Americans realize that individual psychoanalysis is more

costly, less efficient (because it cannot integrate the individual),

and more difficult, they will return to a collective psychotherapeu-

tic technique.



3)	Propaganda technique, moreover, creates a new sphere of

the “sacred.” As Monnerot puts it: “When an entire category of

events, beings, and ideas is outside criticism, it constitutes a sacred

realm, in contrast to the realm of the profane.” As a result of the

profound influence of the mechanisms of propaganda, a new zone

of the forbidden is created in the heart of man, but it is artificially

induced, in contrast to the taboos of primitive societies. When

there is propaganda, we are no longer able to evaluate certain

questions, or even to discuss them. A series of protective reflexes

organized by technique immediately intervene.



To summarize: the suppression of the critical faculty, the forma-

tion of a good social conscience, and the creation of a sphere of

the sacred are all aspects of a single manifestation, the first and

clearest consequence of the application of psychoanalytic mass

techniques, incidentally, our analysis confirms a social phenome-

non frequently analyzed by modern sociologists: the “creation of

the masses.” These three elements add a new dimension to the

masses; the masses thereby gain an internal cohesion they did not

possess naturally. A unifying psychism has come into being.



A second consequence of the application of propaganda tech-

niques is the creation of a kind of manipulability of the masses.

Here again Monnerot gives a definition worth repeating. Accord-

ing to Monnerot, propaganda technique “has for its object the

production and cultivation among the masses of certain predisposi-

tions and a special facility for doing at a given moment whatever

is strategically opportune. As political circumstances change, it is

necessary at intervals to cultivate successive predispositions.” This



The Technological Society	(	371



is a remarkable notion; the use of certain propaganda techniques

is not meant to entail immediate and definitive adhesion to a given

formula, but rather to bring about a kind of long-range vacuity of

the individual. The individual, his soul massaged, emptied of his

natural tendencies, and thoroughly assimilated to the group, is

ready for anything. Propaganda’s chief requirement is not so much

to be rational, well grounded, and powerful as it is to produce

individuals especially open to suggestion who can be easily set into

motion.



Two categories of propaganda must be distinguished. The first

strives to create a permanent disposition in its objects and con-

stantly needs to be reinforced. Its goal is to make the masses

4 available,” by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of

fascination. The second category involves the creation of a sort of

temporary impulsiveness in its objects. It operates by simple pres-

sure and is often contradictory (since contradictory mass move-

ments are sometimes necessary). Of course, this dissociation can

be effective only after the propaganda technique has been com-

pletely fused with the popular mores and has become indispen-

sable to the population. This stage may be reached quickly, as, for

example, in Germany in 1942, after only ten years of psychic ma-

nipulation. The same result seems to have been obtained in the

Soviet Union, where the masses have been conditioned to the fluc-

tuations of the party line.



A third consequence of technical propaganda manipulations is

the creation of an abstract universe, representing a complete re-

construction of reality in the minds of its citizens. The new uni-

verse is a verbal universe, to use the excellent phrase of Armand

Robin, our keenest student of radio propaganda. Men fashion

images of things, events, and people which may not reflect reality

but which are truer than reality. These images are based on news

items which, as is the case in much of the world, are “faked.”

Their purpose is to form rather than to inform. Faking the news

is systematically practiced by the Soviet radio, but the procedure is

found to a lesser degree in all countries. All of us are familiar with

the “innocent” fraud of the illustrated newspapers in which a photo-

graph is accompanied by an ambiguous caption. A shipyard, for

example, is indifferently described as a plant in one of the de-

mocracies, or in the Soviet Union, or wherever. This kind of thing



372 )	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



represents the first step toward a sham universe. It is also indica-

tive of an important element in today’s psychology, the disappear-

ance of reality in a world of hallucinations. Man will be led to act

from real motives that are scientifically directed and increasingly

irresistible; he will be brought to sacrifice himself in a real world,

but for the sake of the verbal universe which has been fashioned

for him. We must try to grasp the profundity of this upheaval. The

human being has enormous means at his disposal, and he acts upon

and in the real world. But he acts in a dream: he seeks other ends

(those the incantational magic of propaganda proposes for him)

than those he will really attain. The ends he is expected to reach

are known only to the manipulators of the mass subconscious, and

to them alone.



At this point, the reader will protest that our analysis may apply to

others, but not to him. But if he listens regularly to the radio, reads

the newspapers, and goes to the movies, the description does fit him.

He will not be aware of it because the essence of propaganda is to

act upon the human subconscious but to leave men the illusion of

complete freedom. The objection will be raised, in another vein,

that some countries do not exploit these propagandistic manipula-

tory devices; for example, the democracies in general and the

United States in particular.8 But here certain distinctions must be

made. Some democracies do not exploit the propaganda arsenal

simply because they cannot afford to do so. Others, like the United

States, exploit it only to a limited degree, during certain restricted

periods (for example, during wars, hot and cold) and only in cer-

tain areas. However, such restraint cannot be imputed to demo-

cratic scruples; these democracies simply do not yet feel the compel-

ling necessity to exploit propagandistic technique. As the present

global struggle intensifies and world domination by one nation or

another becomes inevitable, the utilization of propaganda by the

democracies will also become inevitable. The high priests of effi-

ciency will not recoil before the use of an instrument as efficient as

propaganda, the more so because it fits the tenor of their culture

and no longer shocks anyone’s “humanitarian” sentiments. When

once the masses have become inured to the practices of propa-

ganda techniques, it is impossible to turn back.



„# Ellul: Propagandes (1962).



The Technological Society	(373



Propaganda activity entails two further consequences of a socio-

logical nature. Because these are obvious, they may be briefly

summarized. First, as we have already seen in our treatment of the

techniques of work, there is the psychological factor, which mani-

fests itself in the arrested spiritual development of the worker.

Friedmann believes that the worker would not experience this

arrest in a congenial environment, that is, in a favorable economic

system. He has in mind a socialist regime, which he contends

would be the most,propitious working environment. In such an

environment the worker, working without constraints, could ma-

ture. But it is clear that socialist manipulation of unconscious tend-

encies by means of propaganda produces the same results as a real

modification of conditions. For example, in the social movement

in the Soviet Union, which concentrates on productivity, it is not

economic facts that carry the workers along, but socialist propa-

ganda, the creation of a purely verbal universe. Workers react in

exactly the same way under capitalism if they are sufficiently over-

whelmed by propaganda. This is what happened in the United

States on a temporary basis during the war years. And there is a

permanent factor operating in the United States to facilitate the

application of propaganda technique: the rapidly developing and

remarkable mechanism of public relations. This technique is a sys-

tem of propaganda applied to all economic and human relations.



A second consequence, in the political sphere, is the devaluation

•f democracy. I revert here to an idea which we have already con-

sidered but which is difficult to drive home. All of us, more or less,

take propaganda to be the defense of an idea or system. We hear

constantly that it cannot therefore be of any harm to the democra-

cies. After all, there are a plurality of political parties employing

propaganda to maintain opposing or even contradictory ideas; the

citizen has a free choice among them. Such a misapprehension

comes from a frighteningly elementary conception of propaganda.

I have made it quite clear that propaganda is not the defense of an

idea but the manipulation of the mob's subconscious. The hope

reposed in the contradictions of propaganda comes to this: the citi-

zen receives a blow in the face from his neighbor on the right,

which, fortunately, is compensated for by another blow from his

neighbor on the left. If propaganda involved calm exposition of

political theories among which the citizen might choose intelli-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



374)



gently, contradictions would be beneficial and would leave the

citizen a free man. But this is an impossibility, from the moment

the propagandist possesses material means for exerting action on

the mob and knowledge of the secret recesses of the human psy-

che. The man who upholds a political theory presumably believes

in it. I take the case of a politician who acts from conviction and

not from personal interest. He will indeed strive to present his

convictions in the best possible light and to secure the adherence

of the greatest number of his fellow citizens. To do this he will of

course make use of the most efficient means. So, like any totalitar-

ian, he will proceed to rape the mob propagandistically. And rape

remains rape though it be effected by ten political parties ten times

in a row. Altering the outward form does not alter the substance.

Think of the parades, for instance, of Nazi Germany, the somber

and fanatical rites of "blood and soil.” In the United States, the

equivalent for the most part revolves about rites involving scantily

clad girls. It is all a matter of temperament; the psychic aim is the

same. And it is ruinous to democracy.



In the operation of political parties, the exploitation of technical

means on a large scale presupposes great financial resources. This

tends to eliminate all minor parties completely or to reduce them

to the shadowy role of hangers-on. The more intense the political

propaganda struggle (and the more costly its execution), the

greater the tendency to reduce the operation of democracy to the

opposition between two blocs. A citizen may have an original,

valid, and true political idea, one which might even have had

every chance of success with his fellow citizens. But if he does

not possess the millions necessary to elaborate it the length and

breadth of the country, it counts for nothing. The American democ-

racy is no longer in its youth, when propaganda consisted of one

man speaking directly to other men.



In the devaluation of democracy, the influences of the propa-

ganda technique work on men as well as parties. The individual,

forced to submit to contradictory streams of propaganda, not only

is incapable of preserving freedom of choice, of choosing between

different doctrines, but is eliminated from the political operation

completely. He literally no longer exists—and this comes about in

proportion to the contradictoriness of the propaganda. He is inte-

grated into a sociological group and votes as the group votes.



The Technological Society	(375



We come here to an important conclusion: to the degree that

propaganda is a technique, it has its own personal identity and

specificity. But it acts toward an unalterably fixed end. It is mere

vanity to wish to distinguish a technique as good or bad according

to its end. Whether technique acts to the advantage of a dictator or

of a democracy, it makes use of the same weapons, acts on the in-

dividual and manipulates his subconscious in identical ways, and

in the end leads to the formation of exactly the same type of hu-

man being. Whether 99 per cent of the citizens cast their ballot for

a dictator or for the various parties in a democracy, whether or not

the political structures of the different regimes formally differ, the

well-kneaded citizen, upon whom both regimes ultimately depend,

becomes through the operation of technique progressively indis-

tinguishable in either. The problem is not merely political; we have

come upon it in every area of life. But we must distinguish be-

tween two planes here: formal opinion and personal decision.

Through propaganda, we can train a man not to kill or not to

drink alcohol; or we can train him to kill or to smoke opium. The

objective result is different in either case. Sociologically, there is

admittedly a world of difference between dictatorship and democ-

racy. But in both the moral problem is suppressed; the individual

is simply an animal broken in to obey certain conditioned reflexes.

Indeed, there may be a difference between dictatorship and de-

mocracy on the plane of public health or statistics; but on the moral

plane there is a fundamental identity when democracy achieves

its ends through propaganda. The human effects of technique are

independent of the ideological end to which they are applied.

Amusement, The techniques of amusement and diversion are dif-

ferent from the other human techniques we have considered. Ma-

terially, these techniques are identical with those of propaganda:

films, radio, newspapers, and, to a lesser degree, books and phono-

graph records. But the hierarchy of these means is not the same. For

example, the cinema has first place and plays a more important

role than the radio. By comparison, in the propaganda hierarchy

radio is the instrument of choice.



Here too we find the exploitation of techniques of the subcon-

scious, but they are exerted with much less pressure. Moreover,

the range and sphere of these subconscious techniques is different.

Amusement seeks to distract, propaganda to lead. The principal



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



37®)



difference, however, relates to spontaneity. Propaganda technique

Is calculated and deliberate, whereas amusement technique is

spontaneous and nondeliberate. The former is the result of the

organizer s decision; the latter, of the mob's need.



Consider the average man as he comes home from his job. Very

likely he has spent the day in a completely hygienic environment,

and everything has been done to balance his environment and

lessen his fatigue. However, he has had to work without stopping

and under constant pressure; nervous fatigue has replaced muscu-

lar fatigue. When he leaves his job, his joy in finishing his stint is

mixed with dissatisfaction with a work as fruitless as it is incompre-

hensible and as far from really productive work. At home he “finds

himself** again. But what does he find? He finds a phantom. If he

ever thinks, his reflections terrify him. Personal destiny is fulfilled

only by death; but reflection tells him that for him there has not

been anything between his adolescent adventures and his death,

no point at which he himself ever made a decision or initiated a

change. Changes are the exclusive prerogative of organized tech-

nical society, which one day may have decked him out in khaki to

defend it, and on another in stripes because he had sabotaged or

betrayed it There was no difference from one day to the next. Yet

life was never serene, for newspapers and news reports beset him

at the end of the day and forced on him the image of an insecure

world. If it was not hot or cold war, there were all sorts of acci-

dents to drive home to him the precariousness of his life. Torn be-

tween tliis precariousness and the absolute, unalterable determi-

nateness of work, he has no place, belongs nowhere. Whether

something happens to him, or nothing happens, he is in neither

case the author of his destiny.



The man of the technical society does not want to encounter his

phantom. He resents being torn between the extremes of accident

and technical absolutism. He dreads the knowledge that every-

thing ends “six feet under.** He could accept the six-feet-under of

his life if, and only if, life had some meaning and he could choose,

say, to die. But when nothing makes sense, when nothing is the

result of free choice, the final six-feet-under is an abominable in-

justice. Technical civilization has made a great error in not sup-

pressing death, the only human reality still intact



Man is still capable of lucid moments about the future. Propa-



The Technological Society	(377



ganda techniques have not been able wholly to convince him that

life has any meaning left. But amusement techniques have jumped

into the breach and taught him at least how to flee the presence of

death. He no longer needs faith or some difficult asceticism to

deaden himself to his condition. The movies and television lead

him straight into an artificial paradise. Rather than face his own

phantom, he seeks film phantoms into which he can project him-

self and which permit him to live as he might have willed. For an

hour or two he can cease to be himself, as his personality dissolves

and fades into the anonymous mass of spectators. The film makes

him laugh, cry, wonder, and love. He goes to bed with the lead-

ing lady, kills the villain, and masters life’s absurdities. In short, he

becomes a hero. Life suddenly has meaning.



The theater presupposed an intellectual mechanism and left the

spectator in some sense intact and capable of judgment. The mo-

tion picture by means of its “reality” integrates the spectator so

completely that an uncommon spiritual force or psychological ed-

ucation is necessary to resist its pressures. In any case, people go to

the movies to escape and consequently yield to its pressures. They

find forgetfulness, and in forgetfulness the honied freedom they do

not find in their work or at home. They live on the screen a life they

will never live in fact.



It will be said that dreams and hope have been the traditional

means of escape in times of famine and persecution. But today

there is no hope, and the dream is no longer the personal act of an

individual who freely chooses to flee some “reality” or other. It is a

mass phenomenon of millions of men who desire to help them-

selves to a slice of life, freedom, and immortality. Separated from

his essence, like a snail deprived of its shell, man is only a blob of

plastic matter modeled after the moving images.



There is a vast difference between the dreams and hopes of the

past and those of the present. Formerly, with the conviction that

“things would change,” hope was a beacon illuminating the future.

Dreams represented flight, but flight into one’s own self. In motion

pictures, however, the future is not involved. On the strip of film,

what ought to change has already changed. And the flight of cine-

matic dreams has nothing to do with the inner life; it concerns mere

externals. When people leave the movie theater, they are full of the

possibilities they experienced in the shadows; they have received



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



378)



their dose of the inner life. Their problems too have undergone a

transformation. They are now problems posed by the film. And they

have the blissful, if contradictory, impression that these cinematic

problems, which occupy the whole field of their consciousness, are

both strong enough to put all vexations to flight and unreal enough

not to be troublesome. The modern passion for motion pictures is

completely explained by the will to escape. Just as the tempo of

work or the authority of the state presupposes spiritual adhesion

and hence propaganda, so the human condition under the regime

of technique supposes the escapism which diversional techniques

offer. One cannot but marvel at an organization which provides the

antidote as it distills the poison.



Man, emptied by the technical mechanism of all personal inter-

ests, sometimes finds himself at home. What shall he talk about?

Man has always had one unfailing subject of conversation, life's

vexations. Not fear, nor anguish, despair, or passion. All that has

always been suppressed in his subconscious. But he has always

been able to talk companionably about vexatious things, hail on

his vines, mildew, machinery out of order, a troublesome prostate,

and so forth. Now technique intervenes, repairs everything, and

creates a world in which everything works well, or well enough.

Even if some petty vexations persist, the individual feels no need

to speak of them and turns toward the efficient silence-fillers, tele-

vision and radio, prodigiously useful refuges for those who find that

family life has become impossible. Jean Laloup and Jean Nelis

evince a curious optimism when they write that radio and televi-

sion have reconstituted the family. Television doubtless facilitates

material reunion. Because of it the children no longer go out in the

evenings. The members of the family are indeed all present materi-

ally, but centered on the television set, they are unaware of one

another. If they cannot stand or understand one another, if they

have nothing to say, radio and television make this easy to bear by *

re-establishing external relations and avoiding friction. Thanks to

these technical devices, it is no longer necessary for the members

of a family to have anything at all to do with one another or even to

be conscious of the fact that family relations are impossible. It is no

longer necessary to make decisions. It is possible for a married

couple to live together a long time without ever meeting each

other in the resonant emptiness of television. This too is a curious



The Technological Society	(379



means of escape, of hiding from others instead of from oneself. It is

the modem mask man puts on every evening, which unfortunately,

lacks the virtues of the ancient mask, demoniac and divine.



One of the best studies of the problem of the radio, that of Roger

Veille, reminds us that the ear is the great “fault'’ in man. Through

it he perceives the “silence of the infinite spaces”; it is the point of

origin of his great disturbance. The ear, unlike the eye, evokes mys-

tery and renunciation; it is the center of anguish and anxiety. And

radio fills this opening, protecting man against the silence and the

mystery by amusing him. The program makers know all this and

create their programs as a function of this escapism, not for motives

of crass commercialism or Machiavellianism (as some people seem

to think), but because they themselves partake of the human con-

dition and seek protection against its anguish. It follows, then, that

the radio makes a clean break between everyday social reality and

the dreams and narcotics which its duty is to dispense. To use the

words of Veille, it must be one of the “liberating distractions.” It

must deliver the individual from objective constraints. It is a pub-

lic utility dealing in moral comfort, charged with offsetting the

tragedies of family living, social pressures, and the vexations of

modem life. The radio must compensate for the inhumanities of

life in today’s cities. In a milieu in which the human being is un-

able to make true friendships or to have profound experiences, the

radio must furnish him with the appearances of reality, acquaint-

ance, and human proximity; it must captivate and reassure him.

But Veille rightly inquires whether “the radio may not gradually

habituate to mere auditory images those to whom it gives the illu-

sion of belonging; and, what is worse, condition them to the ab-

sence of interlocutors.” Unfortunately, the answer to Veilles

question is clear. There is no other comparable instrument of hu-

man isolation. The radio, and television even more than the radio,

shuts up the individual in an echoing mechanical universe in which

he is alone. He already knew little enough about his neighbors, and

now the separation between him and his fellows is further

widened. Men become accustomed to listening to machines and

talking to machines, as, for example, with telephones and dicta-

phones. No more face-to-face encounters, no more dialogue. In a

perpetual monologue by means of which he escapes the anguish of

silence and the inconvenience of neighbors, man finds refuge in



3 8 O )	HUMAN TECHNIQUES



the lap of technique, which envelops him in solitude and at the

same time reassures him with all its hoaxes. Television, because

of its power of fascination and its capacity of visual and auditory

penetration, is probably the technical instrument which is most

destructive of personality and of human relations. What man seeks

is evidently an absolute distraction, a total obliviousness of him-

self and his problems, and the simultaneous fusion of his con-

sciousness with an omnipresent technical diversion.



In diversion we are at a stage of development in which technique

answers the needs of men in a technical society, but a society in

which they are still free to use or not to use the available technical

means. “If you wish to escape,” says technique, “you are welcome

to try.” Modern men, however, are beginning to be aware of their

need at all costs not to challenge the technical situation, and to

recognize that technical means exist to meet this need. Take, for

example, the extraordinary success of Butlin's vacation camps in

Great Britain. Butlin grasped the fact that in a world at once exact-

ing and depersonalizing in the extreme, the vacation most men

prefer must be a genuine vacuum, an ever greater depersonaliza-

tion which gives the impression of freedom but which never allows

the individual to come face to face with himself, even materially.

To achieve this end, Butlin in 1938 organized his "family vacation

camps.” The vacationer lives in a crowd on a strict timetable judi-

ciously arranged so that each day will be different, giving the

impression of constant novelty and variety. Games, songs, theater,

eating, "fun” succeed one another at a rapid tempo from seven

o’clock in the morning until midnight. "The important thing,” says

Butlin, "is that no one is ever left to himself even for a moment.”

Everything takes place in a spirit of gaiety and liveliness and under

the direction of game leaders who are "specialists.” All available

means are employed to persuade the individual that he is happy.

Since each camp can accommodate four thousand persons, there is

little difficulty in arranging for the vacationer to pass his holiday,

which lasts a fortnight, among a crowd of people. The whole thing

represents an elaborate and rigorous enterprise for becoming un-

conscious, carried out by a technique described in detail by Butlin

himself. Butlin minces no words. The problem, as he sees it, is to

make his customers systematically lose consciousness, not as be-

fore from political motives, but from motives of pure entertain-



The Technological Society	(3 31



ment. Here is technique put to the service of a kind of Pascalian

distraction. Not exactly the same kind, since it is not so much a

matter of dodging the dilemma of man facing eternity as of dodg-

ing the conflict between man and his situation in this life; of for-

getting to meditate not so much on the two infinitives (something

most men are incapable of) as on the obvious crashing absurdity

of life in a technical world. The average man is inevitably con-

scious of this. He must therefore becloud his consciousness at any

cost, and in this, it seems, he is in essential accord with the needj

of a technical society. Our thesis is verified by the prodigious suc-

cess of Butlin's camps, a success which is perhaps the most aston-

ishing thing about them. In 1947, four hundred thousand persons

vacationed in them, and the number has been growing steadily.

And bear in mind that these figures represent Englishmen, who by

their very nature would seem the most hostile to this kind of thing.



This demonstrates the complete adaptation of technical amuse-

ments to technical society and to their sociological function. How

illusory is the effort to make of the motion pictures an educative

art and a means of instruction! Art films and films with philosophic

or political intent simply do not correspond to the wishes of the

movie-going public. It can, of course, be legitimately maintained

that motion pictures are nonetheless a means of '‘educating'' the

public. But here we must guard against a certain confusion; educa-

tion of the spectator's taste and understanding takes place, but

only incidentally. The clouding of his consciousness is paramount,

and art and science can contribute to this end. The film can suc-

ceed only if it puts art to the service of a sociologically necessary

and technically possible enterprise; only if art (and indoctrination

disguised as science) becomes the new means of wrenching men

from reality. If this were not the case, the public would not have

patronized films like the first ones of Orson Welles.



Spontaneous or organized mechanisms of entertainment such as

I have described are useful only to the degree that propaganda

technique is undeveloped. Propaganda, as it develops, tends to

assimilate amusement, which either makes its appearance as an

efficient propaganda medium or, at a later stage, is exploited for

purposes of human adaptation.



This last makes it impossible to agree with Veille's suggestion

that the Swedish or Russian radio is not concerned with “distrac-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



3*«)



tions,** with building up a social structure of lies and soporifics, be-

cause the citizens of these states have been “set free" and no

longer “feel the wearisome continuity of daily obligations." Veille,

it may be noted, tends implicitly to see in this fact one of the benefi-

cial effects of socialism. In reality, the condition he describes is

due to the fact that the Swedes are the most “integrated" and

adapted of all mankind. They have alienated themselves to the

greatest possible degree in the organization, so that they are no

longer conscious of any cleavage between personality and tech-

nique, and do not therefore need an artificial paradise. In the case

of the Russians, propaganda has cleverly absorbed and replaced

amusement. The Russian citizen subjected to his government’s daily

propaganda (the most highly developed in the world) is unaware

of anxiety. But, then, the same was true of Hitler’s Germany.



Sport. There is one last sphere where man can still frolic, but there

too technique has stopped up all the gaps. I am referring to sport.



Sport has been conditioned by the organization of the great

cities; apart from city life, its very invention is inconceivable. Coun-

try “sport" is but a pale imitation of city sport and has none of the

characteristics of what we know as sport.



The sporting vocabulary is English; it was introduced to the con-

tinent when the continental nations came under the influence of

English industrialization. After the industrial center of gravity

passed to the United States, American sporting forms prevailed.

The Soviet Union began to cultivate sport when it began to indus-

trialize; the only country in central Europe which had organized

sport, Czechoslovakia, was the only one which was industrialized.



Sport is tied to industry because it represents a reaction against

industrial life. In fact, the best athletes come from workinef-class

environments. Peasants, woodsmen, and the like, may be more vig-

orous than the proletariat, but they are not as good athletes. In

part, the reason for this is that machine work develops the mus-

culature necessary for sport, which is very different from peasant

musculature. Machine work also develops the speed and precision

of actions and reflexes.



Moreover, sport is linked with the technical world because sport

itself is a technique. The enormous contrast between the athletes

of Greece and those of Rome is well known. For the Greeks, physi-

cal exercise was an ethic for developing freely and harmoniously



The Technological Society	(	3	8	3



the form and strength of the human body. For the Romans, it was a

technique for increasing the legionnaire’s efficiency. The Roman

conception prevails today. Everyone knows the difference be-

tween a fisherman, a sailor, a swimmer, a cyclist, and people who

fish, sail, swim, and cycle for sport. The last are technicians; as Jiin-

ger says, they “tend to carry to perfection the mechanical side of

their activity.” This mechanization of actions is accompanied

by the mechanization of sporting goods—stop watches, starting

machines, and so on. In this exact measurement of time, in this

precision training of muscular actions, and in the principle of the

“record,” we find repeated in sport one of the essential elements of

industrial life.



Here too the human being becomes a kind of machine, and his

machine-controlled activity becomes a technique. This technical

civilization profits by this mechanization: the individual, by

means of the discipline imposed on him by sport, not only plays

and finds relaxation from the various compulsions to which he is

subjected, but without knowing it trains himself for new compul-

sions. A familiar process is repeated: real play and enjoyment, con-

tact with air and water, improvisation and spontaneity all disap-

pear. These values are lost to the pursuit of efficiency, records, and

strict rules. Training in sports makes of the individual an efficient

piece of apparatus which is henceforth unacquainted with any-

thing but the harsh joy of exploiting his body and winning.



The most important thing, however, is not the education of a few

specialists, but the extension of the sporting mentality to the

masses. Insofar as this represents a vigorous reaction to the mere

passivity of spectator sports, it is good. But the usual result is the

integration of more and more innocents into an insidious tech-

nique.



It is needless to speak of the totalitarian frame of mind for which

the exercise of sports paves the way. We constantly hear that the

vital thing is “team spirit,” and so on. It is worth noting that tech-

nicized sport was first developed in the United States, the most

conformist of all countries, and that it was then developed as a mat-

ter of course by the dictatorships, Fascist, Nazi, and Communist,

to the point that it became an indispensable constituent -element

of totalitarian regimes.



Sport is an essential factor in the creation of the mass man. It is.



HUMAN TECHNIQUES.



384}



at the time, a disciplinary factor, and this in a twofold way. It coin-

cides exactly with totalitarian and with technical culture. In the

“new"’ countries, an interpenetration of technique and the practice

of sport is to be observed. The authoritarian states understand and

exploit fully the efficiency of technicized sport in making their citi-

zens into conformists and mass men. It is one of the chief boasts of

Communist states that they fabricate champions in countries

which hitherto had never heard the word sport. This is an effect of

the totalitarian society, but it also represents one of its modes of

action. In every conceivable way sport is an extension of the tech-

nical spirit. Its mechanisms reach into the individual's innermost

life, working a transformation of his body and its motions as a func-

tion of technique and not as a function of some traditional end

foreign to technique, as, for example, harmony, joy, or the realiza-

tion of a spiritual good. In sport, as elsewhere, nothing gratuitous

is allowed to exist; everything must be useful and must come up to

technical expectations.



Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of

furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished

his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one tech-

nique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds

the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions, and objectives—in short,

all the technical laws and customs—which he encounters in office

or factory.



Medicine, Technique makes its major contribution in surgery and

medicine. I will consider these technical forms only briefly, first

because they are far removed from the area of my own special com-

petence, and second because they are as uncertain as they are fa-

miliar.



How can we classify these techniques? A report published in the

review Esprit states: 'Thanks to our knowledge of psychophysio-

logical correlations, it is possible to claim that we are in a position

to modify the human being's interior energetics." These modifica-

tions may be achieved by the following means: (1) appropriate

nutritional regimes involving vitamins and the like; (a) suppres-

sion of glandular secretions, as, for example, castration or steriliza-

tion to control antisocial and overaggressive reactions; (3) injec-

tion or grafting of hormones, as, for example, in attempts to

increase bodily energy, virility, femininity, or the maternal in-



The Technological Society	( 3 8 5



stinct; (4) prolonged synthetic medication to modify metabolism;

(5) operative interruption of the nerve paths of intracerebral

communication (to which must be added lobotomies and thala-

motomies, both of which involve direct intervention on the brain

and entail a “lowering of the psychic lever).



We ought to add to the above the whole pharmacopeia of "police

drugs,” as certain narcotics have become popularly known. These

so-called "truth serums,"* that do not extract the truth, have a bad

reputation, and they are still limited to professional medical use.

Because of this, we must insist that there are extremely few au-

thenticated instances in which sodium pentothal, for example, has

been employed for other than medical reasons. Even the accounts

of the celebrated trials in the Soviet Union and its satellites in

which the defendants accused themselves must be taken with a

grain of salt. There is nothing to prove conclusively that truth se-

rums were ever used, and there are good technical reasons for

believing otherwise. In any case, no positive conclusions can be

based on such evidence as we possess. What is clear is that these

presumed techniques, as they are represented by the press, evoke

spectacular public reaction and inquiries. The chief reason for the

public’s belief in the efficacy of truth serums is probably moral

indignation and fear brought to a pitch of madness by anti-

Communism, so that the real state of affairs becomes proportion-

ately harder to analyze scientifically. It is undeniable, however,

that it is possible to modify the human being effectively, but it is

still uncertain just how this modification occurs or what can ulti-

mately be expected from such technical intervention. From my

point of view, these medical techniques of intervention have only

secondary importance. I would not deny that they represent a

major intervention; they affect the human being materially and

modify him in far-reaching ways. Morally, such intervention is cer-

tainly a grave matter, but the problem, after all, is not essentially

different from that posed by the death penalty.



As for medical technique, what is to be feared and hoped from its

application? And with what other technical system will this tech-

nique be interrelated? The answer is; solely with the state. And

this indicates what we have to fear. It is universally understood

that technical means begin to be dangerous when the state begins

to exploit them, utilizing them in connection with its arbitrary,



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



386)



omnipotent decisions. When the individual undertakes to systema-

tize a number of techniques, he seldom creates a sturdy structure.

The technical framework of our world is linked together naturally,

not by arbitrary human decision, and it is this which gives it its

solidity. The field of application of these medical techniques will

of necessity be very limited, since they will be applied only to

persons expressly designated by the state as enemies or undesir-

ables. These techniques can essentially serve only the state’s de-

signs—whether they are to break the spirit of the last remaining

free men or to eliminate the old or to obtain sensational confessions

or declarations during a fake trial. And these designs must be

limited, since in the last analysis the state can have no interest in

generalizing methods which appear to degrade the human being.

The state, on the contrary, has need of whole, strong human beings,

in full moral, intellectual, and physical vigor, who alone can serve

it best. What the state requires is the technical means for integrat-

ing completely whole beings, and these means are on the point of

becoming a reality. The technical state will not be a party to the

deterioration of its material. Only with regard to already useless

material (because it is refractory or weak) could the technical

state be driven to use one of these techniques. It is certainly not

altogether out of the question that the state might employ these

techniques. But the state has many other means of attaining its

ends. Since it has at its disposal concentration camps and the death

scmtaice, it would hardly go out of its way to find more compli-

cated means, except perhaps for the sake of occasional propaganda.

And certainly the population need not become so alarmed about

what is, after all, only a lesser evil.



Surgical and medical intervention have another defect from the

state’s point of view. They cannot be generalized, and are as a

consequence indeterminate except for special cases. Each new

case requires the state to make a special decision; these techniques

cannot function with the autonomous regularity of such state or-

gans as the police. Indeed, it is necessary to limit application, be-

cause the general public must be kept in ignorance. The citizens

are far from ready to accept the use of these techniques, and would

be easily aroused if they learned of it. The danger of a popular

reaction, even a momentary one, against the state is too great to

risk for the limited advantages the state might draw from their use.



The Technological Society	(387



It does not seem, therefore, that medical techniques are an im-

portant part of the body of human techniques. It is possible of

course to envision a time when surgery will be able to modify

brain structure instead of destroying it and thereby will be able

to reconstruct a positive personality. But this is still speculative.

My conviction is that there is little chance of practical applica-

tion here, apart, perhaps, from the purely medical sphere. Surgical

intervention must be relegated to a relatively distant future. And

when we consider the remarkable development of psychosociology

and social psychoanalysis, both of which are presently being ap-

plied on a mass scale, it is clear that with these the state can

achieve anything it might hope to achieve through surgical modifi-

cation of the human personality. Surgical intervention can only

produce “consolidating” effects. We might ask whether the game

is worth the candle, since such intervention, when undertaken by

the state, confirms all our moral reservations and strictures con-

cerning the state’s contempt for the human personality.



The over-all efficiency of these techniques does not allow us to

attach any great weight to them. Their real importance, which

causes some disquiet, is that they are a “red herring.” Since they

are spectacular, the public pitches upon them fearfully and crys-

tallizes about them its diffuse fear of technique in general. But it

is relatively easy to prove to the public that in this respect its

fears are groundless. The public, unable to see the real problem of

technique because it gravitates unerringly to glaring superficialities

and wavers between unreasoning fear and false security, never

penetrates to the heart of the problem of modem society.



Echoes



Techniques, Men, and Man, Here ends the long encirclement of

men by technique. It is not the result of a plot or plan by any one

man or any group of men who direct it or apply it or shunt it in

new directions. The technical phenomenon is impersonal, and in

following its course we have found that it is directed toward man.

In investigating its preferred loci, we find man himself. This man

is not the man in the mirror. Nor is he the man next door or the

man in the street. Proceeding at its own tempo, technique analyzes



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



388)



its objects so that it can reconstitute them; in the case of man, it

has analyzed him and synthesized a hitherto unknown being.



Technique never works on the man we meet in the street. The

great scandal of Nazism was its indecency in applying its tech-

niques to Otto Schultz, who had a family name and a given name,

who practiced his trade and led his life in full view of hundreds

of his neighbors. He was operated on without anesthesia, dragged

off under duress to the accompaniment of the lamentations of his

family. The physicians of Struthof were scandalous because of

their cynicism and brutality. It was a glaring blunder for the Nazis

to show such complete contempt for human feelings. We do bet-

ter; we operate painlessly. Even when we use successive opera-

tions to demonstrate the evolutionary processes of the human

embryo, the procedures are carried out on “volunteers,” and no

one complains very much. None of our techniques claims that it

applies to the living.



Because it is first of all scientific, technique obeys the great law

of specialization; it can be efficient only if it is specialized. In the

case of human beings, efficiency has a double meaning. It means

that technique must be applicable without raising storms of pro-

test. And it means that it must not neglect the scientific aspect

(which is the most important) of this specialization. Techniques

are designed for application to a relatively limited number of

cases; as a consequence, general applicability cannot be envisaged.

Every human technique has its circumscribed sphere of action, and

none of them covers the whole of man. As we have seen, there are

psychological techniques, educational techniques, and many oth-

ers. Each of these answers one and only one particular need. If

one of them is applied, it does indeed encroach on some private

sphere or other of the individual, but the greatest part remains

private. There is therefore never any clear reason to protest. This

relatively impersonal technical operation is a far cry from one

which would hurl man brutally into a world of concentration

camps where the most strident, dramatic, overwhelming techniques

suddenly descend on him.



A further mistake of Nazism was to dress its techniques in a

demoniac mask designed to inspire terror. Because the use of

terror is also a technique, the Nazis made it an invariable accom-

paniment of all their other techniques, shocking the rest of the



The Technological Society	( 3S9



world by useless excess. We do better. We dress technique in the

aseptic mask of the surgeon. Impassivity is an attribute of the new

god, as it was an attribute of the old. The true face of modern

technique is far more like the Deist’s triangle than the grimacing

mask of Siva.



A single technique and its guarded application to a limited

sphere is the starting point of dissociation. No technician anywhere

would say that he is submitting men, collectively or individually,

to technique. The biogeneticist who experiments on the human

embryo, or the film director who tries to affect his audience to the

greatest possible degree, makes no claim that he is working on

man. The individual is broken into a number of independent frag-

ments, and no two techniques have the same dimensions or depth.

Nor does any combination of techniques (for example, propaganda

plus vocational guidance) correspond to any part of the human

being. The result is that every technique can assert its innocence.

Where, then, or by whom, is the human individual being attacked?

Nowhere and by no one. Such is the reply of technique and tech-

nician. They ask indignantly how it can be alleged that the hu-

man being is being attacked through the application of the new

school of technique. According to them, the charge itself demon-

strates an absence of comprehension and the presence of errone-

ous, not to say malicious, prejudices. And, in fact, every technician

taken separately can affirm that he is innocent of aggressive de-

signs against the human being. The biologist, working on a living

embryo with the consent of the mother, is guilty of no assault on

her life or her honor. Thus, since no technician applies his tech-

nique to the whole man, he can wash his hands of responsibility

and declare that the human being remains intact.



A larger view of the technician’s operations thus presents a

totally reassuring and even edifying picture. Every technician

working on a tiny particle (so tiny it could not be considered a

man) of living flesh can claim that he is at work in the name of a

higher being: Man.



Technicians are not very complicated beings. In truth, they are

as simple as their techniques, which more and more assimilate

them. The Communists are no doubt right in thinking that all moral

problems will be resolved when all men have become technicians.



If it is an important part of the work of our “intellectuals” to



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



390)



analyze the times and discover all the myths at work in the twen-

tieth century, this task will demonstrate that the myths are deep-

rooted and widespread. And when they turn their critical faculties

to the myths of the technicians, they will not need to delve much

or deeply. The technicians" myth is simply Man—not you or I, but

an abstract entity. The technician intones: “We strive for Man’s

happiness; we seek to create a Man of excellence. We put the

forces of nature at his disposal in full confidence that he will over-

come the problems of the present,” and so on. Other modem

myths—for example, the myth of “progress” or of the “proletariat”

—are immeasurably less real to the technician than the myth of the

abstract entity Man, in which he finds his justification. This myth,

moreover, represents a stage he cannot transcend, for he has small

ideology and less philosophy. He understands his methods, which

he applies with satisfaction because they yield immediate results.

The technician anticipates results, but, be it said, they are not

genuine ends but merely results. And then he makes the great

leap into the unknown and finds the explanation of everything and

the answer to all possible objections: the myth of Man. The tech-

nician either does not believe in the myth at all or believes in it

only superficially. It respresents for him a ready-made and com-

fortable conviction, a ready answer to all criticism. It is a justifica-

tion, but scarcely a conscious one. Why indeed should the techni-

cian justify himself? He feels in no way guilty; his good intentions

are as clear as their excellent results are undeniable. No. the tech-

nician has no need of justification. And if ever the slightest doubt

were to penetrate his consciousness, his answer would be as clear

as it would be staggering: The Man for whom I am working is

Humanity, the Species, the Proletariat., the Race, Man the crea-

ture, Man the eternal, even You. All technical systems, whether

they be expressed in Communist or Liberal phraseology, come

back in the final analysis to this abstraction. All technicians, too.

The technicians, in any case, do not have sufficient intellectual

curiosity to ask themselves what their favorite abstraction really

means or what the relation is between this abstraction and tech-

nique. Not, one supposes, that intellectual curiosity would be worth

much here. The abstraction, Man, is only an epiphenomenon in

the Marxist sense; a natural secretion of technical progress.



Why then become agitated? We have, on the one hand, various



The Technological Society	(391



techniques, each of which exerts only partial action and can there-

fore be of no danger to man’s total being. On the other hand, we

have a myth, “Man,” which more or less deifies him and in any

case strongly affirms that technique is subordinate to the human

being. What more could we want?



However, one important fact has escaped the notice of the tech-

nicians, the phenomenon of technical convergence. Monnerot has

defined political totalitarianism as a convergence of a plurality of

national histories with a plurality of political systems. Our interest

here is the convergence on man of a plurality, not of techniques,

but of systems or complexes of techniques. The result is an opera-

tional totalitarianism; no longer is any part of man free and in-

dependent of these techniques. This convergence might be likened

to the convergence of theater projectors, each of which has a spe-

cific color, intensity, and direction, but each of which can fulfill

its individual function only in conjunction with the others. The

effect cannot be predicted on the basis of the individual projectors,

only on the basis of the object illuminated. Such is the case with

human techniques. A plurality of them converge toward the hu-

man being, and each individual technician can assert in good

faith that his technique leaves intact the integrity of its object. But

the technician's opinion is of no importance, for the problem con-

cerns not his technique, but the convergence of all techniques. It

is impossible to determine, by considering any human technique in

isolation, whether its human object remains intact or not. The

problem can be solved only by using the human being as a cri-

terion, only by looking at this point of convergence of technical

systems. This is why I have had to make a preliminary enumeration

of the various technical complexes which have been applied to

man.



Now, two additional remarks are in order. First, as I have said

repeatedly, technical convergence is not brought about by the will

of any technician or any group of technicians. No technician acts

as conductor of the technical orchestra. Convergence is a com-

pletely spontaneous phenomenon, representing a normal stage in

the evolution of technique. The technicians are not conscious of

the mechanism and even sometimes do not approve of it. Some in-

tellectuals have a dim awareness of the fact of convergence and

recognize, generally optimistically, that the technical movement



3 9 * )	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



Is directed to the whole man. Some technicians are indeed seeking

gropingly to unify a number of different techniques. Cybernetics

and psychosomatic medicine are good examples of this, and con-

firm, incidentally, the phenomenon of technical convergence. At

the midpoint of the twentieth century we begin to become con-

scious of the phenomenon.



It is difficult to exploit the techniques that already exist precisely

because of the fact of technical specialization. Our highly special-

ized technicians will have a vast number of problems to hurdle

before they are in a position to put together the pieces of the puz-

zle. The technical operations involved do not appear to fit well

together, and only by means of a new technique of organization

will it be possible to unite the different pieces into a whole. When

this has finally been accomplished, however, human techniques

will develop very fast. As yet unrecognized potentialities for in-

fluencing the individual will appear. At the moment such possi-

bilities are only dimly discerned in the penumbra of totalitarian

regimes still in their infancy. It should not be forgotten, of course,

that, while our technicians are trying to synthesize the various

techniques theoretically, a synthetic unity already exists de facto,

and man is its object.



Our second remark concerns certain judgments we might be

tempted to make. In discussing the effects of technique on man,

we must avoid overhasty or superficial generalizations. We must

not become too agitated or hold that man’s nature is cut into bits

and pieces. We must be wary of using a mystical vocabulary. We

do not understand very well what man is, and nothing we know

would justify us in declaring his character sacred or some part of

it inalienable and purely personal or in asserting that he has su-

preme value. The values may be there, but they elude us as soon

as we try to define them or to make precise their nature and loca-

tion. Is this supreme value under attack? When we behold the

individual, trapped in technical mechanisms, we are indeed

tempted to reply in the affirmative. But if we analyze the situation

concretely, we cannot discover the locus of the attack or even

what is being attacked.



For this, another system of references is needed, a conception

of man which is a priori and nonscientific. But then we must not

be surprised at the divergent reactions we get when we speak of



The Technological Society	(393



the impact of techniques upon the human being. On the other

hand, we must not say that the question is unimportant. It would

be deceptive to ask, “Wbtet then is under attack?” and to enumerate

analytically the components of the human psyche, as determined

by the most up-to-date methods, in order to show that nothing

humanly valuable is endangered by the progress of technique. For

we never know whether there is not something in man which our

analyses and scientific apparatus are unable to grasp. All of us,

even the materialists, are sure that there is. For it is on the un-

moving and unseen axis, which is the essence of the wheel and

round which it turns, that all else depends.



But we cannot declare that it is unimportant if technique per-

meates everything human so long as it does not reach the unreach-

able center. This dualism is impossible because this “center” is not

abstract but concretely embodied. If the quality of being human

depends on it, and if this quality is modified by the ways in which

technique mauls man’s body and soul, we have no right to say

that what is essential remains unscathed. There is, on the contrary,

every evidence that what is called the “person” is being danger-

ously impaired. Similarly, it is escapism to say that what can be

laid hold of in man is itself the result of many influences, many

social currents and collective habits, so why worry about the in-

fluence of technique?



I do not believe there are many proponents left of the idea that

man is something in himself, that he has an essence independent

of his milieu. But there is a broad middle ground between the in-

difference to technique affected by the philosophical dualists who

would maintain such a position and the indifference that the techni-

cal sycophants affect. Two reservations suffice. First, the fact that

the individual is subject to a given influence is no reason to make

him submit to another. Second, there is a difference between the

spontaneous and lightly coercive influence of an individualistic

social group and the calculated, precise, and efficient influence of

techniques.



But here we are at the mercy of religious and scientific prejudices,

which give rise to banal and superficial statements. In discussing

the human effects of technique, I have made every effort to avoid

passing favorable or unfavorable judgments and to shun journal-

istic commonplaces. My purpose is to inquire not so much into the



394 )	HUMAN TECHNIQUES



modifications of the human being that are being made as into the

symptoms of the technical encroachment which is now more or

less complete.



Let us not forget that every one of the human techniques is re-

lated to all other techniques. We must be on guard against at-

tempting to isolate them. When we say that human techniques

must compensate for the disagreeable consequences of other tech-

niques, we are arbitrarily isolating different technical spheres. Hu-

man techniques are closely dependent on economic, political, and

mechanical techniques, not only because of their origin and po-

tentialities, but even more because of the necessity for their ap-

plication. Economics and mechanics form a framework, a milieu,

within which human techniques necessarily belong. Suppressing

the context no doubt makes it easy to analyze these techniques and

to draw reassuring conclusions. But the conclusions are also com-

pletely unreliable. Human techniques have no existence except to

the degree that the human individual is subject to economic condi-

tions and to the degree that mechanical conditions permit the

means discovered to be exercised upon him. To neglect the tech-

nical context of these human techniques is to live in a world of

dreams. To admit it is to perceive that human techniques in the

real world (not in the world of philosophic abstractions where

freedom is always possible) are conditioned by the economic, the

political, and the mechanical. Human techniques, therefore, are

never “dominants'* because they can exist only in relation to all the

others. They cannot be isolated in a pure state; and their means,

tendencies, and results must be interpreted in relation to these

others. If human techniques were ever to come into conflict with

the others, they would inevitably lose out, for they would retain no

real substance. To the degree that they might conceivably run

counter to the necessities, for example, of economic productivity,

they would ruin the condition sine qua non of their application.

Without unremitting productivity, the men, money, and time nec-

essary to their application would not be forthcoming. Human

techniques, therefore, are obliged to become a part of the techni-

cal system; the reassuring conclusions drawn by some writers seem

correspondingly less convincing.



The explicit problem then seems to be: If we can perceive certain



The Technological Society	(395



echoes of techniques in man, how do these echoes enable us to

measure the degree of human technical encirclement?

Vhomme-machine.9 A progressively more complete technical

knowledge of man is being developed. Will it liberate him? Man's

traditional, spontaneous activities are now subjected to analysis in

all their aspects—objects, modes, durations, quantities, results. The

totality of these actions and feelings is then systematized, sche-

matized, and tabulated. A human type is created which is the only

recognizable “normal.” As Sargent puts it: ‘‘Technique will furnish

me with norms of life in whatever concerns work, food, housing,

education, and so on.*



It is to be understood, of course, that there is no absolute obliga-

tion for the individual to conform to the type. He can, if he will,

despise it. But then he will always find himself in an inferior posi-

tion, vis-^-vis the type, whenever the two come into competition.

Our human techniques must therefore result in the complete con-

ditioning of human behavior. They must assimilate man into the

complex “man-machine,” the formula of the future.



In the coupling of man and machine, a genuinely new entity

comes into being. Most writers still insist on the modern tendency,

which they profess to discern, to adapt the machine to the man.

Such adaptation doubtless exists and represents a great improve-

ment; but it entails its counterpart, the complete adaptation of the

man to the machine. This last does not lie in a remote future. Man’s

nature has already been modified; and it is to an already adapted

individual that technique adapts mechanical apparatus. Such

adaptation is becoming progressively easier, and even takes place

spontaneously when the human techniques co-operate.



A familiar case in point is the “fixation” of workers in their work.

Polls reveal that when a worker begins work on an assembly line,

he frequently experiences a certain malaise. He is simply not cut

out for such work, and assembly-line workers are often tempted to

abandon it or to request transfers. They become jittery and nerv-

ous, and evidence a profound uneasiness. But to make a living

and to avoid the ever threatening unemployment, they must hold



•Literally, “Man: a machine” A famous French phrase and the title of Julien

Offroy de la Mettrie’s celebrated work (1748) which argues the materialistic

thesis that the soul, like the muscles, is the result of metabolism. (Trans.)



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



396)



on to their jobs. They must force themselves to adjust to working

conditions as they find them. They are "fixed.” When they are

questioned, they claim to be satisfied and disclaim any desire for

change; the very idea of change, in fact, can call forth real fear.

The results of such polls are taken to indicate that the working

man is happy. But a completely different interpretation is pos-

sible: that the constant exercise of impersonal labor has resulted

in the total depersonalization of the laborer. He has been shaped

by his work, used by it, mechanized, and assimilated. Impartial

psychological investigations reveal that the workers have been de-

prived of initiative and responsibility; they are “adapted” to the

degree that they have become inert, unable to take risks in any

area. Such findings do not, perhaps, apply to all workers, but

they represent the current tendency. They are, moreover, readily

understandable. Why should we demand that workers be super-

men? Workers, like all other men in the technical society, have

acquired a fear of change, and feel the need of the work that costs

them so much. Their situation is analogous to that of the man who

began by reacting to propaganda, progressively abandoned him-

self to it, ended by being manipulated by it, and is no longer

capable of dispensing with this adjuvant to personality and excit-

ant to thought and feeling.



Until recently it was possible to show that worker adaptation to

a given machine did not represent excessive specialization in the

important sense that the specialized worker could be adapted to a

very great number of different machines. This statement is still

perhaps true for the period we are passing through today. But the

more monumental and exacting the machine becomes (and by

machine I understand organization, too), the more indissoluble

the complex man-machine becomes. The difficulty experienced by

pilots of hypermodern aircraft in changing over to another type of

machine, or even to another machine of the same type, is well

known. This last seems a good example of the irreversible condi-

tioning of the individual by technique. The more human factors

are taken into account in the development of technique, the more

man himself is a part of the development, not perhaps in a subordi-

nate role, but irreversibly and indissolubly superordinated. But

such superordination, even if we take it in its most favorable light,

can scarcely represent human liberation; the human being be-



The Technological Society	{397



comes completely incapable of escaping from the technical order

of things. Man and technique bear the same relation to each other

as the social superstructure bears to the economic infrastructure

in the Marxist scheme of things. Technicized man literally no

longer exists except in relation to the technical infrastructure.



The theory might be advanced that in the man-machine complex

man in some sense plays the role the soul plays in relation to the

body in certain philosophies. But the contrary would rather seem

the case, as J. M. Lahy implied long ago when he asked: "Will not

this man have less and less time to be conscious of his own living

presence?” No doubt, man will continue to steer the machine, but

only at the price of his individuality.



Again the adaptability of man will be raised as an objection to

my thesis. Why should not man be able to adapt to the technical

context, since he has in the past adapted to so many new situation*

and to so many different conditions equally representative of pro-

found change? Why should he forfeit his personal life now, after

he has for so long been able to take new conditions in stride with-

out forfeiting it? Technical adaptation will doubtless produce a new

human type, but why should this be condemned? My reply to thi*

theory (which has enjoyed great vogue in the past few years) is

that man does indeed possess an extraordinary adaptive capacity,

but this adaptability has produced very varied results. Some natives

of Tierra del Fuego have succeeded in adapting to life on Cape

Horn; but it can hardly be maintained that they represent a very

desirable human type. I entertain no doubts whatsoever that a

generalized human adaptability exists, but I am much less certain

of the excellence of its results in what concerns men in the con-

crete. I must add that I am much more interested in real men

who actually exist than in that ideal Man which has no existence

except as an image and an abstraction.



The ideal Man is an escapism which eases every kind erf

enormity with tranquilizing abstractions. We should remember

what the Nazis did with respect to this ideal in their extermination

camps (which destroyed some millions of unimportant specimens).

We ought to avoid the same mistake with respect to this all-virtuous

ideal in the universal concentration camp we live in. What is im-

portant is not the adaptability of Man, but the adaptability erf

men. We shall find the answer, not in the immortal soul of the



3 9 8 >	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



Species, but in the preservation of our own individual souls, which

are, perhaps, not immortal.



Our personal adaptability is limited. There are circumstances in

which men as we know them cannot live at all. They cannot live,

for example, in concentration camps, even when these exist without

supplementary tortures. There are conditions in which they can

indeed continue to exist, but only with the loss of everything which

makes them peculiarly human. In this connection we have only

to think of certain tribes terrifyingly close to the animal level (and,

in some aspects of life, even below it). We need only think of the

Nazi torture apparatus, or of the degradation experienced by the

ordinary man in the ranks of the army in wartime. In view of these

examples, we are entitled to ask what adaptation will really be like

in the man-machine complex. The psychotechnicians have recog-

nized that adaptation is not possible for everyone. In a completely

technicized world, there will be whole categories of men who will

have no place at all, because universal adaptation will be required.

Those who are adaptable will be so rigorously adapted that no

play in the complex will be possible. The complete joining of man

and machine will have the advantage, however, of making the

adaptation painless. And it will assure the technical efficiency of

the individuals who survive it.



Up to the present, adaptation has been the product of material

interaction, with all this implies in laxness, misfitting, and excess.

But future adaptation will be calculated according to a strict sys-

tem, the so-called “biocracy.” It will be impossible to escape this

system of adaptation because it will be articulated with so much

scientific understanding of the human being. The individual will

have no more need of conscience and virtue; his moral and mental

furnishings will be a matter of the biocrat’s decisions.



At present we have little conception of what this new man will

be like. The technician by his existence gives us an inkling, but an

imperfect one; the technician still retains elements of spontaneity.

We are, however, able to divine what the new man will gain and

what he will lose in comparison with the average modem man.

The Dissociation of Man. A second element, which is of great im-

portance (and is, in a way, the inverse of the last), is the human

dissociation produced by techniques. The purpose of our human

techniques is ostensibly to reintegrate and restore the lost unity of



The Technological Society	(399



the human being. But the unity produced is the abstract unity of

the ideal Man; in reality, the concrete application of techniques dis-

sociates man into fragments. We have already considered the dis-

sociation of human intelligence and action characteristic of modem

methods of work. The same tendency is found in “shift” work. It

is understood, of course, that in modern work the human being

accomplishes nothing; at best he performs a neutral function dur-

ing the “dead time” of the working day. He must exercise his

own personality, if he exercises it at all, during the eight hours of

leisure.



This tendency gives “good results” in the form of contented

workers. But in another sense it is exceedingly dangerous. It is im-

possible to make industrial labor interesting by allowing the worker

to introduce his own personality into it. He must be rendered com-

pletely unconscious and mechanized in such a way that he cannot

even dream of asserting himself. The technical problem is to make

his gestures so automatic that they have no personal quality at all.



What we usually say is: “The worker must be freed from con-

tinual preoccupation with the tasks of his vocation.” I can easily

see the good results of this liberation. But to call good the fact

that the worker thinks and dreams about matters unrelated to his

work while his body carries out certain mechanical activities is to

sanction the psychological dissociation between intelligence and

action which our technical society tends to produce and which is

possibly the greatest of human scourges. We thereby admit that,

when all is said and done, the ideal state, higher than conscious-

ness, is a dreaming sleep.



To acquiesce in the thesis that work is “neutral” is to acquiesce

in this profound rupture. Indeed, the individual cannot be “ab-

sent” from his work without great injury to himself. Work is an

expression of life. To assert that the individual expresses his per-

sonality and cultivates himself in the course of his leisure (we have

already considered what may be expected of man’s leisure) is to

accept the suppression of half the human personality. History com-

pels the judgment that it is in work that human beings develop and

affirm their personality. Those who set an inordinately high value

on sports and gambling are without substance. Only see what

leisure has made of the bourgeois classes of societyl



It is possible that the modern organization of industrial society



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



400)



has made people "happy." The dissociation of mental activity from

physical actions probably results in a lessening of fatigue since

there is no longer any need to participate or to make decisions. It

is nonetheless undesirable to sanction this situation or to establish

it as the norm. To do so is inevitably to weaken the human per*

sonality; it is impossible so to fragment man's personality without

weakening it. A certain disequilibration may be avoided by these

means. But the loss of creative power has disastrous psychological

consequences. When the human being is no longer responsible for

his work and no longer figures in it, he feels spiritually outraged.

The technical organization of the technical society may obviate

certain tendencies to aggression and frustration (in a non-Freudian

sense). But the annihilation of work and its compensation with

leisure resolves the conflicts by referring them to a subhuman

plane.



It is difficult to understand the hope many modem men repose

in leisure. Yet this hope is prevalent. It is, for example, the point

of departure of Christian employers 1 who hold that in his leisure

time the worker can lead a personal life, escape the constraints put

upon him by society, and regain his psychic equilibrium. This is

also the attitude of the socialists, who advocate the greatest possible

reduction of working hours in order that the individual be afforded

certain possibilities of life and self-development. It is the attitude

of the technicians of labor, as reported by Friedmann. In com-

menting on certain essays of Leon Walther, Friedmann writes:

~We must conjure up the prospect of a society in which labor will

be of restricted duration, industrial operations automatized, and

piecework, requiring no attention, made pleasant by music and lec-

tures ... a society, in short, in which culture will be identified

completely with leisure. In a leisure more and more full of po-

tentialities, and more and more active, will be found the justifica-

tion of the humanistic experiment."



Friedmann is asserting here that it is impossible to make indus-

trial labor positive. But if we agree to Friedmann's proposition

that the human being can develop his personality only in the

cultivation of leisure, we are denying that work is an element of



1 See Rapport mr le travail au Conseil CEcum^nique (1948).



The Technological Society	(401



personality fulfillment, or of satisfaction, or of happiness. This is

bad enough; but the situation is even more serious when we con-

sider that putting our hopes in leisure is really taking refuge in

idealism. If leisure were a real vacuum, a break with the forces of

the environment, and if, moreover, it were spontaneously utilized

for the education of the personality, the thesis of the value of

leisure might hold. But neither of these conditions is true.



We see first of all that leisure, instead of being a vacuum rep-

resenting a break with society, is literally stuffed with technical

mechanisms of compensation and integration. It is not a vacuous

interval. It is not a human kind of emptiness in which decisions

might be matured. Leisure time is a mechanized time and is ex-

ploited by techniques which, although different from those of

man’s ordinary work, are as invasive, exacting, and leave man no

more free than labor itself. As to the second condition, it is simply

not the case that the individual, left on his own, will devote him-

self to the education of his personality or to a spiritual and cultural

life. We are perpetually falling into this idealism. In fact, modern

man himself seeks to give a technical form to his leisure time and

rebels against entering the sphere of human creativity. Since his

youth, and in his vocational activity, he has been unrelentingly

“adapted.1* If the individual must be regimented into intelligent

use of his free time, if he is obliged to spend this time learning

how to be “human,” of what value are vacations and leisure? Where

in this new framework of propaganda is there room for the tran-

scendingly important elements of personality formation, choice,

personal experience, and spontaneous participation in creative ac-

tivity? Who or what is to be his guide in the collective, educative

employment of leisure? The employer? the administration? the

labor unions? To put the question at all is to recognize its fatuity.

What if man’s leisure allowed him to judge his own work? What if,

in becoming “cultivated” or, even better, “a real person,” he should

rebel against his stupid, mechanized job? Or find his four hours of

obligatory servitude an intolerable abasement? It is unimaginable.



We conclude that the education of the human personality can-

not but conform to the postulates of technical civilization, Man’s

leisure must reinforce the other elements of this culture so there

will be no risk of producing poorly adjusted persons. This is the



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



402)



direction the techniques of amusement have taken. To gamble that

leisure will enable man to live is to sanction the dissociation I have

been describing and to cut him off completely from a part of life.



Historically it has always been possible for men to realize them-

selves in their free time. The individual has always found self-

expression both in work and in leisure; the two exist in a mutual

relationship and express two consubstantial aspects of the human

being. It is idealistic to expect leisure to replace the functions of

both work and leisure or to epitomize and take upon itself the whole

of life. A minimum condition would be that automatic work, the

travail neantf be of very limited duration, perhaps three or four

hours daily. But such a reduction of working hours is still a long

way off. And even if we could be certain that this would come to

pass in two or three generations, might not the human being have

been so transformed by that time that his spontaneous creative

power would have been irreparably destroyed? It would be utterly

idealistic to reply in the negative. And it would be twice-com-

pounded idealism to believe that the individual with fourteen

hours of leisure free of technique and of necessity, would spon-

taneously produce works expressing his personality.



There are people who have hobbies such as gardening or putter-

ing about the house. But what is the proportion of such people to

those who do nothing? The melancholy fact is that the human

personality has been almost wholly disassociated and dissolved

through mechanization.



All this shows once again how illusory it is to pin to one sector of

technique the hopes which serious analysis denies all of them. We

must conclude that the organizers of work, who have clearly recog-

nized the nature of modern labor, have failed to recognize the

nature of leisure. If it is asked whether leisure could be otherwise,

the answer is that it could. So could the conditions of work. And

the state and human nature. But if we are going in for all these

conditionals, paradise could also find a place on earth.



The Triumph of the Unconscious. Flight is always possible. It is,

indeed, the spontaneously chosen solution (moreover, it represents

still another aspect of the technical encirclement of the person). If

there cannot be any real salvation, the individual escapes into il-

lusion and unconsciousness. Modern man (I do not speak of the

theoreticians) represses his fear of the technical world and intoxi-



The Technological Society	(403



cates himself with action, or, better, with the illusion of action. One

of the most genuine men of our time, Georges Navel, is a living

witness t© fhe possibility of true freedom even in a technical world.

But Navel has had to pay a fearful price for this freedom in effort,

asceticism, and refusal to compromise. And even Navel is not com-

pletely free of the illusion of action, as shown by his recommenda-

tion of “political participation” as one means of curing the world's

malaise.



The individual who engages in party politics, with its program

of activities, meetings, and fellowship, may well discover in it an

answer to the problems of disequilibration. Indeed, the more de-

manding the party, the more efficacious the remedy. Communism

long ago denounced the political activity of the democracies as an

intolerable hoax and a “flight into unreality.” For them, democratic

political “action” is completely useless. I will not go into Marx's

analysis of democracy, which I hold to be true. But everything

Marx has to say about democratic political action seems to me to

hold, feature for feature, for Communist politics as well. The in-

dividual who throws himself into political activity of any coloration

has the gratifying impression that he is accomplishing something,

and justification and satisfaction. But the sad truth is that he is

resolutely by-passing the real problem and repressing it. This kind

of compensation, which is natural and easily understandable, can

nonetheless only result in human disintegration and a new techni-

cal alienation. A detailed consideration of political activity would

bring us back once more to the same point. Political activity allows

the human being to exist in the technical milieu, but it is regression

nonetheless, and a corollary to the general flight into unconscious-

ness.



But this is true of work and, in fact, of all elements of human life.

All of them, to the extent that they are encircled and repressed by

technique, tend to pass over the lower threshold of consciousness.

The unconscious tends, therefore, to play an ever more important

role in the conduct of human life.



Every technique, and above all every human technique, makes

a fundamental appeal to the unconscious. At the same time the

sphere of action of the unconscious is enlarged by means of the

repressions I have mentioned. It is highly significant that technical

elements begin to appear in what the psychoanalysts call the



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



404)



“great dreams.* The traditional figures of certafci typical dreams,

figures which go back to the remotest human times, are beginning

to be displaced by technical instruments. Bastide notes the appear-

ance of the automobile in the dreams of certain Indian tribes. The

important point here is that a technical contrivance has replaced

traditional symbols; the breakdown of an automobile, it would

seem, is symbolic of sexual derangement. This mechanical pene-

tration of the unconscious indicates that nothing human is exempt

from the influence of technique.



In art, technical influence has been marked. Indeed, modern art

expresses the subconscious precisely to the degree that the sub-

conscious has been influenced by the machine. The artist is in fact

a seismograph that records the fluctuations of man and society.

The cubist and abstract schools of art (as, in poetry, dadaism and

oneirism) are aspects of this deep reality. With very different

forms, Chirico, Leger, and Marcel Duchamp, sometimes con-

sciously and sometimes unconsciously, show us the coupling of

machine and person. They show too the absurdity of the mechani-

cal world, however rational it may be, and the impossibility of an

aesthetic based on the technical movement unless it is an aesthetic

of madness. A major section of modern art and poetry uncon-

sciously guides us in the direction of madness; and, indeed, for the

modern man there is no other way. Only madness is inaccessible to

the machine. Every other “art” form can be reduced to technique;

note the utilitarian art of the Soviets. The artists of our time are the

most impressive witnesses to the fact that a true aesthetics is an

impossibility for men whose only alternatives are madness or pure

technique; and this in spite of the existence of powers of artistic

invention such as past civilizations have seldom seen.



As long as modem art was concerned with an aesthetic of move-

ment (as opposed to the older aesthetic of form), with the inte-

gration of duration into graphic representation, with the “simul-

taneity” of Miro, Picasso, and Klee, an artistic world capable of

development was still possible. But although the artist of the

present can still master and represent the impulse of the machine,

he is completely overwhelmed and impotent in a world that has a

place only for a human being who has been stripped of his real self.

Contemporary art forms bear witness to this impotence.



The Technological Society	(405



We must pay due respect to the honorable struggle being waged

by those who wish to deliver men from the clutches of technique

and restore certain possibilities of living to man. If I have criticized

their research on work and leisure, I did so not because I object to

their aims but because I distrust their illusions and idealism.



If we take note of the penetration of technique into the un-

conscious, we must also consider the inverse, the exploitation of

this penetration by other techniques with the purpose of reinforc*

ing it and making it more complete. I have indicated that propa-

ganda is based on the manipulation of the subconscious by

technical means. So are those hypermodem police methods which

have as their end the establishment of a ‘"neurotic complex” based

on feelings of insecurity. Our technical world not only creates these

feelings spontaneously, it develops them with malice aforethought

for technical reasons and by technical means which, in their action

on the human being, reinforce the structures of that technical

world. “The only person who still remains a private individual is

he who is asleep,” declared Robert Ley in a noteworthy phrase.

The words might be taken to refer exclusively to the Nazi regime.

But they are not limited. They pertain to the integration of all

men into a brutally technicized environment.



Ley's aphorism, however, is not altogether exact, for we have

observed the intrusion of technique even into dreams. This phe-

nomenon has been given a Freudian interpretation in terms of the

“superego,” which lays hold of the thoughts and feelings of every

individual. This concept of the superego, which is composed of the

collective imperative and mass assimilation, brings us to a new

series of observations centering about the “mass man.”



Mass Man, Modem society is moving toward a mass society, but

the human being is still not fully adapted to this new form.



The purpose of human techniques is to defend man, and the

first line of defense is that he be able to live. If these techniques

strengthen him in his nineteenth-century individualism (itself no

ideal state of affairs), they only aggravate the split between the

material structures of society, the social institutions, and the forces

of production, on the one hand, and man’s personal tendencies, on

the other. This presupposes that technique can in fact defend

man’s individuality. But such a disruption is technically impossible

because it would entail insupportable disorders for man. Human



406)	human	techniques



techniques must therefore act to adapt man to the mass. Moreover,

these techniques remain at variance with the other material tech-

niques on which they depend. They must contribute to making

man a mass man and help put an end to what has hitherto been

considered the normal type of humanity. The type that will emerge

and the type that will disappear will be the subjects of a forth-

coming work. For the moment, it suffices to establish concretely

the tendencies of our human techniques to create the mass man.



Material techniques usually result in a collective social form by

means of a process which is largely involuntary. But it is sometimes

voluntary; the technician, in agreement with the technical data,

may consider a collectivity a higher social form. Involuntary and

voluntary action are both to be observed, for example, in the sphere

of psychological collectivization. I have indicated (for example, in

my treatment of leisure) the means by which this involuntary and,

in a way, automatic adaptation appears. I shall refer to one other

striking phenomenon of involuntary psychological collectivization:

advertising.



The primary purpose of advertising technique is the creation of a

certain way of life. And here it is much less important to convince

the individual rationally than to implant in him a certain concep-

tion of life. The object offered for sale by the advertiser is naturally

indispensable to the realization of this way of life. Now, objects

advertised are all the result of the same technical progress and are

all of identical type from a cultural point of view. Therefore, ad-

vertisements seeking to prove that these objects are indispensable

refer to the same conception of the world, man, progress, ideals—

in short, life. Once again we are confronted by a technical phe-

nomenon completely indifferent to all local and accidental dif-

ferences. Indeed, American, Soviet, and Nazi advertisements are

in inspiration closely akin; they express the same conception of life,

despite all superficial differences of doctrine. The Soviet Union,

after having for a period violently rejected the technical system of

advertising publicity, has more recently found it indispensable.



Advertising, which is founded on massive psychological research

that must be effective, can *put across” the technical way of life.

Any man who buys a given object participates in this way of life

and, by falling prey to the compulsive power of advertising, enters



The Technological Society	(407



involuntarily and unconsciously into its psychological framework.



One of the great designs of advertising is to create needs; but this

is possible only if these needs correspond to an ideal of life that

man accepts. The way of life offered by advertising is all the more

compelling in that it corresponds to certain easy and simple tend-

encies of man and refers to a world in which there are no spiritual

values to form and inform life. When men feel and respond to the

needs advertising creates, they are adhering to its ideal of life. This

explains the extremely rapid development, for example, of hygiene

and cocktails. No one, before the advent of advertising, felt the

need to be clean for cleanliness’ sake. It; is clear that the models

used in advertising (Elsie the Cow, for instance) represent an ideal

type, and they are convincing in proportion to their ideality. The

human tendencies upon which advertising like this is based may be

strikingly simple-minded, but they nonetheless represent pretty

much the level of our modem life. Advertising offers us the ideal

we have always wanted (and that ideal is certainly not a heroic

way of life).



Advertising goes about its task of creating a psychological col-

lectivism by mobilizing certain human tendencies in order to intro-

duce the individual into the world of technique. Advertising also

carries these tendencies to the ideal, absolute limit. It accomplishes

this by playing down all other human tendencies. Every man is

concerned, for example, about his bodily health—but show him

Superman and it becomes his destiny to be Superman. In addition,

advertising offers man the means for realizing material desires

which hitherto had the tiresome propensity of not being realized.

In these three ways, psychological collectivism is brought into

being.



Advertising must affect all people; or at least an overwhelming

majority. Its goal is to persuade the masses to buy. It is therefore

necessary to base advertising on general psychological laws, which

must then be unilaterally developed by it. The inevitable conse-

quence is the creation of the mass man. As advertising of the most

varied products is concentrated, a new type of human being, pre-

cise and generalized, emerges. We can get a general impression

of this new human type by studying America, where human beings

tend clearly to become identified with the ideal of advertising. In



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



408)



America advertising enjoys universal popular adherence, and the

American way of life is fashioned by it



In addition to the involuntary, psychological activity which leads

to the creation of the mass man, there are certain conscious means

which can be used to attain the same end. We must not misunder-

stand the qualification conscious in this connection. The degree of

choice is very small; the process is effectively conditioned by ma-

terial techniques and the beliefs they engender. However, this

consciously concerted action is geared to psychological collectivi-

zation and, unlike advertising techniques, exerts a direct effect. It

has a twofold basis and a twofold orientation, and centers about

the notions of group integration and unanimity, which I shall dis-

cuss in the following section.



Up to now, in discussing human techniques we have considered

only man's need for adaptation with a view to his happiness or, at

least, his equilibrium. This plays a role here too. For example, it

can be shown that in our society the individual experiences tran-

quility only in a consciously gregarious state. This involves not only

the indeniable “strength in unity'’ and "forgetfulness of one’s lot

in the crowd,” but also the conscious recognition of the need to

apply adequate remedies to social dangers. In our culture, the per-

son who is not consciously adapted to his group cannot put up

adequate resistance. Lewin's studies of anti-Semitism, for example,

indicate that the Zionist groups with their collective psychology

wcie able iu withstand persecution much more readily than were

the unorganized Jews who had retained an individualistic men-

tality.



It cannot be denied that this kind of conscious psychological

adaptation, which gives the individual a chance to survive and

even be happy, can produce beneficial effects. Though he loses

much personal responsibility, he gains as compensation a spirit of

co-operation and a certain self-respect in his relations with other

members of the group. These are eminently c< Activist virtues, but

they are not negligible, and they assure the individual a certain

human dignity in the collectivity of mass men.



While I have insisted on the “humanistic” tendencies of human

techniques and, starting from the premise that man must be

adapted to be happy, have tried to demonstrate the necessity of



The Technological Society	(409



these techniques and their interrelation with all other techniques,

my attitude has been resolutely optimistic. I have presupposed

that technical practices and the intentions of the technicians wer£

subordinated to a concern with human good. And when I traced

the background of the human techniques, I proceeded from the

most favorable position, that of integral humanism, which, it is

claimed, is their foundation.



But there are more compelling realities. The tendency towardpsy-

chological collectivization does not have man’s welfare as its end.

It is designed just as well for his exploitation. In today’s world,

psychological collectivization is the sine qua non of technical ac-

tion. Munson says: “By building the morale of the troops, we are

trying to increase their yield, to substitute enthusiastic self-disci-

pline for forced obedience, to stimulate their will and their attention

—in short, we are pursuing success.” There he gives us the key to

this kind of psychological action: the yield is greater when man

acts from consent, rather than constraint. The problem then is to

get the individual’s consent artificially through depth psychology,

since he will not give it of his own free will. But the decision to

give consent must appear to be spontaneous. Anyone who prates

about furnishing man an ideal or a faith to live by is helping to

bring about technique’s ascendency, however much he talks about

“good will.” The “ideal” becomes so through the agency of purely

technical means whose purpose is to enable men to support an in-

supportable situation created within the framework of technical

culture. This attitude is not the antithesis of the humanistic atti-

tude; the two are interwoven and it is completely artificial to try to

separate them.



Human activity in the technical milieu must correspond to this

milieu and also must be collective. It must belong to the order of

the conditioned reflex. Complete human discipline must respond to

technical necessity. And as the technical milieu concerns all men,

no mere handful of them but the totality of society is to be con-

ditioned in this way. The reflex must be a collective one. As Munson

s»vs: “In peacetime, morale building aims at creating among the

troops that state of mental receptivity which makes them sus-

ceptible to every psychological excitation of wartime.” And this

“receptivity” must also be instilled in every other human group in

the technical culture, and especially in the masses of the workers.



4	1 O )	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



Psychological conditioning presupposes collectivity, for masses

of men are more receptive to suggestion than individuals, and, as

we have seen, suggestion is one of the most important weapons in

the psychological arsenal. At the same time, the masses are intoler-

ant and think everything must be black or white. This results from

the moral categories imposed by technique and is possible only

if the masses are of a single mind and if countercurrents are not

permitted to form.



The conditions for psychological efficiency are, first, group inte-

gration and, second, group unanimity. (This should not be taken

to mean that on a larger scale there may not be a certain diversity.)

I am speaking of a determinate group (for example, a political

party, the army, an industrial plant) which has a definite technical

function to fulfill. The purpose of psychological methods is to

neutralize or eliminate aberrant individuals and tendencies to

fractionation. Simultaneously, the tendency to collectivization is

reinforced in order to “immunize"’ the environment against any

possible virus of disagreement.



When psychological techniques, in close co-operation with ma-

terial techniques, have at last succeeded in creating unity, all pos-

sible diversity will have disappeared and the human race will have

become a bloc of complete and irrational solidarity.



Total Integration



Until recently, we were obliged to think of man as divided in his

relation to the technical world. One part of him was given over

completely to the monster and subjected to the interior and ex-

terior rules; but the other part he could keep for himself: his inner

life, his family life, his psychic life. He suffered from this division,

but nonetheless he retained a very considerable measure of free-

dom. (When he insisted on retaining too much, he was said to be

suffering from a proportionate lack of social adaptation.) Many

more aspects of the human personality have been exposed to the

technical society, and today very nearly the entire human race is

experiencing this progressive cleavage of personality. The average

man, with his sentimental and intellectual attachments to the past, i



The Technological Society	(411



suffers acutely. Rare are the men who have so completely re-

nounced the inner life as to hurl themselves gladly and without

regret into a completely technicized mode of being. Such persons

may exist, but it is probable that the “joyous robot” has not yet

been bom.



I have repeated time and again that this tension, this dichotomy, is

harder and harder to bear and begins to appear more and more

baneful in its influence even to the psychologists, sociologists, and

teachers, that is, to the psychotechnicians in general. They want to

restore man’s lost unity, and patch together that which technical

advances have separated. But only one way to accomplish this ever

occurs to them, and that is to use technical means. Since the

human sciences are applications of technical means, this entails

rounding up those elements of the human personality that are

still free and forcing (“reintegrating”) them into the expanding

technical order of things. What yet remains of private life must be

forced into line by invisible techniques, which are also implacable

because they are derived from personal conviction. Reintegration

involves man’s covert spiritual activities as well as his overt actions.

Amusements, friendship, art—all must be compelled toward the

new integration, thanks to which there is to be no more social

maladjustment or neurosis. Man is to be smoothed out, like a pair

of pants under a steam iron.



There is no other way to regroup the elements of the human

personality; the human being must be completely subjected to an

omnipotent technique, and all his acts and thoughts must be the

object of the human techniques. Those men, undoubtedly “men of

good will,” who are so preoccupied with the technical restoration

of man’s lost unity certainly have not willed things as they have

turned out. Their error lies much more in not having clearly seen

genuine alternatives. The conscientious psychologist, sympathetic

though he may be to human suffering, does not even consider al-

ternative solutions to the problem. For him, technique imposes a

technical solution. And this solution indeed restores unity to the

human being, but only by virtue of the total integration of man

into the process which originally produced his dismemberment.

The psychologist sees this dismemberment (and civilizations neu-

roses, too) as symptomatic of the incompleteness of the absorptive

process. To achieve unity, then, means to complete the process.



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



412)



Technical Anesthesia. It seems odd that the application of a tech-

nique designed to liberate men from the machine should end in

subjecting them the more harshly to it. But given the technological

state of mind, the paradox is easily explained. Consider a worker

who is subject to a machine and its caprices. He must follow the

machine's tempo and breathe its waste products. At the same time,

he must fight off fatigue and boredom. In short, he must perform

the work of two men. The efficiency expert comes and institutes

procedures to automate actions and save energy by transforming

everything into mechanical reflexes. But the psychologist is dead

set against this; he finds insupportable the total subjection of the

worker to the machine which the efficiency expert has elabo-

rated, and he proposes to liberate him. To accomplish this laudable

end, the psychologist in turn elaborates a science of human be-

havior with its own laws of human psychology; for example, laws

concerning worker fatigue, and so on. He draws up a program not

merely of the worker’s actions in the factory, but of his whole life.

The human being ends by being encased in an even broader tech-

nical framework. It will doubtless make life easier and enable him

to work with a minimum of effort, but only on condition that he

follow its rules to the letter. The example is a simple one, but it

can be found in every sphere of human activity, wherever the

psychotechnician has felt himself called upon to '‘liberate” man-

kind. Progress must obviously be paid for by even harsher subjec-

tion to the instrument of salvation. The worker is in the same

situation as the invalid racked by pain who receives an anodyne

narcotic which makes him an addict—the addiction persists even

after he has been '‘cured.” In much the same way, a nation that has

been subjected to a totalitarian propaganda barrage is unable to

get its bearings in a direct and natural way after the barrage has

ceased; the psychic trauma was too profound. The sole means of

liberating people from "ideas” so inculcated is through another

propaganda campaign at least as intense as the first. But the new

propaganda only subjects them to a psychic pressure that kills a

little more of their freedom.



Consider an inquisitorial and brutal police force that operates

as it pleases and carries out arrests arbitrarily. No citizen has any

peace of mind. Yet the only remedy so far devised for the disease

is the establishment of the hypermodern system of dossiers. Every



The Technological Society	(413



citizen is kept track of throughout his life, geographically, bio-

logically, and economically; the police know precisely what he is

up to at every moment. This police system no longer needs to be

brutal, openly inquisitorial, or omnipresent to the public con-

sciousness. But it permeates all of life, in a way the average citizen

finds it impossible to understand. Just what has been gained? Ad-

mittedly, man need no longer be apprehensive at work, or live per-

petually under suspicion, or be afraid of being subjected to the

“third degree” The terror which until now has been an integral

part of the police methods of totalitarian states is, or soon will be,

a thing of the past. The “terror over the city,” perfectly described

by Cerrado Alvaro, is only a transitory stage. A diffuse terror usu-

ally follows open police raids and public executions. At this stage

the police may be invisible, but they lurk in the shadows. One

hears tales of secret executions in the soundproof cellars of vast,

mysterious buildings. At a still more advanced stage of police

technique, even this diffuse terror gradually dissipates. The police

exist only to protect “good citizens.” They no longer carry out

raids and there is nothing mysterious about them; therefore they

are not felt to be oppressive. Police work has become “scientific.”

Their files contain dossiers of every citizen. The police are in a

position to lay hands on anyone “wanted” at any moment, and this

obviates to a great degree the necessity of doing so. No one can

evade the police or disappear. But, then, no one wants to. An

electronic dossier is not particularly fearsome.



Here we have the essence of the techniques of “humanization”; to

render unnoticeable the disadvantages that other techniques have

created. The task of the technician is to develop machine tech-

niques and human techniques to such a pitch of perfection that

even the man face to face with the perfectly functioning machine

no longer has human initiative or the desire to escape. In a simple

machine, a sticking gear or an overheated rod calls the existence

of the machine to the notice of its vexed user. A lubricating

technique is needed which will make the machine function so

smoothly that its presence is not felt. The ability to forget the ma-

chine is the ideal of technical perfection. In the “man-machine”

complex, friction results from the collision between the human

being and the organization. This friction can take a number of

forms. Individual initiative may become irritated by some obvious



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



414)



mechanical failure; the individual may insist on operating the ma-

chine in a manner not provided for in the rules of automatism.

The problem then is twofold: to perfect mechanical techniques, on

the one hand, and to invent and impose certain human techniques,

on the other, so as to obviate the human sources of friction. As

Latil has pointed out, self-guiding techniques that operate with-

out any external interference are possible. This has been demon-

strated by machines that are autonomous, have a memory, and

anticipate future events. Skeptics of the kind who denied a priori

the possibility of heavier-than-air machines will deride this as

mere imagination. It is true that such machines have not yet been

perfected, but even an approximation in this direction would suf-

fice for our argument.



The technical society must perfect the “man-machine” complex

or risk total collapse. Is there any other way out? I am convinced

that there is. Unfortunately, I am also compelled to note that

neither the scientists nor the technicians want any part of any other

solution. And since I work with realities and not with abstractions,

I recognize the inevitability of the fact that technical difficulties de-

mand technical solutions. All the troubles provoked by the en-

counter between man and technique are of a technical order, and

therefore no one dreams of applying nontechnical remedies. Men

distrust them. A. Sargent well expresses the common opinion:



Humanity is still captive of a metaphysical and dogmatic men-

tality at a time when experimental science (technique) could be-

yond any doubt allow them to solve their principal difficulties.

We are still half buried in scholasticism at a time when biology

is in a position to be our salvation . . . Our dogmatisms have well

shown their mischievousness ... It is therefore indispensable

henceforth to resist the seductions of systems based on metaphysics

and to face up to the one reality which we can understand and

which concerns us . . . The life-sciences bring together certain

means of knowledge and action. All doctrines which draw their

inspiration from abstract conceptions have already betrayed their

fundamental incapacity to organize the human world. Biocracy,

that is, organization in accordance with the basic laws of life,

represents our only chance of salvation at a moment of our devel-

opment in which the various metaphysics and systems left over

from archaic cultures still corrupt human life.



The Technological Society	(4*5



Sargent’s position is clear. What is catastrophic in our situation is

the survival of philosophies, political doctrines, and religion. (I am

unable, incidentally, to believe them so powerful!) As to tech-

nique, it is completely innocent of the imminent catastrophes. De-

spite exaggerations, the text is clear: no other solution is possible,

no other hope, than that represented by the improvement of human

techniques. Every other solution is either inefficient or mis-

chievous.



Sargent’s attitude is representative of that of the majority of

technicians. We have already examined the kind of future it holds

in store for us.



Integration of the Instincts and of the Spiritual, We shall now

take up perhaps the most difficult technical phenomena to grasp,

inasmuch as they do not concern human techniques directly, but

rather certain of their results.



It is often objected that skeptics fail to understand the nature

of technical society because they are unwilling or unable to accept

the extraordinary power of spiritual resistance to technical inva-

sion of which human beings are capable. Everywhere, it is said,

human liberty affirms itself in a world that the skeptics have de-

clared closed to it. In proof of this, literary and musical forms are

invoked like magical incantations. Abstract painting, surrealism,

jazz; ethical forms such as "eroticism” and the "politics of engage-

ment” are said to be manifestations of the supremacy of human

freedom and will in the technical society. No one, of course, seeks

to deny that these phenomena are immediately related to the tech-

nicity of the present; the question is how they are to be interpreted.

It is true that man has psychic power, the strength of which is not

yet known. Man is capable of outbursts of passion and violence. It

does not seem that those sources of vital energy which might be

summarized as sexuality, spirituality, and capacity for feeling have

been impaired.



But every time these forces attempt to assert themselves, they

are flung against a ring of iron with which technique surrounds

and localizes them. Moreover, technique attacks man, impairs the

sources of his vitality, and takes away his mystery. We have seen

that one of the objectives of certain human techniques is to rob

him of this mystery. And men must and do react instinctively and

spiritually to the aggression of technique. When Henry Miller ut-



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



416)



ters his anguished wail against the modem world, he is appealing

through his fundamental eroticism to man’s most primitive in-

stincts. When the American Negro was still a slave, jazz meant

release from despair and chains. But it is questionable that eroti-

cism and jazz really represent a purposive reaction to technical

aggression. We cannot settle these problems by appealing to a

purely verbal idealism.



Jazz is one of today’s most authentically human protests. Let us

trace it back to its origin. The Negroes were hopelessly enslaved.

The story of their toil, punishments, hate, and crushed rebellions

has been often told. The terrible black emperor of Santo Domingo

was now no more than a dream. In their extremity the Negroes

discovered song, which likewise answered the needs of faith.

Music expressed for them at once the despair of the present and

the hope for salvation in Christ. Its culmination in delirium

brought deliverance, but only as opium and alcohol did for others.

Marx’s celebrated remark that nineteenth-century religion was the

opiate of the European masses is equally applicable to the jazz of

the Negro slaves. In jazz they created a true art form. But with it

they also shut every door to freedom. Jazz imprisoned the Negroes

more and more in their slavery; from then on, they drew a morose

relish from it. It is highly significant that this slave music has

become the music of the modem world.



All instincts seem more unbridled today than ever before—sex;

passion for nature, the mountains, and the sea; passion for social

and political action. There cannot have been many historical pe-

riods in which these forces were so evident or so authoritative.

Again, I have no wish to deny whatever validity they possess. It is

good for city dwellers to go to the country. It is good that a marked

eroticism is wrecking the sclerotic traditional morality. It is well

that poetry, thanks to such movements as surrealism, has become

really expressive once more. But these phenomena, which express

the deepest instinctive human passions, have also become totally

innocuous. They question nothing, menace nobody. Behemoth1

can rest easy; neither Henry Miller’s eroticism nor,Andr6 Breton’s

surrealism will prevent him from consuming mankind. Such move-



1 Behemoth (Hebrew; plural of majesty) designates matter organized, glorified, and

set in motion.



The Technological Society	(4*7



merits are pure formalisms, pure verbalisms. No one has ever car-

ried out the famous “pure surrealist act." And as for the self-styled

revolution in ethics of Miller and the “black novels” of Boris Vian

and others, all they amount to for the normal man is an invitation

to a brothel (something which has never passed for revolutionary

or as an affirmation of freedom). It is harmless to attack a crum-

bling middle-class morality. True, persecutions, seizures, and law-

suits have been directed against the “black” authors. But I would

like to point to the tidy profits that such minor scandals have

brought them. I am somehow unable to believe in the revolutionary

value of an act which makes the cash register jingle so merrily.



For a like reason, the “politics of engagement” are vitiated. The

monolithic political parties consist of the fossilized rank and file

(who can scarcely be thought to be manifesting any particular

activity or to be striking a blow for freedom merely because the

hearse which is transporting them is rolling along at a clip) and of

party intellectuals and directors who are out after votes and

money. It is as though a winner of the National Lottery could pass

for a martyr.



Then there is the modern passion for nature. When it is not

stockbrokers out after moose, it is a crowd of brainless confonnists

camping out on order and as they are told. Nowhere is there any

initiative or eccentricity.



In sum, the supreme forces of human nature are set into motion

for the sake of amusement. The great bell in the cathedral tower,

formerly rung to call the city's warriors to arms, is sounded to

amuse foreign tourists. At this point I shall not make a lengthy

analysis of the social forces we have been speaking of.* It is

enough to indicate the contrast between the powers aroused and

the ghastly mediocrity of the end products; between the preten-

sions of Andr6 Breton, for example, and the results. What has hap-

pened to the deepest human passions stems from many different

causes. The only one of concern to us here is the fact that these

spiritual movements are totally confined within a technical world.

Here is yet another example of the phenomenon described at

length in the second chapter, that technique encompasses the



* I have studied these centra} problems in a aeries of articles entitled "Conformism

de notre temps," Rdforme, 1949.



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



418)



totality of present-day society. Man is caught like a fly in a bottle.

His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have be-

come mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.



The Final Resolution. A precise question is posed: Into what has

technique transformed man’s efforts toward the spiritual?



One answer to this question is that technique possesses mo-

nopoly of action. No human activity is possible except as it is

mediated and censored by the technical medium. This is the great

law of the technical society. Thought or will can only be realized

by borrowing from technique its modes of expression. Not even the

simplest initiative can have an original, independent existence.



Suppose one were to write a revolutionary book. If it is to be

published, it must enter into the framework of the technical or-

ganization of book publishing. In a predominantly capitalistic

technical culture, the book can be published only if it can return

a profit. Thus, it must appeal to some public and hence must re-

frain from attacking the real taboos of the public for which it is

destined. The bourgeois publishing house will not publish Lenin;

the “revolutionary” publishing house will not publish Paul Bourget;

and no one will publish a book attacking the real religion of our

times, by which I mean the dominant social forces of the techno-

logical society. Any author who seeks to have his manuscript pub-

lished must make it conform to certain lines laid down by the po-

tential publishers. A manuscript which in subject matter and for-

mat does not conform has no chance. This is the situation at the

most elementary level of the technical publishing organization. One

step further and we encounter the notorious system of the “re-

write.”



If the publishing system is state-owned, the publication of revo-

lutionary literature cannot even be considered. All this amounts to

saying that technical forces, which were put into operation ostensi-

bly for the diffusion of thought, lead in practice to its emasculation.

The same holds true for broadcasting under private capitalism or

under state ownership. It is impossible to agree with the ideologues

who assert that capitalism is synonymous with freedom of broad-

casting4 or with those who assert that state ownership means

humanization.



4 M. Veille’s analysis of this point is convincing. See his La Radio et les homines

(Paris: Editions de Minuit; 1951).



The Technological Society	( 419



Of course, we can write or teach anything, including por-

nography, inflammatory revolutionary manifestoes, and new eco-

nomic and political doctrines. But as soon as any of these appear

to have any real effect in subverting the universal social order

(which is establishing itself in every country of the world with the

support of the overwhelming majority of the respective popula-

tions), they are forthwith excluded from the technical channels of

communication. As Crozier justly remarks: “The intellectual has a

difficult life. He can only live by communicating, but he has been

deprived of the means without which he cannot communicate.”

The intellectual has become a mere mouthpiece subject to the de-

mands of the various techniques. According to Wiener, this is the

cause of the progressive sterilization of intellectual life in the

modem world. As Wiener puts it, present-day methods of com-

munication exclude all intellectual activity except what is so con-

ventional that it has no decisive value.



In the same way technique controls the nascent love of nature.

The lone city dweller on a camping trip escapes his technical fate

momentarily. But suppose that the solitary camper swells to a

throng, overflows the countryside, sets the woods on fire, and

commits other nuisances? Suppose he disturbs the “paying” guests?

or trespasses on private property and hunting preserves? The pub-

lic interest is then involved and technique intervenes, as it in-

variably does where large numbers of men are concerned. (In-

versely, technique is creating a culture in which if large numbers

are not involved, there is nothing at all.) Intervention then takes

the form of an administrative police technique. Obligatory camp

sites are established, complete with regulations. The camper is

forced to carry a license, and the erstwhile act of free individual

decision becomes a purely technical matter.



When an individual engages in political action a corresponding

technical mechanism is set in motion. Political action is no longer

possible except as a mass phenomenon, and “engagement” pre-

supposes participation in a collectivity. Only a collectivity is

wealthy enough to have at its disposal the means to "play politics.”

Only a collectivity can make itself felt in a world in which tech-

nique has given primacy to the quantitative rather than the qualita-

tive. Since an inorganic mass would be inefficient, the collectivity

must be optimally organized, with all that this implies in the way



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



420)



of unity, discipline, and tactical flexibility. These are the exclusive

province of technical organization, a fact which straightway leads

to the formation of monolithic political parties, which alone can

hope for success. Once again technique imposes its iron law on the

generous strivings of the individual heart.



These brief examples, taken from as diverse spheres as possible,

make it evident that today every human initiative must use techni-

cal means to express itself. These technical means ipso facto

“censor” initiative. First, they screen out whatever does not lend

itself to technical expression; initiative remains a purely private

matter, with no importance to the technical society. Second, they

compel a rigid conformism; initiative is reduced to the lowest com-

mon denominator and is, in effect, emasculated. The interplay of

the technical censorship with the pretended “anarchic” spiritual

initiatives of the individual automatically produces the situation

desired by Dr. Goebbels in his formulation of the great law of the

technical society: “You are at liberty to seek your salvation as you

understand it, provided you do nothing to change the social order.”

All technicians without exception are agreed on this dictum. It is

understood, of course, that the social order is everywhere essen-

tially identical: the variation from democracy to Communism to

Fascism represents a merely superficial phenomenon.



A second answer to our question of how technique has trans-

formed man s quest for the spiritual involves an examination of the

fate of the ecstatic * impulses and phenomena of the human spirit.



It is not difficult to observe that ecstatic phenomena proliferate

in proportion to the technicization of society. They play an impor-

tant role in modern society, but not the role usually assigned them.

They function not as causes but as effects. It is childish to believe

that Communism and Fascism, for example, created a mystique

out of whole cloth, which they then imposed on their peoples; that

they have blown up a vast bag of wind with which they “seduce”

or “delude” the world. On the other hand, it is too easy to say that

the Russian soul and the German soul were naturally “predisposed”

to these systems. We would then have to hold that the Italian (and



* In what follows, the word ecstasy is used in its original Creek sense to denote a

mental state transported out of its usual condition. The word denotes anarchic and

antisocial tendencies as well as the more pleasant transports we usually associate

with it. It is the ground of war as well as of religion. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(421



now the Yugoslav and Chinese) souls are similarly predisposed.

The myth presupposes a psychological basis—that people adhere

to systems because these systems respond to something “true” in

them. But this truth is certainly not very specific since very dif-

ferent sorts of people adhere to it. Further, mystic systems are not

arbitrary creations of dictatorial regimes. No more are they the

result of the demented will to power of the mighty. No “popular

movement” can produce them; the requirements far exceed the

spontaneous mystic capabilities of man. The real reason for the

emergence of society as we know it is not mystic or psychic but

technical.



It is nevertheless true that ecstatic phenomena are" found today

in the societies that have as their avowed aim the maximal exploita-

tion of technique. Ecstasy occurs here, however, not as a cause

but as a result of the technical society. More specifically, it is a

function of the acceleration of the tempo of the technical society,*

rather than of the technical level of the society.



For a long time it was believed that technique would yield a har-

monious society, a society in equilibrium, happy and without spe-

cial problems. This society would resign itself to an easy life of

production and consumption based on an untroubled commercial

ideology. This model of bourgeois tranquillity seemed to corre-

spond exactly to the preoccupations of technology. The summum

bonum was comfort, and the ideal type was capitalist Switzerland

or socialist Sweden. The sudden plunge of the technically most

advanced societies into war and mutual destruction was a rude

awakening for the bourgeoisie. An aberration? Scarcely. It had

been forgotten that technique means not comfort but power. The

bourgeois countries had developed their technical systems at a

comfortable pace, until these systems had fully exploited their pos-

sibilities of orderly growth. Then technology, with its accelerated

tempo, took over. The smaller nations were unable to keep up.

And the great technical countries had willy-nilly to abandon their



• Ellul anticipates here a recent preoccupation of so-called “general system theory,"

according to which social and psychological phenomena depend for their specific

results on the acceleration of linear systems ana not upon their position or velocities.

The latter is usually a condition of equilibrium; the former seldom is. Thus, to give

a trivial example, it is not the absolute value of the world’s population at any

moment which threatens social dissolution, but the rate at which it is increasing,

especially if the rate of increase is itself increasing. (Trans.)



HUMAN



422)



languid pace and accommodate themselves to the real tempo of

the technical society. The result was that disproportion between

the leisurely bourgeois mentality and the explosive tempo of tech-

nique to which we give the name war. A by-product of this ecstasy

was a certain mystique. The American myth was born, presenting

exactly the same religious traits as the Nazi or Communist myth.

But it is different, as we have often noted, in that it still is in a

spontaneous phase; it is not yet organized, utilized, and developed

technically.



Whatever the actual technical level of the country, as soon as

technical acceleration appears, the mystique appears too. Even

technically backward societies experience it as soon as they decide

to adopt modern techniques. So do such societies as the Nazi or the

Communist when they take up and adapt to their system whatever

is new. The more languid social groups, such as Switzerland or

France, which cannot or will not submit to technical acceleration,

do not manifest these phenomena.7



A nation which has reached a pitch of perfection in its technical

organization sometimes feels this perfection to be intolerable. Suqh

a factor was probably the cause of the astonishing ecstasy of “com-

bativity without object” which erupted in Sweden in December

1956. In a too-perfect universe the human being has no adequate

way of releasing the deepest impulses of human nature. These ob-

scure forces are always there, and tend to emerge to the degree

that perfect technical constraint has not yet been fullv achieved.



These observations confirm Roger Caillois’s statement that the

more restrictive the social mechanism, the more exaggerated are

the associated ecstatic phenomena. The restrictions imposed by

technique on a society reduce the number of ways in which re-

ligious energy can be released. In a nontechnical society there are a

plurality of ways in which psychic energy can be channeled; but

in a technical society there is only one. Technical restrictions elimi-

nate all secondary objects. Human psychic energies concentrate,

and there are no “leaks.” The result is ecstatic phenomena of un-

paralleled intensity and duration.



In today's technical society, magical and mystical tendencies

which traditionally were in opposition are all mutually satisfied by



T Since 1958 France has experienced Tx>th rebirth of technical progress and a

nationalistic mystique.



The Technological Society	(4*3



technique and hence majde one. Technique fully satisfies the mystic

will to possess and dominate. It is unnecessary to evoke spiritual

powers when machines give much better results. But technique

also encourages and develops mystical phenomena. It promotes the

indispensable alienation from the self necessary, for example, for

the identification of the individual with an ideology. Whether man

identifies with a father figure or with an abstraction, this identifica-

tion is incited by the recognition of an exceptional charismatic

quality. This quality, integrated into the technical society, takes

from it a compelling intensity it did not have before. It also takes

on a mechanical character. The ecstatic phenomenon, organized,

centralized, and diffused by technique, can only relate to a mecha-

nized charism which is capable of this relation. This charismatic

endowment has traditionally been an attribute of heroes, but today

it is the ‘"heroes of labor" who are so endowed.



We must conclude that it is far from accidental that ecstatic phe-

nomena have developed to the greatest degree in the most techni-

cized societies. And it is to be expected that these phenomena will

continue to increase. This indicates nothing less than the subjec-

tion of mankind’s new religious life to technique. It was formerly

believed that technique and religion were in opposition and repre-

sented two totally different dispensations. It was held that, with

the development of a purely materialistic society, a struggle was

inevitable between the machine and the economy, on the one side,

and the ideal realm of religion, art, and culture, on the other. But

we can no longer hold such a boundlessly simplistic view. Ecstasy

is subject to the world of technique and is its servant. Technique,

on the most significant level, integrates the anarchic and antisocial

impulses of the human being into society. These impulses take their

influence and receive their diffusion strictly by virtue of the techni-

cal means brought into play. The ecstatic phenomena of the human

psyche, which without technical means would have remained

completely without effect, are deployed throughout the world.



Technical means, acting on the ecstatic phenomena, encourage

certain daring innovations of expression. Consider, for example, the

extraordinary artistic novelty of the cinema. But it must be re-

membered that the technical fact ipso facto entails the total in-

clusion of art and thought (however revolutionary they seem)

within the social framework. Human impulses are confined within



4?4)	HUMAN	TECHNIQUES



well-defined limits, and become the objects of propaganda, profit-

seeking, contractual obligations, and the like. The vast extent of

the technical apparatus makes the '‘payoff” inevitably the primary

consideration, in money in the capitalist world, in power and au-

thority in the Communist world. Technique as a means, however,

encourages and enables the individual to express his ecstatic reac-

tions in a way never before possible. He can express criticism of

his culture, and even loathing. He is permitted to propose the mad-

dest solutions. The great law here is that all things are necessary to

make a society and that even revolt is riecessary to make a techni-

cal society. I believe that this is no exaggeration. Revolt is con-

sciously organized in the Soviet Union, for example, in Krokodll,

the journal officially devoted to criticism of Soviet polity and ad-

ministration. The expression of criticism is permitted because its

repression would be even more catastrophic. But it is permitted

only on condition that it entail no serious consequences, or, better

put, so that no serious consequences to the power of the state can

result. The technical apparatus, in fact, assures this by confining

the most violent explosions of human ecstasy within itself and by

satisfying without danger and at small cost to itself certain spiritual

needs of the citizen reader. It must not be supposed that there is

any danger of the reader becoming a partisan of an author. Sartre

complains that he has readers but no public. He gives certain com-

plex reasons for this, and some of them may even be true. But he

does not see (or perhaps refuses to see) that the technical condi-

tions of publishing necessarily entail such a result. Sartre, of course,

is not alone. What he complains of represents a long tradition.

Technique, which transforms culture into luxury, puts so- many

cultural modalities at the reader’s disposal that none of them has

any more importance than any other; the customer becomes a

butterfly dipping into whatever flower he chooses. Sartre repre-

sents one ten-thousandth of French authorship, and he reaches

twenty thousand readers. Not bad. But in the circumstances it is

difficult to have a genuine community of readers. (I take it that

the cellars of the Left Bank do not constitute the public Sartre

dreams of.) Technique erects a screen between the author and his

readers. Miniature fireworks issue from the magic bottle, but not

revolt. A few printed pages out of the deluge of printed matter

will never make the butterfly a revolutionary.



The Technological Society	( 4 2 5



The complete separation of thought and action effected by

technique produces in a new guise a phenomenon which we have

already discussed as it appears in other areas: the lack of spiritual

efficacy of even the best ideas. The very assimilation of ideas into

the technical framework which renders them materially effective

makes them spiritually worthless. This does not mean that ideas

have no worthwhile effect on the public at all. They have a great

effect, but not the effect their creators intended. Henry Miller's

erotic petard, launched onto society like a plastic bomb, finds a

reader whose sexual life is thwarted, who is upset by the conditions

of his work, his lodgings, his political life. This has created in him

a thirst for revolt. And he finds his thirst powerfully and well ex-

pressed by Miller. The pornographic element unfetters his imagina-

tion and plunges him into an erotic delirium that can satisfy his

contracted needs. But Miller's book, far from pushing a man to

revolt, vicariously satisfies the potential revolutionary, just as the

sexual act itself stills sexual desire, or jazz soothes the Negroes'

bitter longing for freedom. We have noted that jazz has become

universal. The reason is now clear: it is the music of men who are

satisfied with the illusion of freedom provoked by its sounds, while

the chains of iron wind round them ever tighter. The same mecha-

nism is at work on the reader of Krokodil Seeing his discontent

expressed far better than he could express it himself, he is satisfied

vicariously with an official revolt and ceases to criticize ... at

least for a while—but by then he will have received the next issue.



As a result of technique, these vicarious remedies are not local

but universal phenomena. Technique diffuses the revolt of the

few and thus appeases the need of the millions for revolt The same

could be said of all the “movements” started since the turn of the

century in response to the frustration of the most elementary hu-

man impulses. But can it be maintained, therefore, that social

movements such as surrealism, youth hostels, revolutionary politi-

cal parties, anarchism, and so on, have failed? They have failed in

that they have not achieved their own goals of re-creating the

conditions of freedom and justice or of allowing man to rediscover

a genuine sex life or intellectual life. But they have been com-

pletely successful from another point of view. They have per-

formed the sociological function of integration. Technical means

are so important, so difficult to achieve and to manage, that it is



HUMAN TECHNIQUES



426)



easier to have them if there is a group, a movement, an association.

Such movements are based on authentic impulses and valid feel-

ings, and do allow a few individuals access to modes of expression

which otherwise would have been closed to them. But their es-

sential function is to act as vicarious intermediaries to integrate

into the technical society these same impulses and feelings which

are possessed by millions of other men. Herein lies their sociologi-

cal character. Certain deep ecstatic instincts and impulses would

otherwise escape the jurisdiction of the technical society and be-

come a threat to it. Movements such as today’s existentialism, or

eroticism in the form of a renovated Marquis de Sade or of the

little pornographic reviews, are a sociological necessity to a techni-

cal milieu. The basic human impulses are unpredictable in their

complex social consequences. But thanks to “movements” which

integrate and control them, they are powerless to harm the techni-

cal society, of which henceforth they form an integral part. These

movements perform a well-defined but completely involuntary

function. Their operations are effected independently of will or

desire. And no one has calculated their effects in advance. Andr6

Breton and Henry Miller are innocent of the sociological function

they have assumed. One can reproach them only for a fearful

lack of clarity as to their position and function in the technical

society.



All revolutionary movements are burlesques of the real thing, but

this must not be imputed to the activities of Machiavellian wire-

pullers. The phenomenon appears naturally in the interaction of

human techniques with social movements that seek to express basic

human instincts. Our analysis could be repeated for pacifism. Com-

munism, and all the multifarious movements designed to secure

peace or social justice. They all fall into the same pattern and

fulfill the same function. Some are indeed more authentic and

“truer” than others because they better express human revolt; they

are more successful in pulling the teeth of aggressive instincts and

in integrating them into the technical society. (If I have not men-

tioned religions, it is because they no longer express revolt; they

have long since, in their intellectual and sociological forms, under-

gone integration.)



With the final integration of the instinctive and the spiritual by

means of these human techniques, the edifice of the technical so-



The T echnological Society	(4*7



ciety will be completed. It will not be a universal concentration

camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane,

for everything will be ordered, and the stains of human passion

will be lost amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing more

to lose, and nothing to win. Our deepest instincts and our most

secret passions will be analyzed, published, and exploited. We

shall be rewarded with everything our hearts ever desired. And

the supreme luxury of the society of technical necessity will be to

grant the bonus of useless revolt and of an acquiescent smile.



CHAPTER



CO



A LOOK AT

THE FUTURE



We have completed our examination of the monolithic technical

world that is coming to be. It is vanity to pretend it can be checked

or guided Indeed, the human race is beginning confusedly to

understand at last that it is living in a new and unfamiliar universe.

The new order was meant to be a buffer between man and nature.

Unfortunately, it has evolved autonomously in such a way that

man has lost all contact with his natural framework and has to do

only with the organized technical intermediary which sustains

relations both with the world of life and with the world of brute

matter. Enclosed within his artificial creation, man finds that there

is “no exit”; that he cannot pierce the shell of technology to find

again the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of

thousands of years.



The new milieu has its own specific laws which are not the laws

of organic or inorganic matter. Man is still ignorant of these laws.

It nevertheless begins to appear with crushing finality that a new

necessity is taking over from the old. It is easy to boast of victory

over ancient oppression, but what if victory has been gained at



The Technological Society	(4*9



the price of an even greater subjection to the forces of the artificial

necessity of the technical society which has come to dominate our

lives?



In our cities there is no more day or night or heat or cold. But

there is overpopulation, thraldom to press and television, total ab-

sence of purpose. All men are constrained by means external to

them to ends equally external. The further the technical mechanism

develops which allows us to escape natural necessity, the more we

are subjected to artificial technical necessities. (I have analyzed

human victory over hunger in this vein.) The artificial necessity

of technique is not less harsh and implacable for being much less

obviously menacing than natural necessity. When the Communists

claim that they place the development of the technical society in a

historical framework that automatically leads to freedom through

the medium of the dialectical process; when Humanists such as

Bergson, or Catholics such as Mounier, assert that man must re-

gain control over the technical “means” by an additional quantity

of soul, all of them alike show both their ignorance of the technical

phenomenon and an impenitent idealism that unfortunately bears

no relation to truth or reality.



Alongside these parades of mere verbalisms, there has been a

real effort, on the part of the technicians themselves, to control the

future of technical evolution. The principle here is the old one we

have so often encountered: “A technical problem demands a tech-

nical solution.” At present, there are two kinds of new techniques

which the technicians propose as solutions.



The first solution hinges on the creation of new technical instru*

ments able to mediate between man and his new technical milieu.

Robert Jungk, for example, in connection with the fact that man

is not completely adaptable to the demands of the technical age,

writes that “it is impossible to create interstellar man out of the

existing prime matter; auxiliary technical instruments and appa*

ratus must compensate for his insufficiencies.” The best and most

striking example of such subsidiary instruments is furnished by the

complex of so-called “thinking machines,” which certainly belong

to a very different category of techniques than those that have

been applied up to now. But the whole ensemble of means de-

signed to permit human mastery of what were means and have now

become milieu are techniques of the second degree, and nothing



A LOOK AT THE FUTURE



430)



more. Pierre de Latil, in his La PensSe artificielle, gives an ex-

cellent characterization of some of these machines of the second

degree:



“In the machine, the notion of finality makes its appearance, a

notion sometimes attributed in living beings to some intelligence

inherent in the species, innate to life itself. Finality is artificially

built into the machine and regulates it, an effect requiring that

some factor be modified or reinforced so that the effect itself does

not disturb the equilibrium . . . Errors are corrected without hu-

man analysis, or knowledge, without even being suspected. The

error itself corrects the error. A deviation from the prescribed track

itself enables the automatic pilot to rectify the deviation . . .For

the machine, as for animals, error is fruitful; it conditions the cor-

rect path.*



The second solution revolves about the effort to discover (or re-

discover) a new end for human society in the technical age. The

aims of technology, which were clear enough a century and a half

ago, have gradually disappeared from view. Humanity seems to

have forgotten the wherefore of all its travail, as though its goals

had been translated into an abstraction or had become implicit;

or as though its ends rested in an unforeseeable future of unde-

termined date, as in the case of Communist society. Everything

today seems to happen as though ends disappear, as a result of

the magnitude of the very means at our disposal.



Comprehending that the proliferation of mean? brings about thp

disappearance of the ends, we have become preoccupied with re-

discovering a purpose or a goal. Some optimists of good will assert

that they have rediscovered a Humanism to which the technical

movement is subordinated. The orientation of this Humanism may

be Communist or non-Communist, but it hardly makes any dif-

ference. In both cases it is merely a pious hope with no chance

whatsoever of influencing technical evolution. The further we ad-

vance, the more the purpose of our techniques fades out of sight.

Even things which not long ago seemed to be immediate objectives

—rising living standards, hygiene, comfort—no longer seem to have

that character, possibly because man finds the endless adaptation

to new circumstances disagreeable. In many cases, indeed, a

higher technique obliges him to sacrifice comfort and hygienic

amenities to the evolving technology which possesses a monopoly



The Tech nological Society	( 431



of the instruments necessary to satisfy them. Extreme examples are

furnished by the scientists isolated at Los Alamos in the middle of

the desert because of the danger of their experiments; or by the

would-be astronauts who are forced to live in the discomfort of

experimental camps in the manner so graphically described by

Jungk.



But the optimistic technician is not a man to lose heart. If ends

and goals are required, he will find them in a finality which can be

imposed on technical evolution precisely because this finality can

be technically established and calculated. It seems clear that there

must be some common measure between the means and the ends

subordinated to it. The required solution, then, must be a technical

inquiry into ends, and this alone can bring about a systematization

of ends and means. The problem becomes that of analyzing indi-

vidual and social requirements technically, of establishing, numeri-

cally and mechanistically, the constancy of human needs. It fol-

lows that a complete knowledge of ends is requisite for mastery of

means. But, as Jacques Aventur has demonstrated, such knowledge

can only be technical knowledge. Alas, the panacea of merely

theoretical humanism is as vain as any other.1



“Man, in his biological reality, must remain the sole possible

reference point for classifying needs,” writes Aventur. Aventur s

dictum must be extended to include man's psychology and soci-

ology, since these have also been reduced to mathematical calcu-

lation. Technology cannot put up with intuitions and “literature."

It must necessarily don mathematical vestments. Everything in

human life that does not lend itself to mathematical treatment must

be excluded—because it is not a possible end for technique—and

left to the sphere of dreams.



Who is too blind to see that a profound mutation is being ad-

vocated here? A new dismembering and a complete reconstitution

of the human being so that he can at last become the objective

(and also the total object) of techniques. Excluding all but the

mathematical element, he is indeed a fit end for the means he has



1 It must be clear that the ends sought cannot be determined by moral science. The

dubiousness of ethical judgments, and the differences between systems, make moral

science unfit for establishing these ends. But, above all, its subjectivity is a fatal

blemish. It depends essentially on the refinement of the individual moral conscience.

An average morality is ceaselessly confronted with excessive demands with which

it cannot comply. Technical modalities cannot tolerate subjectivity.



A LOOK AT THE FUTURE



43*)



constructed. He is also completely despoiled of everything that

traditionally constituted his essence. Man becomes a pure appear-

ance, a kaleidoscope of external shapes, an abstraction in a milieu

that is frighteningly concrete—an abstraction armed with all the

sovereign signs of Jupiter the Thunderer.



A Look at the Year 2000. In i960 the weekly TExpress of Paris

published a series of extracts from texts by American and Rus-

sian scientists concerning society in the year 2000. As long as such

visions were purely a literary concern of science-fiction writers and

sensational journalists, it was possible to smile at them." Now we

have like works from Nobel Prize winners, members of the

Academy of Sciences of Moscow, and other scientific notables

whose qualifications are beyond dispute. The visions of these

gentlemen put science fiction in the shade. By the year 2000, voy-

ages to the moon will be commonplace; so will inhabited artificial

satellites. All food will be completely synthetic. The world’s popu-

lation will have increased fourfold but will have been stabilized.

Sea water and ordinary rocks will yield all the necessary metals.

Disease, as well as famine, will have been eliminated; and there

will be universal hygienic inspection and control. The problems of

energy production will have been completely resolved. Serious

scientists, it must be repeated, are the source of these predictions,

which hitherto were found only in philosophic utopias.



The most remarkable predictions concern the transformation of

educational methods and the problem of human reproduction.

Knowledge will be accumulated in "electronic banks” and trans-

mitted directly to the human nervous system by means of coded

electronic messages. There will no longer be any need of reading

or learning mountains of useless information; everything will be

received and registered according to the needs of the moment.

There will be no need of attention or effort. What is needed will

pass directly from the machine to the brain without going through

consciousness.



In the domain of genetics, natural reproduction will be forbidden.

A stable population will be necessary, and it will consist of the

highest human types. Artificial insemination will be employed.

This, according to Muller, will "permit the introduction into a car-



* Some excellent work*, such as Robert Jungk's Le Futur * cttf& commend, were

included in this classification.



The Technological Society	(433



rier uterus of an ovum fertilized in vitro, ovum and sperm . . .

having been taken from persons representing the masculine ideal

and the feminine ideal, respectively. The reproductive cells in

question will preferably be those of persons dead long enough

that a true perspective of their lives and works, free of all personal

prejudice, can be seen. Such cells will be taken from cell banks

and will represent the most precious genetic heritage of hu-

manity , , . The method will have to be applied universally. If

the people of a single country were to apply it intelligently and

intensively . . . they would quickly attain a practically invincible

level of superiority , . .** Here is a future Huxley never dreamed of.



Perhaps, instead of marveling or being shocked, we ought to

reflect a little. A question no one ever asks when confronted with

the scientific wonders of the future concerns the interim period.

Consider, for example, the problems of automation, which will

become acute in a very short time. How, socially, politically, mor*

ally, and humanly, shall we contrive to get there? How are the

prodigious economic problems, for example, of unemployment, to be

solved? And, in Muller's more distant utopia, how shall we force

humanity to refrain from begetting children naturally? How shall

we force them to submit to constant and rigorous hygienic con*

trols? How shall man be persuaded to accept a radical transforma*

tion of his traditional modes of nutrition? How and where shall

we relocate a billion and a half persons who today make their

livings from agriculture and who, in the promised ultrarapid con*

version of the next forty years, will become completely useless as

cultivators of the soil? How shall we distribute such numbers of

people equably over the surface of the earth, particularly if the

promised fourfold increase in population materializes? How will

we handle the control and occupation of outer space in order to

provide a stable modus vivendi? How shall national boundaries be

made to disappear? (One of the last two would be a necessity.)

There are many other ''hows," but they are conveniently left unfor*

mulated. When we reflect on the serious although relatively minor

problems that were provoked by the industrial exploitation of coal

and electricity, when we reflect that after a hundred and fifty years

these problems are still not satisfactorily resolved, we are entitled

to ask whether there are any solutions to the infinitely more com*

plex “hows'* of the next forty years. In fact, there i$ one and only



A LOOK AT THE FUTURE



434)



one means to their solution, a world-wide totalitarian dictatorship

which will allow technique its full scope and at the same time re-

solve the concomitant difficulties. It is not difficult to understand

why the scientists and worshippers of technology prefer not to

dwell on this solution, but rather to leap nimbly across the dull and

uninteresting intermediary period and land squarely in the golden

age. We might indeed ask ourselves if we will succeed in getting

through the transition period at all, or if the blood and the suffer-

ing required are not perhaps too high a price to pay for this

golden age.



If we take a hard, unromantic look at the golden age itself, we

are struck with the incredible naivete of these scientists. They say,

for example, that they will be able to shape and reshape at will

human emotions, desires, and thoughts and arrive scientifically at

certain efficient, pre-established collective decisions. They claim

they will be in a position to develop certain collective desires, to

constitute certain homogeneous social units out of aggregates of

individuals, to forbid men to raise their children, and even to

persuade them to renounce having any. At the same time, they

speak of assuring the triumph of freedom and of the necessity of

avoiding dictatorship at any price.* They seem incapable of grasp-

ing the contradiction involved, or of understanding that what

they are proposing, even after the intermediary period, is in fact

the harshest of dictatorships. In comparison, Hitler's was a trifling

affair. That it is to be a dictatorship of tesf tubes rather than of

hobnailed boots will not make it any less a dictatorship.



When our savants characterize their golden age in any but scien-

tific terms, they emit a quantity of down-at-the-heel platitudes that

would gladden the heart of the pettiest politician. Let's take a few

samples. “To render human nature nobler, more beautiful, and

more harmonious.” What on earth can this mean? What criteria,

what content, do they propose? Not many, I fear, would be able

to reply. “To assure the triumph of peace, liberty, and reason.”

Fine words with no substance behind them. “To eliminate cultural

lag ” What culture? And would the culture they have in mind be

able to subsist in this harsh social organization? “To conquer outer 1



1 The material here and below is cited from actual texts.



The Technological Society	(435



space.” For what purpose? The conquest of space seems to be an

end in itself, which dispenses with any need for reflection.



We are forced to conclude that our scientists are incapable of

any but the emptiest platitudes when they stray from their special-

ties. It makes one think back on the collection of mediocrities ac-

cumulated by Einstein when he spoke of God, the state, peace, and

the meaning of life. It is clear that Einstein, extraordinary mathe-

matical genius that he was, was no Pascal; he knew nothing of

political or human reality, or, in fact, anything at all outside his

mathematical reach. The banality of Einstein's remarks in matters

outside his specialty is as astonishing as his genius within it. It

seems as though the specialized application of all one's faculties in

a particular area inhibits the consideration of things in general.

Even J. Robert Oppenheimer, who seems receptive to a general

culture, is not outside this judgment. His political and social dec-

larations, for example, scarcely go beyond the level of those of the

man in the street. And the opinions of the scientists quoted by

tExpress are not even on the level of Einstein or Oppenheimer.

Their pomposities, in fact, do not rise to the level of the average.

They are vague generalities inherited from the nineteenth century,

and the fact that they represent the furthest limits of thought of our

scientific worthies must be symptomatic of arrested development

or of a mental block. Particularly disquieting is the gap between

the enormous power they wield and their critical ability, which

must be estimated as null. To wield power well entails a certain

faculty of criticism, discrimination, judgment, and option. It is im-

possible to have confidence in men who apparently lack these

faculties. Yet it is apparently our fate to be facing a ‘‘golden age”

in the power of sorcerers who are totally blind to the meaning of

the human adventure. When they speak of preserving the seed of

outstanding men, whom, pray, do they mean to be the judges. It

is clear, alas, that they propose to sit in judgment themselves. It is

hardly likely that they will deem a Rimbaud or a Nietszche worthy

of posterity. When they announce that they will conserve the

genetic mutations which appear to them most favorable, and that

they propose to modify the very germ cells in order to produce

such and such traits; and when we consider the mediocrity of the

scientists themselves outside the confines of their specialties, we



▲ LOOK AT THE FUTURE



436)



can only shudder at the thought of what they will esteem most

'‘favorable.’*



None of our wise men ever pose the question of the end of all

their marvels. The “wherefore’* is resolutely passed by. The re-

sponse which would occur to our contemporaries is: for the sake

of happiness. Unfortunately, there is no longer any question of

that. One of our best-known specialists in diseases of the nervous

system writes: “We will be able to modify man’s emotions, desires

and thoughts, as we have already done in a rudimentary way with

tranquillizers.’* It will be possible, says our specialist to produce a

conviction or an impression of happiness without any real basis

for it. Our man of the golden age, therefore, will be capable of

“happiness5* amid the worst privations. Why, then, promise us

extraordinary comforts, hygiene, knowledge, and nourishment if,

by simply manipulating our nervous systems, we can be happy

without them? The last meager motive we could possibly ascribe to

the technical adventure thus vanishes into thin air through the very

existence of technique itself.



But what good is it to pose questions of motives? of Why? All that

must be the work of some miserable intellectual who balks at tech-

nical progress. The attitude of the scientists, at any rate, is clear.

Technique exists because it is technique. The golden age will be

because it will be. Any other answer is superfluous.



Bibliography



In connection with this bibliography, the following points should be noted:



i) It makes no pretense to be exhaustive. 1 have listed only the works 1

have actually used and cited in the text. And since books are made to be read

and not consulted, 1 have rejected the scholarly tradition of specifying pages

ki footnotes.



a) I have omitted systematically most works predating 1940. They are

readily available elsewhere.



3)	1 have abo omitted literary works on technique, such as those of

Duhamel, Huxley, Ernst JUnger, Orwell, Gheorgiu, and others.



4)	I have not inserted references relating to projmganda and psychological

techniques, since these will be found in my forthcoming work on propaganda.



To these remarks of the author the translator wishes to add that it was

impossible to check quotations cited in the text, since page references are

lacking. In some cases, therefore, English has been translated into French

and then back into English, a procedure which can conceivably lead to novel

effects. But as M. Ellul has remarked, the books cited are to be read and not

consulted.



Publisher's Note. This bibliography is somewhat less extensive

than the bibliography in the original French edition since it in-

cludes only those works which are readily available in American

libraries.



438)



Ailleret, Charles: VArt de la guerre et de la technique. Paris: Charles-

Lavauzelle; 1949-1950.



American Marketing Society: The Technique of Marketing Research (pre-

pared by the Committee on Marketing Research Technique of the

American Marketing Society, Ferdinand C. Wheeler, Chairman). New

York: McGraw-Hill Book Company; 1937.



Angelopoulos, Angelos: VAtome unira-t-il le monde? Aspects Sconomiques,

sociaux, politiques. Paris: R. Pichon and R. Durand-Auzias; 1956.



-------: Planisme et progrds social. Paris: Librairie G6n6rale de Droit et de



Jurisprudence; 1949-1950.



Aragon, Louis: VHomme communiste. Paris: Gallimard; 1946-1953. * vol-

umes.



Ardant, Gabriel: Technique de Titat de la productivity du secteur public.

Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1953-



Aron, Raymond: La Soctite industrielle et la guerre. Paris: Plon; 1959.



-------: Le Grand schisme. Paris: Gallimard; 1948.



-------: Les Guerres en chatnes. Paris: Gallimard; 1951.



Aventur, Jacques: Sante collective et science economique. Les approches de

la comptability humaine (typed thesis). Bordeaux; 1954.



Baissette, Gaston: Les Merveilles de la mydccine. Editeurs Frangais R6unis;

1949-1950



Baker, John Randal: Science and the Planned State. New York: The Mac-

millan Company; 1945.



Balandier, Georges, ed.: Le "Tiers monde ” sous-dyveloppement et developpe-

ment. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1956. Revised edition,

1961.



-------: “Qu Tethnologie retrouv6 l’unit6 de lTiomme.” Esprit, No. 166 (April



1950), pp- 596-612.



Bardet, Gaston: . . . Dematn, cest Tan 2000! fans: Flon; 1952.



-------: Le Nouvel urbanisme. Paris: Vincent, Freal; 1948.



-------: Mission deTurbanisme. Paris: Editions Ouvrieres; 1949.



Bastide, Roger: Sociologie et psychanalyse. Paris: Presses Universitaires de

France; 1950.



Beaglehole, Ernest: “Evaluation Techniques for Induced Technological

Change.” International Social Science Bulletin, Vol. VII, No. 3 (1955),

pp. 376-86.



Beard, Miriam: A History of the Business Man. New York: The Macmillan

Company; 1938.



Beecher, Catherine Esther, and Harriet Beecher Stowe: The American

Womans Home: or, Principles of Domestic Science; Being a Guide

to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beauti-

ful, and Christian Homes. New York: J. B. Ford and Company; 1869.



Beecher, Catherine Esther: A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of

Young Ladies at Home, and at School. Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon

and Webb; 1841.



Bibliography



Bendix, Reinhard: "Bureaucracy: the Problem and Its Setting.” American

Sociological Review, VoL 12 (October 1947), pp. 493-507.



Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovich: Christianisme et la realiie sociale. Paris:

Editions “je sers”; 1934.



-------: Christianity and Class War. New York: Sheed and Ward; 1933.



-------: De VEsprit bourgeois. Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestle; 1949.



-------: The Bourgeois Mind, and other Essays. London: Sheed and Ward;



1934-



Bernanos, Georges: La France contre les robots. Paris: R. Laffont; 1947.



-------: La liherte, pour quoifaire? Paris: Gallimard; 1953.



Bernard, Luther Lee: "Invention and Social Progress.” American Journal of

Sociology, Vol. 29 (July 1923). pp* i~33-

Bertrand, Andre: "Les techniques du travail gouvernementale en Grande-

Bretagne.” Revue internationals (Thistoire politique et constitutiorielle.

N.S. nos. i-2 (January-June 1951), pp. 62-76.



Bettelheim, Charles: Les Problemes thcoriques ct pratiques de la pi unification.

Paris. Presses Universitaires de France; 1946.



-------: Traite d’economic politique, I’economic sovietique. Paris: Sirey;



1949-1950-



Biot, Rene: Offensives biologiques contre la personne. Paris: Editions Spes;

195°* „



Bloch, Marc: “Les Techniques, Thistoire et la vie. Note sur un grand problems

d'influences.” Annales d’historie economique et sociale, Vol. 8, No. 42

(November 1936), p. 513 ff.



Bogdanov, Alexander Alexandrovic: Allgemeine Organisationslehre, Tekto-

logie. Berlin: Organisation-Verlagsgesellschaft; 1926.



Borneeque, Eduard: "Police et armee dans les etats modernes.” Revue de

defense nationale (August 1947) pp. 198-211.



Bouthoul, Gaston: La Guerre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1953.



-------: Les Guerres; elements de polemologie. Paris: Payot; 1951.



Braibant, Guy: La planification en Tchecoslovaquie. Paris: A. Colin; 1948.

Brinkmann, Donald: Mensch und Technik, Grundziige einer Philosophic der

Teehnik. Bern: A. Franke; 1945.



Brittain, Robert E.: Let There Be Bread. New York: Simon and Schuster;

1952.



Brodsky, Michel: Production et economic industrielles, Vol. 14. Librairie

Generate de Droit et de Jurisprudence; 1952.



Bryson, Lyman: "Notes on a Theory of Advice.” Political Science Quarterly,

Vol. 66 (September 1951), pp. 321-39.



Buisson, Albert, et al.: VExperimentation humaine en medecine. P. Lethiel-

leux; 1952.



Burnham, James: The Managerial Revolution. New York: The John Day

Company; 1941.



-------: The Struggle for the World. New York: The John Day Company;



1947-



Bush, George Pollock, and Lowell M. Hattery, eds.: Scientific Research: Its



44°)



Administration and Organization. Washington: American University

Press; 1950.



CaiUois, Roger: Vhomme et le sacrS. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France;

*939- [Translated as Man and the Sacred. Glencoe, Illinois; Free

Press of Glencoe; i960.]



-------: Quatre essais de sociologie contemporaine. Paris: O. Perrin; 1951.



Carr, Sir Cecil T.: “Mechanics of Law-Making." Current Legal Problems,

Vol. 4 (1951), pp. 122-36.



Castelli, Enrico: II tempo esaurito, Roma: Bussola; 1947.



Castro, Josu6 de: Geographic de la faim: la faim au Brasil. Paris: Editions

Ouvriires; 1951.



-------: G6opoIitique de la faim. Paris: Editions Ouvri&res; 1952.



Charbonneau, B.: L'Ptat. Privately printed at M6z&res; 1952.



Chevalier, Jean: Organization. Paris: Dunod; 1957.



Clark, Colin: The Economics of 1950. London: Macmillan and Co.; 194*.

Combe, Paul: Niveau de vie et progr&s technique en France, 1660-1939.



Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1956.



Corte, Marcel de: Essai sur la fin (Tune civilisation. Paris: Librairie de

M^dicis; 1949.



-------: Incarnation de Vhomme. Psychologic des moeurs contemporaines.



Paris: Librarie de M^dicis; 1946.



-------: Philosophic des moeurs contemporaines. Brussels: Editions Univer-

sitaires; 1944.



Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nicolaus: Revolution durch Technik. Vienna:

Paneurapa Verlag; 1932.



Couffignal, Louis: Les machines & penser. Paris: Edition* de Minuit; 1952.

Courtine, Robert: L’Assassin est & votre table. La Pens6e Modeme; 1956.

Crozier, Michel: “La Civilisation technique." Let Temps modernest No. 76

(February 1952), p. 1497 ff.



-------: “Human Engineering." Let Temps modernes. No. 69 (July 1951),



p- 44 ff-



Dahrendorf. Ralf: Sozialstruktur des Betriebe?; Betriebssosiolcgie. Wiesbaden;

T. Gabler; 1959.



Dandieu, Amaud and Robert Aron: La Revolution ntcessaire. Paris: B. Gras-

set; 1933.



-------:	Le Cancer amSricain. Paris: Rieder; 1931.



Deffontaines, Pierre: Geographic et religions. Paris: Gallimard; 1948.



De Lion, Andr6: L’Ptat et les entreprises publiques. Paris: Sirey; 1958.

Dickson, W. J., and Fritz Jules Roethlisberger: Management and the Worker.



Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; 1939.



Diebold, John: Automation, the Advent of the Automatic Factory. New York:

Van Nostrand; 1952.



Diehls, Herman: Antike Technik. Leipzig: B. C. Treubner; 1924.



Bibliography	(441



Driencourt, Jacques: La Propaganda, nouvelle force politique. Paris: A. Colin;

1950.



Duboin, Jacques: La Grande reUve des homines par la machine. Paris: Les

Editions Nouvelles; 1931.



Dubreuil, Hyacinthe: Nouveaux standards; les sources de la productivity et

de la pie. Paris: B. Grasset; 1931.



-------: Robots or Men? A French Workmans Experience in American In-

dustry. New York: Harper and Brothers; 1930.



Ducass6, Pierre: Histoire des techniques. Paris: Presses Universitaires de

France; 1945,



■	: Les Techniques et le philosophe. Paris: Presses Universitaires de



France; 1958.



Duchet, Ren6: Bilan de la civilisation technicienne, anSantissement ou pro-

motion de rhomme. Toulouse: Private-Didier; 1955.



Dumont, Ren6: VEconomic agricole dans le monde. Paris: Dalloz; 1953.



Duplessy, Lucien: La Machine ou Thomme. Paris: Colombe; 1947.



Dupriez, L6on Hugo: "LTntensit6 du progr&s technique." Des mouvements

iconomiques generaux. Louvain: Institut des recherches 6conomiques

et sociales. University de Louvain; 1947.



Einstein, Albert: The World as I See It. New York: Covici Friede; 1934.



Eliade, Mircea: TraitS dhistoire des religions. Paris: Payot; 1949.



Ellul, Jacques: Presence au monde moderne. Geneva: Roulet; 1948.



Espinas, Alfred Victor: Les OHgines de la technologie. Paris: F. Alcan; 1897.



Faber, Maurice: "La Technocratic a-t-elle une mission?" Economie et Hu-

manisms , No. 88 (\pv ember-Dec ember 1954), p. 32.



Faucheux, J.; La Decentralisation industrielle. Berger-Levrault; 1959.



Feely, James K., Jr.: "Analysis of Administrative Purpose." American Political

Science Review, Vol. 45 (December 1951), pp. 1069-80.



Felice, Philippe de: Foules en delire, extases collectives. Paris: A. Michel;

1947-



Ferrero, Guglielmo: La Fin des aventures. Paris: Les Editions Rieder; 1931.



-------: Pouvoir; les g^nies invisible de la city. Paris: Plan; 1943. [Translated



as The Principles of Power; the Great Political Crises of History. New

York: C. P. Putnam’s Sons; 1943.]



Ford, Henry: My Life and Work. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page

and Company; 1923.



Fourastiy, Jean: La Civilisation de iq6o. Paris: Presses Universitaries de

France; 1947.



-------: Le Grand espoir deXX* sidcle; progrds technique, progrds economi-



que, progrds social. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1949.



-------: Machinisme et bien-Stre, niveau de vie et genre de vie en France



de 1700 d nos jours. Paris: Editions de Minuit; 1951 and 1963.

[Translated as The Causes of Wealth. Glencoe, 111,: Free Press;

i960.]



44*)



Fourasti£, Jean: Revolution d TQuest. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France;

1957-



Freyer, Hans: Theorie des gegenuxirtigen Zeitalters. Stuttgart: Deutsche

Verlags-Anstalt; 1955.



Fried, J. H. E,; “The Social and Economic Role of Technicians.” Inter-

national Labour Review; 1947.



-------: “Social and Economic Role of Engineers and Technicians.” In-

ternational Labour Review, Vol. 55 (June 1947), pp. 512-37.

Friedmann, Georges: La Crise du progrds. Paris: Gallimard; 1936.



-------: Le Travail en miettes, specialisation et loisirs. Paris: Gallimard;



1956. [Translated as The Anatomy of Work; Labor, Leisure and

the Implications of Automation. New York: Free Press of Glen-

coe; 1962.]



-------: Ou va le travail humain? Paris: Gallimard; 1950.



-------: ProbUmes humains du machinisme IndustrieI Paris: Gallimard;



1946.



Friedwald, Eugene-Marie:	VHumanite doit choisir. Calinann-Levy;



1949-1950.



Frisch, Alfred, et al.: Civilisation du travail? Civilisation du loisir?

A. Fayard; 1956.



-------: Une Reponse au defi de Xhistoire. Descl£e de Brouwer; 1954.



Gachkel, Serge: Le Mechanisme des finances sovietiques. Paris: Payot;

1946.



Galtier-Boissiere, Jean, and Ren6 Lefebvre: Histoire de la presse. Le

Crapouillet; 1934.



Gehlen, Arnold: Die Seele im technische Zeitalter. Hamburg: Rowohlt; 1957.

George, Pierre: La Ville. Le fait urbain d trovers de monde. Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France; 1952.



Giedion, Siegfried: Mechanization Takes Command. New York: Ox-

ford University Press; 1948.



Gillouin, Ren6: Mans Hangman Is Man. Mundelein, 111.: Island Press;

1957*



Girardeau, Emile Ferdinand Engine: Le Progrds technique et la personnalite

humaine. Paris: Plon; 1955.



Glass, Max: VEurope invincible. Editions Monde Nouveau; 1948.



Clavier, Jean-Francis: Decentralisation et progrds technique. Paris: Flam-

marion; 1954.



Goldstein, Julius: Die Technik. Frankfurt am Main: Riitten & Loening; 1912.

Goodman, Leonard Landon: Man and Automation. Harmondsworth, Eng-

land: Penguin Books; 1957.



Graham, Sylvester: A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making. Boston: Light

and Steams; 1837.



Gravier, Jean Francis: Paris et le desert francais; decentralisation, equipe-

mentt population. Paris: LePortulan; 1947.



Gross, Feliks: "Some Social Consequences of Atomic Discovery." American



Bibliography	(443



Sociological Review, Vol. 15 (February 1950), pp. 43-50, and Vol. 16

(February 1951), pp. 100-2.



Cuitton, Henri: “Stagnation et croissance £conomiquesRevue dtconomie

politique, Vol. LXI (January-February 1951), pp. 5-40.



Gurvitch, Georges, ed.: Industrialisation et technocratic. Paris: A. Colin; 1949.



Haberler, Gottfried: The Theory of International Trade with Its Application

to Commercial Policy. London: W. Hodge; 1956.



Haesaert, Jean-Polydore: Theorie generate du droit. Paris: Sirey; 1949-1950.



Hartmann, Georges: Le Patronat, les salaries, TEtat face d Tautomation. Paris:

Societe Fr an$ais du Livre; 1957.



Hayek, Friedrich August von: La Route de la servitude. Paris: Librairie de

Medicis; 1945.



Heissenberg, Werner: Philosophic Problems of Nuclear Science. London:

Faber and Faber; 1952.



Herskovits, Melville J.: “Motivation and Culture Pattern in Technological

Change.” International Social Science Bulletin, Vol. VI, No. 3 (1954),

pp. 388-400.



Hicks, John Richard: Value and Capital. Oxford: The Clarendon Press; 1939.



Homey, Karen: The Neurotic Personality. New York: W. W. Norton & Com-

pany; 1937.



Huxley, Aldous: Ends and Means. New York: Harper and Brothers; 1937.



i.n.s.e.e. [Institut national de la statistique et des Etudes £conomiques]:

Les Comptabilites nationales dans le monde. Paris: Presses Univer-

sitaires de France; 1952.



Jaffe, Abram J.: “Technological Innovations and the Changing Socioeconomic

Structure.” Scientific Monthly, Vol. 67 (August 1948), pp. 93-102.



James, Emile: Histoire de la penste economique au XX*s. Paris: Presses Uni-

ver^itaires de France; 1955.



Jaspers, Karl: Man in the Modern Age. New York: Henry Holt and Company;

1933-



Jung, Carl Gustav: Modem Man m Search of a Soul. New York: Harcourt,

Brace; 1956.



Jiinger, F.: Die Perfection der Technik. Frankfurt: Klostermann; 1949.



-------: Maschine und Eigentum. Frankfurt: Klostermann; 1949.



Jungk, Robert: Die Zukunfk hat schon begonnen; Amerikas Allmacht und

Ohnmacht. Stuttgart: Scherz and Goverts; 1952. [Translated as To-

morrow Is Already Here; Scenes from a Man-Made World. London:

R. Hart-Davis; 1954.]



Karpinski, V.: La Structure sociale et politique de TU.R.S.S. Editions Sociales;

195*-



Keynes, John Maynard: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and

Money. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company; 1936.



444 )



King, Robert Waldo: "Whither the Technological State?'* Political Science

Quarterly, Vol. 65 (March 1950), pp. 55-67.



Kohn-Braxnstedt, Ernst: Dictatorship and Political Police; the Technique of

Control by Fear. London: I. Paul, Trench, Trubner; 1945.



Lafeuillade, Jean: Let Grander lots de Xorganization. Le XVIII* siEcle. L*Evo-

lution militaire organique. Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle It Cie.; 1937.

Lajugie, Joseph: "La Concentration ^conomique." TraitE diconomie politique.



Paris: Dalloz; 1951 and 1953.



Laloup, Jean, and Jean N61is: Hommet et machines; initiation i Xhumanisme

technique. Casterman; 1953.



Landowska, Wanda: Le Travail en musique. Paris: Plon; 1949-50.



Laski, Harold Joseph: “Bureaucracy." Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

New York: The Macmillan Company, Vol. Ill (1951), pp. 70-74.



-------; Reflections on the Revolution of our Time. New York: TTie Viking



Press; 1943.



Laaserre, Georges: Socialises dans la libertE; vocation de XEurope. Paris:

A. Michel; 1949.



La til, Pierre de: La PensEe ertiflcielle; introduction i la cybemEtique. Paris:

Gallimard; 1953.



Laufenburger, Henry: VIntervention de XEtat en matiEre Economique. Paris:

Librairie C6n6rale de Droit et de Jurisprudence; 1938.



-	VEconomic allemagne a XEpreuve de la guerre. Paris: Librairie de



M£dicis; 1940.



Lauga, Pierre: Le REvolution urbaine, ou VArchitecture au secourt de

XEconomic politique. Paris: Editions "Je sen"; 1946.



Laviosa Zambiotti, Pia: Origint e diffusions della civiltd. Milano: Marzorati;

1947-



Lefebvre des Noettes, Richard: La Force motrice anitrude i tfuvcn le*

Ages. Paris: Berger-Levrault; 19*4.



Lenin, V. I.: Selected Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing

House; 1946-1947.



Lerich, L6on: La Police scientifique. Paris: Presses Univenitaires de France;



1949-



Leroi-Courhan, Andr6: Milieu et techniques. Evolution et techniques.

A. Michel; 1945.



Lescure, Jean: Etude sociale comparEe des rEgimes de libertE et des rEgimes

autorkakes. Domat-Monchrestien; 1940.



Lilienth&f, David Ely: TV A: Democracy on the March. New York: Harper k

Brothers; 1944.



Litt, Theodor: Technlsches Denken und menschliche Bildung. Heidelberg:

Quelle It Meyer; 1957.



Lombroso-F errero, Cina: La Ranfon du machinisme. Paris: Payot; 1931.

[Translated as The Tragedies of Progress. New York: E. P. Dutton;

1931.]



Bibliography	(



McKellar, Peter: “Responsibility for the Nazi Policy of Extermination.’' Journal

of Social Psychology, Vol. 34 (November 1951) , pp. 153-63.



Maclaurin, William Rupert: “Process of Technological Innovation; the

Launching of a New Scent for Industry.” American Economic Review»

Vol. 40 (March 1950), pp. 90-112.



Malaparte, C.: Technique du coup dEtat. Paris: B. Crasset; 1932.



Mantoux, Paul: La Revolution industrieUe au XVIII* sttcle. Society Nouvelle

de Librairie; 1906.



Marchal, Andre: Methods scientifique et science economique. Paris: Librairie

de Medicis; 1952 and 1955.



-------: Economic politique et technique statistique. Paris: Libraire GEnErale



de Droit et de Jurisprudence; 1948.



Marlio, Louis: Le Cercle infernal. Paris: Flammarion; 1951.



Martinet, Gilles: “Le Deperissementderetat" La Revue Internationale, Vol 6,

No. 25-26 (January-June 1951), pp- ao-a6.



Mas, Antoine: VIntroduction du machinisme dans le travail administrate Set

aspects technique, economique et social. Paris: Dunod; 1949-1950.



Maucorps, Paul H.: Psychologic des mouvements sociaux. Paris: Presses Uni-

versitaires de France; 1950.



Mauss, Marcel: Sociologie et anthropologic. Paris: Presses Universitaires de

France; 1949-1950.



Merigot, Jean: “Autour de l'Homo oeconomicus." Economic contemporaine

(March-June 1949), p. 6 ff.



Mey, Abraham: “Les Transformations de la comptabilitE publique." Inter-

national Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. XVII (1951), pp.

470-92.



Mises, Ludwig von: La Bureaucratic. Paris: Librairie de Media's; 1946.

[Translated as Bureaucracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

Press; 1944]



Monnerot, Jules: Sociologie du communisme. Paris: Gallimard; 1949-1950.



-------: La Guerre en question. Paris: Gallimard; 1952.



Moraze, Charles: La France bourgeois, XV111*-XX* siecles. Paris: A. Colin;

1946.



-------: Essaisur la civilisation dOccident. Paris: A. Colin; 1949-1950.



Mosse, Robert: “Le Domaine et la nature de la connaissance Economique."'

La Revue des Sciences Economiques, Vol 24, No. 77 (March 1949),

P-J3 ff-



-------: “Le Keynisme devant le socialisme." La Revue Socialiste, Vol II,



No- 33 (January 1950), p. 13 ff.



Mounier, Emmanuel: La Petite peur du XX* siicle. Editions du Seuil; 1948.



-------: Manifeste au service du personnalisme. F. Aubier; 1936.



Mumford, Lewis: The Culture of Cities, New York: Harcourt, Brace and

Company; 1938.



-------: Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Com-

pany; 1934.



Munson, Claude: Le Maniement des homines. Paris: Flammarion; 1950.



446)



Navel, Georges: Travaux. Delemain et Boutelleau; 1945.



Naville, Pierre: La Vie de travail et ses problemes. Paris: A. Colin; 1954.



: “Th6orie de Torientation professionnelle.” Nouvelle Revue Fran-

gaise; 1945.



Nef, John Ulric: La Route de la guerre totale. Paris: A. Colin; 1949-1950.

Newmark, Maxim, ed.: Illustrated Technical Dictionary. New York: The

Philosophical Library; 1944.



o.e.c.e. [Organisation Europ6enne de Cooperation 6conomique]: Comp-

tabilitS mdustrielle et productivity. Le rdle de la comptabilite in-

dustrielle aux U.S.A. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1952.

Ogbum, William F., and M. F. Nimkoff: Technology and the Changing

Family. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1955.



-------•, eds.: Technology and International Relations. Chicago: University of



Chicago Press; 1949.



-------: “Technology and sociology.” Social Forces, Vol. 17, No. 1, p. 1-8.



Oppenheimer, J. Robert: The Open Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster;

1955-



Ortega y Gasset, Jos6: The Revolt of the Masses. New York: W. W. Norton;

1957-



Palmade, Guy: La Psychotechnique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France;

1955-



Pareto, Vilfredo: The Mind and Society; a Treatise on General Sociology.



New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.; 1935.



Park, R. E.: “Culture and Cultural Trends.” American Sociological Society

Publications, Vol. 19 (1925), pp. 24-36.



Pasermadjian, Hrant: Le Gouvernement des grandes organisations. Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France; 1955.



Passet, Rene: Problemes economiques de Vautomation. Domat-Monfchrpstfprv

*957-



Paton, Herbert James: The Modern Predicament; a Study in the Philosophy

of Religion. New York: The Macmillan Company; 1955.



Perroux, Francois: Science de Vhomme et science economique. Paris: Librarie



de Medicis) 1943.



: La Technique du capitalisme. Lesfauries; 1939.



Persian, Walter: “Religios-Politische Krisis des Buddhismus.” Europa Archiv.,

Vol. 6, No. 23 (December 5,1951). pp*4539“48*



Pimlott, John Alfred Ralph: Public Relations and American Democracy.



Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1951.



Pollock, Fr6d6rick: VAutomation. Editions deMinuit; 1957.



Rathenau, Walter: Was wird werden. Berlin: G. Fisher; 1920.



Reiwald, P.: De TEsprit des masses. Traite de psychologie collective. Neu-

chatel: Delachaux et Niestle; 1949-1950.



Rice, Stuart Arthur, and Joseph W. Keppel: “Strategic Intelligence and the



Bibliography	(447



Publication of Statistics.*' American Political Science Review, Vol. 45

(December 1951), pp. 1058-68.



Ripert, Georges: Aspects furidiques du capitalisme modeme. Librairie Gen-

erate de Droit et de Jurisprudence; 1946.



: Le Declin du droit. Etudes sur la legislation contemporaine. Librairie

Generate du Droit et de Jurisprudence; 1949-1950*



Robin, Armand: La Fausse parole. Editions de Minuit; 1953.



Rodgers, Cleveland: American Planning; Past, Presentt Future. New York:

Harper & Brothers; 1947.



Roethlisberger, Fritz Jules: Management and Morale. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-

vard University Press; 1941.



Rolin, Jean: Drogues de Police. Paris: Plon; 1949-1950.



Romains, Jutes: Le ProbUme numero un. Paris: Plon; 1947.



Rosenberg, Alfred: Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mimchen: Hoheneichen-

Verlag; 1932.



Rossi, Amilcare: Crise frangaise, crise mondiale. Physiologie due parti com-

muniste. Societe d’Editions Litteraires Francises; 1949-1950.



Rousiers, Paul: Les Grandes industries modernes. Paris: A. Colin; 1924-1925.

Rousset, David: LVnivers concentrationnaire. Editions du Pavois; 1946.

Russell, Bertrand: Impact of Science on Society. New York: Simon and

Schuster; 1953.



Samuelson, Paul: Economics, an Introductory Analysis. New York: McGraw-

Hill Book Co.; 1961.



Sauvy, Alfred: Bien-etreet population. Editions Sociales Frangaise; 1945.

Schelsky, Helmut: Die sozialen Folgen der Automatisierung. Diisseldorf,

Koln: Diederichs; 1957.



Schuhl, Pierre-Maxime: Machinisme et philosophic. Paris: F. Alcan; 1938.

Schumacher, Fritz: Der “Fluch” der Technik. Hamburg: Boy sen & Maasch;

1933-



Scott, J. F., and R. F. Lynton: The Community Factor in Modern Technology.



unesco Tensions and Technology Series No. 1, 1952.



Sheldon, Oliver, et al.: Factory Organization. London: Pitman & Sons; 1928.

Siegfried, Andre: Aspects du XX* si&cle. Machette; 1955.



: "L’Age administratif.” La Revue litterature histoire, arts et sciences

des deux mondes. No. 9 (May 1,1951), pp. 3-12.



Simonet, Roger: Les Derniers progrds de la physique. Calmann-Levy; 1948-

1950.



Sluckin, W.: Minds and Machines. Baltimore: Penguin Books; i960.



Smith, J. M., and T. E. Chester: "The Distribution of Power in the National-

ized Industries.” British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 2 (December

1950, pp-275-93-



Sombart, Werner: Der modeme Kapitalismus. Munich: Duncker & Humblot;

1924.



-------: VApogee du capitalisme. Paris: Payot; 1932.



44«)



Sorre, Maximilien: Let Fondements de la geographic humaine. Let Fonde-

ments techniques. Paris: A. Colin; 1949-1950.



Spongier, Oswald: The Decline of the West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf;

1957-



-------: Afon and Technics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 193a.



Taton, Ren*, ed.: Histoire generate des sciences. Paris: Presses Universitaires

de France; 1958.



Tchakhotin, Serge: Organisation rotionnelle de la recherche scientifique.

Paris: Hermann et Cie.: 1938.



-------: Le Viol des joules par la propagande. Paris: Callimard; 1939.



[Translated as The Rape of the Masses. London: G. Routledge fit Sons;



1940]



Toynbee, Arnold: Civilization on Trial. New York: Oxford University Press;

1948.



uhesco: Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, a manual edited by Mar-

garet Mead. 1953.



unesco: Education in a Technological Society; a Preliminary International

Survey of the Nature and Efficacy of Technical Education. 195a.



Valois, Georges: Technique de la revolution syndicate. Paris: Edition "Li-

bert*”; 1935.



Veblen, Thorstein: The Theory of Business Enterprise. New York: Charles

Scribner’s Sons; 193a.



Veill*, Roger: La Radio et les hommes. Paris: Editions de Minuit; 1952.

Vierendeel, Arthur: Esquisse dune histore de la technique. Brussels: Vromaat;

1921.



Vincent, Andre L. A., and Ren* Froment: Le Progrds technique en France

dupuis cent ans. Imprimerie nationale: 1Q44.



-------: Initiation d la conjoncture economique. Paris: Presses Universitaires



de France; 1947.



Vogt, William: Rood to Survival New York: W. Sloane Associates; 1948.



Waffenschmidt Walter Georg: Wktschaftsmschar.ik. Stuttgart: W. Xohlham-

mer; 1957.



Walther, L*on: La Psychologie du travail. Travail mdustriel. Geneva: Edition

du Mont-Blanc; 1947.



Weil, Simone: Le Condition ouvridre. Paris: Gallimard; 1951.



Weill, Georges: Le journal. Origines, evolution et rdle de la Presse pdriodique.



La Renaissance du Livre; 1934.



Weiner, Norbert: Cybernetics. New York: M.I.T. Press; 1961.



-------: The Human Use of Human Beings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1950.



Wengert, Norman: "TVA—Symbol and Reality.” Journal of Politics, Vol. 13

(August 1951). PP- 369-9*-

Weyl, Alfred Richard: Guided Missiles. London: Temple Press; 1949.



Bibliography



Whyte, William Hollingsworth: The Organization Man. New York: Simon

and Schuster; 1956.



Williams. Gertrude: The Price of Social Security. London: I. Paul, Trench,

Trubner & Co.; 1944.



Yugow, A.: "Economic Statistics in the U S.S.R," The Review of Econotnie

Statistic*. Vol. XXIX, No. 4 (November 1947), pp. *42-6.



Index



abstract man, myth of, 390, 391

Academy of Sciences, in Soviet

Union, 314-15, 43*

accounting technique, 166-7

adaptation, 397, 398, 408; as

key word of human techniques,

348



Adenauer, Konrad, 269

administrative techniques, 231-2

advertising, 364, 365, 406-8

aesthetics, 72, 73

Africa: and Dardenne’s inquiry,

255; Soviet intervention in, 283

agriculture, 38, 57, 104, 105, 106,

108, 116, 151-2, 274, 339, 433

Algeria, 127, 272

Alvaro, Cerrado, 413

amusement technique, 113-14,

115,375-8*

anti-Semitism, 408

anxiety, 331,336

Archimedes, 28, 52, 62

architecture, 38



Ardant, Gabriel, 254, 264, 268,

278



Aristotle, xv, xxix



art, subordinated to technique,

128, 129, 404

Aspects sociaux de h rationali-

sation, 354

assembly line: in United States,

58; worker’s uneasiness on, 395

Assyrians, 52

Atlantic Pact, 182, 277

atomic bomb, 61, 62, 86, 98, 99,

M5



atomic energy: industrial use of,

99; need for state control of,

157, 235; research projects in,

249



atomic waste, problem of disposal

of, 109

Augustine, Saint, 34

Australia, 197



automation, 135-6,153-4,433;

abo cybernetics; electronic cal-

culating machine

automatism, technical, see techni-

cal automatism

automatons, 45



INDEX



H)



autonomy o f technique, 133-47

Aventur, Jacques, 159, *13, 431



backward peoples, 117, 118, lao,

121,122,123

Bakunin, Mikhail A., 222

Bardet, Gaston, 153, 270

Barth, Karl, 290



Bastide, Roger, 404; quoted, 124

Bata, Thomas, 248, 351 and n.

Beecher, Catherine Esther, 326

and n.



Belgium, 248

Bergson, Henri, 429

Berlin Institute of Applied Psy-

chology, 368

Bertolino, on standardization, 211,

212,213

Bettelheim, Charles, 174,177

Bevan, Aneurin, 277

Beveridge Plan, 103

biocracy, 398,414

biogenetics, 143,389

biometry, 139,342

"black” novels, 417

Bloch, Marc, 23

Bodin, Jean, 39

Boer War, 272

Boulton, Matthew, 53

bourgeoisie, 58, 219, 221, 222,

421; involved with technique,

53-4; technicians of, and wor-

ship of technique, 144-5; moral-

ity of work constructed by, 220;

in scapegoat role for Commu-

nists, 366

Bourget, Paul, 418

Bouthoul, Gaston, 137

Brazil, 104



Breton, Andr£, 416,417,426

Buddhism, 32,76,121,130

Bulgaria, 272



Bulletin of the Social Sciences, 121

Bureau of Standards, in United

States, 169,259



Burnham, James, 11

Butlin vacation camps, 380-1



Caillois, Roger, 422

calculating machine, electronic, 16,

89. 163, 429-30; see also auto-

mation; cybernetics

Camichel, Charles, 10, 93

Canada: police power in, 103;

vitrification process undertaken

in, 109



capitalism, 5, 53, 56, 104,144, 184,

197, 201, 236, 364, 418; and

technical automatism, 81-2; and

technological unemployment,

103; use of statistical data re-

stricted by, 169; and norms in

economic technique of interven-

tion, 172; technique as factor

in destruction of, 198, 236-7;

state, 245, 247; technique of

human relations in, 356

Carnegie, Dale, 341

Cartwright, Edmund, 112

Castelli, Enrico, 329 n.



Castro, Fidel, 197

Castro, J. de, 104, 107, 108

Cato the Elder, 36

Caus. Solomon De, 8

Celsus, 34

cenobitism, 37



Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, xxxi,

234



charism, mechanized, 423

Charles I, 55



China, 70, 266; Communist, xii,

121, 179 n.



Chirico, Giorgio de, 129, 404

Christianity: and technique, 32-8;

taboos resulting from, 49; in

eighteenth-century England, 56

Church of England, 56

Ciliga, A., 255



city, big, phenomenon of, 113-14



Index



city-planning technique, H3» a37»

270



Clark, Colin, 88,104

CNRS, in France, 311-12, 313

Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 41

collective incubation, 48, 59

colonialism, 118,119

Combat (newspaper), 349

combine, created by technical ne-

cessity, 156

comfort: in technical society, 66;



in Middle Ages, 66-7

commons, enclosure of, 57

Communism, 81, 82, 121,144,196,

206, 221, 260, 266, 282-3, 289,

290, 322, 365, 383, 384, 403.

420, 422; see also Marxism;

socialism; Soviet Union

Communist Party, in Soviet Union:

and ITR, 255-6; and Lysenko,

315



compass, nautical, invention of, 38

competition, 204; adverse to lib-

eralism, 203

computer, electronic, 16, 89, 163,

429-30; see also automation;

cybernetics

concentration camp, 131-2, 272-3,

386, 388, 398; imposed by

technical necessity, 102-3, 14°

consciousness: intervention of, in

technical operation, 20, 21; be-

clouded by amusement tech-

niques, 380, 381

consumer research, 273

corporation, 113, 154, 155, 170,

235; technical and basic sci-

entific research by, 317

corporatism, 183,185, 186, 246

Cort, Henry, 58

Couffignal, Louis, 349

counselor, industrial, 353

Cromwell, Oliver, 56

Crozier, Michel, 353, 419

Crusades, 35,68



(Hi



cybernetics, 45* 136. a79 n,» 34a*

392; see also automation; elec-

tronic calculating machine

cyclotron, 145, 236

Czechoslovakia, 382



Dardenne, African inquiry by, 455

Dawes plan, 182

D.D.T., as poison for warm-

blooded animals, 106

decentralization, 199-200

De Civitate Dei, 34

Deffontaines, Pierre, 23	76



Defoe, Daniel, 56

De Gaulle, Charles, xi

de la Mattrie, Julien Offroy, 395 n.

democracy: technique opposed to,

408-18; perverted by accumula-

tion of propaganda techniques,

275-6; dictatorship imitated by,

288-9; devalued by propaganda,



373-4

Denmark, 248, 269

depression, economic, 151

Descartes, Ren6, xiv, 40,43,54

determinism, technological form

of, xxxiii



dialectics, opposed to statistics, 206

Dickson, W. J., 305

dictatorship: problem of, posed by

decolonization, 123; implied by

standardization, 213; politicians

and technicians in, 256-7; imi-

tated by democracy, 288-9;

technicized sport in, 383; world-

wide totalitarian, 434

Diderot, Denis, 46

dissociation of man, 398-402

DNA, 143

“dreams, great,” 404

Driencourt, Jacques, 125, 285;



quoted, 286

Duboin, Jacques, 137

Ducass6, Pierre, 3, 38,62

Duchamp, Marcel, 404



INDEX



iv)



Dumont, Ren6, 108

Dupriez, Hugo, 88



EAC, 259



East German Democratic Repub-

lic, New Work Code in, 104

ECA, 182



econometrics, 16, 164, 165,171

economic man, 218-27

economic science, 159 ff.; defined,

157-8



economic technique (s), 22, 114-

15, 148-227 passim; secret ways

of, 158-83 passim; statistics in,

163-5, 169. 170. 195. 196; of

observation, 163-71; accounting

in, 166-7; method of models in,

167-8; public-opinion analysis

in, 168-9; action, 171-7; see

also technique (s), economic

systems confronted by

economy:	centralized,	193-200;



authoritarian, 200-8; antidemo-

cratic, 208-18

economy of forms, principle of, 67

ecstatic phenomena, 420 and n.,

421, 422, 423, 424, 426

educational technique, 344-9; see

also pedagogy

efficiency, as end of technique, 21,

72, 73, 74, 80, 110

Egypt, ancient, 36, 52, 68, 70,

295



Einstein, Albert, 10, 317,435

electrical networks, interconnec-

tion of, 237

electronic banks, in year 2000, 432

electronic calculating machine, 16,

89, 163, 429-30; see also auto-

mation; cybernetics

Elkin, A. P., quoted, 122

enclosure of commons, 57

Engels, Friedrich, 62

Engel’s law, xv, xvi



Engineers and the Price System,

The,\



England, see Great Britain

eroticism, 415,416, 425, 426

Esprit, quoted, 384

Essai sur la civilisation d'Occident,

48



Etruscans, 33

existentialism, 426



famine, problem of, 107, 108, 109

and n.



Faraday, Michael, 8

Fascism, 238, 246, 262, 263, 266,

289, 290, 420; see also National

Socialism

fatalism, xxix, xxx

fatigue of worker, 338,350,351

feedback, 14 n.



Feely, James K., Jr., 264,265

Ferrero, Guglielmo, 229

fifteenth century, technique in,



38-9. 72



financial technique, 113, 230-1,

244-5



First World War, maladroit prop-

aganda used during, 365

Fondement theologique du droit,

292 n

Ford, Henry, 211, 350

Fourastie, Jean, xxxi, 61, 64, 88,

91, 150, 192, 198, 336; tech-

nique defined by, 15, 16, 17;

quoted, 215,245

France, 155, 167, 349, 252, 262,

263, 267, 268, 272, 278, 295,

324, 326, 349, 422 and n.;

flexibility of state intervention

in, 187; groundwork for electri-

fication of, 195; Maison de la

Presse in, 240; insurance indus-

try in, 241; economic planning

in, 269, 270; National Center

for Scientific Research in, 311-

12, 313; increase of popula-



Index



France (Continued)

tion in, 328; education in, 344,

345, 349'> trade unionism in,

357; vocational guidance in,

359, 362

Franco, Francisco, 263

Frankel, Charles F., quoted, 122

Frankel, S. Herbert, quoted, 122

Frederick the Great, 43, 229

free enterprise, 200,202,205

French Revolution, 43, 50, 140,

209, 229, 230, 232, 243-4, 281

Friedmann, Georges, xxxi, 274,

275, 325, 336, 350, 353, 354,

373, 400; technique defined by,

17; quoted, 311, 322-3,400

F r isch, Ragn or, xxxi

Fromm, Erich, xi



Futur a dejd commend, Le,



432 »•



Gallup Institute, 168

“general system theory," 421 n.

General Theory, Keynes's, 150

genetics, in year 2000, 432-3

Geographie des religions, 23

Geography of Hunger, The, 104

Germany, 187, 238, 241, 244-5,

256, 257, 322, 382; economic

planning in, 174, 269; occupied,

CIC in, 272; propaganda in,

before and during Second World

War, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371;

postwar neuroses in, 370; see

also Hitler, Adolf; National So-

cialism



Giedion, Siegfried, v, 45, 58, 66,



67, 129, 135, Mi* 152, 327;



quoted, 52,129, 133, 134~5, *37

Gilbreth, Frank B., 53, 181, 330,

33i



Gille, Bertrand, 36; quoted, 7, 71

Girondists, 51

Glass, Max, 233, 283

Goebbels, Josef, 420



(«



Gosplan, 315

Graham, Sylvester, 327

Gravier, Jean Francis, 199

Great Britain, 152, 252, 257, 258,

263, 272, 277; National Re-

search Project in, 172; concept

of full employment in, 180;

Centra! Committee for National

Patriotic Organization in, 240;

economic planning in, 26g;

intervention by, in Greece

(1944), 282; Butlin's vacation

camps in, 380-1

Greece, ancient, 70,	73; and



technique, 27-9, 33, 44, 45, 70;

slavery in, 66; art in, 68;

athletes of, 382

Gueron, J., 336

guilds, 50, 51, 67



Guitton, Henri, 150; quoted, 6

gunpowder, invention of, 38



Haberler, Gottfried, 150, 189, 190

Hargreaves, James, 112

Hayek, Friedrich August von, 178,

180

H-bomb, 285



Hegel, Georg, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, 52

historical science, technique of, 8

Hitler, Adolf, xvii. 59, 83,191,213,

239, 240, 244, 254, 255, 261,

262, 276, 290, 322; quoted, 84,

367; see also Germany; National

Socialism

Hoeffding, Harald, xiv; quoted, xiii

Holland, 248, 264

Homans, George C., quoted, 65

and n.



Hoover Committee, for elimination

of waste, 156

Horney, Karen, 333

Howard, Albert, 339

human engineering, 351,353

human relations, technique of,

354-6



•0



human technique(s), aa, 98, *16,

319-427; necessities of, 319-

40; hopes placed in, 336-8; army

experiments in, 343; multiplicity

of, 343-4; adaptation as key

word of, 348; related to all other

techniques, 394; and total in-

tegration of personality, 410-27

humanism, 430, 431; of seven-

teenth century, 41-2; technical,

33$> 337. 338. 339, 340. 348.

350, 409

Huxley, Aldous, xi

Huygens, Christian, 8



immigration, problems raised by,

270-1

Incas, 70



incubation, collective, 48, 59

India, 32,147,179 n., 266

Indian Journal of Political Science,

178 n., 179 n.



Industrial Revolution, 42-60 pas-

sim



initiative, censored by technique,

420



input-output technique, 166

Inquisition, 59

insemination, artificial, in year

*ooo, 432-3

instincts, integration of, 415

integration, total, as object of

technique, 410-27

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile,

284



International Agency for Atomic

Energy, 109

International Labor Organization,

354



invention, 23, 38, 70; in eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries, 44,

52; propagation of, 50; in United

States (1750-1850), 5*; un~

predictability of, 91

Islam, 32



index



Israel, ancient, 36

Italy, 238, 263,357

ITR. 255-6



Japan, 123,152, 282

jazz, 415,416,425

Jesuits, 252



Joliot-Curie, Fr6d6rfc, quoted, 312

Joseph II, 59

Judaei, 35



judgment, intervention of, in

technical operation, 20, 21

judicial technique, 291-300; see

also law

Julian, Emperor, 34

Jung, Carl, 141

Jiinger, Ernst, ix



Jiinger, F., 13, 15, 8$, 194, 201,

498, 383



Jungk, Robert. 138, 259, 429, 431,

432 n.; quoted, 8, 10, 137, 138



429



Kelsen, Hans, 296

Ken, Bellanden, 258

Keynes, John Maynard, 150, 151

170, 177

Khrushchev, Nikita S., 214

Kierkegaard, Soren, 55

Klee, Paul, 404

Kohler, Joseph, 292

Kohn-Bramstedt, Ernst, 100, 101,

133. 285



Krokodil magazine, 353, 424, 4*5



labor unionism, 357-8

Lahy, J. M., 397

laissez-faire, 200

Lajugie, Joseph, 154

Laloup, Jean, 71, 378

Lasswell, Harold D., technique

defined bv, x, 18

Latil, Pierre de, 75, 414; quoted,



430



Index



(t?ii



Lavera port, creation of, 120

law, 231; in ancient Rome, 30,

68-9, 71, 77. *&4, *97"-; sys-

tematized in Napoleonic code,

43, 69; backwardness of, *51-2;

proliferation of, 297-8; see also

judicial technique

L£ger, Fernand, 129, 404

leisure, in technical society, 400-2

Lenin, Nikolai, 83, 84, 232, 240,

260, 279, 280, 290,418

Leonardo d a Vinci, 44

Leroi-Gourhan, Andr6, 20, 23, 24,



63



VEsprit des masses, 206

Le Tellier, Michel, 229

rExpress (newspaper), 432, 435

Ley, Robert, 405

thomme-machine, 395-8

liberal interventionism, 183, 187,

189



liberalism: technique opposed to,

200-5; competition adverse to,

203; and economic man, 218

Life magazine, 347

limes, of Roman Empire, 36 and «.

literature, subordinated to tech-

nique, 128

Loewenberg, J., xiii

Louis XIV, 41,231

Louis XVI, 49

Louvois, F., 41, 229

Lowe, Chombart de, 336

Lutfalla report, 166

Luxembourg, 248

Lynton, R. P., 355, 361; quoted,

117, 126, 334

Lysenko, T., 315



MacArthur, Douglas, 259

Machiavelli, Niccold, 232,284

machine(s): and technique, 3-11,

42, 242; electronic calculating,

16, 89, 163, 4*9-30; war, 16,

276-7; slow diffusion of, 71;



machine (Continued)



impossibility of isolated, 112; for

evaluating military situations,

279 n.; agricultural, 309-10;

man coupled with, 395-8; see

also automation; cybernetics;

technical phenomenon

macroeconomics, 157, 161, 162,

169,205-6

magic, 24-7,36-7, 64, 65, 69

maieutic, 345 and n.



Malraux, Andr£, ix

Man and Technics, v

Managerial Revolution, The, 11

Marchal, Jean, 153, 154, 158, 183,

184,189



Marches, of Roman Empire, 36

and n.



Marshall Plan, 182, 307

Marx, Karl, vi, 52, 54, 55, 62,

82, 144, M9. 150, 153. 197.

222,233, 281, 403

Marxism, xii, 54, 69, 150, 154, 206,

260, 290, 302; see also Commu-

nism; socialism; Soviet Union

Mas, Antoine, 172, 362; quoted,

11-12, 92, 201,250, 275

mass man, 405-10

mass production, demands of,

upon consumer, 327

mass society, creation of, 332-5

Masson-Oursel, 25

mathematics: applied in transition

from art to technique, 342; all-

inclusiveness as aim of, 431; see

also statistics

Maucorps, Paul H., quoted, 342

Mauss, Marcel: quoted, io, 24;



technique defined by, 13, 14, 15

Mead, Margaret, 121,122; quoted,

361



Mechanization Takes Command, v

medicine, 384-7; psychosomatic,

39*



Mein Kampf, quoted, 84, 367

Memoire sur le recrutement, 229



INDEX



Mende, Tibor, 179 n.



M6rigot, Jean, 218

Methodism, 56



microeconomics, 157, 161, 162,

170



microfilm, 163



Middle Ages, 35* 3®, 66-7, 73,

*57



Mikoyan, Anastas I., quoted, 246

milieu: social, plasticity of, 49, 51,

55, 56, 57» 5^-6o, 126; modified

by technique, 325-7

military technique, 83, 229-30

Miller, Henry, 415, 416, 417, 425,

426



Mills, C. Wright, 256

Mir6, Joan, 404

Mohammed, 32

Monde, Le, 349



money, symbolism of, 219, 221

monism, of technique, 94-111

Monnerot, Jules, 364, 391; quoted,

369* 370

Monnet plan, 179, 181

monopoly, 202

Montaigne, Michel de, 345

Montessori, Maria, 86, 347;



quoted, 346

Moore, W. E., 354, 355

morale: technique supported by,

321-2; building, 341

morality, 301, 302; not observed

by technique, 97, 134; bour-

geois. 220

Moraz6, Charles, 48

Morgenstem, O., 279 n.



Moss6, Robert, 157, 158

motion, modified by technique,

330-i



motion pictures: artificial paradise

created by, 377; passion for,

explained by will to escape, 378

Mounier, Emmanuel, xxxi, 79, 429

Mumford, Lewis, v, 42, 47, 88,

95* 98, 99, 114* 177, an, 3*9;



Mumford (Continued)

quoted, 5, 6, 45, 95, 99-100,

169



Munson, Claude, 125, 334, 34^

342; quoted, 341-2,409

music, "objectivity” in, 129-30

Mussolini, Benito, 303

mystery, as element in man's life,

141-2



Napoleon, 43, 53, 83, *30, 231,

239,267, 268,281

Napoleonic code, 43, 69

narcotics, 108-9

Nasser, Carnal Abdel, 197

National Bureau of Standards, in

United States, 169, 259

National Center for Scientific Re-

search, in France, 311-12, 313

National Research Project, in

Great Britain, 172

National Socialism, 244-5, *55,

260, 261, 262, 289, 290, 296,

317, 318, 365, 366, 374, 388,

397, 405, 4**; see also Ger-

many; Hitler, Adolf

nation-state, 237-8, 265

Navel, Georges, 403

Naville, Pierre, 359, 360, 361, 362

Nazism, see National Socialism

Nef, J. U., 110, 111, 169

Nelis, Jean, 71, 378

Netherlands, 248, 264

Neurath, Otto, 360

neuroses, 331, 334, 369, 37°



New Zealand, 197; police power

in, 103



Noettes, Richard Lefebvre des, 23

norms: in economic technique of

intervention, 171-3; logic of,

i7*-3



nuclear physics, and state, 236

nutrition, problems associated

with, 109-10



Index



obsessional technique, 366

operational research, techniques

of, 129, 173

Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 99, 435

Organisation Europ6enne de Co-

operation Economique, 265-6

organization, technique of, 11-13,

21, 22



Organization Man, The, 363

overproduction, in United States,

156



pantocrator, defined, 347 n,



Papin, Denis, 8,71

Pascal, Blaise, 41,71

Pasdermaidfan, Hrant, 249

Pasteur, Louis, 45



pedagogy, 22, 252; see also ed-

ucational technique

P6guy, Charles, 223

Penseearti fiddle, La, 430

Perrin, Porter Gale, 75

Perroux, Francois, 161, 175, 217

personality, total integration of, as

object of technique, 410-27

Peter the Great, 59

Phdnomenologie des Geistes, xiii,

xv



Philip IV, 230, 239, 284

physics: preceded by technique,

8; nuclear, and state, 236

Picasso, Pablo, 404

Pitt, William, 56



planning, economic, 157, 173r7*

184-90 passim, 194, 195, 201,

213-14, 269, 270, 307; criti-

cized by Perroux, 175, 217; and

liberty, 177-83; see also econ-

omy, antidemocratic

Plato, xii, xiii, xxix

Point Four, Truman’s, 119, 120,

184

Poland, 272



police control, technique of, 100-1,

102, 103, 111, 133, 412-13



(ix



political doctrine, and technique,

280-4



politicians, in conflict with tech-

nicians, 255-67

politics of engagement, 415, 417

Pombal, Marquis de, 59

population: related to technique,

48, 59; world, increase of, 328

Presence au monde modeme, 141,

189 n., 222-3

Prince, Machiavelli's, 232

printing, invention of, 38

progress, hopes of, through tech-

nique, 190-3

progressive education, 344-8

proletariat, 51, 143, 144, 198, 220,

221, 222, 289

propaganda, 22, 84, 91, 101, 115,

121, 125, 216, 221, 240, 261,

275-6, 285-6, 344, 363-75;

conditioned reflexes created by,

365. 375; during war, 365-6;

scapegoats introduced by, 366-

8; manipulation of subconscious

by, 367, 369, 372, 373’ 375;

Oedipus complex manipulated

by, 368; critical faculty sup-

pressed by, 369, 370; good

social conscience provided by,

369, 370; overall effects of,

369-70; manipulability of mas-

ses as object of, 370-1; de-

mocracy devalued by, 373-4;

difference from amusement tech-

nique, 375-6

Propagandas, 363 n., 372 n.

Prosperity and Depression, 150

Proudhon, Pierre J., 222

psychoanalysis, 14, 142, 143, 226,

285, 340, 341, 344, 370; social,

368,387



psychological technique, 321, 322-

3, 324,409,410,411,412

psychometry, 342

psychopedagogy, 346,348

psychosomatic medicine, 392



INDEX



*>



public opinion; analysis of, 168-9;

and morality, 30a, oriented to-

ward technique, 303, 304, 310

public relations, 341, 351, 373

Puritans, 56



radio: importance of, in propa-

ganda hierarchy, 375; as instru-

ment of human isolation, 379

Header i Digest, 3*3

reason, intervention by, in tech-

nical operation, 20-1

reciprocal suggestion, 369

Reformation, 35, 38,39, 56

Reiwald, P., 206

Renaissance, 38, 41

Republic, Plato's, xiii

Rey, Abel, 28

Rice, Stuart Arthur, 195

Richelieu, 41, 284

Road to Serfdom, 178

Robin, Armand, 371

Roethlisberger, Fritz Jules, 334

Rome, ancient, 67, 77, 125; an^

technique, 29-32, 33, 36, 60,

125; law in, 30, 68-9, 71* 77»

284, 297 n.,- slavery in, 66, 70;

athletes of, 382, 383

Ropke, Wilhelm, 283

Rostand, Edmond, 223

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, xlx

Russell, Bertrand, 153

Russian Revolution, 209, 322, 365



Sahara, 249, effects of petroleum

explorations in, 106-7

Saint Augustine, 34

Saint Ignatius Loyola, 52,234

sales engineering, 273

San Marino, 248



Sargent, Alain, 336, 4151 quoted,



395, 4M

Sartre, Jean-Paul, ix, 206, 424

satellite, artificial, 145. *49

Sauvy, Alfred, quoted, 93



Savery, Thomas, 8



Savigny, Friedrich Karl von, 292



scholasticism, 35



science: and technique, 7-11, 45,

317; in ancient Greece, 28, 29

Science Technique, 28

Sciences of Man Re-establish Hk

Supremacy, The, 336

scientists, naivete of, 434-6

Scott, Jerome, 126, 334, 355

Semainet mSdicales de fans, 331

servo-mechanism, 14 and »., 88,217

Seymonds, Arthur, 258

Shannon, Claude E., 279 n.

Sheldon, Oliver, quoted, 11

sixteenth century, technique Jo,

38-42

Skinner, B. F., xi

slavery, 29, 35, 36, 65-6, 70

social plasticity, 49, 51, 55, 56,

57. 59~fc>, 1*8

social psychoanalysis, 368, 387

social structure, and technique,

302, 304,305

socialism, i8g, 196, 197-8, 245,

246, 275, 282; and technologi-

cal unemployment, 103-4, *53“

4; fragmentary, 198; suppres-

sion of state implied by, 245;

and concept of teleology, 246-7;

technique of human relations in,

356; vocational guidance in,

360, 362; and propaganda, 373;

see also Communism- Marxism?

Soviet Union

socialist rivalry, *13, 225, 356

sociology: technical application of,

14; psychoanalytic, 333. 387

sociometry, 34*



Socrates, 345 and n.

soil conservation:	authoritarian



methods necessary for, 107-8;

and trace elements, 339

Soustelle, Jacques, 99

South Africa, 269

Soviet News, 347



Index



(xi



Soviet Union, xi, xii, 81, 119, 1*3,

M7. 195. *08, **$. *39, 245,

*46, 257, 262, 282, 302, 347;

and technological unemploy-

ment, 103, 154; as technical

power, 119; technicians sup

plied by, to underdeveloped

peoples, 121; concentration

camps in, 132, 272; statisticians

in, 164; economic planning by,

173, 174, 189, 213-14; close to

synthesis of politics and eco-

nomics, 197; technical intel-

ligentsia in, 255-6; MVD in,

272; Academy of Sciences in,

314-15, 43*; tempo of change

hi* 349; trade unionism in, 357;

vocational guidance in, 360-1;

news faked in, 371; propaganda

in. 37i* 373. 382; technicized

sport in 382; advertising pub-

licity in, 406; criticism permitted

in, reason for, 424, 425; see

also Communism; Marxism;

socialism

space, modified by technique,

3*8

Spain, 263



specialization, bridged by tech-

nique, 132

Spengler, Oswald, v

spirituality, integration of, 415,

417.418

sport, 382-4

Sputnik, 145.317

Stakhanovism, 225, 246, 342

Stalin, Joseph, 59, 144, 214, 223,

254, 260, 262, 290

standardization: Mas quoted on,

11-12; Bertolino's view of, 211,

212, 213; authoritarian state

action implied by, 211-12

state: techniques of, for control of

individual, 115; atomic energy

controlled by, 157, 235; and

centralized economy, 193-8



state (Continued)



passim; ancient techniques uti-

lized by, *29-33; political

function of, 232; new tech-

niques utilized by, 233-9, 3°7~

11; radio controlled by, 235;

and nuclear physics, 236;

reaction of, to techniques elabo-

rated by individuals, 243-7;

conjoined with technique, 245,

246, 247; repercussions on, of

conjunction with technique,



247-	91; evolution of, following

conjunction with technique,



248-	52; as technical organism,

252-5; constitution of, and tech-

nique, 267-80; totalitarian,

284-91, 364, 365, 384; medical

techniques utilized by, 385-6



state capitalism, 245, 247

state-nation, 237-8, 265

statistics: in economic technique,

163-5,	169. 170. 195. 196;



opposed to dialectics, 206; mass

society implied by, 207

Steelman report (1947), 317

stochastics, 165, 216

Stravinsky, Igor, quoted, 129

suggestion: reciprocal, 369;



masses receptive to, 410

"superman," remote possibility of,

337-8



"surplus value," persistence of, in

socialist regimes, 246

surrealism, 415,416,417,435

Sweden, 382, 421, 422

Swift, Jonathan, 56

Switzerland, 421, 42*

systemics, unknown effects of, 106



taboos; resulting from Christi-

anity, 49; sociological, 49, 50, 55

TAT, 363

taxation, 269



INDEX



X(i)



Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 133,

264, 350

Taylorism, 246, 326

Tchakotin, Serge, 84, 341, 365

technical anesthesia, 412-15

technical automatism, 79-111;

defined, 80; and capitalism,

81—2



technical civilization, defined,

127-8



technical complex, formation of, 47

technical consciousness, 57, 58, 59,

126, 127

technical convergence, 391, 392

technical intelligentsia, in Soviet

Union, 255-6

technical intention, 60; defined, 52

technical operation, ig, 20, 21

technical organism, development

of state into, 252-5

technical phenomenon, 19, 20, 21,

22, 52, 63, 69, 85; present

aspect of, 61, 62, 78; rational

process in, 78-9; artificiality of,

79; limitless progress open for,

90; monism of, 94-111, 195;

impersonality of, 387; see also

machine(s); technique (s)

technical universalism, 116-33,



technicians: in conflict with poli-

ticians, 255-67; as new elite,

275; as specialists, 389; and

myth of abstract Man, 3go;

unaware of technical con-

vergence, 391

technique(s): definitions of, vi-

viii, x, xviii, xix, xxv-xxvi, xxviii,

xxxvi, 13-18, 19; and machines,

3-11, 42, 242; and science,

7-11, 45, 317; of organization,

11-13, 21, 22; UNESCO Col-

loquium on, 17; efficiency as

end of, 21, 72, 73, 74, 80, 110;

economic, see economic tech-

nique (s); human, see human



technique (Continued)



technique (s); primitive, 23-7,

63; and ancient Greece, 27-9,

33. 44. 45; and ancient Rome,

29-32» 33. 36. 60, 125; and

Christianity, 32-8; in sixteenth

century, 38-42; and Industrial

Revolution, 42-60 passim; in-

tellectual, 43, 116; in eighteenth

century, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52; in

nineteenth century, 44, 45, 47,

112; population related to, 48,

59; bourgeoisie involved with,

53-4, 144-5; masses converted

to, 54-5; agricultural, 57, 104,

105, 108, 116, 151-2, 274; five

factors in growth of, summary

of, 59-60; characterology of,

61-147 passim, traditional, and

society, 64-77; in civilization,

£4-79; instrumental, 67; ab-

stract, 71, 73; slow evolution

of, 71-2; characteristics of

modem, 77-147; and automa-

tism of technical choice, 79-85;

political, 83, 84, 136 (see abo

state); military, 83, 229-30;

self-augmentation of, 85-94;

geometric progression in self-

augmentation of, 89, 91; inter-

dependence and combinations

of, 91, 111-16; monism of, 94-

111; moral judgments not ob-

served by, 97, 134; necessity

as characteristic of, 99, 111-16;

of police control, 100-1, 102,

103, 111, 133, 412-13; unfore-

seeability of secondary effects

of, 105-11; commercial, 112-

13; transportational, 113; fi-

nancial, 113, 230-1, 244-5; city-

planning, 113, 237, 270; of

amusement, 113-14, 115, 375“

82; of state, for control of

individual, 115 (see abo state);

universalism of. 116-33, 206,



Index



(xiii



technique (Continued)



355; cultural breakdown pro-

voked by, 121, 122, 123, 124,

126,	130; literature subordi-



nated to, 128; art subordinated

to, 128, 129, 404; of operational

research, 129, 173; for "ob-

jective” music, 129-30; special-

ization bridged by, 132; au-

tonomy of, 133-47; human

being subservient to, 137-9*

306-7, 340; worship of, 143-6,

302-3,	324; and economy,



see economic man; economic

science; economic technique(s);

economic systems confronted

by, 183-90; hopes of progress

awakened by, 190-3; centrali-

zation presupposed by, 193-4;

as factor in destruction of

capitalism, 198,	236-7; op-



posed to liberalism, 200-5; op-

posed to democracy, 208-18;

and economic man, 218-27;

ancient, utilized by state, 229-

33; administrative, 231-2; new,

utilized by state, 233-9, 3°7“

11; private and public, 239-

43, 300-1; conjoined with state,

245,	246,	247; and reper-



cussions on state, 247-91; and

state constitution, 267-80; and

political doctrines, 280-4; ju-

dicial, 291-300 (see also law);

repercussions on, 300-18; no

counterbalance to, 301-7; in-

stitutions in service of, 311-18;

and human tension, 319-25;

psychological, 321,	322-3,



324, 409, 410, 411, 412 (see

also psychoanalysis); milieu

and space modified by, 325-

8; time and motion modified

by, 328-32; and humanism,

336, 337* 338, 339. 340, 348.

350. 409; educational, 344-9



technique (Continued)



(see also pedagogy); of work,

349-58; of human relations,

354-6; medical, 384-7; special-

ized, efficiency of, 388, 389;

human dissociation produced by,

398-402; initiative censored by,

420; and ecstatic phenomena,

421, 422, 423,	424; revolt



integrated by, 425-6,	427;



future of, 428-36; see also

economic technique (s); human

technique (s); states; technical

phenomena

technocracy, 336



technological unemployment, 103-4

television: artificial paradise cre-

ated by, 377; as means of es-

cape, 378-9; as destroyer of

personality and human relations,

380



Temps harcelant, Le, 329 n.

tension, human, 319-25

Thematic Apperception Test, 363

Tibetans, 76, 121

Tillich, Paul, xi



time, modified by technique, 328-

30



tools: and skill of worker, 67, 68;



conquest belonging to, 146

totalitarian state, 284-91, 364,



365. 384



Toynbee, Arnold, 11,12,21

trace elements, and soil conser-

vation, 339

trade unionism, 357-8

Treatise on Bread, 327

Truman, Harry S., 119, 120, 184

trusts, 202, 235

"truth serum,” 385

Turkey, 123



TV A, 108, 182, 265, 323, 324

unconscious, the, triumph of,



402-5



INDEX



xiv)



underdeveloped peoples, 117, 118,

lao, 121,122, 123



unemployment, technological,

103-4



UNESCO, 17, 121, 123, 346, 361

unionism, labor, 357-8

United States, 107, 108, 119, 147,

196, 235, 252, 263, 284, 286,

326, 347; invention in (1750-

1850), 52; as technical power,

119; technicians supplied by,

to underdeveloped peoples,

120; crash programs in, to re-

construct soil, 143; concentra-

tion of capital in, 154, 155;

overproduction in, 156; statis-

ticians in, 164; economic plan-

ning in, 184, 270; Bureau of

the Budget in, 195; and synthe-

sis of politics and economics,

*97; political technicians in,

258-9; antitrust laws in, 266;

FBI in, 272; sales engineering

in, 273; inability of, to pay for

complete disarmament, 277;

lobbyists in, 278; Japan occupied

by, 282; scientific research in,

315.	317;	large-scale	ag-



riculture in, 339; tempo of

change in, 349; labor unionism

to* 3571 postwar neuroses in,

369, 370; and propaganda, 372

373. 374; technicized sport in,

382, 383

universalism:	in sixteenth and



seventeenth centuries, 40; of

technique, 118-33.	355



urbanitis, 332



Vauban, S., 41

Vaucanson, Jacques de, 46

Veblen, Thorstein, v, xviii, 8if

15*



Veilte, Roger, 379,	381, 38a,



418 H.



Venetians, 35



Vevey Congress, 109 »., 117

Vian, Boris, 417

Vierendeel, Arthur, 47,48

Vincent, Andr£ L. A., 48, 85, 203;

quoted, 12, 167; technique de-

fined by, 16, 17, 18

vitrification process, 109

vocational guidance, 22, 358-63

Vogt, William, 107, 108, 116;



quoted, 116-17

Voltaire, 46



Wallace, Henry, 303

Walther, Leon, 352, 400

war, 422; Bouthoul’s view of

causes of, 137; modern, beyond

human endurance, 320; propa-

ganda used during, 365-6

war machines, 16, 276-7

Warburton, William, 56

Waterman report, 317

Watt, James, 53

Weber, Max, xiv

Weil, Simone, 245

Weill, Georges, 336

Welles, Orson, 381

Wengert, Norman, 323

Whyte, William Hollingsworth,

383



Wicksell, Knut, 177

Wiener, Norbert, 9, 38, 42, 48, 90,

*77. a79	419



work: as morality of bourgeoisie,

220; present-day, felt as ab-

surdity, 320; technique of, 349-

58; on assembly line, un-

easiness caused by, 395; disso-

ciation produced by, 398—40*

World Congress for the Study of

Nutrition, 109



Yalta agreements, 282

Young plan, 18a



Zweckwissenschaft, 317, 318



ABOUT THE AUTHOR



jacques ellul was born on January 6, 1912, in

Bordeaux, France. He studied at the University

of Bordeaux and at the University of Paris, and

holds degrees in Sociology, Law, and the His-

tory of Law. Since 1938 he has been associated

with the University of Bordeaux as professor of

History and Contemporary Sociology.



During the Second World War, Professor Ellul

was a leader in the French resistance movement,

and since then he has been active in politics in

his native city. He is prominent in the worldwide

Ecumenical movement.



Among his works are Propaganda (1965), and

The Political Illusion (1967).



SOCIOLOGY & POLITICAL SCIENCE



“Jacques Ellul is a French sociologist, a Catholic layman active

in the ecumenical movement, a leader of the French resistance

in the war, and—one is tempted to add, after reading his book—

a great man. Certainly he has written a magnificent book.

...The translation by John Wilkinson is excellent.



“With monumental calm and maddening thoroughness he goes

through one human activity after another and shows how it has

been technicized—rendered efficient—and diminished in the

process...."



—Paul Pickrel, Harper’s



"The Technological Society is one of the most important books

of the second half of the twentieth century. In it, Jacques Ellul

convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue

to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything

that prevents the internal logic of its development, including hu-

manity itself—unless we take the necessary steps to move

human society out of the environment that ‘technique’ is creat-

ing to meet its own needs."



—Robert Theobald, The Nation



“...The effect is a contained intellectual explosion, a heated

recognition of a tragic complication that has overtaken con-

temporary society.”



—Scott Buchanan, George Washington Law Review



9 loujyt iuj»u»



U.S.A. $12.00



Can. $16.95



ISBN D-3T4-?D3'10-1



978039470390951200