A Civilization of Technics Part 3

A Civilization of Technicsⁱ

Philip Mairet (1945) Part 3

The present convulsions of civilization are both a manifestation of this degradation and a violent effort to arrest it. The programmes of the warring parties, Communist, Nazi, Fascist, and Democratic, are all com­plex mixtures of ideas, some of which threaten to intensify the predica­ment of power-economy whilst others propose its alleviation, for all men are horrified at the problems into which unrestricted machine-power is leading them. While the whole world is beating tractors into tanks, some rueful voices are also being raised to ask whether the entire direction of technological progress may not have to be reversed. In the January 1942 number of Harper's Magazine, for instance, a learned contributor hails the present struggle as the beginning of the ' Anti-Industrial-Revolution', and prophesies that the strict limitation of technics must be its final out­come—a pronouncement especially remarkable in the United States, where applied technology has reached its apotheosis. Yet there can be no merely negative solution, nor is the issue susceptible of compromise. The exploitation of solar energy must either be justified at the altar of man's supreme aspirations, or else it will continue to operate as a curse on the human race.

Before attempting to say what we should hope and work for, let us con­sider what is likely to occur. The only positive solution at present envisaged by very many people is, as we have seen, that a Civilization of Technics should set before itself this single aim—the distribution of the maximum of wealth and well-being to all. We may expect that, after the war, there will be a thoroughgoing attempt to realize this aim through planning upon a continental if not planetary scale—that is, unless the war leaves people too discouraged to give any serious effort to recovery, as the Civil War has left the people of Spain: but this is unlikely to be the uni­versal condition, and if large blocs of population are afflicted with inertia, it may only facilitate the plans of those who still feel vigour enough to take initiative. From this aim, however, great success is not to be expected, for reasons indicated earlier in this essay. The effort is to be welcomed because it is positive, and it would seem to lie in the natural line of development. It is for instance in harmony with important changes now proceeding in the political mentality of society.

The people who will wield the greatest powers in the society of the near future will be—apart from military leaders and their experts—the tech­nological elite. Those who have hitherto ruled the world that is now going up in flames have been people of specialized mentality, expert in accoun­tancy and financial politics, organized in rather unstable groups which were continually engaged in surreptitious dynastic wars, fighting one another by manipulating stock markets, cornering supplies and altering prices—wars in which the victories were signalized by mergers and com­bines and the defeats by liquidations. In the present world war there can be little doubt that these financial dynasties are being weakened if not destroyed.

At present the financial dynasts are being compelled to give a last exhibition of their abilities by helping the Governments at war to co­ordinate all productive industry in the national interests; but in doing so they must destroy the roots of their own power. The question is, who will succeed them? Militant politicians will be very powerful, presumably, but modern war is the greatest of industrial undertakings, and the dominant class of men in a modern war state must be the technicians, whose power is bound to continue into the peace, in order to fulfil the growing demand for planned economy and wealth-distribution. We are in for technocracy.

The ground has been well prepared for this palace revolution, by the decline of the power of ownership. Industries, and even the largest com­bines, may still be nominally ruled by their shareholders as titular owners, but for a long while past this ownership has been in no real sense a directive function. Management has become more and more a profession in itself, the managers being the highest class of technicians, and they commonly appoint their own successors. This is undoubtedly the rising class throughout the Civilization of Technics, whose abilities, aims, and ideas have done most to shape the development of the modern world. It is a small class, and one can only get into it by technical knowledge and ability of a high order; but so far its direct political and social control has been small. The political influence of industrial concerns has been exer­cised by the financial class, which overlaps the technical only to a small extent. Now the financial class, considered as a political aristocracy, is out of public favour. It has conspicuously failed to lead a technological civiliza­tion either to plenty or stability; and its relations with the technicians have for some time been hostile. Civil engineers, scientists, and experts in productive organization have been the leaders in the contemporary revolt of opinion against the financial system as such—and therefore against the prestige of the financial class. The issue between them has always been that between full production and ' artificial scarcity'; the financiers having habitually imposed limits upon production in order to fit their financial frame, whereas the technicians work for the abolition of all financial constraints, and for the complete liberation of industry to fill the world with its products.

The people who will wield the greatest powers in the society of the near future will be—apart from military leaders and their experts—the tech­nological elite. Those who have hitherto ruled the world that is now going up in flames have been people of specialized mentality, expert in accoun­tancy and financial politics, organized in rather unstable groups which were continually engaged in surreptitious dynastic wars, fighting one another by manipulating stock markets, cornering supplies and altering prices—wars in which the victories were signalized by mergers and com­bines and the defeats by liquidations. In the present world war there can be little doubt that these financial dynasties are being weakened if not destroyed.

At present the financial dynasts are being compelled to give a last exhibition of their abilities by helping the Governments at war to co­ordinate all productive industry in the national interests; but in doing so they must destroy the roots of their own power. The question is, who will succeed them? Militant politicians will be very powerful, presumably, but modern war is the greatest of industrial undertakings, and the dominant class of men in a modern war state must be the technicians, whose power is bound to continue into the peace, in order to fulfil the growing demand for planned economy and wealth-distribution. We are in for technocracy.

The ground has been well prepared for this palace revolution, by the decline of the power of ownership. Industries, and even the largest com­bines, may still be nominally ruled by their shareholders as titular owners, but for a long while past this ownership has been in no real sense a directive function. Management has become more and more a profession in itself, the managers being the highest class of technicians, and they commonly appoint their own successors. This is undoubtedly the rising class throughout the Civilization of Technics, whose abilities, aims, and ideas have done most to shape the development of the modern world. It is a small class, and one can only get into it by technical knowledge and ability of a high order; but so far its direct political and social control has been small. The political influence of industrial concerns has been exer­cised by the financial class, which overlaps the technical only to a small extent. Now the financial class, considered as a political aristocracy, is out of public favour. It has conspicuously failed to lead a technological civiliza­tion either to plenty or stability; and its relations with the technicians have for some time been hostile. Civil engineers, scientists, and experts in productive organization have been the leaders in the contemporary revolt of opinion against the financial system as such—and therefore against the prestige of the financial class. The issue between them has always been that between full production and ' artificial scarcity'; the financiers having habitually imposed limits upon production in order to fit their financial frame, whereas the technicians work for the abolition of all financial constraints, and for the complete liberation of industry to fill the world with its products.

Is it too much to hope that, from this necessary development, we may see the natural sciences re-assume their proper place and their priority to the technical? If so, there will be a change of mind and mood in which philosophy can once more flourish and religion regain its rightful sway: for there, in religion alone, is the primary and continual source of the cultural spirit, not in technics indeed and also not in Nature. Out of Nature are our societies born, in their technics they die, but through Religion they are regenerated. A re-born society can go on developing ever greater technical powers, so long as it uses, and is not used by them. But when it succumbs to the fascination and the power and pride of tech­nics, it loses not only its sense of the supernatural order, but also its foot­hold upon natural life.

Chapter from Prospect for Christendom: Essays in Catholic Social Reconstruction, Maurice Reckitt (ed), Faber and Faber (1945/6)

COMMENT: As becomes evident on reading the three-part essay entitled A Civilization of Technics, Philip Mairet was a key writer and activist in the network of debates on the social order of the first half of the 20th century. See Wikipedia. He was a familiar figure in the emerging guilds, trade unions, social credit, anthroposophical and cooperative movements of his time, writing key texts across the range of social thinking on philosophy, politics, economics and finance.

i When we speak of a civilization of Technics we mean a social order so shaped and adapted that it can make the fullest use of the solar energy stored up in mineral form as coal or oil, or obtained by distillation from vegetable substances. This last source of energy, though it may increase in importance, is at present too relatively costly to be greatly exploited; much more power is at present obtained from the world's great water-courses. The stimulus and the means which made possible the present phenomenal developments of machinery began with the discovery of the energy that can be obtained from the combustion of coal and oil.