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View Full Version : Connolly a Technocrat?


CartCollector
6th November 2010, 22:40
From Socialism Made Easy under Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism:


...Social Democracy will be administered by a committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of the land;... The local and national governing or rather administrative bodies of Socialism will approach every question with... the fullest expert knowledge born of experience; the governing bodies of capitalist society have to call in an expensive professional expert to instruct them on every technical question, and know that the impartiality of said expert varies with and depends upon the size of his fee.

This is after he describes how his form of socialism has a government divided into different industries. So each industry, along with the general government, will be managed by experts in their fields according to him. This "rule by experts" sounds like Technocracy to me. Thoughts?
RED DAVE
6th November 2010, 22:49
From Socialism Made Easy under Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism:


...Social Democracy will be administered by a committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of the land;... The local and national governing or rather administrative bodies of Socialism will approach every question with... the fullest expert knowledge born of experience; the governing bodies of capitalist society have to call in an expensive professional expert to instruct them on every technical question, and know that the impartiality of said expert varies with and depends upon the size of his fee.
This is after he describes how his form of socialism has a government divided into different industries. So each industry, along with the general government, will be managed by experts in their fields according to him. This "rule by experts" sounds like Technocracy to me. Thoughts?This is probably derived from Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. It reads very much like the system he describes in his late 19th-Century novel. There was definitely a strain of technocratic elitism in a lot of the socialist beliefs of that time.

Yes, it does sound like Technocracy. Basically, this brand of "socialism" began to differentiate itself from socialist beliefs as we know them. By the 1920s, it had become Technocracy which is antithetic to socialism.

RED DAVE