Technocracy

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Hey comrades.

(Yeah, I know, I've been gone a while. I'm back, though!)

Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys what you think of the idea of technocracy. To me it seems pretty cranky on the outset. I've also heard people describe the USSR's government during the Brezhnev era as having rather technocratic characteristic.

....And I may be wrong, but Bordiga's ideas of "Organic Centralism" actually reek of technocracy to me.

[Heretek]

There were multiple threads from a while ago about technocracy. Here's one of the longest: http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/130829-Technocracy-and-Communism?highlight=technocracy


Most of it's proponents were eventually banned, not exactly certain on the why, but popular opinion was that they were counter-revolutionaries. This also explains how some users use "technocratic" and those derivatives as descriptors of fascists, corporatists, liberals, and other counter-revolutionaries.

[ckaihatsu]

....And I may be wrong, but Bordiga's ideas of "Organic Centralism" actually reek of technocracy to me.





[S]ome users use "technocratic" and those derivatives as descriptors of fascists, corporatists, liberals, and other counter-revolutionaries.


Hmmmmm, I tend to *favor* the idea / practice of 'organic centralism' as a synonym for 'revolutionary vanguard', or any emergent leading-edge of class consciousness.

The reason 'organic centralism' is *not* technocratic is because it doesn't (necessarily) concern itself with technical matters of *implementation*.

By the same reasoning we find that technocracy *is* counter-revolutionary because it concerns itself primarily *with* matters of 'professional' technical implementation -- it looks for new avenues of *specialization*, saying that a professional hierarchy of technical specialists needs to exist, separate from the whole population.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys what you think of the idea of technocracy. To me it seems pretty cranky on the outset. I've also heard people describe the USSR's government during the Brezhnev era as having rather technocratic characteristic.

....And I may be wrong, but Bordiga's ideas of "Organic Centralism" actually reek of technocracy to me.

Most modern regimes to some extent are "technocratic" in a weak sense, insofar as they try to design an ordered society which can be governed effectively by an all-knowing and independent bureaucracy. All regimes have bureaucratic experts empowered to make choices about ecological, social, financial and other concerns as a body of experts. Any regime or movement looking to bolster this bureaucracy, fill it with "experts" and give it access to the most knowledge and power possible can be described as "technocratic". This is certainly true of the pro-austerity "technocrat" governments in Europe who are slashing budgets, as well as popular demands in Iraq by Sadr's followers for a government which is "technocratic" not "ethnic".

As an ideological tendency in Leftism, it does seem problematic. I don't think we want to empower a group of bureaucrats who are even somewhat unaccountable. In practice, many Leftist regimes were at least somewhat technocratic in their governance, as your example of the USSR shows. We have to ask though, who might be excluded from the rule of experts? How would their issues be sufficiently understood by a body which does not include them, even if this body is constituted by experts?

[ckaihatsu]

Most modern regimes to some extent are "technocratic" in a weak sense, insofar as they try to design an ordered society which can be governed effectively by an all-knowing and independent bureaucracy. All regimes have bureaucratic experts empowered to make choices about ecological, social, financial and other concerns as a body of experts. Any regime or movement looking to bolster this bureaucracy, fill it with "experts" and give it access to the most knowledge and power possible can be described as "technocratic". This is certainly true of the pro-austerity "technocrat" governments in Europe who are slashing budgets, as well as popular demands in Iraq by Sadr's followers for a government which is "technocratic" not "ethnic".

As an ideological tendency in Leftism, it does seem problematic. I don't think we want to empower a group of bureaucrats who are even somewhat unaccountable. In practice, many Leftist regimes were at least somewhat technocratic in their governance, as your example of the USSR shows. We have to ask though, who might be excluded from the rule of experts? How would their issues be sufficiently understood by a body which does not include them, even if this body is constituted by experts?


I think these questions serve to *legitimize* the technocratic camp, unfortunately.

I'm somewhat surprised that more comrades don't notice that the validation of 'experts' -- whether in technical fields or for political representation -- essentially lends a veneer of legitimacy to *proprietary* areas of knowledge, and this in our current era of social-network-enabled Internet communications.

(In other words would a revolutionary society aim to *build up* specialized areas of knowledge, along with specific personnel for them, or would it be about *distributing* humanity's store of knowledge, with collective administration over the *use* of it -- ?)

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

(In other words would a revolutionary society aim to *build up* specialized areas of knowledge, along with specific personnel for them, or would it be about *distributing* humanity's store of knowledge, with collective administration over the *use* of it -- ?)

This seems like a false dichotomy. I think we can create more expertise in fields while also popularizing the knowledge necessary to understand what social planners are thinking and doing. I think the worry with a technocratic form of government (at least construed as a body of governing experts) is it does not acknowledge the need for control by an informed populace.

[ckaihatsu]

This seems like a false dichotomy.


It's an *illustrative* / descriptive dichotomy, to ask what society's attitude toward *itself* would be, regarding social productivity.

People may think of the Stalinist-era approach where students would be selected from above and 'tracked' into special channels of years of training and education, as for gymnastics, for example.

While this kind of approach could certainly build-up whatever fields societal attention and efforts are focused on, I have to point out that such an approach is really *specialization*-oriented, since non-specialists may or may *not* be able to gain from any collection of specialized knowledge -- would a post-capitalist 'academia' continue to exist, and if it did, would it continue to have an institutional self-interest in maintaining its own 'turf' over particular areas of knowledge, at the expense of the larger society's access to it -- ?





I think we can create more expertise in fields while also popularizing the knowledge necessary to understand what social planners are thinking and doing.


This statement reveals a ready *acceptance* of political substitutionism, in that the larger population -- in this scenario -- would be *passively* trying to discern what the specialist / substitutionist 'social planners' are thinking and doing.

(In other words why would 'social planners' be needed *at all* -- ? Couldn't all of society be in constant, continuous mass discussions at all 'levels' of thinking, planning, and implementation, without requiring any 'hands-offs' to any intermediaries -- ?)(!)


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As an ideological tendency in Leftism, [Technocracy] does seem problematic.


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I think the worry with a technocratic form of government (at least construed as a body of governing experts) is it does not acknowledge the need for control by an informed populace.


Correct -- I have reservations with even situating Technocracy as 'Left' since the technocratic program would inherently create a social dichotomy between 'planning' and 'implementation' -- planning could indeed be participatory and bottom-up, but *implementation* would strictly be in the hands of a substitutionist 'professional' social hierarchy.