Technocracy

[Pogue]

What is this and why do some comrades on the board hold it so dear? The students of May 68 apparently were very much against it.

[Dr Mindbender]

What is this and why do some comrades on the board hold it so dear? The students of May 68 apparently were very much against it.

I believe technocracy is needed to bring an end to all forms of scarcity and human suffering.

Specifically underproduction and menial labour.

[Psy]

What is this and why do some comrades on the board hold it so dear? The students of May 68 apparently were very much against it.

They are a group (wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_Incorporated)) that independent of Marxist teaching discovered a contradiction of industrialized capitalism were wages are based on labor while mechanization lowers necessary labor time (graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Technocracy_graph1.jpg)) which Marx explained as the lowering of commodity values through the generalized adoption of more fixed capital yet surplus value comes from the exploitation of variable capital not fixed capital thus this trend drags down the rate of profit.

[Pogue]

They are a group (wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_Incorporated)) that independent of Marxist teaching discovered a contradiction of industrialized capitalism were wages are based on labor while mechanization lowers necessary labor time (graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Technocracy_graph1.jpg)) which Marx explained as the lowering of commodity values through the generalized adoption of more fixed capital yet surplus value comes from the exploitation of variable capital not fixed capital thus this trend drags down the rate of profit.

lol wut

[SocialRealist]

Quite honestly many of you need to correct the answers you have given due to the fact that Technocracy refers to a system of government where the technical figures of society hold power, as in engineers, scientists and mathematicians for example.

This system would be heavily bureaucratic as well due to its limitations.

[Pogue]

Quite honestly many of you need to correct the answers you have given due to the fact that Technocracy refers to a system of government where the technical figures of society hold power, as in engineers, scientists and mathematicians for example.

This system would be heavily bureaucratic as well due to its limitations.

Thats what the students opposed.

[Psy]

lol wut
Here is a old video from the technocratic group Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ps5vJrIxM), Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icPOfVeISi8) and Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQFpES63OPc) gets into their view on the contradiction of industrial capitalism.

[apathy maybe]

Technocracy has different meanings apparently. I always understood it to mean "rule by the technicians", that is rule by people who actually knew how to run machinery, repair it etc. I got this understanding from the book The Shape of Things to Come (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Things_to_Come) by HG Wells.

Technocrats around here, however, object to this characterisation.

Personally though, I think that to maximise freedom, decentralisation needs to be practised much more than most technocrats seem to support.

[apathy maybe]

Edit: Dup post, someone can delete this.

[JimmyJazz]

lol wut

It's not funny when you don't even try to understand. In fact, it's annoying.

[Pogue]

It's not funny when you don't even try to understand. In fact, it's annoying.

i thought his post was a joke, i couldnt grasp it

[JimmyJazz]

I didn't totally understand it either, but you didn't think it was a joke. Come on.

[Pogue]

I didn't totally understand it either, but you didn't think it was a joke. Come on.

i wondered you know, but anyway sorry for any offense

[Psy]

i thought his post was a joke, i couldnt grasp it

To put it simply, a group of non-Marxists stumbled upon the contradiction of exchange value being grounded in labor power while industrialization reduced the labor power needed to produce commodities. They interpreted this as exchange value being obsolete and linked all the contradictions within capitalism to the exchange value being obsolete in a industrial society.

[Niemand]

Didn't Marx say that eventually machines would remove any need for workers? I say this because I either vaguely remember him saying something like that or it's a thought of my own derived while studying Marx.

[ckaihatsu]

automated, worker-controlled administration


Quite honestly many of you need to correct the answers you have given due to the fact that Technocracy refers to a system of government where the technical figures of society hold power, as in engineers, scientists and mathematicians for example.

This system would be heavily bureaucratic as well due to its limitations.



Technocracy has different meanings apparently. I always understood it to mean "rule by the technicians", that is rule by people who actually knew how to run machinery, repair it etc. I got this understanding from the book The Shape of Things to Come (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Things_to_Come) by HG Wells.

Technocrats around here, however, object to this characterisation.

Personally though, I think that to maximise freedom, decentralisation needs to be practised much more than most technocrats seem to support.


Considering that we're revolutionaries living in an era built upon the know-how of industrial manufacturing *and* digital information flows, I think it's time we reconfigure our model for how a revolutionary society should be built, *without* falling prey to the old-fashioned definitions for terms like 'technocracy'.

Obviously we'd want the workers in control, instead of the bourgeoisie, but also *empowered* -- not victimized -- by both industrialism *and* digital information.

We might even say that today, because of the Internet, we're *all* de facto technocrat wannabes, with easy access to a wide array of useful information, but without the real, collective control of the levers of society with which to use the information.

I don't think a technocratic, collectivized working class administration would *have* to be bureaucratic, but it *would* have to be well-informed, administratively, and well-coordinated. I'm even of the position that, due to resource-managing, online retail outfits like Amazon.com, we already have the existence of a *very* automated administration over vast numbers of resources, and, by extension, over assets as well once a revolution is successful.

Here's a sketch from a couple months ago that elaborates on this:



In a post-capitalist, post-private-property mode the entire wealth of the world's society would, by definition, be opened up to political debate -- this would be instead of private claims to this-or-that parcel of land, factory, business, or vault. While not everyone would decide to necessarily be actively political in this mode, not everyone would *have* to be. The *political* objective then, as now, would be paramount -- are all assets and resources accounted for and under public administration? In other words, think of it as Wikipedia for the outside world.

In a fairly short span of time every asset and resource *could* be catalogued and administered in common by those who feel most motivated to participate as such. In this way the world would indeed soon have *complete knowledge* of the material world, including what consumers want, because every person on earth could have their own Wikipedia-type page.

I maintain that every person on the planet would just need to provide an updated, linear list of what items they are currently requesting -- a *demand* list, as opposed to a "wishlist" -- that would be fulfilled by available supply according to workers' councils / planning boards.



[T]here is only supply and demand, and we would have to find priorities on both sides -- assets, labor, and resources - to - individualized, prioritized lists of demands.

This does not require a *mathematical* solution, as many people tend to imagine it. It is *always* a material political issue, and should always be discussed as such. Given our current state of information technology the logistics for this are currently available.



You don't have to start out producing millions of units. You make a few thousand prototypes and measure how rapidly consumers take them from the store. Whether the individuals whose job is to develop new products (chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc.) can decide on their own to submit the requision to the manufacturing line, or whether some degree of management signoff is also needed, will be society's policy choice.

From that point on, it shouldn't be the workers' choice whether or not they want to make them. It should be part of their job requirements to make the quantity needed to keep the orders filled. You can choose your career, but, within each career, you have to do the job that was socially planned. If you don't, you get no credit for showing up at work and you have no income.

You can't have the problem of investing in a new product. If all socially owned industries are subdepartments of one organization, resources would come from interdepartment transfers, not investment. The number of people needed in each department would fluctuate when something new is invented, but then the problem becomes one of how to attract more people to work in the sectors where they are needed most, not a problem of investments.


Chris





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-- Of all the Marxists in a roomful of people, I'm the Wilde-ist. --

[Dr Mindbender]

Didn't Marx say that eventually machines would remove any need for workers? I say this because I either vaguely remember him saying something like that or it's a thought of my own derived while studying Marx.

Im sure he would have meant workers in the menial sense. Unless the singularity happens (look it up people) it will be impossible to remove all human interaction at all levels.


*Waits for Serpent, Noxion and Sentinel to join the thread and whistles*http://forum.insanelymac.com/style_emoticons/default/whistle.gif

[ckaihatsu]

singularity [...] (look it up people)


- The good news: The technological singularity *won't* happen since the development of anything robotic is taking place in highly developed, energy-equipped social civilizations. The relationship of the created to the creators will never be ignored, so that will always be a mitigating factor to any possible runaway-robot type of imagined scenario -- even if we *wanted* to enable a type of independent artificial life, that is, which is itself questionable.

(Humanity developed in response to a much more scattered, scrappy type of natural environment and has had to pull its shit together in social and technological ways that have brought us to the current, highly socialized point.)


- The bad news: I *am* the technological singularity incarnate.


: D


All of your wayward, ponderous musings will find their graves at my feet.


x D


Okay, but seriously, the "singularity" thing is rather counter-revolutionary -- the political implication is that we *can't* do this ourselves, and so we fall victim to yet another time-wasting racket (like religion or philosophy) while the bourgeoisie muscles ahead.

[Jazzratt]

What is this and why do some comrades on the board hold it so dear? The students of May 68 apparently were very much against it.


People have so far provided some excellent answers, but I thought I'd add a few points of my own:

When most people on this site identify as "technocrats" they mainly, it seems to me anyway, support the idea of introducing energy accounting to already extant social theories. Energy accounting is the system technocrats propose to use as a way of observing and calculating the way in which an abundance is distributed; it is a complete abolition of price systems.

Technocracy, as a word, has all kinds of meaning. Technocracy originally meant "rule of the skilled", in the 1930s when Technocracy Inc. was formed the "Technocracy" in their name referred to a unique two-tiered governmental system (whereby rule of the skilled was order of the day for the "technical sphere" and direct democracy was favourite for the "social sphere"); it is likely that one or both of these are what the students opposed. Technocracy can also apply to any idea that incorporates energy accounting and logical, detached approaches to problems.

As for apathy maybe's claim:


Personally though, I think that to maximise freedom, decentralisationneeds to be practised much more than most technocrats seem to support.

The problem is that there is a delicate balance: technologies, especially advanced ones, require a certain amount of central administration. Also the complete fracture of society may mean that some vital pieces of research are not shared (especially compared to them being readily accessible on central databases).

Us technocrats are a fairly divergent bunch though. Hopefully NoXion, Serpent, Cult of Reason and some of the other technocratic bunch will be along soon to straighten out the various points.

[apathy maybe]

The problem is that there is a delicate balance: technologies, especially advanced ones, require a certain amount of central administration. Also the complete fracture of society may mean that some vital pieces of research are not shared (especially compared to them being readily accessible on central databases).
Certainly some technologies require central administration. But not, by any means, all advanced technologies.

I guess, once you start building big, you may start getting coordination problems. Personally, I think that, for example, it is better, that rather then having one large power plant, that there be multiple smaller ones. All connected to the same grid (which can be maintained by a central organisation, or by smaller organisations which just hook up).

This removes not only "points of failure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_point_of_failure)" in the technical sense, but also in the social sense. There is no one group that can turn off the power for an entire large area, simple by hitting a couple of switches. (Instead, they would have to go around to each power station, and the news would rapidly get out that people are turning things off, and other people can react etc.)

The systems behind most parts of the Internet (DNS, to a certain extent, excepted), are designed to be decentralised. If one section disappears, everything can still route through other sections.


Also, I never argued for the fracture of society. I am arguing for freedom, including the freedom for people to associate, to move, etc. Rather, I just am arguing for the decentralisation of power structures (in the social sense), so that no one group can control more than the minimum.

As to research etc. It is very easy to have a decentralised "central" research setup, including easy to search databases. I'll leave out to implement such a thing to your imagination, but a hint: the Internet is an amazing tool (I'm assuming you don't want everything in one database, hosted on one computer).

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Aside from energy accounting which Jazzratt already mentioned, there is (in my mind at least) the question of self-management of skilled workers.

A good engineer, scientist, construction worker, technician, and so on knows what to do to achieve goals or complete projects. The projects may be the decision of the society as a whole but the actual execution and nitty-gritty should be entirely at the remit of those involved in the project. Unlike today where corner-cutting and penny-pinching are the order of the day at the behest of miserly beancounters or ravenous shareholders whose only concern is profit.

Whether that will require "centralisation" or "decentralisation" will depend entirely on the technical specifications of the line of work or the project in question.

[8bit]

I like to imagine techno-marxism for bit-torrent for material items.


I maintain that every person on the planet would just need to provide an updated, linear list of what items they are currently requesting -- a *demand* list, as opposed to a "wishlist" -- that would be fulfilled by available supply according to workers' councils / planning boards.

Basically, the above, with the addition that, as most development and distribution would be automated on the technical level (a lot of artistic input would still be required from some, however, this can also be automated in certain areas) you can simply build a request, and track it's automated delivery to your place of residence online.

Modern technocracy puts emphasis, to my understanding, on automation and automated, generally eco-friendly, renewable energy. This frees up time for artistic expression, scientific development, free thinking, and blow off time.

And with world-wide WiMAX, assumed cloud processing, a visual display behind the eyes, and a WiFi reciever and EEG scanner implanted in one's head these process can be completed at any point, even, literally, while in one's sleep. *wishful transhumanist thinking*

[ckaihatsu]

Certainly some technologies require central administration. But not, by any means, all advanced technologies.

I guess, once you start building big, you may start getting coordination problems. Personally, I think that, for example, it is better, that rather then having one large power plant, that there be multiple smaller ones. All connected to the same grid (which can be maintained by a central organisation, or by smaller organisations which just hook up).

This removes not only "points of failure" in the technical sense, but also in the social sense. There is no one group that can turn off the power for an entire large area, simple by hitting a couple of switches. (Instead, they would have to go around to each power station, and the news would rapidly get out that people are turning things off, and other people can react etc.)

The systems behind most parts of the Internet (DNS, to a certain extent, excepted), are designed to be decentralised. If one section disappears, everything can still route through other sections.


This decentralized, distributed, interconnected configuration favors systems that have an abundance of material -- redundancy is not a big deal and actually adds to the robustness and flexibility of the system. Digital information, of course, is exceptional because it can be replicated infinitely at negligible cost. I think I can safely say that no other goods or services are quite like the material of digital information (except maybe non-digital information) -- it is truly utopian in its nature where everything else is not.



Also, I never argued for the fracture of society. I am arguing for freedom, including the freedom for people to associate, to move, etc. Rather, I just am arguing for the decentralisation of power structures (in the social sense), so that no one group can control more than the minimum.

As to research etc. It is very easy to have a decentralised "central" research setup, including easy to search databases. I'll leave out to implement such a thing to your imagination, but a hint: the Internet is an amazing tool (I'm assuming you don't want everything in one database, hosted on one computer).


Considering that information is an outgrowth of *human* activity, we can never have information that is self-motivated. *Someone* will always have to intervene to make (political) decisions about how to categorize meanings, what categories to use, what should be showcased, emphasized or prioritized, and so on.

All of this especially applies in the research domain -- it begs the question of research to only look at the information systems that one might use *while doing* _research_.

[ckaihatsu]

I like to imagine techno-marxism for bit-torrent for material items.


8bit, I'd like to run with this premise and ask, in an inquiring manner, if you think -- not that a technological singularity will put our brains out of business -- but rather if the technological enabling of the people of the world might possibly make class struggle obsolete.

Let's make a rough comparison to the invention of the printing press which enabled people to read and interpret writings for themselves instead of relying on an elite scholarly class to provide formal, educated direction. Now, in modern times, we have a fully liberated printed word -- call it the communism of thought, if you like. And, in the current period, of course, we have the communism of information, thanks to the Internet.

Extrapolating to the possibly near future, could we reach such a stage of abundance that power relations might be swamped altogether? Call it a jilted Garden of Eden that has returned with a passion, where a utopian abundance is all around, and at arm's length for everyone. In the midst of hyper-enlightened, hyper-self-enabling freedom no one can concentrate on such base motivations as power-mongering long enough to sustain a campaign for any sort of public approval.

Just as we can't conceive of waging war over the freedom to breathe air, could we soon see a technological abundance that makes a non-issue of *all* material concerns? (Thanks.)