Why do so many leftists seem opposed to technocracy?

  1. Shinigami
    Shinigami
    I've looked through the threads by Wolf Larson and Dr Mindbender and a couple of threads on Libcom and it disturbs me how many leftists hate technocracy.

    This may just be my experience, hence why I'm asking. In the thread on Libcom Wolf Larson posted complaining about how Revleft is 'controlled by technocrats', most posters there seem to be of the opinion that technocracy sucks. I admit I don't know much about technocracy other than what I've heard from people like Dimentio and Technocrat explaining in the threads on here and a few links I've read, but from what I've seen, all criticism seems to be centered around the idea that technocrats want scientists/engineers to be dictators or something.
    I want to know what this belief stems from, of course, but my main question is, are the majority of leftists opposed to technocracy as it seems from Wolf Larson/Red Dave/the posters on Libcom?
  2. al8
    Well I think it can come down to several things. Lack of reading comprehention is one. Fixation with shibboleths, talk with correct phrase mongering and emphasis - which I think might stem from the small horizions that often come with being a anglophone mono-lingual.
    Another reason is that these individuals are part of cultic tendencies that are pedantic splitter and wrecker ideologies. Antiorganisational anarchism and (workerist) trotskyism. Tendencies that have never evolved from genuine sustained practice in governing and guiding actual historically existing societies for any significant length of time.
    They are quickly taken to cartoonish and mccarthyist understanding of visionaries. Interpreting everything in an super-suspicious anti-communist fashion.
    There is also the old split in the socialist camps between 'utopian' and 'scientific' socialists.
    Utopian socialist is an umbrella term for long-term visionaries who dwell on clear goals and intricate models for educational and promotional purposes. It can also sometimes refer social escapists and disconnected commune dwelling hippes and dreamers, or people urging the rich to fund the socialist project.
    Scientific socialists refer to the offshoot that thinks in rather hazy long-term goals but is more oriented on concrete short-term goals and the project of building up the sufficient agency and orientation of the working class to become the force to better their lot and build a utopia at their discretion as tasks and priorities allow at a later date when the range of possibilites become clearer in the course of the struggle. This approach has often lead to myopic super-tactical reformism.
    The best is when the best of both worlds is combined and the crap in both discarded.
  3. Technocrat
    Technocrat
    What al8 said.

    It's a purely reactionary, emotion-based phenomenon - they hear the prefix "techno" and their mind runs wild with all kinds of dystopic science fiction fantasies.
  4. Buttress
    Buttress
    I'm all for human progress (and transhumanist development) but I do not classify myself as a Technocrat. Technocracy has the potential of carrying with it all the problems a state-oriented society has, so you can probably see why many communists are against it. This has nothing to do with being anti-technology or a fear of a "dystopia".
  5. ÑóẊîöʼn
    ÑóẊîöʼn
    There is also the old split in the socialist camps between 'utopian' and 'scientific' socialists.
    Utopian socialist is an umbrella term for long-term visionaries who dwell on clear goals and intricate models for educational and promotional purposes. It can also sometimes refer social escapists and disconnected commune dwelling hippes and dreamers, or people urging the rich to fund the socialist project.
    Scientific socialists refer to the offshoot that thinks in rather hazy long-term goals but is more oriented on concrete short-term goals and the project of building up the sufficient agency and orientation of the working class to become the force to better their lot and build a utopia at their discretion as tasks and priorities allow at a later date when the range of possibilites become clearer in the course of the struggle. This approach has often lead to myopic super-tactical reformism.
    The best is when the best of both worlds is combined and the crap in both discarded.
    al8 is no longer with us, but I wanted to address this:

    I don't see how building up the "agency and orientation of the working class" is necessarily incompatible with "dwell[ing] on clear goals and intricate models for educational and promotional purposes". I really don't.

    I'm all for human progress (and transhumanist development) but I do not classify myself as a Technocrat. Technocracy has the potential of carrying with it all the problems a state-oriented society has, so you can probably see why many communists are against it. This has nothing to do with being anti-technology or a fear of a "dystopia".
    As an economic model, technocracy has its core the idea that a society's productive output can be scientifically managed and democratically distributed in an egalitarian manner - even the model as proposed by Tech Inc, despite its many other problems, proposed that every citizen of the technate (a technocratic society) would receive an equal energy share for them to use as they please.

    Obviously as an anarchist communist I have other problems with the model proposed by Tech Inc, which I call "orthodox technocracy". For example, the Tech Inc model pays scant attention to the problems of authority and hierarchy - while it has many pertinent criticisms as to the corrupting influence of money, it ignores some of the other basic problems with the capitalist price system.

    Personally, I blame this on the attempt by orthodox technocrats to distance themselves from politics. While this is admirable in that it avoids the trap of reformism, it has the problem of, basically, rendering itself irrelevant to vast majority of people who would stand to gain from a technocratic and egalitarian approach to running society.