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plenty of times a counterrevolution has arisen through "worker's self management". it wasnt, after all, a long time ago that the situationist rode ben bella's dick because of his autogestione policy. i think it is very simplistic to argue that a sort of mediations of decisions give rise to a new class. again, i dont think most people would want to fill the stadiums arguing about production. i think there is plenty of room for representation, engineers, scientists, etcetera.
Formerly dada
[URL="https://gemeinwesen.wordpress.com/"species being[/URL] - A magazine of communist polemic
But, production could be democratic without any sort of arguing. Production could be based on individual contribution of wants/needs. It could be an automatic/electronic thing, for local production, and/or import of other local area's production. The society would not need any management class.Originally Posted by maldoror
Besides this (rather critical) point, I am positive towards the creative/constructive spirit of the (european) technocracy project. But, as you say, it needs to be a much broader movement, based around the class of people that need economical/political change (the proletarians). I am also skeptical of the treatment of scientific facts/holy truths/objectivity... but that is another discussion.
i think it is more than a little presumptuous to suggest your ideology is the only solution to the problems we face.
but your fellow technocrat argues that communism is impossible and that hierarchy is necessary. which is it?
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
i am also skeptical of the treatment of "scientific facts" as holy because after all, they are interpreted by men. besides, science says nothing about how the world ought to be. it simply states how it is and within it there are no political programs. scientists can either help the liberation of humanity or turn the world into a sewer.
however, automatization is not here, and i dont think automatization is a precondition for communism. obviously most people should have an input on productiion etcetera but you cannot turn the normal person into an engineer, and an english teacher at the same time.
Formerly dada
[URL="https://gemeinwesen.wordpress.com/"species being[/URL] - A magazine of communist polemic
So your arguing that A. Technocracy is not elitist B. "communism and technocracy compliment each other perfectly". Technocrats have the notion that all non skilled tecnical work is mundane, like working in a factory right? Elitist says What? What will happen to the proletariat who enjoy such menial tasks when the hiearchy of the upper chaste running the system is voted in based on popularity and technical skill? With such effeciency and technical prowese elliminating the need for menial labour, is it going to be efficient to keep a surplus of idle people? I dont know brother, you tell me how these Technocracy and Communism compliment eachother at all ok.
With that being said I dont deney the right of skilled technical workers to be appart of communist revolution. The fact is that as our technology increases so will the ammount of skilled workers and I am happy to call them a part of the proletariat if they sick of being exploited by thier wage slave masters.
Oh Yeah, Id also like to give mad props to my comrades who stuck it to the technocrats inthe other thread. With special thanks to Wolf and Dave for thier vigilante stand against this sytem. Good work
Not at all. What we are doing in the European movement is to build the foundations for energy accounting today.
As for scientific decision-making. The technate does not decide what should be produced, only how it should be produced. It is not a planned economy. In fact, it is more de-centralised than the most "free" market economy which has existed.
Do you know of another movement that calls for the transfer of a proportional switchover since 1800 of 2% to 98% of total work by extraneous means? If you know of one please let me know.
Heirarchy is not, I repeat not necessary. In a society where menial labour by people is viewed as barbaric and as contemptious as slavery in the conventional sense then heirarchy becomes wholly irrelevant.Originally Posted by bcbm
I'm not sure that technocrat entirely sings from the same hymn book as EOS. At times i think the anti-technocracy lobby take him out of context and others he is perhaps somewhat of a loose cannon. He means well though.
If you want to mindlessly drudge through repetitive tasks, I don't think anyone will stop you. Only that under a technocratic system, you won't have to do that in order to survive.
There won't be a "proletariat" because nobody will be working for money.
There won't be a surplus of "idle people". For a start, there are many, many ways of filling one's time that does not involve engaging in what we commonly call these days "work".
If the pursuit of scientific and technical knowledge doesn't catch your fancy, then there are a vast range of cultural and artistic activities that you could undertake. The humanities also offer choices. If outdoor work is your thing, then society will still have a need for forestry workers and natural park wardens.
Just use your imagination, and don't let contemporary capitalist ideas of "work" tie you into a straitjacket.
Because "brother", technocracy has the goals of providing the largest amount of people with the highest standard of living with the minimal expenditure of labour, materials and energy, based on a system of distribution that does not involve money.
I agree and disagree, since there are really two issues here;Originally Posted by bcbm
"Communism is impossible" - nobody can honestly say this, at least for advanced technological societies. There are tantalising hints from events such as the Paris Commune, which suggests that communism is at least temporarily possible. In my estimation this makes communism worth pursuing.
"Hierarchy is necessary" - I really think this is context-dependant. Arbitrary hierarchy that encompasses the whole of society and is based on wealth or power is demonstrably oppressive and sub-optimal, but hierarchy confined within a certain domain, such as within an Engineering Guild, is justified and useful. The Chief Engineer is the go-to person for a major construction project, but beyond that he has the same amount of power as the rest of us.
Furthermore, I wish to add that technocrats are not carbon copies of each other, and are free to disagree with each other or hold different opinions; there is no "party line" to toe. Many critics of technocracy seem to forget this, and assume that one technocrat speaks for all. This just isn't so.
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
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Its not only mundane, it's inefficient. The human brain is the most complex device in the world. What is the point of letting it vegitate when it could be achieving so much more?
In the 1800's in Britain children used to be sent up chimneys to clean them and work in orphanage workhouses. Many countries still practice this barbarism. We abolished this on the auspice that children should be educated not in labour, but learning is a lifelong process. If we can abolish such labour for children, why stop there? Why not go on to abolish all human labour? Reduction in the amount of menial work is a hallmark of progression. For the most part, people hate menial work. It is degrading, co-ercive and largely those in it do so for want of avoiding unemployment.
I'd like to think that these people would take advantage of the university and college courses which will no doubt be available freely and at point of demand but like Noxion says if anyone wants to engage repetitive menial tasks no one will stop them. The only difference is they wont have to do so in the context of a baking hot factory with a supervisor breathing down their neck.
If sweat fetishists and nostalgists want to set up a menial workers club where they can go and stand by a production line for 8 hours then power to them, just dont expect me to be forced to do the same thing.
My main concern is the happiness of the vast majority of people trapped in co-ercive jobs that'd rather be doing other things.
I'm sorry where did you read that technocracy favours rule of the popular?
I think you're confusing technocracy with bourgeoisie democracy and parliamentarism.
Secondly, there is no 'upper chaste' because technocracy eradicates the conditioning for a heirarchic society.
Like i and Noxion have said, there will be educational places, as well as arts and humanities jobs available en masse.
There will be absolutely no need for anyone to be idle.
Please don't spam the thread with your obnoxious 'shout outs' please.
Do technocrats or Technocracy Inc, or NET have a political/transitional program? What are their positions/ideas about smashing capitalism and establishing a new society? I can agree with a lot of the ideas put forth by technocrats but I don't see their ideas about defeating capitalism and constructing a socialist--communist society.
Or are technocrats composed of a diverse spectrum of political positions, some of which do not propose revolutionary transformation at all...?
My experience is that technocrats refer to the 'price system' when they refer to capitalism, but for the most part they are one and the same thing. The price system is what technocrats want to abolish.
What the price system does is attach arbitrary values to items, promoting scarcity. It then validates this scarcity by creating debt or 'debt tokens'. However the price system is a tenent of most contemporary political systems, not excluding socialism.
Is not this blatant dismissal of the works of a certain K. Marx? Perhaps you should look into the theory that the price system is inherently connected to the class system, and in the interest of a certain group of people: the upper class. To highlight only the monetary aspect of Capitalism seems a bit negligent. The problem today, many would claim, is not mainly the price system, but the fact that 5% of the people own 90% of the stuff. I, of course, agree that the price system does need to be overthrown as well, however I disagree that classes should not be addressed. It seems a very a-social and a-historical way of looking at economics, probably connected to the reactionary idea of the epistemological supremacy of 'natural science' over 'social science'.
However, besides this I agree with many of the proposals of European Technocracy (which now apparently calls itself the European Organisation for Sustainability; a terrible name in my opinion, as I disagree that 'sustainability' is a particularly meaningful term outside bourgeois economics).
NET/EOS have a long-term transitional proposal. The first step involves experimentation and the establishment of a proto-technate which would be autonomous.
Technocracy Incorporated has a variation of the - in my opinion - absolutely idiotic "phoenix syndrome", the delusion that when capitalism collapses by itself, Tech Inc would ride in and save the day.
So then in that case, I would guess that technocracy does not have that much to offer in the political sphere of the struggle, but do certainly have developed ideas about potential development involving some of the plans and ideas like energy accounting etc. Would you agree?
Indeed. The price system in general though is a very adaptable thing in itself, imo. Socialism does not involve abolishing the price system, yet it's price system, this goes without saying, is fundamentally different than the price system of a capitalist economy. For this reason I find that the function of technocratic economics aren't really feasible or useful until a given society is advanced enough and has abolished capitalism (though not necessarily having abolished division of labor and state institutions all together though).
This is why I'm questioning the actual political and historical context that technocrats sort of envision their ideas put into material practice. Obviously you and the rest of the technocrats who post here are socialists, but as we know very well that doesn't mean the same thing to all of us in a lot of cases.
What do you mean by autonomous? Is this a socialist society were talking about? Obviously if the proto-technate were to be put through it's first stages of experimentation then were talking about a society where division of labor and even a state persists no?
I guess my main question is do technocrats assume that a form of technocratic economics or government can be developed first from within a price system (namely a socialist price system), and essentially transitioning from a price system to a system based on energy accounting or "to each according to need".
Btw, I'm sorry if my questions seem dumb or whatever but the only example even close to technocratic forms of government and management we have seen is in the former Soviet Union, which was still operating within the boundaries of a price system. This is why I have a lot of questions...because I have no actual experiences to look at.
The proto-technate is an embedded system. It is co-existing on the same territory as a state, and on the same territory where a capitalist (or another) system is in existence. The proto-technate is composed of "holons", which are project groups which could be communities or cooperatives. Internally, the proto-technate should produce its own food, its own electricity, its own heating. It would also produce a lot of things requested by the outside world. These things would be exchanged by interface companies which are existing in the membrane between the technate and the non-technate world. For the revenue, the technate would buy up more land, which would be transformed into technate-operated territory, as well as more companies, which would transformed into interface cooperatives.
Internally, the system is entirely moneyless, using energy accounting as a mean to allocate resources. That means that a cooperative which is producing for example robotic lawnmovers would get its electricity for free from a cooperative which is producing electricity, etc.
The goal is not only to get a system like that up'n'running, but also to constantly having it expanding. It would not only exist in one land. Different segments of the same proto-technate could exist in Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Russia and Tanzania.
as far as i know, the goal of almost all communists and anarchists is to eliminate all unnecessary labor through the best means available.
you're preaching to the choir. i'm telling you to get your story straight with your fellow technocrats who think it is, especially if you're going to claim to have the one, true solution.
my manager at work performs almost entirely the same duties as i do, but they're ultimately still my manager. eliminating one form of labor is not the same as eliminating hierarchy.
all sorts of people have "meant well," which doesn't mean shit when their ideas are still horrible.
i understand that perfectly. i was pointing out the disagreements in the face of dm saying that technocracy is the only solution- this isn't exactly a helpful proclamation if technocrats can be anything from hierarchal, racist proto-fascists to egalitarian minded communists.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
that is utopian socialism. you cant have a handful of people crafting an economic system with the hopes people will be "converted". you folks have from energy accounting, to technates and urbanates. i mean that seems pretty blueprinty to me
Formerly dada
[URL="https://gemeinwesen.wordpress.com/"species being[/URL] - A magazine of communist polemic
This is same argument used by economists to justify capitalism. They argue that people are rational utility maximizers, that they will make rational choices in their consumption and other decisions, and that this will allow the market to reach equilibrium. The assumption that people are rational utility maximizers is called rational man and has been falsified for over 60 years. People are not rational utility maximizers.
If people are not rational utility maximizers, then people will not voluntarily do what is in their own best interest. The only way to protect a resource - in this case, the planet earth - is through mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon. This is something that has been used for thousands of years, even by egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies.
The word sustainability has different uses in different contexts, such as in economics where it is used interchangeably with the word "profitable". In Technocracy however, the word sustainability is used to mean: "To provide every person with as much as they can physically consume, with the lowest possible input of resources, energy, and labor."
Economic Left/Right: -7.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.38
People here are confusing "pecking order" with "hierarchy". They are not synonymous. Pecking orders are not fixed - they change depending on the situation. They are a mutually agreed upon cooperative strategy to reduce the number of conflicts within the group (which waste time and energy).
Pretty much says it all right there.Originally Posted by Noxion
Last edited by Technocrat; 8th April 2010 at 03:34.
Economic Left/Right: -7.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.38
