al8, bie, Q, Technocrat
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In defence of Technocracy.
The technocracy movement has come under attack numerous times and of late from certain factions on this forum.
It has been criticised as being associated as a bourgeoisie theory, and at worst, connected with fascism. These connections are tenuous at best and laughable, pretty much stemming from the fact that members of Technocracy inc. used to wear uniforms. So what? Does this make the soviet union fascist?
The idea that technocracy is elitist has been laid at the fact that it seeks to abolish menial labour from the human hand. How is this not a progressive movement? Menial toll is an unpleasant experience and communism seeks to maximise human happiness. Therefore to me, it seems that communism and technocracy compliment each other perfectly.
Let us be realistic for a moment. What child ever said they wanted to be a factory worker, repeatedly performing mundane tasks? The idea that not all workers can take advantage of their talents, skills and pursue their interests is reactionary defeatism and cynicism that i am calling out technocracy's critics on now.
al8, bie, Q, Technocrat
well there's a strawman if i ever saw one!
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
Please dont participate in the thread unless you have a tangible or structured rebuttle to offer.
Thanks.
how does one offer a tangible and structured rebuttal to nonsense? nobody here has expressed opposition to technocracy because they want to see humans engaged in drudgery.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
No, but they have expressed the sentiment that it is an elitist and even fascist system. I want the attention of those who have made these claims and put a stop to this ignorance.how does one offer a tangible and structured rebuttal to nonsense? nobody here has expressed opposition to technocracy because they want to see humans engaged in drudgery.
you might want to start by actually addressing their actual arguments instead of suggesting that they have a fetish for manual labor, then. there's a whole 23 page thread full of them.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
Both Technocrat and Dimentio have addressed them in full but still they rattle on. That thread has been spammed to irrelevance with cut n paste jobs on Howard Scott and Technocracy incorporated.
I think it's better to take the debate with a fresh perspective.
i'm not sure making shit up qualifies as a fresh perspective on the debate.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
Now theres a strawman if i ever saw one.
okay, find me someone arguing that technocracy is elitist because they want human beings to be engaged in menial labor. or that believes not all workers can take advantage of their talents, skills and pursue their interests. go!
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
I dont need to. If people arent against the idea of unnecessary innefficient human menial labour being automated what other agenda could they have for opposing technocracy?
i'm pretty sure this is a logical fallacy of some sort. as mentioned previously, 23 pages of other reasons have been laid out and not a one of them has involved wanting menial labor to continue.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
This thread has all the potential to be a new Mao Zedong/Dialectics thread (taken straight from Monty Python's argument school).
one can only hope
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
Who has said that?Originally Posted by Dr Mindbender
I would offer that the technocracy plan is 'elitist', or would actually lead to a new class system, because it disallows workers self management; instead relying on a class of management over production (at least specialized production). I see no need for this, and have an alternative: Communism. People themselves should govern production, by planning production based on their desires and by executing production based on what they want to do. Of course, all technological advancements are extremely helpful aids in that they decrease amount of human labor needed. But that's not a theory, thus no one would dispute that.
Technocrats are too concerned with 'sustainability'. All ideologies would offer what they'd call 'sustainability', which is the problem. Fascism may offer a 'sustainable' system, that doesn't make it fair.
Sustainability has a meaning, namely that we manage resources in a manner which aren't depleting the planet's regeneration capacity, while at the same time guaranteeing a high quality of life for all people, for so long time as possible.
As for elitism. Your proposal is exactly what we strive to achieve. The main difference is that we have a more detailed proposal for how to conduct management in a high-technological society without alienating people. All people would - through energy accounting - be given equal access to the fruits of production.
We say that you receive 500 EC in your energy certifikate. You then allocate that to what you want to be produced for your own need. There is no one deciding what you should consume in the technate apart from yourself.
Almost all the workers in the technate would be engineers or scientists, and members of autonomous holons where all individuals have a say. What is deciding how things should be conducted is not the opinion of anyone, but could only be decided by scientific facts.
Technocracy is basically rule by science, not rule by opinion. It is certainly not the rule of individuals, since all decisions need to be open source. No one is automatically infallible for being a doctor. All people's opinions should be given the same treatment, no matter if they are working as child care personnel or rocket scientists.
Any plan that falls short of wanting to follow the path to a fully fledged high energy society (as outlined by the technocracy movement) will necessitate the continuation of human menial labour.
Traditional marxism or any other contemporary school of traditional communist thought has not intself any such agenda of transferring to a high energy society. That is not to say that technocracy is anti communist. What it does mean though that technocracy is necessary for the survival of communism because only technocracy has the impotus and methodology to truly end heirarchic society of the skilled vs the unskilled.
And by "how things should be conducted", you mean what is to be produced? And by "scientific facts" here, you mean demand? Otherwise, I would not understand the sentence, as 'scientific facts' clearly can not decide anything.
Define closer what you mean by "science" here.Originally Posted by Dimentio
I'm not massively keen on getting into all of this again but the accusation of fascism was based on the parallels between Technocracy Incorporated's arguments and Mussolini's rhetoric. More to the point though it was thrown particularly at the member Technocrat because he was preaching hierarchy and using arguments that looked suspiciously like class collaboration.
As I have said before my principle objection to technocracy in general is that energy accounting is not a feasible means of calculating economic activity. When it came to the stuff the above mentioned member was giving us though, stronger terms needed to be used.
i think there is nothing wrong to dream about a future technological utopia. men have always tried to reach the stars, whether utopian socialists, technological utopians, Owen, Simons, etcetera -. their gift to humanity was exactly this idea of trying to reach the stars and i might say i embrace such a dream. i mean after all, above the pavement, there are the stars. my problem with technocracy is that i can't say i am convinced by this grand blueprints made by a handful of people. i don't think it works that way. what are you going to do? after we are able to get rid of this miserable world are you guys just going to run at people and tell them "hey we have a great idea! look at our blueprints!". in difference to most people here, i am not arguing from a democratist standpoint. i don't care (and i suspect most people too) about arguing vigurously in the workplace about the vicicitudes of production. i'd rather eat acid or drink or write in my free time.
Formerly dada
[URL="https://gemeinwesen.wordpress.com/"species being[/URL] - A magazine of communist polemic
