Speaker 1: Section one of Technocracy by William Henry Smith. This is
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Speaker 1: Recorded by the Progressing America project. Technocracy Part one Human
Speaker 1: Instincts in Reconstruction. An analysis of urges and the suggestion
Speaker 1: for their direction. Editor's Note. The author shows that the
Speaker 1: forces of the four great human instincts to live, to make,
Speaker 1: to take, to control are as essential in modern social
Speaker 1: life as at any time in the past. But all
Speaker 1: of these urges in a living democracy should be controlled
Speaker 1: without being controlled. To achieve this seeming paradox, we must
Speaker 1: have a great national purpose and unselfish leadership, such as
Speaker 1: could come through a national Council of scientists. Mister William
Speaker 1: Henry Smith has been in general practice as a consulting
Speaker 1: engines since eighteen seventy nine. He is the inventor of
Speaker 1: many machines and mechanical devices, including a system of raising
Speaker 1: water by direct explosion on its surface, the device being
Speaker 1: known as the direct explosion pump. He has been an
Speaker 1: engineering expert in many patent cases and is a frequent
Speaker 1: contributor to technical journals. As well as a pioneer in mechanics,
Speaker 1: mister Smith is a pioneer in economics. He is a
Speaker 1: member of the leading scholarly associations in that field, including
Speaker 1: the American Economic Association and the Royal Economic Society of
Speaker 1: Great Britain. Parts one, two, and three appeared originally in
Speaker 1: Industrial Management of New York. The concluding part four has
Speaker 1: not heretofore been published and will appear exclusively in the
Speaker 1: Gazette the editor. Instincts control instincts are the most persistent
Speaker 1: human urge factors. Seemingly, they are less subject to change
Speaker 1: than even the most unchanging aspects of our physical environment.
Speaker 1: The instant to live self preservation is as dominating today
Speaker 1: as in the days of our caveman ancestors. The instinct
Speaker 1: to construct is as persistent in man as in the beaver.
Speaker 1: The mastery instinct desire to control others is as vital
Speaker 1: as Ever, the thievish instinct desire to acquire and hoarde
Speaker 1: shows no change and is the same old urge as
Speaker 1: that disclosed by the pre man's stores of insects, birds,
Speaker 1: and various animals. Indeed, without these primordial urges, man could
Speaker 1: not have developed, and the loss or atrophy of any
Speaker 1: one of them would probably mean the rapid extinction of
Speaker 1: the race. Thus, it would seem that our fundamental instincts
Speaker 1: are essentially necessary to human continuance, at least to our
Speaker 1: social existence. So let us look once more at these
Speaker 1: vital factors in the light of recent events in order
Speaker 1: to see what part they now take and are likely
Speaker 1: to play in our future social economy. Brute force, no
Speaker 1: lesson of the war, probably is more obvious or more
Speaker 1: clearly defined than the rapid trend towards skill as a
Speaker 1: predominating and controlling factor in our immediate social development. Recorded
Speaker 1: history and archaeological investigation confirm the suggestion that, in the
Speaker 1: matter of economic control of human activities in their products,
Speaker 1: the possession of this control has oscillated to and fro
Speaker 1: under the influence of one or other of the instinct
Speaker 1: of verges, so that characteristic types of men secured alternate mastery.
Speaker 1: Starting in the pre human period before the dawn of
Speaker 1: definite self consciousness and continuing during the eons in the
Speaker 1: twilight of human intelligence, rob root force must have been
Speaker 1: the dominating economic factor. The influence of skill during this
Speaker 1: period was practically negligible, except in so far as it
Speaker 1: affected individuals. Of this the huge prolongation of the unchanging
Speaker 1: Stone age is sufficient demonstration contest with cunning. The gradual
Speaker 1: growth and rapid culmination of the skill factor is an
Speaker 1: important consideration in our present inquiry and likewise in our
Speaker 1: social reconstruction problems. For while purposeful skill is of slow development,
Speaker 1: purposive cunning, on the contrary, is inherently otherwise. Indeed, cunning
Speaker 1: and purposiveness both imply mental alertness and hence are in
Speaker 1: some wise synonymous. For these reasons, in the early stages
Speaker 1: of human development, raw strength and animal cunning must alone
Speaker 1: have contended to satisfy the other instinctive urges to live
Speaker 1: to control, practically uninfluenced by the relatively modern urge of
Speaker 1: purposeful skill. Doubtless, this simple conflict of raw strength and
Speaker 1: brute cunning waged with varying results, slowly oscillating age by
Speaker 1: age and race by race in favor of one or
Speaker 1: other human type, as environmental conditions or racial admixtures gave
Speaker 1: one or other the advantage of circumstance, and as economic
Speaker 1: implies the usages, laws, and institutions, whereby a community endeavors
Speaker 1: to organize its methods and means of living. Those whose
Speaker 1: activities characterize the times initiate and administer its economics. Age
Speaker 1: long seesaw. So with these age long oscillations of control
Speaker 1: types economic institutions necessarily underwent like changes conforming to the
Speaker 1: dominating human characteristics of each age and nation that they
Speaker 1: did so oscillate and economically conform in the vaguest dawn
Speaker 1: of human beginnings is the teaching of archaeology. During the
Speaker 1: past few thousand years, the contest of strength and cunning
Speaker 1: is shown by reliable historical records to have oscillated with
Speaker 1: comparative rapidity between one and the other extreme, including considerable
Speaker 1: periods during which strength and cunning unified. Control by union
Speaker 1: of church and state. Prior to the immediate present was
Speaker 1: a transition stage caused by the gradual weakening of the
Speaker 1: bond between turch and state, with a coincidental shifting of
Speaker 1: control in favor of cunning under a changed and relatively
Speaker 1: modern guise, representing the instinct diverge to take expressing itself
Speaker 1: as commercialism. With this change came a consequent modification of usages, laws,
Speaker 1: and institutions appropriate to its highest expression, capitalism capitalistic economies.
Speaker 1: The result of this last oscillation of control in favor
Speaker 1: of acquisitive cunning was that Germany became a nation of slaves,
Speaker 1: England a nation of paupers, France quit breeding, and the
Speaker 1: United States went wealth crazy. Challenged by purposive skill, the
Speaker 1: war represents the conclusive termination in this period of the
Speaker 1: age long contest of force and cunning for the control
Speaker 1: of men and the products of their activity. But this
Speaker 1: last and most spectacular conflict is complicated by the intrusion
Speaker 1: of the most modern and most rapidly developing factor, organized
Speaker 1: purposive skill. Here, then, skill enters the arena with a
Speaker 1: challenge to both earlier contestants for the prize of human
Speaker 1: control and mastery of the social machinery. Enters that contest
Speaker 1: older than the race itself, the struggle to satisfy the
Speaker 1: primordial instincts to live, to control, to take strength versus
Speaker 1: cunning versus skill. Thus the contest has become a triangular
Speaker 1: fight between the strong, the cunning, and the skillful, a
Speaker 1: fight in which rob brute force is a participant of
Speaker 1: rapidly diminishing importance. A modified continuation of the old time
Speaker 1: bloody contest for a humanly undesirable outcome. Cunning control is
Speaker 1: today the victor and in possession of the spoils the
Speaker 1: financial wealth of the world. But all the evidence points
Speaker 1: to a short enjoyment and a losing fight against the
Speaker 1: organized forces of purposive skill. Creaking capitalism. Cracking capitalism under
Speaker 1: war stress shows convincing evidence of inadequacy. The non effectiveness
Speaker 1: of money and credit wealth has become so obvious as
Speaker 1: to procure the enactment of work or fight laws. Thus
Speaker 1: into the discard, when our pre war money evaluation of
Speaker 1: men to be substituted by a standard which measures millionaire
Speaker 1: and hobo alike in accordance with their relative skill. Our
Speaker 1: pre war faith in the mysterious magic of money, too,
Speaker 1: received a staggering shock when all the private fortunes enmassed
Speaker 1: and all the billions of national credit combined utterly failed
Speaker 1: to add a single pound of much needed sugar to
Speaker 1: our limited supply, necessitating the two pounds of sugar per
Speaker 1: person apportionment, a commonplace vulgar fraction measure applicable to financial
Speaker 1: potentate and wary willy alike producer versus parasite on broader lines. Also,
Speaker 1: the evidence points the same way. Purposive skill is inherently productive,
Speaker 1: while purposeful cunning is naturally parasitic. Then the capability of
Speaker 1: cunning to rule and the continuance of its success in
Speaker 1: controlling others resides in and depends upon the stupidity and
Speaker 1: illiteracy of the governed. Mystery and magic are its weapons,
Speaker 1: equally in the realm of modern finance, as in the
Speaker 1: ancient theocracies, skill implies the reverse of all this. For
Speaker 1: skill is intelligence physically manifested. It is knowledge of nature's
Speaker 1: laws utilized dexterously, and the spread of scientific information characterizes
Speaker 1: our age. Thus, as the bulwarks of cunning control crumble,
Speaker 1: the weapons of skill are multiplied and perfected, so the
Speaker 1: outcome seems a foregone conclusion. With this outcome, our methods
Speaker 1: of life will necessarily change. Capitalistic customs, laws, and institutions
Speaker 1: will be substituted by others, differing as widely from those
Speaker 1: with which we are familiar as the motor ideas and
Speaker 1: ideals of purposeful cunning differ from those of purposeful skill,
Speaker 1: work or fight lesson peradventure, the work or fight and
Speaker 1: the two pounds of sugar per person measures are tonic
Speaker 1: forecasts of the coming skill economics. Obviously, we are in
Speaker 1: transition to a new social order. The signs of the
Speaker 1: times portend the dethroning of decadent aquisitive capitalism and the
Speaker 1: crowning of productive skill autocrat of the new age artisanism.
Speaker 1: This change has been in dubious process for years. The
Speaker 1: war has merely speeded its progress and made the outcome
Speaker 1: practically inevitable. But whether it be brought about by evolution
Speaker 1: or revolution, or whether it comes in clean cut aspect
Speaker 1: or be fogged by irrelevant social factors and forces, it
Speaker 1: is in no sense a rational or final solution of
Speaker 1: our social problem. In any event, should artisanism come, it
Speaker 1: will be merely another social spasm, probably shorter than but
Speaker 1: equally as futile as our present world wide finance madness.
Speaker 1: Instincts not a rational basis. While it is conceivable that
Speaker 1: human societies could be organized upon and with any one
Speaker 1: of the stated basic instincts as dominant factor and raison detra,
Speaker 1: it is practically certain that any such national society would
Speaker 1: be quite ineffective and transient. For obviously it would not
Speaker 1: and could not satisfy even our present limited intelligence, our
Speaker 1: rational imagination, or our modern spiritual ideals. No very extended
Speaker 1: analysis would be required to show the validity of this proposition.
Speaker 1: The past has already demonstrated the insufficiency of societies based
Speaker 1: upon the mastery instinct autocracy. The present amply proves the
Speaker 1: failure of the acquisitive instinct as a social basis plutocracy.
Speaker 1: A moment's thought will show that a society based upon
Speaker 1: the making instinct would simply crumble in its formative process
Speaker 1: under the demands of our complicated modern mental make up.
Speaker 1: For clearly this instinct provides inadequate human scope and hence
Speaker 1: presupposed as parasitism in even more extended form than that
Speaker 1: of acquisitive capitalism. And worse than all, a society based
Speaker 1: upon the instinct to live and propagate would return us
Speaker 1: at once to the brute state from which we have
Speaker 1: arisen through ages of struggle, strife and bloodshed. Control without control. Still,
Speaker 1: it is apparent that the basic instincts which urge to live,
Speaker 1: to make, to take, to control, are as useful, yes,
Speaker 1: are as essential in and too modern social life as
Speaker 1: they have been in all the past. But while all
Speaker 1: are necessary, no one of them constitutes a proper basis
Speaker 1: law of operation for a rational human society organization. They
Speaker 1: are factors, necessary and desirable contributory parts, no one of
Speaker 1: which is inherently adapted to function as the machine's unifier,
Speaker 1: its strain and speed equalizer, its control element. Thus, the
Speaker 1: determination of a suitable character of control element is seemingly
Speaker 1: the crux of our social problem, the problem of controlling
Speaker 1: without control, that old old paradox freedom made effective by restraint.
Speaker 1: A paradox, however, which the war may have resolved for
Speaker 1: us by demonstrating its non existence. It has in some
Speaker 1: ways answered our troublous question by clear definition in the
Speaker 1: statement of the nation's object in going to war. The
Speaker 1: war has answered the question in another aspect by the
Speaker 1: nation's adoption of the method forced upon it by logical compulsion,
Speaker 1: whereby success was achieved to make the world safe for democracy.
Speaker 1: Is the clearest and most universally accepted statement of our
Speaker 1: purpose in going to war. Self government for nations, self
Speaker 1: government for individuals. Concept of control control by others, then,
Speaker 1: is antithetical to the ideals for which we have waged.
Speaker 1: This last the greatest, and it is hoped, the final
Speaker 1: bloody contest for self government. Control is equally antithetical to
Speaker 1: our ideals of self government. Whether the control is exercised
Speaker 1: by others characterized by the instinct to live and breed
Speaker 1: the masses, or whether the control is exercised by others
Speaker 1: characterized by the instinct to make the skilled artisan, or
Speaker 1: whether the control is exercised by others urged by the
Speaker 1: instinct of mastery, the employers, or whether the control is
Speaker 1: exercised by others under their dominating, acquisitive instinct, the financiers. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the concept control by others is an idea inherent in
Speaker 1: and appropriate only to now discredited autocracy, a concept which
Speaker 1: the war has rendered an obsolete ideal. If we are
Speaker 1: intelligent enough to profit by its costly teaching discard Caveman control.
Speaker 1: To be rationally consistent, this control concept should be as
Speaker 1: absent as it is obsolete in fact and effect. In
Speaker 1: our inevitable reconstruction, this autocracy control concept must be thrown
Speaker 1: in the discard where we have dumped the European autocrats
Speaker 1: whose ideal it was. If our reconstruction efforts are intended
Speaker 1: to produce a rationally organized modern human society, a society
Speaker 1: founded upon the ideals consecrated by the lifeblood of our
Speaker 1: bravest and best. But our age long familiarity with control
Speaker 1: by others in our halting progress from brute beast to
Speaker 1: modern man, has so deeply ingrained in our mental fiber
Speaker 1: this Stone Age concept as to make it almost impossible
Speaker 1: for us to even conceive the idea of a society
Speaker 1: lacking this cave man spiked club element. Yet no fact
Speaker 1: in lesson of our participation in the war is more
Speaker 1: clear and free from doubt than the spontaneous acquiescence by
Speaker 1: the people of the United States, rich and poor, artisan
Speaker 1: and laborer alike in self control, self repression, self dedication
Speaker 1: to the United will, and unified purpose of the nation purpose.
Speaker 1: No lesson of the war is more significant then. Given
Speaker 1: a national purpose intelligently comprehended and acquiesced in, only unselfish
Speaker 1: leadership is needed, and neither control by force nor control
Speaker 1: by cunning is necessary to bring about the unification of
Speaker 1: effort needed to accomplish the nation's objective. The significance of
Speaker 1: this lesson is the utter irrationality of national control in
Speaker 1: the hands of any class characterized by self centered instincts
Speaker 1: or that strength or skill or cunning should be dominating
Speaker 1: factors in the social structure, though none of these factors
Speaker 1: should dominate each in all of these vital and necessary
Speaker 1: elements should have free scope for the socially effective outflow
Speaker 1: of its particular expression of life energy. Second only in
Speaker 1: significance to the acquiescence and cooperation of the United People
Speaker 1: is the method irresistibly forced upon the nation by the
Speaker 1: logic and necessities of its stupendous war problem. First real nation,
Speaker 1: this first modern economic institution, and the united co operation
Speaker 1: of the United People are the two outstanding lessons of
Speaker 1: the war for us. Taken together, they point significantly to
Speaker 1: the solution of our social problem. The lacking element, which
Speaker 1: should and could consciously, deliberately and rationally unify the basic
Speaker 1: instinct of verges into an harmonious direction of national effort
Speaker 1: and so produce a humanly efficient national organization, the first
Speaker 1: real nation on Earth. The lacking element, the element which
Speaker 1: is adapted to assume the function and position to be
Speaker 1: vacated by the obsolescent autocratic concept arbitrary control. The element
Speaker 1: capable of controlling without control, of making freedom effective democracy
Speaker 1: a living fact as well as a noble ideal. In this,
Speaker 1: as in many other seemingly difficult problems of long standing,
Speaker 1: the solution has evaded us by reason of its very obviousness.
Speaker 1: Such a unifying factor has always existed in plain view,
Speaker 1: unutilized in its proper function as social sal strain equalizer. Indeed,
Speaker 1: this urge factor, more even than the instincts to live,
Speaker 1: to make, to take, to control, is the most universal
Speaker 1: and most humanly characterizing trait of that most marvelous complex man,
Speaker 1: desire to know. I refer to curiosity, curiosity rationalized into
Speaker 1: desire to know. Desire to know, while equally urgent for gratification,
Speaker 1: inherently lacks the undesirable and inappropriate qualities which render the
Speaker 1: other human instincts unsuitable as organizing and strain equalizing factors
Speaker 1: in the social structure. Also, it possesses qualities and attributes
Speaker 1: which make it peculiarly adapted to perform the rationally harmonizing
Speaker 1: function so irrationally assumed in all earlier social organizations under
Speaker 1: the guise of forceful and cunning control. Desire to know
Speaker 1: is as imperative in its demands as any of the
Speaker 1: self centered motor instincts to live, to make, to take,
Speaker 1: to control, but it is impersonal. While it is as
Speaker 1: aggressive as other instinctive urges, Characteristically, its natures and activities
Speaker 1: are directed at nature, not in aggression on human opponents.
Speaker 1: Hence it engenders no human strife. And while it drives furiously,
Speaker 1: it drives none but its possessor in the pursuit of
Speaker 1: knowledge desire to know, while profoundly interested in all that
Speaker 1: pertains to human life and living, to eugenics and racial development. Characteristically,
Speaker 1: its possessor would risk his own life in the pursuit
Speaker 1: of knowledge. Desire to know, though urgently interested in nature's
Speaker 1: laws and in all that concerns the correct making and
Speaker 1: constructing of things, characteristically lacks desire to make or construct things,
Speaker 1: but seeks only systematized concepts of knowledge. Desire to know,
Speaker 1: while deeply interested in all that pertains to the desirable
Speaker 1: things of the world and to economic affairs, characteristically lacks
Speaker 1: the thievish impulse the INSTINCTI take to acquire physical possession.
Speaker 1: Supremely acquisitive, it craves only to acquire knowledge, desire to know.
Speaker 1: While surpassingly masterful, desires no mastery of men. It craves
Speaker 1: instead godlike insight, prevision, prophecy power in the boundless realms
Speaker 1: of knowledge. Leadership here, then, is an indomitable urge, lacking
Speaker 1: all the inappropriate qualities of the strife producing autocratic force
Speaker 1: and fear control motor concept of social organization, and possessed
Speaker 1: of all the unifying qualities of social leadership. A human
Speaker 1: society or nation is sanely designed or rationally organized on
Speaker 1: correct principles only when it has a purpose, and as
Speaker 1: in the case of a well considered machine, only when
Speaker 1: full cognizance is taken of all its contributory elements, together
Speaker 1: with their essential functions and their proper coordination a national objective.
Speaker 1: A truly efficient national organisation would facilitate, not suppress or prohibit,
Speaker 1: the expression of all inherent instinctive urges, rationalizing their outflowing
Speaker 1: life energy by sane institutional conventions into unification in a
Speaker 1: fully predetermined national purpose. In a crude but clearly perceptible manner,
Speaker 1: the United States during the war gave suggestion of such
Speaker 1: an ideal social arrangement. It had a defined and universally
Speaker 1: accepted purpose, its scientific desire to know men, and its
Speaker 1: scientific societies were more or less organized into a unifying
Speaker 1: and advisory board to formulate and suggest methods and means
Speaker 1: for sane living and to accomplish the predetermined purpose of
Speaker 1: the nation. We have accomplished the object of the war.
Speaker 1: We have made the world safe for democracy. Now let
Speaker 1: us inaugurate a democracy, a democracy with an object for
Speaker 1: its existence, a democracy with a purpose. By the peril
Speaker 1: to its life, the nation has been shocked into momentary sanity.
Speaker 1: Let us, while still rational, rationally take to heart the
Speaker 1: lessons which the war has taught at so staggering a cost. First,
Speaker 1: the need of a national purpose, a purpose based upon
Speaker 1: peace and rational human development, a purpose as inspiring and
Speaker 1: as unifying as war for democracy, and as high as
Speaker 1: our highest ideals of life. Second, the need of a
Speaker 1: supreme national Council of scientists, supreme over all other national institutions,
Speaker 1: to advise and instruct us how best to live and
Speaker 1: how most efficiently to realize our individual and our national
Speaker 1: purpose and ideals. But first and last, a unifying national objective. Fernwald, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: December nineteen eighteen. Is it rational to base human society
Speaker 1: on animal instincts? End of Technocracy? Section one, Hey