TheMarketForIdeas

Modern technology invests political and other organizations with the means to increasingly organize all variables which impinge upon their operation. The need to economize an organization’s activities, due to a condition of insufficient means and material, motivates an effort to secure greater control over those variables on behalf of the organization’s presumed interests. This article – the second of two parts [Part I] – is drawn from the second part of a paper written in 1971, which was used as the second chapter of my 1974 M.A. thesis, The Methodical Conquest: Perceptions of the Impact of Modern Technology on Society. It focuses on ideas put forward by writers from 1910-1950.

A new servility may result from new economic and technological forces, but it does not need to take the form of personal servitude of the poor to the rich, an idea which Belloc originally suggested.[60] Servility may be impersonal. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche understood that a “master syndrome” also has its servile aspects. Cultivation of eccentric personal distinctions is an example of a created need which assures a slavish dependency in some situations. Insecurity is a major source of such behavior.

Insecurity and a lack of power may prompt a spirit of fatalism, as well. C. E. M. Joad noticed a discouragement of political participation, an effect which he attributed to blind economic actions. It is upon educated political consciousness that democracy depends for its success. The alternative dispositions – apathy and revolutionary reaction – are equally destructive of this end and arise from a situation which renders participation by citizens politically negligible.[61] Under a large, complex and impersonal system of government, a feeling of powerlessness will affect even the most politically committed citizens. When governing myths falter, as during a political scandal, so do cherished beliefs about the justice and workability of government. This is inescapable since the problem corresponds to a fact of political life. It is another example of disillusioned optimism where the optimism itself is unwarranted in the first place.

“More still needs to be said about change and adaptation to change. People are frequently more adaptable – or inconstant – than they care to admit: often more adaptable than is healthy for them in the long run. Some critics claim that the very tempo of modern life is injurious to health and may promote stress diseases. Human rhythms may be upset by machine rhythms; adaptation may only conceal the mischief, allowing it to proceed undisturbed.”[62]

The relative flexibility of the social or political system is another consideration. From an economic standpoint, Sir Arthur Salter noticed two basic facts about the situation of his time.

“First, mechanization causes great changes in occupation. The agriculturist comes into industry; men move from the old basic industries to new ones; they move from manufacture to personal services. This is a normal and inevitable development even when the economic system is working at its best. The second fact, however, is equally important. The economic system had already, before the depression, been losing its power of rapid absorption.”[63]

The rapidity of technical progress and population growth add further strains.[64] Adaptation continues but planned adjustments are not very compelling; in effect these adjustments resemble what has been termed “entrainment,” imparting a general direction and some parameters to activity but not controlling the results.

Salter’s evaluation is very different from Penty’s and reflects, in part, the very different conditions that marked the decade following the war which led to the Great Depression. Out of these strains arose a problem of distribution: the spectacle of want amidst plenty. Chesterton recognized the importance of this problem, developed a theory of distribution, and even founded a society based on its principles.[65] “In so far as the machine cannot be shared, I would have the ownership of it shared; that is, the direction of it shared and the profits of it shared.”[66]

This proposal is a recurrent theme in the writings of guild socialists, who sought to join an ethic of craftsmanship and professional self-determination with local self- sufficiency and a federal form of government headed by a trade council. The idea has influenced many writers but has had little direct political influence. Decentralization remains an attractive hope; modern governments clearly are ponderous bodies. But the guild socialist notion that government is meant to be primarily a regulator of economic concerns, actually perpetuates the same assumptions about the nature of man and society which capitalism and many forms of socialism uphold. As long as the same assumptions continue to operate, the novelty of a change in political structure will be the only meaningful difference; soon enough even the novelty loses its appeal.

Conflict

Besides such internal social consequences, technological developments also have had a profound effect on international politics, particularly as laid bare by that arm of diplomacy: war. For Russell and Tawney, war is the natural result of unresolved conflicts between parties which, having no higher authority to which they could appeal, have no other recourse than to arms.[67] This belief is an extension of a conception of man as a predatory animal whose competitive spirit is unbounded. Custom has tended to legitimize war as a last resort in the struggle for scarce resources, market advantages, and territorial integrity. The idea that force is the final arbiter contradicts the notion of political self-restraint, putting them at cross-purposes.

For Tawney, nationalism and individualism were at once the source and the expression of conflicting interests, which typify acquisitive societies.

“Nationalism is, in fact, the counterpart among nations of what individualism is within them. It has similar origins and tendencies, similar triumphs and defects. . . . Like individualism it is a force of immense explosive power, the just claims of which must be conceded before it is possible to invoke any alternative principle to control its operations. They rose together. It is probable that, if ever they decline, they will decline together. For life cannot be cut in compartments. In the long run the world reaps in war what it sows in peace.”[68]

Individualism and nationalism become especially destructive when they are made absolute; Tawney suggested that industrialism and imperialism are their perverted forms. His words betray the optimism of a secular faith: “. . .the perversion comes, not through any flaw or vice in human nature, but by the force of the idea, because the principle is defective and reveals its defects as it reveals its powers.”[69]

The last two clauses are well put. Ideas have consequences; their flaws are always found out. Political myths end up by being wrenched apart.

It might be claimed that Tawney’s apparently optimistic assessment of human nature is the polar opposite of the conception of man as a predator or competitor. But it must be remembered that “mutual aid” and “survival of the fittest” derive from some of Darwin’s basic ideas about evolution. Kropotkin and Spencer took opposite sides on one issue but their beliefs in most other respects were very similar. The difference is both a matter of emphasis and the conclusions they drew from ambiguous evidence. Tawney’s humanistic optimism is as shallow as Spengler’s naturalistic pessimism. Both understood man in terms of a collection of functions; they lost sight of the individual by projecting human attributes into self-explanatory collective forces such as history, the masses, competition, cooperation, property, functional society, and so forth. The terms “optimism” and “pessimism” are meaningful only on the basis of what they admit in common. In fact these two ideas tend to merge once they return to their cultural source, Christianity. Yves Simon’s “pessimistic theory of progress” and Emmanuel Mounier’s “tragic optimism” are consonant in principle and basically Christian in inspiration.

Individualism and nationalism are addressed to the same set of values. When carried to the extreme they become like bitter rivals; the claims of one must be given precedence while the other festers. According to Bertrand Russell, if industrialism has produced conditions on which nationalism thrives it has also increased the inclination to use the sophisticated technology it provides for a war-machine.

“The greater ferocity of modern war is attributable to machines, which operate in three different ways. First, they make it possible to have larger armies. Secondly, they facilitate a cheap Press, which flourishes by appealing to men’s baser passions. Thirdly – and this is the point that concerns us – they starve the anarchic, spontaneous side of human nature, which works underground, producing an obscure discontent, to which the thought of war appeals as affording possible relief. . . .I believe that the modern increase in warlike instinct is attributable to the dissatisfaction (mostly unconscious) caused by the regularity, monotony, and tameness of modern life.”[70]

Elsewhere Russell claimed that the roots of conflict are deeply seated in human instincts.[71] This is a casual dismissal of the causes of war. Cheaper distractions are available. War has become too destructive to be called upon as a tool of internal politics. The obliteration of distance as a sanctuary reveals war as the disease which it is by nature. Modern technology and communications have brought peoples closer and increased their interdependence; we can scarcely avoid recognizing that all war is civil war, that it is mutual suicide. The problem of ultraviolent means of conflict brings man face to face with his own self. Sublimated forms of individual violence – competition, greed, jealousy, anger, manipulation – have far reaching consequences, and return to confront us all. War may appeal to the escapist fantasies of some people, but it is not caused by the monotony of modern life through some kind of spontaneous combustion.

The survival of man, for C. E. M. Joad, depends on speedy political maturation; morality must catch up with the growth of power and defeat the tendency to wield it over others. The desire to subjugate other peoples led to the first world war; the same desires, coupled with a desire for revenge, seemed likely in 1935 to spark another.[72]

Joad was an idealist philosopher who later became a Christian. At the time he regarded morality as something which progresses with new knowledge and that the tendency to wield power over man is something which can be managed. But by exercising dominion over both nature and man, he includes himself as raw material to be molded. Man is not merely an embodied spirit or mind, a “ghost in the machine.” Dualists offer a false dichotomy.

Force is a part of existence; it is inescapable. Violence occurs in more forms than one might think. The more visible forms of violence, such as war, are extreme collective expressions of forces which affect our daily lives. When this is recognized it becomes more difficult to speak glibly of “moral lag” or “moral progress.” Social ethics fix into principles modes of behavior which under other circumstances would be moral dilemmas. Choice is always unavoidable. Ethical codes simplify or alter real costs. Dilemmas do not disappear simply by constructing adequate moral codes. Human motives are fundamentally inconsonant; they pull in a variety of directions.

The solution to war, for Haldane, was a new kind of war. In view of man’s belligerent spirit, he proposed a war against diseases and social evils of every kind, which could profitably use energies that might otherwise be spent in useless conflict:[73] “If you are to have real world cooperation and world loyalty, it must be cooperation for some positive end, not for a merely negative end such as keeping peace.”[74] This proposal is similar to William James’ “moral equivalent of war.” Many forms of collective action offer useful discipline, comradeship and service. They may provide excellent outlets for violent energy but, even then, they do not come to terms with the roots of war. War is more than an outlet of violent energies. Cultural change may just as well be blamed. Perhaps such change favors the drift toward war, to which politicians merely affix their signatures.

Reductive images of man and social engineering

The events and concerns mentioned above are all social phenomena; they are descriptive of entire social bodies. But they may also be viewed from an individual perspective. Here the themes of alienation and powerlessness enter, adding depth to the picture.

Objectification, of men and their surroundings, is said to contribute to alienation: a theme that recurs throughout modern literature, whether man is accordingly likened to a robot or is found somehow to have lost his identity or is cast adrift in a universe devoid of meaning.[75] Some writers have blamed science for this objectification of man; Aldous Huxley singled out Christianity for blame.

“By deconsecrating his body and the diverse world with which it participatively communicates through the instincts, feelings, and desires, by robbing them of their divine meaning, Christianity has left him without defence against our mechanized civilization. The sterile creed of the ascetic has to a great extent given place, in our modern world, to the sterile creeds of the abstraction worshipping man of science and the machine worshipping man of applied science (who is the modern ‘average man’).”[76]

Many ills have been laid at the door of Christianity. Often the real culprits are departures from the spirit of Scripture. Huxley’s argument has been repeated by romantic social critics such as Theodore Roszak. Much has been said about the so-called desacralization of nature by Christianity. It is true that pantheism is inconsistent with the Christian conception of nature, but the importance and reality of nature is not thereby diminished. Nor was nature meant to be sterilized, although certain religious interpretations did come to that conclusion.

Idealism is a secularized form of Docetism, an early Christian heresy which denied that Christ’s body is composed of material substance. Idealists similarly degrade matter to the status of a lesser substance. This is not what is meant by “fallen nature”: that it is somehow lower than spirit. This again is dualism. The idealist attitude has contributed to the degradation of the natural world, the human body, and finally human life itself.

Objectification must be understood in light of certain trends in secular philosophy. One of these trends is to see behavior in terms of functions; it constitutes a broken image of man which seeks to replace the imago Dei. Behaviorism, which started as a school of thought in psychology and has since spread to the other social sciences, was generally censured as an extreme example of objectification. Graham Wallas considered it to be “a dangerous tendency” among certain Russian and American scientific thinkers. “These men took the measurable movements of human muscles and the chemical and physical processes which resulted in such movements as a complete account of human behavior.”[77] The “private” world of values had no meaning for them; they only acknowledged the “public,” such as the quantitative or measurable fact.[78] Hilaire Belloc warned against attempts to use the analytical tools of science where the scientific method does not apply, while Haldane scoffed at behaviorism on the same physiological grounds that others claimed to prove its validity.[79]

Much has been said about reductionism. This kind of reductionism, however, can be avoided; it is inconsistent with the spirit of science. Refining its obvious crudities will not help; the flaw is its assumption that a dissection of functions will provide science with anything more than one map out of an assortment of possible maps, each emphasizing different kinds of landmarks. Fortunately, there are supplemental procedures for weighing evidence and acquiring new knowledge which may have different criteria and different tests for accuracy. The limits and purposes of each should be scrupulously observed.

The uprooting of men and atomization of communities is considered another aspect of the alienative process.[80] But more attention was paid by these writers to “standardization” and “uniformity,” which they believed to result in part from considering people in the collective sense: not as unique members of a community, but as objects to be managed.

Too much has been made of the idea that, besides standardized parts for mass production, modern organization and technology requires standardized workers, functionaries, and consumers. Some critics believe that more than a standardization of roles is taking place; they fear that an uncreative uniformity of life-styles, amusements, beliefs, and behaviors have become a part of our marketing and political practice. In previous eras such practices were directed toward other ends, so it would be difficult to determine whether the people of any historical time or place are actually manipulated to a greater extent than any other. In any case, the results are not even uniform; the exceptions belie the rule.

What, then, is this apparent tendency toward some kind of uniformity? Hugh Fausset believed that the search for excellence was losing power.

“We live in a day when the unique is everywhere being submerged in the uniform, and although we may pride ourselves upon a certain intellectual candour and dexterity and to some extent a concern for physical well-being, these virtues are conditioned and counterbalanced by the fact that we have little desire to raise ourselves to a higher pitch or, indeed, to conform to anything but average standards. Yet beneath our physical and intellectual activities the deepest needs of the soul remain unsatisfied. For the deepest need in man or woman is to express the self in some sort of creative activity, however humble.”[81]

At first glance we may be very impressed with the results of modern mechanical invention, but then we find that most of its products “supply no really felt need.”[82] This is a negative aspect of the “created needs” phenomenon. It has been criticized for promoting waste, “puerilism,” and vulgarization of taste.

Aldous Huxley noted that a rationalized division of labor relieves man, “not merely of drudgery, but of the possibility of performing any creative or spontaneous act whatsoever.”[83] And not only our work but our amusements have been mechanized. Yet J. A. Hobson saw nothing inevitable about standardization:

“That some danger exists in the imposition of common ways of living by large scale industrialism and advertising must be admitted. But there are natural defences in the divergent needs and tastes of persons inhabiting different countries and living in different physical and moral environments. And behind all lies the uniqueness of the personality, its physical and mental make-up and its insistence upon a free choice of the novelties offered it.”[84]

Bertrand Russell drew a contrast between machines and emotions; he found that the conflict is between the regularity demanded by the machine and the irregularity of human feelings. Spontaneity and variety are important to happiness; this requires breaks in the monotony of modern life, which is why the people often welcome war, he said. To avoid this, opportunities must be provided for uncontrived self-expression. He mentioned one alternative in “high adventure.”[85] It is certainly true that many modern forms of work overtax the intellectual and calculative faculties. An idea with considerable merit is to combine or at least to alternate manual and mental tasks within the same job to break the tedium of either extreme.

Elsewhere Russell described what he believed would be the characteristics of a “scientific society” and then added:

“Such a society would be intolerably dull, and might in the long run die of inanition. There is, however, a real danger of something of this kind, because in the scientific society men of the administrative type will necessarily have more power than they have had at any previous stage of the world’s history. Many of you will probably feel, as I do, the danger lest men of this type should regard human beings not as separate persons, each with his own individuality, but as raw material for great schemes.”[86]

With these words, Russell expressed one of the central fears which inspires the critique of technology. Man’s insatiable appetite for improvement of his life and society is thought to lead to an increasing tyranny of means: i.e., programs of action. The specter of collectivism has provoked more critiques than any other aspect of our modern situation. Walter Lippmann recalled Hilaire Belloc when he described “collectivists” as subjects of the servile state, which he said is based on “the coercive direction of the life and labor of the people” in the name of humane living standards.[87] Such collectivists represent the benevolent face of the tendency toward totalitarian political control. But their idea is as degrading a myth about the nature of man as any elitist theory has ever been. And the question remains: who will guard the guardians? The sufferings and sacrifices of secular saints, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor,” do not guarantee wise leadership or serve to better the condition of man.

Belloc observed that one effect of the “mass of regulation and constraint” which has made procedural standardization possible is to reenforce “the belief that man is controlled by his environment:” that is, determinism. This belief encourages a “slave” mentality.[88] It contributes to the spirit of fatalistic apathy that has been noted previously.

But our ideas of free will and determinism are usually very crude. Like other polarities they do not exist separately. Political freedom is a changeable thing. Yves Simon, the Neo-Thomist philosopher, said that free will proceeds from causes endowed with an excess of determination, which results “in a dominating indifference to any necessity."[89] People are islands of conscious choice and reconciliation within the interplay of unseeing natural and social forces. They are microcosmic agencies and constructors of their world, however powerless and unfree they may be in appearance.

Leisure

The subject of leisure is a difficult one to place conveniently, as there are several meanings given to it by these authors. C. E. M. Joad remarked that modern man has generally lost his capacity for leisure and must choose between several varieties of entertainment and thrill seeking: poor substitutes for the contentedness of those who have “some knowledge of the art of life.”[90] He also thought that “Man, ‘improved’ scientifically out of all proportion out of all proportion to his spiritual ‘improvement,’ will rush to embrace all manner of esoteric creeds and cults in the vain endeavor to find sustenance for his starved soul.”[91] This is related to what Pitirim Sorokin called “chaotic syncretism.”[92] On the other hand, Hobson claimed that the cultural variety of modern life had “redeemed leisure from its dullness for the masses of the people.”[93]

Patterns of leisure tend to indicate spiritual conditions. This much is agreed upon by such critics as Jose Ortega y Gasset, Josef Pieper, and Johan Huizinga.[94] Leisure is the basis of culture. Ortega wrote an essay on the “sportive origin of the state.” But there has been a debate about leisure: whether mass-produced forms of entertainment are genuine forms of leisure or merely forms of psychological manipulation. Entertainment certainly can follow and assist the aims of mass suggestion; it can be mere distraction or it can be ritualized propaganda. It also seems to fit the definition of a “created need”: in this case the need might be attributed to problems caused by novel social patterns such as urban anonymity.

Chesterton and Penty examined leisure in its function as an important accessory of industrialism; it apparently provides a key to the comprehension of industrialism and its effects. Many themes come together at this point.

For Penty, the connection between leisure and industrialism runs thus: “I have associated the idea of the Leisure State with Collectivist ways of thinking because it seems to me to involve another state – the Servile State.”[95] The pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating, he says; it leads to boredom, selfishness and laziness. Industrialism may release most men from labor, but this would only transfer its burdens to the shoulders of few. And all would seek to evade their responsibilities: “It matters little if that work be reduced to four or even two hours a day, the corruption will be there all the same, and it will corrupt the leisure which accompanies it.”[96] The pleasures which corrupted the elites would be extended to the people.

Penty’s guild socialism was founded on the work ethic; he apparently did not believe in the possibility of a middle ground. Reduction of working hours is a secondary issue. When labor is demeaned it yields little satisfaction; the answer seems to be to shorten the time spent in drudgery. But four hours of slavery a day instead of eight does not diminish the slavery due to the obsessive mentality of slavery, which is more compelling than any physical bond. Freedom is really not the absence of bonds; it is the active conquest of the slave mentality. This should also be the criterion for deciding what constitutes leisure. The answer will be existential rather than definitive.

Chesterton pursued Penty’s point further. He could see no value in the leisure made possible by mass production, because there was “nothing of liberty” in it. On and off work, a man’s life would be dominated by machines which he did not produce and to which he might, at best, only lend a hand in their operation.[97] Indeed, Chesterton recognized the possibility of a managerial elite that would oversee and regulate the social system.[98]

“The answer of the mechanical collectivists is that though the machine might give work to the few, it could give food to the many. But it could only be presided over by the few. Or even if we suppose that some work, subdivided into small sections, were given to the many, that system of rotation would have to be ruled by a responsible few; and some fixed authority would be needed to distribute the work as much as to distribute the food. In other words, the officials would very decidedly be permanent officials.”[99]

As an alternative, Chesterton suggested that some system of distributed machinery might be devised which would make each man the master of his machine and let him decide how it should be applied.[100] He also suggested that workers be allowed a greater voice in decision-making and regulate their own pace.

Behavioral and genetic modification

“Man is no longer a living soul, but a cog in a standardized machine. We are not free men. We have to think as the herd thinks, that we may be driven as the herd is driven. The new science of suggestion aims at turning out human units in the mass, like the products of factories. It is equipped with resources such as Nero and Torquemada never dreamed of.”[101]

William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, was concerned that men were being turned into “robots,” and cited propaganda techniques and state-controlled education in totalitarian countries. “For better and for worse the pendulum will swing back.”[102] But the danger for free men is still great, and the only safeguard lies in the maintenance of personal independence by men willing to do what they know to be right.

1. S. Lewis blamed the reductionist, emotive theory of value for creating an intellectual climate favorable to a new behavioral technology in the guise of the conquest of nature. Echoing Chesterton, Lewis realized that there is less room than ever before for correcting errors once conditioning is put into practice.[103] He believed that the conditioners, like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, would despise or envy the conditioned. “Chance” would still remain, even if a high degree of control were feasible. Ultimately the motives of the conditioners would be decisive: their unchecked skepticism leaving them creatures of wholly irrational behavior. Lewis’ message was this: “You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.”[104] Like Paul Tillich he recognized that behind the manifestations of relativity there must be a reality which is absolute. This he called the Tao.
2. E. M. Joad discerned that danger of propaganda was inherent in mass communications, which have made possible the new techniques of manipulating men’s minds.[105] Another way of putting it is that mass communication helps channel the operation of necessity; it rearranges the patterns of social forces.
3. A. Hobson noted the current use of psychological techniques in advertising and marketing practices.[106] On the other hand, F. S. C. Schiller was skeptical about the possibility of using the methods of psychology, and especially pharmacology, to effect changes in behavior. He granted, however, that psychology was then “in a deplorably backward state” and eventually might be developed into a true science. “Thus a pragmatically efficient Psychology might actually invert the miracle of Circe, and really transform the Yahoo into a man.”[107] The emphasis throughout his book was on the positive benefits offered by modern scientific technique.

Schiller was interested in the possibilities of civilizing men through the practice of eugenics. Cultural progress had been possible because of institutions which have created a continuous social memory. But, he claimed, civilization has reached a point where technical progress is swiftly changing man’s environment. The biological evolution of man had ceased long ago, giving rise to the possibility that man would destroy himself out of plain ignorance or perversity. There is no actual law of progress, he said; if anything, modern man is “markedly inferior to the great races of antiquity (like the Greeks) in their hey-day.”[108] Indeed, the very civilization which modern man depends upon for his well-being is in a state of decline, continually dying off at the top.

“(1) All societies, even those whose social structure is most rigid, have need of ability, discover it, and reward it by social promotion. But (2) as this promotion means passing into a class with a relatively inadequate rate of reproduction, the biological penalty attaching to social promotion is racial extinction. Thus (3) the ultimate reward of merit is sterilization.”[109]

This sounds a bit like the Peter Principle.[110] Schiller’s notion seems to derive from a popular myth that the intellect tends to develop at the expense of instinct and loses its vitality. Schiller did not consider the role of peculiar environmental factors with respect to reproduction within classes. He advocated that information on birth control and selective breeding should be made available, criticized “baby saving” and modern obstetrics, and discounted as impracticable any attempt by the state to impose a genetical program. “To make it effective, it would have to be backed by a powerful, enthusiastic, and intelligent public sentiment.”[111] Schiller wrote his book several years before the Nazi experiment.

Bertrand Russell foresaw little possibility of breeding “superior” people, except perhaps in the very distant future. But the weeding out of “undesirable types” through sterilization seemed to be a definite prospect. “This power will be used, at first, to diminish imbecility, a most desirable object. But probably, in time, opposition to the government will be taken to prove imbecility.”[112] Russell was more concerned about the declining birth rate in the industrial nations, and the rapid proliferation of people in the underdeveloped lands, both of which he felt needed to be regulated.[113] Nearly a century later this remains a political issue.

Some proposals by the critics

With the growing complexity of industry, the possibility of matching it with a strong central authority is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine. This was A. J. Penty’s conclusion more than a decade before the depression. He was concerned that the economic sphere has become more difficult to control from without (that is, by government); so he proposed that the economy be decentralized and controlled from within through the organization of guilds.[114]

This particular combination of the ideals of nineteenth century English conservatism and socialism had much support in popular literature between the world wars. William Morris and Hilaire Belloc inspired the Christian oriented guild socialism; Belloc and Chesterton founded the Distributist Society and their example has influenced American counterparts such as the Southern Agrarians and the Catholic Worker movement.[115] The last was strongly influenced by Dostoevsky, Berdyaev, and Mounier. There has been some revival of interest in these experiments of the 1920’s and 1930’s with “back to the land” cooperatives attracting attention.

Large-scale, nation-wide experimentation with social welfare programs and uniform standards have been more successful in a political sense. Perhaps their very inefficiencies and failures on the human level only strengthen the sense of urgency which feeds them. The so-called “economies of scale” do not apply to such a massive scale. Some kind of economic and political decentralization is needed simply to keep the inefficiencies from becoming a full-time preoccupation of government.

It is useful to look at the issues as they appeared prior to the Second World War and see how the situation has changed since then. The rise of fascism and the crash of the stock market brought the issues of central control to the fore. Sir Arthur Salter concluded that, since a return to things as they had been before the Depression was impossible, the main problem would be to introduce greater governmental regulation to the economy, while guarding against the extremes of too much control and too little regulation.

Salter forecast a gradual decentralization of society. People would be enabled to leave the cities and return to the country due to the availability of power and rapid transit. He also expected that the industrial process itself could be rehumanized and that men would have ample leisure time. Finally, he looked forward to a change in social ethics resulting from these new circumstances, one which would promote cultural toleration and reduce the role played by competition.[116]

The kind of decentralization we have seen in the last thirty years is the flight to the suburbs. This is not what any of these writers had in mind. They were hoping that population would be kept in check and that modern transportation would revive rural communities. But assumptions about rural living have changed. The city follows the urbanite wherever he chooses to live. Centralization still appears to be a strong trend. Urban sprawl secures its hold. The balkanization of local governments adds confusion but does not offset this general trend.

Julian Huxley pursued the idea of state regulation further and saw only two alternatives: totalitarian and democratic. Although the democratic one was for him the more desirable and permanent solution, the character of democracy would be considerably changed by the new circumstances. Free enterprise, he said, was unnecessary and could no longer make any claims on democratic society. “The only universal criterion of democracy and the democratic method is the satisfaction of the needs of human individuals, their welfare, development, and active participation in social processes.”[117] But Huxley did not appreciate that this criterion is fully consistent with “totalitarian democracy,” as J. L. Talmon called it. Democracy is less a particular form than a diffuse spirit of government. This spirit can vitalize even the “dead hand” of custom and law. It can also be perverted and used as a tool to destroy freedom or guarantee conformity.

Even before the Great Depression, J. B. S. Haldane recognized that the economy had become so tightly interwoven that more emphasis would need to be placed on stability rather than on increasing profits. These conflicting goals have not really been reconciled; attempts to impose economic controls in order to stabilize the economic situation have not been successful. The situation is likely beyond deliberate control, something we may not discover this until after we have experimented with some form of world government or world policing organization. Haldane, however, was optimistic about the future: “In sum, I believe that the progress of science will ultimately make industrial injustice as self-destructive as it is now making international injustice.”[118]

Injustice has always been self-destructive and always expensive, perhaps more visibly so now that the horizons of our vision have been extended by communication. But it is the rule rather than the exception. The questions it raises are basically religious although it is usually understood only on the political level. Too often the Christian understanding of social problems is considered anachronistic, inapplicable, or simple rationalizing. Haldane’s words sound hollow when compared with Berdyaev’s description of injustice:

“Christianity demanded submission not to its own social order but to an alien, pagan, bourgeois, even directly evil, order of society. And this submission was required not for the sake of the values of social justice but for the sake of humility in human religious experiences. Christianity taught a real pathos of submission to social injustice as just punishment for the sins of men. . . . Social order has never been social creativeness; it has always been a form of submission and adaptation.”[119]

Scientific progress is not the solution and neither is moral progress. For W. G. De Burgh, the solution to the problems of modern civilization is a spiritual one: a return to the precepts of Christianity. Knowledge and even morality are not enough. If progress in morality is to be achieved, it would have to be inspired by religious faith, for “without this faith we are plunged ever deeper into the maelstrom of relativity.”[120] Worship is a vital part of human life; it embraces the whole of the personality. But, if men lose their religious devotion, they will easily be swayed by ideologies, such as Communism and National Socialism, which offer false objects for worship. De Burgh concluded: “The religion that sets its trust in man can only be conquered by a religion that sets its trust in God.”[121]

Even so, let us be cautious about proposed solutions. An implicit pragmatism of the sacred can be read into De Burgh’s words. Yet while religious faith is not a pink pill with which to correct all of society’s ills, its pseudo-scientific ideological substitutes hold far less claim as a remedy. The political dilemma, as always, is how to reconcile the needs for both liberty and order. Taken to an extreme, when turned into jealous idols, their demands are irreconcilable. We should examine the world situation as it develops and clarify its meaning for us on the basis of experience. There is so much that we cannot do or change. But a sense of helplessness in face of the enormity of our circumstances may only breed quietism. How much we accomplish depends on how we use our personal freedom; life obliges us to more fully know ourselves and the world about us. A critique of modern social influences, such as technology, provides useful perspectives for this understanding.

Photo source: [1]PxHere.com; [2]PxHere.com.

Notes:

[60]Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State (London: T. N. Foulis, 1912).

[61]C. E. M. Joad, Liberty To-day (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1935) 36-39.

[62]See Rene Dubos, Reason Awake: Science for Man (New York Columbia University Press, 1970) 167-68.

[63]Arthur Salter, Modern Mechanization and Its Effect on the Structure of Society (Oxford, 1963) 21.

[64]Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[65]See Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (London: Penguin Books, 1958) 326-36.

[66]Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity (London: Methuen. 1928) 148. The guild socialists advocated a similar solution. See also J. B. S. Haldane, “Health Before Wealth,” The Listener (February 10, 1932) 190; and C. E. M Joad, “Is Man Improving,” Scribner’s Magazine (August 1935) 111-112.

[67]See Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965 [1931]) 239; R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1920) 42.

[68]Tawney, Acquisitive 48 49.

[69]Ibid., p. 49.

[70]Bertrand Russell, “Machines,” Sceptical Essays (London; George Allen and Unwin, 1928) 86.

[71]See Bertrand Russell, Icarus: or the Future of Science (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924) 12 13.

[72]Joad, “Improving” 112-13.

[73]Haldane, “Health,” Listener 190-91; see Sir Oliver Lodge, “The Spirit of Science,” The Listener (February 17, 1932) 222-23.

[74]Ibid. 191.

[75]The words “alienation,” “objectification,” “uprooting” and “individualization” were not used specifically in any of these writings, but there are allusions to these concepts in various passages cited in this paper. Together with “standardization,” they may be considered an “alienative process.” See Hilaire Belloc, “The Modern Man,” in Herbert Agar, et al., Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1936) 334-38.

[76]Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will (London: Watts and Company, 1936) 38; note also “The Myth of the Objective Consciousness” in Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition (New York, Doubleday and Company, 1968).

[77]Graham Wallas, Social Judgment (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935) 133-34, and the quote by Lancelot Hogben on page 135.

[78]Ibid. 135.

[79]Hilaire Belloc, “Machine versus Man,” The Listener (February 3, 1932) 162; Haldane, “Health” 298.

[80]See A. J. Penty, Old Worlds for New: A Study of the Post-Industrial State (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1917) 91 on the insecurity of workers. See also J. A. Hobson, “Civilization on Trial,” The Contemporary Review (September 1931) 298.

[81]Hugh l’Anson Fausset, “The Inefficiency of Science,” The Listener (January 27, 1932) 130.

[82]See Chesterton, Sanity 155-56. See also Eric Gill, Last Essays (London, 1942) 70.

[83]Huxley, “One and Many,” Will 39; see also W. G. De Burgh, “Sources of Present World-Trouble: The Abuse of Knowledge,” The Hibbert Journal (January 1940) 201-02.

[84]Hobson, “Civilization” 300.

[85]Russell, “Machines” 85-88

[86]Russell, “Science” 40.

[87]See Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1943) viii, 386 87.

[88]Belloc, “Machine” 164.

[89]Yves R. Simon, Community of the Free (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1947) 99-100. See also Yves R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) 34-35.

[90]Joad, “Improving” 114.

[91]Ibid. 113. See also Chesterton, Sanity 164-68.

[92]Hobson, “Civilization” 301.

[93]See Jose Ortega y Gasset, “The Sportive Origin of the State,” History as a System and Other Essays toward a Philosophy of History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1957); Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952); Johan Huizinga, In the Shadow of Tomorrow (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1936). Huizinga also wrote Homo Ludens.

[94]Penty, Worlds 176.

[95]Ibid. 176.

[96]Ibid. 178.

[97]Chesterton, Sanity 168-70.

[98]James Burnham explored this possibility in James Burnham, Managerial Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960 [1941]).

[99]Chesterton, Sanity 16-169.

[100]Ibid. 170.

[101]William Ralph Inge, “A World of Robots,” A Rustic Moralist (New York: Putnam, 1937) 200-01. A similar observation was made in DeBurgh, “World-Trouble” 200-01. The word “robot” was coined by the Czech dramatist, Karel Capek, in his play “R.U.R.”

[102]Ibid. 200-03.

[103]C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man: or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of School (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947) 67-91.

[104]Ibid. 91.

[105]Joad, Liberty 51-53. Joad cites other writers in this passage.

[106]Hobson, “Civilization,” 301-02.

[107]F. S. C. Schiller, Tantalus: or the Future of Science (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1924) 64.

[108]Ibid. 14, 19-30. Ibid. 43-48. See also Russell, Outlook 238-39.

[109]Ibid. 38-39

[110]Note: A reference to Laurence Peter’s satirical idea that employees tend to rise to the level of their incompetence.

[111]Schiller, Tantalus 42-45, 51-53.

[112]Russell, Icarus 48-49. See Huxley, “Science” 112. The possibilities of creating life “in a test tube” were already being discussed.

[113]Ibid. 43-48. See also Russell, Outlook 238-39.

[114]Penty, Worlds 92-93.

[115]See Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (New York: Harper and Row, 1962); William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1974) 93-94.

[116]Salter, Mechanization 23-27, 31-42.

[117]Huxley, Revolution 2, 13ff.

[118] Haldane, Daedalus 20-22.

[119]Nicolas Berdyaev, The Meaning of the Creative Act (New York: Collier Books, 1962) 262-63.

[120] De Burgh, “World-Trouble” 205.

[121]Ibid. 206.