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259
EPILOGUE:
WESTERN SOVIETOLOGY AND THE GORBACHEV PHENOMENON.
THE BIRTH OF "LIBERAL" TECHNOCRACY FROM THE ASHES OF COMMUNISM?
Introduction:
The Gorbachev Phenomenon as a Soviet Technocracy
There are a considerable number of Western Sovietologists
who view the rise of Gorbachev as the victory of the competent,
liberal Party "technocrats" over the conservative, ideological
"partocrats."
For example, Samuel Lieberstein argued that there
are two opposing camps in Soviet politics, the technocrats and
the partocrats.
The former, armed with the latest techniques of
information gathering, struggle with the latter, who are armed
with the true word of Marxism.
The former group ostensibly uses
their information gathering techniques (like computers) to
monitor feedback and make adjustments in the system, while the
latter pay no attention to feedback.
"The former group seeks to
introduce a more rational style of thought and action into Party
deliberations, while the latter seeks to preserve the Party's
prerogative of insisting that two and two makes five if
ideological considerations so dictate."1
Similarly, Bruce
Parrott classified the two factions as either "nontraditionalist"
or "traditionalist," with Lenin and Khrushchev representing the
former and Stalin and Brezhnev representing the latter.
He
prophesied in 1983 that the superiority of the nontraditionalist
approach (which was characterized by less Party supervision of
the STI than traditionalists like Stalin) would soon force the
1Samuel
USSR:
1975):
Lieberstein, "Technology, Work, and Sociology in the
The NOT Movement," Technology and Culture 16 (January
65.
260
Party leadership to adopt a nontraditionalist approach to
technological progress, which seems to have been fulfilled with
the rise of Gorbachev.2
And the scholarship which supports the
view that the Gorbachev faction represents the emergence of
Soviet technocracy has a long and some may say distinguished
tradition.
Blau and Meyer, for example, argued that if trained experts
were to perform tasks within the limits of technology and the
administrative framework, resort to strict command authority is
unnecessary and, indeed, "must be eschewed lest it interfere with
the exercise of discretion in making expert judgments . . .
The
advanced technology of the twentieth century necessitates
information feedback and specialized skills, which are
incompatible with an authority structure resting on blind
obedience to orders issued through a chain of command."3
Likewise, Jerry Hough quoted Galbraith as saying that the power
of those with specialized knowledge (the scientists and
specialists) will become "very great," so that one's power would
not necessarily be reflected by their place in the formal
administrative hierarchy.4
Hough further stressed that the
advanced technology of the twentieth century necessitates
information feedback and specialized skills, which "are
2Bruce
(Cambridge:
Parrott, Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union
The MIT Press, 1985), 300-301.
3Peter
M. Blau and Marshall W. Meyer, Bureaucracy in Modern
Society (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 144-5.
4Jerry
(Cambridge:
Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science
Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 60.
Theory
261
incompatible with an authority structure resting on blind
obedience to orders issued through a chain of command," with the
result that "impersonal mechanisms of control displace oldfashioned discipline and command authority."5
Moshe Lewin provides another example of the unquestioned
faith in technology to effect cultural and political change.
He
opens his monograph entitled Political Undercurrents in Soviet
Economic debates with the fuzzy idea that the process of social
development under Stalin was not commensurate with
"modernization" of state institutions.6
In other words, since
social development, from one society to another, follows the same
objective course of progress as determined by the linear model of
science producing technology which causes cultural change, the
"lag" in the "modernization" of social institutions will
inevitably catch up to the level of modernization of the state
and governmental apparatus.
Lewin suggests that the monopoly of
information, ideology, and communications in the USSR "has
hindered the modernization of economic and political life and
severely thwarted the development of science, culture, and
creativity in many spheres."7
Hence, according to Lewin,
"statism" will gradually and gracefully give way to the forces of
"socialist pluralism."8
5Ibid,
p. 63.
6Moshe
Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic
Debates (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), ix.
7Ibid,
8For
292.
an excellent review of Lewin's book, see Steven
Rosefielde, review of Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic
262
Another variation on the same theme is provided by
Barrington Moore, who views the Soviet bureaucracy as staffed by
"technocrats," who make their decisions according to technical
and rational criteria, and who resist Party members who try to
manipulate the "technostructure" for purely political or
ideological motives.9
Hence, the Soviet bureaucracy serves to
"inhibit the leader from exercising his power fully."10
The
logical consequence of this type of bureaucracy, which is
supposedly predictable and rational, which has (1) a code of
legality, (2) objective rules, and (3) objectively evaluated
performance, is that the technostructure has forced the
politicians to become technically competent;
hence, according to
Hough, party membership is primarily a sign of "having the
technocratic criteria for it."11
John P. Young and Jeanne P. Taylor add that the changing
character of Soviet science and technology has placed
increasingly stringent constraints on the permissible form and
magnitude of central direction of science and technology.12
Debates, by Moshe Lewin. In The Russian Review 34 (October 1975):
491. He characterizes Lewin's notion of "statism" and "socialist
pluralism" as "central motifs" of the work, which Lewin attempted
to substantiate "elliptically." I would add that this is the best
Lewin
could
do,
given
the
weakness
of
his
fundamental
presupposition.
9Barrington
Moore, Jr., Terror and Progress USSR (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1954), 187.
52.
10Ibid,
190.
11Jerry
Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory, p.
12John
P. Young and Jeanne P. Taylor, "Science and Technology
Policy in the U.S.S.R.:
Impact of the Changing Character of
263
Moreover, they argue, the growing tensions between central Party
guidance and the spontaneous, decentralized nature of science,
are having the effect of gradual change in favor of recognizing
the autonomous forces of science and technology.13
They suggest
that the effectiveness of traditional methods of control likely
will decline due to the increasing ability of the scientific
community to resist control.
Another variation on this theme of the advance of science
and technology irrevocably transforming society by way of the
technocrats (who are supposedly the political champions of the
STI) is presented by Alexander Shtromas, who argues that the
scientific and technical intelligentsia in the USSR form the
crucial, institutionally recognized "second pivot" of a coming
revolution.
Whereas the interests of the Party apparatus are in
maintaining its control over socially relevant activities,
"however irrational, counterproductive and even damaging in terms
of utility such a system may be," the "professional strata" are,
on the contrary, "chiefly interested in achieving, by whatever
they do, maximum utility which coincides entirely with the
professional person's natural striving for full realization of
his potential."14
According to Shtromas, these technocrats,
Soviet Science and Technology on Its
Studies Journal (Winter 1979): 211.
13Ibid,
Administration,"
Policy
211-212.
14Alexander
Shtromas, "How the End of the Soviet System May
Come About," in Alexander Shtromas and Morton A. Kaplan, eds., The
Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future (New York: Paragon
House Publishers, 1988), p. 209.
264
whose livelihood depends on the successful application of
"universally applicable skills," are naturally opposed to the
partocrats, whose power "rests in the positions they hold."15
Like Lewin, Shtromas suggests that the inevitable "crisis" in the
system will induce the technocrats to rise against the partocrats
in an open bid for supremacy.16
The most salient example of technocratic theories on Western
Sovietology is provided by those who argue that the Soviet Union
has become a Technocracy, in which the superior ability of the
technical intelligentsia in the modern era has forced the eclipse
of ideology and politics.
Such a technocracy is characterized by
the following three features:
(1) in circumstances where
political decisions involve specialized knowledge and the
exercise of technical skills, political power tends to gravitate
toward technological elites;
(2) technology has become
autonomous, hence politics has become a function of systemic
structural determinants over which it has little or no control;
and (3) technology (and science) constitute a new legitimating
ideology that subtly masks certain forms of social domination.17
According to the group conflict school of thought, the first
two criteria for technocracy have already been met.
The idea
that Soviet government is a function of the technocratic
bureaucracy, where the so-called technocrats have allegedly
15Ibid,
p. 215.
16Ibid,
p. 256.
17From
John G. Gunnell, "The Technocratic Image and the Theory
of Technocracy," Technology and Culture 23 (June 1982); p. 397.
265
usurped (or will usurp) power from the partocrats, coincides
nicely with Gunnell's formulation.
This is the central theme,
for example, of Timothy Dunmore's work on post-war Stalinist
politics.18
The third criterion, however, implies a complete
revolution from a Marxist to a Positivist blueprint for social
development.
And several Sovietologists argue that this has in
fact happened.
For example, Cyril Black argues that the social consequences
of the linear model in the USSR have transformed Marxism-Leninism
from a form of economic to scientific determinism.19
But the
most important argument for this idea is provided by Kendall
Bailes, whose extremely influential monograph entitled Technology
and Society under Lenin and Stalin:
Origins of the Soviet
Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941 suggests that the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union is now, in fact, a technocracy.20
The
18Timothy
Dunmore, Soviet Politics, 1945-53 (New York:
St.
Martin's Press, 1984). Dunmore implies that the lower levels of
Soviet industry control top bosses in the USSR by virtue of the
fact that it is the top bosses who rely on their underlings for
correct information and other forms of feedback.
19Cyril
Black,
The
Scientific-Technological
Revolution:
Economic to Scientific Determinism?, A discussion paper presented
at the Kennan Institute and the U.S. Department of State, 18
January 1979, p. 9. Black argues that Soviet theories of the STR
"recognize the global character of contemporary problems and the
ineluctable trend toward international integration."
20The
Citations Index lists well over a hundred references to
this book in scholarly works.
The reviews of Bailes' work are
uniformly positive, some of which are glowing.
See for example
Peter H. Solomon, Jr., review of Technology and Society under
Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia,
1917-1941, by Kendall E. Bailes, In Russian Review 38 (July 1979):
371.
Solomon says that Bailes' work has "implications for a
whole field of study."
Moreover, he has "sharpened our
understanding of Soviet history, politics, economics and society."
See also Mervyn Matthews, review of Technology and Society under
266
central thesis of Bailes's work is that the purges carried out
against the "bourgeois," technocratic minded engineers, and their
replacement with "red" specialists, ironically laid the
foundation of Soviet technocracy:
"While the technical
intelligentsia became politicized in favor of the Communist
party, the Communist party became in part "technocratized" by an
infusion of new members who combined political background with
technical skills.
The party and technical elites in Soviet
society never merged entirely, but this system of overlapping and
interlocking elites marked a profound social change from the
situation in 1928."21
The interesting thing about Bailes' fascinating and wellwritten history is that it was inspired by John Kenneth
Galbraith's The New Industrial State, in which he argued that
science and technology (according to the linear model) force
cultural changes in every society which is in the process of
"modernization."
According to Bailes, his interest in the
Scientific-Technical Intelligentsia (STI) congealed "in the same
period when John Kenneth Galbraith in The New Industrial State
and others in the West were arguing that an emergent
technostructure was becoming the key group in the management of
Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia,
1917-1941 , by Kendall E. Bailes, In The Slavonic and East
European Review 58 (April 1980):
308.
"This is throughout a
scholarly work which illuminates many neglected spots in Soviet
social history."
21Kendall
E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and
Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 200.
267
modern industrial societies, an argument by no means universally
accepted.
These developments raised a host of questions in my
mind about the nature of Soviet society and its comparability
with Western societies, for which no answers were readily
available."22
The significance of this theory with respect to interpreting
the STR is self-evident:
if the CPSU is now dominated by
technocrats, the ideology of the STR clearly appears to be an ex
post facto legitimization of what has already occurred, that is,
the triumph of science and its alleged offspring technology over
Party ideology--appropriately signified by the admission that
science had become a "direct productive force."
Bailes pointed
to the fact that the Soviets characterize the model "New Soviet
Man" as a technical specialist, evidence of the extent to which
technical specialists have impressed their collective image on
Soviet society as a whole.23
This idea that the ideology of the STR in the Soviet Union
is an ex post facto recognition of social and technological
changes which have already taken place is the consensus opinion
of Western analysts of the Soviet STR.
For example, Harley D.
Balzer flatly states that the USSR in the era of Brezhnev was the
most "technocratic society in the world."24
Moreover, he
suggests that "Science and technology are key aspects of the
22Ibid,
3-4.
23Ibid,
317.
24Harley
D. Balzer, "The Soviet Scientific and Technical
Intelligentsia," Problems of Communism 32 (May-June 1982): 66.
268
image Soviet leaders present to their own people and to the
outside world."25
Stephen Cohen--the leading representative of
the revisionist school of Soviet historiography--suggested that
the ideology of the STR as articulated under Brezhnev (a neoStalinist, and therefore, by implication, anti-reformist) was
grudgingly reformist in nature.26
Erik Hoffmann declared that
during the Brezhnev years, the advance of science and technology
forced the top political leadership to adopt old political
princiles--such as centralized economic planning and democratic
centralism--to rapidly changing scientific-technical
conditions.27
Hence, the standard interpretation of the STR is
that the technocratic Party elite is gradually changing in favor
of pragmatism and incrementalism due to the non-ideological force
of science--which has become increasingly necessary to the
functioning of the state.
Perhaps the most striking example of this interpretation of
the official Soviet ideology of the STR is that of Erik P.
Hoffmann and Robbin F. Laird in their work entitled Technocratic
Socialism:
The Soviet Union in the Advanced Industrial Era, in
which they assert that both the theory and practice of societal
guidance in the USSR are now primarily technocratic in nature:
that is, the Soviets value technical (instrumental) more than
25Ibid,
66.
26Stephen
York:
F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet
Oxford University Press, 1985), 139.
27Erik
Experience
(New
P. Hoffmann, "Soviet Views of the 'ScientificTechnological Revolution," World Politics 30 (July 1978): 628.
269
social (symbolic) rationality.28
In the new era of technocratic
leadership, equality rather than hierarchy, reciprocity rather
than sanctions, and free-flowing rather than constricted
information are the bases of interaction between the technical
and political elites.
"Norms are grounded on the mutual
understandings and interests of a community of people actively
engaged in a dialogue on important issues.
Ends and means can
always be changed, and both are continuously responsive to a wide
variety of goal-setting feedback."29
It is as if technology,
which requires spontaneity, non-ideological supervision, and
intellectual freedom in its development and use, is forcing
fundamental changes in the Soviet system, a process which is
recognized as both liberal and legitimate in the official
ideology of the STR.
Problems with Technocratic Theories
There are many problems with the above technocratic
theories, all of which force a reexamination of our understanding
of the Gorbachev phenomenon as the emergence of a liberal Soviet
technocracy.
The first and most important problem is the lack of
any evidence whatsoever that any members of the CPSU view
themselves as either technocrats or partocrats.
If there really
were such a division within the Party, one would expect some sort
of self-conscious acknowledgement of this division from the Party
28Erik
P. Hoffmann and Robbin F. Laird, Technocratic
Socialism:
The Soviet Union in the Advanced Industrial Era
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1985), 171.
29Ibid.
270
members themselves.
It would be as simple and basic as
classifying oneself as either a Republican or a Democrat in
American politics.
But there is no evidence for such a self-
conscious division within the party.
On the contrary, when
Soviet writers respond to with such Western theories of
technocracy, they typically sneer at them as without merit, even
as ludicrous--with good reason.
For example, two prominent
sociologists, Bokarev and Chaplin, acknowledge that "the socalled technocratic school is known to be the most influential
one in modern Western sociology."30
They correctly define
technocracy as "a political system where dominating positions
belong to specialists in administration and economy, hence, the
'technocrat' is defined as a man who, due to his scientific and
technical knowledge, is exercising social and political power in
society."31
But they categorically deny the existence of any
such group in Soviet society:
"In essence," they say,
"technocratic conceptions are nothing but theoretical grounds of
some circles of the contemporary state-monopolist bourgeoisie
striving to establish their political domination."32
Likewise, Bessonov's acid commentary on the group conflict
school of thought in the West identifies "technological
30N.N.
Bokarev and N.B. Chaplin, "Soviet Scientific and
Technical
Intelligentsia
and
Its
Social
Makeup,"
in
The
Intelligentsia and the Intellectuals:
Theory, Method and Case
Study, ed. Aleksandr Gella (London:
Sage Publications, 1976),
224.
31Ibid.
32Ibid,
225.
271
determinism" as the linchpin of this school of thought.33
His
article is spiced with barbed invective aimed at all those who
really take such theories seriously.
Similarly, the Large Soviet
Encyclopedia identifies technocratic theories as "a distorted
form of the reality of the scientific and technological
revolution, with social production and government becoming
increasingly dependent on the application of science and the
employment of specialists."34
Moreover, Soviet theorists from
the Academy of Sciences dubbed the Western linear model of
technological and social progress as a philosophy of
"Neopositivism," which they irrefragably abjure.
As P.N.
Fedoseev put it, "Treating the inner logic of scientific progress
as absolute, they [the Western proponents of the linear model,
Bell, Aron, Brzezinski, et al] put forward, and defend, the
conception of autonomy for science and scientific progress.
According to this conception, science is allegedly independent of
society and its problems."35
Able and willing to turn a nice
phrase in ridicule of such theories, Fedoseev castigates all such
"Neopositivists" as "prophets of fully automated social
development," as "the right wing of technocratic futurology," who
33B.
Bessonov, "The Scientific and Technological Revolution
and the Ideological Struggle," International Affairs, n.s. 2
(1974): 66.
34A.M.
Prokhorov, ed., The Large Soviet Encyclopedia (New
York:
Macmillan, 1981), s.v. "Technocratic Theories," by S.M.
Men'shikov.
35P.N.
Fedoseev, "Topical Problems of Our Time and the
Integration of Knowledge," in Science, Technology and the Future,
ed. E.P. Velikhov, D.M. Gvishiani and S.R. Mikulinski (Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1980), 15.
272
espouse the ludicrous idea that technological development creates
a "'state within a state' able to dictate how its achievements
could be used."36
If there are contingents of "technocrats" and
"partocrats" within the Party, Why is there no recognition of
such a division within the USSR?
Where is the evidence?
Another problem with technocratic theories is the fact that
they are based upon two very problematic presuppositions:
first,
that the USSR has achieved a technological revolution over the
past thirty or so years, making it necessary to replace ideology
with technical and rational criteria;
second, that the STI and
their political guardians within the Party provided both the
initiative and the wherewithal, the push and the drive, to make
this revolution a reality.
But neither of these presuppositions
is supported by the evidence.
The first presupposition is false because the USSR failed to
achieve anything like a technological revolution, either under
Stalin or under his more liberal successors, as I attempted to
demonstrate in chapter four above.
Hoffmann's contention that
"rapidly changing scientific-technical conditions" are forcing
the erosion of democratic centralism assumes that the USSR is as
technologically dynamic as the West.
problem:
the USSR is not nearly as technologically dynamic as
the West.
it were.
But that is precicely the
Hoffman's scenario puts the cart before the horse, as
It is the failure of the USSR to achieve a
technological revolution which is forcing the system to change,
36Ibid,
14.
273
to liberalize.
It is not liberalizing as a consequence of such
changes already underway.
What would be the point of it?
But most troubling of all, technocratic theories assume that
the STI and their patrons in the Party are interested primarily
in making the system work.
These theories suggest that the
Soviet government (the Council of Ministers and the glavki) work
best when left alone.
And this idea is demonstrably false.
As
shown above in chapter four, the historical evidence shows that
the STI have been interested in little more than their own narrow
fields of interest.
The mythical vision of the STI put forth in
the technocratic theories paints a picture of omnicompetent
cadres of specialists who are only committed to making things
work.
But as Joravsky pointed out, such a character rarely exists:
the typical Soviet scientist or technologist can be called a
"pliable man of principle," who tries to be true to his
discipline in times of conflict, but who placates political
authorities with verbal play, or by avoiding sensitive topics, or
by other concessions.37
But by being "true to his discipline,"
in the Soviet system, the scientist or technologist is also
professionally and administrative autonomous.
Without organic
connections between social need and the technologist's research,
37David
Joravsky, "Political Authorities and the Learned
Estate in the USSR," in Soviet Science and Technology: Domestic
and Foreign Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas and Ursula KruseVaucienne (Washington, D.C.:
The National Science Foundation,
1977), 155.
Joravsky classifies the STI from the "learned
opportunist" and the "militant ignoramus" on the one side, to the
"intransigent specialist" or the "Varangian" on the other.
274
there is little incentive for the STI to push through new
technologies, a process which Balzer described as a war.
We know from both Western and Soviet sources that Soviet
scientists and technologists enjoy immeasurably more intellectual
and professional freedom than any other segment of Soviet
society:
as Medvedev put it, science is not only the most
prestigious and best-paid line of work in the USSR, it also
"offers the most freedom and advantages."38
But where is the
evidence that the STI have used their autonomy, their social
position and authority to transform Soviet society?
Scientists
are interested in the expansion of knowledge, of doing
fundamental research;
and the direction of technological
research, in the USA and the USSR alike, come from outside the
technologist in response to social need of some kind, however
defined.
So how is it that the Soviet technocrat has become
dominant in politics?
Moreover, the very nature of the technocrat's work places
institutional constraints upon his behavior which neutralize
their personal beliefs, as with Joravsky's "pliant man of
principle."
For example, the academic discipline of sociology
was born immediately after the Stalinist dark ages as a free and
relatively independent discipline.
The founding fathers of
Soviet sociology considered it part of their mission to use
public opinion surveys and other types of sociological data to
help the leadership become more responsive to the needs of
38Zhores
Medvedev, Soviet Science (New York:
Co., 1978), 143.
W.W. Norton &
275
society.
But it did not prove difficult for the Party to
transform sociology from a discipline in the service of society
to a discipline which was cynically manipulated to serve
political objectives.39
The repressive school reforms of 1984,
for example, were the results of advice provided by Party
loyalists like Rutkevich, whose recommendations served the cause
of buttressing political stability, not in the interests of the
people.
If the interests of the STI are at such a variance with the
interests of the CPSU, then Why are 60 percent of natural
scientists and 90 percent of social scientists also Party
members?40
Is it true, as Popovsky claims, that the Party
apparatus is careful not to let the STI "escape from the Party's
guiding hand for a single moment"?41
How can the STI free
themselves from "the overmastering authority of state interests?"
The answer is that they can't. As Ellul pointed out,
It is difficult to accept without reservation the
image of the technician-archangel sallying forth to do
battle with the megalomaniac and rotten politician.
Nevertheless, it is probable that in the Soviet Union,
as in Nazi Germany, there is a conflict between the
two
classes. But this conflict cannot be counted on
to bring
about a change in the regime. As C. Wright
Mills has
shown, the managers under any regime
whatsoever are never
anything but executive agents.
They are never in a
position, publicly or
39For
an excellent descriptive account of this, see Vladimir
Shlapentokh, The Politics of Sociology in the Soviet Union
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), chapter 3.
40Peter
Kneen, Soviet Scientists and the State (Albany:
University of New York Press, 1984), 73.
41Mark
State
Popovsky, Manipulated Science:
The Crisis of Science
and Scientists in the Soviet Union (New York: Doubleday & Co.,
1979), 49.
276
institutionally, to assert themmasters.42
selves against their
How does one explain the fact that the STI and the Bolsheviks
under Lenin had so much in common?
Why was it, as Bailes pointed
out, that the majority of the STI threw their weight behind the
Bolsheviks during the Civil War?
Why did Lenin view the future
Soviet state as run by scientists and engineers, where there
would be little or no role for politics?
These and other
questions are impossible to answer from the standpoint of an
alleged "technocrat-partocrat" dichotomy.
It may be more
accurate to support Popovsky's contention that the only dichotomy
in the USSR is between "the godless technocrat" and the religious
believer, because both the technocrat and the Party member have
shared a common faith in the linear model of technological and
social development, and have supported centralized planning of
such development from the "top down."43
Yet another problem with technocratic theories, strongly
connected to the above problem, is the modern redefinition of the
technocrat as "liberal."
Traditionally, the typical "technocrat"
has been correcly portrayed as anything but liberal, with good
reason.
Langdon Winner pointed out that technocracy's challenge
to liberalism is simple and direct:
"Its premises are totally
incompatible with a central notion that justifies the practice of
liberal politics:
the idea of responsible, responsive,
42Jacques
Ellul, The Technological Society (New York:
A. Knopf, 1973), 256.
43Popovsky,
Manipulated Science, 230.
Alfred
277
representative government."44
In a liberal democracy--
characterized by the rule of law--the rules and procedures by
which the state is run matter quite apart from any practical
consideration;
hence, even if it were possible for an
"industrial directorate" or a "soviet of engineers" to run the
state based upon scientific and technical criteria (which is
quite impossible due to the impossibility of central planning),
technocracy would be quite undesirable with respect to political
and civil liberties.
In politics, as in other procedures (like conducting a
symphony, for example), the rules of the game are what matter
most to those who take part.
And with the "top down" vision of
social development as provided by the linear model, in which
science spawns new technologies which transform society, there is
little room for feedback or politics.
Polanyi made this point
quite clear when he stated that the positivist programme for the
scientific ordering of society (based upon the linear model)
leads to the destruction of the free society and the
establishment of totalitarianism.45
do;
This is what Lenin tried to
and it failed.
Conclusions:
Technocracy and the Linear Model
The biggest problem with technocratic theories is that they
44Langdon
Winner, Autonomous Technology:
Technics-out-ofControl as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge:
The MIT
Press, 1977), 146.
45Michael
Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty:
Reflections and
Rejoinders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951; reprint,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprints, 1980), 28
(page references are to reprint edition).
278
are based upon the linear model of social development.
The
alleged preeminence of technical specialists in modern soceity is
due to the centrality of spontaneous, non-ideological and
international science as the primary force for social change in
the modern era.
For example, Daniel Bell's notion of "Post-
Industrial" society holds that certain "science based" industries
(computers, electronics, optics, polymers, etc.) increasingly
dominate the manufacturing sector of society and provide the lead
for other industrial societies.
The distinguishing
characteristics of these industries is that they are "sciencebased," which means that they are dependent upon theoretical work
prior to production.46
The social impact of these "science-
based" industries is the "end of ideology" as a force affecting
social consciousness, because science is, by nature, independent
of ideology.47
Given this preeminent role of science in society,
Bell predicts that the scientists and technical specialists-independent of political, social, or economic ideology--will
become the new leaders in post-industrial society.
The gap in
power between the professional elite and the unwashed masses will
widen, because the working classes will not have the technical
expertise required to run society.
In post-industrial society,
the "chief" problem confronting society will be the organization
of science, a job which only scientists can perform.
46Daniel
York:
Bell, The Coming
Basic Books, 1973), 25.
47Daniel
of
Post-Industrial
Bell, The End of Ideology (New York:
1960), 393-407.
Like Don
Society
(New
The Free Press,
279
Price, who thinks that the technical and scientific elite have
become the "fourth arm" of government in the US, Bell thinks that
"the scientific estate--its ethos and its organization--is the
monad that contains within itself the imago of the future
society."48
Although Bell views the phrase "technological imperatives"
as too rigid and deterministic (a view which is inconsistent with
the above), he argues that in all modern industrial societies
"there are certain common constraints which tend to shape similar
actions and force the use of common techniques."49
This is why
he thinks that the Soviet STR is identical to the technological
revolution in the West, despite overwhelming evidence to the
contrary.
Bell argued, in fact, that the Soviet leaders had
replaced the Marxist blueprint for society with the STR and
technocratic leadership. As he put it,
That society [the USSR] is one which is also post
industrial. But such a society merges--in its problems,
not necessarily in its outcomes--with the postcapitalist
societies in that the new determining feature
of social
structure (but not necessarily of politics
and culture) is
the scientific and technological
revolution, or what I
have called in my writings the
centrality of theoretical
knowledge as the axial
principle of social organization,
while the character
of the new stratification system will
be the division
between the scientific and technical classes
and those who
will stand outside.50
John Kenneth Galbraith uses the term "technological
determinism" as the foundational concept in his New Industrial
48Ibid,
378.
49Bell,
Post-Industrial Society, 75.
50Bell,
112.
280
State.
Quite in alignment with the linear model, he asserts that
technology is the systematic application of scientific knowledge
to practical tasks.
The result is that this forces the division
and subdivision of any task into its component parts, a theme
which is prominent in Soviet writings.
And this process of
specialization, he suggests, is more socially efficacious than
what had previously obtained in practice:
by pooling and testing
the information provided by numerous individuals--none of whom is
required to be a genius--it is possible to reach decisions that
are beyond the capabilities of any one person.
"Thus, and only
thus, can organized knowledge be brought to bear on
performance."51
Given the nature of the system, power will
eventually accrue to those who possess specialized technical
knowledge.
Hence, like Veblen, Price, Bell and others, Galbraith
views the emergence of the ubiquitous "technostructure" and
"technocracy" as a social by-product of spontaneous, internallydirected progress of science.
The above examples are only the
most notable and celebrated of the social theories based upon the
linear model.52
Yet, as discussed in the second and third chapters above,
the linear model fails to explain the complicated relationships
between society, technology and science.
The development of
technology owes much more to social need than to scientific
51John
Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), 12.
52For
a
more
comprehensive
discussion
of
technocratic
theorists, see Gunnell, "The Technocratic Image and the Theory of
Technocracy," 392-416.
281
theory, which is often a hindrance to trial and error
technological problem-solving.
And science is utterly dependent
upon technology in its development, now more than ever before.
The linear model is a poor heuristic device with respect to our
understanding of both the progress of technology and of science.
It is a model which has been increasingly recognized to be
insufficient and even misleading.