Anarcho-technocracy is the theory of Direct Action on Things. It
is anarchist, inasmuch as it states that all government over men must be
replaced by the administration of things; it is technocratic, in that it
contends this administration can be encompassed, in this era of
increasing technological complexity, only by the technicians. It
comprises the other political theories, which in reality, if not
avowedly, all have the same end in view. In particular, it comprises and
furthers democracy, our own brand of political theory.
Democracy is not the rule of the majority of the people over a minority,
which inevitably becomes the rule of a minority over the majority, a rule
over the people; it is not self-government, the rule of the people
over the people, which is a physical impossibility -- it is the rule of
all the people, over something else, something other than and
outside the people. There is only one thing outside the people to be
ruled -- that is their material environment, that part of that
environment transformed in industry, the machines. Democracy
becomes inevitably Industrial democracy. In doing this it
transforms political terms, methods, institutions. It transforms politics
itself -- from politics, which is a matter of the government of men, into
technics, which is a matter of the Government of Things.
Democracy can't see this role it plays. All it can see, at its best, is
full human power. But that power is blind, misdirected -- it is expressed
indiscriminately on both men and things. It needs the insight of
anarchism, a later development in political thought, which realises that
no political power should be imposed on men. . . . Democracy in lifting
the people to power makes the people free. Democracy merges then into
anarchy, the demand for full human freedom. The democrat, to the extent
that he carries his theory to its conclusions, is, and must be an
anarchist. Freedom and power are not mutually opposed -- they are
identical. Freedom is power. Moreover this real power must take a form
which they both dread -- that is dictatorship. We hate
dictatorship. But that is only because all dictatorships we have known
have been tyrannies over men, over us. It is the height of folly to
oppose dictatorship, when we are the dictators, when it is our
dictatorship -- and when it is imposed only on things. We can be a
ruthless, arbitrary and as autocratic as we like -- with this subject
"class." What is needed, as contradictory as the terms may
seem, is a fully human, a democratic dictatorship. One that does not
impose its power on any human being whatsoever -- an Anarchist
Dictatorship. Anarchism, not realising how closely bound it is to
democracy, thinks it must oppose any sort of power, but in actuality it
seeks it. It found it, in the workers -- in syndicalism. And so we
had the programme, Anarcho-syndicalism. But since then technology has
transformed work and the workers out of all recognition. Machines are
"the workers" to-day. We are all keeping machines out of jobs.
And the only effective human personnel, the key personnel, are the
scientists -- the technicians. We might know an axe, or a hammer,
or sickle; but we wouldn't know the components of the uranium atom if we
saw them. We can't see them -- they are concepts of physics, mathematics.
We depend on specialists, on technicians. And it so happens that they
have their programme, their movement -- Technocracy. And
anarchism, if it is to keep pace with modern developments, and retain its
position in the vanguard of social advance, must ally itself with this
movement. This new alignment is what I try to cover in the clumsy, but
accurate, amalgam: Anarcho-technocracy.
These two heads are not contradictory -- they are complementary. The
technicians will rule things, the material resources of the community,
all right -- but they nowhere disavow intent to rule us. Their regime
needs the qualification of anarchism -- that there can be no government
over men. But the anarchists repudiate all government. They
need the technicians to point out that there can be a government after
all -- over things. . . . It will almost certainly be objected
that all this is using the terms, rule, power, government, etc., falsely,
out of their context. But it is precisely this transformation in our
terms and in the customary contexts for them which characterises this
shift from politics to technics. We have to lift our political
terminology up bodily and apply it in a new context, in a new direction,
on to things in a new material world.
EXTRACT FROM...
http://www.takver.com/history/hooton_tech.htm
