I think this speaks to man's controlling instinct, and instinct that must be
balanced by a reverence for mystery and awe. We Americans have become
enamored with our own greatness, a misguided belief that we can study,
design, predict, and manage our way to happiness.
We have input but the Universe continues to do what it does, in spite of us.
Kevin
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/16/europe-technocrats-politics
Too long to post the whole thing, but here's a snip:
"Yes, there's no harm in saying it: technocracy once used to be a big
idea for the international left. In 1930s America, for instance, it
wasn't a term of abuse but the programme for a new social utopia. In
the middle of the Great Depression, an emergent technocratic movement
led by engineers and dissident economists such as Thorstein Veblen and
Howard Scott proposed that populist politicians simply weren't capable
to fix the system: "The maladministration and chaos imposed upon the
industrial mechanism by arbitrary rule of extraneous interest has
reached such a point that many technicians feel the urgent need of
confederating their forces in a program of industrial co-ordination
based, not on belief, but exact knowledge," thundered a pamphlet by
the Technical Alliance.
The American technocratic movement was short-lived, not least because
the flaws in its thinking were so apparent: their belief that anyone
could ever be completely apolitical in their decision-making now
strikes us as naive. No one remembers the technocrats' "Plan of
Plenty", and everybody remembers Roosevelt's New Deal.
Over the course of the next few decades, technocracy got a dodgy rep.
Veneration of industrial progress and unchecked rule by bureaucrats
became a trademark of totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and Soviet
Russia. George Orwell describes technocracy as a precursor to fascism.
What was Adolf Eichmann if not a technocrat?
Some might say, though, that technocratic ideals and practices never
really went away. Henry Elsner's critical account of the movement
floats the idea that the New Deal, with its embracing of social
engineering, was more of a synthesis of technocratic and democratic
ideals than an alternative."
My response:
I guess this reflects that whole initial gray zone between the
precursors to both centrism and fascism.
So Europe is relying on technocrats to resolve their gigantic
financial problems...
I think the author lays in a good point in noting that technocracy led
the transition from communist authoritarianism to democracy in eastern
Europe, which really weakens any argument that technocracy signals a
move toward extreme rightist or leftist governance. But those
arguments about moving definitively leftward boil down to the Far
Right not wanting anything so large as to require the services of a
technocrat, making technocracy a symptom of a larger problem to the
hardcore right, naturally causing the lefties to look for the same
beacon.
It breaks down that, when you have a crisis, you want the most
competent people addressing the problem, rather than those with a
vested interest in seeing through a result that may not be the most
optimal solution. Certainly, as the article states, we remember
Roosevelt's New Deal, but don't remember Plan of Plenty. But that's a
good thing sometimes. Do great things, solve the problem, don't take
credit, and move on. Just call it humble meritocracy.
I don't wholesale support or oppose anything here yet, though. There
is still the concern that technocrats technically operate without
direct consent of the public, but a possible answer to that concern is
that technocracy is an important built-in failsafe mechanism in a
democracy that protects itself from destruction. Anyway, I need to
read into this a little more.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
