THE



TECHNOLOGICAL



SOCIETY



JACQUES ELLUL



With an Introduction by Robert K. Merton



A penetrating analysis of our technical

civilization and of the effect of an increasingly

standardized culture on the future of man

A Vintage Book



THE



TECHNOLOGICAL



SOCIETY



BY



JACQUES ELLUL



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOHN WILXINSON



&



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT K. MERTON,



PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY



VINTAGE BOOKS

A Division of Random House



NEW YORK



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served under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. Distributed in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto.



Originally published in French as La Technique ou Venjeu

du sidcle by Librairie Armand Colin. Copyright, 1954, by

Max Leclerc et Cie, Proprietors of Librairie Armand Colin.

Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.



MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



1 3 5 7 9D8 6 4 2



VINTAGE BOOKS



are published by

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Random House, Inc.



Statement from the Publisher



I would never have heard of this book and its author were it not

for my friend W. H. Ferry, Vice-President of the Center for the

Study of Democratic Institutions of the Fund for the Republic, Inc.,

at Santa Barbara, California.



Sometime in 1961, Robert M. Hutchins and Scott Buchanan told

Aldous Huxley of the Center's interest in technology and asked his

opinion about contemporary European works on the subject. Huxley

recommended above all Ellul's La Technique, which had been pub-

lished in Paris by Armand Colin in 1954 without having attracted

much attention. At any rate the copies of the French original which

the Center hastened to procure were from the first edition, as was

also the copy I secured after my old friend Ferry had written me

about it.



I couldn’t possibly read Ellul's French, which apart from the

matters with which he deals is very difficult, but since Scott Bu-

chanan and Columbia's distinguished sociologist Robert K. Merton

both said the book deserved publication in English, and since Mr.

Buchanan had a translator at hand in John Wilkinson of the Center

staff, who was willing to tackle this difficult and almost sure to be

thankless job, I committed our firm to an undertaking that I soon

began to call “Knopf's folly."



Members of the Center met Ellul in Greece in 1961, where he at-

tended a conference as the Center's guest and read a paper he had

written at their request. They later paid him for a new introduction

he had written for the American edition of La Technique. And

the Center also helped to defray some extraordinary expenses in-

curred by Professor Wilkinson in the course of his work.



I wish belatedly to thank the Center publicly for ail they did to

help us with one of the most difficult editorial tasks Alfred A. Knopf,

Inc., has ever undertaken. This note should have appeared in our

first printing and I am sorry it did not.







Foreword



In The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul formulates a compre-

hensive and forceful social philosophy of our technical civilization.

Less penetrating than Thorstein Veblen’s The Engineers and the

Price System, it nevertheless widens the scope of inquiry into the

consequences of having a society pervaded by technicians. Ellul’s

book is more colorful and incisive than Oswald Spengler’s Man and

Technics—which by contrast seems faded and unperceptive—and

it is more analytical than Lewis Mumford’s trilogy—although Ellul

handles the historical evidence much more sparingly and with less

assurance than Mumford. And it is more far-ranging and system-

atic than Siegfried Giedion’s Mechanization Takes Command,

which, of all the books overlapping Ellul’s subject, comes close to

giving the reader a sense of what the dominance of technique

might mean for the present and the future of man. In short, what-

ever its occasional deficiencies. The Technological Society requires

us to examine anew what the author describes as the essential

tragedy of a civilization increasingly dominated by technique.



Despite Ellul’s forceful emphasis upon the erosion of moral

values brought about by technicism, he has written neither a latter-

day Luddite tract nor a sociological apocalypse. He shows that he

it thoroughly familiar with the cant perpetuated by technophobes



Vi)



and for the most part manages to avoid their cliches. Indeed, he

takes these apart with masterly skill to show them for the empty

assertions they typically are. Neither does he merely substitute a

high moral tone or noisy complaints for tough-minded analysis.

His contribution is far more substantial. He examines the role of

technique in modern society and offers a system of thought that,

with some critical modification, can help us understand the forces

behind the development of the technical civilization that is

distinctively ours.



Enough of Ellul's idiosyncratic vocabulary has survived the

hazards of transoceanic migration to require us to note the special

meanings he assigns to basic terms. By technique, for example, he

means far more than machine technology. Technique refers to any

complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined

result. Thus, it converts spontaneous and unreflective behavior into

behavior that is deliberate and rationalized. The Technical Man is

fascinated by results, by the immediate consequences of setting

standardized devices into motion. He cannot help admiring the

spectacular effectiveness of nuclear weapons of war. Above all, he

is committed to the never-ending search for “the one best way” to

achieve any designated objective.



Ours is a progressively technical civilization: by this Ellul means

that the ever-expanding and irreversible rule of technique is ex-

tended to all domains of life. It is a civilization committed to the

quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends.

Indeed, technique transforms ends into means. What was once

prized in its own right now becomes worthwhile only if it helps

achieve something else. And, conversely, technique turns means

into ends. “Know how” takes cn an ultimate value.



The vital influence of technique is of course most evident in the

economy. It produces a growing concentration of capital (as was

presciently observed by Marx). Vast concentrations of capital re-

quire increasing control by the state. Once largely confined within

the business firm, planning now becomes the order of the day for

the economy as a whole. The dominance of technique imposes

centralism upon the economy (despite comparatively inconsequen-

tial efforts to decentralize individual industrial firms), for once

technique develops beyond a given degree, there is no effective



Foreword



(t)ii



alternative to planning. But this inevitable process is impersonal.



Only the naive can really believe that the world-wide movement

toward centralism results from the machinations of evil statesmen.



The intellectual discipline of economics itself becomes techni-

cized. Technical economic analysis is substituted for the older po-

litical economy included in which was a major concern with the

moral structure of economic activity. Thus doctrine is converted

into procedure. In this sphere as in others, the technicians form a

closed fraternity with their own esoteric vocabulary. Moreover,

they are concerned only with what is, as distinct from what ought

to be.



Politics in turn becomes an arena for contention among rival

techniques. The technician sees the nation quite differently from

the political man: to the technician, the nation is nothing more

than another sphere in which to apply the instruments he has de-

veloped. To him, the state is not the expression of the will of the

people nor a divine creation nor a creature of class conflict. It is an

enterprise providing services that must be made to function effi-

ciently. He judges states in terms of their capacity to utilize tech-

niques effectively, not in terms of their relative justice. Political

doctrine revolves around what is useful rather than what is good.

Purposes drop out of sight and efficiency becomes the central con-

cern. As the political form best suited to the massive and un-

principled use of technique, dictatorship gains in power. And this

in turn narrows the range of choice for the democracies: either they

too use some version of effective technique—centralized control

and propaganda—or they will fall behind.



Restraints on the rule of technique become increasingly tenuous.

Public opinion provides no control because it too is largely oriented

toward “performance” and technique is regarded as the prime in-

strument of performance, whether in the economy or in politics, in

art or in sports.



Not understanding what the rule of technique is doing to him

and to his world, modem man is beset by anxiety and a feeling of

insecurity. He tries to adapt to changes he cannot comprehend.

The conflict of propaganda takes the place of the debate of ideas.

Technique smothers the ideas that put its rule in question and filters

out for public discussion only those ideas that are in substantial



v I ii)



accord with the values created by a technical civilization. Social

criticism is negated because there is only slight access to the techni-

cal means required to reach large numbers of people.



In Ellul’s conception, then, life is not happy in a civilization domi-

nated by technique. Even the outward show of happiness is bought

at the price of total acquiescence. The technological society requires

men to be content with what they are required to like; for those

who are not content, it provides distractions—escape into absorp-

tion with technically dominated media of popular culture and

communication. And the process is a natural one: every part of a

technical civilization responds to the social needs generated by

technique itself. Progress then consists in progressive de-humani-

zation—a busy, pointless, and, in the end, suicidal submission to

technique.



The essential point, according to Ellul, is that technique pro-

duces all this without plan; no one wills it or arranges that it be so.

Our technical civilization does not result from a Machiavellian

scheme. It is a response to the ‘‘laws of development” of technique.



In proposing and expanding this thesis, Ellul reopens the great

debate over the social, political, economic, and philosophical mean-

ing of technique in the modem age. We need not agree with Ellul

to learn from him. He has given us a provocative book, in the

sense that he has provoked us to re-examine our assumptions and

to search out the flaws in his own gloomy forecasts. By doing so,

he helps us to see beyond the banal assertion that ours has become

a mass society, and he leads us to a greater understanding of that

society.



Robert K. Merton



Columbia University

January 1964



Translator s Introduction



Jacques Ellul

as the Philosopher of the Technological Society



Ernst Jiinger once wrote that technology is the real metaphysics of

the twentieth century. The irreversible collectivist tendencies of

technology, whether it calls itself democratic or authoritarian, were

already apparent to him, at the end of World War I. It is this so-

ciety, in all its forms, which Jacques Ellul, of the Faculty of Law

of Bordeaux, seeks to analyze.



Professor Ellul, unlike most of the other surviving leaders of the

French Resistance, still functions as a voice of conscience for a

France which seems to feel itself in danger of being overwhelmed

from literally every point of the compass by the materialistic values

of the cold war—consumer society. Greater influence is enjoyed

by others such as Malraux and Sartre; but Malraux is in the service

of the welfare state (albeit one with Gallic flourishes) and Sartre

is growing rich by dispensing absinthe morality in the cellars of

the Left Bank. “I sometimes wonder," says Ellul in a related con-

nection, "about the revolutionary value of acts accompanied by

such a merry jingle of the cash register."



*)



Ellul’s principal work, this book, appeared under the title La

Technique and the subtitle L’enjeu du siecle. The subtitle, which

means literally “the stake of the century/* is a characteristically dark

and difficult Ellulian phrase which may or may not refer to a kind

of “Pascal wager” put on technology by twentieth-century man.

The Technique of the title, however, lends itself more easily to in-

terpretation, although, characteristically, it too is used in a sense

it does not usually enjoy. Technique, the reader discovers more or

less quickly, must be distinguished from the several techniques

which are its elements. It is more even than a generalized mechani-

cal technique; it is, in fact, nothing less than the organized ensemble

of all individual techniques which have been used to secure any

end whatsoever. Harold Lasswell’s definition comes closest to

Ellul’s conception: “The ensemble of practices by which one uses

available resources to achieve values.” This definition has the merit

of emphasizing the scope of technique; but Ellul’s further account

makes it clear that it does not go far enough, since technique has

become indifferent to all the traditional human ends and values by

becoming an end-in-itself. Our erstwhile means have all become an

end, an end, furthermore, which has nothing human in it and to

which we must accommodate ourselves as best we may. We cannot

even any longer pretend to act as though the ends justified the

means, which would still be recognizably human, if not particularly

virtuous. Technique, as the universal and autonomous technical

fact, is revealed as the technological society itself in which man is

but a single tightly integrated and articulated component. The

Technological Society is a description of the way in which an

autonomous technology is in process of taking over the traditional



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pressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture

in which all nontechnological difference and variety is mere ap-

pearance.



The technical malaise so deeply felt in non-Communist Europe

at the imminent takeover has brought forth in recent years an as-

tonishingly large number of literary, philosophic, and sociological

analyses of the technical phenomenon. One of the great merits of

Ellul’s book arises from the fact that he alone has pushed such

analysis to the limit in all spheres of human activity and in the

totality of their interrelatedness. It may be added that what some



Translators Introduction



(xi



authors feel to be the book’s demerits arise from the same source;

they maintain that society more often than not refuses to be pushed

to that reductio ad absurdum which is the inevitable end point of

every thoroughgoing analysis. The books of such authors generally

end on a note of optimism. A final chapter always asks: “What is to

be done?” Unfortunately, their answers to the question are either

inefficacious myths which confront reality with slogans, or only too

efficacious technical solutions to technical problems which end

only in subjecting man the more thoroughly to technology. The

former are exemplified by most modern religions, philosophical

systems, and political doctrines; the latter by schemes for mass

education or mass cultivation of leisure, which, in Ellul’s analysis,

are themselves highly impersonal and technicized structures hav-

ing much more in common with the assembly line than with what

mankind has traditionally designated by these names.



The technological malaise seems to have been much less acutely

felt in the United States. Individuals such as Aldous Huxley, Paul

Tillich, and Erich Fromm, who have raised their voices in protest,

are of European origin and received their education in Europe.

Technolaters such as Professors B. F. Skinner of Harvard and most

other American professors represent the familiar type of the Ameri-

can intellectual caught in an ecstatic technical vertigo and seldom

proceeding beyond certain vague meditations on isolated problem

areas such as the “population explosion,” if indeed he considers

the real problems posed by technology at all. Ellul holds the Ameri-

cans to be the most conformist people in the world, but in fairness

it must be objected that, in his own analysis, the Soviets seem

better to deserve this dubious honor since they have made even

politics into a technique. The Americans, apart from technicizing

the electoral process, have left at least the sphere of politics to the

operations of amateurish bunglers and have thereby preserved a

modicum of humanity. It may be added that France, too, has been

taken into the technological orbit with a speed which must have

astonished Ellul. De Gaulle's plans for his new France contem-

plate the complete technicization of French society in nine years

instead of the quarter century of grace which Ellul predicts in his

book.



Since the religious object is that which is uncritically wor-

shipped, technology tends more and more to become the new god.



xii)



This is true for all modern societies, but especially so for Com-

munist societies, since Marxism, in Ellul’s analysis of it, consciously

identifies the material infrastructure, upon which the social super-

structure is raised, with technology.1 The expression of technologi-

cal malaise in the Soviet Union or in Red China, where technolatry

has become the new Establishment, would be blasphemy in the

strictest sense of the word.



In composition and style, Ellul’s book is certain to be an enigma,

and even a scandal, to many. It is not sociology, political economy,

history, or any other academic discipline, at least as these terms are

usually understood. It will not even appear to be philosophy to a

generation whose philosophic preoccupations are almost exclu-

sively analytic. Ellul himself is in doubt about the value of the

designation philosopher. But, if we think back to the dialectical

philosophies of the whole of thinkers such as Plato and Hegel,

Ellul’s book is philosophy. If an American specialist, say, in eco-

nomics, with his “terribly linear” logic and his apparently un-

shakable conviction that his arbitrarily delimited systems can and

should be studied in isolation from all others, were to flip open

Ellul’s book to those sections which treat of matters economic, it is

conceivable that he would be repelled by what he found. But if this

same specialist could somehow or other implausibly be persuaded

to persevere in the attempt to see with Ellul economics in the light

of the whole of modern technical culture, it is likewise conceivable

that he would gain important insights, not perhaps into the fine-

structure of academic economic problems, but in the border region

where his subject abuts on other disciplines, in that area where

basic discoveries in economics (and everything else) are always

made by gifted amateurs, who faute de mieux must be called

philosophers.



Ellul’s admittedly difficult style is not to be referred to that

style heurte affected by so many postwar French existentialists.

An element of this is doubtless present, but it would be much more

accurate to say that, in an essentially dramatic work such as the

present book must be deemed to be, the transitions and turns of

thought must have a character entirely different from those to be



1 Ellul once again showed much prescience. Marxist publications of the last few

years have come to speak of the “technical-material infrastructure” instead of the

‘'material infrastructure."



Translators Introduction



(x Hi



encountered in the ultra-respectable academic texts which have

taken over from mathematics certain linear and deductive modes

of presentation; modes, which, whatever their pedagogic value may

be, serve, even in mathematics, only to obscure the way in which

truth comes into being. To its dramatic presentation of what are,

after all, well-known facts, Ellul's book owes its high persuasive

quality.



This dramatic character would have been clearly evident if the

book had been written as a dialogue. Indeed, a reader could easily

cast it into this form by representing to himself the various thinkers

who are introduced by name as the dramatis personae, and by

treating the nameless “On the one hands'* and “On the other

hands'* in the same way. In this way the "successive recantations’*

of some positions and the development of others in the light of a

guiding concept of the whole become clear, and the book’s essen-

tial affinity to a Platonic dialogue like the Republic is evident. (No-

where is this successive recantation more evident than in the

first chapter's search for definitions.) Even clearer is the similarity

of the book to Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes, the last work of

Western philosophy with which, in the translator's opinion, the

present work bears comparison. The Technological Society is not a

“phenomenology of mind" but rather a “phenomenology of the

technical state of mind." Like Hegel’s book, it is intensely his-

trionic; and like it, it shows, without offering causal mechanisms,

how its subject in its lowest stage (technique as machine tech-

nique) develops dialectically through the various higher stages

to become at last the fully evolved phenomenon (the technical

phenomenon identical with the technical society). Again, as with

Hegel, what the philosopher J. Loewenberg has called the “his-

trionic irony" of statement must drive the literal-minded reader

mad.



The Danish historian of philosophy, Harald Hoeffding, says of

Hegel's Phenomenology:



The course of development described in this unique work is at

once that of the individual and of the race; it gives at the same

time a psychology and a history of culture—and in the exposition

the two are so interwoven that it is often impossible to tell which of

the two is intended.



xi v)



With the stipulation that Ellul is treating of culture in the sense

of the technological society, Hoeffding s penetrating remark holds

as well for Elluls book.



In such a work it is impossible to separate method from content.

Yet, in another sense, and especially for a translator, it is impera-

tive to do so. Although, after the time of Descartes, French savants

in general were preoccupied with clarifying problems of method,

it has been almost impossible in the twentieth century to extort

from French writers on sociology and economics an adequate ac-

count of their procedures. Some of them have doubtless been over-

sensitive to Poincares famous jibe concerning the sciences "with

the most methods and the fewest results.” In Elluls case, however,

disinclination to discuss methodology specifically is almost cer-

tainly due in large part to his pervasive distrust of anything at all

resembling a fixed doctrine. Nevertheless, throughout the book are

scattered a large number of references to method, and it is possible

and necessary to reconstruct from them a satisfactory account of

the author’s methodology.



Ellul first “situates” the “facts” of experience in a general context,

and then proceeds to “focus” them. This figure of speech, drawn

from, or at least appropriate to, descriptive astronomy, appears

over and over again in connection with each supervening stage of

complexity of the subject matter. The final result of the procedure

is to bring to a common focal point rays proceeding from very

difft;ieiil 5plicicj», The reader should be warned that it is only pos-

sible to approximate in English the mixed metaphors and the

studied imprecisions of each new beginning of the process, which

are gradually refined to yield at the focus a precise terminology.

The lianslalox was always uncomfortably aware of too little pre-

cision, or too much, in his choice of English words. The reader seri-

ously interested in these nuances has no recourse but to consult the

original. The translator can do little more for him than to call his

attention to the problem. Anyone familiar with similar “dialectic

moments” in the works of Hegel or of Max Weber will understand

at once what is meant.



Ellul repeats again and again that he is concerned not to make

value judgments but to report things as they are. One might be

tempted to smile at such statements in view of the intensely per-

sonal and even impassioned quality of a work in which one is never



Translators Introduction



( xv



for a moment unaware where the author's own sympathies lie.

Nonetheless, on balance, it seems clear that he has not allowed his

own value judgments to intrude in any illegitimate way on ques-

tions of fact. "Fact" is very important to Ellul, but only as ex-

perienced in the context of the whole. Facts as they figure in un-

interpreted statistical analyses of a given domain, or as they may

be revealed by opinion polls and in newspapers, are anathema to

him; and he permits himself many diatribes against this kind of

“abstract,” disembodied fact which is so dear to the hearts of

Americans, at least as Ellul imagines them to be. With this proviso,

Ellul can echo the dictum of Hegel’s Phenomenology that the only

imaginable point of departure of philosophy is experience.



The insistence on rendering a purely phenomenological account

of fact, without causal explanation of the interrelation of the sub-

ordinate facts, may seem distasteful to some readers. Since Aristotle

it has been a common conception of science that we have knowl-

edge only when we know the Why. Admittedly, whenever causal

knowledge is available, it is indeed valuable. But it ought not to be

forgotten that such knowledge is increasingly hard to come by, and,

in fact, hardly makes its appearance at all in modem physics, say,

where one must, for the most part, be content with purely func-

tional (that is, phenomenological) equations, which dispense with

any appeal to mechanism but which are nonetheless adequate for

prediction and explanation, and which have the enormous addi-

tional advantage of containing no hidden concepts unconfront-

able by experience. The important questions concerning the techno-

logical society rarely turn for Ellul on how or why things came to

be so, but rather on whether his description of them is a true one.



Ellul’s methodology is fundamentally dominated by the prin-

ciple which has come to be called Engel’s law, that is, the law

asserting the passage of quantity into quality. To give a common-

place example, the city, after it reaches a certain threshold of

population, is supposed to pass over into a qualitatively different

type of urban organization. Unfortunately, both the popular and

the usual philosophical accounts of Engel’s law are incomplete, to

use no worse word.



First, it is incorrect to speak at all of a “threshold” of quantity

which, having been transcended, gives rise to a change of quality

and to a new set of laws and explanatory principles. In dialectical



xvi)



logic, every change of quantity is simultaneously a change of

quality; and the discernment of a “threshold” quantity is partly a

psychological fact of awareness, and partly an illicit attempt to try

to import back into a dialectical logic some of the unequivocalness

of the ordinary either/or logic. Now, Ellul's explanation of the

technical takeover is based fundamentally on the fact that the ma-

terial (that is, technical) substratum of human existence, which

was traditionally not allowed to be a legitimate end of human ac-

tion, has become so “enormous,” so “immense,” that men are no

longer able to cope with it as means, so that it has become an

end-in-itself, to which men must adapt themselves. But, with a

better understanding of the illusory nature of the “threshold quan-

tity,” we are able to turn aside the objections which are always

raised by those who rightly but extraneously urge that historical

societies have always had to struggle with the possibility of a ma-

terial takeover and that the present state of affairs is therefore not

something new. The answer, of course, is that the objection is ir-

relevant. Ellul could not mean to assert that men in the past have

not had to contend with material means which threatened to ex-

ceed their capacity to make good use of them, but that men in the

past were not confronted with technical means of production and

organization which in their sheer numerical proliferation and ve-

locity unavoidably surpassed man’s relatively unchanging biologi-

cal and spiritual capacities to exploit them as means to human

ends.



Second, Engel's law must never be taken to imply a one-way

transition of quantity into quality. In dialectical logic the trans-

formation of quality into quantity is a necessary concomitant



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fact, the essence of technique to compel the qualitative to become

quantitative, and in this way to force every stage of human activity

and man himself to submit to its mathematical calculations. Ellul

gives examples of this at every level. Thus, technique forces all

sociological phenomena to submit to the clock, for Ellul the most

characteristic of all modern technical instruments. The substitution

of the tempos mortuum of the mechanical clock for the biological

and psychological time “natural” to man is in itself sufficient to

suppress all the traditional rhythms of human life in favor of the

mechanical. Again, genuine human communities are suppressed by



Translator9s Introduction



(xvii



the technological society to form collectivities of “mass men* in*

capable of obeying any other law than the statistical “law of large

numbers,* All the technical devices of education, propaganda,

amusement, sport, and religion are mobilized to persuade the hu-

man being to be satisfied with his condition of mechanical, mind*

less “mass man,* and ruthlessly to exterminate the deviant and the

idiosyncratic.



The reduction of everything to quantity is partly a cause, and

partly an effect, of the modem omnipresence of computing ma*

chines and cybernated factories.



It should not be imagined, however, that the universal concentra*

tion camp which Ellul thinks is coming into being in all technical

societies without exception will be felt as harsh or restrictive by its

inmates. Hitler's concentration camps of hobnailed boots were

symptoms of a deficient political technique. The denizen of the

technological state of the future will have everything his heart ever

desired, except, of course, his freedom. Admittedly, modem man,

forced by technique to become in reality and without residue the

imaginary producer-consumer of the classical economists, shows

disconcertingly little regard for his lost freedom; but, according to

Ellul, there are ominous signs that human spontaneity, which in

the rational and ordered technical society has no expression except

madness, is only too capable of outbreaks of irrational suicidal de-

structiveness.



The escape valves of modem literature and art, which technique

has contrived, may or may not turn out to be adequate to the harm*

less release of the pent-up “ecstatic” energies of the human being.

Technique, which can in principle only oppose technical and quan-

titative solutions to technical problems, must, in such a case, seek

out other technical safety valves. It could, for example, convince

men that they were happy and contented by means of drugs, even

though they were visibly suffering from the worst kind of spiritual

and material privation. It is obvious that all such ultimate technical

measures must cause the last meager “idealistic* motifs of the whole

technical enterprise to disappear. Ellul does not specifically say

so, but it seems that he must hold that the technological society,

like everything else, bears within itself the seeds of its own destruc-

tion.



It must not be imagined that the autonomous technique ea*



xviii)



visioned by Ellul is a kind of “technological determinism,” to use a

phrase of Veblen. It may sometimes seem so, but only because all

human institutions, like the motions of all physical bodies, have a

certain permanence, or vis inertiae, which makes it highly probable

that the near future of statistical aggregations will see them con*

tinue more or less in the path of the immediate past. Things could

have eventuated in the technological society otherwise than as they

have.



Technique, to Ellul, is a “blind” force, but one which unfortu-

nately seems to be more perspicacious than the best discernible

human intelligences. There are other ways out, Ellul maintains, but

nobody wants any part of them.



Ellul’s insistence that the technical phenomenon is not a de-

terminism is not weakened by the enumeration (in the second

chapter) of five conditions which are said to be “necessary and

sufficient” for its outburst in the recent past, since the sufficient con-

ditions for the conditions (for example, the causes of the popula-

tion explosion) are not ascertainable.



The inertia of the technical phenomenon guarantees not only the

continued refinement and production of relatively beneficial arti-

cles such as flush toilets and wonder drugs, but also the emergence

of those unpredictable secondary effects which are always the re-

sult of ecological meddling and which today are of such magnitude

and acceleration that they can scarcely be reconciled with even

semis table equilibrium conditions of society. Nuclear explosions

and population explosions capture the public’s imagination; but I

have argued that Ellul’s analysis demands that all indices of mod-

em technological culture are exploding, too, and are potentially

just as dangerous to the continued well-being of society, if by well-

being we understand social equilibrium.



Reference to the vis inertiae of technique should not obscure the

fact that technique has become the only fully spontaneous activity

of the modem world. Art and science are mentioned as other hu-

man activities by Ellul. But art, though it is concrete, is subjective;

and science, though objective in its description of reality, is ab-

stract. Only technique is at once both concrete and objective in

that it creates the reality it describes. Ellul must conclude that

trom among the data of science technique legislates those which it

deems most efficient and reiects the rest Economic and social



Translators Introduction



(xix



"model builders” those assiduous technocratic apes, may seek to

soften the violence of this description by pointing out that all

sciences "specify a universe of discourse.” It remains unfortunately

true, however, that such "specification” proceeds by way of elimina-

tion of the human.



Ellul is no machinoclast like the partisans of the weak-minded

Ludd seeking to wreck the stocking frames. He has no doctrinal de-

lusions at all, a fortiori none like those of Rousseau and certain of

his disciples, who imagined that man would be happy in a state

of nature.



In view of the fact that Ellul continually apostrophizes technique

as "unnatural” (except when he calls it the “new nature”), it might

be thought surprising that he has no fixed conception of nature

or of the natural. The best answer seems to be that he considers

"natural” (in the good sense) any environment able to satisfy man's

material needs, if it leaves him free to use it as means to achieve

his individual, internally generated ends. The necessary and suffi-

cient condition for this state of affairs is that man's means should

be (qualitatively and quantitatively) "at the level” of man's ca-

pacities. Under these dubiously realizable circumstances, Ellul

apparently thinks of techniques as so many blessings.



Since men are unwilling to acknowledge their demotion to the

status of joyous robots, and since they demand justification for their

individual and collective acts as never before in history, it is easy

to understand why the modern intellectuals (and their forcing-

house, the university) have become veritable machines for the in-

vention of new myths and the propagation of old ones. It would

be easy to compile a list of all the things which Ellul must deem

"myth.” Such a list would quite simply contain all philosophical,

historical, religious, and political doctrines known to man, except

insofar as such doctrines have technological components. The

Western democracies, for example, are out after money and the

Eastern Communists are out after power; otherwise they share an

identical view of life, and the epiphenomenal variant ideologies

which accompany identical acts can only be described as a cruel

hoax.



It is disconcerting in the extreme to contemplate the possibility

that cherished democratic institutions have become empty forms

which have no visible connection with the acts of democratic na



XX )



tions, except perhaps to render these acts technically less efficient

than they otherwise need have been. But the fact that they have no

connection is, paradoxically, a powerful reason for their survival.

Ellul evidently contemplates a long future in which sclerotic rival

ideologies will carry on their sham polemics.



Ellul, in agreement with much of Greek philosophy, seems to

think that the distinction usually drawn between thought and ac-

tion is a pernicious one. To him, to bear witness to the fact of the

technological society is the most revolutionary of all possible acts.

His personal reason for doing so is that he is a Christian, a fact

which is spelled out in his book La Presence. His concept of the

duty of a Christian, who stands uniquely (is '‘present”) at the point

of intersection of this material world and the eternal world to come,

is not to concoct ambiguous ethical schemes or programs of social

action, but to testify to the truth of both worlds and thereby to

affirm his freedom through the revolutionary nature of his religion.



It is clear that many people who will accept Ellul's diagnosis of

the technical disease will not accept his Christian therapy. The is-

sue is nevertheless joined: if massive technological intervention is

the only imaginable means to turn aside technology from its head-

long career, how may we be sure that this intervention will be

something other than just some new technical scheme, which, more

likely than not, will be catastrophic?



John Wilkinson



Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Santa Barbara, California

January 1964



Contents



NOTE TO THE READER	XXV



FOREWORD TO THE REVISED AMERICAN EDITION	XXVii



AUTHORS PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION	XXXV



charter I—Technique*



SITUATING THE TECHNICAL PHENOMENON



Machines and Technique	3



Science and Technique	7



Organization and Technique	11



Definitions	13



Technical Operation and Technical Phenomenon	19



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT



Primitive Technique	*3



Greece	27



Rome	29



Christianity and Technique	32



The Sixteenth Century	38



The Industrial Revolution	42



xxii)



chapter 11—The Characterology of Technique



TECHNIQUE IN CIVILIZATION



Traditional Techniques and Society	64



The New Characteristics	77



CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN TECHNIQUE



Automatism of Technical Choice	79



Self-augmentation	85



M onism	94



The Necessary Linking Together of Techniques	111



Technical Universalism	116



The Autonomy of Technique	133



chapter 111—Technique and Economy



THE BEST AND THE WORST



The Influence of Technique on the Economy	149



Economic Consequences	153



THE SECRET WAY



The Economic Techniques of Observation	163



The Economic Techniques of Action	171



Planning and Liberty	177



THE GREAT HOPES



Economic Systems Confronted by Technique	183



Progress	190



Centralized Economy	193



The Authoritarian Economy	200



The Antidemocratic Economy	208



ECONOMIC MAN



chapter iv—Technique and the State



THE STATE’S ENCOUNTERS WITH TECHNIQUE



Ancient Techniques	229



New Techniques	233



Contents	(xxiii



Private and Public Techniques	239



The Reaction of the State to Techniques	243



REPERCUSSIONS ON THE STATE



Evolution	248



The Technical Organism	252



The Conflict Between the Politicians and the Technicians 255

Technique and Constitution	267



Technique and Political Doctrines	280



The Totalitarian State	284



SUMMUM JUS: SUMMA INJURIA

REPERCUSSION ON TECHNIQUE



Technique Unchecked	301



The Role of the State in the Development of Modern Tech-

niques	307



Institutions in the Service of Technique	311



chapter v—Human Techniques



NECESSITIES



Human Tension	319



Modification of the Milieu and Space	325



Modification of Time and Motion	328



The Creation of the Mass Society	332



Human Techniques	335



REVIEW



Educational Technique	344



The Technique of Work	349



Vocational Guidance	358



Propaganda	363



Amusement	375



Sport	382



Medicine	384



ECHOES



Techniques, Men, and Man	387



Jhomme-machine	395



The Dissociation of Man

The Triumph of the Unconscious

Mass Man



TOTAL INTEGRATION



Technical Anesthesia



Integration of the Instincts and of the Spiritual

The Final Resolution



chapter vi—A Look at the Future



A Look at the Year 2000



BIBLIOGRAPHY



398



402



4<>5



41*



415



418



43*



INDEX



437



follow* page 450



Note to the Reader I



I think the task of the reader will be lightened if at the outset I at-

tempt a definition of technique. The whole first chapter is devoted

to making clear what constitutes technique in the present-day

world, but as a preliminary there must be a simple idea, a defini-

tion.



The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, tech-

nology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our

technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally

arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of de-

velopment ) in every field of human activity. Its characteristics are

new; the technique of the present has no common measure with

that of the past.



This definition is not a theoretical construct. It is arrived at by

examining each activity and observing the facts of what modern

man calls technique in general, as well as by investigating the dif-

ferent areas in which specialists declare they have a technique.



In the course of this work, the word technique will be used with

varying emphasis on one or another aspect of this definition. At one

point, the emphasis may be on rationality, at another on efficiency

or procedure, but the over-all definition will remain the same.



Finally, we shall be looking at technique in its sociological aspect;



xxvi)



that is, we shall consider the effect of technique on social relation-

ships, political structures, economic phenomena. Technique is not

an isolated fact in society (as the term technology would lead us

to believe) but is related to every factor in the life of modem man;

it affects social facts as well as all others. Thus technique itself is a

sociological phenomenon, and it is in this light that we shall study

it.



June J963



Jacques Ellul



Author s Foreword to the

Revised American Edition



At the beginning I must try to make clear the direction and aim

of this book. Although descriptive, it is not without purpose, I do

not limit myself to describing my findings with cold objectivity in

the manner q£ a research worker reporting what he sees under a

microscope. I am keenly aware that I am myself involved in

technological civilization, and that its history is also my own. I may

be compared rather with a physician or physicist who is describing

a group situation in which he is himself involved. The physician

in an epidemic, the physicist exposed to radioactivity: in such

situations the mind may remain cold and lucid, and the method

objective, but there is inevitably a profound tension of the whole

being.



Although I have deliberately not gone beyond description, the

reader may perhaps receive an impression of pessimism. I am

neither by nature, nor doctrinally, a pessimist, nor have I pessimis-

tic prejudices. I am concerned only with knowing whether things

are so or not. The reader tempted to brand me a pessimist should

begin to examine his own conscience, and ask himself what causes

him to make such a judgment. For behind this judgment, I believe,

will always be found previous metaphysical value judgments, such



xxviii)



as: “Man is free"; “Man is lord of creation"; “Man has always over-

come challenges" (so why not this one too?); “Man is good." Or

again: “Progress is always positive"; “Man has an eternal soul, and

so cannot be put in jeopardy." Those who hold such convictions

will say that my description of technological civilization is in-

correct and pessimistic. I ask only that the reader place himself on

the factual level and address himself to these questions: “Are the

facts analyzed here false?" “Is the analysis inaccurate?” “Are the

conclusions unwarranted?" “Are there substantial gaps and omis-

sions?" It will not do for him to challenge factual analysis on

the basis of his own ethical or metaphysical presuppositions.



The reader deserves and has my assurance that I have not set out

to prove anything. I do not seek to show, say, that man is deter-

mined, or that technique is bad, or anything else of the kind.



Two other factors may lead the reader to the feeling of pessi-

mism. It may be that he feels a rigorous determinism is here de-

scribed that leaves no room for effective individual action, or that

he cannot find any solution for the problems raised in the book.

These two factors must now engage our attention.



As to the rigorous determinism, I should explain that I have tried

to perform a work of sociological reflection, involving analysis of

large groups of people and of major trends, but not of individual

actions. I do not deny the existence of individual action or of some

inner sphere of freedom. I merely hold that these are not discerni-

ble at the most general level of analysis, and that the individual’s

acts or ideas do not here and now exert any influence on social,

political, or economic mechanisms. By making this statement, I

explicitly take a partisan position in a dispute between schools of

sociology. To me the sociological does not consist of the addition

and combination of individual actions. I believe that there is a col-

lective sociological reality, which is independent of the individual.

As I see it, individual decisions are always made within the frame-

work of this sociological reality, itself pre-existent and more or less

determinative. I have simply endeavored to describe technique as

a sociological reality. We are dealing with collective mechanisms,

with relationships among collective movements, and with modifi-

cations of political or economic structures. It should not be sur-

prising, therefore, that no reference is made to the separate, inde-



Author*s Foreword to the Revised American Edition (xxix



pendent initiative of individuals. It is not possible for me to treat

the individual sphere. But I do not deny that it exists. I do not

maintain that the individual is more determined today than he has

been in the past; rather, that he is differently determined. Primi-

tive man, hemmed in by prohibitions, taboos, and rites, was, of

course, socially determined. But it is an illusion—unfortunately

very widespread—to think that because we have broken through

the prohibitions, taboos, and rites that bound primitive man, we

have become free. We are conditioned by something new: techno-

logical civilization. I make no reference to a past period of history

in which men were allegedly free, happy, and independent. The

determinisms of the past no longer concern us; they are finished

and done with. If I do refer to the past, it is only to emphasize that

present determinants did not exist in the past, and men did not

have to grapple with them then. The men of classical antiquity

could not have found a solution to our present determinisms, and it

is useless to look into the works of Plato or Aristotle for an answer

to the problem of freedom.



Keeping in mind that sociological mechanisms are always sig-

nificant determinants—of more or less significance—for the indi-

vidual, I would maintain that we have moved from one set of

determinants to another. The pressure of these mechanisms is

today very great; they operate in increasingly wide areas and pene-

trate more and more deeply into human existence. Therein lies the

specifically modern problem.



This determinism has, however, another aspect. There will be a

temptation to use the word fatalism in connection with the phe-

nomena described in this book. The reader may be inclined to say

that, if everything happens as stated in the book, man is entirely

helpless—helpless either to preserve his personal freedom or to

change the course of events. Once again, I think the question is

badly put. I would reverse the terms and say: if man—if each one

of us—abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each

of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological

civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his

sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making

a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as

I have described it, and the determinants will be transformed into

inevitabilities. But, in describing sociological currents, I obviously



XXX )



cannot take into account the contingent decisions of this or that

individual, even if these decisions could modify the course of social

development. For these decisions are not visible, and if they are

truly personal, they cannot be foreseen. I have tried to describe the

technical phenomenon as it exists at present and to indicate its

probable evolution. Fatalism is not involved; it is rather a question

of probability, and I have indicated what I think to be its most

likely development.



What is the basis for this most likely eventuality? I would say

that it lies in social, economic, and political phenomena, and in

certain chains of events and sequences. If we may not speak of

laws, we may, at any rate, speak of repetitions. If we may not

speak of mechanisms in the strict sense of the word, we may speak

of interdependencies. There is a certain logic (though not a formal

logic) in economic phenomena which makes certain forecasts pos-

sible. This is true of sociology and, to a lesser degree, of politics.

There is a certain logic in the evolution of institutions which is

easily discernible. It is possible, without resorting to imagination

or science fiction, to describe the path that a social body or institu-

tional complex will follow. An extrapolation is perfectly proper

and scientific when it is made with care. Such an extrapolation is

what we have attempted. But it never represents more than a

probability, and may be proved false by events.



External factors could change the course of history. The probable

development I describe might be forestalled by the emergence of

new phenomena. I give three examples—widely different, and de-

liberately so—of possible disturbing phenomena:



1)	If a general war breaks out, and if there are any survivors,



-■••.Till	nr\	rt..p «	n-r-xr-	nf	m	ri	i	m!



U1C ucauuuuuu mu uv ju uuuiiuvuj, »uu uiv> wuutuv/ua ui iiuiutiu



so different, that a technological society will no longer exist.



%) If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the

threat the technological world poses to man's personal and spiritual

life, and if they determine to assert their freedom by upsetting the

course of this evolution, my forecast will be invalidated.



3) If God decides to intervene, man's freedom may be saved by

a change in the direction of history or in the nature of man.



But in sociological analysis these possibilities cannot be con-

sidered. The last two lie outside the field of sociology, and confront

us with an upheaval so vast that its consequences cannot be as-



Author*s Foreword to the Revised American Edition	( xxxi



sessed. But sociological analysis does not permit consideration of

these possibilities. In addition, the first two possibilities offer no

analyzable fact on which to base any attempt at projection. They

have no place in an inquiry into facts; I cannot deny that they may

occur, but I cannot take them rationally into account. I am in the

position of a physician who must diagnose a disease and guess its

probable course, but who recognizes that God may work a miracle,

that the patient may have an unexpected constitutional reaction, or

that the patient—suffering from tuberculosis—may die unex-

pectedly of a heart attack. The reader must always keep in mind

the implicit presupposition that if man does not pull himself to-

gether and assert himself (or if some other unpredictable but

decisive phenomenon does not intervene), then things will go the

way I describe.



The reader may be pessimistic on yet another score. In this study

no solution is put forward to the problems raised. Questions are

asked, but not answered. I have indeed deliberately refrained

from providing solutions. One reason is that the solutions would

necessarily be theoretical and abstract, since they are nowhere ap-

parent in existing facts. I do not say that no solutions will be

found; I merely aver that in the present social situation there is

not even a beginning of a solution, no breach in the system of tech-

nical necessity. Any solutions I might propose would be idealistic

and fanciful. In a sense, it would even be dishonest to suggest solu-

tions: the reader might think them real rather than merely literary.

I am acquainted with the “solutions* offered by Emmanuel Mou-

nier, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ragnor Frisch, Jean Fourastie,

Georges Friedmann, and others. Unfortunately, all these belong to

the realm of fancy and have no bearing on reality. I cannot ration-

ally consider them in analyzing the present situation.



However, I will not make a final judgment on tomorrow before it

arrives. I do not presume to put chains around man. But I do

insist that a distinction be made between diagnosis and treat-

ment. Before a remedy can be found, it is first necessary to make a

detailed study of the disease and the patient, to do laboratory re-

search, and to isolate the virus. It is necessary to establish criteria

that will make it possible to recognize the disease when it occurs,

and to describe the patient’s symptoms at each stage of his illness.



xxxii)



This preliminary work is indispensable for eventual discovery and

application of a remedy.



By this comparison I do not mean to suggest that technique is a

disease of the body social, but rather to indicate a working proce-

dure. Technique presents man with multiple problems. As long as

the first stage of analysis is incomplete, as long as the problems are

not correctly stated, it is useless to proffer solutions. And, before

we can pose the problems correctly, we must have an exact descrip-

tion of the phenomena involved. As far as I know, there is no

over-all and exact description of the facts which would make it

possible to formulate the problems correctly.



The existing works on the subject either are limited to a single

aspect of the problem—the effect of motion pictures on the nerv-

ous system, for example—or else propose solutions without the req-

uisite preliminary study. I offer these pages as a first effort in lay-

ing the necessary ground; much more work will have to follow

before we can see what man's true response is to the challenge be-

fore him.



But this must not lead the reader to say to himself; “All right,

here is some information on the problem, and other sociologists,

economists, philosophers, and theologians will carry on the work, so

I have simply got to wait.” This will not do, for the challenge is not

to scholars and university professors, but to all of us. At stake is our

very life, and we shall need all the energy, inventiveness, imagina-

tion, goodness, and strength we can muster to triumph in our pre-

dicament While waiting for the specialists to get on with their

work on behalf of society, each of us, in his own life, must seek

ways of resisting and transcending technological determinants.

Each man must make this effort in every area of life, in his profes-

sion and in his social, religious, and family relationships.



In my conception, freedom is not an immutable fact graven in

nature and on the heart of man. It is not inherent in man or in so-

ciety, and it is meaningless to write it into law. The mathematical,

physical, biological, sociological, and psychological sciences reveal

nothing but necessities and determinisms on all sides. As a matter

of fact, reality is itself a combination of determinisms, and freedom

consists in overcoming and transcending these determinisms. Free-

dom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity,

unless it represents victory over necessity. To say that freedom



Author s Foreword to the Revised American Edition ( xxxiii



is graven in the nature of man, is to say that man is free because he

obeys his nature, or, to put it another way, because he is condi-

tioned by his nature. This is nonsense. We must not think of the

problem in terms of a choice between being determined and be-

ing free. We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is in-

deed determined, but that it is open to him to overcome necessity,

and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not static but dynamic;

not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won. Hie mo-

ment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to deter-

minism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably

settled in freedom.



In the modem world, the most dangerous form of determinism

is the technological phenomenon. It is not a question of getting rid

of it, but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it How is this to

be done? I do not yet know. That is why this book is an appeal to

the individual's sense of responsibility. The first step in tbe quest,

the first act of freedom, is to become aware of the necessity. The

very fact that man can see, measure, and analyze the determinisms

that press on him means that he can face them and, by so doing,

act as a free man. If man were to say These are not necessities; I

am free because of technique, or despite technique,* this would

prove that he is totally determined. However, by grasping the real

nature of the technological phenomenon, and the extent to which

it is robbing him of freedom, he confronts the blind mechanisms as

a conscious being.



At the beginning of this foreword I stated that this book has a

purpose. That purpose is to arouse the reader to an awareness of

technological necessity and what it means. It is a call to the sleeper

to awake.



Jacques Ellul



Le Marierre, Pessae, Gironde, France

January 1Q64



Author s Preface to the

French Edition * I



Let us, first of all, clear up certain misunderstandings that inevitably

arise in any discussion of technique.



It is not the business of this book to describe the various tech-

niques which, taken together, make up the technological society.

It would take a whole library to describe the countless technical

means invented by man; and such an undertaking would be of

little value. Moreover, quite enough elementary works describing

the various techniques are already available. I shall frequently

allude to some of these techniques on the assumption that their

applications or their mechanics are familiar to the reader.



I do not intend to draw up a balance sheet, positive or negative,

of what has been so far accomplished by means of these tech-

niques, or to compare their advantages and disadvantages. I shall

not repeat what has so often been stated, that through technology

the work week has been materially shortened, that living stand-

ards have risen, and so forth; or, on the other side of the ledger,

that the worker has encountered many difficulties in adapting to

the machine. Indeed, no one is capable of making a true and item-

ized account of the total effect of existing techniques. Only frag-

mentary and superficial surveys are possible.



xxxvi)



Finally, it is not my intention to make ethical or aesthetic judg-

ments on technique. A human being is, of course, human and not

a mere photographic plate, so that his own point of view inevitably

appears. But this does not preclude a deeper objectivity. The sign

of it will be that worshippers of technique will no doubt find this

work pessimistic and haters of technique will find it optimistic.



I have attempted simply to present, by means of a comprehen-

sive analysis, a concrete and fundamental interpretation of tech-

nique.



That is the sole object of this book.



J. E.



1954



THE TECHNOLOGICAL

SOCIETY



CHAPTER



CO



TECHNIQUES



No social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of tech-

nique in the modem world. And yet no subject is so little under-

stood. Let us try to set up some guideposts to situate the technical

phenomenon.



Situating the Technical Phenomenon



Machines and Technique. Whenever we see the word technology

or technique, we automatically think of machines. Indeed, we

commonly think of our world as a world of machines. This notion—

which is in fact an error—is found, for example, in the works of

Oldham and Pierre Ducasse. It arises from the fact that the ma-

chine is the most obvious, massive, and impressive example of tech-

nique, and historically the first. What is called the history of tech-

nique usually amounts to no more than a history of the machine;

this very formulation is an example of the habit of intellectuals of

regarding forms of the present as identical with those of the past.



Technique certainly began with the machine. It is quite true

that all the rest developed out of mechanics; it is quite true also that

without the machine the world of technique would not exist. But



4 )	TECHNIQUES



to explain the situation in this way does not at all legitimatize it. It

is a mistake to continue with this confusion of terms, the more so

because it leads to the idea that, because the machine is at the

origin and center of the technical problem, one is dealing with the

whole problem when one deals with the machine. And that is a

greater mistake still. Technique has now become almost com-

pletely independent of the machine, which has lagged far behind

its offspring.



It must be emphasized that, at present, technique is applied out-

side industrial life. The growth of its power today has no relation

to the growing use of the machine. The balance seems rather to

have shifted to the other side. It is the machine which is now en-

tirely dependent upon technique, and the machine represents only

a small part of technique. If we were to characterize the relations

between technique and the machine today, we could say not only

that the machine is the result of a certain technique, but also that

its social and economic applications are made possible by other

technical advances. The machine is now not even the most impor-

tant aspect of technique (though it is perhaps the most spectac-

ular); technique has taken over all of man’s activities, not just his

productive activity.



From another point of view, however, the machine is deeply

symptomatic: it represents the ideal toward which technique

strives. The machine is solely, exclusively, technique; it is pure

technique, one might say. For, wherever a technical factor exists, it

results, almost inevitably, in mechanization: technique transforms

everything it touches into a machine.



Another relationship exists between technique and the machine,

and this relationship penetrates to the very cor* of the problem of

our civilization. It is said (and everyone agrees) that the machine

has created an inhuman atmosphere. The machine, so characteris-

tic of the nineteenth century, made an abrupt entrance into a soci-

ety which, from the political, institutional, and human points of

view, was not made to receive it; and man has had to put up with it

as best he can. Men now live in conditions that are less than human.

Consider the concentration of our great cities, the slums, the lack

of space, of air, of time, the gloomy streets and the sallow lights

that confuse night and day. Think of our dehumanized factories,

our unsatisfied senses, our working women, our estrangement from



The Technological Society	(	5



nature. Life in such an environment has no meaning. Consider our

public transportation, in which man is less important than a parcel;

our hospitals, in which he is only a number. Yet we call this prog-

ress. . . . And the noise, that monster boring into us at every hour

of the night without respite.



It is useless to rail against capitalism. Capitalism did not create

our world; the machine did. Painstaking studies designed to prove

the contrary have buried the obvious beneath tons of print. And,

if we do not wish to play the demagogue, we must point out the

guilty party. "The machine is antisocial," says Lewis Mumford. "It

tends, by reason of its progressive character, to the most acute

forms erf human exploitation." The machine took its place in a social

milieu that was not made for it, and for that reason created the in-

human society in which we live. Capitalism was therefore only one

aspect of the deep disorder of the nineteenth century. To restore

order, it was necessary to question all the bases of that society—

its social and political structures, its art and its way of life, its com-

mercial system.



But let the machine have its head, and it topples everything that

cannot support its enormous weight. Thus everything had to be re-

considered in terms of the machine. And that is precisely the role

technique plays. In all fields it made an inventory of what it could

use, of everything that could be brought into line with the ma-

chine. The machine could not integrate itself into nineteenth-

century society; technique integrated it. Old houses that were not

suited to the workers were tom down; and the new world tech-

nique required was built in their place. Technique has enough of

the mechanical in its nature to enable it to cope with the machine,

but it surpasses and transcends the machine because it remains in

close touch with the human order. The metal monster could not

go on forever torturing mankind. It found in technique a rule as

hard and inflexible as itself.



Technique integrates the machine into society. It constructs the

kind of world the machine needs and introduces order where the in-

coherent banging of machinery heaped up ruins. It clarifies, ar*

ranges, and rationalizes; it does in the domain of the abstract what

the machine did in the domain of labor. It is efficient and bring*

efficiency to everything. Moreover, technique is sparing in the usa

of the machine, which has traditionally been exploited to conceal



TECHNIQUES



«)



defects of organization. "Machines sanctioned social inefficiency

says Mumford. Technique, on the other hand, leads to a more

rational and less indiscriminate use of machines. It places ma-

chines exactly where they ought to be and requires of them just

what they ought to do



This brings us to two contrasting forms of social growth. Henri

Guitton says: "Social growth was formerly reflexive or instinctive,

that is to say, unconscious. But new circumstances (the machine)

now compel us to recognize a kind of social development that is ra-

tional, intelligent, and conscious. We may ask ourselves whether

this is the beginning not only of the era of a spatially finite world but

also of the era of a conscious world.” All-embracing technique is

in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world.



Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational

events. Man is not adapted to a world of steel; technique adapts him

to it. It changes the arrangement of this blind world so that man

can be a part of it without colliding with its rough edges, without

the anguish of being delivered up to the inhuman. Technique thus

provides a model; it specifies attitudes that are valid once and for

all. The anxiety aroused in man by the turbulence of the machine is

soothed by the consoling hum of a unified society.



As long as technique was represented exclusively by the ma-

chine, it was possible to speak of "man and the machine.” The ma-

chine remained an external object, and man (though significantly

influenced by it in his professional, private, and psychic life) re-

mained none the less independent. He was in a position to assert

himself apart from the machine; he was able to adopt a position

with respect to it.



But when technique enters into every area of life, including the

human, it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very sub-

stance. It is no longer face to face with man but is integrated with

him, and it progressively absorbs him. In this respect, technique is

radically different from the machine. This transformation, so obvi-

ous in modem society, is the result of the fact that technique has

become autonomous.



When I state that technique leads to mechanization, I am not

referring to the simple fact of human adaptation to the machine. Of

course, such a process of adaptation exists, but it is caused by the ac-



The Technological Society	(	7



tion of the machine. What we are concerned with here, however, is

a kind of mechanization in itself. If we may ascribe to the machine

a superior form of “know-how," the mechanization which results

from technique is the application of this higher form to all domains

hitherto foreign to the machine; we can even say that technique is

characteristic of precisely that realm in which the machine itself

can play no role. It is a radical error to think of technique and ma-

chine as interchangeable; from the very beginning we must be on

guard against this misconception.



Science and Technique. Almost immediately we come up against

a second problem. It is true that it is another pons asinorum; one

hesitates even to mention it since the question has been so often

discussed. The relation between science and technique is a stand-

ard subject for graduate theses—in all the trappings of nineteenth-

century experimental science. Everyone has been taught that tech-

nique is an application of science; more particularly (science being

pure speculation), technique figures as the point of contact between

material reality and the scientific formula. But it also appears as

the practical product, the application of the formulas to practical

life.



This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only

a single category of science and only a short period of time: it is

true only for the physical sciences and for the nineteenth century. It

is not possible therefore to base a general study on it nor, as we are

attempting to do here, an up-to-date review of the situation.



A few simple remarks suffice to destroy our confidence in these

views. Historically, technique preceded science; even primitive man

was acquainted with certain techniques. The first techniques of

Hellenistic civilization were Oriental; they were not derived from

Greek science. Thus, historically speaking, the relationship between

science and technique ought to be reversed.



However, technique began to develop and extend itself only after

science appeared; to progress, technique had to wait for science.

Bertrand Gille has rightly said, in this historical perspective: “Tech-

nique, by means of repeated experiments, posed the problems,

derived general notions and the four primary elements; but it had

to wait for the solutions"—which science provided.



In the present era, the most casual inspection reveals an entirely



TECHNIQUES



«)



different relationship. In every instance, it is clear that the border

between technical activity and scientific activity is not at all sharply

defined.



When we speak of technique in historical science, we mean a cer-

tain kind of preparatory work: textual research, reading, collation,

study of monuments, criticism, and exegesis. These represent an

ensemble of technical operations which aim first at interpretation

and then at historical synthesis, the true work of science. Here,

again, technique comes first.



Even in physics, in certain instances, technique precedes science.

The best-known example is the steam engine, a pure achievement of

experimental genius. The sequence of inventions and improvements

of Solomon De Caus, Christian Huygens, Denes Papin, Thomas

Savery, and so on, rest on practical trial and error. The scientific

explanation of the various phenomena involved was to come much

later, after a lapse of two centuries, and even then it was not easy to

formulate. There is still no automatic link between science and

technique. The relation is not that simple; there is more and more

interaction between them. Today all scientific research presupposes

enormous technical preparation (as, for example, in atomic re-

search). And very often it is some simple technical modification

which allows further scientific progress.



When the technical means do not exist, science does not advance.

Michael Faraday was aware of the most recent discoveries concern-

ing the constitution of matter, but was unable to formulate precise

theories because techniques for the production of vacua did not yet

exist. Scientific results had to await high-vacuum techniques. The

medical value of penicillin was discovered in 1912 by a French

physician, but he had no technical means of producing and con-

serving penicillin; misgivings therefore arose about the discovery

and led to its eventual abandonment.



The majority of investigators in a laboratory are technicians who

perform tasks far removed from what is commonly imagined to be

scientific work. The research worker is no longer a solitary genius.

As Robert Jungk says: “He works as a member of a team and is will-

ing to give up his freedom of research as well as personal recognition

in exchange for the assistance and equipment a great laboratory

offers him. These two tilings are the indispensable conditions with-

out which he cannot even dream of realizing his projects. . . .*



The Technological Society	( 9



Pure science seems to be yielding its place to an applied science

which now and again reaches a brilliant peak from which new

technical research becomes possible. Conversely, certain technical

modifications—in airplanes, for instance—which may seem simple

and mechanical, presuppose complex scientific work. The problem

of reaching supersonic velocities is one. The considered opinion of

Norbert Wiener is that the younger generation of research workers

in the United States consists primarily of technicians who are un-

able to do research at all without the help of machines, large teams

of men, and enormous amounts of money.



The relation between science and technique becomes even less

clear when we consider the newer fields, which have no boundaries.

Where does biological technique begin and where does it end? In

modern psychology and sociology, what can we call technique,

since in the application of these sciences everything is technique?



But it is not application which characterizes technique, for, with-

out technique (previous or concomitant), science has no way of

existing. If we disown technique, we abandon the domain of science

and enter into that of hypothesis and theory. In political economy

(despite the recent efforts of economists to distinguish the bounda-

ries between science and economic technique), we shall demon-

strate that it is economic technique which forms the very substance

of economic thought.



The established foundations have indeed been shaken. But the

problem of these relations, in view of the enormity of the technical

world and the reduction of the scientific, would seem to be an aca-

demic problem of interest only to philosophers—speculation with-

out content. Today it is no longer the frontiers of science which are

at issue, but the frontiers of man; and the technical phenomenon is

much more significant with regard to the human situation than

with regard to the scientific. It is no longer in reference to science

that technique must be defined. We need not pursue philosophy of

science here, or establish, ideally or intellectually, what may be the

relations between action and science. What we must do is look about

us and note certain obvious things which seem to escape the all too

intelligent philosophers.



It is not a question of minimizing the importance of scientific ac-

tivity, but of recognizing that in fact scientific activity has been

superseded by technical activity to such a degree that we can no



TECHNIQUES



10)



longer conceive of science without its technical outcome. As Charles

Camichel has observed, the two are closer than ever before. The

very fact that techniques advance with great rapidity demands a

corresponding scientific advance, and sets off a general accelera-

tion.



Moreover, techniques are always put to immediate use. The in-

terval which traditionally separates a scientific discovery and its

application in everyday life has been progressively shortened. As

soon as a discovery is made, a concrete application is sought. Capi-

tal becomes interested, or the state, and the discovery enters the

public domain before anyone has had a chance to reckon all the

consequences or to recognize its full import. The scientist might act

more prudently; he might even be afraid to launch his carefully cal-

culated laboratory findings into the world. But how can he resist

the pressure of the facts? How can he resist the pressure of money?

How is he to resist success, publicity, public acclaim? Or the gen-

eral state of mind which makes technical application the last word?

How is he to resist the desire to pursue his research? Such is the

dilemma of the researcher today. Either he allows his findings to be

technologically applied or he is forced to break off his research.

Such is the drama of the atomic physicists who saw that only the

laboratories at Los Alamos could provide them with the technical

instruments necessary to the continuation of their work. The state,

then, exercises a very real monopoly, and the scientist is obliged to

accept its conditions. As one of the atomic scientials put it: “What

keeps me here is the possibility of using for my work a special mi-

croscope which exists nowhere else” (Jungk). The scientist is no



longer able to hold out: “Even science, especially the magnificent

science of cur o%vn day, has become an element Oi iec unique, a

mere means” (Mauss). There we have, indeed, the final word:

science has become an instrument of technique.



Later, we shall consider how it has come about that scientific

utilitarianism has gained such momentum from technique that a

disinterested piece of research is no longer possible. It has always

been necessary to have a scientific substructure, but today it is

scarcely possible to effect a separation between scientific and techni-

cal research. Indeed, our omnivorous technique (and this repre-

sents in part Einstein’s thought) may in the end make science

sterile.



The Technological Society	(11



I shall often use the term technique in place of the more com-

monly used term science, and designate as techniques work that is

usually termed scientific. This is due to the close association of

technique and science which I have pointed out and which I shall

discuss more fully later on.



Organization and Technique. A third element will help us formu-

late our problem more clearly. I have already pointed out that we

must understand the term technique in a broader sense. But some

authors, not wishing to deviate from traditional linguistic usage,

prefer to keep to its current meaning and seek another term to

designate the phenomena we are describing here.



According to Arnold Toynbee, history is divided into three pe-

riods, and it is on the point of passing from the technical period

into the period of organization. I agree with Toynbee that mechani-

cal technique no longer characterizes our times. However important

and impressive mechanical technique remains, it is only accessory

to other factors which are much more decisive, if less spectacular.

I have in mind the vast amount of organization in every field, the

recognition of which led James Burnham to write The Managerial

Revolution.



But I cannot agree with Toynbee in his choice of terms or in the

line he draws between the technical period and the period of or-

ganization. In his sketchy conception of technique, for which he

has been severely criticized, the confusion between machine and

technique remains. He has limited the realm of technique to what

it was in the past, without considering what it is now.



In reality, what Toynbee calls organization, and Burnham calls

managerial action, is technique applied to social, economic, or ad-

ministrative life. What but technique is the “organization” defined

in the following? “Organization is the process which consists in

assigning appropriate tasks to individuals or to groups so as to at-

tain, in an efficient and economic way, and by the coordination

and combination of all their activities, the objectives agreed upon”

(Sheldon). This leads to the standardization and the rationaliza-

tion of economic and administrative life, as Antoine Mas has well

shown. “Standardization means resolving in advance all the prob-

lems that might possibly impede the functioning of an organization.

It is not a matter of leaving it to inspiration, ingenuity, nor even

intelligence to find a solution at the moment some difficulty arises;



TECHNIQUES



12)



it is rather in some way to anticipate both the difficulty and its

resolution. From then on, standardization creates impersonality, in

the sense that organization relies more on methods and instructions

than on individuals.” We thus have all the marks of a technique.

Organization is a technique—and Andre L. A. Vincent had good

reason to write: “To approach the optimum combination of factors,

or the optimum dimension is ... to accomplish technical prog-

ress in the form of a better organization.”



It will no doubt be asked: What is the point of discussing these

terms, since, at bottom, you are in agreement with Toynbee? But

these discussions are important: Toynbee separates centuries and

phenomena which ought to remain united. He would have us be-

lieve that organization is something other than technique, that man

has in a way discovered a new field of action and new methods,

and that we must study organization as a new phenomenon, when

it is nothing of the sort. I, on the other hand, insist on the con-

tinuity of the technical process. It is this process which is taking on

a new aspect (I would say, its true aspect) and is developing on a

world-wide scale.



What are the consequences? The first is that the problems cre-

ated by mechanical technique will be heightened to a degree as

yet incalculable, as a result of the application of technique to ad-

ministration and to all spheres of life, Toynbee believes that this

organization which is succeeding technique is in some way a coun-

terbalance to it, and a remedy (and that is a comforting view of

history). But it seems to me that the exact opposite is true, that this

development adds to the technical problems by offering a partial

solution to old problems, itself based on the very methods that

created the problems in the first place. This is the age-old proce-

dure of digging a new hole to fill up an old one.



A second consequence: If what we are witnessing is only an ex-

tension of the domain of technique, what was said above about

mechanization is understandable. Toynbee writes of organization

as a phenomenon whose effects cannot yet be seen. However, we

can be confident that the final result will be that technique will

assimilate everything to the machine; the ideal for which technique

strives is the mechanization of everything it encounters. It is clear,

therefore, that my opposition to Toynbee, even if it appears to be

merely verbal, is significant. The technical age continues to ad-



The Technological Society	(13



vance and we cannot even say that we are at the peak 0£ its ex-

pansion. In fact, some decisive conquests remain to be made—

man, among others—and it is hard to see what is to prevent

technique from making them. Thus, even if this is not a question

of a new factor, it is at least clear now what the phenomenon in-

volves and what it signifies.



Definitions. Once we stop identifying technique and machine, the

definitions of technique we find are inadequate to the established

facts. Marcel Mauss, the sociologist, understands the problem ad-

mirably, and has given various definitions of technique, some of

which are excellent. Let us take one that is open to criticism and,

by criticizing it, state our ideas more precisely: “Technique is a

group of movements, of actions generally and mostly manual, or-

ganized, and traditional, all of which unite to reach a known end,

' for example, physical, chemical or organic.”



This definition is perfectly valid for the sociologist who deals

with the primitive. It offers, as Mauss shows, numerous advantages.

For example, it eliminates from the realm of techniques questions

of religion or art (magic, however, ought to be classified among

techniques, as we shall see later). But these advantages apply only

in a historical perspective. In the modern perspective, this defini-

tion is insufficient

Can it be said that the technique of elaboration of an economic

plan (purely a technical operation) is the result of such movements

as Mauss describes? No particular motion or physical act is in-

volved. An economic plan is purely an intellectual operation,

which nevertheless is a technique.



When we consider Mauss’s statement that technique is restricted

to manual activity, the inadequacy of his definition is even more

apparent. Today most technical operations are not manual

Whether machines are substituted for men, or technique becomes

intellectual, the most important sphere in the world today (because

in it lie the seeds of future development) is scarcely that of manual

labor. True, manual labor is still the basis of mechanical operation,

and we would do well to recall Jijnger's principal argument

against the illusion of technical progress. He holds that the more

technique is perfected, the more it requires secondary manual

labor; and, furthermore, that the volume of manual operations

increases faster than the volume of mechanical operations. This



TECHNIQUES



may be so, but the most important feature of techniques today is

that they do not depend on manual labor but on organization and

on the arrangement of machines.



I am willing to accept the term organized, as Mauss uses it in

his definition, but I must part company with him in respect to his

use of the term traditional. And this differentiates the technique of

today from that of previous civilizations. It is true that in all civiliza-

tions technique has existed as tradition, that is, by the transmission

of inherited processes that slowly ripen and are even more slowly

modified; that evolve under the pressure of circumstances along

with the body social; that create automatisms which become

hereditary and are integrated into each new form of technique.



But how can anyone fail to see that none of this holds true today?

Technique has become autonomous; it has fashioned an omnivo-

rous world which obeys its own laws and which has renounced all

tradition. Technique no longer rests on tradition, but rather on

previous technical procedures; and its evolution is too rapid, too

upsetting, to integrate the older traditions. This fact, which we

shall study at some length later on, also explains why it is not

quite true that a technique assures a result known in advance. It

is true if one considers only the user: the driver of an automobile

knows that he can expect to go faster when he steps on the ac-

celerator. But even in the field of the mechanical, with the advent

of the technique of servo-mechanisms,1 this axiom does not hold

true. In these cases the machine itself adapts as it operates; this

very fact makes it difficult to predict the final result of its activity.

This becomes clear when one considers not use but technical

progress—although, at the present time, the two are closely asso-

ciated. It is less and less exact to maintain that the user remains

for very long in possession of a technique the results of which he

can predict; constant invention ceaselessly upsets his habits.



Finally, Mauss appears to think that the goal attained is of a

chemical or a physical order. But today we recognize that tech-

niques go further. Psychoanalysis and sociology have passed into

the sphere of technical application; one example of this is propa-



1 Mechanisms which involve so-called “feedback,''* in which information measuring

the degree to which an effector (e.g., an oil furance) is in error with respect to

producing a desired value (e.g., a fixed room temperature) is “fed back" to the

effector by a monitor (e.g., a thermostat). (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(15



ganda. Here the operation is of a moral, psychic, and spiritual

character. However, that does not prevent it from being a tech-

nique. But what we are talking about is a world once given over

to the pragmatic approach and now being taken over by method.

We can say, therefore, that Mauss’s definition, which was valid for

technique until the eighteenth century, is not applicable to our

times. In this respect Mauss has been the victim of his own socio-

logical studies of primitive people, as his classification of tech-

niques (food gathering, the making of garments, transport, etc.)

clearly shows.



Further examples of inadequate definition are those supplied by

Jean Fourastie and others who pursue the same line of research as

he. For Fourastie, technical progress is “the growth of the volume

of production obtained through a fixed quantity of raw material or

human labor”—that is, technique is uniquely that which promotes

this increase in yield. He then goes on to say that it is possible to

analyze this theorem under three aspects. In yield in kind, tech-

nique is that which enables raw materials to be managed in order

to obtain some predetermined product; in financial yield, tech-

nique is that which enables the increase in production to take place

through the increase of capital investment; in yield of human labor,

technique is that which increases the quantity of work produced

by a fixed unit of human labor. In this connection we must thank

Fourastie for correcting Jiinger’s error—Jiinger opposes technical

progress to economic progress because they would be, in his opin-

ion, contradictory; Fourastie shows that, on the contrary, the two

coincide. However, we must nevertheless challenge his definition

of technique on the ground that it is completely arbitrary.



It is arbitrary, first of all, because it is purely economic and

contemplates only economic yield. There are innumerable tradi-

tional techniques which are not based on a quest for economic

yield and which have no economic character. It is precisely these

which Mauss alludes to in his definition; and they still exist.

Among the myriad modern techniques, there are many which have

nothing to do with economic life. Take, for example, a technique of

mastication based on the science of nutrition, or techniques of

sport, as in the Boy Scout movement—in these cases we can see a

kind of yield, but this yield has little to do with economics.



In other cases, there are economic results, but these results are



1 6 )	TECHNIQUES



secondary and cannot be said to be characteristic. Take, for ex-

ample, the modem calculating machine. The solving of equations

in seventy variables, required in certain econometric research, is

impossible except with an electronic calculating machine. How-

ever, it is not the economic productivity which results from the

utilization of this machine by which its importance is measured.



A second criticism of Fourastie’s definition is that he assigns an

exclusively productive character to technique. The growth of the

volume of production is an even narrower concept than yield. The

techniques which have shown the greatest development are not

techniques of production at all. For example, techniques in the care

of human beings (surgery, psychology, and so on) have nothing

to do with productivity. The most modern techniques of destruc-

tion have even less to do with productivity; the atomic and hydro-

gen bombs and the Germans’ Vi and V2 weapons are all examples

of the most powerful technical creations of mans mind. Human

ingenuity and mechanical skill are today being exploited along

lines which have little reference to productivity.



Nothing equals the perfection of our war machines. Warships and

warplanes are vastly more perfect than their counterparts in ci-

vilian life. The organization of the army—its transport, supplies,

administration—is much more precise than any civilian organiza-

tion. The smallest error in the realm of war would cost countless

lives and would be measured in terms of victory or defeat.



What is the yield there? Very poor, on the whole. Where is the

productivity? There is none.



Vincent, in his definition, likewise refers to productivity: 'Tech-

nical progress is the relative variation in world production in a

given sphere between two given periods.” This definition, useful of

course from the economic point of view, leads him at once into a

dilemma. He is obliged to distinguish technical progress from

progress of technique (which corresponds to the progression of

techniques in all fields) and to distinguish these two from “techni-

cal progress, properly speaking,” which concerns variations in

productivity. This is an inference made from natural phenomena,

for, in his definition, Vincent is obliged to recognize that technical

progress includes natural phenomena (the greater or lesser richness

of an ore, of the soil, etc.) by definition the very contrary of tech-

nique!



The Technological Society	(17



These linguistic acrobatics and hairsplittings suffice to prove the

inanity of such a definition, which aims at a single aspect of techni-

cal progress and includes elements which do not belong to tech-

nique. From this definition, Vincent infers that technical progress

is slow. But what is true of economic productivity is not true of

technical progress in general. If one considers technique shorn of

one whole part, and that its most progressive, one can indeed assert

that it is slow in its progress. This abstraction is even more illusory

when one claims to measure technical progress. The definition

proposed by Fourastie is inexact because it excludes everything

which does not refer to production, and all effects which are not

economic.



This tendency to reduce the technical problem to the dimensions

of the technique of production is also present in the works of so

enlightened a scholar as Georges Friedmann. In his introduction to

the UNESCO Colloquium on technique, he appears to start out

with a very broad definition. But in the second paragraph, without

warning, he begins to reduce everything to the level of economic

production.



What gives rise to this limitation of the problem? One factor

might be a tacit optimism, a need to hold that technical progress

is unconditionally valid—which leads to the selection of the most

positive aspect of technical progress, as though it were its only one.



This may have guided Fourastie, but it does not seem to hold

true in Friedmann’s case. I believe that the reasoning behind Fried-

mann’s way of thinking is to be found in the turn of the scientific

mind. All aspects—mechanical, economic, psychological, socio-

logical—of the techniques of production have been subjected to

innumerable specialized studies; as a result, we are beginning to

learn in a more precise and scientific way about the relationships

between man and the industrial machine. Since the scientist must

use the materials he has at hand; and since almost nothing is known

about the relationship of man to the automobile, the telephone, or

the radio, and absolutely nothing about the relationship of man to

the Apparat or about the sociological effects of other aspects of

technique, the scientist moves unconsciously toward the sphere of

what is known scientifically, and tries to limit the whole question

to that.



There is another element in this scientific attitude: only that is



TECHNIQUES



18)



knowable which is expressed (or, at least, can be expressed) in

numbers. To get away from the so-called “arbitrary and subjec-

tive,” to escape ethical or literary judgments (which, as everyone

knows, are trivial and unfounded), the scientist must get back to

numbers. What, after all, can one hope to deduce from the purely

qualitative statement that the worker is fatigued? But when bio-

chemistry makes it possible to measure fatigability numerically, it

is at last possible to take account of the worker’s fatigue. Then

there is hope of finding a solution. However, an entire realm of

effects of technique—indeed, the largest—is not reducible to num-

bers; and it is precisely that realm which we are investigating in

this work. Yet, since what can be said about it is apparently not

to be taken seriously, it is better for the scientist to shut his eyes

and regard it as a realm of pseudo-problems, or simply as non-

existent. The “scientific” position frequently consists of denying

the existence of whatever does not belong to current scientific

method. The problem of the industrial machine, however, is a

numerical one in nearly all its aspects. Hence, all of technique is

unintentionally reduced to a numerical question. In the case of

Vincent, this is intentional, as his definition shows: "We embrace in

technical progress all kinds of progress . . . provided that they

are treatable numerically in a reliable way.”



H. D. Lasswell’s definition of technique as “the ensemble of prac-

tices by which one uses available resources in order to achieve

certain valued ends” also seems to follow the conventions cited

above, and to embrace only industrial technique. Here it might be

contested whether technique does indeed permit the realization

of values. However, to judge from Lasswell’s examples, he con-

ceives the terms of his definition in an extremely broad manner.

He gives a list of values and the corresponding techniques. As

values, for example, he lists riches, power, well-being, affection;

and as techniques, the techniques of government, production,

medicine, the family, and so on. Lasswell’s conception of value

may seem somewhat strange; the term is obviously not apt. But

what he has to say indicates that he gives techniques their full

scope. Moreover, he makes it quite clear that it is necessary to

show the effects of technique not only on inanimate objects but

also on people. I am, therefore, in substantial agreement with this

conception.



The Technological Society	(19



Technical Operation and Technical Phenomenon. With the use

of these few guideposts, we can now try to formulate, if not a full

definition, at least an approximate definition of technique. But we

must keep this in mind: we are not concerned with the different in-

dividual techniques. Everyone practices a particular technique,

and it is difficult to come to know them all. Yet in this great di-

versity we can find certain points in common, certain tendencies

and principles shared by them all. It is clumsy to call these common

features Technique with a capital T; no one would recognize bis

particular technique behind this terminology. Nevertheless, it takes

account of a reality—the technical phenomenon—which is world-

wide today.



If we recognize that the method each person employs to attain

a result is in fact, his particular technique, the problem of means

is raised. In fact, technique is nothing more than means and the

ensemble of means. This, of course, does not lessen the importance

of the problem. Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization

of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem,

are more important than the ends. Any other assessment of the

situation is mere idealism.



Techniques considered as methods of operation present certain

common characteristics and certain general tendencies, but we

cannot devote ourselves exclusively to them. To do this would lead

to a more specialized study than I have in mind. The technical

phenomenon is much more complex than any synthesis of char-

acteristics common to individual techniques. If we desire to come

closer to a definition of technique, we must in fact differentiate

between the technical operation and the technical phenomenon.



Tke technical operation includes every operation carried out in

accordance with a certain method in order to attain a particular

end. It can be as rudimentary as splintering a flint or as compli-

cated as programming an electronic brain. In every case, it is the

method which characterizes the operation. It may be more or less

effective or more or less complex, but its nature is always the same.

It is this which leads us to think that there is a continuity in techni-

cal operations and that only the great refinement resulting from

scientific progress differentiates the modern technical operation

from the primitive one.



Every operation obviously entails a certain technique, even the



TECHNIQUES



20)



gathering of fruit among primitive peoples—climbing the tree,

picking the fruit as quickly and with as little effort as possible, dis-

tinguishing between the ripe and the unripe fruit, and so on. How-

ever, what characterizes technical action within a particular ac-

tivity is the search for greater efficiency. Completely natural and

spontaneous effort is replaced by a complex of acts designed to im-

prove, say, the yield. It is this which prompts the creation of tech-

nical forms, starting from simple forms of activity. These technical

forms are not necessarily more complicated than the spontaneous

ones, but they are more efficient and better adapted.



Thus, technique creates means, but the technical operation still

occurs on the same level as that of the worker who does the work.

The skilled worker, like the primitive huntsman, remains a techni-

cal operator; their attitudes differ only to a small degree.



But two factors enter into the extensive field of technical opera-

tion: consciousness and judgment. This double intervention pro-

duces what I call the technical phenomenon. What characterizes

this double intervention? Essentially, it takes what was previously

tentative, unconscious, and spontaneous and brings it into the

realm of clear, voluntary, and reasoned concepts.



When Andre Leroi-Gourhan tabulates the efficiency of Zulu

swords and arrows in terms of the most up-to-date knowledge of

weaponry, he is doing work that is obviously different from that of

the swordsmith of Bechuanaland who created the form of the

sword. The swordsmith’s choice of form was unconscious and

spontaneous; although it can now be justified by numerical calcu-

lations, such calculations had no place whatever in the technical

operation he performed. But reason did, inevitably, enter into the

process because man spontaneously imitates nature in his activi-

ties. Accomplishments that merely copy nature, however, have no

future (for instance, the imitation of birds’ wings from Icarus to

Ader). Reason makes it possible to produce objects in terms of

certain features, certain abstract requirements; and this in turn

leads, not to the imitation of nature, but to the ways of technique.



The intervention of rational judgment in the technical operation

has important consequences. Man becomes aware that it is possible

to find new and different means. Reason upsets pragmatic tradi-

tions and creates new operational methods and new tools; it

examines rationally the possibilities of more extensive and less rigid



The Technologiccd Society	(21



experimentation. Reason in these ways multiplies technical opera-

tions to a high degree of diversity. But it also operates in the op-

posite direction: it considers results and takes account of the fixed

end of technique—efficiency. It notes what every means devised

is capable of accomplishing and selects from the various means at

its disposal with a view to securing the ones that are the most

efficient, the best adapted to the desired end. Thus the multiplicity

of means is reduced to one: the most efficient. And here reason

appears clearly in the guise of technique.



In addition, there is the intervention of consciousness. Conscious-

ness shows clearly, and to everybody, the advantages of technique

and what it can accomplish. The technician takes stock of alterna-

tive possibilities. The immediate result is that he seeks to apply

the new methods in fields which traditionally had been left to

chance, pragmatism, and instinct. The intervention of conscious-

ness causes a rapid and far-flung extension of technique.



The twofold intervention of reason and consciousness in the

technical world, which produces the technical phenomenon, can

be described as the quest of the one best means in every field. And

this “one best means” is, in fact, the technical means. It is the

aggregate of these means that produces technical civilization.



The technical phenomenon is the main preoccupation of our

time; in every field men seek to find the most efficient method But

our investigations have reached a limit. It is no longer the best

relative means which counts, as compared to other means also in

use. The choice is less and less a subjective one among several

means which are potentially applicable. It is really a question of

finding the best means in the absolute sense, on the basis of nu-

merical calculation.



It is, then, the specialist who chooses the means; he is able to

carry out the calculations that demonstrate the superiority of the

means chosen over all others. Thus a science of means comes into

being—a science of techniques, progressively elaborated.



This science extends to greatly diverse areas; it ranges from the act

of shaving to the act of organizing the landing in Normandy, or to

cremating thousands of deportees. Today no human activity es-

capes this technical imperative. There is a technique of organiza-

ticyi (the great fact of organization described by Toynbee fits very

well into this conception of the technical phenomenon), just as



2 2)	TECHNIQUES



there is a technique of friendship and a technique of swimming.

Under the circumstances, it is easy to see how far we are from

confusing technique and machine. And, if we examine the broader

areas where this search for means is taking place, we find three

principal subdivisions of modern technique, in addition to the

mechanical (which is the most conspicuous but which I shall

not discuss because it is so well known) and to the forms of in-

tellectual technique (card indices, libraries, and so on).



1)	Economic technique is almost entirely subordinated to pro-

duction, and ranges from the organization of labor to economic

planning. This technique differs from the others in its object and

goal. But its problems are the same as those of all other technical

activities.



2)	The technique of organization concerns the great masses and

applies not only to commercial or industrial affairs of magnitude

(coming, consequently, under the jurisdiction of the economic) but

also to states and to administration and police power. This organi-

zational technique is also applied to warfare and insures the power

of an army at least as much as its weapons. Everything in the

legal field also depends on organizational technique.



3)	Human technique takes various forms, ranging all the way

from medicine and genetics to propaganda (pedagogical tech-

niques, vocational guidance, publicity, etc.). Here man himself be-

comes the object of technique.



We observe, in the case of each of these subdivisions, that the

subordinate techniques may be very different in kind and not

necessarily similar one to another as techniques. They have the

same goal and preoccupation, however, and are thus related. The

three subdivisions show the wide extent of the technical phenome-

non* In fact, nothing at all escapes technique today. There is no

field where technique is not dominant—this is easy to say and is

scarcely surprising. We are so habituated to machines that there

seems to be nothing left to discover.



Has the fact of technique no intrinsic importance? Does it spring

merely from the march of time? Or does it represent a problem pe-

culiar to our times? Our discussion of the biology of technique will

bring us face to face with this question. But first we must survey in

detail the vast field which the technical phenomenon covers, in

order to become fully cognizant of what it signifies.



The Technological Society



(*3



Historical Development



Primitive Technique. It is scarcely possible to give here a his-

tory of technique in its universal aspect, as we have just defined it.

We are only now beginning to know a little of the history of me-

chanical technique. It is enough to recall the works of Andre

Leroi-Gourhan, Richard Lefebvre des Noettes, Marc Bloch, and

others. But the full history of technique has yet to be written. My

book is not a history. I shall speak in a historical vein only when it is

necessary to the understanding of the technical problem in soci-

ety today.



Technical activity is the most primitive activity of man. There is

the technique of hunting, of fishing, of food gathering; and later of

weapons, clothing, and building. And here we face a mystery.

What is the origin of this activity? It is a phenomenon which ad-

mits of no complete explanation. By patient research, one finds

areas of imitation, transitions from one technical form to another,

examples of penetration. But at the core there is a closed area—

the phenomenon of invention.



It can be shown that technique is absorbed into man’s psychol-

ogy and depends upon that psychology and upon what has been

called technical motivation. But we have no explanation of how an

activity which once did not exist came to be.



How did man come to domesticate animals, to choose certain

plants to cultivate? The motivating force, we are told, was

religious,2 and the first plants were cultivated with some magical

end in mind. This is likely, but how was the selection made? And

how did it happen that the majority of these plants were edible?

How did man come to refine metals and make bronze? Was it

chance, as the legend of the discovery of Phoenician glass has it?

This is obviously not the answer.



One is left with an enigma; and there is some point in emphasiz-

ing that there is here the same mysterious quality as in the appear-

ance of life itself. Each primitive operation of man implies the

bridging of such an enormous gulf between instinct and the techni-



* See, for example, Pierre Deffontaiaes* Geographic des religions.



TECHNIQUES



*4)



cal act that a mystic aura hovers about all subsequent develop-

ment Our modern worship of technique derives from man's

ancestral worship of the mysterious and marvelous character of

his own handiwork.



It has not been sufficiently emphasized that technique has

evolved along two distinct paths. There is the concrete

technique of homo faber—man the maker—to which we are

accustomed, and which poses the problems we have normally

studied. There is also the technique, of a more or less spiritual

order, which we call magic.



It may seem questionable; nevertheless, magic is a technique

in the strictest sense of the word, as has been clearly demonstrated

by Marcel Mauss. Magic developed along with other techniques as

an expression of man's will to obtain certain results of a spiritual

order. To attain them, man made use of an aggregate of rites,

formulas, and procedures which, once established, do not vary.

Strict adherence to form is one of the characteristics of magic;

forms and rituals, masks which never vary, the same kind of prayer

wheels, the same ingredients for mystical drugs, for formulae for

divination, and so on. All these became set and were passed on:

the slightest variation in word or gesture would alter the magical

equilibrium.



There is a relationship between the ready-made formula and a

precise result. The gods being propitiated obey such an invocation

out of necessity; all the more reason that they be given no oppor-

tunity to escape compliance because the invocation is not correctly

formulated. This fixity is a manifestation of the technical character

of magic: when the best possible means of obtaining the desired

result has been found, why change it? Every magical means, in

the eyes of the person who uses it, is the most efficient one.



In the spiritual realm, magic displays all the characteristics

of a technique. It is a mediator between man and ‘‘the higher

powers,” just as other techniques mediate between man and matter.

It leads to efficacy because it subordinates the power of the gods

to men, and it secures a predetermined result. It affirms human

power in that it seeks to subordinate the gods to men, just as tech-

nique serves to cause nature to obey.



Magic clearly displays the characteristics of primitive technique,

as Leroi-Gourhan indicates when he says that technique is a



The Technological Society	(55



cloak for man, a kind of cosmic vestment. In his conflict with mat-

ter, in his struggle to survive, man interposes an intermediary

agency between himself and his environment, and this agency has

a twofold function. It is a means of protection and defense: alone

man is too weak to defend himself. It is also a means of assimilation:

through technique, man is able to utilize to his profit powers

that are alien or hostile. He is able to manipulate his surroundings

so that they are no longer merely his surroundings but become a

factor of equilibrium'and of profit to him. Thus, as a result of tech-

nique* man transforms his adversaries into allies.



These characteristics of material technique correspond perfectly

to the characteristics of magical technique. There, also, man is in

conflict with external forces, with the world of mystery, spiritual

powers, and mystical currents. But there, too, man erects a

barrier around himself, for he would not know how to defend him-

self by his own unaided intellect. He uses any means that will

serve him both for defense and for adjustment. He turns to his

own profit the hostile powers, which are obliged to obey him by

virtue of his magical formulas. Masson-Oursel, in a recent study,

confirms this. He shows that magic is basically a "scholasticism of

efficiency” which man employs as an instrument against his en-

vironment; that magic is pragmatic, yet has a precision that must

be called objective; and that its efficiency is demonstrated only in

certain “consecrations or disqualifications.” Masson-Oursel rightly

believes that magic preceded technique—in fact, that magic is the

first expression of technique.



Plainly, we have had two streams of technique from the very be-

ginning. How does it happen that we never take cognizance of the

second? There are a number of reasons. We can leave aside the

causes that come from modem psychology. Because we are ob-

sessed with materialism and do not take magic seriously, it has

little interest for us, and we are unaware even today, as we study

technique—the techniques that relate to men—that we are draw-

ing on the great stream of magical techniques.



But this neglect is due as well to objective causes: in relation to

purely material factors, it has been demonstrated that every milieu

resists imitating the techniques of another social or ethnic group.

Surely, this resistance was much stronger in the realm of magical

techniques. Here were all the taboos and prohibitions, the im-



TECHNIQUES



26)



mense strength of magical conservatism. Then, too, whereas ma-

terial techniques are relatively distinct and independent of one

another, magical techniques are rapidly elaborated into a rigid

system. Everything is of a piece, everything is dependent upon

everything else; consequently, nothing can be meddled with, noth-

ing modified without threat to the whole structure of beliefs and

activities. Hence, their weak expansive power and their strong

power of defense against alien magical techniques.



The realm of magical practice is limited, and there is little or no

diffusion. Propagation begins with “spiritualist” religions which are

not bound to special magical rites. There is, then, no possibility of

choice between different rival magical techniques; yet expansion

and choice are decisive factors in technical progress. There is no

real progress in the realm of magic; here lies its fundamental dif-

ference. There is no progress in space, no progress in time; indeed,

the tendency of magic is to regress. And because magical technique

is tied to one ethnic group, to one given form of civilization, it dis-

appears completely when that group or civilization disappears.



When a civilization dies, it transmits to its heirs its material but

not its spiritual apparatus. Tools, houses, and methods of manu-

facture live on and, more or less reincarnated, are to be met with

again. There may be a temporary material regression in periods of

great destruction, but the lost ground is recovered, as if a collective

historical memory made possible the recovery of what had been

lost several generations before. But magical techniques, rites, for-

mulas, and sacrificial practices disappear irremediably. The new

civilization will fashion its own new stock of magic, which has

little in common with the old. Only a set of generalizations so broad

as to mean nothing, and overhasty analogies, create the belief that

magical forms are perpetuated and renewed. Indeed, they live on

only in the minds of the “initiates” and not in any human or social

reality.



Consequently, a magical technique that is not passed on in

time or space does not follow the same evolutionary curve as ma-

terial technique. There is not a progression of discoveries built

one upon the other; rather, discoveries remain side by side and do

not affect one another.



There is another factor in the regression of magical techniques:

the problem of evidence. In material techniques, choice is relatively



The Technological Society	(27



simple. Since every technique is subordinate to its immediate result,

it is only a question of choosing the one that produces the most

satisfactory result; and, in the material domain, that result can

readily be seen. That one form of axe is superior to another is a

judgment not beyond a normal man (in spite of the extreme diffi-

culty primitive man experienced when faced with such a choice).

But with magical techniques the same certainty or force of evi-

dence does not exist. Who can judge their relative efficiency?

Magical efficiency is not always to be measured by a clear material

result such as making rain fall, but may have to do with some

purely spiritual phenomena or even with material phenomena

over a long period of time. Here matters are not clear nor the choice

easy; the difficulty becomes even more acute when we think about

the uncertainty of the reasons for failure. Was the magical tech-

nique really inefficient? Or was the one who used it incompetent?

The common reaction is to blame the magician rather than the

technique, and here again we see an element of immobility in

magic.



The two great streams of technique which we have traced from

their beginnings evolved in completely different ways. In manual

technique we observe an increase and later a multiplication of dis-

coveries, each based on the other. In magic we see only endless

new beginnings, as the fortunes of history and its own inefficiency

call its procedures into question.



Explanation becomes even more difficult when we note that in

the magical domain too our own era has achieved an overwhelming

superiority; our magical techniques have become really effective.

These techniques obviously must not be confused with religious

life or anything of that kind. This is purely a social phenomenon,

both in aim and in form. However, the two aspects of technique,

although both are social, are sharply separated, and would seem

to have interacted very little anywhere.



Greece. Technique is essentially Oriental: it was principally in the

Near East that technique first developed, and it had very little

in the way of scientific foundation. It was entirely directed toward

practical application and was not concerned with general theories,

which alone can give rise to scientific movements. This predomi-

nance of technique in the East points up an error which is found

throughout Western thought: that the Oriental mind is turned



TECHNIQUES



*«>



toward the mystical and has no interest in concrete action, whereas

the Western mind is oriented toward "know-how* and action, and

hence toward technique. In fact, the East was the cradle of all

action, of all past and primitive technique in the present sense of

the word, and later of spiritual and magical technique as well.



The Greeks, however, were the first to have a coherent scientific

activity and to liberate scientific thought. But then a phenomenon

occurred which still astonishes historians: the almost total separa-

tion of science and technique. Doubtless, this separation was less

absolute than the example of Archimedes has led historians to

believe. But it is certain that material needs were treated with con-

tempt, that technical research was considered unworthy of the in-

tellect, and that the goal of science was not application but con-

templation. Plato shunned any compromise with application, even

in order to forward scientific research. For him, only the most ab-

stract possible exercise of reason was important. Archimedes went

even further. True, he rationalized practice and even made “appli-

cations” to a certain degree; but his machine was to be destroyed

after it had demonstrated the exactness of his numerical reckon-

ings.



Why did the Greeks adopt this Malthusian attitude toward ac-

tivity? There are two possible answers: either they were not willing

or they were not able. And it is likely that both are true. Abel Rey

has devoted the fifth volume of his Science Technique to the

Greeks. According to him, Greece in her decline became “in-

capable of sustaining the ideal of hard, disinterested labor (the

ideal of an essentially contemplative intelligence disdainful of all

utility). She then fell back on the techniques of the East She

was involved in them by her own techniques, for she had none the

less sought to satisfy men's vital needs, in spite of the contempt in

which she held them.” Confronted with technical necessity, Greece

lost her inventive genius and turned to Eastern technique. She did

not know, says Abel Rey, how to find the bridge between “know-

how” and “know-why.”



This is true for the period of decadence, the second and first

centuries b.c., but it does not seem to be the case in the preceding

period; in the fifth century b,c., Greece experienced rapid technical

development, although later it came to an abrupt halt.



In their golden age of science, the Greeks could have deduced



The Technological Society	(



the technical consequences of their scientific activity. But they did

not wish to. Walter asks: “Did the Creeks, obsessed with harmony,

check themselves at the very point at which inquiry ran the risk of

going to excess and threatened to introduce a monstrosity into their

civilization?"



This was the result of a variety of factors, most of which were of

a philosophic nature. For one thing, theirs was a conception of life

which scorned material needs and the improvement of practical

life, discredited manual labor (because of the practice of slavery),

held contemplation to be the goal of intellectual activity, refused

the use of power, respected natural things. The Greeks were

suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of

brute force and implied a want of moderation. Man, however

humble his technical equipment, has from the very beginning

played the role of sorcerer’s apprentice in relation to the machine.

This feeling on the part of the Greeks was not a reflection of a

primitive man’s fear in the face of something he does not under-

stand (the explanation given today when certain persons take fright

at our techniques). Rather, it was the result, perfectly mastered

and perfectly measured, of a certain conception of life. It repre-

sented an apex of civilization and intelligence.



Here we find the supreme Greek virtue, lypkrt4* (self-control).

The rejection of technique was a deliberate, positive activity in-

volving self-mastery, recognition of destiny, and the application of

a given conception of life. Only the most modest techniques were

permitted—those which would respond directly to material needs

in such a way that these needs did not get the upper hand.



In Greece a conscious effort was made to economize on means

and to reduce the sphere of influence of technique. No one sought

to apply scientific thought technically, because scientific thought

corresponded to a conception of life, to wisdom. The great

occupation of the Greeks was balance, harmony and moderation;

hence, they fiercely resisted the unrestrained force inherent in

technique, and rejected it because of its potentialities. For these

same reasons, magic had relatively little importance in Greece.

Rome. Social technique was still in its infancy. Doubtless, there

had been some attempts at social organization—those of certain

Pharaohs, and those of the Persian empire, were not neglibible.

But such organizations could be maintained only by police power.



TECHNIQUES



3«)



whereas the exact opposite is true of genuine social organization.

By the very fact of its existence, coercion demonstrates the ab-

sence of political, administrative, and juridical technique; for this

reason the great empires of the past are of little importance to our

study. Correlatively, an army (even the army of the Chaldeans,

who advanced the art of war furthest) was a fairly inorganic crew

whose aim was pillage and which applied no social technique. The

army of Alexander made use of genuine strategy, but this was al-

most exclusively military and had no sociological foundations or

attributes. It was the expression not of a people but of a state—and

therefore lacked the substance necessary to technique.



In Rome, however, we pass on, at one step, to the perfection of

social technique, both civil and military. Everything in Roman so-

ciety was related to Roman law in its multiple forms, both public

and private.



To characterize the technique of this law in the period during

which it flourished (from the second century b.c. to the second

century a.d.), we can say first of all that it was not the fruit of ab-

stract thought, but rather of an exact view of the concrete situation,

which the Romans attempted to turn to account with the fewest

possible means. This realism respected justice and acknowledged

history and necessity. From this concrete, experimental view,

which the Romans held consciously, their administrative and judi-

cial technique developed. And a kind of discipline appeared: the

use of a minimum of means. This discipline, which probably had

its foundations in religion, is one of the secrets of the whole de-

velopment. To the degree that the Roman had to respond to neces-

sity, and at the same time not permit himself excessive luxury, it

was necessary to refinp pvery means, to bring it to perfection, to

exploit it in every possible way, and to give it free rein, without

shackling it with exceptions and secondary rules. No social situa-

tion developed which did not immediately find its response in or-

ganization. Nor could this response be the creation of a new means,

but rather the perfection of an old means. Indeed, the proliferation

of means is thought even today to denote technological weakness.



A second element in the Roman development of organization

was the search for an equilibrium between the purely technical

factor and the human factor. Judicial technique did not begin as a

substitute for man. In Roman judicial technique there was no



The Technological Society	(31



question of eliminating initiative and responsibility, but rather of

allowing them to operate and to assert themselves. It was not until

the third century a.d. that judicial technique attempted to deal

with the details of life, to regulate everything, to foresee everything,

thereby leaving the individual in a state of complete inertia. But

the great judicial era of Rome was one of equilibrium: the law

laid down the framework and supplied the means that men could

use in following their own initiative. Of course, this presupposed

a civic sense corresponding to the technical conception. The

equilibrium between the two was evident in the system of pro-

cedure we call bureaucracy; in it is found, with an almost dis-

concerting simplicity, the perfect type of procedure. And there we

find that one of the conditions of technique is respect for the in-

dividual, who is not yet considered apart from society.



A third characteristic of Roman technique was that it was di-

rected toward a precise end: the internal coherence of society. This

technique was not self-justifying, it did not have as its raison (Tetre

its own self-development, and it was not imposed from the out-

side. It was not a kind of scaffolding which held independent ele-

ments together; it sought rather to promote cohesion. The founda-

tion of society was not the police; it was an organization which

enabled society to make the least possible use of the police. A

wide variety of techniques—religious, administrative, and finan-

cial—were obviously needed to execute this design, but in no case

was there recourse to force. When it appeared that the state

would be compelled to use force, the organizational sense of the

Romans led them to abandon a given project rather than attempt

to maintain it by force. Force is never economical, and Rome was

economical in all things.



This social coherence was the first judicial technique the world

had known. It was also the basis for the Roman military system,

which was a direct expression of civil society in that it had the same

respect for efficiency and economy. From it came the development

of organs of transport, food supply, and so on; and the Roman con-

ception of mass strategy and their refusal to create heroes: combat

was thus reduced to its most utilitarian level.



A fourth element was continuity. The judicial technique of the

Romans was constantly being readapted in accordance with a his-

torical plan. It involved a policy of watchful waiting while circum-



3* )	TECHNIQUES



stances were not propitious, at the same time making preparations

for the right moment, and when that moment came, carrying out

the plan decisively.



As regards material techniques, the Romans did not develop

them as brilliantly. From the fourth to the first century b.c., and

after the second century a.d., there was almost total stagnation—

tools and armaments no longer evolved. But from the first century

b.c. to the first century a.d., a technical revival took place. Practical

necessity (on the economic and military levels and with regard to

transport) was met by the production of animal-powered ma-

chines (forges, water wheels, pumps, plows, the screw press,

cord-operated ballistic engines, etc.).



The Romans possessed a remarkable understanding of applica-

bility. Their judicial system could be applied always and every-

where (in the Empire); it was adapted to an unfailing continuity.

And these were totally new phenomena which Rome introduced.

Later, Rome was allowed to drift into a technical vertigo; the end

was near.



Christianity and Technique. The East: passive, fatalist, contemptu-

ous of life and action; the West: active, conquering, turning nature

to profit. These contrasts, so dear to popular sociology, are said

to result from a difference in religion: Buddhism and Islam on the

one hand; on the other, Christianity, which is credited with having

forged the practical soul of the West.



These ideas are hardly beyond the level of the rote repetitions

found even in the works of serious historians. It is not for me to

examine religious doctrines in themselves or as absolute if unreal-

ized dogma, but rather to interpret them sociologically. After all, I

am not writing theology; I am writing history. And there is a world

or difference between dogma and its sociological application. (I

shall not touch upon the personal interpretation of religion, which

concerns the relationship between the individual and God.)



This being the case, it is obvious that certain statements call for

modification. For example, the assertion that as a consequence of

the teachings of Mohammed, the Islamic conquests of the seventh

century are evidence of passivism. This might also be said of the

determined Islamic resistance to Western encroachments during

the last two centuries. We attribute to Buddhist indifferentism the

remarkable artistic, political, and military development in India



The Technological Society	(33



from the second to the fifth century. In fact, however, these civili-

zations were little advanced technically, though they had de-

veloped in many other areas.



Christianity in Russia, on the other hand, gave rise to a mystical

civilization which was indifferent to material life and had no

technical drive and no interest in economic exploitation. “Ah, yesT

is the reply. “But Christianity in Russia had Eastern overtones . .

Here, then, indifference to technique would appear to be a ques-

tion of temperament and not of religion.



Another embarrassing fact: when in her decline Greece applied

herself to technical inquiry and the development of industry, she

looked to the East for methods. And in the first century, when

Rome—the perfect example of the technical spirit in antiquity—

took up industry, she too turned to the East for industrial tech-

niques—the refining of silver and gold, glassmaking, the tempering

of weapons, pottery, ship construction, and so on. All these tech-

niques came to Rome from the East, either early, through the

Etruscans, or much later, after the conquests. We are far indeed

from being able to support this traditional cleavage between East

and West. In fact, during classical antiquity it was the East which

possessed the concrete, inventive mind that grasps the truth and

exploits it.



The West is making a prodigious advance in technique at the

present, and the West is traditionally Christian. Nor can it be main-

tained that Christianity is a negligible factor in that advance. How-

ever, there were several distinct historical periods in the West. The

West was officially Christian until the fourteenth century; there-

after, Christianity became controversial and was breached by other

influences. What do we find, from a technical standpoint, in the

so-called Christian era, the period from the fourth to the fourteenth

centuries, the “sociological moment”? First, we observe the break-

down of Roman technique in every area—on the level of organiza-

tion as well as in the construction of cities, in industry, and in

transport. From the fourth to the tenth centuries, in fact, there was

a complete obliteration of technique, a condition so deplored that

it became a focus of anti-Christian polemic, and rightly so. It was

because the Christians held judicial and other technical activity in

such contempt that they were considered the “enemies of the hu-

man race”—and not only because they opposed Caesar. The re-



TECHNIQUES



34)



proach of Celsus was not without truth. After the Christian triumph

in Rome, there was not one great jurist left who could guarantee

the life and the value of the Roman organization. Decadence? No

—complete disinterest in such activity. Saint Augustine devoted

much of his De Civitate Dei to justifying the Christians in this

respect, and to denying that their influence was detrimental. “They

are good citizens,” he proclaimed. That may have been so, but

their focus of interest was nevertheless on something other than

the state and practical activity. I shall show later on that the

technical state of mind is one of the principal causes of technical

progress.



It is not a coincidence that Rome declined as Christianity tri-

umphed. The Emperor Julian was certainly justified in accusing

the Christians of ruining the industry of the Empire.



After this period of decadence (for which, of course, Christianity

was not solely responsible), what does the historian find? The res-

toration, under Christian influence, of an active civilization—

methodical, exploiting the riches of the world as a gift given by

God to be put to good use? Not at all. The society which developed

from the tenth to the fourteenth century was vital, coherent, and

unanimous; but it was characterized by a total absence of the tech-

nical will. It was “a-capitalistic” as well as “a-technical.”



From the point of view of organization, it was an anarchy in the

etymological sense of the word—and it was completely nontechni-

cal. Its law was principally based on custom. It had no social or

political organization based on reasoned, elaborated rules. In all

other areas—for example, in agriculture and industry—there was

the same nearly total absence of technique. This was also true with

regard to the military, the principal activity of the time. Combat

was reduced to its most elementary—to charging in a straight line

and to hand-to-hand engagement. Only architectural technique

developed and asserted itself; but this was prompted not by a

technical state of mind but by religious impulse.



Little effort was made to improve agricultural or industrial prac-

tices. There was no effort at useful creation—evidence of the re-

markable practical genius of the Christian religion! And when at

the beginning of the twelfth century, at first very feebly a technical

movement began to take form, it developed under the influence of

the East.



The Technological Society	(	35



The technical impetus of our civilization came from the East, at

first through the intermediacy of the Judaei3 and the Venetians,

and later through the Crusades. But even so, it limited itself to

imitating what it had seen—except in art. Certain autonomous dis-

coveries did take place, especially as a result of commercial neces-

sity; but this development was no more intense than it had been

under the Roman Empire.



In fact, the Middle Ages created only one new, complete tech-

nique, an intellectual technique, a mode of reasoning: scholasti-

cism. The very name evokes its mediocrity. With its gigantic ap-

paratus, it was in the end nothing but an extremely cumbersome

formalism; it wandered for centuries in intellectual blind alleys,

notwithstanding the prodigious intellects of the men who used it

and were deformed by it. The balance sheet shows no triumphs,

even on the historical plane.



The technical movement of the West developed in a world which

had already withdrawn from the dominant influence of Christian-

ity. A point can doubtless be made of the effects of the Reformation,

but the economic consequences of this movement have been singu-

larly exaggerated. In any case, this is not the place to take up this

question.



Although, practically speaking, it seems clear that Christianity

was scarcely an important cause of technical progress (not to men-

tion regression), it is nevertheless customary to hold that Chris-

tianity, from the theological point of view, paved the way for

technical development.



Let us consider the two arguments advanced for this point of

view. First, and most important, it is held that Christianity sup-

pressed slavery, the great obstacle to technical development. The

moment men are free, they supposedly turn toward technique to be

delivered from the misery of labor. Slavery was thus a hindrance

to technique because no attempt was made either to relieve the

miserable condition of the slave or to replace him by some other

motive force. The second argument is more intelligent: that an-

tiquity was possessed of a holy fear of nature, and dared not lay

hand on the secrets which to the ancients were gods. They dared

not make use of natural forces, which for them were supernatural.



A particular kind of trader. (Trans.)



TECHNIQUES



36)



Christianity secularized nature: with Christianity nature once

again became simply nature and no one scrupled to exploit it.

Unfortunately, however, neither of these arguments is quite ac-

curate.



There was in fact greater technical progress in civilizations where

slavery was prevalent (for example, Egypt) than in others where

that institution was practically unknown (for example, Israel).

There was greater technical progress in the slaveholding period of

Homan history than in the period when slaves were freed whole-

sale. And the liberation of the slaves during the era of the barbarian

invasions produced no technical improvement, even at long term;

almost seven centuries elapsed between the suppression of slavery

and the beginning of even a feeble technical advance. The rela-

tion between technique and the absence of slavery is in no sense

absolute; as Bertrand Gille has rightly pointed out, human trans-

port by means of slaves was not known in Roman antiquity; yet

the harnessing of animals had not been developed.



We have here one of those facile, impressive, and altogether

antihistorical explanations which theorists are so fond of. The

slave, in fact, represented capital which it was not in the owner's

interest to lose or to use haphazardly. And, as the elder Cato indi-

cates, had it been possible to make the slave's labor more efficient

and less fatiguing, his master had every interest in doing so. More-

over, it did not cost anything to make use of the free men who lived

on the vast domains of the public treasury or the limes or the

Marches/ and later, on the ecclesiastical and seignorial lands.

Certainly, it was not respect for human life which prompted the

Romans to spare these people. And the people themselves scarcely

possessed the freedom of mind or the material possibilities to im-

prove their techniques. Gille has shown admirably that in Athens

the Greek slaves may have had greater value than the free work-

men.



The second argument is no more applicable. It is true that Chris-

tianity secularized nature. But did this benefit technique? We

have noted, in passing, the religious origin of many forms of tech-

nique; indeed, nature, as the theater of spiritual forces, gives rise

to one particular teclinique already mentioned: magic. One of the *



* The limes designated the Empire’s boundary regions to the north; the Marches,

the Scottish and Welsh border areas. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(37



goals of magic is to render the gods propitious to practical action

and to put the “powers'* at the service of material technique. The

representation of nature as inhabited by the gods was itself a

potent act, and favorable, if not to all applications, certainly to

technique itself. Taboos applied only to certain concrete applica-

tions which were determined by ideas of right and wrong. Man

thus felt that his actions were justified by the help given him by

the gods of nature. Christianity, however, deprived him of this

justification.



What was the doctrinal position of early Christianity regarding

practical activity, from the very beginning? On the moral plane,

Christianity condemned luxury and money—in short, everything

that represented the earthly city, which was consecrated to Satan

and opposed to the City of God. This was the era of the anchorite,

of the renunciation of city life, of cenobitism presented as an ideal.

The tendency was toward the restriction of economic life. On the

theological plane, there was the conviction that the world was ap-

proaching its end, that it was useless to strive to develop or cultivate

it, for the Lord was soon to return. It was wiser to be concerned

with eschatology than with worldly affairs.



At the beginning of the medieval period, these doctrines lost

some of their hold (although they persisted under other guises—

the feeling about death, for instance). But another element of

Christianity remained which was opposed to technical develop-

ment: the moral judgment which Christians passed on all human

activities.



Technical activity did not escape Christian moral judgment The

question “Is it righteous?" was asked of every attempt to change

modes of production or of organization. That something might be

useful or profitable to men did not make it right and just. It had to

fit a precise conception of justice before God. When an element

of technique appeared to be righteous from every point of view,

it was adopted, but even then with excessive caution. Only inven-

tions (representing a choice among techniques made by individ-

uals versed in Greek or Latin) judged worthy were applied or

even allowed to become known. It was within this narrow compass

that certain monks propagated and improved technical instru-

ments. The spread of the hydraulic mill by the Cistercians is well

known; likewise the many specialized mills to be found at the



TECHNIQUES



38)



Abbey of Royaumont (the smith’s mill, the fuller’s mill, etc.). But

these exceptions were few.



The search for justice before God, the measuring of technique

by other criteria than those of technique itself—these were the

great obstacles that Christianity opposed to technical progress.

They operated in the Middle Ages in all areas of life, and made

history coincide with theology.



The age of the Reformation, in its effort to return to the most

primitive conception of Christianity, broke down many barriers.

But, even then, it was not so much from the influence of the new

theology as from the shock of the Renaissance, from humanism

and the authoritarian state, that technique received a decisive im-

petus.



The Sixteenth Century. In the period from the sixteenth to the

eighteenth century the absence of technique in all areas but the

mechanical is striking. There was an absence of human reasoning

concerning action, of efforts directed toward simplification and

systematization, and of concern for efficiency. Certain important

technical achievements were made—for example, guns and gun

factories—and there was some agricultural research. But it is sig-

nificant that histories of technique (Pierre Ducasse’s, for ex-

ample) leap from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth

century. Indeed, the period which followed the Renaissance and

the Reformation was much less fertile in invention than the period

which had preceded them.



Printing, the nautical compass, gunpowder (also copied from

the East), all date from the fifteenth century. It would not do to

minimize the importance of these inventions. For Norbert Wiener,

they “constitute the lorn? of an industrial revolution which pre-

ceded the principal industrial revolution.” Wiener, in a remarkable

way, relates the principal inventions of this period to navigation,

which, he proposes, was the propulsive force behind research.

Alongside these major inventions, this period also saw a multitude

of discoveries and new applications in banking, armaments, ma-

chinery, architecture (for example, the discovery of a new system

for constructing the dome, as applied to Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs),

and in agriculture and the making of furniture.



The fifteenth century, in addition, is notable for a number of

technical manuals from southern Germany and northern Italy



The Technological Society	(39



(written at the beginning of the century and printed and circulated

at the end of it). These show a general interest in these problems, a

technical preoccupation on the part of the men of the times. The

great voyages were probably a consequence rather than a cause of

this technical progress.



But this technical drive slackened during the sixteenth century,

which became poorer and poorer in technique, and technical weak-

ness persisted through the seventeenth century and into the be-

ginning of the eighteenth. This poverty of technical achievement,

which lasted two centuries, leads us once more to question the

influence of the Reformation. What caused this slowdown of tech-

nical progress after the fifteenth century, which had been so rich

in discoveries of all kinds?



An uninitiated reader who opens a scientific treatise on law, econ-

omy, medicine, or history published between the sixteenth and the

eighteenth centuries is struck most forcibly by the complete ab-

sence of logical order. The materials are treated successively with-

out any connection, progression of thought, development, or show

of proof. The reader is apparently to be guided only by the au-

thor’s fancy. Every chapter in a scientific work, say, of the sixteenth

century, is a self-contained unit which justifies and proves itself.

A mere affirmation by the author generally serves as proof. And he

lets himself go in a free association of ideas which are in no way

pertinent to the subject; his thoughts often wend off to matters

completely unconnected with the subject of the book.



Purely personal reflection and private experience form the foun-

dations of these books; in no sense do they represent an effort at

common inquiry, reciprocal control, or search for the best method,

all of which are indispensable for technique. The plan of a book

was not laid out with the reader in mind; it was not based on

subject matter, but rather on the personal fancy of the author, or

on more obscure reasonings. Even men of powerful intellect such

as Jean Bodin did not escape these failings.



A second characteristic of this scientific literature is that it at-

tempts to set down in one book the whole realm of knowledge. It

is not rare to find, in works on law in the sixteenth or seventeenth

centuries, extended treatments of archaeology, theology, psy-

chology, and linguistics, not to mention history and literature. En-

tire chapters concerned with magical practices or Peruvian soci-



TECHNIQUES



40)



ology may interrupt the course of a book devoted to revenues or to

the jurisprudence of the Parliament of Bordeaux.



This amalgam of reflections and miscellaneous bits of knowledge

is found in the works of the best authors; it demonstrates the ab-

sence of intellectual specialization. The intellectual ideal was uni-

versality, and it was a rare thing for a judge, say, to be ignorant

of alchemy, or a historian, of medicine. This was, in effect, an

extension by humanism of the universalism to which medieval

theology aspired.



In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries every intellectual had

perforce to be a universalist. He had to have complete knowledge,

and when he wrote on a given subject he felt constrained to put

into the work everything he knew, pertinent or not. This was by

no means a sign of muddleheadedness but rather of the prevailing

search for a synthesized, universal system of knowledge. Every

author sought to put his whole self into his work, even in the case

of a technical book. Not the subject but the author dominated the

work: this tendency itself is contrary to technical inquiry. The

search was not for practical knowledge but for a comprehensive

explication of phenomena. Thus Descartes, after having established

an impeccable method of reasoning, gives himself over to the out-

pourings of his imagination in order to explain—to take a single

example—the movements of the tides.



This explains another characteristic of the books written after

the century of humanism: their lack of convenience. We find few

tables of contents, no references, no division into sections, no

indices, no chronology, sometimes not even pagination. The ap-

paratus standard for scientific works today is not found even rudi-

mentarily in the most perfect works of the period; and its absence

is characteristic of the absence of intellectual technique. The books

of the time were not written to be used, along with hundreds of

others, to locate a piece of information accurately and quickly, or

to validate or invalidate an experiment, or to furnish a formula.

They were not written to be consulted. They were written to be

read patiently in their entirety and to be meditated upon. Again,

this goes back to the ideal of universality.



The presentation of a book as an author's entire self, as a per-

sonal expression of his very being, supposes that the reader sought

in it not the solution of a given difficulty or the answer to a given



The Technological Society	(	41



problem, but rather to make personal contact with the author. It

was more a question of a personal exchange than of taking an ob-

jective position.	\



This applies to every other field of endeavor until the eighteenth

century. Thus, in the simpjest technical form, the mechanical, no

decisive progress was made during this time (unless Pascal were to

be considered the sole exception; but even Pascal merely extended

already known techniques). The same holds true for financial, ad-

ministrative, and military techniques, in spite of what Vauban says

to the contrary.



Then an intermediate situation developed. But despite the efforts

at co-ordination and systematization made by such great techni-

cians as Richelieu and Colbert, the only result was a greater com-

plication of the system, without much gain in efficiency. On the ad-

ministrative and political level, all the new organs (each valuable

in itself and without doubt efficient, but representing only an addi-

tion to what already existed) had to take into consideration every

other organ already functioning in the same field. New complicated

departments, jurisdictions, and hierarchies unceasingly weighed

down the machinery. On the financial plane, the same monstrous

growth occurred—for valid reasons—but it resulted in enfeeble-

ment beneath a seeming efficiency. There was no change in finan-

cial technique, in spite of all the efforts of Colbert, who saw what

should be done. There was no change in the technique of recruit-

ment, supply, and administration of the army, in spite of the efforts

of Louvois, who saw just as clearly what had to be done. Louis XIV

was an impotent monarch, despite his authority, because of the

absence of technical means.



Society was at a crossroads. More and more the need was felt to

create new means; even the structure these must take was clearly

perceived. But the framework of society, the ideas in currency, the

intellectual positions of the day were not favorable to their realiza-

tion. It was necessary to employ technical means in a framework

foreign to them; these techniques were powerless to force a deci-

sion or to eliminate outmoded means. They ran up against the

profound humanism, issue of Renaissance humanism, which still

haunted the seventeenth century—it believed not only in knowl-

edge and respect for the human being but in the genuine su-

premacy of man over means. This humanism, bound up with the



4 2 )	TECHNIQUES



idea of universalism, did not allow techniques to grow. Men re-

fused to conform to any uniform law, even when it operated for

their own good. This refusal was found in all strata of society: in

the most complex way when finance directors and parliamentary

counselors refused to utilize new and precise techniques of ac-

counting and legislative supremacy; in the most summary way

when the peasants rejected new and rational methods of recruit-

ment proposed for the army.



The world had to wait for the eighteenth century to see techni-

cal progress suddenly explode in every country and in every area

of human endeavor.



The Industrial Revolution. The term industrial revolution is ap-

plied exclusively to the development of machinery, but that is to

see only one side of it. In actual fact, the industrial revolution was

merely one aspect of the technical revolution. It is preposterous

that a specialist such as Lewis Mumford can write that he has found

in the various modes of exploiting energy the key to the evolution

of technique and the moving force behind its transformations. In

his view, a first period, which lasted until about 1750, knew only

hydraulic energy; a second period, from 1750 to 1880, is the age

of coal; and a third, that of electricity. (The use of nuclear energy

has only recently appeared; it is perhaps to be reckoned as part

of the age of electricity.)



Mumford’s thesis is incomprehensible unless technique is re-

stricted to the machine; Mumford actually makes this identifica-

tion. His distinction is then valid as a plan for the historical study

of machines, but it is totally invalid for the study of technical

civilization. When technical civilization is considered as a whole,

this classification and explanation are shockingly summary and

superficial. Norbert Wiener likewise rejects the classification

founded on the different sources of energy. For him there has been

only one industrial revolution, and that consisted in the replace-

ment of human muscle as a source of energy. And, he adds, there

is a second revolution in the making whose object is the replace-

ment of the human brain. Of this last we have as yet only prepara-

tions and indications. We are not yet there. What we are witnessing

at the moment is a rearrangement of the world in an intermediate

stage; the change is not in the use of a natural force but in the

application of technique to all spheres of life.



The Technological Society	(43



The technical revolution meant the emergence of a state that was

truly conscious of itself and was autonomous in relation to anything

that did not serve its interests—a product of the French Revolu-

tion. It entailed the creation of a precise military technique (Fred-

erick the Great and Napoleon) in the field of strategy and in the

fields of organization, logistics, and recruitment; the beginning of

economic technique with the physiocrats, and later the liberals. In

administration and police power, it was the period of rationalized

systems, unified hierarchies, card indices, and regular reports.

With Napoleon particularly, there was a tendency toward mecha-

nization which resulted from the application of technique to more

or less human spheres of action.



The revolution also entailed the exertion and the regrouping of

all the national energies. There were to be no more loafers (under

the French Revolution, they were imprisoned), no more privileged

persons, no special interests. Everyone must serve in accordance

with the strictures of technique.



From the judicial point of view, the technical revolution entailed

the great systematization of law in the Napoleonic codes and the

definitive suppression of spontaneous sources of law; for example,

custom. It involved the unification of legal institutions under the

iron rule of the state and the submission of law to policy. And

throughout Europe, except in Great Britain, the nations, amazed

by such an efficient operation, abandoned their traditional judicial

systems in favor of the state.



This systematization, unification, and clarification was applied

to everything—it resulted not only in the establishment of budget-

ary rules and in fiscal organization, but in the systematization of

weights and measures and the planning of roads. All this repre-

sented technique at work. From this point of view, it might be said

that technique is the translation into action of mans concern to

master things by means of reason, to account for what is subcon-

scious, make quantitative what is qualitative, make clear and pre-

cise the outlines of nature, take hold of chaos and put order into it.



In intellectual activity the same effort was evident, particularly in

the creation of an intellectual technique for history and biology.

The principles established by Descartes were applied and resulted

not only in a philosophy but in an intellectual technique.



These phenomena are so far from being sources of energy that it



44)



can scarcely be maintained that mechanical transformation

brought about all the rest. In fact, the widespread mechanical de-

velopment, spurred by the exploitation of energy, came after most

of these other techniques. It would almost seem that the order was

reversed, that the appearance of these other techniques was nec-

essary to the evolution of the machine—which certainly had no

greater influence on society than, say, the organization of the

police.



The revolution resulted not from the exploitation of coal but

rather from a change of attitude on the part of the whole civiliza-

tion. Here we are faced with a most difficult question: Why, after

such slow progress for centuries, did such an eruption of technical

progress take place in a century and a half? Why, at a certain

moment in history, did something become possible which had not

seemed possible before? We must confess that the ultimate reason

escapes us. Why did inventions suddenly burst forth in the second

half of the eighteenth century? We cannot say. Here we are at the

center of the mystery of invention, which strangely came to life for

this brief moment.



The inventions of the nineteenth century are much more easily

explained. A kind of chain reaction was set up: the discoveries

made at the beginning of the century generated those that followed.

There was a logical and foreseeable succession of events, once the

first steps had been taken.



But why were the first steps taken? We will never know, and, in

any case, that is not the purpose of this investigation. We ask

rather why technical inventions have proliferated so radically and

developed to the point where they threaten to engulf society. Why

did the limitless applicability of the sciences become a reality

when hitherto it had been restrained and equivocal? The Greeks

knew that machines could be utilized; why did it devolve upon the

nineteenth century to utilize them? The question, indeed, is why

the nineteenth century not only made applications but did so on

such a grand scale. Leonardo da Vinci invented a prodigious num-

ber of useful devices (the alarm clock, the silk-winder, a machine

for carding textile fabrics, and so on), and proposed many technical

improvements (double-hulled ships, the universal joint, conical

gears, etc.). Why did none of his inventions and improvements

find practical application?



The Technological Society	(45



There are a number of general answers. One can relate everything

to scientific progress, for example. The eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries saw advances in application, not in pure knowledge or in

speculation. It is useless to recount the scientific evolution of thi*

period or to enumerate the sensational series of principles and laws

formulated and applied at this time. Parenthetically, it might be

noted that the scientific revolution began as early as the first half

of the seventeenth century. Experiments were then performed to

prove the exactness of quantitative hypotheses. Moreover, a psy*

chological transformation occurred which led to the consideration

of phenomena as worthy of study in themselves. This prepared the

way for technical progress, but it cannot explain it. These scientific

discoveries represent necessary conditions—but not imperatives.

It is evident that applications are impossible without principles, but,

once principles have been established, applications do not neces-

sarily follow. Applications may be made out of simple curiosity, as

among the Greeks or among the makers of automatons in the

eighteenth century. (These automatons were not without experi-

mental value. Research in cybernetics today likewise ends in the

making of automatons.)



The close link between scientific research and technical inven-

tion appears to be a new factor in the nineteenth century. Accord-

ing to Mumford, “the principal initiatives came, not from the

inventor-engineer, but from the scientist who established the gen-

eral law.” The scientist took cognizance both of the new raw ma-

terials which were available and of the new human needs which

had to be met. Then he deliberately oriented his research toward a

scientific discovery that could be applied technically. And he did

this either out of simple curiosity or because of definite commercial

and industrial demands, Pasteur, for instance, was encouraged in

his bacteriological research by wine producers and silkworm grow-

ers.



In the twentieth century, this relationship between scientific re-

search and technical invention resulted in the enslavement of

science to technique. In the nineteenth century, however, science

was still the determining cause of technical progress. The society of

the eighteenth century was not yet mature enough to allow the sys-

tematic development of inventions. As Siegfried Giedion says, die

France of that period was a testing ground. Ideas proliferated but



46)	TECHNIQUES



could take no final form until society had undergone a transforma-

tion.



What distinguishes the eighteenth century is that applications

were made for reasons of utility; soon the only justification of science

was applicability. Most historians of technique content themselves

with invoking philosophy to explain this.



The philosophy of the eighteenth century did indeed favor tech-

nical applications. It was naturalistic and sought not only to know

but also to exploit nature. It was utilitarian and pragmatic. It con-

cerned itself with easing human life, with bringing more pleasure

into it and simplifying its labor. For the eighteenth century, man's

life was narrowly confined to the material; it seemed evident that

the problem of life would be resolved when men were able to work

less while consuming more. The goal of science thus appeared to

be fixed by philosophy.



This philosophy was concrete; it was bound up with material re-

sults. What cannot be seen cannot be judged, and this explains this

century’s judgment of history: that the foundation of civilizations

is technique, not philosophy or religion.



For these admirable philosophers, technique had the enormous

superiority of manifesting itself in a concrete way and of leaving its

tracks for all to read. Voltaire and Diderot were its principal ex-

ponents. But I am unable to give this philosophy the highest place

in the history of the development of techniques. It played a role,

but it was not the prime force behind the technical movement.

To say it was would be to exaggerate the force of these philosophic

ideas and systems, which affected only a small minority of French-

men and a minute elite abroad. The technical movement was a

European movement; the ideas of these philosophic minorities

could scarcely have penetrated Europe in such a way as to make

evident to everyone the excellence of technical progress. We have

only to recall popular reactions to machinery—for example, to

Vaucanson’s loom, to the first steamboat, and to the first blast fur-

naces. These philosophic ideas scarcely suffice to explain the re-

markable mobilization of all human forces in the nineteenth cen-

tury.



It is even questionable whether this philosophy was universally

accepted. At other times there have been utilitarian currents in

philosophy, but they represented only one branch of philosophy



The Technological Society	( 4 7



among several and did not lead to such a radical transformation of

society.



The optimistic atmosphere of the eighteenth century, more than

this philosophy, created a climate favorable to the rise of technical

applications. The fear of evil diminished. There was an improve-

ment in manners; a softening of the conditions of war; an increasing

sense of mans responsibility for his fellows; a certain delight in

life, which was greatly increased by the improvement of living

conditions in nearly all classes except the artisan; the building of

fine houses in great numbers. All these helped persuade Europeans

that progress could only be achieved by the exploitation of natural

resources and the application of scientific discoveries.



This state of mind created, in the second half of the eighteenth

century, a kind of good conscience on the part of scientists who de-

voted their research to practical objectives. They believed that hap-

piness and justice would result from their investigations; and it is

here that the myth of progress had its beginning.



It is clear that this atmosphere was favorable to technical de-

velopment. But, in itself, it was not enough. How, then, are we to

explain the sudden blossoming of technique in the nineteenth cen-

tury? (The eighteenth century was only the preliminary phase of

technical application; the nineteenth century is the really interest-

ing period.) I feel that this transformation of civilization can be

explained by the conjunction in time of five phenomena: the frui-

tion of a long technical experience; population expansion; the suit-

ability of the economic environment; the plasticity of the social

milieu; and the appearance of a clear technical intention.



The first of these factors must not be neglected: every modem

technical application had ancestors. Arthur Vierendeel and Lewis

Mumford have analyzed these preparations. Every invention has

its roots in a preceding technical period, and every period bears in

itself “not only the trivial residue but also the valuable survivals of

past technologies, and the nuclei of new ones.” What appears to be

genuinely new is the formation of a “technical complex,” which, ac-

cording to Mumford, consists of a series of partial inventions that

combine into an ensemble. This unit begins to function when the

greatest number of its constituents have been assembled, and its

trend is toward continuous self-perfection. From 1000 to about

1750, there had been a slow fermentation which had no immediate



<*)



consequences but which had amassed materials in every area of

life. They had only to be drawn on for the technical miracle to take

place. This continuity has been analyzed by Vierendeel in particu-

lar; and Wiener emphasizes it when he writes: “It is interesting to

reflect on the fact that every tool possesses a genealogy and is the

result of the tools which served to make it.” This enormous sum of

experiments, of apparatus, of inquiries was put to use abruptly at

the end of an evolutionary period which had lasted for nearly ten

centuries without social catastrophe. Continuity of this kind was

important because it made unnecessary the transmission of the

technical legacy from one civilization to another, an operation

which inevitably involves the loss of a part of it, especially a part

of the social forces that apply to nontechnical areas. This continuity

is found in all fields of technique, from finance to transport. If

technical progress does not appear at a given moment, it is only

because the social milieu is not completely favorable. But it is

ripening underground; it is self-perpetuating even while it is dor-

mant, as in the seventeenth century. This long preparation was

necessary as support and foundation for the structure the nine-

teenth century was to build; it represented what Charles Moraze

in his Essai sur la civilisation & Occident calls “collective incuba-

tion” This incubation, consisting of millions of accumulated ex-

periments, was the preparation for the moment of formulation, of

expression.



A second factor was equally necessary: the population expansion.

Here again we find ourselves face to face with a familiar problem.

For two decades population studies in relation to the development

of civilization have demonstrated that there is a close link between

technique and population: the growth of population entails a

growth of needs which cannot be satisfied except by technical de-

velopment. From another viewpoint, a population expansion offers

favorable grounds for research and technical growth by furnishing

not only the necessary market but also the requisite human ma-

terial.



The third condition has been analyzed by Vincent. If technical

progress is to take place, the economic milieu must combine two

apparently contradictory traits: it must be at once stable and in

flux. The foundations of economic life must be stable so that

primary technical research can be devoted to well-defined objects



The Technological Society	(49



and situations. But at the same time this milieu must be capable of

great change, so that technical inventions can be absorbed into the

economy, and research stimulated. A rigid economy brings with it

fixed customs which stifle the inventive faculty. Studies of the eco-

nomic situation in the second half of the eighteenth century show

that it had precisely these two opposed characteristics. But this is

well known. I shall do no more than point it out and shall devote

greater space to the last two conditions, which are usually neg-

lected.



The fourth condition is possibly the most decisive. It is the

plasticity of the social milieu, which involves two factors: the dis-

appearance of social taboos and the disappearance of natural social

groups.



The first of these appears in various forms, depending on the

society involved. In the Western civilization of the eighteenth cen-

tury there are two large categories: the taboos resulting from

Christianity, and sociological taboos. The first category takes in all

religious and moral ideas, judgments concerning action, the prevail-

ing conception of man, and the ends proposed for human life.

These were, theoretically and factually, opposed to technical de-

velopment. When faith had been translated into prejudice and

ideology, and personal religious experience incorporated into a so-

cial institution, a hardening of moral positions took place which

corresponded to the creation of genuine taboos. The natural order

must not be tampered with and anything new must be submitted

to a moral judgment—which meant an unfavorable prejudgment.

This was the popular mentality created by Christianity, particu-

larly during the seventeenth century. Closely related to these were

sociological taboos, in particular the conviction that a natural

hierarchy exists which nothing can modify. The position of the

nobility and the clergy, and above all of the king, could not be

questioned. When in the middle of the eighteenth century these be-

gan to be questioned, the reaction of the people was that sacrilege

was being committed; the stupor that accompanied the execution

of Louis XVI was a religious stupor. In fact, regicide was seen as

deicide. This constitution of society, which everyone relied on and

recognized as the only one possible, was an obstacle to technique

within it; technique was held to be fundamentally sacrilegious.

The natural hierarchy operated against the practice of the mechani-



TECHNIQUES



50)



cal arts, which would only bring conveniences to the lower

classes. And since the lower classes too believed in the natural

hierarchy, they could only be submissive and passive; they did not

try to better their lot. The important point here was not the reality

of the facts or the existence of the hierarchy; it was belief in its

natural and sacred character which stood in the way of technique.



The very structure of society—based on natural groups—was

also an obstacle. Families were closely organized. The guilds and

the groups formed by collective interests (for example, the Uni-

versity, the Parliament, the Confraternities and Hospitals) were

distinct and independent. The individual found livelihood, patron-

age, security, and intellectual and moral satisfactions in collectives

that were strong enough to answer all his needs but limited enough

not to make him feel submerged or lost. They sufficed to satisfy

the average man who does not try to gratify imaginary needs if

his position is fairly stable, who opposes innovation if he lives in a

balanced milieu, even though he is poor. This fact, which is so

salient in the three millennia of history we know, is misunderstood

by modern man, who does not know what a balanced social en-

vironment is and the good he could derive from it.



Man himself may feel less need to improve his condition. In ad-

dition, the very existence of natural groups is an obstacle to the

propagation of technical invention. For primitive peoples, inven-

tion spreads in certain geographical areas within certain groups

according to existing social bonds. Exterior diffusion, however, the

crossing of a sociological frontier, is extremely difficult. This phe-

nomenon exists in every society. Division into closely constituted

groups is an obstacle to the propagation of inventions. The same

holds for guilds. Guilds act not only spontaneously



and as socio-

logical units, but also voluntarily and according to the lawful con-

stitution of each. This is also true of religious groups. Consider, for

example, the manufacturing secrets jealously guarded by the

French Protestants in the seventeenth century. The diffusion of

every technique tends to be checked by these social divisions.



These obstacles disappeared at the time of the French Revolu-

tion, in 1789. With the disappearance of religious and social taboos

came the creation of new religions, the affirmation of philosophic

materialism, the suppression of the various hierarchies, regicide,

and the struggle against the clergy. These factors acted powerfully



The Technological Society	(51



upon the popular consciousness and contributed to the collapse of

the belief in these taboos.



At the same time (and this is the second factor which made for

the plasticity of the social milieu) a systematic campaign was

waged against all natural groups, under the guise of a defense of

the rights of the individual; for example, the guilds, the com-

munes, and federalism were attacked, this last by the Girondists.

There were movements against the religious orders and against the

privileges of Parliament, the Universities, and the Hospitalers.

There was to be no liberty of groups, only that of the individual.

There was likewise a struggle to undermine the family. Revolu-

tionary legislation promoted its disintegration; it had already been

shaken by the philosophy and the fervors of the eighteenth century.

Revolutionary laws governing divorce, inheritance, and paternal

authority were disastrous for the family unit, to the benefit of the

individual. And these effects were permanent, in spite of temporary

setbacks. Society was already atomized and would be atomized

more and more. The individual remained the sole sociological unit,

but, far from assuring him freedom, this fact provoked the worst

kind of slavery.



The atomization we have been discussing conferred on society

the greatest possible plasticity—a decisive condition for technique.

The breakup of social groups engendered the enormous displace-

ment of people at the beginning of the nineteenth century and

resulted in the concentration of population demanded by modem

technique. To uproot men from their surroundings, from the rural

districts and from family and friends, in order to crowd them into

cities still too small for them; to squeeze thousands into unfit lodg-

ings and unhealthy places of work; to create a whole new environ-

ment within the framework of a new human condition (it is too

often overlooked that the proletariat is the creation of the indus-

trial machine)—all this was possible only when the individual was

completely isolated. It was conceivable only when he literally had

no environment, no family, and was not part of a group able to

resist economic pressure; when he had almost no way of life left.



Such is the influence of social plasticity. Without it, no technical

evolution is possible. For the individual in an atomized society, only

the state was left: the state was the highest authority and it became

omnipotent as well. The society produced was perfectly malleable



5*)



and remarkably flexible from both the intellectual and the material

points of view. The technical phenomenon had its most favorable

environment since the beginning of history.



At the same time, by a historical coincidence (whether fortuitous

or not, I shall not undertake to say), what I have called a clear

technical intention came into being. In all other civilizations there

had been a technical movement—more or less extensive work of

this kind—but not a mass intention, clearly understood and de-

liberately guiding the whole society in a technical direction.



Giedion says of the period from 1750 to 1850: “Invention was a

part of the normal course of life. Everyone invented. Every entre-

preneur dreamed of more rapid and economical means of fabrica-

tion. The work was done unconsciously and anonymously. No-

where else and never before was the number of inventions per

capita as great as in America in the 6o’s of that century”



It is possible that a similar phenomenon took place in prehistoric

times when technique appeared out of sheer necessity. Pressed on

all sides, man reacted by creating technique. In historical times the

situation changed, however. Homo sapiens had by then established

his supremacy over the other mammals with respect to natural

forces. Some technical efforts had been pursued, now in one field,

now in another; for example, in the military art of the Assyrians or

in the art of construction of the Egyptians. There were always in-

dividuals who possessed a clear vision of technical supremacy; say,

Archimedes in mechanics, or Loyola in spiritual technique. But we

almost never find the distinctive characteristic of our time—a precise

view of technical possibilities, the will to attain certain ends, ap-

plication in all areas, and adherence of the whole of society to a

conspicuous technical objective. All these, taken together, con-

stitute what I have termed a clear technical intention.



Whence arose this intention? Many causes conspired to produce

it, among them the influence of the philosophy of the eighteenth

century, reinforced by the philosophy of Hegel and later that of

Marx. But there were other factors which were as important. What

really produced the general movement in favor of technique was

special interest.



This technical movement has been studied by men as different

as Descartes and Mare. But it was only when industrial self-inter-



The Technological Society	(53



est, for the sake of efficiency, demanded a search for the "one best

way to do work” that research was begun by Gilbreth in the field of

technique, with the amazing results we see today.



Special interest was and is the great motive force behind the de-

velopment of technical consciousness—but not necessarily any par-

ticular interest; say, the capitalistic interest or the moneyed inter-

est. The state interest was the first to become conscious in France,

at the time of the Revolution. The state developed political and in-

dustrial technique, and later, with Napoleon, military and judicial

technique, because it found them to be potent forces against its

enemies within and without. The state protected "the arts and the

sciences” (in reality, techniques) not out of greatness of spirit or

concern for civilization, but out of the instinct for power. After the

state, it was the bourgeoisie who discovered how much profit could

be extracted from a consciously developed technique. In fact, the

bourgeoisie has always been more or less involved with technique.

They were the initiators of the first financial techniques and, later

on, of the modern state. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,

they saw the possibilities of drawing huge profits from this system,

especially as they were favored by the crumbling "of morals and

religion” and felt themselves free, in spite of the idealistic smoke

screen they raised, to exploit individuals. This class put the interests

of technique before the interests of individuals, who had to be

sacrificed in order that technique might progress. It is solely be-

cause the bourgeoisie made money, thanks to technique, that tech-

nique became one of their objectives.



This alliance is well known and we need recall but a few facts.

James Watt, his steam engine perfected, was ruined and at a

dead end. It was a bourgeois, Matthew Boulton, who grasped the

industrial and financial possibilities of Watt's invention and de-

cided to apply it. Two further facts are pertinent: commercial

capitalism preceded industrial capitalism; industry owed its rise to

the accumulation of capital originating from commerce. And where

did industrialization first occur and become most widespread? In

England, because capitalism was more highly developed there and

the bourgeoisie more at liberty to act than anywhere else. This is

well known. The union between the bourgeoisie and technique

was expressed not only in the development of factories, but much



TECHNIQUES



54)



more subtly in the fact that the majority of technicians came from

this class. It was the bourgeoisie which promoted the advance of

science.



Moreover, the bourgeoisie were so well aware of the relation be-

tween economic success and the scientific foundations of that suc-

cess that they kept in their own hands, almost as a monopoly, the

instruction which was the only means of access to the great schools

and faculties that trained the technicians of science and the tech-

nicians of society.5



Technical progress is a function of bourgeois money. Yet today

the Marxists claim that the bourgoisie either have attempted to

restrain technical progress or make it serve the purposes of war.

Their claim, however, does not prevent history from contradicting

their theories. Marx himself would never have made such state-

ments; what is true today was not true in his time.



However, this self-interest of the bourgeoisie was not enough to

carry the whole of society along with it—witness the popular re-

actions against technical progress. As late as 1848, one of the de-

mands of the workers was the suppression of machinery. This is

easily understood. The standard of living had not risen, men still

suffered from the loss of equilibrium in their lives brought about by

a too rapid injection of technique, and they had not yet felt the in-

toxication of the results. The peasants and the workers bore all the

hardships of technical advance without sharing in the triumphs.

For this reason, there was a reaction against technique, and so-

ciety was split. The power of the state, the money of the bour-

geoisie were for it; the masses were against.



In the middle of the nineteenth century the situation changed.

Karl Marx rehabilitated technique in the eyes of the workers. He

preached that technique can be liberating. Those who exploited it

enslaved the workers, but that was the fault of the masters and not

of technique itself.



Marx was perhaps not the first to have said this, but he was the

first to convince the masses of it. The working class would not be

liberated by a struggle against technique but, on the contrary, by

technical progress itself, which would automatically bring about

the collapse of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism. This reconcilia- *



* The author includes here not only faculties such as the Ecole Polytechnique, but

also administrative tribunals such as the Conseil d’Etut. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	( 55



tion of the masses to techniques was decisive. But it would not

have been sufficient to result in a clear consciousness of the tech-

nical objective, the new consensus omnium, had it not appeared

simultaneously with a second historical fact, namely, the diffusion

of the so-called benefits of techniques among the masses. These

benefits included, for example, the conveniences of daily life, the

progressive shortening of the work day, facilities for public trans-

portation and medicine, new possibilities of making one’s fortune

(in the United States and in the colonies), housing improvements,

and so forth. A prodigious upheaval took place between 1850 and

1914 which convinced everyone of the excellence of a technical

movement that could produce such marvels and alter human life.

All this, Marx explained, presaged even better things and pointed

to the road to follow. Fact and theory were for once in agreement.

How could public opinion resist?



Drawn by self-interest (the ideal of comfort, for instance), the

masses went over to the side of technique; society was converted.

A common will developed to exploit the possibilities of technique

to the maximum, and groups of the most conflicting interests

(state and individual, bourgeoisie and working class) united to

hymn its praises. Literally everyone was agreed on its excellence.

True, after 1914, certain criticisms came from the intellectuals, but

these were ineffective because they were usually beside the point

—manifestations of vague idealism or of sentimental humanitar-

ianism.



In the middle of the nineteenth century, when technique had

hardly begun to develop, another voice was raised in prophetic

warning against it. The voice was Kierkegaard’s. But his warnings,

solidly thought out though they were, and in the strongest sense of

the word prophetic, were not heeded—for very different reasons.

They were too close to the truth.



This analysis applies chiefly to the countries where the technical

movement first developed—England and France. In England

events took a somewhat different course than in France, but they

had the same scope and profound significance. The historical se-

quence varied, but the orientation in both countries was toward

technical development. Social plasticity developed in England by

different paths and at a different time than in France. Sociological

taboos were broken at an early date. The regicide of Charles I by



$6 )	TECHNIQUES



Cromwell gave the initial and primary impulse to social plasticity;

as all writers agree, after this date a rigid social hierarchy no longer

existed in England. The supreme value was productive and efficient

labor which permitted the industrious to rise high on the social

ladder (William Pitt is a good example). The king no longer rep-

resented divine authority, nor was he able to resist the nation. No

longer was there sociological rigidity based on the royal person or

on the power of money. It would be an error to interpret sociologi-

cally the England of the eighteenth century in accordance with

the stability which is discernible in the nineteenth, and which was

achieved after the technical revolution, when society had entered

new paths. In the eighteenth century, England was essentially

mobile and unstable in all its structures. Christianity itself was not

the conservative force it proved to be on the Continent. Two great

currents divided English society before the advent of Methodism:

the Church of England and the Puritans. The Puritans, even after

their political failure, were the predominant influence. In keeping

with the trend the Reformation set, they exploded all prevailing

religious taboos and developed a practical and utilitarian mental-

ity that emphasized the use and even the exploitation of the good

things of this world given by God to men. The relationship of this

trend to the development of capitalism is well known. The Church

of England had favored tolerance since the end of the eighteenth

century and had adopted as its leading principle Bishop War-

burton’s idea of social utility. Here, too, there was a kind of secular-

ization of religion. Religion is no longer the framework of society;

it can no longer impose its taboos or forms upon it. Rather, it inte-

grates itself into society, adjusts to it, and adopts the notion of social

utility as criterion and justification. At the same time the disintegra-

tion and atomization of English social groups occurred—brought

about not so much by the influence of the state (as in France) as

by the destruction of peasant society which began in the early

eighteenth century and of which Defoe and Swift were such elo-

quent witnesses.



The peasant commune and the peasant family were slowly

ruined in the eighteenth century. The historian notes the collapse,

relentless and more rapid than in France, of a whole society which

had been in equilibrium until then. The struggle between the

landed and the moneyed interests ended with the victory of the



The Technological Society	(5	7



moneyed interests. It is not important here to detail the ways a new

peasant society, based on the moneyed interest, came into being.

Newly rich entrepreneurs bought up the great estates and took the

place of the old gentry, but that is not our concern. Our concern is

the merchants whose influence changed the organic structure of

the traditional world. The small landowners and the yeomen were

eliminated or reduced to an agricultural proletariat, or they were

forced to migrate to the city. The rural corporations were ruined,

the communes passed almost completely into the hands of the new

landlords and ceased to constitute coherent sociological units. The

movement was accelerated by the application of new agricultural

methods, which were accepted much more rapidly than in France.

The enclosure of the commons, which in France took place chiefly

after 1780, began in England in 1730. The new agricultural tech-

niques were plainly so superior that it was not possible to preserve

the old “open field” system—the commons, the pastures, and the

forests; thus the final blow was dealt to the old, organic, peasant

society. The peasant could not survive as such, and with him, the

whole of society entered into a state of flux. The plasticity we refer

to came about in England as a result of this evolution in the use of

land, which furnished the technical movement with the necessary

manpower: apathetic, vacant, and uprooted. Not only was this

manpower necessary for the development of industry; the masses

thus created were indispensable to faith in techniques and the

spread of techniques.



To summarize: social plasticity came about earlier in England

than in France, and the technical movement developed along with

it. Moreover, the state, which was dominant in French society, did

not have the same influence in Great Britain.



This applies too to the development of a clear technical con-

sciousness. In Great Britain this consciousness appeared as a bour-

geois interest. The spirit behind the introduction of new techniques

in the rural districts was very different from that which character-

ized France a short time later. The technical movement in France

was launched by the monarchy and took a scientific form: the

academies and the research institutes propagated the new tech-

niques throughout the country; and the nobles applied them, very

often disinterestedly. In England, profit was from the very begin-

ning the prime motive. And empiricism was the dominant factor



TECHNIQUES



5« )



because technique was more efficient. Techniques were developed

because it paid to develop them; commercial activity found them

advantageous. This was true in agriculture as well as in industry.



The English technical movement was marked by the fact that all

the different financial systems (banks, stock exchanges, insurance

companies) were perfected. The clear consciousness of the value

of technique expressed itself primarily in terms of money, and was

located at the center of the systems of distribution. And the accel-

eration of invention in this area influenced all other techniques.

The British state attained this clear technical consciousness at a

comparatively last date, and then only when it saw that techniques

were to its immediate interest.



This phenomenon of technical clarity sometimes came about

through an association of the interests of the state and the interests

of private individuals. In steelmaking, for example, the fact that

Henry Cort was supplier to the Admiralty was decisive, in 1780, for

the application and development of steel puddling. The state

found in this procedure an excellent means of improving its naval

vessels. However, it was competition with the Napoleonic empire

that started His Majesty's government down the road of tech-

nique.



Thereafter, both governments understood that only technical

efficiency in all governmental relations and enterprises could com-

mand the paths of peace as well as the affairs of war. The English

state henceforth had the same influence on the development of

techniques as the French revolutionary state had exerted through

the establishment of a clear technical consciousness. The way had

already been paved in England by the emergence of the British

bourgeoisie. Whatever the differences in its development in Eng-

land and France, however, the technical consciousness that ap-

peared was identical in both countries.



In the United States this took place at the beginning of the nine-

teenth century. Until then, the society of this country was inor-

ganic. But at that time the American social milieu was favorable;

moreover, the Americans profited from the technical conscious-

ness evolved in Europe, and so they arrived immediately at a

model for technique. Giedion has noted that the Americans began

by mechanizing complex operations, which produced the assembly

line, whereas die Europeans tended to mechanize simple opera-



The Technological Society	(59



tions, such as spinning. This American accomplishment was the

result of the exceptional flexibility of the American milieu.



These conditions were not found in the other European coun-

tries: Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia. In these nations the

social structures remained as they were and the social hierarchy

was not attacked. The taboos of religion were fanatically respected,

and those of society were not questioned. The Inquisition and the

Tribunal of the Empire jealously guarded the spiritual and socio-

logical divisions of society. This world was already undermined,

ruined, and emptied of content, but its rigid forms were univer-

sally accepted as good. There were few changes in the cities and

none at all in the rural areas. The traditional organism remained

intact. And when enlightened despotism began to create some ex-

citement, this world was so little prepared that it exhausted itself

in the struggle against the old social structures. Consider, for ex-

ample, the fate of Peter the Great, Joseph II, and the melancholy

and celebrated Marquis de Pombal.



Great inventions may have been made in Germany and Russia

during this period. Everyone is familiar with the claims of Hitler,

and later of Stalin, that all important discoveries were made in

their respective countries. Allowing for exaggeration, there is per-

haps some truth in these claims. But the discoveries were not

applied, and only application counts in the rise of technique.

Application did not take place because the felicitous combination

of factors we have discussed was lacking. The social milieu of these

countries, their spiritual tendencies, group psychology, sociological

structures, and past history were all unfavorable to the rise of tech-

nique. The state in some countries, principally Prussia, was fav-

orable to it; but a clear technical consciousness on the part of the

state alone was obviously insufficient to open the door to the great

mobilization of men and things necessary for this multiform prog-

ress.



The joint occurrence of the five factors we have briefly analyzed

explains the exceptional growth of technique. Never before had

these factors coincided. They are, to summarize: (1) a very long

technical maturation or incubation without decisive checks before

the final flowering; (2) population growth; (3) a suitable eco-

nomic milieu; (4) the almost complete plasticity of a society mal-



TECHNIQUES



6o)



leable and open to the propagation of technique; (5) a clear tech-

nical intention, which combines the other factors and directs them

toward the pursuit of the technical objective. Some of these condi-

tions had existed in other societies; for example, the necessary tech-

nical preparation and the destruction of taboos in the Roman Em-

pire in the third century. But the unique phenomenon was the

simultaneous existence of all five—all of them necessary to bring

about individual technical invention, the mainspring of everything

else.



What else can history teach us? Only the vanity of believing we

can impose our theories on history. Any philosophy which asserts

that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.



CHAPTER



Da



THE



CHARACTEROLOGY

OF TECHNIQUE



In discussing technique today it is impossible not to take a position.

And the position we take is determined by a historical choice, con*

scious or unconscious.



Acknowledging that the technical phenomenon is a constant of

human history, is there anything new about its present aspect?

There are two distinct positions on this question. The first main*

tains that there is no more real technical innovation in the modem

world than there was in the Stone Age. Jean Fourastie asks hu-

morously whether prehistoric man, the first time he saw a bronze

sword used, did not feel as menaced by it as we feel by the atom

bomb. It would seem, then, that technical innovations have al-

ways had the same surprising and unwelcome character for men.

(This is an inexhaustible source of jokes for motion pictures and

cartoons.) If we become frightened, we are merely obeying ances-

tral instincts. There is no more real reason to be frightened by the



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



62)



atomic bomb than by any invention thousands of years old—which,

as we see, has not destroyed the human race. The technique of to-

day has the same characteristics as all preceding techniques. This

normal development, however rapid and surprising, cannot be of

danger to us.



In opposition to this resolutely optimistic position, there is an-

other which maintains that we are confronted with a genuinely new

phenomenon. There is nothing in common between the modern

technical complex and the fragments of it which are laboriously

sought out in the course of history to demonstrate that there has al-

ways been technique. For those who hold this viewpoint, the techni-

cal phenomenon represents a complete change, not only of degree,

but of kind. Modern society is confronted with a transition (her-

alded by Marx and particularly by Engels) which involves change

of quality as a consequence of change of quantity. This postulate,

which Engels applied to physical phenomena, holds true for so-

ciological phenomena as well. Beyond a certain quantity, the phe-

nomenon, even though in a sense it remains the same, does not

have the same quality, is not of the same nature.



One cannot choose between these two theses in a subjective

and a priori manner. It is necessary to examine the objective char-

acteristics of technique to determine whether there has really been

a change. But what characteristics shall we examine? Not the in-

trinsic ones; these do not change. If we consider intrinsic charac-

teristics, the first position is right. The mental operation by means

of which Archimedes constructed certain engines of war is iden-

tical with that of any modern engineer who improves a motor. And

the same instinct impels a man to catapult stones and to construct

a machine gnn Likewise, the same laws of propagation of techni-

cal invention operate, no matter what the stage of technical evolu-

tion. However, these identities are not at all convincing.



Many men who have studied the problems posed by different

techniques admit that there is a radical difference between the tra-

ditional situation and the situation we face today. On the basis of

intrinsic characteristics, these men have established a distinction be-

tween (a) the fundamental techniques which, as Ducasse says,

“sum up all man’s relations with his environment,” and (b) the

techniques which are the results of applied science. The first group

is composed of techniques which, although seldom identical in



The Technological Society	(63



method and form, are identical in intrinsic characteristics. They

constitute the complex of fundamental techniques which sociolo-

gists such as LeRoi-Gourhan usually study and on the basis of

which they elucidate the laws of technique. Primitive techniques

have no reality in themselves; they are merely the intermediary be-

tween man and his environment.



The techniques which result from applied science date from the

eighteenth century and characterize our own civilization. The new

factor is that the multiplicity of these techniques has caused them

literally to change their character. Certainly, they derive from old

principles and appear to be the fruit of normal and logical evolu-

tion. However, they no longer represent the Same phenomenon. In

fact, technique has taken substance, has become a reality in itself.

It is no longer merely a means and an intermediary. It is an object

in itself, an independent reality with which we must reckon.



However, this often admitted difference does not seem to me to

characterize conclusively the singularity of the technical situation

today. The characterization can be challenged because it does not

rest upon deep historical experience. It is not enough simply to de-

clare, by drawing on everyone’s experience of the disparity be-

tween our technique and the limited needs of our bodies, that

technique is a reality in itself. We may keep this in mind, but we

must also recognize that it is incomplete and not altogether con-

vincing.



It is not, then, the intrinsic characteristics of techniques which

reveal whether there have been real changes, but the characteristics

of the relation between the technical phenomenon and society. Let

us take a very simple comparison. A shell explodes and the explo-

sion is normally always the same. Any fifty shells of the same cali-

ber when exploded display approximately the same objective char-

acteristics from a physical or chemical point of view. The sound,

light, and projection of fragments remain nearly identical. The in-

trinsic characteristics of the fifty explosions are the same. But if

forty-nine shells go off in some remote place and the fiftieth goes off

in the midst of a platoon of soldiers, it cannot be maintained that

the results are identical. A relation has been established which en-

tails a change. To assess this change, it is not the intrinsic character

of the explosion which must be examined, but rather its relation to

the environment. In the same way, to learn if there has been, for



THE



OF TECHNIQUE



*4)



man, a change in modem technqiue in relation to the old, we must

assess, not the internal characteristics of the technique, but the ac-

tual situation of technique in human society.



To go beyond this and to imagine, for example, what might nave

been the psychological reaction of primitive men when faced with

technical invention is pure fantasy. The question put by Jean

Fourastie, strictly speaking, has no meaning. The working of the

mind varies according to place and time, and we cannot project our-

selves with any assurance into the mind of primitive man. In

order to remain within the limits of what can be known,

we must be content to study the relation between technique and

society, a relation which has the advantage of being meaningful.



Technique in Civilization



Traditional Techniques and Society. What was the position of

technique in the different societies which have preceded ours?

Most of these societies resembled one another in their technical

aspects. But it is not enough to say that technique was restricted.

We must determine the precise characteristics of the limitations,

which are four in number.



First, technique was applied only in certain narrow, limited areas.

When we attempt to classify techniques throughout history, we find

principally techniques of production, of war and hunting, of con-

sumption (clothing, houses, etc.), and, as we have said, magic. This

complex of techniques would seem to modem man to represent a

rather considerable domain and, indeed, to correspond to the

whole of life. What more could there be than producing, consum-

ing, fighting, and practicing magic? But we must look at these

things in perspective.



In so-called primitive societies, the whole of life was indeed en-

closed in a network of magical techniques. It is their multiplicity

that lends them the qualities of rigidity and mechanization. Magic,

as we have seen, may even be the origin of techniques; but the pri-

mary characteristic of these societies was not a technical but a reli-

gious preoccupation. In spite of this totalitarianism of magic, it

is not possible to speak of a technical universe. Moreover, the im-

portance of techniques gradually diminishes as we reach historical



The Technological Society	(	65



societies. In these societies, the life of the group was essentially

nontechnical. And although certain productive techniques still ex-

isted, the magical forms which had given a technique to social rela-

tions, to political acts, and to military and judicial life tended to

disappear. These areas ceased to respond to techniques and became

subject instead to social spontaneities. The law, which had tradi-

tionally expressed itself in certain customs, no longer had any char-

acter of technical rigor; even the state was nothing but a force

which simply manifested itself. These activities depended more on

private initiative, short-lived manifestations or ephemeral tradi-

tions, than on a persevering technical will and rational improve-

ments.



Even in activities we consider technical, it was not always that

aspect which was uppermost. In the achievement of a small eco-

nomic goal, for example, the technical effort became secondary to

the pleasure of gathering together. "Formerly, when a New Eng-

land family convoked a ‘bee* (that is, a meeting for working in

common), it was for all concerned one of the most pleasurable

times of the year. The work was scarcely more than a pretext for

coming together."1 The activity of sustaining social relations and

human contacts predominated over the technical scheme of things

and the obligation to work, which were secondary causes.



Society was free of technique. And even on the level of the indi-

vidual, technique occupied a place much more circumscribed than

we generally believe. Because we judge in modern terms, we be-

lieve that production and consumption coincided with the whole

of life.



For primitive man, and for historical man until a comparatively

late date, work was a punishment, not a virtue. It was better not

to consume than to have to work hard; the rule was to work only

as much as absolutely necessary in order to survive. Man worked

as little as possible and was content with a restricted consumption

of goods (as, for example, among the Negroes and the Hindus)—

a prevalent attitude, which limits both techniques of production

and techniques of consumption. Sometimes slavery was the answer:

an entire segment of the population did not work at all and de-

pended on the labor of a minority of slaves. In general, the slaves



1 George G Homans, quoted by Jerome Scott and It F. Lyntoa.



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



66)



did constitute a minority. We must not be misled by Imperial

Rome, Greece under Pericles, or the Antilles in the eighteenth

century. In most slaveholding nations, slaves were in a minority.



The time given to the use of techniques was short, compared

with the leisure time devoted to sleep, conversation, games, or, best

of all, to meditation. As a corollary, technical activities had little

place in these societies. Technique functioned only at certain pre-

cise and well-defined times; this was the case in all societies before

our own. Technique was not part of man's occupation nor a subject

for preoccupation.



This limitation of technique is attested to by the fact that in

the past technique was not considered nearly as important as it is

today. Heretofore, mankind did not bind up its fate with technical

progress. Man regarded technical progress more as a relative in-

strument than as a god. He did not hope for very much from it.

Let us take an example from Giedion’s admirable book, in which

he elucidates the small importance technique had traditionally.



In our day, we are unable to envisage comfort except as part of

the technical order of things. Comfort for us means bathrooms, easy

chairs, foam-rubber mattresses, air conditioning, washing ma-

chines, and so forth. The chief concern is to avoid effort and pro-

mote rest and physical euphoria. For us, comfort is closely asso-

ciated with the material life; it manifests itself in the perfection of

personal goods and machines. According to Giedion, the men of

the Middle Ages also were concerned with comfort, but for them

comfort had an entirely different form and content. It represented

a feeling of moral amd aesthetic order. Space was the primary ele-

ment in comfort. Man sought open spaces, large rooms, the possi-

bility of moving about, of seeing beyond his nose, of not con-

stantly colliding with other people. These preoccupations are alto-

gether foreign to us.



Moreover, comfort consisted of a certain arrangement of space.

In the Middle Ages, a room could be completely “finished,” even

though it might contain no furniture. Everything depended on pro-

portions, material, form. The goal was not convenience, but rather

a certain atmosphere. Comfort was the mark of the man's personal-

ity on the place where he lived. This, at least in part, explains the

extreme diversity of architectural interiors in the houses of the pe-

riod. Nor was this the result of mere whim; it represented an



The Technological Society	(	6	7



adaptation to character; and when it had been realized, the man of

the Middle Ages did not care if his rooms were not well heated

or his chairs hard.



This concept of comfort, closely bound up with the person,

clearly takes death for granted, as did man himself; man’s aware-

ness of death likewise profoundly influences his search for an ade-

quate milieu. Giedion’s study is convincing. Medieval man did not

dream for an instant, that technique had any influence at all, even

on objects which today we consider completely material and con-

sequently of a technical order.



This limitation of the sphere of action of technique was in-

creased even more by the limitation of the technical means em-

ployed in these fields. There was no great variety of means for

attaining a desired result, and there was almost no attempt to per-

fect the means which did exist. It seems, on the contrary, that a

conscious Malthusian tendency prevailed. It was expressed, for

example, in the regulations of the guilds concerning tools, and in

Roman law, by the principle of the economy of forms. Man tended

to exploit to the limit such means as he possessed, and took care

not to replace them or create other means as long as the old ones

were effective. From the judicial point of view, the principle of

the economy of forms led to the creation of the fewest possible legal

instruments. Laws were few, and so were institutions. Man used

the utmost ingenuity to obtain a maximum of results from a mini-

mum of means at the price of fictions, transpositions, applications

a pari and a contrario, and so on. This was also true industrially.

Society was not oriented toward the creation of a new instrument

in response to a new need. The emphasis was rather on the applica-

tion of old means, which were constantly extended, refined, and

perfected.



The deficiency of the tool was to be compensated for by the

skill of the worker. Professional know-how, the expert eye were

what counted: man’s talents could make his crude tools yield the

maximum efficiency. This was a kind of technique, but it had none

of the characteristics of instrumental technique. Everything varied

from man to man according to his gifts, whereas technique in the

modem sense seeks to eliminate such variability. It is understand-

able that technique in itself played a very feeble role. Everything

was done by men who employed the most rudimentary means. The



68)	THE CHARACTEROLOCT OF TECHNIQUE



search for the “finished," for perfection in use, for ingenuity of ap-

plication, took the place of a search for new tools which would

have permitted men to simplify their work, but also would have

involved giving up the pursuit of real skill



Here we have two antithetical orders of inquiry. When there is

an abundance of instruments that answer all needs, it is impossible

for one man to have a perfect knowledge of each or the skill to use

each. This knowledge would be useless in any case; the perfection

of the instrument is what is required, and not the perfection of the

human being. But, until the eighteenth century, all societies were

primarily oriented toward improvement in the use of tools and

were little concerned with the tools themselves. No clean-cut divi-

sion can be made between the two orientations. Human skill, hav-

ing attained a certain degree of perfection in practice, necessarily

entails improvement of the tool itself. The question is one of tran-

scending the stage of total utilization of the tool by improving it.

There is, therefore, no doubt that the two phenomena do inter-

penetrate. But traditionally the accent was on the human being

who used the tool and not on the tool he used.



The improvement of tools, essentially the result of the prac-

tice of a personal art, came about in a completely pragmatic way.

For this reason, we can put in the first category all the techniques

we have classified with regard to intrinsic characteristics. A small

number of techniques, not very efficient: this was the situation in

Eastern and Western society from the tenth century b.c. to the

tenth century a.d.



The world of technique had still a third characteristic prior to

the eighteenth century: it was local. Social groups were very strong

and closed to outsiders. There was little communication, materially

speaking, and even less from the spiritual point of view. Technique

spread slowly. Certain examples of technical propagation are al-

ways cited; the introduction of the wheel into Egypt by the Hyksos;

the Crusades; and so on. But such events took millennia and were

accidental. In the majority of cases, there was little transmission.

Imitation took place very slowly and mankind passed from one tech-

nical stage to the next with great difficulty. This is true of material

techniques, and even more so of non-material techniques.



Greek art remained Greek in industrial projects such as pottery-

making, even when imitated by the Romans. Roman law did not



The Technological Society	(6 9



extend beyond the Roman borders, whereas the Napoleonic code

was adopted by Turkey and Japan. As for magic, that technique re-

mained completely secret.



Every technical phenomenon was isolated from similar move-

ments elsewhere. There was no transmission, only fruitless grop-

ings. Geographically, we can trace the compass of a given tech-

nique, follow the zones of its influence, imitation, and extension; in

almost every case we find how small was the extent of its radiation.



Why was this so? The explanation is simple: technique was an

intrinsic part of civilization. And civilization consisted of numerous

and diversified elements—natural elements such as temperament

and flora, climate and population; and artificial elements such as

art, technique, the political regime, etc. Among all these factors,

which mingled with one another, technique was only one. It was

inexorably linked with them and depended on them, as they de-

pended on it. It was part of a whole, part of the determinate so-

ciety, and it developed as a function of the whole and shared its

fate.



Just as one society is not interchangeable with another, so tech-

nique remained enclosed in its proper framework; no more would

it become universal than the society in which it was embedded.

Geographically there could be no technical transmission because

technique was not some anonymous piece of merchandise but

rather bore the stamp of the whole culture. This entails much more

than the existence of a simple barrier between social groups.

Technique was unable to spread from one social group to another

except when the two were in the same stage of evolution and ex-

cept when civilizations were of the same type. In the past, in other

words, technique was not objective, but subjective in relation to

its own culture.



It is understandable, therefore, that technique, incorporated in

its proper framework, did not evolve autonomously. On the con-

trary, it depended on a whole ensemble of factors which had to

vary with it. It is not accurate to conceive the movement in the

oversimplified manner of Marxism, as first the evolution of tech-

nique, and subsequently the alignment of the other factors. This

veiw is accurate for the nineteenth century but it is false for history

as a whole. Certain important covariations traditionally existed,

and these factors, covariant with technique, changed according



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



70)



to the type of civilization. There was, for example, the association

of technique and the state among the Egyptians and the Incas; of

technique and philosophy in Greece and China. Francastel has

shown how technique could be “absorbed and directed by the

arts," as happened, say, in the fifteenth century, when it was sub-

ordinated to a plastic vision of the world, which imposed on it

limits and demands. At that time, there existed a whole “civiliza-

tion well provided with technical inventions, but which deliber-

ately undertook to use them only to the degree in which these in-

ventions would allow it to realize an imaginative construction."

Thereafter, we find a complicated “art technique” and, as else-

where, we almost never find technique in a pure state.



The consequence was an extreme local diversity of techniques

for attaining the same result. No comparison or competition existed

yet between these different systems; the formulation: “The one best

way in the world" had not yet been made. It was a question of the

“best way" in a given locality. Because of this, arms and tools took

very different forms, and social organizations were extremely di-

verse.



It is impossible to speak of slavery as all of a piece. Roman slav-

ery, for example, had nothing to do with Teutonic slavery, or Teu-

tonic slavery with Chaldean. We habitually use one term to cover

very different realities. This extreme diversity divested technique

of its most crucial characteristic. There was no single means

which was judged best and able to eliminate all others by virtue of

its efficiency. This diversity has made us believe that there was an

epoch of experimentation, when man was groping to find his way.

This is a false notion; it springs from our modern prejudice that the

stage we find ourselves in today represents the highest level of

humanity. In reality, diversity resulted not from various experimen-

tal attempts on the part of various peoples, but from the fact that

technique was always embedded in a particular culture.



Alongside this spatial limitation of technique, we find a time

limitation. Until the eighteenth century, techniques evolved very

slowly. Technical work was purely pragmatic, inquiry was empiri-

cal, and transmission slow and feeble. Centuries were required

for: (a) utilization of an invention (for example, the water mill);

(b) transition from a plaything to a useful object (gunpowder,

automatons); (c) transition from a magical to an economic opera-



The Technological Society	(	71



tion (breeding of animals); (d) simple perfecting >r instru-

ment (the horse yoke and the transition from the simple stick plow

to the train plow). This was even more true for abstract techniques.

Abstract techniques, I maintain, are almost nontransmissible in

time from a given civilization to its successor. We must be some-

what skeptical, and in any case prudent, when the evolution of

techniques is presented as an evolution of inventions; actually this

development was never more than potential. There is nothing to

prove that true technique existed heretofore, that is, in the sense of

generalized application. It is possible to compile a fine catalogue of

seventeenth-century inventions, and to deduce from it that a great

technical movement was in force at that time. Many writers have

fallen into this error—among them, Jean Laloup and Jean N'elis. It

is not because Pascal invented a calculating machine and Papin

a steam engine that there was a technical evolution; nor was it

because a “prototype” of a power loom was built; nor because the

process of the dry distillation of coal was discovered. As Gille has

very judiciously noted: “The best-described machines in the eight-

eenth century Encyclopedic are possibly better conceived than

those of the fifteenth century, but scarcely constitute a revolution”

The initial problem was to construct the machine, to make the in-

vented technique actually work. The second consisted in the diffu-

sion of the machine throughout the society; and this second step

proceeded very slowly.



This divergence between invention and technique, which is the

cause of the time lag we have spoken of, is correctly interpreted

by Gille in these words: “There was a discontinuity of technical

progress but there was probably a continuity of research.” Gille

shows clearly that technical progress develops according to a dis-

continuous rhythm: “It is tied up with demographic or economic

rhythms and with certain internal contradictions.” This discontinu-

ity still contributes to evolutionary lag today.



Slowness in the evolution of techniques is evident throughout

history. Very few variations seem to have occurred in this constant.

But it cannot be maintained that this slowness was completely uni-

form. Yet, even in periods that appear rather fertile, it is clear that

evolution was slow. For example, Roman law, which was particu-

larly rich in the classical period, took two centuries to find a perfect

form. Moreover, the number of applied inventions was sharply re-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



7*)



stricted. The fifteenth century, in spite of its importance, produced

no more than four or five important technical applications. The

natural consequence of this evolutionary slowness was that tech-

nique could be adapted to men. Almost unconsciously, men kept

abreast of techniques and controlled their use and influence. This

resulted not from an adaptation of men to techniques (as in mod-

em times), but rather from the subordination of techniques to men.

Technique did not pose the problem of adaptation because it was

firmly enmeshed in the framework of life and culture. It developed

so slowly that it did not outstrip the slow evolution of man himself.

The progress of the two was so evenly matched that man was able

to keep pace with his techniques. From the physical point of view,

techniques did not intrude into his life; neither his moral evolu-

tion nor his psychic life were influenced by them. Techniques en-

abled man to make individual progress and facilitated certain

developments, but they did not influence him directly. Social

equilibrium corresponded to the slowness of general evolution.



This evolutionary slowness was accompanied by a great irra-

tional diversification of designs. The evolution of techniques was

produced by individual efforts accompanied by a multitude of scat-

tered experiments. Men made incoherent modifications on instru-

ments and institutions which already existed; but these modifica-

tions did not constitute adaptations. We are amazed when we

inspect, say, a museum of arms or tools, and note the extreme di-

versity of form of a single instrument in the same place and time.

The great sword used by Swiss soldiers in the sixteenth century had

at least nine different forms (hooked, racked, double-handed, hex-

agonal blades, blades shaped like a fleur-de-lis, grooved, etc.). This

diversity was evidently due to various modes of fabrication peculiar

to the smiths; it cannot be explained as a manifestation of a techni-

cal inquiry. The modifications of a given type were not the out-

come of calculation or of an exclusively technical will. They re-

sulted from aesthetic considerations. It is important to emphasize

that technical operations, like the instruments themselves, almost

always depended on aesthetic preoccupations. It was impossible to

conceive of a tool that was not beautiful. As for the idea, fre-

quently accepted since the triumph of efficiency, that the beautiful

is that which is well adapted to use—assuredly no such notion

guided the aesthetic searchings of the past No such conception of



* The Technological Society	(73



beauty (however true) moved the artisan who carved a Toledo

blade or fabricated a harness. On the contrary, aesthetic considera-

tions are gratuitous and permit the introduction of uselessness into

an eminently useful and efficient apparatus.



This diversity of forms was manifestly conditioned by vainglory

and pleasure—the vainglory of the user, the pleasure of the artisan.

Both caused changes in the classic type. And why not include as

well that pure fantasy which runs through all the creations of

Greece and the Middle Ages?



All this led to a modification of the given type. The search for

greater efficiency likewise played a role, but it was one factor

among several. The different forms were subject to trial and error,

and certain forms were progressively stabilized and imitated, either

because of their plastic perfection or because of their usefulness.

The final result was the establishment of a new type derived from

its predecessor.



This diversity of influences, which operated on all technical

mechanisms, explains in part the slow tempo of progress in these

areas. To obey a multiplicity of motives and not reason alone seems

to be an important keynote of man. When, in the nineteenth cen-

tury, society began to elaborate an exclusively rational technique

which acknowledged only considerations of efficiency, it was felt

that not only the traditions but the deepest instincts of humankind

had been violated. Men sought to reintroduce indispensable factors

of aesthetics and morals. Out of this effort came the unprecedented

creation of certain aspects of style in the 1880's: the tool with ma-

chine-made embellishments. Sewing machines were decorated

with cast-iron flowers, and the first tractors bore engraved bulls'

heads. That it was wasteful to supply such embellishments soon

became evident; their ugliness doubtless contributed to the realiza-

tion. Moreover, these flourishes represented a wrong road, techni-

cally speaking. The machine can become precise only to the degree

that its design is elaborated with mathematical rigor in accordance

with use. And an embellishment could increase air resistance,

throw a wheel out of balance, alter velocity or precision. There

was no room in practical activity for gratuitous aesthetic preoccu-

pations. The two had to be separated. A style then developed based

on the idea that the line best adapted to use is the most beautiful.



Abstract techniques and their relation to morals underwent the



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



74)



same evolution. Earlier, economic or political inquiries were inex-

tricably bound with ethical inquiry, and men attempted to main-

tain this union artificially even after they had recognized the inde-

pendence of economic technique. Modern society is, in fact, con-

ducted on the basis of purely technical considerations. But when

men found themselves going counter to the human factor, they re-

introduced—and in an absurd way—all manner of moral theories

related to the rights of man, the League of Nations, liberty, jus-

tice. None of that has any more importance than the ruffled sun-

shade of McCormick's first reaper. When these moral flourishes

overly encumber technical progress, they are discarded—more or

less speedily, with more or less ceremony, but with determination

nonetheless. This is the state we are in today.



The elimination of these evolutionary factors and of technical

diversification has brought about a transformation of the basic

process of this evolution. Technical progress today is no longer

conditioned by anything other than its own calculus of efficiency.

The search is no longer personal, experimental, workmanlike; it is

abstract, mathematical, and industrial. This does not mean that the

individual no longer participates. On the contrary, progress is made

only after innumerable individual experiments. But the individual

participates only to the degree that he is subordinate to the search

for efficiency, to the degree that he resists all the currents today

considered secondary, such as aesthetics, ethics, fantasy. Insofar

as the individual represents this abstract tendency, he is permitted

to participate in technical creation, which is increasingly independ-

ent of him and increasingly linked to its own mathematical law.



It was long believed that rational systematization would act to

reduce the number of technical types: in the measure that the fac-

tors of diversification were eliminated, the result would be fewer

and more simple and precise types. Thus, during the latter part of

the nineteenth century—in the mechanical, medical, and adminis-

trative spheres—-exact instruments wrere available from which fan-

tasy and irrationality had been totally eliminated. The result was

fewer instruments. As further progress was made, however, a new

element of diversification came into play: in order that an instru-

ment be perfectly efficient, it had to be perfectly adapted. But the

most rational instrument possible takes no account of the extreme

diversity of the operational environment. This represents an essen^



The Technological Society	(	75



tial characteristic of technique. Every procedure implies a single,

specific result. As Porter Gale Perrin puts it: “Jus* as a word evokes

an idea which exactly corresponds to no other word/* so a fixed

technical procedure generates a fixed result. Technical methods are

not multipurposive, or adaptable, or interchangeable. Perrin has

demonstrated this in detail with reference to judicial technique, but

it also holds for everything else. Take the well-known example,

cited by Pierre de Latil, of a machine, brought to the highest possi-

ble pitch of perfection, the purpose of which was to produce from

cast iron, at a single stroke, cylinder heads for aircraft engines.

The machine was 28 meters long and cost $100,000. But the mo-

ment the required type of cylinder head was changed, the machine

became good for nothing; it was unadaptable to any new operation.

A judicial system may function perfectly adequately in France but

not in Turkey. For true efficiency, not only must the rational aspect

of the machine be taken into account, but also its adaptation to

the environment. A military tank will have a different form de-

pending on whether it is to be used in mountainous terrain or in

rice paddies. The more an instrument is designed to execute a sin-

gle operation efficiently and with utmost precision, the less can it be

multipurposive. A new diversification of technical apparatus thus

appears: today instruments are differentiated as a result of the con-

tinually more specialized usage demanded of them.



The field of aviation gives us one of the best examples of this.

Aircraft are described by the use to which they are put. We have,

correspondingly, extremely precise and more and more diversified

types. The list of French military aircraft, consisting at the present

of five great categories, is as follows: (1) strategic bombers,

(2) tactical bombers, (3) pursuit planes, (4) reconnaissance

planes, and (5) transport planes. These five categories are sub-

divided further; there are altogether thirteen different subtypes,

none of which are interchangeable with one another. Each has very

different characteristics resulting from more and more refined tech-

nical adaptations.



The same extensive differentiation is found in much less impor-

tant areas. A recent brochure of the world's largest refiner of lubri-

cating oils lists fifteen different kinds of lubricants designed exclu-

sively for automobiles. Each type corresponds to a definite use, each

possessing specific qualities, and all equally necessary.



76 )	THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



A fourth characteristic of technique, which results from the

characteristics just enumerated, is the possibility, reserved to the

human being, of choice. Inasmuch as all techniques were geo-

graphically and historically limited, societies of many different

types were able to exist. For the most part, there was an equilib-

rium between two major types of civilization—the active and the

passive. This distinction is well known. Some societies are oriented

toward the exploitation of the earth, toward war, conquest, and ex-

pansion in all its forms. Other societies are inwardly oriented; they

labor just enough to support themselves, concentrate on them-

selves, are not concerned with material expansion, and erect solid

barriers against anything from without. From the spiritual point of

view, these societies are characterized by a mystical attitude, by a

desire for self-dissolution and absorption into the divine.



Human societies are variable, however. A group which has

hitherto been active might become passive. The Tibetans, for in-

stance, were conquerors and believers in magic until their conver-

sion to Buddhism. Thereafter they became the world’s most pas-

sive and mystical people. The reverse can also take place.



The two types of society coexisted throughout history; indeed,

this seemed necessary to the equilibrium of world and man. Until

the nineteenth century, technique had not yet excluded one of them.

Moreover, man could isolate himself from the influence of tech-

nique by attaching himself to a given group and exerting influence

on this group. Of course, other constraints acted on him; the indi-

vidual was never completely free with respect to his group, but

these constraints were not completely decisive or imperative in

character.



Whether we are considering unconscious sociological cohesion

or the power of the state, we find these forces always necessarily

counterbalanced by the existence of other neighboring groups and

other loyalties. There was no irrefutable constraint on man, because

nothing absolutely good in respect to everything else had been dis-

covered. We have noted the diversity of technical form and the

slowness of imitation. But it was always human action which was

decisive. When several technical forms came into contact, the indi-

vidual made his choice on the basis of numerous reasons. Efficiency

was only one of them, as Pierre Deffontaines has demonstrated in

his work on religious geography.



The Technological Society	(77



Although the individual existing in the framework of a civiliza-

tion of a certain type was always confronted with certain tech-

niques, he was nevertheless free to break with that civilization and

to control his own individual destiny. The constraints to which he

was subject did not function decisively because they were of a non*

technical nature and could be broken through. In an active civili-

zation, even one with a fairly good technical development, the in-

dividual could always break away and lead, say, a mystical and

contemplative life. The fact that techniques and man were more or

less on the same level permitted the individual to repudiate tech-

niques and get along without them. Choice was a real possibility

for him, not only with regard to his inner life, but with regard to

the outer form of his life as well. The essential elements of life were

safeguarded and provided for, more or less liberally, by the very

civilization whose forms he rejected. In the Roman Empire (a

technical civilization in a good many respects), it was possible for

a man to withdraw and live as a hermit or in the country, apart

from the evolution and the principal technical power of the Em-

pire. Roman law was powerless in the face of an individual's deci-

sion to evade military service or, to a very great degree, imperial

taxes and jurisdiction. Even greater was the possibility of the indi-

viduals freedom with respect to material techniques.



There was reserved for the individual an area of free choice at

the cost of minimal effort. The choice involved a conscious decision

and was possible only because the material burden of technique

had not yet become more than a man could shoulder. The existence

of choice, a result of characteristics we have already discussed, ap-

pears to have been one of the most important historical factors gov-

erning technical evolution and revolution. Evolution was not, then,

a logic of discovery or an inevitable progression of techniques. It

was an interaction of technical effectiveness and effective human

decision. Whenever either one of these elements disappeared,

social and human stagnation necessarily followed. Such was the

case, for example, when effective technique was (or became) rudi-

mentary and inefficacious among the Negroes of Africa. As to the

consequences of a lapse in the second element, we are experiencing

them today.



The New Characteristic*. The characteristics of the relationship

of technique, society, and the individual which we have analyzed



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



78)



were, I believe, common to all civilizations up to the eighteenth

century. Historically, their existence admits of little discussion.

Today, however, the most cursory review enables us to conclude

that all these characteristics have disappeared. The relation is not

the same; it does not present any of the constants recognizable

until now. But that is not sufficient to characterize the technical

phenomenon of our own day. This description would situate it in a

purely negative perspective, whereas the technical phenomemon is

a positive thing; it presents positive characteristics which are pe-

culiar to it. The old characteristics of technique have indeed dis-

appeared; but new ones have taken their place. Today’s technical

phenomenon, consequently, has almost nothing in common with

the technical phenomenon of the past I shall not insist on demon-

strating the negative aspect of the case, the disappearance of the

traditional characteristics. To do so would be artificial, didactic,

and difficult to defend. I shall point out, then, in a summary fash-

ion, that in our civilization technique is in no way limited. It has

been extended to all spheres and encompasses every activity, in-

cluding human activities. It has led to a multiplication of means

without limit. It has perfected indefinitely the instruments available

to man, and put at his disposal an almost limitless variety of inter-

mediaries and auxiliaries. Technique has been extended geo-

graphically so that it covers the whole earth. It is evolving with a

rapidity disconcerting not only to the man in the street but to the

technician himself. It poses problems which recur endlessly and

every more acutely in human social groups. Moreover, technique

has become objective and is transmitted like a physical thing; it

leads thereby to a certain unity of civilization, regardless of the en-

vironment or the country in which it operates. We are faced with

the exact opposite of the traits previously in force. We must, there-

fore, examine carefully the positive characteristics of the technique

of the present.



There are two essential characteristics of today’s technical phe-

nomenon which I shall not belabor because of their obviousness.

These two, incidentally, are the only ones which, in general, are

emphasized by the “best authors.”



The first of these obvious characteristics is rationality. In tech-

nique, whatever its aspect or the domain in which it is applied, a

rational process is present which tends to bring mechanics to bear



The Technological Society	(79



on all that is spontaneous or irrational. This rationality, best exem-

plified in systematization, division of labor, creation of standards,

production norms, and the like, involves two distinct phases: first,

the use of “discourse” in every operation; this excludes spontaneity

and personal creativity. Second, there is the reduction of method

to its logical dimension alone. Every intervention of technique is,

in effect, a reduction of facts, forces, phenomena, means, and in-

struments to the schema of logic.



The second obvious characteristic of the technical phenomenon

is artificiality. Technique is opposed to nature. Art, artifice, artifi-

cial: technique as art is the creation of an artificial system. This is

not a matter of opinion. The means man has at his disposal as a

function of technique are artificial means. For this reason, the com-

parison proposed by Emmanuel Mounier between the machine

and the human body is valueless. The world that is being created

by the accumulation of technical means is an artificial world and

hence radically different from the natural world.



It destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world, and

does not allow this world to restore itself or even to enter into a

symbiotic relation with it. The two worlds obey different impera-

tives, different directives, and different laws which have nothing in

common. Just as hydroelectric installations take waterfalls and lead

them into conduits, so the technical milieu absorbs the natural. We

are rapidly approaching the time when there will be no longer any

natural environment at all. When we succeed in producing artificial

aurorae boreales, night will disappear and perpetual day will reign

over the planet.



I have given only brief descriptions of these two well-known

characteristics. But I shall analyze the others at greater length; they

are technical automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism,

and autonomy.



Characteristics of Modern Technique



Automatism of Technical Choice. “The one best way”: so runs the

formula to which our technique corresponds. When everything has

been measured and calculated mathematically so that the method

which has been decided upon is satisfactory from the rational point



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



8o)



of view, and when, from the practical point of view, the method i*

manifestly the most efficient of all those hitherto employed or those

in competition with it, then the technical movement becomes self-

directing. I call the process automatism.



There is no personal choice, in respect to magnitude, between,

say, 3 and 4; 4 is greater than 3; this is a fact which has no personal

reference. No one can change it or assert the contrary or personally

escape it Similarly, there is no choice between two technical meth-

ods. One of them asserts itself inescapably: its results are calculated,

measured, obvious, and indisputable.



A surgical operation which was formerly not feasible but can now

be performed is not an object of choice. It simply is. Here we see

the prime aspect of technical automatism. Technique itself, ipso

facto and without indulgence or possible discussion, selects among

the means to be employed. The human being is no longer in any

sense the agent of choice. Let no one say that man is the agent of

technical progress (a question I shall discuss later) and that it is

he who chooses among possible techniques. In reality, he neither

is nor does anything of the sort. He is a device for recording effects

and results obtained by various techniques. He does not make a

choice of complex and, in some way, human motives. He can decide

only in favor of the technique that gives the maximum efficiency.

But this is not choice. A machine could effect the same operation,

Man still appears to be choosing when he abandons a given method

that has proved excellent from some point of view. But his action

comes solely from the fact that he has thoroughly analyzed the re-

sults and determined that from another point of view the method

in question is less efficient. A good example is furnished by the

attemnts to deconcentrate our industrial plants after we had



1	o	jr



concentrated them to the maximum possible degree. Another ex-

ample would be the decision to abandon certain systems of high

production in order to obtain a more constant productivity, al-

though it might be less per capita. It is always a question of the

improvement of the method in itself.



The worst reproach modem society can level is the charge that

some person or system is impeding this technical automatism. When

a labor union leader says: "In a period of recession, productivity is

a social scourge,’* his declaration stirs up a storm of protest and con-

demnation, because he is putting a personal judgment before the



The Technological Society	(Si



technical axiom that what can he produced must be produced. If a

machine can yield a given result, it must be used to capacity, and it

is considered criminal and antisocial not to do so. Technical autom-

atism may not be judged or questioned; immediate use must be

found for the most recent, efficient, and technical process.



Communism’s fundamental criticism of capitalism is that finan-

cial capitalism checks technical progress that produces no profits;

or that it promotes technical progress only in order to reserve for

itself a monopoly. In any case, as Rubinstein points out, technical

progress occurs under capitalism for reasons which have nothing to

do with technique, and it is this fact which is to be criticized. Since

the Communist regime is oriented toward technical progress, the

mark of the superiority of Communism is that it adopts all technical

progress. Rubinstein concludes his study by remarking that this

progress is the goal of all efforts in the Soviet Union, where it is said

to be possible to allow free play to technical automatism without

checking it in any way.



Another traditional analysis supplements Rubinstein’s. This seri-

ous study, carried out by Thorstein Veblen, maintains that there is

a conflict between the machine and business. Financial investment,

which originally accelerated invention, now prolongs technical in-

activity. Capitalism does not give free play to technical activity,

the goal of which is that a more efficient method or a more rapidly

acting machine should ipso facto and automatically replace the pre-

ceding method or machine. Capitalism does not give free play to

these factors because it inadmissibly subordinates technique to ends

other than technique itself, and because it is incapable of absorbing

technical progress. The replacement of machines at the tempo of

technical invention is completely impossible for capitalist enter-

prise because there is no time to amortize one machine before new

ones appear. Moreover, the more these machines are improved, and

hence become more efficient, the more they cost.



The pursuit of technical automatism would condemn capitalist

enterprises to failure. The reaction of capitalism is well known:

the patents of new machines are acquired and the machines are

never put into operation. Sometimes machines that are already in

operation are acquired, as in the case of England’s largest glass fac-

tory in 1932, and destroyed. Capitalism is no longer in a position

to pursue technical automatism on the economic or social plane. It



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



82)



is incapable of developing a system of distribution that would per-

mit the absorption of all the goods which technique allows to be

produced. It is led inevitably to crises of overproduction. And in the

same way it is unable to utilize the manpower freed by every new

technical improvement. Crises of unemployment ensue.



Thus we return to the old schema of Marx: it is the automatism

of technique, with its demand that everything be brought into line

with it, that endangers capitalism and heralds its final disappear-

ance. This is an accurate criticism, and reveals two things. First,

that we are correct in speaking of automatism. If the situation of

capitalism is indeed as described, it is so because technical progress

acts automatically. The choice between methods is no longer made

according to human measure, but occurs as a mechanical process

which nothing can prevent. Capitalism, in spite of all its power,

will be crushed by this automatism. Second, that for the men of

our time, this automatism is just and good. If Communism can

make this critique of capitalism a successful springboard for propa-

ganda, it is only because the criticism is valid. And it is valid be-

cause everything can be called into question (God first of all), ex-

cept technical progress. There is nothing left to do but wonder at a

mechanism that functions so well and, apparently, so tirelessly. But,

above all else, no finger must be laid upon it, nor its automatism in-

terfered with. It is in this that the headway of technical progress

becomes automatic; when modern man renounces control over it

and cannot bring himself to raise his hand against it so as to make

the choice himself.



This, then, is the first aspect of technical automatism. Inside the

technical circle, the choice among methods, mechanism, organiza-

tions, and formulas is carried out automatically. Man is stripped of

his faculty of choice and he is satisfied. He accepts the situation

when he sides with technique.



Let us examine the second aspect of automatism. When we leave

the technical domain proper, we find a whole ensemble of nontech-

nical means; among them a kind of preliminary process of elimina-

tion is taking place. The various technical systems have invaded all

spheres to the point that they are everywhere in collision with

modes of life which were heretofore nontechnical. Human life as a

whole is not inundated by technique. It has room for activities

that are not rationally or systematically ordered. But the collision



The Technological Society	(	8 3



between spontaneous activities and technique is catastrophic for the

spontaneous activities.



Technical activity automatically eliminates every nontechnical

activity or transforms it into technical activity. This does not mean,

however, that there is any conscious effort or directive will.



From the point of view which most interests modern man, that of

yield, every technical activity is superior to every nontechnical

activity. Take, for example, politics. It used to be said that politics

was an art, consisting of finesse, aptness, a particular kind of ability,

even genius; in short, of personal qualities which seemed to operate

by chance. If politics was to become a technical activity, chance

must be eliminated. The results to be obtained must be certain. Un-

predictability, which all men share to a greater or lesser degree,

must also be eliminated. Rules had to be established for this par-

ticularly unstable game if certainty of result was to be achieved.

The difficulty was great, but not greater, perhaps, than the difficulty

involved in harnessing atomic energy.



It was Lenin who established political technique. He did not suc-

ceed in formulating a complete set of principles for it, but from the

beginning he attained a twofold result. Even a mediocre politician,

by the application of the “method,” was able to achieve a good aver-

age policy, to ward off catastrophes, and to assure a coherent politi-

cal line. Moreover, the method was far superior to nontechnical

policy; the same result could be obtained with fewer resources and

with much less expense.



On the military plane, the technique applied by Hitler (and it

was a technique, not military genius as with Napoleon—although it

is a mark of genius to develop a technique for war or for politics)

not only enabled him to achieve what was not necessarily a direct

result of his technique but, more important, it enabled him to resist

for three years an adversary who possessed approximately a fivefold

superiority in all areas—in numbers of men and military machines,

in economic power, and so on. This capacity to resist resulted from

the remarkable military technique of the Germans and from the per-

fectly developed relationship they worked out between nation and

army.



In the same way, the political technique of Lenin’s school made,

and is making, possible the achievement of successes over all other

political forms, even when these political forms are able to bring



THE



OF TECHNIQUE



««)



infinitely superior resources to bear. The tide of Leninian policy

retreats for certain periods before the superior weight of the enor-

mous politico-economic machines of the opponents. But to such a

political technique only another political technique can be opposed;

and since the American political technique, for example, is so in-

ferior, it must deploy instead an enormous expenditure of resources.

The superiority of a technique to enormous but inefficiently used

resources and machinery means that the point at which technique

inserts itself becomes a real turning point. The milieu into which a

technique penetrates becomes completely, and often at a stroke, a

technical milieu. If a desired result is stipulated, there is no choice

possible between technical means and nontechnical means based on

imagination, individual qualities, or tradition. Nothing can compete

with the technical means. The choice is made a priori. It is not in the

power of the individual or of the group to decide to follow some

method other than the technical. The individual is in a dilemma:

either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use

traditional, personal, moral, or empirical means, thereby entering

into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious

defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to

accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself be the

victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In

effect he has no freedom of choice.



We are today at the stage of historical evolution in which every-

thing that is not technique is being eliminated. The challenge to a

country, an individual, or a system is solely a technical challenge.

Only a technical force can be opposed to a technical force. All else

is swept away. Serge Tchakotin reminds us of this constantly. In

the face of the psychological outrages of propaganda, what reply

can there be? It is useless to appeal to culture or religion. It is use-

less to educate the populace. Only propaganda can retort to propa-

ganda, or psychological rape to psychological rape. Hitler formu-

lated this long before Tchakotin. He writes, in Mein Kampf:

"Unless the enemy learns to combat poison gas with poison gas, this

tactic, which is based on an accurate evaluation of human weak-

nesses, must lead almost mathematically to success



The exclusive character of technique gives us one of the reasons

for its lightning progress. There is no place for an individual today

unless he is a technician. No social group is able to resist the pres-



The Technological Society	(8 $



sures of the environment unless it utilizes technique. To be in pos-

session of the lightning thrust of technique is a matter of life or

death for individuals and groups alike; no power on earth can with-

stand its pressures.



Will the technical phenomena of today be able to maintain itself,

or must it suffer in its turn impairment or even liquidation? It is

difficult to see ahead, and, in any case, this is not the place to try to

do so. Doubtless, technique has its limits. But when it has reached

these limits, will anything exist outside them? Its limits are presup-

posed by its object and its method. But is it not succeeding in under-

mining everything which is outside it? Beyond its precise and lim-

ited compass, whatever its size, will there remain anything in exist-

ence? We shall be answering this question all through this book.

Within the technical circle nothing else can subsist because tech-

nique's proper motion, as Jiinger has shown, tends irresistibly to-

ward completeness. To the degree that this completeness is not yet

attained, technique is advancing, eliminating every lesser force.

And when it has received full satisfaction and accomplished its

vocation, it will remain alone in the field. Technique thus reveals

itself at once destroyer and creator, and no one wishes or is able to

master it.



Self-augmentation• The self-augmentation of technique also has

two aspects. At the present time, technique has arrived at such a

point in its evolution that it is being transformed and is progressing

almost without decisive intervention by man. Modern men are so

enthusiastic about technique, so assured of its superiority, so im-

mersed in the technical milieu, that without exception they are

oriented toward technical progress. They all work at it, and in every

profession or trade everyone seeks to introduce technical improve-

ment. Essentially, technique progresses as a result of this common

effort. Technical progress and common human effort come to the

same thing. Vincent analyzes with great subtlety the multitude of

factors which intervene, each in its small way, in technical pro-

gress: the consumer, accumulation of capital, research bureaus and

laboratories, and the organization of production, which acts “in

some sense mechanically.* Technical progress appears to Vincent

to be “the resultant* of all these factors. In one sense, technique

indeed progresses by means of minute improvements which are the

result of common human efforts and are indefinitely additive until



86)	THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



they form a mass of new conditions that permit a decisive forward

step. But it is equally true that technique sharply reduces the role

of human invention. It is no longer the man of genius who discovers

something. It is no longer the vision of a Newton which is decisive.

What is decisive is this anonymous accretion of conditions for the

leap ahead. When all the conditions concur, only minimal human

intervention is needed to produce important advances. It might

almost be maintained that, at this stage of evolution of a technical

problem, whoever attacked the problem would find the solution.



The example of the steam engine and its manifold successive

small alterations is well known. This example is being repeated

today in all fields.



The accretion of manifold minute details, all tending to perfect

the ensemble, is much more decisive than the intervention of the

individual who assembles the new data, adds some element which

transforms the situation, and thus gives birth to a machine or to

some spectacular system that will bear his name.



This is the way progress takes place in the field of education, too.

After the general direction given by initiators (like Decroly or

Montessori), it is the findings of thousands of educators which

ceaselessly nourish the improvement of technique. In fact, educa-

tional systems are completely transformed as a result of practice—

without any one’s being quite aware of it. In industrial plants, the

discovery of details is utilized in another way; to create interest on

the part of the worker in hia work. The worker is asked not only to

use the machine he operates, but also to study it to find flaws in its

operation, then to find remedies against these faults, and in addition

to determine how its productivity might be improved. The result is

the “suggestion box” by means of which workers may indicate their

ideas and plans for improvement.



This collective, anonymous research advances techniques almost

everywhere in the world by a like impulse, a striking result of self-

augmentation. It is noticeable that identical technical inventions are

produced simultaneously in many countries. To the degree that

science is taking on a more and more technical aspect, these dis-

coveries are made everywhere at the same time—a further indica-

tion that scientific discoveries are, in reality, governed by technique.



The smashing of the atom and the atomic bomb are characteris-



The Technological Society	(87



tic of this simultaneity. In Germany, Norway, the U.S.S.R., the

United States, and France, research had reached almost the same

point in 1939. But circumstances upset European technical evolu-

tion and gave superiority to the United States. Among these circum-

stances were the invasion of Norway and France, the collapse of

Germany several months after the discovery, and the lack of means

and raw material in the U.S.S.R. What is true of scientific inventions

is much more true of technical inventions. Only lack of means halts

progress in certain countries. The more advanced a country is in the

employment of technique, the more material is required, whether

in numbers of men, raw materials, or complexity of machines. A

country must be wealthy to exploit techniques to a maximum. And

when the country is able to do this, technique returns a hundredfold

increase in its wealth. This is another element in self-augmenta-

tion.



It is still necessary to justify the term self-augmentation, since it

appears to be contradicted by what I have just been saying. If

technical advance is assured by the joint effort of thousands of

technicians, each of whom makes his contribution, it would seem

impossible to speak of self-augmentation. But there is another as-

pect which must be brought to light.



There is an automatic growth (that is, a growth which is not

calculated, desired, or chosen) of everything which concerns

technique. This applies even to men. Statistically, the number of

scientists and technicians has doubled every decade for a century

and a half. Apparently this is a self-generating process: technique

engenders itself. When a new technical form appears, it makes

possible and conditions a number of others. To take a plain and

elementary example: the internal-combustion engine made possible

and conditioned the techniques of the automobile, the submarine,

and so on. In the same way, once a technical procedure has been

discovered, it is applicable in many fields other than the one for

which it was primarly invented. The techniques of 4 operational

research,” for example, were devised to help make certain military

decisions. But it was immediately noted that they could be ap-

plied wherever any decision had to be made. As Barache, a special-

ist in these techniques, says: 44The nature of the problems them-

•elves was secondary . . the methods of approach and the tech-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



88)



niques employed proved to have a general scope.” The same could

be said for the techniques of organization. There is, therefore, a self*

augmentation of the areas of application.



This does not necessarily mean an infinite or indefinite augmen-

tation of technique. I do not wish at this point to enter the realm of

prognosis, but predictions of the more or less rapid extinction of

technical progress seem to me to be contradicted by the facts.

Whether it be Lewis Mumford, say, declaring that the era of

mechanical progress is almost at an end, or Colin Clark announc-

ing the transition of secondary mechanical activities to tertiary ac-

tivities, they are exhibiting what can only be termed a dangerous

confidence.



Lewis Mumford shows that certain of our inventions cannot be

improved, that the possible domain of mechanical activity cannot

be extended, and that mechanical progress is limited by the nature

of the physical world. This last is true. But we are far from knowing

the total possibilities of the physical world. And after Mumford had

written that statement fifteen years ago, servomechanisms, radar,

and atom smashing were discovered. It is obvious that the augmen-

tation of machines cannot be unlimited. But, so as not to rest our

hopes on an alleged stagnation, it will be enough for this progress

to continue for another century.



What is true of mechnical techniques is also true of economic

techniques. I agree fully with the remarks of Leon Hugo Dupriez

when he points out the error of the "stagnation's”—of Wolf, for

example, who writes: "The law of the limit of technico-economic

development is that past progress closes the door to future progress.

For future progress there remains in every case only a ®iargih, only a

fraction, indeed only a small fraction, of past progress.” Dupricz’s

exposure of the error of statements like this seems to me so con-

vincing that I shall content myself with referring the reader to his

work.



On the other hand, Lewis Mumford shows (and, from another

perspective, this is also Colin Clark’s thought) that the best organi-

zation will tend to reduce the use of certain machines. This is

rigorously exact. But this "best organization” is precisely technique

itself and, moreover, it comprises a mechanical element as well.

When Fourastie announces an augmentation of the tertiary, non-

mechanized sector, the extraordinary progress of administrative



The Technological Society	(8$



mechanization of the last ten years must be considered. This mecha-

nization completely modifies the conditions of human work by

what has been termed *the replacement of the organic and the

psychological by the mechanical.” It is certain that this fact will

entail the same social crisis of unemployment as in the '‘secondary”

sector. To take an example, the tabulator adds and prints 45,000

numbers an hour (as compared with 1,500 for a trained employee).

It reads, calculates, analyzes, and prints 150 lines a minute. A

punching machine, attached to it, produces the punched cards

which recapitulate the results. The Gamma (a magnetic-drum

machine) has a '‘memory” with a capacity for 200,000 individual

items of data. A 1960-model calculating machine can handle 40,000

operations a second. The machine, along with organizational devel-

opment, is now the means of reducing both the number of em-

ployees and expenses, and also of reducing, on the collective plane,

the tertiary sector of manpower.



We can hardly agree that mechanical augmentation is decelerat-

ing. We are simply in another phase of technical progress: the

phase of assimilation, organization, and conquest of the other areas.

Here the progress to be made seems limitless, and consists primarily

in the efficient systematization of society and the conquest of the

human being. All that can be said is that, at best, technical activity

has changed its field of operation; it cannot be said that it has slowed

down.



Moreover, nothing argues that subsequently technical activity

will not again turn toward the world of machines with renewed

vigor. On the whole, it is the principle of the combination of tech-

niques which causes self-augmentation.



Self-augmentation can be formulated in two laws:



1.	In a given civilization, technical progress is irreversible.



2.	Technical progress tends to act, not according to an arith-

metic, but according to a geometric progression.



The first of these laws—and we base our conviction on the whole

of history—makes us certain that every invention calls forth other

technical inventions in other domains. There is never any question

of an arrest of the process, and even less of a backward movement

Arrest and retreat only occur when an entire society collapses. In

the transition to a successor, a certain number of technical proce

dures are lost. But, in the framework of the same civilization,



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



.90)



technical progress is never in question. Later I shall examine the

reasons for this. Technical progression is of the same nature as the

process of numbering; there is no good ground for halting the pro-

gression, because after each number we can always add 1. In tech-

nical evolution also, it seems that limits no longer exist. Improve-

ments that result from the application of technique to the matter

at hand (whether it be physical or social) can be added uninter-

ruptedly; there is no reason for arresting the process. In arguing

thus, the qualification must be made that this can be said only of the

ensemble of techniques, of the technical phenomenon, and not

of any particular technique. For every technique taken by itself

there apparently exist barriers that act to impede further progress,

barriers to the addition of new inventions—but these can sometimes

be cleared, as the sound barrier has been for aircraft. For the tech-

nical phenomenon in its ensemble, however, a limitless progress is

open. This progress, as Wiener has shown, is a necessity. Since

techniques, proportionally to their development, exhaust the re-

sources of nature, it is indispensable to fill the vacuum so created

by a more rapid technical progress. Only inventions perpetually

more numerous and automatically increasing can make good the

unheard-of expenditures and the irremediable consumption of raw

materials such as wood, coal, petroleum, and even water.



What is it that determines this progression today? We can no

longer argue that it is an economic or a social condition, or educa-

tion, or any other human factor. Essentially, the preceding tech-

nical situation alone is determinative. When a given technical

discovery occurs, it has followed almost of necessity certain other

discoveries. Human intervention in this succession appears only as

an incidental cause; and no one man can do tills by himself. But

anyone who is sufficiently up-to-date technically can make a valid

discovery which rationally follows its predecessors and rationally

heralds what is to follow.



Two points must be made more precise here. First, the tech-

nical consequences of a technical improvement are not necessarily

of a kind. Thus, a purely mechanical discovery may have repercus-

sions in the domain of social techniques or in that of organizational

techniques. For example, machines that use perforated cards affect

statistics and the organization of certain business enterprises. Con*



The Technological Society	(91



versely, some kind of social technique (for instance, full employ-

ment) may entail an improvement in the techniques of economic

production.



Here we note the interdependence of techniques which is stated

in the second law of self-augmentation: technical progress tends to

be brought about according to a geometric progression. A technical

discovery has repercussions and entails progress in several branches

of technique and not merely in one. Moreover, techniques combine

with one another, and the more given techniques there are to be

combined, the more combinations are possible. Thus, almost with-

out deliberate will, by a simple combination of new data, incessant

discoveries take place everywhere; and whole fields are opened up

to technique because of the meeting of several currents. Material

techniques of communication, psychological techniques, commer-

cial techniques, techniques of authoritarian government, all com-

bine to produce the important phenomenon of propaganda, which

represents a new technique independent of all the rest and neces-

sarily produced as a consequence of the preceding phenomena.



This second law of self-augmentation explains a characteristic of

the technical movement which has engaged the attention of con-

temporary sociologists. This is the unevenness of technical develop-

ment. Enormous disparities exist not only in the various global areas

of technical expansion but also in each field within the various sec-

tors. Technique progresses more rapidly in one branch than in

another—and certain retrogressions are always possible. To Franlcel

this unevenness of development is the key to the disturbances of

equilibrium and the social difficulties that the technical phenom-

enon provokes. According to Frankel, if all branches evolved in the

same rhythm, there would be no problem. FrankeFs view, certainly

too simple, is probably not inexact. However, it explains little. In

fact, these clashing rhythms cannot be altered because of tech-

nical automatism.



Fourastie is right in arguing that technical progress is unpredict-

able. It cannot be known with certainty even a short time in advance

in what quarter the new technical invention will be produced,

precisely because such inventions are, for the most part, the result

of self-augmentation. (Of course, a distinction must be made be-

tween invention and discovery.) Short of halting progress by force



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



9*)



in an advanced sector, there are no means of bringing these rhythms

back into harmony; and the role of the individual is progressively

weakened.



The final point to make in discussing self-augmentation is that

technique, in its development, poses primarily technical problems

which consequently can be resolved only by technique. The present

level of technique brings on new advances, and these in turn add to

existing technical difficulties and technical problems, which de-

mand further advances still. This is a concrete problem in town

planning. A large city supposes a concentration of the means of

transport, air control, traffic organization, and so on. Each of these

permits the city to grow even larger and promotes new technical

advances. For example, to make housework easier, garbage-disposal

units have been put into use which allow the garbage to run off

through the kitchen sinks. The result is enormous pollution of the

rivers. It is then necessary to find some new means of purifying the

rivers so that water can be used for drinking. A great quantity of

oxygen is required for bacteria to destroy these organic materials.

And how shall we oxygenate rivers? This is an example of the way

in which technique engenders itself.



The mechanization of administrative work in business offices

raises the problem of a necessarily different kind of organization.

It is not merely a question of replacing human beings with machines

or of speeding up the work (of bookkeeping, for example), but

rather of effecting operations of a new type which must be inte-

grated into a new kind of organization. For example, the organiza-

tion of the whole system of inventory analysis (with its four func-

tions of entering, grouping, totaling, and comparing) becomes

necessary. An ensemble of new techniques must be elaborated with-

out which the machine in question would be good for nothing,

resulting only in what Mas terms “pseudo-systematization,*



The implications of self-augmentation become clearer: the in-

dividual’s role is less and less important in technical evolution.

The more factors there are, the more readily they combine and the

more evident is the urgent need for each technical advance.

Advance for its own sake becomes proportionately greater and

the expression of human autonomy proportionately feebler.



Human beings are, indeed, always necessary. But literally anyone



The Technological Society	(	9	3



can do the job, provided he is trained to it. Henceforth, men will be

able to act only in virtue of their commonest and lowest nature,

and not in virtue of what they possess of superiority and individ-

uality. The qualities which technique requires for its advance are

precisely those characteristics of a technical order which do not

represent individual intelligence. And here we enter into another

area, the nature of the technician.



In this decisive evolution, the human being does not play a part.

Technical elements combine among themselves, and they do so

more and more spontaneously. In the future, man will apparently

be confined to the role of a recording device; he will note the effects

of techniques upon one another, and register the results.



A whole new kind of spontaneous action is taking place here, and

we know neither its laws nor its ends. In this sense it is possible to

speak of the “reality” of technique—with its own substance, its own

particular mode of being, and a life independent of our power of

decision. The evolution of techniques then becomes exclusively

causal; it loses all finality. This is what economists such as Alfred

Sauvy mean when they say that “by a slow reversal . . . produc-

tion is more and more determined by the wishes of individuals in

their capacity as producers, than by their decisions as consumers."

In reality, it is not the “wishes” of the “producers" which control,

but the technical necessity of production which forces itself on the

consumers. Anything and everything which technique is able to

produce is produced and accepted by the consumer. The belief

that the human producer is still master of production is a dangerous

illusion.



Technique is organized as a closed world. It utilizes what the

mass of men do not understand. It is even based on human igno-

rance. As Charles Camichel says: “The worker cannot understand

the workings of modern industry.” The individual, in order to make

use of technical instruments, no longer needs to know about his

civilization. And no single technician dominates the whole com-

plex any longer. The bond that unites the fragmentary actions and

disjointedness of individuals, co-ordinating and systematizing their

work, is no longer a human one, but the internal laws of technique.

The human hand no longer spans the complex of means, nor does

the human brain synthesize man’s acts. Only the intrinsic monism



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



94)



of technique assures cohesion between human means and acts.

Technique reigns alone, a blind force and more clear-sighted than

the best human intelligence.



This phenomenon of self-augmentation gives technique a

strangely harsh aspect. It resembles nothing other than itself. What-

ever the domain to which it is applied, man or God, technique

simply is; it undergoes no modifications in the movement which

is its being and essence. It is the only locus where form and

being are identical. It is only a form, but everything conforms to it.

Here technique assumes the peculiar characteristics which make it

a thing apart. A precise and well-defined boundary surrounds it:

there is that which is technique, and there is everything else, which

is not. Whoever passes this boundary and enters into technique is

constrained to adopt its characteristics. Technique modifies what-

ever it touches, but it is itself untouchable. Nothing in nature, or in

social or human life, is comparable with it. The intelligence of art or

war comes nowhere near that of technique, no more than does the

industry of ants or bees. A hybrid but not sterile being, and capable

of self-generation, technique traces its own limits and fashions its

own image.



Whatever the adaptations nature or circumstances demand of it,

technique remains self-identical in its characteristics and its course.

Hindrances seem to compel it to become, not something else, but

even more itself. Everything it assimilates strengthens it in its

traits. There is no hope of seeing it change into a fine and gracious

being: it is neither Caliban nor Ariel, but it has been able to take

Ariel and Caliban into the unconditioned circles of its universal

method.



Monism* The technical phenomenon, embracing all the

separate techniques, forms a whole. This monism of technique was

already obvious to us when we determined, on the basis of the

evidence, that the technical phenomenon presents, every-

where and essentially, the same characteristics. It is useless to look

for differentiations. They do exist, but only secondarily. The

common features of the technical phenomenon are so sharply



* The French word is unicttt or instcabUiti. I have adopted “monism” as the Eng-

lish equivalent. “Holism” might have been betfer. In any case, the accumulated

philosophical baggage of both these terms must be rejected and the meaning of the

term understood contextually. (Trans.)



The Technological Society	(95



drawn that it is easy to discern that which is the technical phenom-

enon and that which is not. The difficulties experienced in the study

of technique arise partly from the method to be used and partly

from terminology. They do not arise from the phenomenon itself,

which is eminently simple to fix.



To analyze these common features is tricky, but it is simple to

grasp them. Just as there are principles common to things as dif-

ferent as a wireless set and an internal-combustion engine, so the

organization of an office and the construction of an aircraft have

certain identical features. This identity is the primary mark of that

thoroughgoing unity which makes the technical phenomenon a

single essence despite the extreme diversity of its appearances.



As a corollary, it is impossible to analyze this or that element out

of it—a truth which is today particularly misunderstood. The great

tendency of all persons who study techniques is to make distinc-

tions. They distinguish between the different elements of technique,

maintaining some and discarding others. They distinguish between

technique and the use to which it is put. These distinctions are

completely invalid and show only that he who makes them has

understood nothing of the technical phenomenon. Its parts are

ontologically tied together; in it, use is inseparable from being.



It is common practice, for example, to deny the unity of the

technical complex so as to be able to fasten one's hopes on one or

another of its branches. Mumford gives a remarkable example of

this when he contrasts the grandeur of the printing press with the

horridness of the newspaper. “On the one side there is the gigantic

printing press, a miracle of fine articulation ... On the other the

content of the papers themselves recording the most vulgar and

elementary emotional states . . . There the impersonal, the co-

operative, the objective; here the limited, the subjective, the recalci-

trant, the ego, violent and full of hate and fear, etc. . . .” Unfortu-

nately, it did not occur to Mumford to ask whether the content of

our newspapers is not really necessitated by the social form imposed

on man by the machine.



This content is not the product of chance or of some economic

form. It is the result of precise psychological and psychoanalytical

techniques. These techniques have as their goal the bringing to the

individual of that which is indispensable for his satisfaction in the

conditions in which the machine has placed him, of inhibiting in



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



9$)



him the sense of revolution, of subjugating him by flattering him.

In other w ords, journalistic content is a technical complex expressly

intended to adapt the man to the machine.



It is certain that a press of high intellectual tone and great moral

elevation either would not be read (and then one would scarcely

see the wherefore of these beautiful machines) or would provoke

in the long run a violent reaction against every form of technical

society, including the machine. This reaction would come about not

because of the ideas such a press would disseminate, but because

the reader would no longer find in it the indispensable instrument

for releasing his repressed passions.



In a sound evaluation of the problem, it ought never to be said:

on the one side, technique; on the other, the abuse of it. There are

different techniques which correspond to different necessities. But

all techniques are inseparably united. Everything hangs together

in the technical world, as it does in the mechanical; in both, the

advisability of the isolated means must be distinguished from the

advisability of the mechanical "complex.* The claims of the me-

chanical "complex" must prevail when, for example, a machine too

costly or overrefined threatens to wreck the ensemble.



There is an attractive notion which would apparently resolve

all technical problems: that it is not the technique that is wrong, but

the use men make of it. Consequently, if the use is changed, there

will no longer be any objection to the technique.



I shall return more than once to this conception. Let us examine a

single aspect of it now. First, it manifestly rests on the confusion

between machine and technique. A man can use his automobile to

take a trip or to kill his neighbors. But the second use is not a use; it

is a crime. The automobile was not created to kill people, so the fact

is nut important I know, of course, that killing people is not what

those w!ho explain things in this way have in mind. They prefer to

say that man orients his pursuits in the direction of good and not of

evil. They mean that technique seeks to invent rational therapies

and not poison gases, useful sources of energy and not atomic

bombs, commercial and not military aircraft, etc. This leads them

straight back to man—man who decides in what direction to orient

his researches. (Must it not be, then, that man is becoming better?)

But all this is an error. It resolutely refuses to recognize technical

reality. It supposes, to begin with, that men orient technique in a



The Technological Society	(	9 7



given direction for moral, and consequently nontechnical, reasons.

But a principal characteristic of technique (which we shall

study at length) is its refusal to tolerate moral judgments. It is

absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its

domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral

and immoral use. It tends, on the contrary, to create a completely

independent technical morality.



Here, then, is one of the elements of weakness of this point of

view. It does not perceive technique's rigorous autonomy with

respect to morals; it does not see that the infusion of some more or

less vague sentiment of human welfare cannot alter it. Not even the

moral conversion of the technicians could make a difference. At

best, they would cease to be good technicians.



This attitude supposes further that technique evolves with some

end in view, and that this end is human good. Technique, as I

believe I have shown, is totally irrelevant to this notion and pursues

no end, professed or unprofessed. It evolves in a purely causal

way: the combination of preceding elements furnishes the new

technical elements. There is no purpose or plan that is being pro-

gressively realized. There is not even a tendency toward human

ends. We are dealing with a phenomenon blind to the future, in a

domain of integral causality. Hence, to pose arbitrarily some goal or

other, to propose a direction for technique, is to deny technique and

divest it of its character and its strength.



There is a final argument against this position. It was said that

the use made of technique is bad. But this assertion has no meaning

at all. As I have pointed out, a number of uses can always be made

of the machine, but only one of them is the technical use. The use of

the automobile as a murder weapon does not represent the tech-

nical use, that is, the one best way of doing something. Technique is

a means with a set of rules for the game. It is a “method of being

used” which is unique and not open to arbitrary choice; we gain no

advantage from the machine or from organization if it is not used as

it ought to be. There is but one method for its use, one possibility.

Lacking this, it is not a technique. Technique is in itself a method

of action, which is exactly what a use means. To say of such a

technical means that a bad use has been made of it is to say that no

technical use has been made of it, that it has not been made to

yield what it could have yielded and ought to have yielded. The



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



9*)



driver who uses his automobile carelessly makes a bad use of it.

Such use, incidentally, has nothing to do with the use which

moralists wish to ascribe to technique. Technique is a use. Moralists

wish to apply another use, with other criteria. What they wish, to be

precise, is that technique no longer be technique. Under the cir-

cumstances, there are no further significant problems.



There is no difference at all between technique and its use.

The individual is faced with an exclusive choice, either to use the

technique as it should be used according to the technical rules, or

not to use it at all. It is impossible to use it otherwise than according

to the technical rules.



Unfortunately, men today accept this reality only with difficulty.

Thus, when Mumford makes the statement: “The army is the

ideal form towards which a purely mechanical industrial system

must tend,” he is unable to restrain himself from adding: “But the

result is not ideal.” What is the “ideal” doing here? The ideal is not

the problem. The problem is solely to know whether this mode of

organization responds to technical criteria. Mumford is able to

show that it is nothing of the kind, because he limits techniques to

machines. But if he were to accept the role of human techniques in

the organization of the army he could account for the fact that the

army indeed remains the irreproachable model of a technical

organization, and its value has nothing to do with an ideal. It is

infantile to wish to submit the machine to the criterion of the ideal.



It is also held that technique could be directed toward that which

ia puMlive, constructive, and enriching, omitting that which is

negative, destructive, and impoverishing. In demagogic formula-

tion, techniques of peace must be developed and techniques of

war rejected. In a less simple-minded version, it is held that means

ought lo be suughi which palliate, without increasing, the draw-

backs of technique. Could not atomic engines and atomic power

have been discovered without creating the bomb? To reason thus is

to separate technical elements with no justification. Techniques of

peace and alongside them other and different techniques of war

simply do not exist, despite what good folk think to the contrary.



The organization of an army comes to resemble more and more

that of a great industrial plant. It is the technical phenomenon

presenting a formidable unity in all its parts, which are inseparable.

The fact that the atomic bomb was created before the atomic



The Technological Society	(99



engine was not essentially the result of the perversity of technical

men. Nor was it solely the attitude of the state which determined

this order. The action of the state was certainly the deciding factor

in atomic research (I shall take up this point later). Research was

greatly accelerated by the necessities of war and consequently

directed toward a bomb. If the state had not been oriented toward

the ends of war, it would not have devoted so much money to

atomic research. All this caused an undeniable factor of orientation

to intervene. But if the state had not promoted such efforts, it would

have been the whole complex of atomic research which would have

been halted without distinction between the uses of war and

peace.



If atomic research is encouraged, it is obligatory to pass through

the stage of the atomic bomb; the bomb represents by far the sim-

plest utilization of atomic energy. The problems involved in the

military use of atomic energy are infinitely more simple to resolve

than are those involved in its industrial use. For industrial use, all

the problems involved in the bomb must be solved, and in addition

certain others, a fact corroborated by J. Robert Oppenheimer in

his Paris lecture of 1958. The experience of Great Britain between

1955 and i960 in producing electricity of nuclear origin is very

significant in this respect.



It was, then, necessary to pass through the period of research

which culminated in the bomb before proceeding to its normal

sequel, atomic motive power. The atomic-bomb period is a transi-

tory, but unfortunately necessary, stage in the general evolution

of this technique. In the interim period represented by the bomb,

the possessor, finding himself with so powerful an instrument, is

led to use it. Why? Because everything which is technique is

necessarily used as soon as it is available, without distinction of good

or evil. This is the principal law of our age. We may quote here

Jacques Soustelle’s well-known remark of May, i960, in reference

to the atomic bomb. It expresses the deep feeling of us all: “Since

it was possible, it was necessaryReally a master phrase for all

technical evolution.



Even an author as well disposed toward the machine as Mumford

recognizes that there is a tendency to utilize all inventions whether

there is need for them or not. “Our grandparents used sheet iron

for walls although they knew that iron is a good conductor of



2 O 0 )	THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



heat . . . The introduction of anesthetics led to the performance

of superfluous operations. . . * To say that it could be otherwise

is simply to make an abstraction of man.



Another example is the police. The police have perfected to an

unheard of degree technical methods both of research and of action.

Everyone is delighted with this development because it would seem

to guarantee an increasingly efficient protection against criminals.

Let us put aside for the moment the problem of police corruption

and concentrate on the technical apparatus, which, as I have

noted, is becoming extremely precise. Will this apparatus be ap-

plied only to criminals? We know that this is not the case; and we

are tempted to react by saying that it is the state which applies this

technical apparatus without discrimination. But there is an error

of perspective here. The instrument tends to be applied everywhere

it can be applied. It functions without discrimination—because it

exists without discrimination. The techniques of the police, which

are developing at an extremely rapid tempo, have as their neces-

sary end the transformation of the entire nation into a concentra-

tion camp. This is no perverse decision on the part of some party or

government. To be sure of apprehending criminals, it is necessary

that everyone be supervised. It is necessary to know exactly what

every citizen is up to, to know his relations, his amusements, etc.

And the state is increasingly in a position to know these things.



This does not imply a reign of terror or of arbitrary arrests. The

best technique is one which makes itself felt the least and which

represents the least burden. But every citizen must be thoroughly

known to the police and must live under conditions of discreet

surveillance. All this results from the perfection of technical meth-

ods.



The police cannot attain technical perfection unless they have

total control. And, as Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt has remarked, this

total control has both an objective and a subjective side. Sub-

jectively, control satisfies the desire for power and certain sadistic

tendencies. But the subjective aspect is not the dominant one. It is

not the major aspect, the expression of what is to come. In reality,

the objective aspect of control—more and more, that is to say, the

pure technique which creates a milieu, an atmosphere, an environ-

ment, and even a model of behavior in social relations—dominates

more and more. The police must move in the direction of anticipat-



The Technological Society	(101



ing and forestalling crime. Eventually intervention will be useless.

This state of affairs can come about in two ways: first, by constant

surveillance, to the end that noxious intentions be known in advance

and the police be able to act before the premeditated crime takes

place; second, by the climate of social conformity which we have

mentioned. This goal presupposes the paternal surveillance of every

citizen and, in addition, the closest possible tie-in with all other

techniques—administrative, organizational, and psychological. The

technique of police control has value only if the police are in close

contact with the trade unions and the schools. In particular, it is

allied with propaganda. Wherever the phenomenon is observed,

this connection exists. Propaganda itself cannot be efficient unless

it brings into play the whole state organization, and particularly the

police power. Conversely, police power is a genuine technique only

when it is supplemented by propaganda, which plays a leading role

in the psychological environment necessary to the completeness of

the police power. But propaganda must also teach acceptance of

what the police power is and what it can do. It must make the police

power palatable, justify its actions, and give it its psychosociological

structure among the masses of the people.



All this is equally true for dictatorial regimes in which police

and propaganda concentrate on terror, and for democratic regimes

in which the motion pictures, for example, show the good offices

of the police and procure it the friendly feeling of the public. The

vicious circle mentioned by Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt (past terror

accentuates present propaganda, and present propaganda paves

the way for future terror) is as true of democratic as of dictatorial

regimes, if the term terror is replaced by efficiency.



This type of police organization is not an arbitrary prospect. It is

maintained by every authoritarian government, where every citizen

is regarded as a suspect ignorant of his own capabilities. It is the

tendency in the United States, and we are beginning to see the first

elements of it in France. The administration of the French police

was oriented, in 1951, toward an organization of the system “in

depth.” This took place, for example, at the level of the Record

Office. Certain elements of this are simple and well known: finger-

print files, records of firearms, application of statistical methods

which allow the police to obtain in a minimum of time the most

varied kinds of information and to know from day to day the current



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



102)



state of criminality in all its forms. Other elements are somewhat

more complicated and new. For example, a punched-card mechan-

ical index system (Recherches) has been installed in the Criminal

Division. This system offers four hundred possible combinations

and permits investigations to begin with any element of the

crime: hour of commission, nature, objects stolen, weapons used,

etc. The combination obviously does not give the solution but a

series of approximations.



The most important item in this catalogue of police techniques is

the creation of the so-called “suspect files,” which show whether the

police ever suspected any individual for any reason or at any time

whatsoever, even though no legal document or procedure ever

existed against him (from the press conference of M. Baylot, Pre-

fect of Police, 1951). This means that any citizen who, once in his

life, had anything to do with the police, even for noncriminal rea-

sons, is put under observation—a fact which ought to affect, speak-

ing conservatively, half the adult male population. It is obvious

that these lists are only a point of departure, because it will be

tempting, as well as necessary, to complete the files with all observa-

tions which may have been collected.



Finally, this technical conception of the police supposes the

institution of concentration camps, not in their dramatic aspects,

but in their administrative aspects. The Nazi's use of concentration

camps has warped our perspectives. The concentration camp is

based on two ideas which derive directly from the technical con-

ception of the police: preventive detention (which completes pre-

vention), and re-education. It is not because the use of these terms

has not corresponded to reality that we feel it necessary to refuse to

see in the concentration camp a very advanced form of the system.

Nor is it because the so-called methods of re-education have, on the

whole, been methods of destruction that we feel we must consider

such a concept of “re-education” an odious joke. The further we

v advance, the more will the police be considered responsible for the

re-education of social misfits, a goal that is a part of the very order

which they are charged with protecting.



We are experiencing at present the justification of this develop-

ment. It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result

of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The

whole structure of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mo-



The Technological Society	(	2 03



bilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the

more do we require order, which today represents the highest value.

To deny this is to deny the whole course of modern times. This

order has nothing spontaneous in it. It is rather a patient accretion

of a thousand technical details. And each of us derives a feeling of

security from every one of the improvements which make this

order more efficient and the future safer. Order receives our com*

plete approval; even when we are hostile to the police, we are, by a

strange contradiction, partisans of order. In the blossoming of

modern discoveries and of our own power, a vertigo has taken hold

of us which makes us feel this need to an extreme degree. After all,

it is the police who are charged, from the external point of view,

with insuring this order which covers organization and morals. How

then can we possibly deny to the police indispensable improve-

ments in their methods? ‘



We in France are still in the preparatory phase of this develop-

ment, but the organization of police power has been pushed very

far in Canada and New Zealand, to take two examples. Technical

necessity imposes the national concentration camp (which, I must

point out, does not involve the suffering usually associated with it).

Let us take another example. A new machine of great productive

power put into circulation "releases” a great quantity of work; it

replaces many workers. This is an inevitable consequence of tech-

nique. In the crude order of things, these workers are simply thrown

out of work. Capitalism is blamed for this state of affairs and we

are told that technique itself is not responsible for technological

unemployment and that the establishment of socialism would set

things right. The capitalist replies: “Technological unemployment

always dies out of itself. For example, it creates certain new activi-

ties which will in the long run create employment for qualified

workers,” This appears to be a dreadful prospect because it implies

a readaptation in time and a more or less lengthy period of un-

employment. But what does socialism propose? That the “liberated”

worker will be used somewhere else and in some other capacity.

In the Soviet Union the worker is either adapted to a new skill

by means of vocational training or he is sent to another part of the

country. In the Beveridge Plan the worker is employed wherever

the state opens a plant of any sort. This socialist solution involves

readaptation in space. But this solution, too, appears to be com-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



104)



pletely alien to human nature. Man is not a mere package to be

moved about, an object to be molded and applied wherever there is

need. These two forms of readaptation, the only ones possible,

are both inhumane. The New Work Code promulgated in the

(East) German Democratic Republic in November, i960, shows

this inhumanity in operation in the socialist camp. And none of

these adaptations can be separated from the machine which re-

places human labor. They are its necessary and inevitable conse-

quence. Of course, idealists will speak of the reduction of the work

week. But this reduction can only be effected when equivalent

technical improvements are produced in all fields of work. Accord-

ing to Colin Clark, it seems that this reduction, too, must “ceiling

out** before long. But this consideration passes over into the area

of economics.



I could cite innumerable examples, but the ones I have given

suffice to show that technique in itself (and not the use made of it,

or its non-necessary consequences) leads to a certain amount of

suffering and to social scourges which cannot be completely sepa-

rated from it. This is its very mechanism.



Of course, a technique can be abandoned when it proves to have

evil effects which were not provided for. From then on, there will

be an improvement in the technique. A characteristic example is

furnished by J. de Castro in The Geography of Hunger. De Castro

shows in detail, with regard to Brazil, what was already known

superficially about other countries, that certain techniques of ex-

ploitation have proved disastrous. According to de Castro, certain

regions were deforested in order to grow sugar cane. But only the

immediate technical productivity was considered. In a further

work, de Castro seeks to show that the hunger problem was created



aODlicatiO"	ormil-oltet-	polnniali*:!-	tn	fl(Tr{ntltur#».



J ir-------	—-------r----------------------j---------- o-------



His reasoning, however, is correct only to a very limited extent. It

is true that when an agriculture of diversified crops is replaced by

a single-crop economy for commercial ends (tobacco and sugar

cane), capitalism is to blame. But most often crop diversification is

not disturbed. What happens is that new areas are brought under

cultivation, producing a population increase and also a unilateral

utilization of the labor forces. And this is less a capitalist than a

technical fact. If the possibility of industrializing agriculture exists,

why not use it? Any engineer, agronomist, or economist of a hun-



The Technological Society	(i o $



dred years ago would have agreed that bringing uncultivated

lands under cultivation constituted a great advance. The applica-

tion of European agricultural techniques represented an incom-

parable forward step, when compared, for example, to Indian

methods. But it involved certain unforeseen consequences: the re-

sulting deforestation modified hydrographic features, the rivers

became torrents, and the drainage waters provoked catastrophic

erosion. The topsoil was completely carried away and agriculture

became impossible. The fauna, dependent on the existence of the

forest, disappeared. In this way, the food-producing possibilities of

vast regions vanished. The same situation is developing as a result

of the cultivation of peanuts in Senegal, of cotton in the South of

the United States, and so on. None of this represents, as is com-

monly said, a poor application of technique—one guided by selfish

interest. It is simply technique. And if the situation is rectified “too

late” by the abandonment of the old technique, it will only be as a

consequence of some new technical advance. In any case, the first

step was inevitable; man can never foresee the totality of conse-

quences of a given technical action. History shows that every tech-

nical application from its beginnings presents certain unforeseeable

secondary effects which are much more disastrous than the lack of

the technique would have been. These effects exist alongside those

effects which were foreseen and expected and which represent

something valuable and positive.



Technique demands the most rapid possible application; the

problems of our day are evolving rapidly and require immediate

solutions. Modern man is held by the throat by certain demands

which will not be resolved simply by the passage of time. The

quickest possible counter-thrust, often a matter of life or death, is

necessary. When the parry specific to the attack is found, it is used.

It would be foolish not to use the available means. But there is

never time to estimate all the repercussions. And, in any case, they

are most often unforeseeable. The more we understand the inter-

relation of all disciplines and the interaction of the instruments,

the less time there is to measure these effects accurately.



Moreover, technique demands the most immediate application

because it is so expensive. It must “pay off,” in money, prestige,

or force (depending on whether the regime is capitalist, Com-

munist, or Fascist, respectively). There is no time for precautions



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



106)



when the distribution of dividends or the salvation of the prole-

tariat is at stake. Nor can we permit ourselves to say that these

motives are no affair of technique. If none of them existed, there

would be no money for technical research and there would be no

technique. Technique cannot be considered in itself, apart from its

actual modes of existence.



We are brought back, then, to serious facts of this order: in

certain agricultural research in England, antiparasitic agents called

systemics were applied. An injection was made into a fruit tree,

which as a consequence was infected with the agent from its

roots to its leaves. Every parasite died. But nothing is known of the

effects on the fruit, or of the effects on man, and in the long run of

the effects on the tree. All that is known is that the agent is not an

immediate deadly poison for the consumer. Such products are al-

ready commercially available, and it is probable that they will

shortly be used on a large scale. What we have said about systemics

holds for the specific insecticide, D.D.T. It was announced origi-

nally that this insecticide was completely harmless for warm-

blooded animals. Subsequently, D.D.T. was widely used. But it

was noted in 1951 that D.D.T. in fatty solution (oily or otherwise)

is actually a poison for warm-blooded animals and causes a whole

complex of disturbances and diseases, in particular, rickets. This

fatty solution may be produced entirely by accident, as when cows

treated with this chemical produce milk containing D.D.T. Rickets

has been detected in calves nourished with such milk. And several

international medical congresses since 1956 have drawn attention

to the grave danger to children.



But the real question is not the question of error. Errors are

always possible. Two facts alone concern us: it is impossible to

foresee ail the consequences of a technical action; and technique

demands that everything it produces be brought into a domain that

affects the entire public.



The weight of technique is such that no obstacle can stop it. And

every technical advance is matched by a negative reverse side. An

excellent study of the effect of petroleum explorations in the Sahara

(1958) concludes with the observation that the most serious prob-

lem is the increase in the wretchedness of the local population. The

causes of this growing misery, among others, are: the supplanting of

caravan traffic by motor vehicles; the disappearance of the date



The Technological Society	(107



palms (diseased through widespread chemical wastes); and the

disappearance of cereal grains because of nonmaintenance of the

irrigation works. This complex seems to represent a typical example.



The human being is delivered helpless, in respect to life’s most

important and most trivial affairs, to a power which is in no sense

under his control. For there can be no question today of man’s con-

trolling the milk he drinks or the bread he eats, any more than of his

controlling his government. The same holds for the development of

great industrial plants, transport systems, motion pictures, and so

on. It is only after a period of dubious experimentation that a tech-

nique is refined and its secondary consequences are modified

through a series of technical improvements. Henceforth, someone

will say, it will be possible to tame the monster and separate the

good results of a technical operation from the bad. That may be.

But, in the same framework, the new technical advance will in its

turn produce further secondary and unpredictable effects which are

no less disastrous than the preceding ones (aithough they will be of

another kind). De Castro declares that the new techniques of soil

cultivation presuppose more and more powerful state control, with

its police power, its ideology, and its propaganda machinery. This

is the price we must pay.



William Vogt, surveying the same problem, is still more precise:

in order to avoid famine, resulting from the systematic destruction

of the topsoil, we must apply the latest technical methods. But con-

servation will not be put into practice spontaneously by individuals;

yet, these methods must be applied globally or they will not amount

to anything. Who can do this? Vogt, like all good Americans, asserts

that he detests the authoritarian police state. However, he agrees

that only state controls can possibly produce the desired results. He

extols the efforts made by the liberal administration of the United

States in this respect, but he agrees that the United States continues

“to lose ground literally and figuratively,” simply because the

methods of American agricultural administration are not authori-

tarian enough.



What measures are to be recommended? The various soils must

be classified as to possible ways to cultivate them without destroy-

ing them. Authoritarian methods must be applied in order (a) to

evacuate the population and to prevent it from working the im-

periled soil; and (b) to grow only certain products on certain type*



108)	THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



of soil. The peasant can no longer be allowed freedom in these

respects. This evolution is to be facilitated by centralization of the

great land holdings. In Latin America there are today from 20 to 40

million ecologically displaced persons, persons occupying lands

which ought not to be under cultivation. They are living on hillsides

from which it is absolutely necessary to drive them if the means of

existence of their countries are to be saved from destruction. It will

be difficult and costly to relocate these people, but Latin America

has no choice. If she does not solve this problem, she will be re-

duced to the most miserable standard of living.



All experts on agricultural questions are in fact in fundamental

agreement De Castro (although hostile to the ideas of Vogt) and

Dumont (critical of de Castro on certain points) come to the con-

clusion that only strict planning on a world scale can solve the prob-

lems of agriculture, and that only human relocation and collective

distribution of wealth can solve the problem of famine. This can

only mean that man, if he is to improve the traditional agricultural

techniques and be rid of their drawbacks, will be obliged to apply

extremely rigorous administrative and police techniques. Here again

we have a good example of the interconnection of different elements

and of the unpredictability of the secondary effects.



It was believed for a long time that the TVA was a praiseworthy

response to certain problems raised by technique. Today, however,

certain major flaws have become apparent. For example, the correct

application of methods of reforestation and animal reproduction

were not understood. Flood control was not carried out by retention

of the water in the soil but by submerging permanently a good part

of the lands which have been saved to protect others. Man, we

repeat, is never able to foresee the totality of effects of his tech-

nique. No one could have foreseen that regulating the Colorado

River for irrigation purposes would lead the Pacific Ocean to en-

croach upon the coast of California, or that it would endanger

the valleys (which had been “regulated”) by the removal of up to

500 tons a day of sand and rock. It is likewise impossible to foresee

the effect of techniques intended to control the weather, dispel

clouds, precipitate rain or snow, and so on. In another area,

Professor Lemaire, in a study of narcotic drugs, shows that tech-

nique permits the manufacture of synthetic narcotics with greater

and greater ease and in increasing quantities. But, according to



The Technological Society	(109



Lemaire, the control of these drugs is thereby rendered more and

more difficult because "we cannot predict whether they will or

will not be dangerous. The only proof is their habitual use by

addicts. But to obtain this proof requires) ears of experience."



There is scarcely need to recall that universal famine, the most

serious danger known to humanity,* is caused by the advance of

certain medical techniques which have brought with them good and

evil inextricably mixed. This is not a question of good or bad use.

No more so is the problem, posed by atomic techniques, of the dis-

posal of atomic waste. Atomic explosions are not the real problem.

The real problem continues to be that of the disposal of the

ceaselessly accumulating waste materials, despite the reassuring

but unfortunately partisan explanations of some atomic scientists.

The International Agency for Atomic Energy recognized, in 1959,

that these wastes represent a deadly peril and that there is no sure

way of avoiding it, except perhaps by means of the difficult process

of “vitrification” being undertaken in Canada. And all this involves

the peaceful use of the atom!



In every case, what can really be foreseen more or less clearly is

the need of state intervention to control the effects of technical

applications. But by the time a technique is modified in the light

of these effects, the evil has already been done. When it is proposed

to "choose” between effects, it is always too late. It is doubtless still

possible to modify any given element, but only at the price of

secondary repercussions. Again, it is doubtless possible to produce,

by means of rational exploitation of natural resources, enough food

to nourish five billion human beings. But this can be accomplished

only at the price of forced labor and a new kind of slavery. What-

ever point we choose to examine, we always perceive this inter-

relation of techniques. In i960, the World Congress for the Study of

Nutrition considered the problem of how modem nutrition is viti-

ated by the use of chemical products which are themselves sig-

nificant contributory causes of the so-called diseases of civilization

(cancer, cardiovascular illnesses, etc.). But the Congress's studies

indicate that the solution can no longer be a return to a "natural"

nutrition. On the contrary, a further step must be taken which

involves completely artificial alimentation, so-called rational ali-



* That this problem can be solved seem* doubtful to most recent congresses, the

Vevey Congress of i960 among them.



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OP TECHNIQUE



110 )



mentation. It will not be sufficient merely to control grains, meat,

butter, and so forth. The stage at which this would have been

feasible has been passed. New technical methods must be found.

But can we be assured that this new alimentation will in its turn

present no danger?



Every rejection of a technique judged to be bad entails the appli-

cation of a new technique, the value of which is estimated from the

point of view of efficiency alone. But we are always unaware of the

more remote repercussions. History shows us that these are seldom

positive, at least when we consider history as a whole instead of

contenting ourselves with examining disconnected phenomena such

as the population increase, the prolongation of the average life

span, or the shortening of the work week. These are symptoms

which perhaps would have meaning if man were merely an animal,

but which have no conclusive significance if man is something more

than a production machine.



However, it is not my intention to show that technique will end in

disaster. On the contrary, technique has only one principle: efficient

ordering. Everything, for technique, is centered on the concept of

order. This explains the development of moral and political doc-

trines at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Everything which

represented an ordering principle was taken in deadly earnest. At

the same time the means destined to elaborate this order were

exploited as never before. Order and peace were required for the

development of the individual techniques (after society had

reached the necessary stage of disintegration). Peace is indispensa-

ble to the triumph of industrialization. It will be hastily concluded

from this that industrialization will promote peace. But, as always,

logical deductions falsify reality, j. U. Nef has shown admirably

that industrialization cannot act otherwise than to promote wars.

This is no accident, but rather an organic relation. It holds not only

because of the direct influence of industrialization on the means of

destruction but also because of its influence on the means of ex-

istence. Technical progress favors war, according to Nef, because

(a) the new weapons have rendered more difficult the distinction

between offense and defense; and (b) they have enormously re-

duced the pain and anguish implied in the act of killing.



On another plane, the distinction between peaceful industry and

military industry is no longer possible. Every industry, every tech-



The Technological Society	(in



nique, however humane its intentions, has military value. “The

humanitarian scientist finds himself confronted by a new dilemma;

Must he look for ways to make people live longer so that they are

better able to destroy one another?” Nef has described all this

remarkably well. It is no longer a question of simple human be-

havior, but of technical necessity.



The technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a

way as to retain the good and reject the bad. It has a “mass” which

renders it monistic. To show this we have taken only the simplest,

and hence the most easily debatable, examples. To enable the

reader to grasp fully the reality of this monism, it would be neces-

sary to present every problem with all its implications and ramifi-

cations into other fields. The case of the police, for example, cannot

be considred merely within its specific confines; police technique

is closely connected with the techniques of propaganda, adminis-

tration, and even economics. Economics demands, in effect, an

increasing productivity; it is impossible to accept the nonproducers

into the body social—the loafers, the coupon-clippers, the social

misfits, and the saboteurs—none of these have any place. The police

must develop methods to put these useless consumers to work. The

problem is the same in a capitalist state (where the Communist is

the saboteur) and in a Communist state (where the saboteur is the

internationalist in the pay of capitalism).



The necessities and the modes of action of all these techniques

combine to form a whole, each part supporting and reinforcing the

others. They constitute a co-ordinated phenomenon, no element of

which can be detached from the others. It is an illusion, a perfectly

understandable one, to hope to be able to suppress the “bad” side

of technique and preserve the “good.” This belief means that the

essence of the technical phenomenon has not been grasped.



The Necessary Linking Together of Techniques. We have seen

how the two technical characteristics, self-augmentation and

monism, combine. Now we must consider the historical, necessary

linking up of all the different techniques. This analysis will complete

my discussion of these two characteristics.



Machine technique appeared after 1750. The technical state of

mind was first manifested in the application of the principles of

science. We already know how this necessity arose (it is emphasized

in all textbooks). The flying shuttle of 1733 made a greater pro-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



lii)



duction of yam necessary. But production was impossible without

a suitable machine. The response to this dilemma was the invention

of the spinning jenny by James Hargreaves. But then yam was

product in much greater quantities than could possibly be used

by the weavers. To solve this new problem, Cartwright manu-

factured his celebrated loom. In this series of events we see in its

simplest form the interaction that accelerates the development of

machines. Each new machine disturbs the equilibrium of pro-

duction; the restoration of equilibrium entails the creation of one

or more additional machines in other areas of operation.



Production becomes more and more complex. The combination

of machines within the same enterprisers a notable characteristic of

the nineteenth century. It is impossible, in effect, to have an isolated

machine. There must be adjunct machines, if not preparatory ones.

This need, which is not clearly evident in the textile industry (a

loom is relatively self-sufficient), is singularly well defined in the

metallurgical industry. Fabrication in this area consists of multiple

inseparable operations. For each of these operations, one or more

machines are needed. This gives rise to a complex enterprise which

demands the application of the organization of production. The

need for organization of machines is found even in the textile

industry. A large number of looms must be grouped together in

order to utilize the prime mover most effectively, since no indi-

vidual loom consumes very much energy. To obtain maximum yield,

machines cannot be disposed in a haphazard wav. Nor can produc-

tion take place irregularly. A plan must be followed in all technical

domains. And this plan, which becomes more and more inflexible in

proportion to increasing production, is the product of a technique

of organization and of operation.



Organizational technique was still very sketchy at the beginning

of the nineteenth century. But with the increase in the number of

manufactured products, new commercial methods had to be

created. Capital, labor, producers, and consumers had to be found.

Three new kinds of technique emerged: commercial, industrial,

and transportational. Commercial techniques developed at the

beginning of the nineteenth century with the same velocity as

industrial techniques. These commercial techniques exploited all

the old systems which had previously existed sporadically and



The Technological Society	( 113



without much vigor. Bills of exchange, banks, clearing houses,

double-entry bookkeeping, and the like, were further developed.



The need to distribute manufactured goods thus acted to produce

a powerful commercial technique, which, however, proved to be

incapable of assuring proper distribution. The accumulation of

capital (produced by the machine and also necessitated by it) be-

came the source of an international financial organization, with

its systems of great firms, insurance, credit, and the corporation

with limited liabilities. The corporation was indispensable in view

of die magnitude of the commercial traffic generated by sheer

concentration.



But the two systems, commercial and financial, were only able

to function at full capacity if they were in a position to dispose of

their merchandise at the most favorable point, as determined by

commercial techniques. This implied the rapid, regular, and certain

transport of merchandise. Hence, systems of transport had to be

assured if financial and commercial techniques were to be able to

operate. A new technique came into being, transport, which was

not a direct result of the machine. It was a separate branch; and

organization played a greater role in it than the machine itself (in

railway routes and timetables, problems of eminent domain, etc.).



At the period this technical torrent was emerging from industrial

enterprise, a crowd of human beings began to gather about the

machine. A great number of individuals were necessary to service

it; an equally great number were required to collect about it to com-

sume its products. The first great change consisted in forcing the

consumer to come to the machine, inasmuch as adequate means of

transportation were to come fifty years too late. With this develop-

ment came the hitherto unknown phenomenon of the big city.

At the beginning, the big city engendered no particular technique;

people were merely unhappy in it. But it soon appeared that mega-

lopolis represented a new and special kind of environment, calling

for special treatment. The technique of city planning made its ap-

pearance. At first, urban planning was only a clumsy kind of adap-

tation which was little concerned, for example, with slums (despite

the efforts of the utopian planners of the middle of the century).

Somewhat later, as big city life became for the most part intolera-

ble, techniques of amusement were developed. It became indis-



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



pensable to make urban suffering acceptable by furnishing amuse-

ments, a necessity which was to assure the rise, for example, of a

monstrous motion-picture industry.



This phase of development was still dominated by the machine,

and corresponded to what Mumford has called the paleotechnical

period. During this period the instruments of the power mentality

developed. It became apparent that mechanical improvements

alone do not suffice to yield socially valuable results. This was

clearly a period of transition in which inventions had not yet com-

pletely overthrown the older institutions. And they had not yet

touched human life, except indirectly. It was a period of disorder.

And the most glaring manifestation of this disorder was man's ex-

ploitation of man. This disorder, however, led to a strenuous search

for order, which developed first in the economic field. For some

time it had been possible to believe that the increasing flow of

merchandise would be absorbed automatically. But the illusions

of liberalism collapsed very quickly. Little by little, the liberal

system broke down before the profusion of goods which the ma-

chine blindly poured forth. It was inescapable that only technical

methods of distribution would be able to cope with the problems

created by technical methods of production. There was no way

around it. A mechanism of distribution and consumption was nec-

essary, as precise as the mechanism of production, which itself was

not yet sufficiently precise, merely because it was mechanical. It

was imperative that the different parts of the productive mecha-

nism be adjusted and that the goods produced correspond exactly

to the need, in quantity as well as in quality. It was no longer suffi-

cient to organize enterprise. The entire production had to be

organized in all its details. And if production were completely or-

ganized, there could be no question of allowing consumption

(which had, in the meantime, become mechanized) to operate

without its own world-wide organization. These logical interac-

tions, which emerged first on the national level, were soon found

on the international level as well.



The development of this mechanism inevitably implied the most

perfect possible economic technique. This economic technique in

turn would permit the utilization of new machines. Reciprocally,

certain other instruments would facilitate the improvement of the

economic technique. Moreover, nothing could be left to chance.



The Technological Society	(115



in this kind of organization; the labor supply in particular could not

be entrusted to the whim of the individual. Economic organization

presupposes a technique of labor. (The precise form of this tech-

nique is of little consequence to us here. We are interested only in

the principle.) Labor had to be systematized; it had to become

scientific. Thus, of necessity a new technique was added to the pre-

ceding ones. But at the same time it became mandatory to com-

pensate the workers for the fatigue generated by technical labor.

Here we meet again the necessity for additional mass amusement

—a necessity which the existence of the big city had already pro-

voked. The cycle was inevitable.



The whole edifice was constructed little by little, and all its indi-

vidual techniques were improved by mutual interaction. Before

long, however, the need for still another instrument appeared. Who

was to co-ordinate this multiplicity of techniques? Who was to

build the mechanism necessary to the new economic technique?

Who was to make binding the decisions necessary to service the

machines? The individual is not by himself rational enough to ac-

cept what is necessary to the machines. He rebels too easily. He

requires an agency to constrain him, and the state had to play this

role—but the state now could not be the incoherent, powerless, and

arbitrary state of tradition. It had to be an effective state, equal to

the functioning of the economic regime and in control of every-

thing, to the end that machines which had developed at random

should become “coherent.” To this end, the state itself must be

coherent. Thus, the techniques of the state—military, police, ad-

ministrative, and political—made their appearance. Without them,

all the rest would have been no more than faint hopes unable to at-

tain maximum development. They intermingled, necessitating one

another, and all of them necessitated by the economy.



It soon became evident that such external action was insufficient.

A great effort was required of the individual, and this effort he

could not make unless he was genuinely convinced, not merely

constrained. He must be made to yield his heart and will, as he had

yielded his body and brain. And so the techniques of propaganda,

education, and psychic manipulation came to reinforce the others.

Without them, man could scarcely have been equal to his organiza-

tions and his machines. Without them, technique could not have

been completely certain of its operation. To the degree that material



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OP TECHNIQUE



116)



techniques became more precise, intellectual and psychic tech-

niques became more necessary. By these means man acquired the

conviction and strength needed to make possible the maximum

utilization of the others. So the edifice was completed.



It is impossible to amputate a part of the system or to modify it

in any way without modifying the whole. The system was not built

through whim or personal ambition. Its factors were all reciprocally

engendered.



In this description we have constantly encountered the term

necessity; it is necessity which characterizes the technical uni-

verse. Everything must accommodate itself to it with mathematical

certainty. Every successive technique has appeared because the

ones which preceded it rendered necessary the ones which fol-

lowed. Otherwise they would have been inefficacious and would

not have been able to deliver their maximum yield.



It is useless to hope for modification of a system like this—so com-

plex and precisely adjusted that no single part can be modified by

itself. Moreover, the system perfects and completes itself unremit-

tingly. And, except in print, I see no sign of any modification of the

technical edifice, no principle of a different social organization that

would not be founded on technical necessity.



Technical Universalisnu This characteristic of the technical phe-

nomenon manifests itself under two aspects, the first geographic

and the second qualitative.



From the geographic point of view, it is easy to see that tech-

nique is constantly gaining ground, country by country, and that

its area of action is the whole world. In all countries, whatever

their degree of “civilization,” there is a tendency to apply the same

technical procedures. Even when the population of a given country

is not completely assimilated technically, it is nevertheless able to

use the instruments which technique puts into its hands. The peo-

ple of these countries have no need to be Westernized. Technique,

to be used, does not require a “civilized” man. Technique, what-

ever hand uses it, produces its effect more or less totally in propor-

tion to the individual's more or less total absorption in it.



Vogt emphasizes this fact, for example, when he shows that in

the domain of agriculture the most up-to-date techniques have be-

come universal. Never before, says Vogt, has man destroyed his

natural environment “with the inexorableness of an armored divi-



The Technological Society	(117



sion. These ‘civilized' forces of destruction, which have been de-

veloped under our influence, have conquered the entire globe to

such a degree that Malays, Hottentots and Ainos are spreading the

plague."



In the course of history there have always been different princi-

ples of civilization according to regions, nations, and continents.

But today everything tends to align itself on technical principles.

In the past, different civilizations took different “paths”; today all

peoples follow the same road and the same impulse. This does not

mean that they have all reached the same point, but they are situ-

ated at different points along the same trajectory. The United

States represents the type that France will represent in thirty years,

and China in possibly eighty. All the business of life, from work

and amusement to love and death, is seen from the technical point

of view. The number of “technical slaves" is growing rapidly, and

the ideal of all governments is to push as fast as possible toward

industrialization and technical enslavement.



I am well acquainted with the perfectly valid arguments which

turn on economic necessity and the misery of the so-called “back-

ward" peoples. But the problem is not the process involved; it is

simply to note that different societies are adopting Western tech-

nique. The Vevey Congress of i960 forcefully emphasized this

point. Although, understandably, the primary problem of the un-

derdeveloped peoples is undernourishment, obsession with tech-

nique has befuddled them to such a point that what they are de-

manding, and what we are offering, is the very industrialization

that will aggravate the evil. Technique is the same in all latitudes

and hence acts to make different civilizations uniform. This tend-

ency arises directly from technique itselfThe Oriental, Russian,

and South American societies were by no means historically pre-

pared, as was ours, to favor technical development



The best sociologists have noted that technique involves the

same effects everywhere. R. P. Lynton writes; “The industrializa-

tion of a community of Europe or America, on the one hand; or of

Siam, Nigeria, Turkey, or Uruguay, on the other, poses the same

problems." If the technical movement had had its inception in one

of these “backward” countries, it would have aborted. But these

societies are presented with a technical movement in full vigor and

in all its expansive power. No longer is there any question as to



1 l8)	THE	CHARACTEROLOGY	OF	TECHNIQUE



whether circumstances favorable to its flowering exist. The tech-

nical movement is strong enough to impose itself and to break down

all barriers to its progress.



But why does this expansion exist at all? Until now it was gen-

erally accepted that very similar social environments were neces-

sary if propagation of techniques were to occur. This is no longer

true. Today technique imposes itself, whatever the environment.

This expansive force can be explained by a whole ensemble of

historical reasons (more or less superficial, though true), and by

one profound reason (to be examined later on).



The historical reasons are bound up with two great currents

which have occasioned the technical invasion: commerce and war.

Colonial war opened the door to those European nations that

possessed the whole complex of technical means. The conquering

nations exported their machines and their organization through

their armies. The vanquished peoples, in a state of mind com-

pounded of admiration and fear, adopted the machines, which

came to replace their gods. Not only were the machines the means

their conquerors had used to subdue them, but the machines repre-

sented the possible means for liberation from these conquerors. In

these colonies traffic in arms and in all the instruments of power

began to flourish as a means of provoking insurrection. At first,

rebellion was incoherent, but to the degree that these peoples be-

came better organized and technicized, rebellion became a national

affair.



War also involved the backward peoples globally. I have in

mind not so much the direct effects of colonial war as the effects of

wars among so-called civilized nations. The colonies of Germany

and France became involved in the war between these nations.

Later on, China and Siberia came in. Yakuts rode in tanks in the

front line of the Red Army. War provokes the sudden and stupefy-

ing adaptation of the “savage” to machinery and discipline.



The second factor governing technical invasion is commerce. It

was mandatory for the Western powers to conquer the markets

necessary for Western industry and technical life. No barrier could

oppose this necessity; and primitive peoples were literally

swamped by the products of modem technique. In 1945 the Ameri-

cans sent tons of individual military rations to the Bulgarians, who

had no desire at all to adapt themselves to a new kind of butter and



The Technological Society	(119



to other substitutes. But their resistance necessarily yielded to tech-

nical adaptation and, very rapidly, to plain abundance. The exces-

siveness of the means broke down all traditional and individual

desires.



After consumer goods came an invasion of productive tech-

niques. Technical invasion is a question not only of colonialism but

also, for the less powerful countries, of simple technical subordina-

tion. This, and this only, explains the formation of the two blocs

today. All political or economic explanations are superficial and

ridiculous. There are two great technical powers, the United States

and the Soviet Union. Every other country must subordinate itself

to one or the other of the two simply because of their technical

superiority. Technical invasion is not exclusively colonial in-

vasion but assumes other forms as well.



The phenomenon of present-day decolonialization is closely re-

lated to the possibilities of the technical development of peoples

who, up to now, have lived in symbiosis with colonial powers. From

the very moment of “independence,” these peoples are constrained

to appeal for assistance to the two major powers; after all, they can-

not possibly be self-sufficient on the technical plane. The major

powers then equip them in a “disinterested” way. In fact, of course,

the major powers have no choice if they cherish any hope at all that

the poverty of these new “free” nations will not make them theatres

of endemic war (not to mention the fact that the major powers are

themselves in competition). Thus, the best and most moral inten-

tions (as, for example, Harry S. Truman’s Point Four aid to colonial

lands) lead to a rapid technicization of the world; and every polit-

ical phenomenon accelerates this technicization, which necessarily

assumes a Western look.



The expensive factors are clearly favored by the elementary

technical facts. Consider, for example, the speed and thoroughness

of the means of communication, which permit technical products

to be transported anywhere in the world soon after their appear-

ance in the country of origin. The result of this must be speedy

unification.



The very means of communication presuppose such unification.

Great ocean-going vessels necessitate continually improved port

installations everywhere. Railroads demand identical roadbeds in

all countries. Aviation requires a whole technical substructure.



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



120)



which is becoming more important day by day and which must be-

come ever more uniform as tonnage and speed increase.



The creation of the port of Lavera, near Port-de-Bouc, is a case

in point. To construct a harbor for oil tankers to meet the de-

mands of the French market, it was necessary to conform exactly

to the international requirements of petroleum shipping. These de-

mands are wholly technical: depth of channel for modem tank-

ers of more than 30,000 tons, special docks, relay reservoirs fitted

with technical improvements exactly adapted to the tankers, and

so on. It was clearly impossible to continue to do without these

facilities. In French home ports today, the petroleum brought in

by the large tankers must first be discharged by small lighters to

plants which are either floating installations or of insufficient pump-

ing capacity. This results in loss of time and excessive handling.

Every ton of crude oil bears an extra burden of approximately

three dollars. These factors are clear and are leading to the accept-

ance of the most modern procedures—which reciprocally contrib-

utes to world-wide technical unification.



There is still another element in the mechanism of technical

expansion: the export of technicians. This is not only a question of

German technicians going, for example, to the United States or to

Russia. (This exodus, incidentally, was accompanied by a certain

technical flowering which rendered German technique truly in-

ternational. ) There is the same diffusion of American technique to

underdeveloped countries by the application of President Truman's

Point Four Program. Academicians are supplied who are charged

with blueprinting the future of underdeveloped peoples. (This

form of technical assistance assimilates intellectually the inhabi-

tants of the countries in question.) In addition, the United States

directly supplies the necessary technicians for exploiting the natu-

ral resources of these countries. The immediate purpose is to raise

the standard of living of the population, beginning with a realistic

appraisal of the possibilities of the given country, and the final ob-

jective is a perfectly humanitarian one; we can refrain from passing

judgment on whether American imperialism is involved. Neverthe-

less, this leads to a diffusion of techniques throughout the world in

an accelerated tempo, and at the same time it leads to technical

identity in all countries.



A certain educational unity is also involved here. Every citizen



The Technological Society	(121



of an underdeveloped country must become adept in the use of

the new techniques. This leads to the extension of European-style

education, allows the colored peoples to participate actively in

scientific progress, and provokes as a consequence a kind of a

priori adhesion to technical diffusion. Since 1956 we have been

witnessing the sante diffusion of technicians from the Soviet Union,

and more recently from China, to Syria, Guinea, Ghana, and Cuba.

Without entertaining political suspicions of these acts, let us bear

in mind only that these factors, among others, are an active aid to

technical invasion.



Technical invasion does not involve the simple addition of new

values to old ones. It does not put new wine into old bottles; it

does not introduce new content into old forms. The old bottles are

all being broken. The old civilizations collapse on contact with the

new. And the same phenomenon appears under every possible cul-

tural form. Take, for example, religion. We have seen one religion

disappear under our very eyes as a result of a technical fact: Mi-

kado worship vanished after the bomb was dropped at Hiroshima.

We are witnessing the collapse of Buddhism under Communist

pressure in Tibet and China. And, according to recent studies,

Buddhism is vanishing for technical reasons, not because of the

ideological effect of Communism. The phenomenon is due, on the

one hand, to a brutal and massive infusion of industrial techniques

and, on the other, to the use of propaganda techniques which en-

tail the abandonment of religion by the ever growing population.

In a certain sense these religious people are not left without reli-

gion. To their transcendental religion a “social” religion is opposed,

a religion which is but an expression of technical progress.



Even the most classically oriented sociologists today recognize

that the impact of techniques is producing a collapse of the non*

Western civilizations. This involves the collapse of cultural as well

as of economic forms, and of the traditional psychological and

sociological structures.



UNESCO has been greatly preoccupied with these questions,

and both the Bulletin of the Social Sciences and the reports of Dr.

Margaret Mead strike an alarming note. Investigators find, in effect,

that it is easy to transfer technical procedures, but that the elabora-

tion of sociological and psychological methods of controlling them

is slow, difficult, and laborious.



12 2)	THE	CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



One is always running up against the simple-minded tendency

to say, as Charles F. Frankel puts it, that “it is sufficient to give

technical procedures and their accumulated blessings to the back-

ward peoples in order to put them on their feet, as one might give

an injection to a sick man.” This kind of injection may conceivably

help. But in giving it, we destroy the traditional ways of life. Tech-

nique does not, of itself, carry its own equilibrium. The opposite is

nearer the truth. We have seen in the West how technique des-

troyed communities and brought the relevance of the human being

into question, even though technique was bom in the Western

milieu and grew only slowly. How much more formidable are its

effects when it is suddenly implanted in a foreign environment, ap-

pearing in all its power at a single stroke. In Africa the worker is

separated from his family and, as S. Herbert Frankel says, “his

social ego remains attached to the rural group while he himself has

been transplanted into an industrial milieu. When his family comes

to the city they are completely unprepared for urban life and are

destroyed in that environment morally and sociologically.” In

Australia we find the same collapse of the traditional way of life.

A. P. Elkin says: “In the tribe, authority belonged to the eld-

ers .. . but it is now in process of passing to the corral boss,

or to the ranch owner. . . . The mysterious rites, which are asso-

ciated with the succession of the seasons and with the search for

food, and which in the past occupied a great deal of time, are tend-

ing to lose their meaning.” It would bp easy enough to give many

more examples.



Every culture must be considered as a whole. The transformation

of a given element through the effect of technique produces shocks

in all areas. All the peonies of the world today live in a cultural



JL	JL	J



breakdown provoked by the conflicts and the internal strife re-

sulting from technique. Over and above this—as Margaret Mead

points out—since every human being incorporates in his own per-

son the cultural environment in which he lives, its disagreements

and incoherences are to be met with again in each individual

personality.



Moreover, we are poorly equipped to respond to this cultural

collapse. We have few studies of the mentality and the needs of

these peoples, and even fewer studies of their psychological reac-

tions to technique. We have no studies of the social and adminis-



The Technological Society	(123



trative measures that might meet their needs, or of their changes

in aptitudes. We never send along with our technique any civilized

environment or adaptable value capable of replacing what is being

destroyed. This, at any rate, is the diagnosis of UNESCO, an

agency generally characterized by optimism.



The situation is being studied now, but for the most part we are

too late. All the instruments ought long since to have been pre-

pared, for no natural adaptation or spontaneous reorganization can

be counted upon. No hope of this exists. We have no instruments

ready. And while the problem is being studied, the ravages of

technique are making steady inroads. We are in a veritable race,

but it is evident that we are beaten before we begin. The effects of

technique are already too far advanced for us to begin again at

the beginning. There is no doubt that all the traditional cultures

and sociological structures will be destroyed by technique before

we can discover or invent social, economic, and psychological

forms of adaptation which might possibly have preserved the

equilibrium of these peoples and societies.



In the political sphere the phenomenon takes the form of the

brutal transition from elementary forms of society to the fully

developed modern dictatorship. A major part of the world’s popu-

lation has passed in a few years from serfdom or feudalism to the

most punctilious dictatorial state, by virtue and necessity of pro-

ductive and administrative techniques. The Soviet Union, Turkey,

and Japan are well-known examples.



The problem of dictatorship is likewise posed by decolonializa-

tion. Either one succeeds in organizing the country and in estab-

lishing a centralized authoritarian state (as has occurred in

Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sudan) or anarchy reigns (as in the

Belgian Congo, Cameroon)^ Halfway liberal successes (as, for

example, Tunisia) are infinitely rare and fragile.



As to economics, it seems scarcely necessary to discuss these

problems. All the traditional economic structures of production and

distribution in Africa and Asia are exploding in the presence of the

new technical means. Up to the time of Western intervention, life

on the Asiatic continent was highly stable; populations and envi-

ronments were in equilibrium. Of course, things were far from be-

ing perfect; undernourishment, for example, was always a danger.

But certain civilizations were harmonious enough; some of them



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



endured much longer than our own. Everyone, I believe, agrees

that the tribulations of modem Asia stem in part from the com-

plexity that the West has imposed on it, the complexity and density

of structure provoked by the indispensable application of tech-

niques.



In all areas, then, technique is producing the rapid collapse of

all other civilizations. When we speak of the collapse of these civili-

zations, we are speaking only of sociological forms. Even the weak-

est civilizations preserve certain values which, in Roger Bastide’s

words, permit them to “maintain a mental equilibrium which cul-

tural shock might shatter. . . . The social situation allows the old

complexes to remain alive which, not being fulfilled any longer

through ancestral customs, create for themselves new defense

mechanisms.” But it is very probable that this situation is only

temporary; even these psychological reserves will be attacked and

absorbed by technique when the so-called human techniques

(those which have man for their object) are applied to them.



Obviously, the effect of technique on these groups will not be

the same everywhere. Detailed sociological studies have been

made of the various phenomena of assimilation, regrouping, func-

tioning, and marasmus or progressive dissolution. According to

these studies, there has not been comparable and identical pro-

gression in every case. However, behind this diversity is to be

noted an absolute incompatibility between the technical type of

civilization and all the others. Technicians have not willed this

outcome; no one seeks consciously to destroy a civilization. This

is simply the proverbial collision between the earthenware pot and

the iron pot. What happens, happens, despite the best possible

intentions of the iron pot.



It might be said: This is not necessary. Why should the simple

fact of bringing more well-being to India ruin the Hindu civiliza-

tion?” I do not know if it is necessary, but nevertheless it is so. A

civilization which is collapsing cannot be re-created abstractly.

It is too late to turn back and enable these worlds to live. What

has been given them is not simply well-being. This well-being pre-

supposes a transformation of all of life: work where there had been

only laziness; machines and their accessories, organs of co-ordina-

tion and rational administration, and internal adherence to the

regime.



The Technological Society	(115



Technique cannot be otherwise than totalitarian. It can be truly



efficient and scientific only if it absorbs an enormous number of

phenomena and brings into play the maximum of data. In order to

co-ordinate and exploit synthetically, technique must be brought to

bear on the great masses in every area. But the existence of tech-

nique in every area leads to monopoly. This is noted by Jacques

Driencourt when he declares that the technique of propaganda is

totalitarian by its very nature. It is totalitarian in message, meth-

ods, field of action, and means. What more could be required?



One could require more. Totalitarianism extends to whatever

touches it, even things which seem, at first sight, very remote from

it. When technique has fastened upon a method, everything must

be subordinated to it. There are no longer any neutral objects or

situations. Claude Munson forcefully demonstrates that psychologi-

cal technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial

plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves psycholog-

ical adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods,

supervision of family life, and training family life for military or

industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a

civilization. Everything is its concern.



It will be objected: “If these transformations do take place, tech-

nique alone is not responsible. Many other factors have contrib-

uted; for example, the intellectual superiority of the white race, the

corruption of these other civilizations, and the population growth.*

In fact, all these factors refer back to the problems of techniques.

Indeed, Western intellectual superiority is only manifested in the

technical domain. And the alleged corruption of the Chinese and

Islamic civilizations depends solely on the criteria by which they

are judged. In making die objection, we are in effect judging solely

on the basis of technical criteria.



Again, it will be objected: “Granting all this, is it not the case

that coexistence, and even synthesis, has been possible between

these two kinds of life? After all, when the Barbarians invaded the

Roman Empire, a successful synthesis eventually took place." But

the historical situation was clearly not the same then as it is to-

day. In fact, it was the Roman civilization which, being technical,

endured. The civilizations threatened today by our own can offer

no effective resistance because they are nontechnical.



The decisive factor which leads me to reject the three objections



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



126)



just stated is that our technique, which is destroying all other civili-

zations, is more than a simple mechanism: it is a whole civilization

in itself.



We have analyzed the combination of circumstances that

favored technical development in the West and guaranteed its

easy diffusion. Since technique has engulfed civilization, a very

remarkable effect has been observed—in fact, a complete reversal.

When technique penetrates a new milieu, it tends to reproduce in

this milieu the circumstances which, in a fortuitous way, it found

favorable to itself in the nineteenth century in France and Eng-

land. At least, it reproduces those features which it is possible and

necessary to reproduce. It is of small importance for technique to

hit upon a long cultural experience or a favorable demographic

situation. On the contrary, social plasticity and a clear technical

consciousness are the general terms which it forcibly imposes in

every area of the world. It dissociates the sociological forms, des-

troys the moral framework, desacralizes men and things, explodes

social and religious taboos, and reduces the body social to a collec-

tion of individuals. The most recent sociological studies (even

those made by optimists) hold that technique is the destroyer of

social groups, of communities (whatever their kind), and of

human relations. Technical progress causes the disappearance, as

Jerome Scott and R. P. Lynton put it, of that “amalgam of attitudes,

customs and social institutions which constitute a community!*

Communities break up into their component parts But no new

communities form. The individual in contact with technique loses

his social and community sense as the frameworks in which he op-

erated disintegrate under the influence of techniques. This fact is

established beyond question by the disappearance of responsibili-

ties, functional autonomies, and social spontaneities, the absence of

contact between the technical and the human environment, and so

forth. In the area of industrial labor, for example, sociologists point

out the physical separation between the industrial plant and the

social group in which the plant is situated (the city, say). In tra-

ditional societies, the social and the economic aspects of life were

inextricably meshed into a social whole. But in a technical society

the two aspects are strictly separated; this in itself brings about

the dissolution of the entire group. Related activities such as pro-

duction and social relations cannot be separated without ruining



The Technological Society	(127



the whole society. However, to the degree that production is tech-

nique and social relations is not, the two are of necessity dissociated.

This is the conclusion reached by innumerable detailed studies of

social groups at the point at which technique begins to function.

The conclusion is equally true of the industrialized milieus of Eu-

rope, America, Asia, and Africa. The situation cannot be otherwise.

The technicians themselves are very clear on this point. For exam-

ple, an official report of 1958 on the perspectives of economic devel-

opment in Algeria indicated that this development can only be

brought about by changing the Algerians* whole way of life, in

particular, by putting the still seminomad masses to work. Develop-

ment involves economic planning, displacement of populations,

mobilization of the local economy, acceptance of authoritarian po-

litical power, modification of local moral habits and traditional

mentalities; in short, a New Deal of the Emotions! These are the

conditions proposed and (and considered normal) for technical

progress in the 'Third World.”* Technique makes its sociological

compost pile where it does not find one already made. And it pos-

sesses sufficient power and efficiency today to succeed. Before long,

it will produce everywhere that clear technical consciousness which

is the easiest of its creations to bring about, and which man falls in

with so willingly. The world that technique creates cannot be any

other than that which was favorable to it from the very beginning.

In spite of all the men of good will, all the optimists, all the doers

of history, the civilizations of the world are being ringed about

with a band of steel. We in the West became familiar with this

iron constraint in the nineteenth century. Now technique is me-

chanically reproducing it everywhere as necessary to its existence.

What force could prevent technique from so acting, or make it be

otherwise than it is?



Technique has progressively mastered dll the elements of civiliza-

tion. We have already pointed this out with regard to mans eco-

nomic and intellectual activities. But man himself is overpowered

by technique and becomes its object. The technique which takes

man for its object thus becomes the center of society; this extraordi-

nary event (which seems to surprise no one) is often designated

as technical civilization. The terminology is exact and we must fully



Sauvy, Balandier, et al.: Le Tiers Monde.



THE C



128 )



OIjOCY or TECHNIQUE



grasp its importance. Technical civilization means that our civili-

zation is constructed by technique (makes a part of civilization only

what belongs to technique), for technique (in that everything in

this civilization must serve a technical end), and is exclusively

technique (in that it excludes whatever is not technique or reduces

it to technical form).



We can see that this is actually the case in certain phenomena

considered essential to a civilization, for example, art and litera-

ture. These activities in modem society are tightly subordinated

in different ways to technical necessities by the direct interference of

technique. Take, for example, the motion pictures, radio, and tele-

vision. These media require great capital investments. As a result,

artistic expression is subordinated to a censorship of money or of

the state. This censorship most often takes the form of indirect in-

fluences, which, again, may assume different guises. Personal music

is supplanted by the radio; and painting, threatened by photogra-

phy, is obliged to modify itself by becoming abstract so as not to

be a mere substitute for reproduction. Modem art and literature

manifest in all points their subordination to the technique which

has extended its power over all activity, and hence over all culture.



Herein lies the inversion we are witnessing. Without exception in

the course of history, technique belonged to a civilization and was

merely a single element among a host of nontechnical activities.

Today technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Certainly,

technique is no longer the simple machine substitute for human la-

bor. It has come to be the “intervention into the very substance

not only of the inorganic but also of the organic.”



This intervention into the inorganic world is represented, for ex-

ample, by the exploration of the atom and its use for purposes as

yet unknown. But the world which is most clearly taking on a tech-

nical form is the organic. In this realm the necessity of production

penetrates to the very sources of life. It controls procreation, influ-

ences growth, and alters the individual and the species. Death,

procreation, birth, habitat; all must submit to technical efficiency

and systematization, the end point of the industrial assembly line.

\yhat seems to be most personal in the life of man is now techni-

cized. The manner in which he rests and relaxes becomes the object

of techniques of relaxation. The way in which he makes a deci-

sion is no longer the domain of the personal and voluntary; it has



The Technological Society	(129



become the object of the techniques of “operations research." As

Giedion says, all this represents experimentation at the very roots

of being.



How is it possible, then, not to believe that all of civilization is

affected and engulfed when the very substance of man is ques-

tioned? The essence of civilization is thus absorbed.



Concerning art, Giedion goes on to say: “What happened to art

in this period gives us the most intimate vision possible of the pene-

tration in depth of the human being by mechanization. Ban's re-

vealing selections in his Cubism and Abstract Art show us how the

artist, who reacts like a seismograph, expresses the influence of full

mechanization . . . Mechanization has penetrated into the sub-

conscious of the artist. Chirico expresses it in a remarkable way in

the mixture he makes of man and machine . . . The anxiety, the

solitude of man forms a melancholy architecture of the preced-

ing epoch and its mechanical dolls, painted in the smallest details

with a tragic expression."



We have the large-scale frescoes of Leger which construct the

image of cities out of signs, traffic signals, and machine parts. Even

the Russians and Hungarians, who in 1920 were far from mechani-

zation, were inspired by his creative power. In the hands of Du-

chanu and others, the machine, marvel of efficiency, was trans-

formed into an irrational object, charged with irony. At the same

time, a new aesthetic language was introduced.



To free themselves from a corrupt art and the prevailing taste,

artists have recourse to objects such as machines and mechanisms

because these objects contain an objective truth. What is true of

the plastic arts is likewise true of music. Preoccupation with “ob-

jectivity" is prevalent there, too. Igor Stravinsky writes: “My work

is architectonic and not anecdotal; objective construction and not

descriptive." These are the words of a man unconsciously steeped

in the technical milieu. Since Stravinsky wrote this, music has been

still further transformed by means of techniques which were not

originally musical techniques, that is, neither musical methodology

nor instrument construction. I have in mind Schaeffer s “concrete

music," Ussachewsky’s “music for tape," and Eimert's electronic

music, all of which make use of technical means that are not a

priori musical. In none of these types of music is there any longer

the need for a performer. The ancestral musical structures disin-



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



130)



tegrate and are atomized and we have a phenomenon that is funda-

mentally new. We shall doubtless see ever more refined and ex-

acting research into musical technique, and the dominant

musical structure and rhythm will undoubtedly correspond en-

tirely to the technical environment.



The external structures imposed by technique can no longer, by

themselves, modify the components of a society; here the internal

influence of technique on the human being becomes decisive.

Henceforth, every component of civilization is subject to the law

that technique is itself civilization. Civilization no longer exists of

itself. Every activity—intellectual, artistic, moral—is only a part of

technique. This fact is so enormous and unpredictable that we

are simply unable to foresee its consequences. Most of us, blinded

by traditional and well-established situations, are unable to grasp

its meaning. Henceforth, there will be no conflict between contend-

ing forces among which technique is only one. The victory of tech-

nique has already been secured. It is too late to set limits to it

or to put it in doubt. The fatal flaw in all systems designed to

counterbalance the power of technique is that they come too late.



Under these circumstances, it is understandable that technique,

in all the lands it has penetrated, has exploded the local, national

cultures. Two cultures, of which technique is one, cannot coexist.

This does not mean, of course, that uniformity prevails. There are

still great differences from region to region. But for the most part

these differences are due to the fact that the vestiges of a civiliza-

tion lake a long time to disappear completely. Technique has al-

ready gained its victory over Buddhism. It is clear, however, that it

will take two or three generations to modify the mode of life and

thought engendered by Buddhism. A certain diversity will per-

sist while this mode or life is weakening. Technique does not lead

to general uniformity. In fact, it creates a certain diversity. Its ob-

jectives are always the same, and so is its influence on man. But

though it is axiomatic that the one best way will prevail, this one

best way will vary with climate, country, and population. The more

technique is refined, the more it varies its means of action. There-

fore, we shall continue to have the appearance of different civili-

zations in India and in Greenland. They will indeed be different in

certain aspects. But their essence will be identical; they will be

techniques. And what differences there are will result from the cold



The Technological Society	(131



calculation of some technician, instead of being the result of the

profound spiritual and material effort of generations of human be-

ings, Instead of being the expression of man’s essence, they will be

the accidents of what is essential: technique.



The differences which exist today are therefore without impor-

tance in relation to the fact of technical identity. The differences

to come will bear upon the most diverse activities and give the

illusion of liberty. But they will nevertheless be no more than the

expression of the monism of technique. Geographically and quali-

tatively, technique is universal in its manifestations. It is devoted,

by nature and necessity, to the universal. It could not be otherwise.

It depends upon a science itself devoted to the universal, and it is

becoming the universal language understood by all men. We need

not belabor the fact, which everyone recognizes, that science is uni-

versal. And this fact in turn leads of necessity to the technical uni-

versalism which stems from it.



The second of the two elements we referred to (production and

social relations) requires more explication. In his relation to the

world, man has always made use of multiple means, none of which

were universal because none were objective. Technique is a means

of apprehending reality, of acting on the world, which allows us to

neglect all individual differences, all subjectivity. Technique alone

is rigorously objective. It blots out all personal opinions. It effaces

all individual, and even all collective, modes of expression. Today

man lives by virtue of his participation in a truth become objective.

Technique is no more than a neutral bridge between reality and

the abstract man.



Technique, moreover, creates a bond between men. All those

who follow the same technique are bound together in a tacit

fraternity and all of them take the same attitude toward reality.

There is no need for them to converse together or to understand

one another. A team of surgeons and assistants who know the tech-

nique of a given operation have no need to address one another in

order that the necessary motions be correctly performed at the right

moment.



Industrial labor likewise tends more and more to dispense with

orders and personal contact. This was pushed to an extreme in the

concentration camps, where men of different nations were mixed

together so that they should have no contacts and yet be able to



THE



or TECHNIQUE



perform collective work. It was hasty and superficial work, to be

sure, but a little more rigor could easily make this labor really pro-

ductive (as seems to be the case in the Soviet Union). One cannot

speak merely of isolation. These men work in teams, but there is

no need for them to know or understand one another. They need

only understand the technique involved and know in advance what

their teammate will do. It is not necessary for the crew to under-

stand one another in order to run an aircraft. The indicator panel

controls the actions to be performed; and every crew member, sub-

mitting by necessity and conscience to the automatic indications,

obeys for the safety of all. Each man's actions are dictated by the

conditions of life and its preservation. This is clear in the case of

flying an aircraft. But it is equally clear in every other situation in-

volving technique—and this encompasses the most important areas

of life. Men do not need to understand each other in order to carry

out the most important endeavors of our times.



Technique is of necessity, and as compensation, our universal

language. It is the fruit of specialization. But this very specializa-

tion prevents mutual understanding. Everyone today has his own

professional jargon, modes of thought, and peculiar perception of

the world. There was a time when the distortion of overspecializa-

tion was the butt of jokes and a subject for vaudeville. Today the

sharp knife of specialization has passed like a razor into the living

flesh. It has cut the umbilical cord which linked men with each

other and with nature. The man of today is no longer able to under-

stand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the

technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed

universe. He no longer understands the vocabulary of the others.

Nor does he comprehend the underlying motivations of the others.

Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and

man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges

the specializations because it produces a new type of man always

and everywhere like his duplicate, who develops along technical

lines. He listens to himself and speaks to himself, but he obeys

the slightest indications of the apparatus, confident that his neigh-

bor will do the same. Technique has become the bond between

men. By its agency they communicate, whatever their languages,

beliefs, or race. It has become, for life or death, the universal lan-

guage which compensates for all the deficiencies and separations it



The Technological Society	(133



has itself produced. This is the major reason for the great impetus

of technique toward the universal.



The Autonomy of Technique* The primary aspect of autonomy is

perfectly expressed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, a leading tech-

nician. He takes, as his point of departure, the view that the in-

dustrial plant is a whole in itself, a "closed organism,” an end in

itself. Giedion adds*. "What is fabricated in this plant and what is

the goal of its labor—these are questions outside its design.” The

complete separation of the goal from the mechanism, the limita-

tion of the problem to the means, and the refusal to interfere in

any way with efficiency; all this is clearly expressed by Taylor and

lies at the basis of technical autonomy.



Autonomy is the essential condition for the development of tech-

nique, as Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt’s study of the police clearly

indicates. The police must be independent if they are to become ef-

ficient. They must form a closed, autonomous organization in or-

der to operate by the most direct and efficient means and not be

shackled by subsidiary considerations. And in this autonomy, they

must be self-confident in respect to the law. It matters little whether

police action is legal, if it is efficient. The rules obeyed by a techni-

cal organization are no longer rules of justice or injustice. They are

“laws” in a purely technical sense. As far as the police are con-

cerned, the highest stage is reached when the legislature legalizes

their independence of the legislature itself and recognizes the pri-

macy of technical laws. This is the opinion of Best, a leading Ger-

man specialist in police matters.



The autonomy of technique must be examined in different per-

spectives on the basis of the different spheres in relation to which

it has this characteristic. First, technique is autonomous with re-

spect to economics and politics. We have already seen that, at the

present, neither economic nor political evolution conditions tech-

nical progress. Its progress is likewise independent of the social

situation. The converse is actually the case, a point I shall develop

at length. Technique elicits and conditions social, political, and eco-

nomic change. It is the prime mover of all the rest, in spite of any

appearance to the contrary and in spite of human pride, which pre-

tends that man’s philosophical theories are still determining influ-

ences and man’s political regimes decisive factors in technical

evolution. External necessities no longer determine technique.



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



134)



Technique's own internal necessities are determinative. Technique

has become a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws

and its own determinations.



Let us not deceive ourselves on this point. Suppose that the

state, for example, intervenes in a technical domain. Either it inter-

venes for sentimental, theoretical, or intellectual reasons, and the

effect of its intervention will be negative or nil; or it intervenes for

reasons of political technique, and we have the combined effect of

two techniques. There is no other possiblity. The historical experi-

ence of the last years shows this fully.



To go one step further, technical autonomy is apparent in respect

to morality and spiritual values. Technique tolerates no judgment

from without and accepts no limitation. It is by virtue of technique

rather than science that the great principle has become established:

chacun chez soi. Morality judges moral problems; as far as techni-

cal problems are concerned, it has nothing to say. Only technical

criteria are relevant. Technique, in sitting in judgment on itself, is

clearly freed from this principal obstacle to human action.

(Whether the obstacle is valid is not the question here. For the

moment we merely record that it is an obstacle.) Thus, technique

theoretically and systematically assures to itself that liberty which

it has been able to win practically. Since it has put itself beyond

good and evil, it need fear no limitation whatever. It was long

claimed that technique was neutral. Today this is no longer a use-

ful distinction. The power and autonomy of technique are so well

secured that it, in its turn, has become the judge of what is moral,

the creator of a new morality. Thus, it plays the role of creator of a

new civilization as well. This morality—internal to technique—is

assured of not having to suffer from technique. In any case, in re-

spect to traditional morality, technique affirms itself as an inde-

pendent power. Man alone is subject, it would seem, to moral judg-

ment. We no longer live in that primitive epoch in which things

were good or bad in themselves. Technique in itself is neither, and

can therefore do what it will. It is truly autonomous.



However, technique cannot assert its autonomy in respect to

physical or biological laws. Instead, it puts them to work; it seeks

to dominate them.



Giedion, in his probing study of mechanization and the manu-

facture of bread, shows that “wherever mechanization encounters



The Technological Society	(135



a living substance, bacterial or animal, the organic substance deter-

mines the laws.” For this reason, the mechanization of bakeries was

a failure. More subdivisions, intervals, and precautions of various

kinds were required in the mechanized bakery than in the non-

mechanized bakery. The size of the machines did not save time;

it merely gave work to larger numbers of people. Giedion shows

how the attempt was made to change the nature of the bread in

order to adapt it to mechanical manipulations. In the last resort,

the ultimate success of mechanization turned on the transformation

of human taste. Whenever technique collides with a natural obsta-

cle, it tends to get around it either by replacing the living organism

by a machine, or by modifying the organism so that it no longer

presents any specifically organic reaction.



The same phenomenon is evident in yet another area in which

technical autonomy asserts itself: the relations between techniques

and man. We have already seen, in connection with technical self-

augmentation, that technique pursues its own course more and

more independently of man. This means that man participates less

and less actively in technical creation, which, by the automatic

combination of prior elements, becomes a kind of fate. Man is re-

duced to the level of a catalyst. Better still, he resembles a slug in-

serted into a slot machine: he starts the operation without partici-

pating in it.



But this autonomy with respect to man goes much further. To the

degree that technique must attain its result with mathematical pre-

cision, it has for its object the elimination of all human variability

and elasticity. It is a commonplace to say that the machine replaces

the human being. But it replaces him to a greater degree than has

been believed.



Industrial technique will soon succeed in completely replacing

the effort of the worker, and it would do so even sooner if capital-

ism were not an obstacle. The worker, no longer needed to guide or

move the machine to action, will be required merely to watch it

and to repair it when it breaks down. He will not participate in the

work any more than a boxers manager participates in a prize fight.

This is no dream. The automated factory has already been realized

for a great number of operations, and it is realizable for a far greater

number. Examples multiply from day to day in all areas. Man indi-

cates how this automation and its attendant exclusion of men op-



THE CHARACTEROLOGY OF TECHNIQUE



*3«)



erates in business offices; for example, in the case of the so-called

tabulating machine. The machine itself interprets the data, the ele-

mentary bits of information fed into it. It arranges them in texts

and distinct numbers. It adds them together and classifies the re-

sults in groups and subgroups, and so on. We have here an ad-

ministrative circuit accomplished by a single, self-controlled ma-

chine. It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the astounding growth of

automation in the last ten years. The multiple applications of the

automatic assembly line, of automatic control of production opera-

tions (so-called cybernetics) are well known. Another case in point

is the automatic pilot. Until recently the automatic pilot was used

only in rectilinear flight; the finer operations were carried out by

the living pilot. As early as 1952 the automatic pilot effected the

operations of take-off and landing for certain supersonic aircraft

The same kind of feat is performed by automatic direction finders

in anti-aircraft defense, Man's role is limited to inspection. This

automation results from the development servomechanisms which

act as substitutes for human beings in more and more subtle opera-

tions by virtue of their "feedback" capacity.



This progressive elimination of man from the circuit must Inexo-

rably continue. Is the elimination of man so unavoidably necessary?

Certainly 1 Freeing man from toil is in itself an ideal. Beyond

this, every intervention of man, however educated or used to ma-

chinery he may be, is a source of error and unpredictability. The

combination of man and technique is a happy one only if man has

no responsibility. Otherwise, he is ceaselessly tempted to make un-

predictable choices and is susceptible to emotional motivations

which invalidate the mathematical precision of the machinery. He

is also susceptible to fatigue and discouragement. All this disturbs

the forward thrust of technique.



Man must have nothing decisive to perform in the course of

technical operations; after all, he is the source of error. Political

technique is still troubled by certain unpredictable phenomena, in

spite of all the precision of the apparatus and the skill of those in-

volved. (But this technique is still in its childhood.) In human re-

actions, howsoever well calculated they may be, a "coefficient of

elasticity" causes imprecision, and imprecision is intolerable to

technique. As far as possible, this source of error must be elimi-

nated. Eliminate the individual, and excellent results ensue. Any



The Technological Society	(13 7



technical man who is aware of this fact is forced to support the

opinions voiced by Robert Jungk, which can be summed up thus:

“The individual is a brake on progress.” Or: “Considered from the

modem technical point of view, man is a useless appendage.” For

instance, ten per cent of all telephone calls are wrong numbers, due

to human error. An excellent use by man of so perfect an apparatus!



Now that statistical operations are carried out by perforated-

card machines instead of human beings, they have become exact.

Machines no longer perform merely gross operations. They perform

a whole complex of subtle ones as well. And before long—what

with the electronic brain—they will attain an intellectual power of

which man is incapable.



Thus, the “great changing of the guard” is occurring much

more extensively than Jacques Duboin envisaged some decades

ago. Gaston Bouthoul, a leading sociologist of the phenomena of

war, concludes that war breaks out in a social group when there

is a “plethora of young men surpassing the indispensable tasks of

the economy.” When for one reason or another these men are not

employed, they become ready for war. It is the multiplication of

men who are excluded from working which provokes war. We

ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual

decrease in human participation in technical operations.



However, there are spheres in which it is impossible to eliminate

human influence. The autonomy of technique then develops in an-

other direction. Technique is not, for example, autonomous in re-

spect to clock time. Machines, like abstract technical laws, are

subject to the law of speed, and co-ordination presupposes time

adjustment. In his description of the assembly line, Giedion writes:

“Extremely precise time tables guide the automatic cooperation of

the instruments, which, like the atoms in a planetary system, consist

of separate units but gravitate with respect to each other in obedi-

ence to their inherent laws.” This image shows in a remarkable way

how technique became simultaneously independent of man and

obedient to the chronometer. Technique obeys its own specific

laws, as every machine obeys laws. Each element of the technical

complex follows certain laws determined by its relations with the

other elements, and these laws are internal to the system and in no

way influenced by external factors. It is not a question of causing

the human being to disappear, but of making him capitulate, of in-



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



138)



during him to accommodate himself to techniques and not to ex-

perience personal feelings and reactions.



No technique is possible when men are free. When technique

enters into the realm of social life, it collides ceaselessly with the

human being to the degree that the combination of man and tech-

nique is unavoidable, and that technical action necessarily results

in a determined result. Technique requires predictability and,

no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique

prevail over the human being. For technique, this is a matter of life

or death. Technique must reduce man to a technical animal, the

king of the slaves of technique. Human caprice crumbles before

this necessity; there can be no human autonomy in the face of tech-

nical autonomy. The individual must be fashioned by techniques,

either negatively (by the techniques of understanding man) or

positively (by the adaptation of man to the technical framework),

in order to wipe out the blots his personal determination introduces

into the perfect design of the organization.



But it is requisite that man have certain precise inner charac-

teristics. An extreme example is the atomic worker or the jet pilot.

He must be of calm temperament, and even temper, he must be

phlegmatic, he must not have too much initiative, and he must be

devoid of egotism. The ideal jet pilot is already along in years

(perhaps thirty-five) and has a settled direction in life. He flies

his jet in the way a good civil servant goes to his office. Human

joys and sorrows are fetters on technical aptitude. Jungk cites the

case of a test pilot who had to abandon his profession because

“his wife behaved in such a way as to lessen his capacity to fly.

Every day, when he returned home, he found her shedding tears of

joy. Having become in this way accident conscious, he dreaded

catastrophe when he had to face a delicate situation/' The individ-

ual who is a servant of technique must be completely unconscious

of himself. Without this quality, his reflexes and his inclinations are

not properly adapted to technique.



Moreover, the physiological condition of the individual must an-

swer to technical demands. Jungk gives an impressive picture of

the experiments in training and control that jet pilots have to

undergo. The pilot is whilred on centrifuges until he “blacks out”

(in order to measure his toleration of acceleration). There are cata-

pults, ultrasonic chambers, etc., in which the candidate is forced



The Technological Society	(139



to undergo unheard-of tortures in order to determine whether he

has adequate resistance and whether he is capable of piloting the

new machines. That the human organism is, technically speaking,

an imperfect one is demonstrated by the experiments. The suffer-

ings the individual endures in these “laboratories” are considered

to be due to “biological weaknesses,” which must be eliminated.

New experiments have pushed even further to determine the re-

actions of “space pilots” and to prepare these heroes for their roles

of tomorrow. This has given birth to new sciences, biometry for

example; their one aim is to create the new man, the man adapted

to technical functions.



It will be objected that these examples are extreme. This is cer-

tainly the case, but to a greater or lesser degree the same prob-

lem exists everywhere. And the more technique evolves, the more

extreme its character becomes. The object of all the modern “hu-

man sciences” (which I will examine later on) is to find answers

to these problems.



The enormous effort required to put this technical civilization

into motion supposes that all individual effort is directed toward

this goal alone and that all social forces are mobilized to attain the

mathematically perfect structure of the edifice. (“Mathematically”

does not mean “rigidly.” The perfect technique is the most adapta-

ble and, consequently, the most plastic one. True technique will

know how to maintain the illusion of liberty, choice, and individ-

uality; but these will have been carefully calculated so that they

will be integrated into the mathematical reality merely as appear-

ances!) Henceforth it will be wrong for a man to escape this

universal effort. It will be inadmissible for any part of the individ-

ual not to be integrated in the drive toward technicization; it will be

inadmissible that any man even aspire to escape this necessity of

the whole society. The individual will no longer be able, materially

or spiritually, to disengage himself from society. Materially, he will

not be able to release himself because the technical means are so

numerous that they invade his whole life and make it impossible

for him to escape the collective phenomena. There is no longer an

uninhabited place, or any other geographical locale, for the

would-be solitary. It is no longer possible to refuse entrance into

a community to a highway, a high-tension line, or a dam. It is vain

to aspire to live alone when one is obliged to participate in all col-



THE CHARACTEBOLOCT OF TECHNIQUE



140)



lective phenomena and to use all the collective’s tools, without

which it is impossible to earn a bare subsistence. Nothing is gratis

any longer in our society; and to live on charity is less and less

possible. “Social advantages" are for the workers alone, not for “use-

less mouths." The solitary is a useless mouth and will have no ration

card—up to the day he is transported to a penal colony. (An at-

tempt was made to institute this procedure during the French Rev-

olution, with deportations to Cayenne.)



Spiritually, it will be impossible for the individual to disassociate

himself from society. This is due not to the existence of spiritual

techniques which have increasing force in our society, but rather to

our situation. We are constrained to be “engaged," as the existen-

tialists say, with technique. Positively or negatively, our spiritual

attitude is constantly urged, if not determined, by this situation.

Only bestiality, because it is unconscious, would seem to escape

this situation, and it is itself only a product of the machine.



Every conscious being today is walking the narrow ridge of a

decision with regard to technique. He who maintains that he can

escape it is either a hypocrite or unconscious. The autonomy of

technique forbids the man of today to choose his destiny. Doubt-

less, someone will ask if it has not always been the case that social

conditions, environment, manorial oppression, and the family con-

ditioned man’s fate. The answer is, of course, yes. But there is no

common denominator between the suppression of ration cards in

an authoritarian state and the family pressure of two centuries ago.

In the past, when an individual entered into conflict with society,

he led a harsh and miserable life that required a vigor which ei-

ther hardened or broke him. Today the concentration camp and

death await him; technique cannot tolerate aberrant activities.



Because of the autonomy of technique, modern man cannot

choose his means any more than his ends. In spite of variability and

flexibility according to place and circumstance (which are charac-

teristic of technique) there is still only a single employable tech-

nique in the given place and time in which an individual is situ-

ated. We have already examined the reasons for this.



At this point, we must consider the major consequences of the

autonomy of technique. This will bring us to the climax of this

analysis.



Technical autonomy explains the “specific weight" with which



The Technological Society	(141



technique is endowed. It is not a kind of neutral matter, with do

direction, quality, or structure. It is a power endowed with its own

peculiar force. It refracts in its own specific sense the wills which

make use of it and the ends porposed for it. Indeed, independently

of the objectives that man pretends to assign to any given technical

means, that means always conceals in itself a finality which cannot

be evaded. And if there is a competition between this intrinsic final-

ity and an extrinsic end proposed by man, it is always the intrinsic

finality which carries the day. If the technique in question is not

exactly adapted to a proposed human end, and if an individual pre-

tends that he is adapting the technique to this end, it is generally

quickly evident that it is the end which is being modified, not the

technique. Of course, this statement must be qualified by what has

already been said concerning the endless refinement of techniques

and their adaptation. But this adaptation is effected with reference

to the techniques concerned and to the conditions of their applica-

bility. It does not depend on external ends. Perrot has demon-

strated this in the case of judicial techniques, and Giedion in the

case of mechanical techniques. Concerning the over-all problem of

the relation between the ends and the means, I take the liberty

of referring to my own work, Presence au monde modeme.



Once again we are faced with a choice of “all or nothing.'* If

we make use of technique, we must accept the specificity and

autonomy of its ends, and the totality of its rules. Our own desires

and aspirations can change nothing.



The second consequence of technical autonomy is that it renders

technique at once sacrilegious and sacred. (Sacrilegious is not used

here in the theological but in the sociological sense.) Sociologists

have recognized that the world in which man lives is for him not

only a material but also a spiritual world; that forces act in it which

are unknown and perhaps unknowable; that there are phenomena

in it which man interprets as magical; that there are relations and

correspondences between things and beings in which material con-

nections are of little consequence. This whole area is mysterious.

Mystery (but not in the Catholic sense) is an element of man’s life.

Jung has shown that it is catastrophic to make superficially clear

what is hidden in man’s innermost depths. Man must make allow-

ance for a background, a great deep above which lie his reason and

his clear consciousness. The mystery of man perhaps creates the



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



14a)



mystery of the world he inhabits. Or perhaps this mystery is a real-

ity in itself. There is no way to decide between these two alterna-

tives. But, one way or the other, mystery is a necessity of human

life.



Man cannot live without a sense of the secret The psychoana-

lysts agree on this point But the invasion of technique desacralizes

the world in which man is called upon to live. For technique noth-

ing is sacred, there is no mystery, no taboo. Autonomy makes this so.

Technique does not accept the existence of rules outside itself, or

of any norm. Still less will it accept any judgment upon it. As a

consequence, no matter where it penetrates, what it does is per-

mitted, lawful, justified.



To a great extent, mystery is desired by man. It is not that he

cannot understand, or enter into, or grasp mystery, but that he does

not desire to do so. The sacred is what man decides unconsciously

to respect. The taboo becomes compelling from a social standpoint,

but there is always a factor of adoration and respect which does not

derive from compulsion and fear.



Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single

role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by ra-

tional use to transform everything into means. More than science,

which limits itself to explaining the “how,” technique desacralizes

because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through

use and not through books) that mystery does not exist. Science

brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred.

Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it. The sacred cannot

resist. Science penetrates to the great depths of the sea to photo-

graph the unknown fish of the deep. Technique captures them,

hauls them up to see if they are edible—but before they arrive on

deck they burst. And why should technique not act thus? It is au-

tonomous and recognizes as barriers only the temporary limits of its

action. In its eyes, this terrain, which is for the moment unknown

but not mysterious, must be attacked. Far from being restrained by

any scruples before the sacred, technique constantly assails it.

Everything which is not yet technique becomes so. It is driven on-

ward by itself, by its character of self-augmentation. Technique

denies mystery a priori. The mysterious is merely that which has

not yet been technicized.



Technique advocates the entire remaking of life and its frame-



The Technological Society	(i4 3



work because they have been badly made. Since heredity is full of

chance, technique proposes to suppress it so as to engender the kind

of men necessary for its ideal of service. The creation of the ideal

man will soon be a simple technical operation. It is no longer neces-

sary to rely on the chances of the family or on the personal vigor

which is called virtue. Applied biogenetics is an obvious point at

which technique desacralizes;6 but we must not forget psycho-

analysis, which holds that dreams, visions, and the psychic life in

general are nothing more than objects. Nor must we forget the pene-

tration and exploitation of the earth’s secrets. Crash programs, par-

ticularly in the United States, are attempting to reconstruct the soil

which massive exploitation and the use of chemical fertilizers have

impaired. We shall soon discover the functions of chlorophyll and

thus entirely transform the conditions of life. Recent investigations

in electronic techniques applied to biology have emphasized the

importance of DNA and will possibly result in the discovery of the

link between the living and the nonliving.



Nothing belongs any longer to the realm of the gods or the super-

natural. The individual who lives in the technical milieu knows very

well that there is nothing spiritual anywhere. But man cannot live

without the sacred. He therefore transfers his sense of the sacred

to the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to tech-

nique itself. In the world in which we live, technique has become

the essential mystery, taking widely diverse forms according to

place and race. Those who have preserved some of the notions of

magic both admire and fear technique. Radio presents an inex-

plicable mystery, an obvious and recurrent miracle. It is no less

astonishing than the highest manifestations of magic once were,

and it is worshipped as an idol would have been worshipped, with

the same simplicity and fear.



But custom and the recurrence of the miracle eventually wear

out this primitive adoration. It is scarcely found today in European

countries; the proletariat, workers and peasants alike, with their

motorcycles, radios, and electrical appliances, have an attitude of

condescending pride toward the jinn who is their slave. Their ideal

is incarnated in certain things which serve them. Yet they retain

some feeling of the sacred, in the sense that life is not worth the



8 See, in this connection, the previous note.



THE CHARACTEROLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



144)



trouble of living unless a man has these jinns in his home. This

attitude goes much further in the case of the conscious segment of

the proletariat, among whom technique is seen as a whole and not

merely in its occasional aspects. For them, technique is the instru-

ment of liberation for the proletariat. All that is needed is for tech-

nique to make a little more headway, and they will be freed pro-

portionately from their chains. Stalin pointed to industrialization

as the sole condition for the realization of Communism. Every

gain made by technique is a gain for the proletariat. This represents

indeed a belief in the sacred. Technique is the god which brings

salvation. It is good in its essence. Capitalism is an abomination

because on occasion it opposes technique. Technique is the hope

of the proletarians; they can have faith in it because its miracles are

visible and progressive. A great part of their sense of the mysterious

remains attached to it. Karl Marx may have been able to explain

rationally how technique would free the proletariat, but the prole-

tariat itself is scarcely equal to a full understanding of this “how.”

It remains mysterious for them. They retain merely the formula

of faith. But their faith addresses itself with enthusiasm to the

mysterious agent of their liberation.



The nonintellectual classes of the bourgeoisie are perhaps less

caught up in this worship of technique. But the technicians of the

bourgeoisie are without doubt the ones most powerfully taken with

it. For them, technique is sacred, since they have no reason to

feel a passion for it. Technical men are always disconcerted when

one asks them the motives for their faith. No, they do not expect to

be liberated; they expect nothing, yet they sacrifice themselves

and devote their lives with frenzy to the development of industrial

plants and the organization of banks. The happiness of the human

race and Suchlike nonsense are the commonplaces they allege. But

these are no longer of any service even as justifications, and they

certainly have nothing at all to do with man's passion for technique.



The technician uses technique perhaps because it is his profes-

sion, but he does so with adoration because for him technique is

the locus of the sacred. There is neither reason nor explanation in

his attitude. The power of technique, mysterious though scientific,

which covers the whole earth with its networks of waves, wires,

and paper, is to the technician an abstract idol which gives him a



The Technological Society	i145



reason for living and even for joy. One sign, among many, of the

feeling of the sacred that man experiences in the face of technique

is the care he takes to treat it with familiarity. Laughter and humor

are common human reactions in the presence of the sacred. This is

true for primitive peoples; and for the same reason the first atomic

bomb was called “Gilda,” the giant cyclotron of Los Alamos

'‘Clementine,” the atomic piles “water pots,” and radioactive con-

tamination “scalding.” The technicians of Los Alamos have banned

the word atom from their vocabulary. These things are significant.



In view of the very different forms of technique, there is no

question of a technical religion. But there is associated with it the

feeling of the sacred, which expresses itself in different ways. The

way differs from man to man, but for all men the feeling of the

sacred is expressed in this marvelous instrument of the power in-

stinct which is always joined to mystery and magic. The worker

brags about his job because it offers him joyous confirmation of his

superiority. The young snob speeds along at 100 m.p.h. in his

Porsche. The technician contemplates with satisfaction the gradi-

ents of his charts, no matter what their reference is. For these men,

technique is in every way sacred: it is the common expression of

human power without which they would find themselves poor,

alone, naked, and stripped of all pretentions. They would no longer

be the heroes, geniuses, or archangels which a motor permits them

to be at little expense.



What shall we say of the outburst of frenzy when the Sputnik

went into orbit? What of the poems of the Soviets, the metaphysical

affirmations of the French, the speculations on the conquest of the

universe? What of the identification of this artificial satellite with

the sun, or of its invention with the creation of the earth? And, on

the other side of the Atlantic, what was the real meaning of the ex-

cessive consternation of the Americans? All these bore witness to a

marked social attitude with regard to a simple technical fact.



Even people put out of work or ruined by technique, even those

who criticize or attack it (without daring to go so far as to turn

worshippers against them) have the bad conscience of all icono-

clasts. They find neither within nor without themselves a compen-

sating force for the one they call into question. They do not even

live in despair, which would be a sign of their freedom. This bad



THE CHARACTEnOLOCY OF TECHNIQUE



146)



conscience appears to me to be perhaps the most revealing fact

about the new sacralization of modern technique.



The characteristics we have examined permit me to assert with

confidence that there is no common denominator between the tech-

nique of today and that of yesterday. Today we are dealing with an

utterly different phenomenon. Those who claim to deduce from

man’s technical situation in past centuries his situation in this one

show that they have grasped nothing of the technical phenomenon.

These deductions prove that all their reasonings are without

foundation and all their analogies are astigmatic.



The celebrated formula of Alain has been invalidated: “Tools,

instruments of necessity, instruments that neither lie nor cheat, tools

with which necessity can be subjugated by obeying her, without the

help of false laws; tools that make it possible to conquer by obey-

ing.” This formula is true of the tool which puts man squarely in

contact with a reality that will bear no excuses, in contact with mat-

ter to be mastered, and the only way to use it is to obey it. Obedi-

ence to the plow and the plane was indeed the only means of domi-

nating earth and wood. But the formula is not true for our

techniques. He who serves these techniques enters another realm

of necessity. This new necessity is not natural necessity; natural

necessity, in fact, no longer exists. It is technique’s necessity, which

becomes the more constraining the more nature’s necessity fades

and disappears. It cannot be escaped or mastered. The tool was

not false. But technique causes us to penetrate into the innermost

realm of falsehood, showing us all the while the noble face of ob-

jectivity of result. In this innermost recess, man is no longer able to

recognize himself because of the instruments he employs.



The tool enables man to conquer. But, man, dost thou not know

there is no more victory which is thy victory? The victory of our

days belongs to the tool. The tool alone has the power and carries

off the victory. Man bestows on himself the laurel crown, after the

example of Napoleon III, who stayed in Paris to plan the strategy

of the Crimean War and claimed the bay leaves of the victor.



But this delusion cannot last much longer. The individual obeys

and no longer has victory which is his own. He cannot have ac-

cess even to his apparent triumphs except by becoming himself the

object of technique and the offspring of the mating of man and



The Technological Society	(147



machine. AH his accounts are falsified. Alain’s definition no longer

corresponds to anything in the modem world. In writing this, I

have, of course, omitted innumerable facets of our world. There are

still artisans, petty tradesmen, butchers, domestics, and small agri-

cultural landowners. But theirs are the faces of yesterday, the more

or less hardy survivals of our past. Our world is not made of these

static residues of history, and I have attempted to consider only

moving forces. In the complexity of the present world, residues do

exist, but they have no future and are consequently disappearing.



Only the things which have a future interest us. But how are we

to discern them? By making a comparison of three planes of civili-

zation which coexist today: India, Western Europe, and the United

States. And by considering the line of historical progression from

one to the other—all of this powerfully reinforced by the evolution

of the Soviet Union, which is causing history to boil.



In this chapter we have sketched the psychology of the tyrant.

Now we must study his biology: the circulatory apparatus, the

state; the digestive apparatus, the economy; the cellular tissue, man.



CHAPTER



pa



TECHNIQUE

AND ECONOMY



There is a certain na*ivet6 in wishing to treat the problem of eco-

nomic technique in a few pages, and it seems completely useless

to take up once again a question so frequently studied. But, as in

the book as a whole, I do not mean to address myself exclusively to

those aspects of the problem which are traditionally considered,

that is, to the facts. The facts, figures, statistics (well or little

known) form the background and foundation of my inquiry. It

seems unnecessary to reiterate them. They can be found in many

books, so 1 shall continue with the “cursive” method I have hitherto

employed. By encircling the facts, I shall emphasize their impor-

tance; and on the basis of the data given, I shall seek to derive

new aspects and “lines of force” for new studies. It might be asked

whether, this has not already been done and is hence unnecesary.

But this inquiry presupposes that we have escaped not only from

sole preoccupation with brute facts but from formal logic as well.

Neither gives an account of reality. The point is to let oneself be

guided by a kind of logic internal to facts and things. It is useless

to speak of “laws.” I am opposed to the attitude, represented for ex-



The Technological Society	(149



ample by the works of Fourasti6, which combines elements on the

basis of pure logic, yielding a terribly linear and inhuman result.

I am likewise opposed to the attitude, characteristic of the majority

of Western intellectuals, which, having taken account of the facts,

denies them forthwith by avowals of hope and assertions of the cer-

tainty of human freedom—which is anything but scientific. This

attitude can be reduced to the conviction that the reality of things

is simply too frightful to behold. Instead of guiding themselves by

reality, most investigators of the problem adopt an attitude flatly

contradicted by all the events of modern times. This attitude might

be summarized as follows: '‘The facts are the elements of a game

of patience which is amorphous and has no form of its own. The

individual is perfectly at liberty among these facts to arrange the

pieces of the game as he will and to elaborate a voluntary and hu-

mane economy/*



I take an extreme view but one that I believe is closer to reality.

I see that the facts have their form and their specific weight. They

respect neither freedom of the individual nor formal logic. I am

striving in this essay to find their special consistency and their com-

mon tendencies, and to discover whether man still has a place in

this tangle; whether he still has any authority among these colossal

masses in movement; whether he still can exert any force whatever

on the statistics which are slipping from his hands into the abstract

and the unreal. Can he have a place, authority, and the pos-

sibility of action oil a better basis than ill-founded declarations of

hope or blind acts of unreasonable faith?



The Best and the Worst



The Influence of Technique on the Economy. Let us consider first

the aspect of the relation between technique and economy which

is traditionally studied, particularly by Marx. Technique, or rather

techniques, appears as the motive force and the foundation of the

economy. Without them, there is no economy. For this reason, a

distinction can be made in economics between dynamic force,

which is technical invention, and static force, the organization of

the economy, Marx distinguishes between the system of production

and the system of distribution: the former revolutionary, the latter



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



15°)



necessarily conservative. It is self-deception to put economics at the

base of the Marxist system. It is technique upon which all the rest

depends. But the distinction made by Marx must be revised, for

it is no longer true that technique plays its role in the realm of pro-

duction alone. Distribution, too, is to a great degree modified by

techniques. Indeed, no area of economic life is today independent

of technical development. It is to Fourastie’s credit that he pointed

out that technical development controls all contemporary economic

evolution, from production operations to demography. (There is no

doubt that world population growth is related to the increase in

consumption.) Even more abstract spheres are shown by Four-

astie to be dominated by technical progress; for example, the price

mechanism, capital evolution, foreign trade, population displace-

ment, unemployment, and so on.



This invasion of all economic activity by technique seems today

indisputable. Of course the problem had been raised by economists

before Fourastie, if not in full, at least to a certain degree. In an ef-

fort to explain crises, Gottfried Haberler, in Prosperity and De-

pression, ascribed their existence to inequality of technical develop-

ment in different branches of economic activity. The success of a

technique leads to its full development; technique will tend to reach

the limits of its possible development in a given area. The result is,

first, an inequality of power in the various areas of the economy,

which provokes an unblancing of the whole system; and second,

a diminution of plasticity of the economic milieu. Technical prog-

ress entails stasis in one part or other of the system; the economy

is strained to the full and loses all possibility of adaptation, bar-

ring, of course, a complete breakdown. The crisis then results from

the fact that the system cannot progress, economically, at the same

tempo in all its parts.



Henri Guitton returns to this idea when he notes that the adap-

tive mechanisms which were active during the nineteenth century

have become more and more hampered. This disturbance seems to

be attributable to the loss of structural elasticity. A structure suita-

ble to simplified mechanisms, lighter, so to speak (the old world had

not accumulated as many innovations as the new), is no longer

adapted to the exigencies of growth of a world no longer young.



In an altogether different field, John Maynard Keynes has also

shown in his work, General Theory, that technical progress is an



The Technological Society	(151



indispensable factor in the economy. The economic world cannot

remain stationary. It is unceasingly called on to evolve. In particu-

lar, the importance of technical progress is central to the theory of

investment. All the possibilities of labor must be utilized at any

price. It is necessary constantly to uncover new possibilities of in-

vestment. For, says Keynes, the more numerous the consumers’

goods—the production of which has been provided for in advance

—the more difficult it is to find corresponding new needs—which

must likewise be anticipated and which call for new investments.

What Keynes in fact fears is that there will not be sufficient new

possibilities of investment. There is only one way to ensure limit-

less possibilities. These possibilities have nothing to do with spon-

taneous human needs, but involve technical discovery and applica-

tion, which create new products to replace the old, and also stimu-

late the need for these products. Technical progress is therefore a

decisive factor in the progression of investment. The epicentric po-

sition of the theory of investment in Keynes’s system is well known.

If a Byzantine phase of technical arrest were to occur in the eco-

nomic realm, it would represent not only an arrest of economic

evolution but a regression as well, with a resultant series of deep

crises.



In a closely related sense, a great importance is attached to tech-

nique both by those who hold and by those who reject the theory

of economic maturity. According to this theory, only ceaseless tech-

nical progress can compensate for the causes of depression which

become manifest in an economy that has arrived at maturity.

These causes of depression are decline in the rate of population

growth and limitation of geographic expansion—two factors which

entail a decrease in the rate of investment. Technical progress could

remedy this but, according to the initiator of the theory, technique

shares in the decrease, not absolutely, but relatively. Technical

progress no longer occurs rapidly enough to compensate for the

other factors. Not even the opponents of this theory repudiate the

importance of the technical factor, and that is what interests us

here.



Yet another element of economic life ought not to be neglected:

agricultural production. In this case, too, the upheaval brought

about by techniques is a radical one. We have already noted the

danger to the earth itself. As to the benefits and the penetration of



Z 5* )	TECHNIQUE	AND ECONOMY



technique into farm labor, it suffices to refer the interested reader to

Giedion’s work. But I must insist on one point: as a result of the

influence of techniques, the modem world is faced with a kind of

“unblocking of peasant life and mentality.” For a long time peasant

tradition resisted innovation, and the old agricultural systems pre-

served their stability. Today technical transformation is an estab-

lished fact; the peasant revolution is in process or already com-

pleted, and everywhere in the same direction. The actual extent of

the progress of this revolution is of small importance; what counts

is the first step, which permits the barriers of tradition to be hur-

dled. The peasant becomes conscious of the inferiority of his tradi-

tions; the usual justifications are held in contempt and the peasant

world passes from the irrational to the rational. Once again we en-

counter the notion that technique destroys traditional forms of civi-

lization and introduces instead a global unity. What does this un-

blocking mean for the future? In the years to come we shall witness

an acceleration of technical progress in rural life, and an accelera-

tion of already perceptible phenomena: peasant emigration, agri-

cultural specialization, deforestation, and the growth of agricultu-

ral production in general. These events are of major importance in

view of the fact that agricultural production still remains the basis

of economic life; and that the countries of the world most depend-

ent on industry, Great Britain and Japan, have not reached as high

a standard of living as the United States because of the lack of suf-

ficient cultivable lands. The economic repercussions of this type of

technical progress ai e easily grasped.



These examples, chosen arbitrarily from different social areas,

show that the influence of technique on economic life is much more

widespread and profound than classical manuals of economics

w culd have \is beiieve.



Moreover, all this is implied in the elementary observation that

the progress of production closely depends on technical progress.

It is at the present a truism to say that a new, general economic

organization corresponds to certain new forms of production.



This dependence of the economy on techniques and primarily

on machines has come about in an irrational way. It is not the ac-

tion of clear and certain causes which have produced this interde-

pendence. Veblen asks whether machines do not squander more



The Technological Society	(153



effort and material than they save; whether they do not cause grave

economic losses by the developments they bring about in means of

transport, etc. The same questions are put by Bertrand Russell and

still more emphatically by Gaston Bardet, who points to the enor-

mous waste of human forces, of time, work, and capital, occa-

sioned by the social structures conditioned by the machine. These

are indeed simple questions, but important ones.



We see, then, that the influence of technique on the economy

does not arise from an indisputable economic superiority of the ma-

chine. Ideas and theories no longer dominate, but rather the power

of production. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century

resulted immediately from the technical advances of that time; this

relation has not changed. Marx was unquestionably right with re-

spect to the period from about 1830 to the present; the motive force

of all economic evolution has indeed been technical development.

However, Marx was not necessarily right with respect to other pe-

riods of history. Technical progress has not always been the basic

principle. We have already shown the contrary. Moreover, this does

not mean that the consequences Marx draws from his contention

are true. All we need do is note that Marx's observation is correct:

the more we advance into the new world, the more is economic life

dependent on technical development.



Economic Consequences. As Jean Marchal says, “the accumula-

tion of machines transforms the economy." We know that technique

is not equivalent to the machine, and Marchal’s statement is even

truer when technique is considered in my more general sense.

Furthermore, his formula, which historically is more or less exact,

tends to appear all the more exact in view of the economic dis-

turbances caused, for example, by automation. A simplistic view of

the automated economy proclaims ease and abundance for all

men, thanks to technique. But, unfortunately, this is not so sim-

ple. We are, in fact, confronted with a phenomenon which will

produce a veritable economic mutation. None of the economic

modalities (salaries, distribution, reduction of the work week, trans-

fer of the labor force from one area to another, disturbance of the

balance of production in the various areas) seems capable of reso-

lution in the present state of affairs. Even the socialist economic

structure is not adapted to receive the massive effects of automa-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



iS4)



tion. This has been avowed by the Soviet economists themselves in

their research into the effects of automation in the light of Marxism.



Returning to Marchal’s formula, we might ask in what direction

this transformation acts. If we consider certain traits of technical

progress of concern to the economy, we note that they all move in

the same direction. Let us recall that technical means are becom-

ing more and more enormous and costly. Consider, for example,

(a) the ever more numerous machines that are necessary to pro-

duction, which act more rapidly, are always being improved upon,

and are subject to frequent replacement because of constant inven-

tive progress; (b) the organization of labor, which implies more

and more numerous and costly personnel, which, although indis-

pensable, is not always immediately forthcoming; (c) publicity

techniques. In all these economic means the same fact is to be

noted, the investment of enormous amounts of nonproductive capi-

tal. Capital in such amounts can no longer be owned by a single per-

son and economic activity is beyond the range of individual possi-

bilities. But technical progress cannot do without the concentration

of capital. An economy based on individual enterprise is not con-

ceivable, barring an extraordinary technical regression. The neces-

sary concentration of capital thus gives rise either to an economy of

corporations or to a state economy.



A concentration of enterprise corresponds to this concentration

of capital. This fact can hardly be denied today, especially in view

of the power of these enterprises. Two examples from the United

States: In 1939, 52 per cent of all industrial capital was held by

0.1 per cent of the total number of enterprises; and in 1944, 62 per

cent of all workers were employed in 2 per cent of American enter-

prises. A similar concentration of banking facilities exists. Of 30.000

banks in the United States in 1920, only 15,000 were left in 1956.

There were 350 mergers in 1955 alone. The situation became so evi-

dent that in 1956 the Federal Reserve Board undertook a campaign

against this concentration.



This tendency toward concentration is confirmed daily, as Joseph

Lajugie shows. The important thing is to recognize the real motive

force behind it. The human and social effects of this concentration

are, on the whole, evil. In a great corporation, the workers are

more than ever enslaved and scarcely in a position to act in a dis-

tinctively human way. Even the consumer is frequently imposed



The Technological Society	(155



upon. The integration of the individual into the technical complex

is more complete than ever before.



From the purely economic point of view, the value of the results

is highly debatable. It would seem, from the point of view of the

market economy, that concentration should be a markedly favora-

ble factor. It involves, for example, suppression of competition and

a tendency to raise prices. But, more striking still, concentration does

not result in growth of profits. In many branches of production,

profit growth is arrested or even declines when the transition is

made from the medium-size enterprise to the large corporation.



What, then, is the motive force behind this concentration? Tech-

nique alone. A number of elements in technique demand concen-

tration. Mechanical technique requires it because only a very large

corporation is in a position at the present to take advantage of the

most recent inventions. Only the large corporation is able to apply

normalization, to recover waste products profitably, and to manu-

facture byproducts. Technique applied to problems of labor effi-

ciency requires concentration because only through concentration

is it possible to apply up-to-date methods which have gone far be-

yond the techniques of the former efficiency and time-study experts

(for instance, the application of techniques of industrial relations).

Finally, economic technique demands both vertical and horizontal

concentration, which permits stockpiling at more favorable prices,

accelerated capital turnover, reduction of fixed charges, assurance

of markets, and so on.



Technical progress thus entails concentration. But this concen-

tration represents real advantages only in the technical domain. The

impulse to concentrate is so strong that it takes place even contrary

to the decisions of the state. In the United States and in France,

the state has often opposed concentration, but ultimately it has

always been forced to capitulate and to stand by impotently while

the undesired development occurs. This confirms my judgment con-

cerning the decisive action of technique on the modern economy.



What is more, the technique of organization renders the inter-

vention of the state indispensable.



The necessity of normalizing products is no longer debated today.

It is one of the conditions of economic progress. This normalization

is based on technical research. But here, as everywhere else in a

capitalist or semiliberal economy, the technical result is in conflict



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



15*)



with certain interests. In order to apply it, the good will of the pub-

lie cannot be counted on. It then becomes indispensable to sanction

normalization in some other way. And only the state can apply this

sanction. The result is the creation of arbitration commissions armed

with public powers to deal with normalization.



Technical necessity calls for state intervention in order to organ-

ize the electric power network. Later on I shall discuss the inter-

relation of the network and the purely technical motives which

prompt it. It is not the regulation of opposed interests, but the ne-

cessity of a higher organization embracing the local organizations,

which, in this case, brings about the appeal to state power. The

technical organism called a combine is of the same order. Whether

it be the TVA or a Soviet Kombinat, it is perfectly illusory to claim

that such combines represent autonomous organisms. In fact, the

technical necessity which brought them into being gains force and

value only through state intervention. Doubtless, when the organ-

ism is constituted, it may receive a certain independence from the

state. But we must not forget who the real parent is. Nor must we

overlook the fact that this parentage represents a profound inter-

vention in the economy on the part of the state, an intervention,

moreover, not dictated by a theory or a will to power, but by the

technical manifest.



The necessity of utilizing certain goods also tends in the same

direction. It has long been recognized that technical progress is

effected more rapidly in the creation of the means of production.

From this fact comes a kind of hypertrophy of machine-producing

industries. The well-known Hoover Committee for the elimination

of waste found, for example, that the production of the American

clothing industry was 45 per cent greater than necessary. The ca

pacity ot the shoe industry was double its real production; and the

printing industry was overequipped by 100 per cent. The excess

production of home appliances and automobiles is well known.

None of this overproduction would represent a waste, if one were

judging on the basis of world needs. But, in the present situation,

overproduction produces disequilibrium with respect to revenues,

investment, and consumption possibilities, and so on. There is no

absolute need to halt technical growth in any given area (say, in

heavy industry). But there is a need to find markets for this over-

production. At present, only the state is in a position to sustain the



The Technological Society	(	15 7



tempo of technical progress in this direction, a heavy burden in-

deed.



Economics even intervenes in politics—consider the expansion

of systematic “planning," which proceeds by waves, so to speak.

Here there is a transition from the microeconomy to the macro-

economy which it would be interesting to study in a detailed way.

I shall simply point out that the application of planning on the

scale of the enterprise leads to a nationwide application of planning

in which all enterprises obey a like rule.



The establishment of production norms or of a plan becomes

rational and technically necessary when the method is already ex-

tended to the national field. I could easily give additional examples;

for instance, in the development of financial and banking tech-

niques. Let us bear in mind that atomic energy, say, when put to

work will suppose state control of all sources of energy. It is incon-

ceivable that an individual could have at his disposal the sources

of atomic power. Not doctrinal but technical reasons today render

economic life inseparable from the state. This does not mean that

the economy necessarily becomes collectivist or totalitarian. For the

moment let us simply note the indissoluble relation.



This relation is admitted by many economists. Is it the resuk

of chance or of choice? Of neither exclusively. Nor is it the result of

a managed economy. As Robert Moss6 writes: “With the develop-

ment of the managed economy, it has become very difficult to trace

a boundary between politics and economics ..." In reality, it is a

necessity resulting from the advance of technique. Technique plays

an important role in economic life; but it has the same effect with

reference to economic science. A relation is being established be-

tween technical progress in economic life and technical progress

in science or method. The two converge and end in identical

results.



Before examining this transformation of method, we must briefly

recall that political economy has changed its object, and almost its

nature, as a consequence of the enormous accumulation of eco-

mic facts. Economic facts have been rendered more numerous and

more enormous—and this is not the least effect of technique in

economic life. The definition of economic science has hence be-

come more and more complex and comprehensive. Without seek-

ing to note all the points of the curve, let two definitions suffice for



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



15*)



comparing the distance between the extremes. The first was given

in 1850, the second in 1950. In the first, economic science was de-

fined as the “science of wealth/’ Its object was primarily acquiring

wealth and disposing of it. It was therefore an individual and pri-

vate matter. The objective of political economy is conceived in

such a way today that it is virtually impossible to encompass it in a

formula. As Marchal shows, we have the problem of satisfying the

needs of humanity, co-ordinating the available means of produc-

tion, modifying existent institutions, and even transforming human

needs. These problems must all be studied not on the plane of the

individual but on the plane of the social group, and an effort made

to disengage the laws of these social groups.



There is no need to go to the extreme and substitute for the or-

ganization of production the organization of distribution alone, as

Robert Mosse appears to be doing when he writes: “From the mo-

ment production becomes sufficient, the essential thing is to dis-

tribute goods and leisure.” Without going that far, it is easy, as

Lange has done, to see the difference between a science of the pro-

duction of wealth and a science of administration of scarce goods.

More and more, the economic fact covers all human activity. Every-

thing has become function and object of the economy, and this has

been effected by the intermediacy of technique. To the extent that

technique has demanded complete devotion of man or brought to

light a growing number of measurable facts, or rendered economic

life richer and more complex, or enveloped the human being in a

network of material possibilities that are being gradually realized,

it has transformed the object of the economy. The economy now

becomes obliged to take into account all human problems. The

development of techniques is responsible for the staggering phe-

nomenon of the absorption by economics of all social activities.



The Secret Way



But another relation between technique and economy exists: the

formation of an economic technique. Not only has economic science

changed its object and its nature, but it has produced a technique

which is simultaneously a method of knowledge and a method of



The Technological Society	(15 9



action. Political economy has not renounced its claim to being

normative. It seeks not only to grasp reality but also to modify it.

But the real relation of these two aspects of economic technique

is obvious. The method of scientific knowledge as such reacts on the

economic milieu and tends to shape it; but this technique is not

“neutral.” It does not merely stand ready to do the bidding of any

random doctrine or ideology. It behaves rather with its own

specific weight and direction. It is not a mere instrument, but

possesses its own force, which urges it into determined paths, some-

times contrary to human wishes.



Economists, not understanding this, want to disengage their

technique from its “neutrality” and to bring it into the service of

their ends. They reject the definition; “Economics is the science

[technique!] of efficient choices.” But when they seek to humanize

the economy, they learn quickly enough that such attempts lead

directly to the subjugation of the ends to techniques. Those who

pose the problem of ends and propose a humane economy as their

goal are the very persons who develop techniques further and en-

hance their specific weights, as Jacques Aventur has shown. But

whereas the overpowering phenomenon of the machine strikes

home to everyone and makes plain its influence on economic life,

the ways of economic technique are secret and everyone remains

convinced of its innocuousness and docility.



In order to grasp the nature of economic technique, it is first of all

necessary to grasp the reasons for its rise. One of its causes is so

simple that I shall mention it only in passing. This is the evolution

of the sciences in general.



The sciences in general, in the twentieth century, have passed

through a crisis of growth characterized by the appearance of cer-

tain problems of methodology and technique. Economic science

is likewise abandoning dogmatic positions and deductive methods

in order to establish exact procedures. This may have taken place

before the first gropings of the infant science had borne definitive

results. Many economists believe that the ideal science, which must

serve all others as model, is physics, and that economic method

must approximate the method of physics taken as general type but

not as specific means.



At the same time economists feel, as a kind of challenge, the in-



16 O )	TECHNIQUE	AND ECONOMY



effectiveness of their system. Nothing has exposed the vanity of

political economy better than their contradictory diagnoses and

therapies for economic crises. For some the cause of crisis is an un-

saleable surplus of goods; for others, insufficiency of production.

For some it is an excess of savings; for others, a lack of them. And

as far as the proposed remedies are concerned, some economists

would raise the discount rate and others would lower it. Some hold

that wages must be stabilized and others demonstrate that they

must be lowered. Such contradictions can only arise from a defect

of method. And the economists bitterly resent the ironical attitude

the public has toward them. One of them recently wrote: "The

public believes in the physicist, but it has no confidence in the

economist.** Policymakers absolutely cannot rely on what the econo-

mists say, nor follow their contradictory counsels with respect to

action. All this, then, made it mandatory to replace the regime of

theories, which gave birth to nothing but opinion, with a rigorous

method which "sticks’* to facts.



The need to stick to the facts became more imperative as the facts

themselves became more complex. Here again the effect of tech-

niques made itself felt. The facts of economic life could be grasped

directly when economic life was still relatively simple, when eco-

nomic phenomena (for example, at the end of the eighteenth cen-

tury) presented a picture which, in magnitudes and elements, was

compatible with direct experience. But the enormous growth of the

economic milieu has made direct apprehension impossible and

brought about the decline of corresponding modes of reasoning.

Everyday logic cannot embrace more than a very limited number

of data. It was therefore necessary to invent a method correspond-

ing to the increasing complexity and amplitude of economic phe-

nomena. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a "technical

state of mind” appeared which developed mightily toward mid-

century. This state of mind was characterized, first of all, by an

effort to make a hard and fast separation between what is and

what should be. The doctrinal character of economics was com-

pletely repudiated. The sole interest was in matters of fact. The

goal was simply to know scientifically, to accumulate facts, to put

them in mutual relation, and, if possible, to explain them by means

of one another.



The Technological Society	(161



Political economy is no longer a moral science in the traditional

sense. It has become technique and has entered into a new ethical

framework, which I shall define later on. This represents a de-

cisive step for the creation of a technique. The technical state of

mind is likewise evident in the creation of a precise method (which

more and more consists in the application of mathematics to eco-

nomics) and in the precise delimitation of a sphere of action. In

effect, in order for technique to exist, method must be applied to a

fixed order of phenomena. In the transition of doctrine to technique,

the central idea was the distinction between microeconomics and

macroeconomics, as in the work of Francis Perroux, a leader in

this inquiry in France.



We have here a decisive situation. Microeconomics studies

economic phenomena at the human level where the relatively hu-

mane traditional methods can be applied, where individual de-

cision is respected, but where the complete application of the tech-

nical apparatus is not permitted, either with respect to method or

with respect to action. The observation of facts on the microeco-

nomic level does not ipso facto entail action, and to promote action

is one of the principal characteristics of techniques. Even if

microeconomic inquiry is useful and congenial, it nevertheless ap-

pears to have no future because it pertains to the limited world of

the individual



Macroeconomics, on the other hand, opens all roads to technical

research and application. Technical application presupposes, as we

have already noted, measurable magnitudes, elimination of errors

of judgment, and amplitudes of movement wide enough for tech-

nique to have an understandable object. These are precisely the

characteristics of macroeconomic inquiry. There is no doubt that

the methods of macroeconomics are still somewhat uncertain, and

many phenomena are recalcitrant to it (for example, scientific tech-

niques applicable to revenues). Nevertheless, this is the domain a

priori of technique and we can be assured, as a consequence, that

this is where the really effective forces will be concentrated. We are

likewise assured that microeconomics, far from being an element in

the foundation of macroeconomics, or a complementary element to

it, will be absorbed. It will lose its reason for existence to the extent

that macroeconomics develops surer techniques. We are heading



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMt



1 62 )



toward a society in which knowledge of microeconomic phenomena

will be the result of simple deduction from knowledge of macro-

economic phenomena.



The technicians in these new disciplines all have one trait in

common: the joy of constituting a closed group in which the lay-

man has no part at all. This represents an unconscious tendency; but

we observe it among many modern economists in the form of a se-

cret technique, an esotericism, a certain contempt for whatever

does not belong to its new world of means.



This “pride of youth” always appears among technicians when

they are convinced that their new method is unassailable and that

their discoveries are becoming the center of things. The authority

in which they clothe themselves takes the form of a secret vocabu-

lary which is incomprehensible to the outsider even when it is em-

ployed, as often happens, to enunciate the most obvious facts.

Technique always creates a kind of secret society, a closed frater-

nity of its practitioners. It is a new thing in the milieu of economics

to note a kind of studied incommunicability. Up to now, every man

with a little education was able to follow the works and theories of

the economists. To be able to follow them today, one would have to

be both a specialist and a technician. The technique itself is difficult

and the necessary instruments cannot be managed without previ-

ous education. And there is that caprice of many economists to

constitute themselves a closed society. These two factors coincide,

indicating the grave consequence of excluding the public from the

technical life. Yet it can scarcely be otherwise.



Technique as a general phenomenon (as we shall see when we

study the political milieu) always gives rise to an aristocracy of

technicians who guard secrets to which no outsider has access. De-

cisions which have a serious basis take on the appearance of arbi-

trary and incomprehensible decrees. A cleavage like this, which is

inevitable in the advance of technique, is decisive for the future of

the democracies. Economic life, not in its content but in its direc-

tion, will henceforth entirely elude popular control. No democracy

is possible in the face of a perfected economic technique. The de-

cisions of the voters, and even of the elected, are oversimplified, in-

coherent, and technically inadmissible. It is a grave illusion to be-

lieve that democratic control or decision-making can be reconciled

with economic technique. Little by little the elements necessary to



The Technological Society	(16 3



the creation of this technique are taking shape; and soon they will

be perfected.



The Economic Techniques of Observation. I do not intend to

describe these instrumentalities; I am concerned here solely with

exhibiting them as an ensemble.



The principal instruments which have been developed are: statis-

tics, accounting procedures, the application of mathematics to eco-

nomics, the method of models, and techniques of research into

public opinion. It is evident that these elements reciprocally con-

dition one another.



At the base of the structure lies statistics, the instrumentality for

determining the raw facts of economics. At one time statistical data

were ridiculed on the ground that they were misleading. But this

stage lies behind us, and nowadays a large measure of confidence

rests in the precision of such data. This change has resulted, in part,

from a change in the state of mind of the statisticians themselves.

They are immersed in a “statistical atmosphere” and comply with

the quantitative and numerical practices of the modern world. To

statisticians, statistics is no longer a mere game; it is an essential

operation of society. This represents a change not only in perspec-

tive and in seriousness, but also in basic position. For a long time

statistics was the work of amateurs; today it is a complex organiza-

tion of specialists. It has become a profession and, as a conse-

quence, is practiced much more earnestly. Moreover, the statisti-

cians have at their disposal increasingly precise instruments. Among

these instruments (which have transformed administrative as well

as statistical technique) are the calculating machine, the punched-

card machine, and microfilm. Not only has the speed of operation

been prodigiously accelerated, but also its precision and its dimen-

sions. By means of microfilm, hitherto uncombinable elements can

be combined; and by means of the electronic brain, operations can

be effected which the human brain could never perform.



The statistician is, materially speaking, in a position to perform

convincingly. This is even more evident in the utilization of statisti-

cal data. As we shall see, the combination of the elements is essen-

tial, and this combination becomes feasible largely through the

intermediacy of the machine.



A final element increases the professional seriousness of the statis-

ticians: their responsibility. In democratic countries, it lies in the



164)	TECHNIQUE	AND	ECONOMY



realm of private enterprise; the various organs concerned with sta-

tistical data in effect sell their studies to the great corporations

which must know precisely, for example, the course of a market. If

the information proves inexact, the statistician can be sued in

civil court, at least in the United States. In countries under authori-

tarian rule, responsibility is a public matter; in the Soviet Union the

statistician who gives false information is regarded as a saboteur.



These elements together make modern statistical data more and

more precise. The great scope of statistical operations and of the

organs involved generally escapes the nonspecialist. To give a sin-

gle example, there are in the United States fifty-six federal agencies,

each of which specializes in one or several statistical categories. Al-

together, twelve categories of weekly statistics are published. One

of these, the category of price, takes in four elements. One of these

(gross price) comprehends 1,690 weekly quotations combined

in 890 series. This indicates the extreme complexity of the opera-

tion. It must become even more complex when interpretation is

undertaken.



All this work is not motivated by pure scientific interest. It is

oriented toward action. Permanent inquiry of this sort is no longer

instituted to construct or support doctrines but rather to relate in-

formation to action. In order to succeed in effecting this connection,

interpretation is necessary, and this is the principal task of the tech-

nical discipline called econometrics.



Econometrics is distinct from mathematical economics. It is much

more theoretical. Its principal operations on statistical data are two-

fold: (1) analysis, comprising operations such as simplification or

dissociation of statistical data; and {%) comparison, which can be

applied to different kinds of elements. Magnitudes can be com-

pared by establishing what are called equations of regression,

which express a constant relation between two magnitudes of the

economic domain. Variations can also be compared; here a correla-

tion index is established, according to which two economic phe-

nomena vary in direct or in inverse proportion but with the same

velocity. Within the same realm, the econometrician tries to estab-

lish certain relations: no fact in the economic domain can be re-

garded as due to chance; and not satisfied with simply noting and

giving the correlation formula, the econometrician goes further and



The Technological Society	(165



establishes the causal relation between two phenomena, a proce-

dure which leads into the future.



Until recently, economists operated on concrete data alone. But,

for the purposes of action, they must make predictions. A distinction

must be drawn between predictions which are made according to

the system of covariations, and causal explanations of phenomena.

Here the economist leaves the purely technical realm. An equation

no longer provides the solution; there is a certain subjectivity, a cer-

tain personal judgment. To be sure, it is present in the various

other operations, but to a lesser degree.



Economic technique has taken over a variety of other means; for

example, stochastics, the application of the calculus of probabilities

to economic phenomena. This technique is extraordinarily difficult

to handle. It does not operate on raw figures but on statistical data,

on data furnished by econometrics (as, for example, the coefficients

of elasticity), and on the data furnished by public-opinion research

institutes. In connection with the third element, it is evident that

economic phenomena are not mechanical; opinion plays a role. In

a very simplified way, it might be said that stochastics seeks to es-

tablish a law of probability, or of the frequency, of a given event,

starting with a very large number of observations. Stochastics,

therefore, represents an instrument of prediction which gives the

direction of the most probable evolution of the situation.



This stochastic calculus is limited only by the nature of the eco-

nomic and social milieu. For example, if a given law is exact, the

public which is informed of it tends to react in the inverse sense.

But sometimes it reacts by conforming to the law. The act of predic-

tion is thus in a sense self-falsifying. But the public, by so reacting,

falls under the influence of a new prediction which is completely

determinable. The economist is able to establish laws of probability

for all deviations of opinion. It must be assumed, however, that

one remains in the framework of rational behavior. The system

works all the better when it deals with men who are better inte-

grated into the mass, men whose consciousness is partially para-

lyzed, who lend themselves willingly to statistical observations and

systematization. The results obtained by this technique are impres-

sive, even though the technique is still immature.



Much more classical, and of a different order, is the whole com-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



166)



plex of accounting techniques. These techniques have been much

modified and no longer belong merely to the realm of enterprise

but rather to that of economics. The accountant is no longer a mere

agent for registering the movement of funds in an enterprise. Ac-

cording to the Lutfalla report published by the Conseil Economique,

1948, he has become a veritable “profits engineer.” His operations

encompass not only money but all the elements of production. He

is oriented toward the past and also toward the future. The more

complex manufacturing operations become, the more necessary it

is to take adequate precautions and to use foresight. It is not possi-

ble to launch modern industrial processes lightly. They involve too

much capital, labor, and social and political modifications. De-

tailed forecasting is necessary. We shall meet this question again

when we discuss planning, but it is appropriate here to call atten-

tion to the so-called “input-output” techniques Leontieff has

pointed out. These represent a method designed to establish in a

precise, numerical way the interconnections among all sectors of

production techniques. They determine for each sector what is

bought from and sold to the others. This method makes it possible

to establish in detail what raw materials, instruments, tools, and

machines are required to produce a given product. Under present

conditions, one can no longer fix magnitudes approximately or be

content with mastering certain key subjects. For even a very ordi-

nary commodity, two or three hundred basic elements must be

taken into account. Exact quantities, weights, and times must be

fixed. The necessary calculations can only be performed with the

help of computing machines. With this method the well-known and

hackneyed formula—that everything is reciprocally dependent—

becomes a rigorous reality. But it is the technical elements which

are reciprocally dependent, welded together by a common neces-

sity and expressed in certain new techniques.



What holds for the private accountant is even more true for the

public accountant who works on a nationwide scale. There are

certain differences between the two insofar as enterprise has pri-

vate profit as its end. As a consequence of the profit motive, the pri-

vate accountant must comply with the rules of capitalist manage-

ment. The public accountant (who becomes an accountant of

initiative) draws up balance sheets and future revenue potentials

for a complex organism whose reactions are slow and of great am-



The Technological Society	(16 7



plitude when referred to the impulses at their origin. If public en-

terprise behaves in any way like capitalist enterprise, its internal

dynamism complies with certain laws. The role of the accountant

is to discover these laws. The effects of this new revenue-calculating

economic technique, which relates economic effects to their causes,

are easily seen in fields such as the liquor industry, housing, trans-

portation, and so on. It is clear that this calculated revenue poten-

tial bears not merely on money but also on human capital. France

does not yet have a central accounting service which could com-

pletely exploit this technique and establish a measurement of social

needs, means of production, movement of capital, national income,

and demographic change, etc.



Returning to the methods of pure economic technique, we find

the method of models. It is extremely difficult to experiment in eco-

nomic matters. But experimentation is indispensable in all sciences

and even more so in techniques. As Vincent puts it, a model is a

“simplified but complete representation in its numerical aspect of

the economic evolution of a society; for example, a nation during a

given period.” A model is a reproduction in miniature of a certain

economic ensemble in the form of mathematical equations. It is im-

possible, obviously, to put all economic phenomena into a model; a

certain arbitrariness is called for. The primary act is therefore a

choice, founded on some theoretical decision, of the constants and

variables to be put into the model. This theoretical decision, how-

ever, is not arbitrary. It is guided by certain principles, in particular

the necessity of linking observation to action. Once the constants

and the variables of the system have been selected (and they may

be numerous), the relations between them are established. Some

of these relations are evident in the sense that they are purely

quantitative; others are more unstable and subjective and must be

established by the economic technician himself. They are empirical

relations, verified or proven false by experiment. Finally, the en-

semble of these relations must be put in the form of equations by

insertion of the time factor. Then, by solving the equations, it

is possible to study the evolution of the system and its incidences.

This facilitates the study of the evolution of certain mechanisms

determined by a social group, or of the incidence of some ex-

terior intervention into an economic system, or of the influence

and importance to the whole of every element in an ensemble.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



168)



Models can be purely theoretical or historical, as when the data

arise from statistics (in which case they must be tested against

the actual evolution of society). Or they can be predictive, as when

the attempt is made to forecast the future. These predictive models

are the object of great interest in the study of economic complexes.



The last of these new economic techniques which I wish to de-

scribe in this brief review is public-opinion analysis. Everyone is ac-

quainted with the Gallup Institute, which has branches in almost

every country of the world. Various systems (soundings, sam-

plings, inquiries) are used to establish periodically the feelings of a

given class or category of the population*, about any important

question. Certainly, there is strong skepticism about these methods.

No one believes that he thinks and acts like his neighbor. No one is

sympathetic to the notion that he is a mere number in some list or

series; and this unconscious rejection makes for skepticism. None-

theless, the results of such samplings must be deemed valid, in

spite of the seeming (but easily explainable) setbacks they suffer,

as, for example, in the well-known case of the American presiden-

tial elections of 1948. The results reflect various phenomena: soci-

ological currents, ethical preferences, and political opinions with

which we here are not concerned. But other results reflect eco-

nomic currents: opinions concerning prices and wages, commer-

cial choices, urgent economic needs (to the extent that they are

measurable), and so on. In sum, anything in the nature of an opin-

ion which can be grasped by a good observer or reporter will hence-

forth be numerically measured and followed scientifically during

all stages of its development. This method represents a great revo-

lution; it permits the integration of opinion in the technical world

in general and in economic technique in particular. This system

brings into the statistical realm measures of things hitherto unmeas-

urable. It effects a separation of what is measurable from what is

not. Whatever cannot be expressed numerically is to be eliminated

from the ensemble, either because it eludes numeration or because

it is quantitatively negligible. We have, therefore, a procedure for

the elimination of aberrant opinions which is essential to the

understanding of the development of this technique. The elimi-

nation does not originate in the technique itself. But the investi-

gators who utilize its results are led to it of necessity. No activity

can embrace the whole complexity of reality except as a given



The Technological Society	(169



method permits. For this reason, this elimination procedure is

found whenever the results of opinion probings are employed in

political economy.



The economist is thus provided with an arsenal of technical

means which enable him to observe and sometimes to predict eco-

nomic reality in detail. Then the following question is unavoidable:

Will these techniques remain simple techniques of observation, of

pure knowledge? We grant that their creators had no ulterior mo-

tives. The means are there simply to be of assistance to economic

science. But will this motive be adhered to? Let us consider the

position of the economist as J. U. Nef has described it. The econo-

mist, more or less stricken with an inferiority complex in regard to

the public, “abandoning the hope of affecting policy by objective

thinking, seeks refuge by becoming an expert and counselor on

questions of technology or practical politics/' Economists cherish

the hope of influencing reality. The technique of knowledge the

economist is now acquiring allows him, through the state, to exer-

cise this influence. We note this in all countries, no matter what

their type of economy or form of government. It has been called the

reign of the experts, but it is in actual fact the reign of the techni-

cians. Economists today have the means of being technicians near

the seat of state power. But even without wishing to take account

of this tendency, we know that these means of observation of reality

will not remain inert. Like all techniques, they possess specific

weights and direction. The reasons are very simple.



An organization for establishing statistical data is extremely

costly and cannot continue without profits. One way of making

a profit is to sell statistical products to a capitalist clientele, which

will utilize them to guide its business into certain channels. A

statistical bureau then becomes a counseling bureau. But the

use of statistical data in a semiliberal capitalist economy is re-

stricted and cannot be developed to its full effectiveness. This

incapacity of capitalism correctly to employ techniques appears

time and again. Mumford says: “One of the most flagrant faults of

capitalism is not to have known how to make use of existing lab-

oratories, for example, the Bureau of Standards, to determine

norms from which the whole body of consumers would have bene-

fited/’ The tendency of technological society is to determine the

movements of the macroeconomy; yet it is striking to note that sta-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



170 )



tistics, once established, tend to revert to the level of the micro-

economy and individual decision, and to find employment only on

this level. This is obviously insufficient; the economists are in a

position to lay claim to something better than a clientele which,

in any case, seldom enables them to cover their costs. They must

address themselves to the state. Certain semipublic corporations

finance the operations, but it is clear that the state demands its

quid pro quo. If the state is to pay for statistical research, it must

get something in return: assistance in directing national affairs.

The state requires the economist, on the basis of statistics, to seek

out methods of intervention either directly or by subtle means

such as those advocated by John Maynard Keynes. When the

great private corporations or the state ask the economist for a

method to influence reality, they are addressing the economist's

own invincible longing, which in the beginning engendered the

improvement of these scientific means. Suppose that we have ac-

cumulated enormous quantities of facts, have encompassed the

whole of reality, and possess the means to follow the mechanism of

economic phenomena and even to a certain degree to predict them.

Shall this accumulated force, then, serve no purpose? The 1952

report of the American Bureau of Labor Statistics shows clearly

that this ensemble of means leads inevitably to planning.



We confess that we are unable to follow Closon’s reasoning

when he declares that the operations of the Compabilite Nationale

are not a threat to freedom because, in fact, they are not applied.

Once the trends of the economy have been recognized and re-

duced to numerical form, will it be tolerated that no intervention

be undertaken when the catastrophic consequences of some de-

cision or other have been clearly perceived?



On a more modest but still significant plane, what meaning has a

detailed accounting of all the needs of a thoughtless worker (in-

cluding the number of springs in his mattress and the number of

razor blades he uses annually), undertaken in order to establish a

minimum wage, if he can spend his money haphazardly? Mere pre-

diction would plainly be absurd. The irrationality of the individual

keeps him from living on the amount he could live on according to

calculations. He would die of hunger on a subsistence minimum,

unless an authoritarian education made him conform.



Let us grant that this represents no more than a temptation to



The Technological Society	(171



the economist. But it would require superhuman strength not to

yield to this temptation once action becomes possible; the more so

because the informational techniques described are closely con-

nected to techniques of action, as are the establishment of norms or

of accounting plans. We have distinguished somewhat arbitrarily

between knowledge and action in order to present in the most ob-

jective way possible the normal development of economics pro-

duced by the creation of these techniques. Even when they serve

solely for the purposes of knowledge, it is clear by how many routes

they end in intervention. Econometrics is only to be understood if

it issues in its normal end, the establishment of economic plan-

ning. Without this, econometrics is inefficient, and efficiency is the

very law of technique. Like a horse chafing at the bit, the tech-

niques of economic science await the signal to intervene more com-

pletely than ever before in the reality they have come to under-

stand.



The Economic Techniques of Action. At the same time that the

economist has created a technique for knowing, he has created a

technique for acting. A new world is awakening, an economic mu-

tation is being effected. Among these techniques of intervention we

shall consider only two: plan and norms.



The establishment of norms by the economist has become neces-

sary, Dieterlen tells us, simply in order to follow and understand

economic development. (A good example of the transition from

techniques of understanding to techniques of action.) It is not

sufficient merely to follow the course of statistical data. It is neces-

sary to erect in advance a system of norms of progression of the

elements of a given economic system which will permit us at any

moment to estimate the divergence of a given element of the sys-

tem from the norm. Even in a nondirected economy, it is possible

to determine (a) a certain relation among the different economic

components; (b) a “normal” tendency for the evolution of each of

these elements; and, consequently, (c) a “normal” evolution of

their relation. When such a scheme has been established, it is then

possible to say whether one of the elements is progressing too rap-

idly or too slowly, a fact which, in Dieterlen’s opinion, should

serve to reveal the causes of an economic crisis.



But if we thus establish certain norms of progression, we are con-

fronted with two facts. First, the necessity of intervention: once



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



17*)



the norm has been set and a condition which diverges from it has

been observed, it would be folly to permit a dangerously abnormal

phenomenon to develop. Second, the possibility of extending such

an establishment of norms. Why should inquiry be limited to a

given system? Once a calculus of norms is possible, it ought to be

extended throughout the economy. This legislative tendency

will operate not merely in the area of the organization of labor. A

bureau for setting standards, or a service of industrial analysis, is no

longer limited to the co-ordination, say, of wages and of the scien-

tific organization of labor. These operations transcend the level of

private enterprise and attain the level of the general. They har-

monize the complementary activities of wide economic sectors. We

are then completely within the technique of intervention; the tran-

sition from the one to the other has been imperceptible.



If the term norm is taken in its exact meaning, it is evident that

the application of the system of norms orients us in a unique direc-

tion. Under capitalism, norms are fundamental to the planning of

enterprise, but the tempo of production remains a function of mar-

ket conditions. In a planned economy, norms are fundamental to

all economic calculations. They determine the quantities to be pro-

duced and measure the degree to which the plan is realized in the

market (Fedotov). The technique of normalization can only have

full scope in a planned economy. It tends, in proportion to its devel-

opment, to imply a planned economy, simply because it tends to

pass from private planning and an atomized economy to a global

economy and general planning (the fundamental condition of its

application). A global economy is more exact to the degree that

both these aspects of planning are subject to the law and control of

the machine, as Mas indicates.



Ail this represents a tendency rather than an accomplished fact

As soon as industrial normalization intervenes, it brings with it

this tendency which inevitably devalues the older economic types

and the older industrial organizations.



Norms mutually entail each other and presuppose certain syn-

chronizations. It is almost impossible to conceive of localized

norms. If it is asked what the motive force behind this tendency is,

once again we must answer: efficiency. The logic of norms was

clearly evident in the application in Britain in 1940 of the National

Research Project. Research on the measure of production and its



The Technological Society	(17 3



practical consequences spread like a slick of oil and brought the

whole of industry into line. It has been praised as “political econ-

omy entering into action,*



This “chain reaction* is also only a tendency at the moment. It is

claimed that counteracting factors, economic and human, will pre-

vent it from becoming a reality. But these other factors are not tech-

nical. The competition is between divergent forces, the one techni-

cal, the others not. And in our society the technical factor must pre-

vail over the others. I therefore believe that in this area, too, the

logic of norms will impose itself everywhere. And if in my analysis

of this development I seem to have isolated the technical factor,

this is not because I choose to neglect or fail to recognize the others.

But, as I have already demonstrated, the technical factor is at pres-

ent the decisive one. In addition, most of the other developmental

factors are well known and almost universally studied, whereas

the technical factor remains, in general, obscure.



As soon as norms become essential because of their obvious util-

ity, they appear to complement the plan. There is no better means

of co-ordinating them or permitting them their full efficiency than

to integrate them into a plan. This is what I mean by the logic of

norms.



Another technique of intervention which has recently become

essential (and which I shall only mention) is so-called operational

research. Its basic characteristics, its objectives, and its meaning are

identical with those of norms. But the problem here is a problem of

decision. Norms and operational research are today the two means

by which the plan is executed.



Planning represents a second aspect of the economic technique

of intervention. Everyone has an approximate idea of what plan-

ning means: the state decides everything and regulates everything

in advance. We must analyze at least the characteristics of the plan-

ning operation, if not its details. Economic planning is a variety of

technique, not a form or a system or an economic theory. Not a

single economy of any type whatsoever has been constructed by

means of planning. We think otherwise because the Russian ad-

venture has always appeared to us in such a guise. “It was desired

to build an economy of the collective type and to succeed in this a

plan was elaborated.* But the Russian plan assumed its own mean-



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



174)



ing independently of all theoretical ideas. In reality, the plan is a

technique and ipso facto indifferent to doctrines and opinions; it is

least of all concerned with principles of action. In Germany no one

had any very clear concept of the economic form that should be

adopted, but planning was accepted as an efficient means. In our

own day, it is even more true that plans develop in all countries

without any foundation of economic doctrine. This, in one sense, is

very reassuring. People constantly say: “If we remain true to our

old doctrine and the plan is only an instrument, we remain what

we were. If planning has sometimes functioned as a socialist in-

strument, it was only because it was in the service of socialist doc-

trines." This is, as consolation, illusory. But it is at least founded on

the truth that planning is not connected with any particular doc-

trine. System or not, however, it perhaps implies a certain definite

form of economy.



A second observation leads us to insist on the importance of

“ways and means” in the establishment of the plan. The plan is not

merely a set of commands or some general orientation. There are

two focuses in the plan. There is the choice of objectives, the direc-

tion to give to an economic system in its ensemble. There is also the

most concrete possible anticipation of the means needed to reach

these objectives. Economic choice of objectives and the establish-

ment of corresponding means—such is the plan. But this choice and

these means are elaborated in the most rational possible way, and a

whole complex of techniques of application enables the user to

avoid arbitrariness. With regard to the techniques of the forma-

tion of a plan, we refer the reader to the works of Charles Bettel-

heim.



Now let us consider a great difficulty which is an important point

of discussion in modern planning: prices and wages. Until now, the

plan has been more or less tied to “real” prices and wages. Plan-

ning, if not actually established by the market, was at least fixed in

temporal or spatial relation to market prices and wages. But this

situation could not last long. The intention of the third Soviet

plan was precisely to fix prices and wages in a purely abstract, but

not arbitrary, way by certain econometric methods, independently

of the laws of the market. It would seem from the various wage

manipulations which took place in 1949, and the repudiation of

Vosnessenski, that this attempt was not a success. However, we



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must consider it a s the only logical way i n which planning could

then have been undertaken. And this approach may vevy well be

eliminated by new improvements in economic technique. This

would set to rest the objections of Francois Perroux, for whom the

plan was thereby deprived of all “economic rationality.”



A plan is executed in accordance with two constant principles:

efficiency and social need. The plan first answers the constant

search for the most efficient use of mechanical means, natural

riches, and disposable forces. The problem is to organize, co-ordi-

nate, and normalize these elements in such a way that each instru-

ment produces its maximum yield. Planning has been criticized on

all fronts, from the philosophic to the economic. But no one has yet

questioned the fundamental efficiency of planning, except at the

beginning. This criticism had its origin in two things, the gropings

of the planners and the ignorance of the critics. Everyone has since

become convinced that the mechanism is efficient—with allowances

for a certain bluff that up to now has accompanied planning experi-

ments. As far as technique is concerned, judgment is based solely

on efficiency, and planning appears fully justified in this respect.



The second of the two principal criteria of planning is the satis-

faction of social needs. The initial difficulty is to determine just

what these needs are at a given moment. How shall we effect the

balance between social needs and production? Theoretically these

are insoluble questions (I say theoretically advisedly). The pro-

posed means (opinion polls, ration cards, obligatory absorption by

the buyer of whatever is produced) indicate that the question as it

is usually posed is abstract. If one says: “In planning, the consumer

is in command,” one is making abstraction from the fact that the

plan, a sociological phenomenon, answers to social need and not to

individual need. At the same time one is thinking of an abstract

man (a kind of fixed image of man), and this, too, renders the pro-

posed question inoperative. The social man envisaged by the plan

is a man integrated more and more into modern technical society.

His needs are more and more collectivized, not indeed by direct

pressure, but by publicity, standardization of goods, intellectual

uniformity, and so on. It is well-known that “to the standardization

of production corresponds a standardization of taste which gives to

social life its collective character.” Moreover, mass consumption

corresponds spontaneously to mass production. There is no need



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



176)



for repressive measures. The adaptation of the public occurs of it-

self. The average man becomes the norm in the most liberal system

in the world because only the products necessary to the average

man are offered on the market In fact, the problem of understand-

ing social needs is complicated only if planning technique is sepa-

rated from all the other techniques. These other techniques spon-

taneously lead men to feel certain social needs conformable to

certain data. When the plan is reinserted into its true framework, it

is evident that there is no need of forcing social needs. They are

prepared in advance, so that the plan is in a position to correspond

exactly to them, after a more or less difficult period of adaption.



The whole evolution of human needs, in their “sociologism,"

tends toward the plan. There is almost no necessity any longer to

exert pressure on these needs. They are already what they should

be, provided that we abandon human misfits to their miserable lot,

a procedure which is, in any case, the course of all techniques.

When it is a question of dominating the world, one cannot stop to

consider Kirgiz shepherds or Bantu huntsmen who will not accept

th#4aws of the determining forces.



Planning does not pretend to produce an immediate response to

all social needs. As I have said, there is choice. It is choice which

can render certain persons unhappy but not hopeless, because the

plan is inserted into a dynamic conception of the economy. The

equilibrium between production and consumption is neither static

nor does it exist at present It is to come, and will constantly re-

new itself. The choice effected at a given moment is placed in a

general perspective which makes this choice relative, and at the

same time subordinate, to subsequent foreseeable development. It

is necessary therefore to consider both the future of realization

and the mechanism of uniformization of needs (which I have al-

ready mentioned). This leads the two lines to come together con-

stantly. This is an element of the dialectical view of the economy,

which is the only one admissible today. During the realization of a

plan, a constant readaptation of means and ends is simultaneously

effected, assuring a greater cohesion of the ensemble, if not a

greater certainty of realization.



Finally, it seems to me important, in connection with the plan

itself, to emphasize the need for utilizing the labor force efficiently.

It would appear that full employment is an internal necessity, not



The Technological Society	(17 7



merely a momentary circumstance, of the plan. Charles Bettelheim

has demonstrated that without full employment there is no possi-

ble satisfaction of the totality of social needs. In this connection,

wages change their character and become a part of the social

product. The plan ought, therefore, to provide for both full employ-

ment and the assignment of the labor force in accordance with the

requirements of the production plan. It becomes indispensable to

extend the plan to the whole labor force. Without this, the mecha-

nism cannot function. And this then poses the question of the

place, of the limitation, of the characteristics of planning.



One need not yield to the puerile enthusiasm that considers plan-

ning a panacea, a polyvalent remedy like penicillin. But it is nec-

essary to put the plan into a different perspective. Whatever the

remedies or proposed reforms for resolving injustice and incoher-

ence in the modern economy, everything occurs through the agency

of the plan. The plan in itself is no solution. But it is the indispensa-

ble instrument of all solutions. Even if one starts with Knut Wicksell

or John Maynard Keynes, one meets again and again the urgency

of planning.



In Mumford’s proposals to release man from the clutches of tech-

nique, there is an interesting project for an economic regionalism

on a world-wide plane. But this regionalism can, in fact, only be

based on the exceedingly complete and rigid planning of produc-

tion and distribution.



Planning and Liberty. Everybody, or almost everybody, is con-

vinced today of the effectiveness of the two techniques of interven-

tion, norm and plan. And, in fact, in view of the challenges which

not only nations but political and social systems hurl at one another,

and even more, in view of the challenge that man is making to

misery, distress, and hunger, it is difficult to see how the use of the

means provided by planning could be avoided. In the complexity

of economic phenomena arising from techniques, how could one

justify refusal to employ a trenchant weapon that simplifies and re-

solves all contradictions, orders incoherences, and rationalizes the

excesses of production and consumption? And since the techniques

of economic observation, if they are to have their full scope, issue

directly in the technique of planning, and since there can be no

question of renouncing the youthful vigor of these mathematical

methods, how is it possible not to see them through to the end?



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



178 )



Yet a certain disquiet has appeared among those who cherish

human freedom and democracy. They ask if planning is not an all-

consuming force. They seek to set three kinds of limits to its power,

represented by: (a) flexible planning, (b) the system of limited

planning, and (c) the separation of the planning agency from the

state (in short, what is usually called the reconciliation of liberty

and socialism). No one accepts Friedrich August von Hayek’s

proposition (in his Road to Serfdom) that planning is essentially

evil. Conscientious economists are unable to renounce technical

discovery. They seek a middle term.1 Is it to be a limited plan? But



1 See a compendium of ideological illusions concerning planning and liberty con-

tained in a recent special number devoted to this question in the Indian Journal of

Political Science. Ten or so articles attempt to demonstrate that planning is indeed

indispensable but that it presents no danger at all to freedom. A complete unreality

characterizes these articles. The position of the authors can be summarized as

follows.



First, they express the hope of saving freedom through liberal and partial plan-

ning. (However, other authors in the same volume show that this hope is absurd

and ineffective.) Second, the articles contain other formulas, equally absurd and

without content. “Planning should have as its object the realization of freedom’';

“The more rational planning becomes, the greater the freedom of the people." These

are mere affirmations, and one would seek in vain for corresponding realities or for

a possible content.



Some of these authors rely for proof of their propositions on a series of simple

syllogisms. For example: “(1) Planning increases production, (a) Production allows

the satisfaction of more needs. (3) The satisfaction of needs is the condition of

freedom. Hence, planning is the condition of freedom.” This reasoning is faulty for

two reasons. It is linear and takes no account of the complexity of the facts (for

example, put a man in prison, give him everything he needs: he is nonetheless

free). It derives its conclusion partly from an economic premise (the first) and

partly from an ethical premise (the third), without attempting to distinguish the

logical planes on which these premises lie. The third premise is, in any case, wholly

questionable from a spiritual or ethical point of view. (I shall return later to a

discussion of this.)



But for these authors the principal hope of saving freedom, in this amazing theory,

in the claim that an enlightened public opinion has the Dower to direct the

decision of the planners toward the satisfaction of its real needs. In this case, one

would indeed have democratic planning, collectivism on a voluntary base. But to

reason like this is surely to move in a world of dreams. The good faith of these

intellectuals compels one to think seriously of pathology.



Can anyone really believe that, if public opinion wanted pastry shops, planning

could be oriented toward these institutions, if, in addition, the other uses of flour

had to be sacrificed? Can anyone really believe that public opinion would receive

any satisfaction if it demanded footgear when tractors were needed? Such beliefs

are simple nonsense. It will be maintained that public opinion does not really know

what it needs . . . But then the technician makes the decision. We are familiar

enough with the mechanism: first producer goods, then consumer goods. Of course,

public opinion will be “consulted” after the technician has made his decision: “You

would have preferred woolen goods? Technically impossible; we had to make them

of cotton. Green? Unfortunately, there is no aniline. But you can choose between



The Technological Society	(179



then the problem is posed: where lies the limit? For some econo-

mists, planning is a purely economic question bearing on key in-

dustries. But the debate has lasted a century and no decision has

been reached as to which industries are key industries. The deci-

sion becomes even more difficult as categories change with time

(the extraction of uranium, for example, was not a key industry

twenty years ago) and as the interpenetration of economic activi-

ties becomes greater and greater. It is becoming extremely diffi-

cult to analyze the factors involved in production. Every part of the

system is, directly or indirectly, dependent on all the others through

financial repercussions or through the structure of labor. How,

then, is it possible to set up a planned sector of the economy along-

side an unplanned sector? When one rereads what was published

on this problem only ten years ago, it is clear that these studies

are completely out of date and have been rendered null and void

by subsequent technical improvements. Let us assume that a plan

has been made for a five-year period. If now the attempt is made

to limit it to economics by allowing the greatest possible freedom

outside this area (for example, by having no planning in the social

domain), how can this economic plan possibly be viable?



The problem of financing is necessarily raised even by a flexible

and limited plan. It was clear, at the time of the discussion of the

new phase of the Monnet plan (September, 1950), that bank credit,

the appeal to private financing, was insufficient. It was necessary

to turn to public financing. But this represented an enormous un-

dertaking, even for the state. The state was obliged to concern it-

self with the planning of its finances according to the more or less



light red and dark red. See what freedom you have!” In effect, these authors

seek to baptize obedience to technical necessity with the name freedom. They

attempt to hide the real compulsions and write either out of blindness or hypocrisy.



Only one of these articles is valid. Suda declares: "So much the worse for freedom.

We can sacrifice it. In any case, on the plane of values, dedication to the common

good is a higher ideal than freedom.” I cannot agree with this, but at least it allows

us honestly to assess our situation. We encounter the same attempt at justification

(in general, better supported but as unconvincing) in Entre la planification et la

liberty, in which Dutch, French, Norwegian, and American authors study the prob-

lem from very varied viewpoints (Revue Economique, March, 1953).



These illusions are contradicted by Tibor Mende himself (India After 12 Years,

1959)- He shows that Indian agricultural planning (the communal projects of the

villages) collapsed because it was not comprehensive and authoritarian. His com-

arison of India with China is a clear demonstration that, in accordance with the

criteria of yield and efficiency (the sole justified criteria of any planning), the most

authoritarian methods are the most profitable.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



l80 )



new totalitarian financial conception, which assumes control of the

whole national revenue and affects every citizen.



In order for the plan to be realized, the use of the labor force

must also be integrated into it This is recognized by Great Britain,

for example, in its conception of full employment. The application

of the plan likewise presupposes planning of housing and of voca-

tional guidance, apprenticeships, and schools. Moreover, it quickly

becomes clear that there is a need too for social security (a neces-

sary psychological and sociological element if full employment is

to function without too violent a shock to human nature). This in-

terrelation is not imaginary and gratuitous. Internal necessity con-

nects the elements of the plan, and it is folly to think of breaking its

links.



Thus the plan, once adopted as method, tends perpetually to

extend to new domains. To limit it would be to put the method in

a position in which it cannot function—exactly as though one were

to construct efficient automobiles but refuse to build adequate

roads. The car could indeed run on narrow, rutted, and sandy roads,

but it would not give the results for which it had been designed.

Certain complementary given elements become proportionately

more numerous as planning improves and modern society becomes

more complicated. These mutual relationships render limited plan-

ning impossible. The plan engenders itself, unless technique itself

is renounced.



The same situation holds if the planner aspires to adopt a flexi-

ble plan or one independent of the state. In such a case the fun-

damentals of the plan are not obligatory. The plan appears as mere

advice concerning what would be desirable; the producers remain

independent, the consumers have free choice, and the attitude of the

individual prevails over the social. The flexible plan is subject to

constant revisions and readjustments demanded by universal per-

sonal freedom. The same holds true if the attempt is made to refer

the organization of the plan to agencies other than the state: to

narrower organisms, such as administrative divisions of specialized

economic; organizations; or to organizations of wider scope, as, for

example, international organizations. The appeal to international

bodies is designed to vitiate the criticism of such writers as Hayek

concerning the dangers of totalitarianism which arise when the

state is in charge of the plan.



The Technological Society	(181



These different proposals are extremely deceptive. The flexible

plan has only one defect; but that defect is crucial: the plan cannot

be realized. The reason is simple. If the plan corresponds to the

real nature of planning, it ought to fix objectives, which normally

would not be attained by the play of self-interest and a modicum of

effort. It must stretch productive forces to the maximum, arouse

energies, and exploit existing means with the maximum of effi-

ciency. (That planners do not always succeed, that administrative

errors occur, and that not all planning invariably acts with the maxi-

mum efficiency is no more a criticism of the system than errors of

calculation are a criticism of mathematics.) But if the individual is

allowed freedom of decision and there is no plan, he will not make

the maximum effort required of him. If the industrialist is allowed

to retain full independence, he will seek out other arrangements

and not arrive at the objectives proposed. Hence, the plan, in or-

der to be realized, must be paired with an apparatus of sanctions.

This appears to be a veritable law of economics; planning is in-

separably bound up with coercion.



The individual does not realize spontaneously what is most ef-

ficient. Nor do the workers conform spontaneously to Gilbreth’s

'‘movements.*' The following alternative presents itself. Either the

plan is flexible but is not realized, as experience shows: in spite of

the propaganda about the Monnet plan, its objectives were only 70

per cent realized. The flexible plan of the Bulgarians (1947) was

37 per cent realized. The Monnet plan, which ought to have been

completed in 1950, was actually completed in 1953, having taken

twice the proposed time. In Vaction psychologique (1959), Mai-

gret restudies the effect on the breakdown of the plan of the ab-

sence of propaganda (which would have rendered the plan psy-

chologically compulsory). It is useless to expend the great amount

of labor which goes into a plan only to reach a stalemate. Or the

plan must be realized, but at the cost of loading it with sanctions

so that it becomes more rigid. Those who count on the good will

of mankind display a delirious, idealistic optimism. Centuries of his-

tory, despite the facts, have not been able to convince them of the

contrary; reason certainly will not change them. But they are so

far removed from reality that their opinion is negligible.



The problem of sanctions brings planning into relation with the

state. Anyone who claims that planning and the state are separable.



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



182 )



or that local plans can be carried out (the TVA is always cited), has

forgotten that local plans must be guaranteed by the state or they

come to nothing. And this suffices to give back to the state all its

prerogatives. It is evident (and Russia and Germany were no ex-

ceptions) that it is not the state itself which creates the plan, but

rather some specialized organism more or less dependent on it.

As to the TVA, the source of this enterprise was the Roosevelt

government, which performed operations of expropriation, made

means available, and assured sanctions.



How, then, is it possible to retain a belief in the independence

of the plan? The bond between planning and the state is organic

and not due to chance. At the minimum, the power of the state is

required for a general examination of available resources and to put

all the national forces to work. I do not use the word planning in

the technical sense, as when one points to school-construction pro-

grams or traffic-signal installations. Local entities are of course able

to execute such programs. But they do not represent planning any

more than does dike construction in the Netherlands. If they did,

the "planning” of a house by an architect would have to fall under

this category. As to international decisions (which might be cited

as a proof of the separation of the plan from the state), these do

not represent plans in the proper sense of the term (for instance,

the Bretton Woods agreements). The sole hope of realization of

international plans—for example, in Europe—rests, as we clearly

see today, on the existence of a European state. This kind of plan-

ning acquires substance only to the degree that such a state is con-

stituted. This fact corroborates our thesis. Only a supranational state

would be able to convince both the national states and the trusts

to co-operate in a common economic operation. The Dawes and

Young plans ended in failure because they had no means for genu-

ine sanctions and no political power to support them. Conversely,

we note that the Marshall Plan (which became the EC A) is im-

perceptibly producing a political system. The Atlantic Pact is a cor-

relative to the Marshall Plan, and Europe will begin to organize

itself only in the event that the ECA is seen to be completely use-

less unless it is applied to a politically ordered world.



The Americans understood perfectly that the only alternative to

a useless expenditure of money in the ECA was a European politi-

cal organization. Unification, or even economic co-ordination, can-



The Technological Society	(18 3



not be conceived of independently. Mere understanding or good in-

tentions can scarcely result in real planning. Again we are back at

the necessary conditions for the realization of a planned economy.



That in an ideal society the connection between plan and state is

unnecessary, just as the need for penalties disappears in the case of

the individual as he exists in himself, I am willing to admit. But

that does not make me believe in such an ideal and take it as a

reality. In fact, I note that techniques of knowledge engender and

necessitate techniques of action, and techniques of action presup-

pose certain conditions and developments in accordance with a

true law which might be called the law of the extension of planning.



This extension of planning does not necessarily bring about a so-

cialist society. Private ownership of the means of production need

not be modified in order to have a planned economy. Likewise,

planning does not necessarily bring about a dictatorial state. The

use of sanctions and propaganda can be accommodated to forms

other than dictatorships. But when a technique invades a certain

domain, in connection with planning, the technique effects its

whole operation with completeness. It is useless to try to set limits

to it or to seek some other mode of procedure.



The Great Hopes



Economic Systems Confronted by Technique. Jean Marchal is

right in reducing to three systems the economic solutions presently

recommended. Marchal’s three systems are; corporatism, planning,

and liberal interventionism. But after having correctly observed

that the system of planned economy is at bottom no more rational

than the system of the market economy, he is wrong in adding that

“the choice between the two systems follows more from philosophic

preferences than from truly scientific considerations”; and that “nei-

ther of these systems can pretend to a total rationality.”



It is not philosophical preferences which weigh one system

against the other, or which lead to the choice between them. If I

ask myself which of the two ought logically to prevail, I am not

referring to the “philosophical” choice of the masses. It is efficiency

and success that lead history to adopt a certain direction—not man

who in some sense makes a decision. The problem does not concern



TECHNIQUE AND ECONOMY



l84)



personal decision or preference; it is a question of discerning what

seems most probable. At the present moment, what system is most

efficient? I insist on the phrase at the present moment. It means

nothing to explain that liberal capitalism was extraordinarily effi-

cient a century ago. The statement is true and we do not wish to

deny it. But what of the present moment? If we accept the idea that

different human systems of action ought to correspond to different

social, political, and economic circumstances, can we uphold the

thesis that the past efficiency of liberal capitalism is a pledge of

present efficiency? Let us remember that from the point of view

of efficiency the Russian and German planned economies were

successes. And the United States adopted a planned regime when

it was challenged by war—it may be added, with all the care and

precaution presupposed by the critical democratic sensibility of the

Anglo-Saxons.



Shortly after reconversion, in 1950, however, the Americans were

obliged to embark on a new program. It was not merely an arma-

ments program (which had certain advantages in connection with

full employment), but a sound program encompassing a group of

countries, as indicated by Truman’s Point Four. These programs

presupposed a planned economy.



It would seem that we are today unable to escape the facts. And

the facts direct us toward the planned economy, regardless of our

theoretical judgments in the matter. It is also often asked whether,

after long periods of planned economy, the trend could be reversed.

But this is another problem.



We must ask why these fixed and rigid programs (which emerge

in a planned economy) are adopted on a wider and wider scale,

irrespective of doctrines and intentions. The only reply is that plan-

ning permits us to do more quickly and more completely wliaievei

appears desirable. Planning in modem society is the technical

method. It does not necessarily represent the best economic solu-

tion, but it does represent the best technical solution. We must de-

mand of planning what it is able to do, and nothing else. Marchal,

therefore, is right in saying that the planned economy is not more

rational than the market economy. It is not at all certain that it will

result in any greater savings. I understand that one of the pre-

occupations of economic science is whether a result has been at-

tained in the most economical manner possible. But this is possibly



The Technological Society	(185



only an abstract point of view and, in any case, is secondary. The

same problem arises in war between one general who hesitates to

sacrifice human life and another general who desires victory at any

cost and is willing to sacrifice everything to gain it Unfortunately,

our experience since the eighteenth century has been that the gen-

eral who hesitates to make the sacrifice is always defeated. The

same problem is posed by “dumping.” In speed, intensity, and co-

herence, the technique of the plan proves superior. There may be

waste. This is not completely certain. But it ought not to be for-

gotten that the charge of waste was one of the keenest criticisms

leveled against liberalism. It is possible that waste will be mitigated

through an improvement of the technique. We are not presently

in a position to say one way or the other.



These observations might be summed up in the statement that

in one case technique exists and in the other it does not. But things

are not so simple. It is standard practice to set up in opposition

the possible solutions; for example, corporatism and planning. But

we should guard against the possibility that the contrast is com-

pletely artificial. We should guard against abandoning ourselves

to the judgment of the specialists. The important question is one of

perspective. Every system is composed of different elements. We

can put these elements in different perspectives and thereby arrive

at different judgments. The specialist will fasten on certain specific

elements. Either he will envisage a given system sub specie aeter-

nitatis, in which case his judgment will be that the planned econ-

omy and the corporate economy are clearly not identical. Or he

will envisage the system from the viewpoint of practical realization

in all the facets of its achievements. In this case the structure of a

corporation (or the systems of corporative production) will again

be judged not to be the same as the structure of the planned econ-

omy in genuinely concrete details.



These elements of a given system, which are important in their

specificity, lose importance, however, if, instead of isolating the

system, we try to reintegrate it into the complex of society and

into the general course of history. What then takes on importance

are the elements in their relation. Relations are of the highest im-

portance, not mere internal consistency. It is the connections be-

tween the economic system and the state (with its technical

means, different classes, and structures in national form) which be-



l86)	TECHNIQUE	AND	ECONOMY



come characteristic. And we do not mean here theoretical connec-

tions, but real ones resulting from the internal necessity of the re-

gime. From this point of view, the corporate economy and the

planned economy come singularly close together, to the degree

that both systems (a) take a firm hold on the economy, (b) man-

age it on the basis of exact mathematical methods, (c) integrate it

into a Promethean society which excludes all chance, (d) centralize

it in the frameworks of nation and state (the corporate economy to-

day has no chance of success except as a state system), (e) cause

it to assume an aspect of formal democracy to the total exclusion of

real democracy, and (/) exploit all possible techniques for con-

trolling men. The kinship of the two systems is obvious in spite of

differences in material structure.



The end pursued by both the corporate economy and the planned

economy, and the means adopted to reach this end, are identical.

Only the outward forms change. It is useless to compare these

forms. History will decide which form is best—best adapted to the

common end.



It does not seem to me to be exact, therefore, to hold that there

are three possible economic pathways. There are only two. And

only one of them entails the exploitation of these techniques; the

other one ascribes the chief place to nature. (Here again is the old

opposition between the natural and the artificial, the artificial repre-

senting the expression of art: technS.) The complete identity,

rather than the resemblance, between corporatism and planning

ought to be noted. Corporatism is adapted to a traditional, culti-

vated, bourgeois mentality; planning, to an innovating, proletarian,

pseudo-scientific mentality. But the attitude of the two is funda-

mentally the same. And, speaking objectively, the result, insofar as

the real structure of human society is concerned, will be identical.

As to the choice between the two, the system that can best utilize

the techniques proposed by the economists will prevail. Up to

now, there is no doubt that the planned society seems better able

than the corporate society to utilize these techniques. The cor-

porate society brings to bear a whole complex of nontechnical

considerations (sentimental or doctrinaire) which the planned

society rejects.



It may be objected that in the planned society politics intervene

on a major scale and that this is not technique. I would then ask



The Technological Society	(18 7



what kind of politics is meant. As we shall see, politics have tended

to become technical in the countries that have adopted planning.



The serious study of the opposition between politics and eco-

nomics, and of the relations between them, dates back perhaps

twenty years. This opposition has tended to bec