Technocracy In Plain Terms

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Technocracy

in

PLAIN TERMS

TECHNOCRACY

INC.

155 East 44th Street, New York, N. Y.
S CENTS

Previous generations had to venture
forth in the darkness, groping their
way slowly. Today, the next advance
in the structure of society is already
charted. You will not be able to
remain unaffected in this greatest
of all social constructions. Why
not be in the vanguard?

Technocracy

in

PLAIN TERMS

— A Challenge
and a Warning

First Five Printings
Published by Section I, R. D, 12349, Technocracy Inc.
Vancouver, B. C.

Sixth Printing, March 1939
Seventh Printing, August 1939
Published by Continental Headquarters, Technocracy Inc.
155 East 44th St., New York, N. Y.

Copyright 1939, Technocracy Incorporated

Printed in U. S. A

Technocracy in Plain
Terms

A WAY back in 1919, a body of scientists,
I \ engineers and technicians known as the
XA. 'Technical Alliance,' began a production-
and-distribution survey and analysis of the system
in use on the North American Continent. This
survey was known as the 'Energy Survey of North
America.' They gathered a great mass of informa-
tion regarding the use of energy and the physical
equipment of this Continental area to ascertain
the relationship of energy consumption to the
amount of goads and services rendered.

Technocracy is the direct result of the work of
this body of scientists.

The word itself stands for the findings and con-
clusions of this organization, and signifies a new
and purely scientific form of social management
which, as formulated by Technocracy Inc., is based
solely on scientific principles and incontrovertable
scientific facts, and can only be carried on along
scientific lines.

Technocracy Inc. is a legal, non-profit member-
ship organization.

The members of Technocracy are called 'Tech-
nocrats.' The name 'Technocracy' is copyrighted
and the right to use it owned exclusively by Tech-
nocracy Inc.

5

Technocracy is not the result of deliberate
scheming or Utopian day-dreaming; in this it
differs, as it does in many other ways, from all
other movements. It is a new method of governing
society that inevitably suggested itself to the re-
search body as its analysis and survey progressed.

If the human race on this Continent is to survive
the crash of the Price System, Technocracy will
have to be put into practice. And this crash will
inevitably occur within the next very few years
as the result of the impact of the use of extraneous
energy on the social fabric, a process which is
steadily throwing millions of men on the industrial
slag heap. If the people of North America — the
rich as well as the poor, as none are immune —
are to escape the stark horror of famine and bar-
barism which may follow this crash, Technocracy
will have to save them. Only Technocracy can
do it — Technocracy, the scientific control of all
social functions.

Can you visualize what such a chaotic period
would mean? A nation-wide walk-out and panic
would only be the start of things. There would
be hunger, rioting, disease, and starvation — and
deaths, probably by the million. This is Tech-
nocracy's challenge and warning to the people of
North America. Heed it or perish.

Technocracy will not perish. After the inevit-
able collapse of our stupendous financial and
political structure, after the many palliatives have
been tried and have failed, it will still remain.
Technocracy is the one workable answer to the
frightening dilemma in which we find ourselves.
You can kill a million men, but you cannot suspend
the laws of nature.

6

What It Holds for You

In consideration of Technocracy there are four
major questions that will rise in the mind of the
inquirer :

1. What is Technocracy?

2. What is it designed to do?

3. How will it junction?

4. Will it be satisfactory to all concerned?

1. What is Technocracy? This question has
been answered partly in this article already.
Science is no respecter of persons and there is no
appeal from the immutability of natural laws.
Live according to nature's laws and you will avoid
a lot of grief. Live contrary to her laws (or at-
tempt to)) and you pay the price — which is some-
times very heavy.

2. What is it designed to, do? Technocracy,
briefly stated, is the application of science to the
social order. Science (through the technologists)
has looked at the present order of things on this
Continent and exhaustively surveyed and analyzed
the methods of production and distribution of all
goods and services, the energy harnessed and po-
tential, the renewable and non-renewable resources,
the technological equipment now in use, and the
trained personnel which operates it.

Science — now Technocracy — -finds that every
man, woman, and child could have and enjoy for
his natural lifetime a supply of goods and ser-
vices equivalent to $20,000 per year based on prices
in 1929, or ten to twenty times what the average
man then enjoyed. This is a very high standard

7

of living to be shared by our entire population and
if it sounds like an exaggeration, be assured that
our statement is easily supported by proven sta-
tistics available to any one who cares to make the
investigation. We shall not undertake the proof
here, for that could not be done intelligently in an
article of this length.

In their researches the scientists discovered
certain things. They did not carry any precon-
ceptions to their task, nor did they do any guess-
ing or theorizing as they went along. Their find-
ings cannot be successfully refuted or denied by
anyone and from them come concrete indications
of the collapse of the Price System on the North
American Continent. The evidence is positive
and complete. There is no 'out.' The Price
System can no longer work on this Continent.
And by Price System is not meant merely the
capitalistic system which is only one variety of
the species ; it means the collapse and complete
obsolescence of the entire method of distributing
goods and services by means of a PRICE.

3. How will it junction? In a Technate there
are no such things as trading or working for
wages. We have such an abundance of goods
available now that they can lo longer be exchanged
or bought or sold. They must be distributed to all
persons without restriction in order to scientifically
determine production and to operate the plant on
a balanced load basis ; and to do this goods must be
measured and not evaluated. Money cannot be
used, and its function of purchasing must be re-
placed by a scientific unit of measurement.

All the goods that the people of this Continent
can use can be turned out in a steady flow by the
present productive equipment with each operative
8

working 4 hours a day, 4 days a week for about
165 days a year between the ages of 25 and 45,
with complete leisure time after his 45th birthday.

4. Will it be satisfactory to all concerned? This
question as it involves the tastes, opinions, formed
habits, emotions, idiosyncracies, etc., of people, no
two alike, is the hardest to deal with. But even the
most hardboiled and hardest to suit would prob-
ably come to like living under a Technate. At
any rate it is quite possible that you would have
to take it whether you liked it or not. That would
be rather a raw deal, wouldn't it? — to have all of
the very things that you wanted forced upon you?
The only way to avoid enjoying all these things —
the full and unrestricted gifts of science, as re-
leased by technological control — would be to com-
mit suicide or leave the country permanently.

Get this fact firmly: Technocracy is not advo-
cated because it may be desirable. Technocracy
does not deal in any way with people's emotions, or
desires, or wishes, or dreams. All Utopian states
in the past have been formulated by dreamers who
started out by postulating what they thought would
be the best or more desirable. Technocracy starts
out with the facts at hand which indicate what the
next most probable state of society will be, and
whether that state will be desirable from the stand-
point of people's opinions or not, has nothing to
do with the question. However, and fortunately,
it all seems to be highly desirable, even to the most
skeptical.

For Technocracy, the only test is : 'Will it
function ?'

Mechanization

Would it make it any clearer or more emphatic
with regard to the mechanization of industry and

9

the displacement of manpower, and man's ultimate
emancipation from toil — to say that a certain ma-
chine, now in existence and working, can go out
into the cotton fields and pick cotton so fast that
if it were used universally it would throw five-
sixths of all the cotton pickers out of work? Or
to tell you that :

There are paper making machines a city
block long, each one of which can turn out a
strip of paper 21 feet wide and nearly 300
miles long in a day? There is a rotating
machine in a dairy near New York which
washes, dries, and milks 60 cows every 12
minutes? Three men with a modern thresh-
ing combine can cut, thresh, and sack 40 acres
of wheat per day? A single unit in a modern
brick plant has a capacity of 10,000 bricks
per hour, and there is no limit to the number
of units that can be installed in a factory if
necessary? In a modern match factory one
machine dips a million sticks with each revolu-
tion of a wheel, a job that used to be done by
hand? Shoe factories now have machines in
the form of a gigantic wheel and each revolu-
tion of the wheel completely soles 200 pairs of
shoes ?

But machines more astounding than these are
being put into use in all lines of industry every
day. It would take a small pamphlet merely to
list some of the major developments of the so-
called 'depression years.' You can see that by
increasing the number of units of any of these
machines there is no limit to the amount of goods
that can be turned out in an incredibly short time

10

and with very little or no man-energy applied.

Is it any wonder that the machine has put men
out of work? We can see only too clearly what
misery that phenomenon is causing today ; but we
also see that it is the machine which can give us
security and leisure to enjoy life.

These statements are not the theories and
vagaries of engineers or inventors talking about
machines they have in mind which they are going
to produce some day in the future. These ma-
chines and countless thousands more are now in
existence and working. And day by day, as they
whirl and roar, they are spelling out on the wall
in fiery letters the doom of the Price System.

Technocracy will bring out the many useful
machines and processes that are lurking in the
background — buried patents, and many other use-
ful things, suppressed for financial reasons- — and
put them to work to increase still further the
leisure of mankind on this Continent.

Technocracy finds that most of the human effort
expended under the Price System is wasted effort
and non-productive, tending only to increase the
cost of the goods produced and prevent their wide-
spread distribution, rather than to increase the
quantity or supply. Technocracy will eliminate
this waste and produce as much as possible for
the least possible expenditure of man-energy. Pro-
duction and distribution will be maintained on the
basis of a balanced load ; no overproduction and no
underconsumption .

Think of the millions of salesmen, insurance
agents, bankers, bookkeepers, accountants, adver-
tising men, etc., in industry who actually produce
nothing and only add to the cost of the goods !
Their services in these capacities will not be re-

11

quired under the Technate. Those over forty-five
will not be required to work any more, and those
under twenty-five years of age will be trained in
some really useful capacity to their liking and
ability, and along with those now unemployed
would be given work, reducing the individual
working hours of all.

Every one will have all that he can use of
everything with no repetition of the present or
any other form of depression. The man or woman
who is incapable of working will be entitled to
exactly as much as any other person, for the use
of goods and services will in no sense be given as
a reward for work done, but simply because the
recipient happens to be a human being living on
the North American Continent.

What Would This Cost You?

This abundance of goods and leisure can be had,
as we said before, by every one for their lifetime
with a minimum of work and a maximum of
leisure, with complete leisure time after the age of
forty-five. The working hours would be further
reduced as time went on as new labor-saving ma-
chinery was devised, or as the demands and desires
of the people became less. The cost of keeping it
after we had it would be very little in terms of
human energy. There would be a large positive
gain in the net comfort and well-being of every-
one, and there would be another large gain in the
independence and sovereignty of each individual.
We would lose our right to vote once every few
years, and gain a new right to vote every day, and
as many times a day as we chose.

12

Our present vote amounts to the expression of
a choice between two or more usually dubious
political parties, once, say, every four years. Either
way, our vote has positively no effect on the
actual operation of the country, for the country is
not run by politicians anyway. The voice of the
people through the ballot box is absolutely nil.

The only real vote is purchasing power. What
you buy you vote for. The people who attend
wrestling matches in their thousands each week are
voting for them each time they go. Every time
you buy anything or use any service you vote for
a continuation of that thing or service, and in this
manner help to weave the texture of your life and
the collective life of the country. Unfortunately
the purchasing power of everyone today is unequal,
which invalidates the real power of this consuming-
power ballot. Under a Technate, however, every-
one's consuming rights are equal (because by far
the simplest way to distribute the right to use
goods and services is equally) and therefore every-
one has an equal voice in what he or she shall
have. There are no elected politicians to spend
your 'money' for you, so you spend it yourself and
directly represent yourself ; nor do you need any-
one else to help you. Each individual tells the
Technate what shall be made, and the Functional
Control says how it shall be made. The only dic-
tatorship in Technocracy is in the plant, where it
is even now. Just try and be an individualist —
working in a factory!

Technocracy has many other far-reaching social
implications, benefits, and advantages which there
is no room even to mention here.

Any statement made by Technocracy Inc. is a
statement of fact, not theory. Technocracy's pre-
dictions are made with almost the same mathe-
13

matical and scientific exactitude as astronomers'
predictions of the next solar eclipse. We use the
word 'almost' because Technocracy, unlike astron-
omy, has to take into account the human equation
in its calculations which might possibly cause a
short-term variation. The predictions would ulti-
mately come true, however, in spite of the human
variation factor.

Technocracy does not concern itself with human
emotions or antagonisms, or political dogmas or
beliefs, or with European philosophic importations.
Technocracy does not talk in terms of what is
known as 'economics.' Technocracy is not to be
confused with any recovery or reform movement
or organization either monetary, political, or other-
wise. It bears no allegiance to and makes no com-
promise with the Price System or anything that is
a part of the Price System.

Technocracy stands for reconstruction and a new
form of control operated and directed by a Con-
tinental Control, acting through and with each one
of the Functional Sequences in our productive
system. Each Sequence or industry will control
itself from within on the basis of the requirements
of the job and abilities of the men who are in the
plant and naturally control it anyway. Under this
form of control the resources of the country would
be converted into goods and services for use only.
Only that which was demanded by the people as
individuals extering their right to consume would
be produced.

The Big Job Today

What Technocracy Inc. is chiefly engaged in
now is the organization of an army of trained men

14

and women in the United States and Canada who,
when the present interference controls break down
and the intricate machinery of production and dis-
tribution is in danger of stopping, will be able to
prevent that catastrophe before it is too late. For
once the mechanism were to stop completely it
would be practically impossible to get it going
again. There is only a few days' store of goods at
any time in the larger urban centers of this Con-
tinent, and in a period of hunger and madness it
would not take long for the mob to ruin or let go
to ruin an important part of the machinery. Even
if they did not actually destroy the industrial plant
it would have to be started simultaneously from
the basic industries up since it operates as one
inter-locking mechanism.

Can you imagine the picture that would prevail
if this machinery came to a dead stop?

It is up to all who do useful things in a material
world to get in touch with Technocracy Inc., find
out what can be done, and be ready for any emer-
gency that may arise. They must at least know
why they should keep on performing their own
particular job even in the midst of chaos, and with
no pay. If people do not function the new civiliza-
tion will never be ushered in. Every one of us will
be needed on the job.

The Symptom Doctors

It is difficult, very difficult, for the average man
to distinguish between the various reform organiza-
tions which are sprouting up like weeds in these
troublous times. However, a careful examination
will reveal that all organizations can be divided
into two classes. The first is composed of those

IS

that are trying in some way to improve the Price
System, or are attacking it in some way or other
to effect an improvement in its operation. (Re-
member, by the Price System we do not mean
capitalism. We mean the entire method of ex-
change and barter, wages and money.)

If you critically examine the various organiza-
tions or movements of today, such as socialism,
fascism, communism, social credit, the Townsend
plan, the League for Social Justice, etc., you
will find that they all retain the essential mechanics
of a Price System. They are attempts either to
remodel the monetary system or to switch controls
from one group to another, retaining the most im-
portant and pernicious parts of the present order.

It is worth while to take each in turn and care-
fully analyze it. Even if you are a member of one
of these organizations, you should attempt to do
this and find out how they are designed to func-
tion. You should see clearly their lack of con-
formity to the technological requirements of this
Continent — requirements not duplicated anywhere
else on earth — and you should see how incapable
they are of putting their reforms into effect with
any chance of success.

If they retain any part of the Price System in
their make-up, they can only be classified among
the Symptom Doctors. They are dealing with
Symptoms, and with Straw Men they have built in
their own minds. They are not dealing with real,
material conditions.

If they retain within their structure one bit of
the design that is part of the present structure and
has caused its breakdown, you can safely discard
them as inadequate to the problem at hand. Tech-
nocracy Inc. is the only organization in existence

16

which does not fall into the class of the Symptom
Doctors. Technocracy is not trying to make pres-
ent conditions any better, or to obtain any conces-
sions from the lords-of-finance or the political-
powers-that-be. Invariably, people who attempt to
alleviate the present suffering of humanity wind
up their activities in an attempt to maintain the
system, with some slight modifications. Tech-
nocracy will have none of this. Technocracy by its
very nature can have none of this. The Price Sys-
tem on this Continent is doomed.

Technocracy is a clean break. It is perfectly in
conformance with the physical facts at hand. You
cannot cure a man of cancer by cutting out the
cancer and replacing it with another, nor can you
cure the present functional and organic evils of
society by substituting for the present cause of our
troubles another with any of the same deadly dis-
ease germs in it.

Conclusion

Technocracy is not out to smash anything. It
knows thoroughly well that this Price System is
smashing itself. Before that happens Technocracy,
with your help, stands ready and able to save this
Continent from ruin, and stands able to institute
a balanced production and distribution of all goods
and services commensurate with the available en-
ergy and resources of the Continent.

Technocracy shows how the high-energy civiliza-
tion on this Continent today has made a Price
System unworkable, and that the only System that
is workable is functional control and direct and
equal distribution — without a Price.

17

Technocracy Inc. has nothing to sell, and is not
out for your vote. It is merely giving you the
facts of a dangerous situation.

Nor, in this article, is it attempting any proofs.
Proofs there are, and striking and overwhelming
ones, but to have them you will have to get in touch
with your Technocrat friends.

Do that. Technocracy needs you. Believe it or
not, you can help. Every able man and woman will
be needed in the crisis now approaching so rapidly,
and already so near.

Of course, 'If enough of us understood the in-
evitability of Technocracy and were prepared to
act, we could have it right now, without having to
wait and go through the hell that may otherwise
check the evolutionary struggle of mankind to
reach the much-to-be-desired state of peace, secur-
ity, leisure, and plenty that is now within our
grasp.'

18

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