A critique of Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society

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Authors Mendel, Edward Earl, 1942-

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A CRITIQUE OF JACQUES ELLUL'S THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY

byEdward Earl Mendel

A The sis Submitted to the Faculty of theDEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTSIn the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

1 -9 7 1

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfill­ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The Univer­sity of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowl edgement of source is made. Reouests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in nis judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGNED:

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:

PHILLIP C. CHAPMAN DateProfessor of Government

TABLE OF CONTENTSPage

AB S TRA CTo © © » © © ©■© © © © © « © © © © © © © © i\r1 © INTRODUCTION © © © ® ® © © » © © © © © © © © & © © I2* THE TYRANNY OF TECHNOLOGY© * © * . * . « * » » * * 8

The Gem^e © © © © © © © © © © © © © © » © © © © 1 1Critique of the Genre © © o o © © © © « © © © © 32Critique of The Technological, Society© © » © © 1|_0

Fxrsr Level© © © © © ® © © © © & © © © © © ij.0Second Level © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © l-j-2Third Level © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © !-j-3.F our th Level© © © © © © © © © © © © © © ©

3* TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE . , , * * * © © © , © * * © lj_84.© TECHNOLOGY AND IDEOLOGY© © © © © © © * © © ©. , © ©' 63

Ideology Toduy © © © © © © © © © © © •© © © © © .Ellul Today o © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © 8

LIST OF REFERENCES © © © © © © © © © © ©• © © © © . © 92

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ABSTRACT

Using, a historical approach this thesis attempts to evaluate the success and the significance of Ellul’s book. As for its. success: A comparison with a number of other books treating the same subject^ a consideration of several other, authors ’ efforts to refute it and Ellul’s own reconsideration all lead to the conclusion that the book’s main theme--that ntechnique" proceeds autonomously — is at best problematic. As for its significance: The book is clearly a new and, if its main theme is accepted, devastating development in the age-old. effort to establish the cultural priority of the spiritual over the material. But more importantly, the book’s forceful contention that such (heretofore largely unquestioned) goals as develop­ment, modernization and progress must end in a totali­tarian society finds its echo in what may be an emerging ideology based on dissent from the values of the techno­logical society. ,

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Has the great multitude of men--the masses, to use the pejorative term favored by much of that literate elite that affects the old aristocratic world-view--ever had an ideology? Can men not well-educated, not familiar with even the rough outlines of the,modern nation-state, to say nothing of the great body of sophisticated theo­retical and matter-of-fact speculation as to how it really works, even be expected to have an ideology— meaning, in Karl Mannheim$ s use of the word, a transcendent view that reinforces the bonds of the existing society? And if they did have such a view, would they be able to describe it, in words, and to then defend their view, in words, against the advocates of other views? Or has the notion of ide­ology, all this time, been only at best the concern of the educated and articulate, and at worst the psychological salvation of that type that has come to be called the True Believer?

The ideology of the masses— what would it be like? Since they do not speak, one would not hear it discussed at the forum; since they do not write, one would not find it in

a book* How now# then# to find it? It is true that the masses have been interrogated about this matter. From the pulpit i Do you believe? From the media1s man-in-the-s tree t:Do you believe? From the survey questionnaire; Do you believe? Always it is the same result* The masses try to be polite# attentive and to say what is expected of them* And the interrogator walks away#, convinced that they are not telling all# determinedly suppressing the suspicion that they have really said nothing* Then *. * * inspiration! The interrogator drives to the wilderness and# under a full moon# becomes a poet# seeking the collective unconscious# the herd lowing within* And he finds--a dim shape# moving*

We call it "progress#" the deep-seated notion that the world is moving away from the bad times and into the good* We think it has its deepest origins in a mechanical sense of time that ticks regularly# linearly and predictably; in the clench-teethed Faustianism that seeks everything in the here and now and# contrarily# in the belief that material accom­plishment is the outward manifestation of the spiritually graced and elect; in the secular belief in evolution and the religious belief that the millennium awaits; in# finally# the belief that our destiny is not now but later* No one knows for sure# however# just where it did come from or# for that matter# just what it expects* Among the literate# the learned and the non-mass the notion of progress has never been

a matter of great faith.. Progress? Please be more specific Progress of what? Progress toward what? What are the words for it? But among the many# those who had the faith# there was no need for words# even if the right ones could have been found. For it was their great unspoken hope and dream# to the extent that they shared one„

That progress may no longer be their dream is the subject of this papera Our grandfathers# maybe even our fathers# liked to think of themselves as being “builders#n “boosters”, and “go-getters sn They were proud of their “pep„ But now the current reality has shaken the old faith that all that is needed is more of the samee It is now too clear to many that more building# more population# more “develop­ment" is a problem not a solution. If the great enervating urge of the foregoing generations was to make that progress# then the urge of successive generations may be--who knows?— to curb it? to escape it?, to undo it? Even now there are some who like to think of themselves as being for the "environment#" "ecology" and "doing your own thing," And what is it that threatens these things that they are for: progress ? '

One of the most uncompromising and frightening views of progress as a threat is that of Jacques Ellul in his book The Technological Society, He claims that

“techniquej,n nthe totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of develop”

"Iment) in every field of human activity,/* proceeds autono­mously until it creates a society that is totally manipula" tive6 This is a radical inversion of the old faith in progress0 Ellul*s contention is that men do not make progress ? progress makes men* The complete inversion^ the diametrical opposition of Ellul*s view makes it the “ideal type'* of the loss of faith in progress 0 Ellul * s view is the dialectical negation of the old faith* Whereas formerly progress had been seen as hopes with Ellul it becomes threat* Ellul says the concept of “technique" describes the way in which the principles of the machine will necessarily determine all aspects of economy^ human organization and individual personality* The main characteristics of “technique" seem to be:

Automatism--Just as no human choice is involved in the decision that four is greater than threes no human choice directs technical progress| it is guided instead by the search for the "one best way

Self-Augmentation--"Technique" proceeds not through the efforts and decisions of lone geniuses but

I* Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage, 196^), p. xxv6

2e Ibid*a ppo 79-80*

- ' . . £ tTarough ftanonymous accretion.Moreover, ,ltechniquenengenders itself. For example, the internal combustionengine made possible a number of other techniques. Theprinciple of self-augmentation can be formulated in twolaws: !tl) In a given civilization, technical, progress isirreversibleo 2) Technical progress tends to act, notaccording to an arithmetic, but according to a geometricprogression.”^ Limits to technical progress no longerexisto ’ Technique” proceeds In the same way as the processof numbering and after each number we can always add one5a particular ntechnique” may have its limits but not theensemble. Furthermore, "technique” poses technicalproblems which can only be resolved by "technique."^

■ Monism--The various ”techniques" combine to forma whole. Every technical application'produces unforeseeablesecondary effects that are more disasterous than the lack

/of the "technique" would have been. Thus "technique" demands its own rapid and indeliberate application.

Universalism--Though perhaps not precisely similar in all outward respects, all modern civilizations will

3° Ibid., p. 8 6 .I).. Ibid., p. 8 9 .5. Ibid., p. 92.6. Ibid. 3 p. 10k.

6nonetheless become a ntechnique««n In the same way as modern science, ntechnique11 is a universal common to all cultures« As a means of social action, l$techniquen circumvents the need to understand language or human motives„

Autonomy— "Technique" tolerates no judgments from without and accepts no limitations 0 • Man is reduced to the level of a catalyst/^ It is a question of all or nothing»MTechniquen becomes sacred; for the masses salvation through ntechnique11 becomes a mystery

The discussion here of progress as an ideology, organized around a critique of Ellul's book, is divided into three parts 0 In the first part, an attempt is made to situate the book in the mainstream of the body of thought based on the inversion of -the old faith in progress; this is followed by a critique of this body of thought and, finally, by a critique of Ellul’s book, as subsequently made by Ellul himself and several other writers, who use varying approaches to the problem* The second part of the discussion deals with the position of Ellul’s work in the continuing cultural struggle between men oriented toward the spiritual

7o Ibid., p. 131o8. Ibid., p. 135>o9o Ibid., p. li|lj.«.

)

7and men oriented toward the material. The third part of the discussion describes the central role of technology in the ideological debate of our day, in which the intellectuals find themselves in the ironic position of having to advocate the unscientific, and concludes with Ellul$s own renunciation, made in his latest book, of the view that technological progress is in itself a threat.

CHAPTER 2

THE TYRANNY OF TECHNOLOGY

For Aristotle there was no need to belabor the matter of tyrannye He said its common form is a single person ruling irresponsibly with the aim of furthering his own interest rather than that of his subjects 0 Elluls on the other hand, finds, that he must deal with his notion of tyranny laboriously and at great length0 The movement from the one view of tyranny to the other, from Aristotle to Ellul, is a complication on several levels« The tyrant moves from the personal to the impersonal? the scope of the tyranny from a single city-state or nation to all mankind? the act of tyranny from the present to the futuree While a satisfactory view of Aristotle8 s tyrant might have been obtained by simply going to the public gathering place on an occasion of state, the mere description of the tyranny that Ellul has in mind is a formidable intellectual task,A view of Ellul’s tyrant can be had only through the intellective, and not the sensory, processes of the mindo His tyrant is, like an organism, a process that reveals itself in time, but not, of course, in some happy flowering the organic metaphor would be more like a malignancy.

8

a cancero To see this tyrant one must see history* and Ellul believes that he does* for he says* more than once* that he is in fact writing history* As social analysis * Ellul's history is a departure from the more customary tasks of attempting to account for some or all aspects of the past or the present*-or even perhaps some transitive element that seems to have appeared in all ages e This kind of analysis can rest* finally, on some element of the empirical, which is the customary criterion for judging the success of the analysis* A final judgment of Ellul's analysis, however, resting as i-c does in some future state, can only be made after the history he describes does or does not come to pass* If Ellul cannot say that he is certainly correct, neither can it be said that he is certainly wrong* Meanwhile, the analysis can be evaluated in other ways, even though all of them must necessarily remain inconclusive*

Because there is no formula for forecasting the future, Ellul must find a pattern in which events yet to come seem likely to unfold* He must take the stuff of the past and the present and work it into a shape along which events seem to course * To be successful, he must also accomplish a certain evocation.of the future * He must find a way of apprehending something that, is not and has never been and, at the same time, make it seem real* If the

10typical analysis can be termed an undoing of the concrete? then Ellul!s task is a doing of the as yet unconcrete„Ellul must literally create the grounds for a vision of the future«, Yet this vision must seem like more than the other-worldly imaginings of science fiction; it must seem? to both Ellul and his reader? to have a definite air of authentic!tye

Ellul1s method of creating a compelling vision of things to come is ingenious6 Without even describing the future? except for noting? with the appropriate reserve? the predictions of a few eminent scientists? he nonetheless succeeds in creating apprehension about the world of tomorrow* He does so by using a kind of whirlpool effect * With his concept of a "technique" that is autonomous? self-augmenting and universal? he sets things in motion* Then in subsequent chapters he uses a mass of sociological findings to describe the narrowing rush of the ntechnique11-driven vortex in our time6 As he describes how society is being pulled down in ari ever-tightening spiral? the reader? like Dante with Virgil? makes the descent too„ During the journey great abstract aspects of human experience— economics? politics? psychology — 'Bhe seen as flotsam helpless in the whirling wall* At last the reader? his mind reeling amid the gurgle? roar and suck? is left hanging far down in the maelstrom of modernity* He does not need a description of what the future holds? what

11lie's beneath* He 'does not need to be told that all of the human constructs caught up. in the funnel must soon be whipped into an unrelieved homogeneity*

The sheer .bulk of the sociological evidence, the refined subtlety of the arguments and'the force of Ellul$ s writing make the book an alarming view of bur t,im.e* An indication of just how alarming can be had by comparing the book with other well-known examples of the genre, which can be characterized, roughly, as an attempt to describe a tyranny of technology0

The GenreBy leaving the final test of his analysis to the

outcome of modern society and by relying on the findings of . sociological studies, Ellul saves himself some of the difficulties encountered by Herbert Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man*^° Marcuse*3 book, published in 1964s the year that student unrest at Berkeley first gained national attention, begins with an introductory section titled "The Paralysis of Criticism: Society Without Opposition." Six years later such questions as "Can America Continue?" are being discussed in the mass circulation press * Marcuse, meanwhile, has had to update and revise his analysis. His preface to An Essay

1. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964).

12on Liberation, published in 1969# begins with the words "The growing opposition to the global dominion of corporate capitalism .... 6#11 an admission of a definite two-dimensional development. Ellul* s analysis# however# first published in 1954s still stands and Ellul, has gone on to analyze society from a number of other approaches.

Despite the turn taken by recent events # Marcuse6 s ■ book remains a remarkable analysis of the theoretical potential of a technological society. But the same theo­retical approaches that enable the superb analysis--the Marxism# the Freudianism# the dialectical concept of the function of art and language--may also make his analysis less satisfactory# to many m i n d s t h a n the analysis of Ellul. To minds steeped in'the theoretical approaches that Marcuse employss his work may well be regarded as a significant advance. But to those unacquainted with thought in ■ those modes and to those, more importantly# who have misgivings about the current importance of Marxian# Freudian and dialectical thought# Marcuse1s theoretical approaches can seem like an obstacle. They might say: I have to accept the theory before I can accept the analysisj but I cannot accept the theory. Ellul's analysis# however# cannot be rejected on these grounds„ He is not concerned with advancing any

2. Herbert Marcuse# Ah Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon# 1969)# p.. viie

13traditional theory in an all-encompassing attempt to account for the development of human consciousness» He is concerned only with "technique" as a contemporary "sociological phenomenon,M But Marcuse^ theoretical concerns range far beyond contemporary sociology; they are grounded in eternal visions of what men ought to be.

On the other hand# Marcuse*s theoretical conceptions give him at least one indisputable advantage over Ellul, He is thus enabled to analyze the intellectual elements of our time a From his philosophical viewpoint he can "undo" such intellectual activities as the role of art* the operationalism of concepts* linguistic analysis* positivism and modern physics . But Ellul* s sociological approach forces him to- deal almost exclusively with mass activities0 Marcuse attempts to unsettle the assumptions of the intellectuals5 Ellul* on occasion* displays a loathing of the many. Furthermore, the fact that Marcuse*s theoretical approach also contains a conception of how society ought to be proceeding makes his work of value, even though the main thrust of his argument has perhaps been denied by recent history. If at some point in the future, however, it should become clear that.Ellul’s contention is not justified, then his work will be of limited value, since it only aspires to the sociological, Marcuse’s work still offers a way to

think about' life| Ellul1 s work, if denied by future events, will become merely a magnificent but erroneous description. Moreoverthe total effect of Marcuse?s analysis is a genuine undoing of the concrete. And this is one of the important differences between his work and that of Ellul, For it explains why Marcuse1s argument rests in the present and Ellul1s does not and, consequently, why the two men fear the same thing for very different reasons, Ellul, looking from the outside, sees history as moving in a dangerous direction, toward the totalitarian, Marcuse, whose analysis has penetrated to the inside, finds that the forces of change are missing, that history cannot move as it should, and.that technology, therefore,, has already brought about the totalitarian.

Although Ellul does not approach his subject with the previously formulated social theory used by Marcuse, he does, in the course of his work, develop an abstract analytic mechanism of his own. His notion of "technique," however, is not a social theory; it is not something that attempts to account for human nature and human society. Without committing himself to an explicit social theory, Ellul nonetheless believes that he has diagnosed a social malady. But the source of the danger he fears is not in society itself; it is in the over-bearing will of "technique," If the nature of "technique" were such that it did not, in

Ellul! s view* have a will pf its own.* then the analysis of ' "technique" would have to proceed from an analysis of society Itself; the analysis of "technique'6- would then be one more analysis of one of those ambiguous fields of human activity such as economics or politics. In these realms of social theory the matter considered is always human, even if it is declared to be an element of the unconscious or a historical force. Here it is always a question of what men are doing, and so the analysis is necessarily an undoing of the human activity being considered. But with Ellul, human activity . is being whipped into shape by an alien element, "technique," and his analysis must necessarily be a description of that doing o-

■ In contrast, Thorstein Veblen8s The Engineers and the Price System, another work in the genre, is a definite undoing of an activity that is only h u m a n H e maintains that businessmen are incompetent, obsolete "saboteurs" whose irrationality wastes, among other things, natural resources. . The human, all too human, activity of the businessmen would, he thought, mean that the conduct of a modern economy must be, in one way or another, turned over . to the "production engineers." Because of the necessity of using the world’s resources in a rational manner, he .

3» Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (New York; A. M. Kelley,19^5)° ™ "™~

thought this reign of technocrats would be extended into an .^International 'Interlocking Industrial System6ft The first movement of his analysis rests on the human activity of the businessmen; their avaricious nature will, in the end, bring about.their extinction. The second movement of the analysis rests on the “production engineersjn they must eventually control society and, meanwhile, their commitment to the rational direction of society might even result in a “class consciousness" aimed at freeing the world from the irrational reign of the businessmen, Veblenfs analysis is so deeply grounded in human activity that it parallels the ancient myth of the forces of light against the forces of darkness or, in the common phrase,, the good guys against the bad guys, But whatever the worth of Veblen's analysis, its active agent is undeniably man himself. Men would see that businessmen were a ruinous, self-defeating way of conducting an industrial society and that the solution lay with the "production engineers,”

Veblen's analysis is, like Ellul1s, open-ended in its central concern; he is forecasting the future. Now, some 50 years after Veblen wrote the essays that make up the work, it is possible to make a rough assessment of some of his claims. In one of those brilliant sardonicisms with which he be-jeweled his work, he labeled businessmen.

who must “conscientiously withhold efficiency” to reduce supply and thus drive up prices s “saboteurs He also saidthat businessmen could not implement or manage technological innovationso But these claims 9 it seems apparent nows were not justified® One of the common charges against businessmen today is not that they deliberately hold back production but that they create markets for vast amounts of superfluous consumer items e They are not the market5 s “saboteurs |11 they are its "saturators As for the second claims it is 5 according to Servan-Schreiber* the businessmen1s ability to capitalize on the latest organizational developments that has given America its ruling economy®^ . Where did Veblen go wrong?' The answer seems to be that he mis judged the human nature of the businessmen. They were not locked into a rigid role| they adapted to the conditions of a changing, market and technology. Today they still think of themselves as businessmen and they still give their allegiance to the profit principle0 Again from the vantage point of some $0 yearsj, it is possible to say that Veblen1 s vision of a “soviet of techniciansu failed to materialize for yet another very human reason; the “production engineers" did not develop the necessary class consciousness e Even now it

k-o Ibid,, ppo 8-9o5® J, J® Servan-Schreiber, The American Challenge

(New York: Atheneum, 1968)s p „ ixe

: iscannot be said, of course? that a ^soviet of technicians'* will not some day direct an “International Interlocking Industrial System,," But before that day comes to pass still another very human activity, nationalism, will have to be resolvede . In Veblen's analysis the tyranny of technology exists only in so far as men see fit to bring it about; and this, needless to say, is very different from a technology that proceeds with a will of its own*

Veblen's analysis, like that of Marcuse, attempts .to account for society by penetrating to its inner workings* His mechanism of change is an enlightenment of the con­sciousness of a certain elite..® Ellul's mechanism of change, on the other hand,- is a self~gene-ratlng environment that plunges all consciousness into the dim sameness of a mass society* Veblen has an elite bringing about the techno­logical society; Ellul has all men being crushed into a mass by an environment run wild* The fact that Ellul’s analysis does not penetrate society may also explain, in part, why in his analysis "technique" is an alien, sinister forcee If he viewed "technique" as merely a projection of some essential attribute of humanity, then a technological society would be not disaster but simply a manageable development of man® This would not have to be the vulgar exhilaration over progress displayed in the past; it could be, for example, something like the thought of Marshall McLuhan®

196In The Gutenberg Galaxy, the work in which he

constructs the grand theory that he subsequently detailed and popularized, McLuhan says that both the individual and the old notion of the public and nation-state are, because of electronic technology, disappearing In a new corporate, tribal-like, world-wide societye But McLuhan says he is deliberately refraining from making a value judgment about this historical development and that, far from being deter­ministic, he hopes that his elucidation of our condition will give us a control over technology that we have not previously hada McLuhan* s analysis attempts to penetrate to the very core of society, to the human mind, and his mechanism of change is the human .consciousness creating and then responding to a man-made environment„

McLuhan believes that the essential contours of consciousness are the product of sensory ratios, which are altered as man extends his senses in the various forms of technological apparatus e In the pre-technological era man's senses were united within himself in a way that allowed the translation of one sense into another in the interplay of imagination and "tactility," This free interplay of the senses ceased when they were extended in the various technologies, such as the alphabet, money and the wheel*

6„ Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto, "1962) „

Thus while a pre-technological oral culture is auditory- oriented and undifferentiating* a culture formed by the printed page extends the visual sense and becomes intensely conscious of the self and others e The visual emphasis of the print culture created the concept of the public and the Newtonian* mechanical view of the world* Formerly* the various technologies were closed systems incapable of inter­play* But now* in the electronic age* the closed systems of the extended senses are united in.a single field of instantaneous awareness| and interplay must occur here* just as it had during the pre-technological era in a single mind* As the electronic environment takes on the charac­teristics of the pre-technological mind* it alters the consciousness of the men of the new world in the same way0 Instead of thinking in the old mechanistic mode of cause and effect in linear sequence* which required a fixed point of view* the new consciousness seeks the simultaneity of a "field perspective" and the "technique of suspended judgmento"

In keeping with the theory, McLuhan’s analysis is developed through what he terms a mosaic or field approach*A more conventional mind might call it fragmentary and incoherente Since the analysis does not aspire to logical rigor* the concepts are ill-defined, the development of the argument is difficult to follow and even the nature of

. 21 the conclusion is not entirely clear0 McLuhan, it seems apparent, must be regarded from a nfield perspective^ and with the "technique of suspended judgment" if he is to be regarded at all® One finds it hard to go much beyond the title of Tom Wolfe’s story about McLuhan, "What If He Is Right?"7

Still, McLuhan’s analysis, despite its irregular nature, does illustrate some of the limitations of Ellul’s analysis® Ellul-stays wholly within the world-view that McLuhan, borrowing the phrase from Blake, calls "Newton’s sleepan A world ordered according to Newtonian physics is a world ordered according.to objective laws; and a world in which "technique" triumphs'is a world ordered according to objective laws® For "technique" is a method, a way of doing, that prescribes itself; it is man’s environment shaping itself and man. according to the environment’s own laws® But according to McLuhan’s analysis the Newtonian world-view was simply an imbalance in man’s ratio of sense perceptions which has been corrected now that man has, by creating the electronic age, outered his nervous system®In McLuhan’s analysis not only is the shape of society firmly grounded in human nature but so is the shape of the environment® The fact that Ellul believes that

7» Tom Wolfe, The Pump House Gang (New York: Bantam, 1968), pp® 105-133=

22technological development is objectively directed while Mehuhan does not may be part of the reason that one fears it and the other does not,.why for one it ends in the totali­tarian and for the other, the tribe® ,

Certainly another part of the reason is the notion of electrical simultaneity and the famous nglobal village If McLuhan Ls_ right, then human government- has been radically restructured in a totally new fashion® In Ellul1s view ntechnique” brings a kind of government by Big Brother, something bureaucratic in which the technicians at the peak of the pyramid, receiving both sanction and direction from the dictates of ”technique,” rule those beneath them much like the leaders of any undemocratic hierarchical government, except for possessing the means to Implement their policies rigidly and inflexibly; the reign of ”technique” would be a two-fold governmental innovation: an inhuman source of policy, and policy carried out precisely® This is not a restructuring of traditional government; it is only an extreme variation on the old theme of leaders and followers = But what McLuhan has in mind is in its structure unprecedented; it is a Leviathan made up not of separate particles fearfully vibrating in harmony but of a single consciousness ® In the old village human relations were personal, face-to-face® In the ”global village” human relations occur through an intermediary, electronics® The individual point of view

23dissolves in the "field approach" and "technique of suspended judgment" fostered by the electronic environment. Once out of the undifferentiated psychic milieu of the tribe* men found themselves in a Newtonian-like space where they were forced.to seek order and cohesion by piling themselves in the geometric figure of the pyramid. If it rested on its base* the few ruled the many; if it rested on its peak* the many ruled the few. The ancient dilemma was solved with elec­tricity* the new psychic solvent in which all men are again united® In this new society institutions * social classes* states * closed cultures--in fact* all the old forms of ■ social order-“disappear. If McLuhan is_ right* then there are no more politics--no. legitimate coercion* no authori­tative allocation of values * no wielding of power* no decision-making*, no conflicts <, Therefore* it is difficult to believe that McLuhan is right* just yet0

At this point in time the main value of McLuhan1s analysis* if it is accepted* seems to be as an antidote to pessimism about technological progress. His analysis does reveal a tyranny of technology: He claims that technology radically alters the self and society in a way that men had not been aware of hitherto. But his analysis also sounds two notes of optimisms Technological progress may be* in a way we had not even dreamed of, a kind of solution after all; but if men decide that it is not* it poses no threat*

. 24since it is not deterministic® McLuhan's analysis is, to repeat, firmly grounded in human nature, and it is its roots there, no doubt, from which grows' the view that the various technologies are nothing more frightening than extensions of man that can be, if man is only fully conscious of what he is doing, shaped or retracted at wills

But beyond that McLuhan, like Veblen and unlike Marcuse and Ellul, believes that. unchecked technological progress is dialectical, that the current society does contain the seeds, of its own antithesis and negation® For McLuhan technological progress is not merely a linear process, more of the same, ad infinitum, until everything is planned, programmed and, at long last, comes to rest in a state of perfect order® What he envisions.as the result of technological progress is a state so radically different that it can seem quite unimaginable® Ellul's view, on the other hand, is simply a straight-line projection of what he thinks is the ever-narrowing rush of the main current of our time„ The discovery of a dialectical element in society would require a penetration of that society, for a negation could only grow out of an inner contradiction® Conversely, a claim that there is no dialectical element in society would also require a demonstration of that fact* Ellul, of course,cannot do this, for the focus of his analysis is limited to a description of something that is being done

25to society by “technique*!t that alien and inhuman force that proceeds with a will of its own. His analysis* since it does not penetrate society* cannot show that man will not undergo an alteration of consciousness that could radically . alter the present nature of his technological project; nor can he show* from the external viewpoint provided by a theory of an Inhuman “technique** and by sociological descriptions of the non-elite elements of society* that man1s unconscious animal nature can ever be fully mechanized.

Ellul's failure to penetrate modern society* to attempt to find whether a dialectical element is or is not present* is echoed in a number of other works in the genre® Roderick Seideriberg's Posthistoric Man is an extreme • example of this limitation.® Seidenberg divides all history into three parts: the pre-historic* in which an unconscious society was ordered by instinct; the historic* in which the clash between instinct and intellect produces a conscious society of individual men; the post-historic* in which an. unconscious society is ordered by intellect. During conscious history instinct remains static while intellect* in accordance with the “axiom” that organization breeds organization* accumulates with each successive generation.In the end* man is perfectly adjusted to a perfectly

8. Roderick Seidenberg* Posthistoric Man (Boston: Beacon* 1950). ”

rational.society; he is also "unneurotic, uncreative and unconscious. Seidenberg does not try to find the support for his analysis in contemporary society; he turns instead to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that all things tend toward a more probable state; he also uses the analogy of the process of crystallization in the physical world, where, when a certain level of saturation is reached in a solution, the introduction of a single small crystal provides the nucleus of a process that inevitably ends in a solid. In a human society saturated with the scientific world-view, that small crystal was. the machine. To accept Seideribergis analysis one must accept two assumptions r that human history is subject to inexorable laws and that these laws are those that we believe to determine'the state of physical matter. Logically speaking, the proof of such assumptions would be a step-by-step deduction showing that existing human activity is the product of such physical laws o Until that undoing is accomplished, Seidenberg1s analysis is only an analogy.

Lewis Mumford's The Myth of the Machine rests on another analogy that does not penetrate modern society.^Here, however, the analogy is not with a science of physical matter but with another form of human society, that which

9. Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Worid, 1966)1

27

occurred at the “rise of civilization11 in Egypt and the Middle East and later in Latin America and South Americae Formerly society had been'ordered by ritual, taboo, the mythical and the instinctual. But in these area's a new society arose in which the new ordering principle became the notion of regularity' obtained from astronomical observation. This new form of order, when given mythical and religious sanction, permitted the creation of what Mumford calls the “megamachine.“ In its earliest form its components were human. But in the new “megamachine,n which began in the Sixteenth Century when Kepler, Brahe and Copernicus revealed the Mew Sun God, human flesh has been joined by metal, glass and other physical matter. The bulk of Mumford* s analysis is devoted to a demonstration of the claim that man is not essentially a tool-making animal but a mind-making, self­mastering and self-designing animal. The analysis, which deals only with matters of the human past, ends with the advent of the Sixteenth Century. Thus any conception of modern society to be had from Mumford's book comes only by reasoning analogously from the past to the present. And yet, oddly enough, this assertion of an analogy is all that Mumford offers in support of his contention that the new “megamachine" threatens to turn man into a passive, house- broken, machine-conditioned animal. But it is not even a good analogy, for all of the old “megamachines“ broke down.

28Apart from analogies with the inhuman or the remote

pasts yet another work in the genre fails to penetrate modern society in yet another way* Siegfried Giedion's Mechanization Takes Command is a study of what he calls nanonymous history," the shaping of daily life by the mechanization of man's Immediate e n v i r o n m e n t H e describes, in great detail, the mechanization of crafts, using the door lock as an examplej the mechanization of the production of grains, bread and meat; the mechanization of furniture, household functions and the bathc But he develops no theory of mechanization, no attempt to account for its origin or evolution; nor does he speculate about where it is taking us0 But above all, he does not show how mechanization has taken commando Indeed, he says that he has deliberately refrained.from taking a stand either for

" or against mechanization; he says only that mechanization may have to be checked some time in the future to allow a more independent way of living. Furthermore, he says it is doubt­ful that anyone still has the old blind faith in progress and that the mechanistic view of life that characterized the last century is gradually being replaced by other outlooks in all

. fields of scientific research. He concludes that what is needed is "man in equipoise," a new equilibrium between the subjective and the objective. One finds it difficult to

10. Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford, 19^8).

refrain from thinking that there is something perverse about Giedionfs analysis, . In studying the modern age, which has carefully recorded the art and thought of its living consciousness, G-iedion sifts and orders its artifacts as if he were an archaeologist contemplating the lifeless leavings of some human period of the past now unable to speak for itself,' But more importantly,„the mechanization of which he speaks now seems outdated and not very formidable when compared with the potential commanding role of the computer and automated devices, matters which he does not discuss,

Ellul1s analysis, with its theory of how "technique" proceeds and its sociological description of how -"technique" has affected contemporary society, seems more satisfactory than arguments from analogy and the study of artifacts.Although his analysis denies the importance of the inner dynamics of contemporary society, the evidence that he offers in support of his contention at least has its source in the present day. The historical perspective to be gained from the analogies and the artifacts is no doubt suggestive, but the question at hand is whether technology is in itself necessarily a form of tyranny. The finding of ominous suggestions in another time, in another scientific discipline or in the patterns of cultural trappings ia a poor portrait of a new tyrant.

30The tyranny of which Friedrich Georg Juenger speaks

11in The Failure of Technology has two phases. From the onset of technology, iaanrS' attempt to organize nature means that he must organize himself; and for every increase in power obtained from the machine, man must give its equivalent in return. Mechanization is thus an invasion of civilization by elemental forces; and there is a measure of truth in the ancient fear that some machines might become demoniacal, . with a rebellious and destructive will of their own. However, man finally triumphs in his struggle with nature; but then his organization, no longer contained by a counterforce, sickens and grows cancerously until it destroys all that is not organized, Juenger says that the state only exists in relation to something that is not the state--namely, the people. When the technical organization of the people is accomplished, the 'state ends. In the course of the 38

separate essays that make up the book, Juenger develops no systematic support for his• conception of either the first phase of tyranny, in which machines cause rather than reduce human effort, or the second phase, in which organization proceeds freely until it encompasses everything. His tyranny is, one concludes, only an assertion,

11, Friedrich Georg Juenger, The Failure of Technology (Chicago: Regnery, 19^9),

31Juenger's analysis is perhaps the most complete

failure in a genre that iss the sampling discussed here would, seem to indicate, notable for its failures„ The authors may all one day be vindicated in their contentions«, But they ■ have not, as of yet, come up with either the analysis or the evidence to support the claim that there is indeed a tyranny of technology. Only two of the works discussed here appear to be of use in attempting to establish the main character­istics of what would be the paragon of the genre describing a tyranny of technology. The paragon would be the idealj that work which would convince the reader that there is, beyond doubt, a tyranny of technology. The' paragon*s characteristics would provide a gauge, of sorts, for Ellul8 s analysis (here designated, TS)', The paragon, it seems clear, would have to do at least three things0

le We cannot know the futurej therefore, the paragon would rest its case in the present| it could be conclusively proven now, (TS fails; it is a deliberate attempt to forecast the future, requiring that one believe that "technique" is deterministic0)

2, The paragon would show that human society contains no dialectical elements; that it must, therefore, persist in its present form, (TS fails; unlike Marcuse1s analysis, which tries to show how the Marxian, Freudian, intellectual and artistic conceptions of change have been stymied, TS does not show how society has been made passive,)

323= The paragon would show that technological

progress Is not• dialectical. (TS falls; unlike McLuhan's analysis# TS does not consider the possibility that technological progress could radically change everything.)

Critique of the GenreWhat distinguishes the genre is the.belief that the

industrial sciences that we call technology stamp the living stuff of society into a rigid and predetermined form--whether Ellulfs totalitarian state# Marcuse1s historical container# Veblenls soviet of technicians# McLuhan1s global village# Seidenberg’s crystalline termite colony# Mumfordts megama­chine# G-iedion’. s mechanization or Juenger's downfall of the state. It is thus the source of the form that establishes the genre# not the configuration of the form itself. Stated at its broadest# the genre is encompassed in the sentence: Technological progress produces a historical necessity. The genre is# then# open to all the objections that can be made against any claim of historical determinism. One of the most unimpeachable of these is that tomorrow cannot be known today. But the objection that no work in the genre can make its claim with certainty is itself open to the objection: What# after all# can be known for certain? The critique# therefore# must go beyond a dismissal# out of hand# on the grounds that the genre rests in a deterministic view.

33Because the genre is so broad, its critique is

difficult. Having successfully.disarmed it in one form, onecannot be certain that it won't, like another head of thehydra,, spring up again. An early critique of the genre, forexample, having dealt with one facet, finds that today thereis yet another. In their.essay UA Marx for the Managers,"C. Wright Mills and Hans H. G-erth criticize James Burnham's

12The Managerial Revolution. Burnham views modern history as progressive bureaucratization, and Mills and Berth situate the book in the genre by pointing out that it is a popular­ization of a view held by Hegel, Weber and Veblen, among others. The ,authors say that what determines history is not some general form of organization but the ownership of property, the composition of social classes, political and social movements and war. They say that bureaucracies, far from being all powerful, can be rapidly built, rapidly destroyed and also undermined by "cells," small groups within the bureaucracy whose political allegiance lies elsewhere| moreover, bureaucrats tend to share the same assumptions as the owner-managers. As for the "experts," there is a high turnover rate as their stock rises and falls with the politicians;, the rigor of their training and socialization makes them easily coordinated and led by politicians; they

12. C. Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People (Hew York: Ballantine, 1 9 6 3 ), pp. 53-71«

cannot entrench their positions through inheritance; their knowledge and relation to production is one thing, their social class, political loyalties and stake in the current system, another* The authors say that modern industry can be situated in very different political systems, any of which could possibly be overturned. In their view modern industry is but a pawn in the ongoing political struggle arising from human emotion and social conflict* For them, what Mills liked to call the "managerial demiurge!t was only an element in the game, not the controlling factor* But since Mills ■ and Gerth published the essay in 19l|-2 the focus of the genre has shifted from the routinized human activity of the bureaucracy to scientific discoveries and their consequences for societye

It is also science that has undercut an older, contradictory genre dealing with technological progress 6 Some of the works of such men as Freud, Spengler and Ortega y Gasset might be, in considering technology, termed the Old Pessimism. As opposed to the New Pessimism of the genre being discussed here, in whose view technology is snowballing out of control, the Old Pessimism was the view that techno­logical progress is necessarily limited. Thus Spengler1s Man and Technics, for example, is an attempt to develop the view that modern technology is the product of a Faustian soul peculiar to .the Europeans, who made the fatal mistake

of allowing that technology to fall into the hands of non- Europeans , who, with their superior bulk of people and natural resources, must one day triumph over the Europeans| but since the non-European does not have the Faustian soul, he will not, when he has freed himself of the domination of the European, feel the need to pursue technology further, and so revert to his old religious world-view, in which the role of technology is. i n s i g n i f i c a n t O r t e g a y Gasset developed a number of variations on the theme of the Old Pessimism. In The Revolt of the Masses, t h e idea that democratization would end modern civilization because the many were not capable of continuing the elaborate and sophisticated society produced by the few;, in Man and

lg ,Oris is, the idea that man creates a counter-culture to free himself from a culture that becomes too complex and

"1 ZLoverloaded; in Mission of the University, the idea that if science is not simplified and synthesized to its quintessence, the oncoming generation will lose interest

13. Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics (New York: Knopf, 1932)«

ll|_o Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1932)„

lf>o Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1958)=

16* Jose Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University (New York: Norton, 19ljij.).

36

in it; in The -Modern Theme^ t h e idea that the fundamentalrealization of our time is that the spontaneity of self takesprecedent- over the acquisition of culture; in his essay

1 8"The Sunset, of Revolution/' the idea that history moves through a cycle having three phases^ in which man is first dominated by the traditional$ then the rational and, finally, the mystice Since Ortega y Gasset was both fertile and prolific, he no doubt produced still other variations on the theme»

Some of the apprehensions of the Old Pessimism have been obviated, to a degree, by changes that science has wrought in technology, especially since World War II0 Spengler$ s fear of the Yellow Peril,, besides being currently unfashionable, antedates not only international relations based on the threat of massive nuclear retaliation but also, as technology reduces many of the natural checks on human proliferation, the view that a massive population is a burden not a dies singe Ortega y Gasset? s concerns, on the other hand, antedate the prospect of a- computerized, automated, self-sustaining, perhaps even self-developing, technology and also Servan-Schreiber's claim that the remnants of the

17» Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Modern Theme (New York: Harper, 1961)»

180 Ibid., pp. 99=13li»

■ 37European class system do not uphold, technology but, to the contrary, actually impede it„ Indeed, the fact that the Old Pessimism, the fear that technological progress might be checked, has been largely replaced by the New Pessimism (see Chapter 3), the fear that such progress might not be checked, is perhaps the strongest statement of the old genre's lack of credibility at this point in timee

Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man provides an illustra­tion of how one.famous form of the Old Pessimism was turned against itself and converted into the New* Marcuse modern­izes Freud’s claim that as civilization becomes progressively complicated,' man must progressively renounce the gratifica­tion- .of basic instincts and, therefore, becomes progressively neurotic; Marcuse .says, contrarily, that in the advanced industrial society the basic instincts of which Freud spoke are used to support the current civilization. He claims that the mechanization of the natural environment has led to its de-eroticization, thus reducing the ,fpolymorphous” potential of libidinal energy and focusing it on the sexual, which is more easily released. Society can then mobilize and administer libido by using its shrunken manifestation as the sexual to further society’s own ends in, for example, work, the consumer economy and public relations technique.The use of the sexual to channel and release libido is a form of "repressive desublimation," . While the erotic

38release of libido is usually accomplished through sublima­tion^ which heightens the autonomy and awareness of the individual, sexual desublimation only furthers mindless conformity. But more than that, in Freudian theory there is a fixed amount of energy to be distributed between the two primary drives, eros and thanatosv And the cramped release of eros through the sexual leaves more energy to be released through thanatos in the form of aggression,Marcuse then assumes that much of the latter form of energy is released in the pursuit of technology, which is readily manipulated by society in yet another form of controlled desublimation. Thus the forces that Freud thought threatened civilization' become, in Marcuset: s' view, an imp o’rt ant part of its support.

For whatever reason--the advance of science, the advance of theory--the Old Pessimism does not appear to be an adequate critique of the genre being discussed here, It is, like much of the New Pessimism, an attempt to forecast the future. Furthermore, to counter the fear that techno­logical progress cannot be. controlled with the claim that the civilization that produced the.progress must necessarily collapse lacks subtlety; as an answer to a problem it seems at once too simple and too extravagant, like the old cliche that has one throwing the baby out with the bathwater, instead of attempting to make a case for an opposing view of

- 39 history* a critique of the New Pessimism today might, begin with an analysis of the genre»

One of the most obvious differences between the leading works in the genre discussed here--those of Marcuse* Veblen* McLuhan and Ellul--is that a judgment as to whether the.analyses of Marcuse* Veblen and McLuhan reveal a tyranny can only be made on an ideological basis„ Since in these three analyses technological progress can be controlled* each of them confronts man with the need to make a decision that can only be based on individual values or ideology*In Marcuse1q case that decision is whether the technological state is indeed totalitarian; in.Veblen's* whether the engineers ought to rule; in McLuhan's *• whether we ought - to retribalizee But in Ellul's analysis there is no room for the ideological element because there is no decision to be made „ "Technique11 and technological progress cannot be controlled* If the analyses of Marcuse* Veblen and McLuhan can be reduced to a question of ideological choice * then Ellul's analysis can be reduced to the contention that, there is no choice to be made„ Thus Marcuse* Veblen and McLuhan could be regarded as conventional political thinkers * concerned with how man ought to shape his history* though including in their arguments * to be .sure* strong conceptions of how that history, borne along by technological progresss will probably shape itself into what may or may not be

1--0regarded as tyranny. It:Is because'Ellul!s tyranny Is based on tbe assertion of a fact, that It is utechniqueft not man who will sh^> e_ history, that Ellul! s analysis is open to a refutation on. grounds that are not overtly ideological3

Critique of The Technological Society A critique, of. Ellul!s analysis can proceed on at

least four levels«, 1) Staying close to the text, one couldtry to ,find inconsistences or self-refuting evidence within the analysis Itself0 2) Abandoning the text, one could lookfor empirical evidence that denies the thesis that techno­logical progress is autonomous« 3) Leaving the realm ofthe empirical for that,of the abstract, one could attempt to formulate concepts and logical schemes that deny the thesis o ip) Leaving the limitations of present conditions, one could attempt to forecast a technological progress that does not bring about a totalitarian state» Drawing mainly on the work of other men, this, critique will in fact proceed on these four levels„

First Level "One of the most striking things about Ellul's book

is its curious ambivalence on its central point: whether ntechnique" can be controlled. The body of the text itself maintains unequivocally, and in some places almost shrilly,■ that it cannot $ But the seven-page "Author's Foreword to

klthe Revised American Edition," written 10 years after the book was first published, is very different in both tone and outlook. In this foreword Ellul briefly presents two ideas that are not only absent from the text but also cause the reader to understand, as he would not otherwise, that the author is making a very limited claim.for the necessity of the conclusions reached in the text. Unmistakably, the foreword is the work of a man who, from the calm elevation of full maturity, wishes to qualify some of the exclamatory excesses of his youth, -

One of the qualifications introduced in the fore­word is an enumeration of the conditions that could prevent the necessary development of a totalitarian society,. These are a general war, an increasing awareness of the techno­logical threat or an act of God,' Blaming his tools, Ellul says that these possibilities lie beyond the scope of sociological analysis, All that he can do, he says, is make an extrapolation to establish a probability that could be proven wrong by events, Clearly, to say that technology could be contained if enough individuals became aware of the need to contain it is to say that its progress is not necessarily autonomous„ As if this admission were not enough of a blow to the main theme of the book, Ellul goes on to introduce another qualification in the foreword that is perhaps even more damaging„ This is the assertion that

42manfs main task is not to rid himself of technological determinism but$ in some way that Ellul says he cannot yet specify, to transcend ite Incredibly enough, with these two qualifications Ellul denies both the validity and. the importance of his bookrs main theme, that “technique" is autonomous; in this foreword he says that "technique" is not necessarily autonomous and that anyway, whether it is or is not, the important thing is that it somehow be transcended® With these qualifications the dramatic aspect of his analysis disappears| it becomes only an admonition that technological progress ought to be controlled, not the scenario of a great tragedy based on man’s inevitable fate.

Second LevelIn his book The Conquest of Nature R c J. Forbes

attempts to refute Ellul’s thesis that technological progress is autonomous,"*"^ By tracing the development of technology Forbes demonstrates, to his own satisfaction, that technology arose only in response to human needs, Forbes says that Ellul’s mistaken conception is in large part the result of a "language barrier," which prevents the layman from under­standing the specialized terminology of science. He claims that few if any of the men engaged in the pursuit of

19, R. J, Forbes, The Conquest of Nature (New York: Praeger, 1968), '

• 43technology would accept the contention that technology Is autonomous. Furthermore, man himself has selected one array of technologies while yet another lies dormant0 For reasons of national prestige, the political order tends to single out and magnify certain aspects of technology; for competi­tive reasons, the economic order tends to do the same. Hot only does technology itself lack the inner logical structure of, say, chemistry or physics, but man’s natural organic configuration determines, on the one hand, the nature of the technology that is devised, since man must make it himself, and on the other, the way in which that technology must be employed, since man must use it himself*

Third LevelIn his essay "The Scientization of Politics and

Public, O p i n i o n , J u r g e n Habermas, after weighing three conceptual models, concludes that what actually determines the relation between science and politics is the formulation of long-term research policy. In the "decisionistic model" advanced by Max Weber, says Habermas, the function of the expert and that of the politician are clearly separated, Weber thought that the sphere of the former was rational; that of the latter, irrational. But today, says Habermas,

20, Jurgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society (Boston: Beacon, 1970), pp. 62-80, '

systems analysis and decision theory cast at least some doubt on the irrationality of the latter„ In the ntechnocratic model'1 advanced by Ellul? the dependence of the expert on the politician appears to have reversed itself as political decision-making is completely replaced by analytic decision- making « But this supposes that technological progress is in fact autonomous * and furthermores that all the elements that formerly went into the political sphere can be reduced to rationality; but they cannot„ So there are either as yet undiscovered forms of decision theory or no reasons to be given for certain decisions in this sphere. In the rtpragma™ tistic model" as advanced by Dewey# the strict separation between the politician and the expert is replaced by "a critical interaction#" which is to say: Value systems condi­tion the use of technique and the use of technique conditions value systems. However# Habermas contends# the real problem of the relation between politics and science appears in the formulation of long-term research policy# which is a matter of public opinion. There are three obstacles to the dis­cussion of scientific policy: the depoliticized masses# military secrecy and the bureaucratic encapsulation of research. But there are also three factors that favor discussion: Science has become so specialized that its various practitioners must communicate with each other through a journalistic vulgarization of their work that .

k$presupposes no specialized knowledge; pressure for interna­tional coexistence encourages the .free exchange of informa­tion; the scientist has a role conflict as the obedient servitor of science because he himself is also a vulnerable human being*

Fourth LevelIn Between Two Ages Zbigniew Brzezinski says that

control of technological change is the most inroerative task?1facing our society* He believess however, that not only

can technological change be controlled, but that it offers the means for a greater achievement of human liberty and equality than has ever existed* He believes that American society is undergoing a third revolution, the others being the American and the industrial, as it moves into the “technetronic era." America is the trendsetter for world development and the rest of the world1s nations will, in effect, Americanize; even now America is the first "global society*" Today technology and electronics (hence "techne- tronic") are changing everything; the old cultures, ideol­ogies and attitudes toward nation-states are crumbling*What we live in now is not McLuhan*s "global village" but a "global city," individuated, chaotic and busy. Though

21. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages (New York: Viking, 1970).

It-6Brzezinski does not use the word "retribalize," he says old institutionalized beliefs and dogmas are being discarded in favor, of personal beliefs and a new equality.based not on. law but emotion* Citing Elluls Brzezinski says that the mechanization of the modern era is indeed self-generatingj but, he contends, it can be mastered through evolutionary institutional and cultural changes * Institutionally, what is needed is a "participatory pluralism,11 in which private groups of all description join with governmental institutions in the social planning that becomes ever more necessary* Culturally, what is needed is education that is extended and intermittent and media programming that is decentralized and of a higher quality* From the current conflict between the irrational personalism of the "humanists" and the impersonal rationality of the "modernizers,n there may eventually result a "rational humanism," .

Another view based on the McLuhanesque notion that the dialectical element in modern society involves a change of consciousness is that of Charles A, Reich in The Greening

ppof America, Like Brzezinski, Reich believes that America is now moving into a third era, Reich calls it Consciousness III, His three stages of consciousness roughly parallel Brzezinski’s three revolutions * Consciousness I, which

22, Charles A* Reich, "The Greening of America,The New Yorker, Vol. XLVI, Ho* 32, Sept."26, 1970, pp.i -iir:

47ended In the Nineteenth Century* was the outlook of the farm­er* the small businessman and the worker* all trying individ­ually to get ahead. Consciousness II* which began its full flowering with the New Deal* culminated in the* Corporate Statee "The essence of the corporate state is that it is relentlessly single-minded; it has just one value* the value of technology as represented by organization* efficiency* growth, p r o g r e s s . B u t the war in Vietnam "pierced" Consciousness II, and the people began to question the Cor­porate State. Consciousness III was.produced by this unmasking and two contradictory forces: The promise of affluence and liberation and* at the same time* the threat to the promise posed by the- dreariness of contemporary social conditions, the war in Vietnam and the spectre of nuclear war. Both Consciousness I and II defined their thought in terms of science. But Consciousness III seeks to transcend science and technology, to restore the spiritual to a predominant place in society and to develop new ways of living based not on the principles of economic scarcity but on brotherly love.

23, Ibid.* p. 1|5,

CHAPTER. 3

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

The artist has traditionally thought of himself as the one who, through various forms of culture, defines and, even in a certain sense, creates mane Lately, much of the artistic spirit has used literature as its form --particularly the novel, which, properly or not, is often called the bourgeois art form* The supreme importance, for himself and others, that the artist claims for his mission appears, for example, in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where Stephen Dedalus, about to leave Ireland, says, "Welcome, 0 life I I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race01 6 Those who would think of art as merely refined and elegant self-expression are, Dedalus1 burning spirit seems to make quite clear, certainly not the artists them­selves 0

\

1 o James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York; Viking, 195T"), P» 2$2,

49The act of creating the conscience of. a race is

an exalted calling--a god-like calling, a Philistine might sarcastically say--and such a creator, making for himself the claim of genius, must necessarily be arrogante Emerson, distinguishing in his essay on Montaigne between men pre­disposed toward the senses and men predisposed toward the spirit, says of the latter:

Read the haughty language in which Plato and the Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions: other men are rats and mice, The literary class is usually proud and exclusive0 The correspondence of Pope and Swift describes mankind around them as monsters| and that of Goethe and Schiller, in our time, is scarcely more kind„2

Leaving aside the possibility that the artist may feelpersonal superiority because of the rarity of his gift, hisdisdain for those who, besides being not similarly blessed,do not even honor his spirit is, at least in the artistesown terms, understandable6 For if art is to move and shapemen, men must first surrender themselves to. art* It is notsurprising then that, in one of the more well-known formsthat the debate over technological progress has taken inour time, we should find on one side the "scientist" and onthe other, "the literary intellectual*"^

C 0 P, Snow says these "two cultures" have developed

2= Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895)7~P^"ll]!^ — — —

3. C, P . Snow, The Two Cultures: And a Second Look (New York: Mentor, 19&3TI ' — - — —

along lines so divergent that they no longer have enough in common to be able to communicate with'each other. In char­acterizing the two. Snow says the 11 scientists'* are socially optimistic, rigorous of argument and more moral than the "literary intellectuals'1 who. In their artistic arrogance of spirit, show a marked tendency to be anti-social and who are, as well, "natural luddites" who have never understood the industrial revolution. The "literary intellectuals" are somehow able to ignore the fact, claims'Snow, that science and technology is, for most of mankind, the only hope of freedom from material want.

In a rejoinder, F, R» Leavis, after first attempting to undermine Snow's reputation, says that although he does not advocate a reversal of technological progress, it is ."not enough, disastrously not enough."^ What is needed, he says, is not necessarily traditional culture but e/special creative quality of the spirit, something he calls "the third realm." He says there is the subjective realm, the objective realm and, thirdly, that experience gained by gazing at the symbols on the printed page. Leavis says Europeans sharing his concern see their tomorrow in the "life impoverishment and human emptiness" of today's America.^

Frank Raymond Leavis, Two Cultures? (New York:Pantheon, 1963), p. I4.O. ■

$1 -Besides undermining the role of art and the spirit*

another calamity attributed to technology is that it has eradicated science as a source of human culturee Formerly* says Jurgen Habermas, science made itself felt in the world by ordering the lives of individual men, who studied theory to learn how to act in accordance .with principles derived

f.through reason,- But today, says Habermas, the theory of control that science teaches does not use education and cultivation to alter the individual0. It is instead a theory of technical control derived from the various social sciences and applied directly to society* Such technology does alter human behavior| but unlike the former method of transmitting science through education and cultivation, it does not do so by enlightening the individuale

A loathing of technological culture, however, can go beyond revulsion. To some, such a culture is a threat, Judith Shklar says that one of the main characteristics of

\what she calls the "romantic" mind is a horror at technology and a hatred of the masses,? Its ideal, she says, is not man, the rational animal, but Prometheus, the defiant creator, This defiant, "one" fears engulfment by the mechanical order and its servants, the masses. Technology reduces the "one"

6 , Habermas, 0£, cit., pp, 50~6l,.7« Judith N, Shklar, After Utopia (Princeton,

Ho J»; Princeton University, 195>7) >' P . 1^2T~

■ . 52;to a mere function of the subdivision of labor. . Moreover# in a technological society# no one man can be said to know all. that is to be known# which is a further diminishment of the individual„

In addition to. the ^romantic#n she says there is another type of mind that believes itself threatened by technology.. For the “Christian fatalist," the Enlightenment

oand the subsequent secularization of Western man was heresy. This mind believes that if society is not ordered organically from within# in the pre-Enlightenment manner of the West# then it must be ordered from without by totalitarian means. Even worse for the "Christian fatalist#'* he believes in what is called social theology# which holds that ideas and faiths determine society® So, from his view, the disappearance of the faith that created the West means that the West mustJdisappear also# thus extinguishing even a vestigial form of Christianity.

Of all these forms of opposition to technology# it is this last# that of Shklar's "Christian fatalist#" with which Ellul’s view seems most nearly to conform. In a section labeled "The Creation of the Mass Society,Ellul says the structure of modern society does not grow out of

8. . Ibid.# p.. 185. -9. Ellul, op. cit. # pp. 332-335 =

the psychology of individuals, as it.would if it were an organically ordered community. Nor is it structured accord­ing to thought, doctrine, discussion or will. It is struc­tured, says Ellul, according to technical demands, And the adaptation of the individual to such a society requires "a tremendous effort of psychic mutation," which the society tries to accomplish through various techniques s Indeed, "Human T e c h n i q u e s , t h e bookfs longest chapter (about one-quarter of the tdtal volume), is devoted to a descrip­tion of the techniques that are being used to transplant the uprooted individual into the totalitarian state.

Like the "Christian fatalist," Ellul is dismayed at what he calls the "bourgeois’s stupid notion,of progress," He says modern man has a "peculiar orientation--which has material possessions and * stomach’ as the central values , Even worse, modern man is so firmly in the grip of the myth of progress that he regards certain material accomplishments with sacred delerium and the denial of the earthly paradise, for which he yearns can produce a frustration capable of causing the atrocities of modern war. But, Ellul asks, is what modern man seeks really progress? He notes, for example, that no quantitative measure can be used to

10. Ibid,. pp. 319-li.27.11. Ibid., p. 191.12. Ibid., p. 193.

Compare the difference in the quality of human satisfactionexperienced by the medieval artisan and. the modern laborer.But more importantly: "If a whole people is oriented towardthe search for justice or purity, if it obeys in depth theprimacy of the spiritual, it does not suffer from, the lackof material things, just as we today do not feel the inverseneed of the spiritual,

If for the "Christian fatalist" modern society isa heretical society, then its members must certainly leadlives that have lapsed from grace. And in Ellul’s eyes alarge part of modern society has lapsed indeed:

In the proletariat, we see human beings emptied of all human content and real substance, and possessed by economic p o w e r T h e - proletar 1 an was alienated, not only because he was the servant of the hour- . geois but because he became a stranger to the human condition, a sort of automaton filled with economic machinery and worked by an economic s w i t c h . -

Although Ellul’s view, in at least these importantrespects, conforms with that of the "Christian fatalist,"there is an important difference. For the "Christianfatalist" the state is either Christian or totalitarian;for Ellul the choice is not clear-cut. As noted, he thinksat least three factors-~a general war, an act of God ora determination by individuals to have their freedom--

13. Ibid., p. 192

could forestall the totalitarian state, which suggests thats between, the extremes posed by the “Christian fatalist,“ a half-way house may be possible, even though Ellul1s position is not, as he insists, either optimistic or pessimistic®

The central notion shared by both the "Christian fatalist" and Ellul-— that "progress" is not hope but peril-- is a formidable critical tool® Generally speaking, most critiques of modern society see imperfection as resulting from a lack of "progress e" But what Ellul and the "Christian fatalists" charge the modernizer with is not a failure to realize this ideal but the very nature of the ideal itself® The "Christian fatalist" believes that modern society must reject itself; Ellul, that it must at least fear itself®In neither view are "boosterism" and "Babbitry" virtues®

Furthermore, if there are in fact "men of the spirit" and "men of the senses," then this critique must certainly be an important addition to the argumentative arsenal of the former® It allows the "man of the spirit" to repudiate the "man of the senses" while using the letter’s own terms, This is an improvement on the simple tactic in which the "man of the spirit" merely makes the bald assertion that, properly, man ought to place his hopes in mind not matter® Unimproved, the "man of the spirit’s" argument is "Be not a Philistine«" Improved, it is "Be not a slave." Mhile the Philistine must be defined in terms of the spirit.

the slave can be defined In terras of the senses $ and Is thus presumably$ a concept more readily understood by men whose customary definitions are unspirituaie

A critique of this nature is also, if accepted, a vindication of the "man of the spirit," whose side, it would now seem apparent, has been on the right road all along, ■Vindication of the self, in this case at least, apparently slides easily into self-righteousness, and from there on into scorn of the non-electe For some men who have accepted the .critique view with complete contempt other men whom they believe to be the grotesque products of a perverted culture (e0g0, Ellul!s description of the proletariat).Of course, this attitude may be no more than the age-old tendency of the "man of the spirit" to view others as "rats and. mice," But if it is no more than the traditional "fine rage" of the elect at the failings of the many, then why forecast a tyranny of technology? Or for that matter, why even speak of technology at all?

It may he no coincidence that Ellul* s intemperate denunciations of current cultural conditions were echoed at a conference on technology and society held in 1966 by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, for which Ellul6s book had been set as "reading," Significantly in six papers presented then and later published by the center in an occasional pamphlet, the three men alarmed

57.at technological progress are. also distressed by currentcultural conditions; on the other hand,, the two men notalarmed by technological progress- are also not noticeablydismayed by current culture; indeed* one of them thinksthat an unruly mass culture plays an important part inpreventing a tyranny of technology. (The other paper*neutrally viewing technological progress as a given fact*contends that Christianity must make itself conform tohistorical conditions.) '

One of the alarmist contributors restates*, indifferent terms * Emerson!s description of the differingoutlooks of the "men of the spirit" and the "men of thesenses." Gerald Sykes'goes farther than Emerson* however*claiming that the new men of action have enchained thecreative spirits:

Like the old Aztecs* the new Aztechs merely took over ideas -and skills that had been patiently produced over centuries by men of greater humanity and greater responsibility. Like the old Toltecs* the new Toltechs--the scientists and artists of our own day--must submit to the authority of a more primitive kind of man who happened to be on hand when thought* to which he had contributed nothing* produced a bonanza. His more primitive

. skills are needed for organization* distribution* and regularity.15Apparently* what Sykes finds disturbing is a kind of"revolt of the masses." And like Ellul* his view of many

15® Technology and Human Values* ed. John Wilkinson* (Santa Barbara* Calif.: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions* 1 9 6 6 )* p. 7.

58of his fellow men is that they are subhuman automatons:

But the vacuum that his work creates in the techni­cians mind has to be filled. And other specialists think up things to put into his empty mind, so that he may buy: their products, support their party, or do whatever else they wish of him. This propaganda maneuver is executed so expertly that the mind of the public is now an overstuffed void,18

Sykes makes his emphasis on current culture plain as he concludes with the words: 16If man is to be saved from tech­nology, he will begin by looking at what it has already done to him."^7 ,

Dennis Gabor of the University of London contrib­uted a paper titled ^Fighting Existential Nausea^ n In which mankind's major problem is said to be a kind of ennui,Gabor says that "existential natcs-e-a," which has alwaysplagued the rich, has now, thanks to democracy, become theproblem of all® He notes, briefly, a solution: "Life willalways be full of meaning and Interest for the creative minority and for healthy children® The technological society shows a sound instinct by fostering in grown-uppeople the mentality of children.who want more and more

18toys," Gabor says flatly that we now live in the "Brave- Hew World.n He weighs the probability of its persistence and then describes some accomodations that he believes it will require, Speaking of the need to shift values from

16. Ibid., p, 10.' 17. Ibid., p. 17,18. Ibid., po 13,

59production to servicess he says;

It should not be too hard to make people feel that it is no more degrading to serve a customer who returns a smile with a smile than to serve a greasy machine in a factory0 If the Technological Society cannot be a Great. Society, let it at least be a smiling society1,19 . '

In the same paragraph? Gabor also uses the term “redundantmasses e 11 There is a definite anti-democratic air aboutGabor's paper (somehow one finds it hard to believe thatGabor means either himself or his audience when he speaks of"redundant masses"' and "servants") that is fully revealed inhis concluding paragraphi ™

This may also bring us closer to a much neglected ideal;: diversity. Ours is a sadly uniform world? and it could hardly be otherwise in a democracy that is just becoming prosperous. It will become even more so if it is crippled by overpopulation.But if we escape the triple danger of nuclear war? overpopulation? and existential nausea? born of inner emptiness? we may approach a worthwhile world? which will be rich in diversity and not just in consumption. We do not see the end? and we do not want to see it. Our slogan should be not Utopia but the more modest maxim: "The show mus t go on I" 20

Oddly? Gabor does not say what he means by the ideal of"diversity?" which leaves one to suspect that his culturalobjections to technology may be not those of the "man of thespirit" but instead those of the man nostalgic for the oldaristocracy based on social class„

With Sykes and Gabor the nausea at contemporary.culture exhibited in the six papers reaches its peak. Less

19. Ibid.? p. 15.20. Ibid.. p. 17.

60emotionallyj, Martin. Grotjahns a psychoanalyst, says that atpresent the machine in modern society is a perversion* Asit is, he says we have focused our inherent narcissism onthe machine itself in a kind of phallic fetishism. To shiftthe focus of our narcissim to the function of the machine,where it belong, is, he says, a task so great that it canonly be accomplished with psychoanalytic help,21

Myron B, Bloy Jr* attempts to make the case for a"relevant'* Christianity,^ Bertrand de Jouvenal rejects outof hand the notion of a technological imperative, calling ita "nefarious idea," Then, taking the view that is perhapsthe essence of Philistinism, he says that technology has,at any rate, given us one unquestionable blessing: a longerlife. He devotes the bulk of his paper to a discussion ofeconomic matters,

It is Theodore Roszak who sees the unruly masses asthe.bulwark against technocracy:

In the many back rooms, pool halls, pubs, bedrooms --the secret places that elude discovery and fru­strate analysis--a mass life of sarcasm, cynical good sense, and incorrigible resistance to orga­nization continues, mixed with as much supersti­tion and crude incomprehension as ever. The most

■ critical charge I would level at Jacques Ellul and those other technological pessimists centers on their systematic ignorance of this factoro2lt-

21, Ibid,, p, 27,22, Ibid., p. 19,23, Ibid., p . 36,2l|-, Ibid., p. 32,

61It is also Roszak, however, who subsequently made a complete turnabout by publishing a book calling for a total renuncia­tion of science and the ntechnocratic society'* and a return to the world-view-of the shaman.^ Titled The Making of a Counter Culture, the book is prefaced by a quote from William Blake that is a call to arms for the "men of the spiritt!l "Rouse up, 0 Young Men of the New Age I Set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings I For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War."In the book what was formerly seen as a saving "incorrigible resistance to organization" becomes, among other things, a "pathological passivity" as the spectre of a totalitarian future is coupled (characteristically, as we have seen) with a denunciation of current cultural conditions.

Unfortunately for Ellul and men like Sykes, Gabor ' and Roszak, their unrestrained loathing of the technological present casts doubt on their claim of an even more horrible technological future„ Such a stance can seem too much like • a hew, and not very admirable, strategem in the ongoing debate between the "men of the spirit" and the "men of the senses." To object to modern technology because it under­mines certain human potentials that one values--art, science

,25« Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1 9 6 9 )". ’ ”

62as culture, religion or whatever-~is to make a commitment in the long-standing struggle for the minds and.hearts of men*But an attempt to change men by frightening them through prophecy is,.some might, say, a violation of the things to which these men believe themselves to be committed. They would do better to adopt the calm moderation .of.the type that Emerson placed on the middle ground between the 11 men of the spirit” and the "men of the senses:” the skeptic, as represented by Montaigne„ As it stands now, they can surely be accused of having made one of the "discoveries” of which Tom Wolfe speaks in his introduction to The Pump House Gang:

. What struck me throughout America and. England was . that so many people have found such novel ways of doing: just, that, enjoylnp;,. extending their egos. ; way out on the best terms' available, namely, their . . .own* It is curious how many serious thinkers--and politicians--res 1st this rather obvious facto Sheer.ego extension— especially if attempted by all those rancid proles and suburban petty burghers--is a perplexing prospecto Even scary, one might saye Intellectuals and politicians currently exhibit a • vast gummy nostalgia for the old restraints, the old limits, of the ancient ego-crusher: Calamity„ Historically, calamity has been the one serious concern of serious peoplee War, Pestilence-- Apocalypse I was impressed by the profound relief with which Intellectuals and politicians discovered poverty in America in 1963, courtesy of Michael Harrington's book The Other America, And, as I say, it was discovered. Eureka L We have found it Again I We thought we had lost it. That was the spirit of the enterprise„ When the race riots erupted--and when the war in Vietnam grew into a good-sized hell*— intellectuals welcomed all that with a ghastly embrace, too. War I. Poverty I Insurrection '. Alienation I 0 Four Horsemen, you . . have not deserted us entirely. The game can go on.26

26. Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 8-9®

CHAPTER 4

TECHNOLOGY AND IDEOLOGY

Today every kind of dogmatism is left standing dispirited and discouraged, Lf it is left stand­ing at all I For there are scoffers who claim that it has fallen* that all dogmatism lies on the ground--even more * that all dogmatism is dying„

Nietzsche* Beyond Good and Evil*'After the radical inversion of the old faith in

progress--what? Ellul may not have shown* to everyone's- satisfaction* that 11 techniquen proceeds autonomously until it creates a state in which it manipulates man totally; he may not have shown* either* that man must redirect his main cultural effort from the material to the spiritual--or else„ But he has firmly called into question the old warm feeling that as man* through the "miracle of modern science*" gradually increases his control over himself and his envi­ronment* things naturally keep getting better. One who has read Ellul is not reassured when the smiling pitchman for a giant corporation says "progress is our most important product." Ellul may not make his case for the claim that "technique" has a.will of its own* but an important by-product of his argument is the demonstration that the unqualified

Walter Kaufman* Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library* 19^8)*' p , 192.

63

%pursuit of progress is not an unmitigated blessing. And this raises the question of an alternative to progress. It is almost as if the arrogance of his adamant assertion that "technique" cannot be controlled repels the reader into exclaiming* "But it can be controlledV And having said that* the reader must then ask himself* "But to what end?"

To say that Ellul has deliberately overstated his case is to say that his argument is a stratagem. In that curious foreword* written ten years after* he seems to acknowledge that the book may perhaps contain a certain amount of. over- (kill. He also notes* in that foreword* that he has been accused of not offering a solution* then he goes on to say* lamely* that the answer lies in a transcendence, the method of accomplishing which he does not yet know. Still, the text itself is the perfect expression of a dictionary definition of nihilism* the radical repudiation of existing society without offering a constructive alternative. As such it joins company with that thoroughly modern syndrome in which we find the radical solitude sometimes called existentialism* the notion of the absurd, black humor* the deliberate "blowing" of the mind* the movement from utopian to dystopian speculation* the catch phrase "the end of „ . , (innocence* radicalism* ideology* etc0)"--in short* all those forms of cultural collapse and disbelief* ending in despair for many* that were announced in the Nietzschean thunder* "God is dead," ■

Ideology TodayBesides being one form of nihilism, the wholesale

denunciation of existing society without proposing an alter­native can also be, incredibly enough, one form of what Karl Mannheim calls the utopian, a view which transcends reality and at the same time breaks the bonds of the existing order„ In Ideology and Utopia^ Mannheim defines politics as that part of human activity that cannot be reduced to a routi- nized matter of management and administration. He says the sphere of the political results from the need to choose, which itself can only result from the desire to direct history toward a view of a certain utopia. If the urge to shape society in accordance with- a transcendent pattern is absent, then the utopian element lapses into science, A world dominated by science would become static, making man no more than a thing in a repetitious, predictable process, Man would no longer be man; he would be merely an object. Thus Mannheim5s view in the section of the book called “Utopia in the Contemporary S i t u a tion,is dour, for he claims that the utopian element in politics has been anni­hilated, He says the ability of the intellectual to find satisfaction in spiritual matters has been undermined from

1, Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harvest, 1936),2, Ibid,, pp, 2I4.8 -263,

66two sides: by the 'concept of cultural determinancy and by the concept of1human drives* The focus in spiritual matters, therefore, has shifted from the value of the vision to the forces that produce the values with which the vision is pro­claimed and judged: one thus comes to concern himself not with the worth of what he thinks but with why he thinks it *In such straits, the intellectual today who desires to gener­ate at least some tension countering the trend toward the transformation of utopianism into science has, says Mannheim, four choices: 1) He can affiliate with what is le f't oT^the proletariat, 2) He can attempt to revive some extinct form of reality-transcendence such as religion or myth, 3) He can deliberately shut himself off from the world and the • historical process in a movement like that, for example, of the philosophy of Kierkegaard, 1|.) He can strive for intel­lectual integrity and attempt to destroy the ideological elements in science in the manner typified by the work of Weber and Pareto, Mannheim first published his book in 1929, In retrospect, it seems evident that his claim that the traditional utopian element had been annihilated may well have been justified. But it is also clear now thathis list of the four choices remaining to intellectuals

1 ' '

seeking some utopian tendency was incomplete. For he'Omitted what became known as the "dystopia," that lengthysuccession of works devoted to chilling depictions of

futuristic dictatorships based - on totalitarian methods gained from scientific progress , Perhaps still pre-eminent, among these are Aldous Huxley{s Brave New World and George Orwellf s 1981u But the genealogy of the still-growing genre has been charted In, among other places, Chad Walsh's Prom Utopia to; Nightmare and Kingsley Amis's New Maps of .Hell, In Mann­heim's terms the "dystopia" can have a utopian function. It can transcend reality, though by positing not an ideal to be realized but a horror to.be avoided; and it can break existing social bonds by maintaining that a society that adheres to the scientific world-view will inevitably produce the horror. While accomplishing the two main functions of a Mannheimian utopia, transcendence, and the rupture of existing social bonds, the '‘dystopia” also skirts the stalemate stemming from the inability of the Mannheimian intellectual to believe in an ideal. The dystopia" gives the intellectual grounds for political action without requiring of him the Mannheimian impossibility of subscribing to a view of an ideal society. With a "dystopia," the intellectual can negate the present not with a view of perfection but with a view.of something whose only virtue need be that it is clearly not the scientifically based horror forecast for the future, This utopian function of the literary fiction that comprises the genre of the "dystopia" is also shared, of course, by the genre of social analysis that here has been called the

68tyranny of technology6 And the ndystopia,n like Ellults work, confronts the reader with the question: If not that, then what?

The reply of Jurgen Habermas in his essay ”Technology and Science as sIdeology8 is that both genres, to the extent that they contribute to public discussion, are in themselves an answer. To control technology, says Habermas, we do not need an ideology that projects a vision of the good life; we need only a rebirth of that sphere of human communication that once contained all technological endeavor. For in the modern age technology itself has become an ideol­ogy, Ideologies began, he says, as a scientific, critique of tradition, that was, at the same time> a legitimation of the new ways brought about by economic and technological progress. But with the passing of the free market, the ideology of free exchange was replaced by a striving for stability and growth aiming not at the attainment of abstract goals but at the solution of technical problems, which required the free intervention of the state, which in turn was. made possible by the depoliticization of the masses*The legitimation of the new technical and apolitical method of problem solving was accomplished when the masses, adopted technology as an ideology. This new ideology does

3» Habermas, ojd, cit,, pp. 81-122,

V . .

69no^ hold the masses through a collective vision of the good life; it holds them by stabilizing capital-labor antagonism through a distribution system that curbs exploitation of the worker and by rewarding "privatized" needs through allocations of money and leisure time. The triumph of technology, is characterized by the ascendancy of "work" over "interac­tion" --"work" being systematic action based on an ends-means analysis aimed at controlling the objective world, "inter­action" being human communication based on symbols and consensual norms. Historically, all "work" had taken place within a larger framework of "interaction.” But the linking of technology to research by the state as it intervened to solve all problems technically destroyed the old framework of "interaction"- and now only "work" remains „ Today the resurrection of "interaction" can only be accomplished through the mass media; it is the only means by which the depoliticized masses can be brought to question the ideol­ogy of technology.

With his concept of "interaction" Habermas is able to -make more than a nihilistic "negation of the technological -society, more than a vehement "nothing of that - kind, nothing of that kind." Yet in doing so he is able to avoid the difficulty of having to advocate a specific form of society, even something whose only virtue is that it is clearly not a state- ruled scientifically. Though Habermas does not

mention Mannheim, his concept of H inter action" meets Mann­heim’s contention, that our awareness of the origins of any ideal make the ideal suspect, by turning it against itselfe Habermas does this by completely shifting the focus of ideological evaluation from substance to process«, The old naive view of ideology was focused entirely on substance«In this view, it is as if the ideology were an object, .some­thing that when verbalized took on.a reality of its own that men could weigh, measure and evaluate in the same way that one attempts to know and judge phenomena in the physical realm«■ Mannheim’s refinement on the old objective view of ideology was to trace it back to its source, to say that an ideology cannot be fully understood if it is regarded as If it were an alien other, whose form is not at all dependent upon mane Mannheim’s view enlarges the focus to include the process by which the Ideology is formed® Having done that, one sees that different processes result in the formation of different ideologies® One concludes, there­fore, that ideologies are determined by these processes ®All ideologies are then reduced to the state of being effects of causes® And as in all cases of causality, that which becomes of crucial importance is that which comes first, that which determines what is to.follow® Mannheim’s view, in Ideology and Utopia, rests at this point® All transcendent elements in man’s vision of society, whether merely ideological or truly utopian, have been hopelessly

71.undermined. An ideology can no longer be regarded as a thing in itself; it is now only the necessary product of the circumstances of its creation.

While Mannheimrs refinement was to enlarge the ideological focus to include both.substance and process # thus finding that the former was overshadowed by the latter, Habermas1s refinement is another step farther: He shifts the focus to the process alone, completely ignoring its sub­stance , His "interaction" does not require an unimpeachable, transcendent element in which men can believe. The purpose of the transcendent element in Mannheim's view is to gener­ate flux in human society by setting up a firm goal, non­existent in the world of direct sensory experience, toward which man can direct that experiential worlde Habermas's refinement is to say that the flux can be generated without positing a firm goal, .If the purpose of the flux is simply to prevent the world from lapsing into a predetermined state dictated by science, then we need only see to it that science is debunked as an ideology and man will be thrown back upon himself, causing him to again determine his affairs by communicating with his fellows through language, through, that is to say, "interaction,11 which rests on consensual norms determined by men, and not "work," which rests on objective.laws determined by the inhuman.

72According to Hab.ermas * then, all that is needed to

resurrect "Interaction" is the end of sclentized technology as an ideologye For in his terms all of human experience is contained in the dichotomy !$worlcf!/ninteraction"- even Parson5 s supposedly exhaustive categorization of value orientations (affectivity-affective neutrality., particular- lsm~universalism# ascription-achievement^ diffusene.ss-spec­ificity) s even Weber's "rationalization," If one accepts the dichotomy, then it follows that if "work" is no longer the ordering principle, human activity must be structured according to "interactiono" It does not follow, however, that this "interaction" will not take the definite form of a specific ideology. If "work".is dethroned one cannot be certain that the consensual norms that succeed it will not harden, sooner or later, into an ideology in the traditional sense„ Though, of course, in Habermas5 s view this does not matter, for it would still be the result of the procedure that he values, "interaction,"

Still, if the rebirth of "interaction" were to result in a traditional ideology, events would have.come full circle, returning once again to a Mannheimian state of affairs in which the intellectual finds himself unable to believe in the. prescriptive content of any transcendent dogma, Habermas5 s refinement, which overcame this obstacle by focusing on procedure, would be lost. It seems logical to suppose, then, that the situation that Habermas desires,

the end of the ideology of scientized technology and the necessary resumption of "interaction*n would bring about a test of Mannheim1s analysis» If Mannheim is correct*.and the utopian element has indeed been annihilated* then the forced resumption of ^interaction" could not produce a traditional ideology; It could only result in an ideology that values concrete procedure rather than a prescribed vision that is both collective and transcendent; it could only be an ideology that values "Interaction" for its own sake and not for any outcome of that processc

There'~is some evidence that supports the view that the death of the ideology of a scientized technology* or progress* leads to an amorphous "interaction" that is only an ideology in a procedural sensee • The most notable attribute of the works in the genre constituted by the re­cent proposals for controlling a runaway technology istheir variety® A look at but a few of the works indicates

■ tthat the action advocated in the genre spans the spectrum of traditional political discourse® Indeed* when a sam­pling of the works in the genre is considered in company* the divergence of the solutions proposed plus the fact that they offer no new directions in political thought* can encourage one to think that the spectre of a techno­logical imperative perfectly provides the only thing that could revive traditional ideological thinking in

our time: a goad* The would-be ideologue of our day finds adherents for his view not by attracting them with a vision that promises the ideal, but by driving, them away from a vision that is a nightmare«

Thus we find, in the works already mentioned here, Brzezinski advocating a conservative evolutionism, Marcuse advocating the perfect nihilism of the Great Refusal, Roszak advocating the abandonment of civilization and a return to nature, and Habermas advocating complete democracy. Among, other works in. the genre, we find Michael Harrington in .The Accidental Century^ advocating socialism, Victor C» Perkiss in Technological Man^. advocating a philosophy which he calls- the new naturalism, the new holism and the new immamentism, John Kenneth Galbraith in The Hew Industrial

AState advocating the leadership of an elite that he calls the educational and scientific estate, and Erich Fromm in The Revolution of Hope? advocating the formation, at the local, regional and federal levels, of citizen advisory committees that would influence policymaking through public

i|,, Michael Harrington, The Accidental Century (Baltimore: Penguin, 1965),

5 o Victor 0. Perkiss, Technological. Man (New York: Braziller, 1969)«

6, John Kenneth Galbraith, The New IndustrialState (New York: Signet, 196?)«

7« Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope (NewYork: Bantam, 1968),

75opinion. Cancelling the technological spectre from this sampling Of the genre, we see that the authors have only managed to raise again nearly all of the issues of tradi­tional, political thoughtt conservatism, nihilism, naturalism, democracy, socialism, a timely philosophy, elitism and institutional reform. The thought cannot be suppressed: If eight different men start from the same premise, that tech- . nological progress poses a problem, and. draw eight separate conclusions that range from one end of the political spec­trum (conservatism) to the other (nihilism), doesn’t that suggest that the old issues can only exist today when propped up in opposition to some threat?

There is, however, the possibility that all beliefs and ideologies exist only in opposition. If this were the case, then religion might exist only in opposition to death, science to chaos, liberalism to monarchy, conservatism to liberalism, capitalism to feudalism, socialism to capitalism and so on. To make such a claim is to say that men can beunited, in conscious belief only through opposition to a

8 " • ' "devil." To believe this, one must subscribe to a dia­lectical view of history, which is itself, of course, an ideology, existing in opposition, no doubt, to the view of

8 . "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil." Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (New York: Harper, 195>1), p. 8 6 .

straight-line evolutionism or progress e But regardless of whether the principle can or cannot he. extended-, on out. into an all-encompassing generality about the human condition^ it isg nonetheless, one way of viewing Ellul and three of the genres mentioned here--the tyranny of technology, the dystopia and tne technological pacifiera The scientific world-view.put down its devil, a world of chaos, the mystic and the unknowable, and so generated the need for a new devils Because the scientific world-view was totally tri­umphant, it left nothing other than itself capable of posing enough of a. threat to be regarded as the new devils And if the devil is science, then its antithesis is the unscienti- fico Therefore, the justification for Habermases procedural concept of "interaction" and for all of the ideologies proposed as a pacification of technology is that.they are unscientific* That is all the virtue that is claimed for them; and in a world in which the only force powerful enough to seem ominous is a scientized. technology, that is enough*.

That the absence of a "devil" is necessarily The End of Ideology is Daniel Bell's contention in the book of that name, which he published in 1960*^ Although Bell defines ideology as the "conversion of ideas into social levers," it is clear that what he was actually proclaiming

9* Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe, 111*: Free Press, I960)*

■ 77the end of was not Ideology but "utopia"'in Mannheim!an terms or, less esoterically,.old-style radicalism— specifieally. Marxian-oriented hopes of revolutionary change, He did not recognize that a scientized technology was also the "conver­sion of Ideas into social levers" and that, because the old ndevils" were, as he said, exorcized, a scientized technology might itself become the "devil." .Bell repeatedly claims that an ideology must oppose something! and he repeatedly maintains that the problem of the radical of that day was that there was nothing to be against. A man who attempts to think dialectically'would, it goes without saying, never conclude that the radical impulse has been stymied because there is no longer anything to be against. But Bell, then at least, was too much the conventional thinker. After his analysis, proceeding all the while in one direction, had led him to one conclusion, he did not Immediately deny that conclusion by beginning, from that point, an analysis pro­ceeding in the opposite direction. And so we find him saying, in I9 6 0 , that in the past radicalism had vitality because it was apocalyptic, wanting to completely alter the old society, "But where the problems are,, as Karl Popper put it, of ’piecemeal technology,’ of the prosaic, yet necessary questions, of school costs, municipal services, the urban sprawl, and the like, bravura radicalism simply becomes a .

■ 78-| pjhollow shell," A man. whose habitual thought Is dialectic

would have recognized, of course, that If the old order hadvanished, leaving the radical impulse with no antagonist,then the radical Impulse must square-off against the neworder, "piecemeal technology,"

For Bell - was well aware that the radical impulseitself had not vanished. Indeed, it is with more than slightsatisfaction (as we shall see) that Bell notes that NormanPodhoretz, speaking for what was at that time the post-collegegeneration, said that his generation had a longing for acause to believe in. And Bell goes on to say;

But the problem for the generation is less, as Mr, Podhoretz says, the "fear of experience" than an inability to define an "enemy." One can have causes and passions only when one knows against whom to fight, The writers of the twenties--Dada­ist, Menckenian, and nihilist--scorned bourgeois mores. The radicals of the thirties fought "cap­italism, " and later, fascism, and for some, Sta­linism, Today, intellectually, emotionally, who is the enemy that one can fight?H

The events that Bell believed had smashed chiliastic hopes,that "fear of experience," were, among other things, theself-destruction of the revolutionary generation of the 3 0 s,the Moscow Trials, the Soviet-Fascist pact, a world-widedepression, racial imperialism, bureaucratized murder and,perhaps both resulting from and contributing to that "fear,"

10. Ibid., p. 298.11. Ibid.» p. 288.

79a mood of anti-rationalism, exemplified by the interest in the writings of Sigmund Freud, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich«, The result of the "fear" and the inability to find an "enemy" is. Bell said, not only that "counter-beliefs" have been eradicated but also that "few serious minds" now believe that it is possible to create a "blueprint" from which "social engineers"' can create the good society."In the Western world, therefore, there is today a rough consensus among intellectuals on political issues: the acceptance of a welfare state; the desirability of decen­tralized power; a system of mixed economy and of political

IPpluralism."Bell, in an instance of G. Wright Mills5 "celebra­

tion of the status quo," welcomed the end of ideology. He ' said that ideology gets its force from passion, emotions which formerly were released in religion but now are pro­ducing political irrationality. He also said that ideol­ogies were strongly linked to intellectuals who, as a class, were engaged in a power struggle with other elements of society. And he also said of the old ideologies, in a ' sentence in which he again passed by the new "devil" with­out recognizing it, "By identifying inevitability with progress, they linked up with the positive values of science ."^-3

1 2 . - Ibid., p. 373. '1 3 . Ibid., p. 372.

: 80 To the Mannheimian question--what produced Bell’s

Ideology?— a few answers can be ventured. In the introduc­tion Bell says the book is a collection of essays (only a few of which deal explicitly with ideology) written while he '.was labor editor of Fortune magazinee They are* then* the product of a conservative American journalist, Their origin in the milieu of the quasi-official organ of the American business world may account* in part*, for the essays$ vehement anti-radical and anti-intellectual stance and also for their failure to perceive that "piecemeal technology" and "progress" might actually be methods of converting "ideas into social l e v e r s T h e i r origin in journalistic effort may account* in part* for the fact that the essays do not attempt to systematically make the point that ideol­ogy has been eradicated and also for the fact that the title of the book can seem* to the uncharitable * like a sensational* attention-getting ploy— or "grabber*" as some journalists call the strategy— which* supported only by the concluding essay (a mere afterthought)* was chosen in the business-like attempt to move the product, But regardless of what motivated the book it was * as has often been noted* published not at the beginning but at the end of the era of ideological quiescence of which it told.

81Eight years later James P „ Young in The Politics of

Affluence, Ideology in the United States Since World Warobserved that what Bell had in mind was indeed not the end of ideology but an ideology of the status quo, that some were now saying that technology is the problem not the solution and that American political thought seems to be in a transitional period, the outcome of which is not yet clear„ Young con­tended that.the advent of ^affluence" may have meant that the old economic issues and the ideological constructions used to describe them were, as a result, no longer of supreme importance and that they may, therefore, have been in the process of being replaced by issues and ideologies revolving around civil rights and foreign affairs e This shift infocus, he believed, might also bring with it a style ofpolitics dominated hot by the technical approach appropriate to individual and international affairs„ The new moral style, he said, would bring about the rebirth of ideologyc Having acknowledged the merit of arguments by Bell and others against intellectual irresponsibility. Young set forth his definition of ideology: "An ideology involves three things: a set of goals, an analysis of the.contemporary scene in the light of these goals, and a program designed to achieve the posited ends within the limits imposed by the particular status quo.n^

11}.. James P. Young, The Politics of Affluence,Ideology in the United States~sTnce World War II (San Pran- cisco: Chandler^ 19SBT7 " ' ~~ ~

IS. Ibid., p. 218.

He maintained that this definition of ideology was superior to any abstract notion of the public interest because ideol­ogy, in these terms, has an "empirical referent," or, if he had chosen to speak more plainly, a restraint* Thus ideol­ogy, so defined, could play.a role in determining affairs without tearing society apart for the total reconstruction required by some traditional messianic ideologies* Young advocated the revival of "programmatic" thinking aimed at the reconstruction of consensus in America; but this, he said in an apparent non sequitur, is hampered by the lack of a genuine conservative element that could preserve tradi­tional values in the face of conformist pressures from a mass' society and by the .failure of intellectuals to act as social critics and to advance programs for social change*How the absence of these two factors would hinder consensus was not explained; and in the absence of that explanation one cannot help but wonder whether the presence of elitist values, criticism and proposals for action do not actually tend to prevent consensus in a given society rather than to preserve it.

To the Mannheimian question--what produced Young1s ideology?— we can again venture a few answers. Young, a professor, said the book is based on his doctoral disser­tation; he also maintained that the "political scientists today are derelict in their responsibility when they

abstain from the age-old functions of clarifying values and criticising policy alternatives,"^^ Young is, then-, an activist academic. His cloistered point of view may partially account for his labelling of both the conservative coup in the Republican Party in 1961i- and the Hew Left as' the "seamy side of politics" and also for his failure to.consider that these two movements might be construed by some to be evidence of the presence of the conservative and critical elements that Young believed to be absent in American society. That same-point of view also appears- in his claim that the "reconstruction of the American consensus" ought to be accomplished by continuing the grand debate between the liberal and conservative traditions in classical political theory, even though, as he notes, the conservative tradition that he would like to see represented would have to be cultivated because it has no roots in America, which never went through a feudal period. But who, it hardly needs to be pointed out, besides assiduous academics could be expected to be conversant in classical political theory? Certainly not the Hew Left and the C-oldwater conservatives, those occupants of the "seamy side -of p o l i t i c s A n d Young ends his book with these words:

We. need to reconsider the soundness of our basicvalues as we-move into a new era in American

1 6 . Ibid., p-.. 1.

81history,, to weigh our public policies in the light of those values} and to suggest programs that can help us to achieve our ends« As noted at the outset, the discipline of politi­cal science is peculiarly suited to this taske Such a role may generate no little controversy, but this should not bother us, for controversy is the lifeblood of a free society,17 .

What Young advocates is, from Habermas’s point of view, a procedural ideology or “interaction,n a kind of “piecemeal moral ism. “ He has no total, all-encompassing view of society, no “blueprint” for the “social engineers«,n The nearest that he comes to advocating a specific shape for society is his goal of a “reconstruction of the Ameri­can consensus o“ But what ■ is “consensus ?“' He never attempts to say, precisely,, and his most specific statement is that: “There is a basic agreement--particularly on the institu­tions of government, but on the day-to-day issues of politics as well--which tends to submerge conflict in a sea of con­sensus „ It is ironic that Young should advocate that the tradition of classical political theory— intensely articulate, rational and conscious--should be used to achieve something ,as amorphous as a “sea of consensus,” a kind of warm feeling- among the multitude that everything is alright, rather than a clear picture in each citizen's head of what the society is and how it should function. Yet as we have seen, the

17. Ibid., pp. 222-223.18„ Ibid., p. 3.

85movement away from the ideology of a scientized technology or stprogressn places a positive, value on the unscientific,

But if there really is a dialectic at work here, and the only possible ideological virtue today is that of being unscientific, it seems unlikely that the antithesis would devolve upon an ideology that existed before or during the period when human consciousness was locked within the scientific world-view®. The truly unscientific ideology would be, it seems more probable, something radically new® One can, needless to say, only speculate about the radi­cally new at this point„ For example: If at bottom the scientific process can be. said to be the finding of the general in the particular, then something radically opposed to science would be the complete and uncompromising denial of the general® This would make an objective ideology impossible and men would be forced to fall back on some procedural concept like Habermas ! s ,rInteraction®,f Thus freed of all dogmas, each man would have to imagine his own life project, to write his own life history, to--how one loves the expression l--do his own thing® On the other hand, something equally radical in its opposition to science would be the denial of the particular. This would make a subjective ideology impossible and men would be forced to fall back on a "sea of consensus" or a McLuhan- esque single consciousness® Arbitrarily restricting the

' . . 86 radically unscientific to these two categories,•we can con­tinue our speculation with an attempt to show how McLuhan has the ideological lead0

The great handicap of particularism today is that it is not new* , One might be able to trace it back' to the dawn of human consciousness, or at least as far back as the first claim that each man has a unique soul. More recently, particularism has been-associated with existentialism, a word now nearly exhausted by long and various use, Further­more, a particularistic outlook requires a great effort of will * It demands that the individual become intenselyself-conscious and self-reliantj it is a state of mind that

■ ' , requires constant cultivation. It is even possible, to sayit as plainly as possible, that particularism can only be the pursuit of the few; the many may neither want nor be able to stand the strain experienced as one plumbs the depths of radical solitude,

McLuhanism, on the other hand, is both new and effortless. As technology "outers" the human nervous system the individual consciousness disappears, willy-nilly, in the global village. The Newtonian world-view was dia­lectic; it has undone itself* Thus for those potential ideological adherents still enveloped in "Newton's sleep," McLuhanism gains credibility because it is grounded in a causal mechanism. And for the awakened vanguard who have

87already entered into the "field approach" and the lttechnique of suspended judgment*" there is the constant flow of oracu­lar pronouncementss deliberately devoid of the scholarly trappings and pompous prolixities of traditional ideology and presented instead in the style of the latest ad-mass0

Ellul TodayThe idea that the ideologies of the modern mind

exist only in opposition has at least one exponent with enough expertise in the matter to be able, presumably, to mount an argument from authority to that effect which cannot be immediately dismissed as the product of a naivete both gross and.presumptuouso Robert A 9 Hisbet says that the politicization of the Western mind, has gone through three major stages, in each of which the new wave rallied around an opposition to the status quo: opposition to feudalism, in which Rousseau was the spiritual eminence; opposition to capitalism, in which Lenin was the spiritual eminence; opposition to technology, in which Ellul is definitely not the spiritual eminencee Misbet makes the assertion in Commentary in an article that was one of the first in a series that appeared, in the magazine criticizing the various assumptions, of what is usually called the New Left.-*-9

19» Robert A « Misbet, "The Grand Illusion: An Appreciation of Jacques Ellul^" Commentary, Vol. 1l9, Mo. 8 , Aug., 1970, pp. l+O-ljli..

Nisbet claims that the opponents of technology are mistaken when they claim Ellul for their camp. Citing a number of Ellul5s other works, Nisbet attempts to demonstrate that Ellul actually belongs in a. long-established school of French political thought that sees the essence of modernity in the growth of an all-pervasive political state rather than in technological progress as such. But in .doing so Nisbet encounters trouble on two fronts. His method of going be­hind the surface of Ellul5s most influential book. The Tech­nological Society, to attempt to understand the mind that produced it, -as revealed in the central concerns of Ellul5s other works, can only result in the claim that Ellul is inconsistent if such a procedure should reveal that in all of his works the problem of technology is only a minor theme. Despite Nisbet5s demonstration, the New Left, one suspects, could only be moved to reassess Ellul by a convincing refu­tation of his claim that "technique" is autonomous, a con­tention that Nisbet does not even mention, much less attempt to deal with. By willfully ignoring the thesis of the book that has given Ellul,his reputation in this country Nisbet is able to pose a rhetorical question that must seem absurd to anyone who has read The Technological Society: "But how, despite the testimony of his preponderantly political writings, has he come to be placed with those who see

89POtechnology as the dominant process in Western history?”

In any case, when the New Left indicts modern society it alludes to the analysis in. the book and not to its author's long-standing political preoccupations„

As if Nisbet's attempt to undemine the force of Ellul's analysis of ”technique” by showing it to be one of • the author's subordinate concerns were not questionable enough in itself, the demonstration is further weakened by the fact that it was premature, Nisbet says in his .article that Violence, published in America in 1989, is Ellul's latest volume e But while the issue of Commentary that carried his article was still on the newsstands, the pub­lication of a more recent work by Ellul, The Meaning of

21the City, was being advertised* In an introduction to this book John Wilkinson, who translated The Technological Society, says The Meaning of the City is the "theological counterpoint" to The Technological Society, just as each of Ellul's works about secular concerns has its "theolog­ical counterpoint." In his account of Ellul's works Nisbet does not mention this habitual practice, much less thar the "theological counterpoint" to The Technological Society was, at the time of Nisbet's writing, still forth­coming* .While The Meaning of the City supports Nisbet's

20 e Ibid.*, p . ijJ „21* Jacques Ellul, The Meaning of the City

(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1970j*

claim that Ellul himself is not a technophobe,- the book is an explicit denial of Ifisbet1 s claim that Ellul is but another of those French thinkers who find the meaning of moderniza­tion in the growth of the political state* In this book Ellul says that all of modern civilization is the product of the city, which bears the curse., of Cain*

As noted, Ellul said in his foreword to the American edition of The Technological Society (which as also noted deliberately tempered the tenor of the text) that the solu­tion to "'technique'1 was a transcendence whose nature Ellul did not yet know„ In The Meaning of the City we are given an elucidation of that transcendence* The book is an exege­sis of the meaning of the. city , in the Bible „ Ellul begins by showing how the first city was built by Cain after he was cursed and driven from God1 s presence he goes on to show that in the Bible the city is the "sign" of man's attempt to turn away from Godj he ends with a depiction of the New Jerusalem with which God Himself will transcend the city*Ellul says that meanwhile man neither returns to the country nor perfects the city. If man himself were to judge the city, says Ellul, he would be replacing God* Man's mission now is to break the spiritual power of the city. He does this by praying, by adopting an attitude of waiting, by representing God in the heart of the city and by not taking his earthly work seriously* And man must remember:

91Because God forgives s Christians must realize that the ..words of Ecclesiastes are true: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are g o i n g L i f e is given us in order that we accomplish these works and make scientific progress8 And we are asked to have a share in all of the human life, in .all of man? s research, to build with men their Works„ To the extent tnat in Jesus Christ the city is not devil- isn, to the extent that it is destined to be trans­figured, we must not pass judgment on the works of others, but must work, along with the others in the construction of the city<= 2 c.

22. Ibid., p. l80.

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