CHAPTER 3: Economic Man: Servant to Industrial Metaphors The imperatives of technology and organization, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economic society. ... I am led to the conclusion that we are the servants in thought, as in action, of the machines we have created to serve us.
-- J. K. Galbraith (1967)
Technology . . . has become the prime source of material change and so determines the pattern of the total social fabric.
-- R. J. Forbes (1968)
The above quotations reflect a prevailing sense that technological and economic developments have had a dominant influence upon the pattern of our total societal fabric. Indeed,
industrialism is one of the most potent and widely spread cultural/societal systems in human history. In America, no modern institution has escaped its influence: the school, the family, the community and city, the church, all have been influenced by this primary driving force of the modern era (Miller and Form, 1967). Thus, the industrial revolution in modern times refers to more than machines and markets; it refers also to the people and institutions locked into a network of relationships dominated by economic and technological forces. The pervasiveness of economic forces suggests that we cannot anticipate the images of humankind that might emerge without giving consideration to the tugs and pulls of economic and technological influences. SOURCES OF THE ECONOMIC IMAGE OF MAN The social effects of the Industrial Revolution markedly transformed the lives and actions of individuals in Europe, especially by the mid-nineteenth century. For example, the emergence of the concept of "factors of production" (land, labor, and capital) had revolutionary implications for the Western image of humankind. Humans (the labor component) were no longer a part of the organic whole of society; rather, the person, the laborer, became an objectified and standardized component of the production process. The tendency to see
people as mere units in the production process, bought in an impersonal marketplace and forced to submit to the dictates of the factory in order to survive, was reinforced by the post-mercantilist socio-economic ideology of laissez-faire, which discouraged government intervention in economic activities. The image inherent in this setting
could reasonably be described as "economic man":
• rationalistic (able to calculate what was in his own self-interest),
• mechanistic (a factor of production),
• individualistic (with great responsibility to take care of himself),
• materialistic (with economic forces acting as primary if not exclusive reward and control mechanisms). In addition to the changes in economic structure that laid the groundwork for a market economy and factory-dominated society, we also can identify some of the basic value premises that emerged during the period of the Renaissance. This is important since many elements of the dominant images of humankind currently held by our society have their origins in the Renaissance and its aftermath, and can be inferred from the value premises of that era. These value premises are discussed briefly below.
Rationalism. Reason was elevated to a pinnacle in the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment: "Reason would discover the natural laws regulating existence, thereby insuring the progress of the human race" (Brinton et al., 1955, p. 47). A number of threads formed the intellectual fabric of rationalism. First, there was the rejection of revelation as a source of truth. Truth was no longer something that was found through a religious intermediary and divine revelation; rather, truth was discoverable through empirical observation of the world. Second,
there developed an invidious distinction between reason and emotion. The rational mode of perception became dominant since that was the mode most useful in dealing with a physical world. "The way was paved for the increasing preoccupation in modern times with phenomena that were susceptible to mathematical and mechanical treatment, and for the increasing suppression of non-mechanical and
so-called 'irrational experience'" (May, 1966, p. 59). This suppression of the non-mechanical went hand-in-hand with the industrializing process, for that which could be calculated and measured had practical utility in the industrial world and what was irrational did not.
Individualism. In earlier societies, humans perceived themselves as inseparable components of the seamless web of being which extended throughout their natural and social environments (Lovejoy, 1939). For example,
To the Greek, the city-state was not merely a legal structure; it was a way of life. Every aspect of daily existence was intimately connected with it. The individual derived his importance from his relation to the state; he was viewed as a citizen who depends on the state and who can contribute to its welfare. But it is the state that is omnipotent.
-- Rima, 1967, p. 4
Man also had a collectivist image of the person during the Middle Ages: "Each citizen, serf or priest or knight, knew his place in the hierarchy of church and feudalism; and all emotions were channeled in community and religious ceremonies" (May, 1966, p. 57). With the Renaissance and Reformation came a new belief in the power and dignity of the individual. There arose a new confidence that a person could overcome problems and forge a life by his or her own efforts and by following the promptings of one's own conscience.
Secular Progress. As the emphasis shifted from collectivism to individualism, so
the focus of attention to life on earth and attainments in the here and now, rather than rewards in life hereafter. People came to see their future in an optimistic perspective. No longer was happiness something to be gained in an afterlife — happiness could be found in this life. This optimism was grounded in a faith that the future would prove to be congenial or at least neutral to the strivings of the individual (Heilbroner, 1959, p. 27).
This corresponded with a faith in the power of science. Natural Law. There developed a belief in a pre-established harmony in the universe, a natural law of existence. In its economic, form, this was the
belief that if every person pursued their own self-interest for material gain, then the well-being of society as a whole would be enhanced. Man as Master [ i].
Man came to think of himself as uniquely apart from nature so that it was his destiny to master the natural environment. The roots of this concept of man's relationship to his environment can be traced, in part, to Judeo-Christian traditions. "Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen. Christianity . . . not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends" (White, 1967, p. 1205). With the industrial period came the convergence of operational images of man and technological means whereby man could master his environment.
Materialism. In this period, the satisfaction of the individual's material wants became not only a necessary activity but a desirable one as well. Where, in the past, the acquisition of wealth had been disdainfully regarded, at least theoretically, it now was strongly favored.
Calvinism, as it came to be applied, suggested that one's life here on earth might hint at one's ultimate destination in the afterlife — to be "called" to one's work and be diligent in worldly endeavors while maintaining a spirit of rectitude was outward evidence of dedication to a religious life. Thus, "the energetic merchant was, in Calvinist eyes, a Godly man, not an ungodly one; and from this identification of work with worth, it was not long before the notion grew up that the more successful a man, the more worthy he was" (Heilbroner, 1968, p. 60). Although the role of the "Protestant Ethic" in the industrializing process should not be overly emphasized, "it is striking that without exception it was the Protestant countries with their 'Puritan streak' of work and thrift which forged ahead in the economic race" (Heilbroner, ibid.).
The compatibility among these value premises is striking and it is suggestive of the extent to which these premises collectively formed an image of man as possessor of a tremendous dynamism for altering the conditions of human existence. This is well summarized by Woodruff (1966) who examines the impact of European ideas upon the world and concludes:
No civilization prior to the European had occasion to believe in the systematic material progress of the whole human race; no civilization placed such stress upon the quantity rather than the quality of life; no civilization drove itself so relentlessly to an ever-receding goal; no civilization was so passion-charged to replace what is with what could be; no civilization had striven as the West has done to direct the world according to its will; no civilization has known so few moments of peace and tranquility, (p. 16)
Although these value premises did not specify the exact form of society that would evolve, they did articulate the ground rules, so to speak, from which it would emerge. And in this function they formed a resilient, potent, and enduring base for the advent of the modern industrial era. But as the industrial system gives way to its socio-economic successor, so should the images of humankind, the values, and the conceptual milieu yield to the offspring they have helped create.
THE IMAGE OF ECONOMIC MAN IN THE CONTEMPORARY SETTING Fig. 8. Hypothesized interaction between the economic man and society. [ii]
Our society seems to have reached that point in American history where our dominant image of economic man no longer fits the physical reality. Until recently, the basic value premises of individualism, secular progress, materialism, and so on, have been commonplace in American society and gave support to societal change in the form of the industrial system. Further, these image components, growing out of the Renaissance, were sufficiently embracing in their interpretation and flexible in their adaptation to encompass a wide range of societal changes without themselves fundamentally changing — for example, theoretical notions of the essential equality of all humankind, which have only very recently, and still not fully, been incorporated into society as a practical reality. But in the process of historical evolution,
merely a slight difference in rates of change can eventually create a significant disparity between images and societal experience. This "lead-lag" phenomenon — shown in its general version earlier as Fig. 1 and related specifically to the economic image of man in Fig. 8 — takes on added significance when applied to the particular historical period since the Industrial Revolution.
In Fig. 8, a portrayal of this period, the economic image is at first anticipatory; in other words, it is operating as a set of "ground rules" providing direction to societal change as industrialism emerges. The gentle slope of image change in the later portions of the industrial period suggests that the economic image continues to change, but in a slow evolutionary way as it is articulated to a degree through interaction with the changing living environment. Also during this stage, the living environment is gradually, and then with increasing momentum, being altered so as to conform with the rationale of the anticipatory, economic image of man. Then follows a "short" period of relative congruence or match between this image and the living environment. The period of congruence does not last for long since the economic image of man, which has become firmly embedded in the whole societal framework, provides a base for further changes in the living environment. Among these changes are increasing urbanization, increasing material abundance, growing energy utilization, and expanding transportation and communication networks. Changes in this living environment then proceed rapidly in accord with an internal dynamic that can "overshoot" the image base from which the initial momentum derived.
In this later phase, the economic image of man must increasingly adapt itself to the realities of the altered living environment if it is to be a supportive image. However, such change in the underlying image of man is difficult to secure since the image is so basic to the society's "world view" that it changes only very slowly and with great effort; thus, the image increasingly lags behind societal changes and a gap or mismatch grows. When this mismatch between the image and the realities of the environment becomes too great, there is societal disruption — arising from a severe loss of meaning, purpose, and direction. This, in turn, sets the stage for basic readjustment between the image of humankind and the societal context.[iii]
The Poverty of Our Abundance There are two useful ways of assessing whether the foregoing analysis is relevant to changing images in our era. First, we can note that the economic image was born at a time when scarcity and abject poverty were facts of life. The question emerges, are they still such dominant facts of life that the image retains appropriateness for organizing our collective and individual behavior? Second, we can note the operational value premises that accrue from this image — premises that are inferred from the way in which people behave rather than what they say. These premises, in turn, can be related to the present societal environment and their continued appropriateness for organizing and directing our behavior can be evaluated. These points are discussed below.
John Maynard Keynes (1930) anticipated the profound disorientation and loss of meaning that might occur when a society achieved a condition of relative affluence but continued to deal with it as if there were continuing scarcity. The economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race. Thus we have been expressly evolved by nature — with all our impulses and deepest instincts — for the purpose of solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, humankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose. Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares. . . . There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy, (p. 211)
That we are rapidly approaching this point in America is dramatically illustrated by data which show changes in poverty levels and median family income levels over the last 40 years.
There has been a veritable revolution in affluence — both in magnitude and in the rapidity with which it was acquired. In roughly the space of half a lifetime, from 1929 to 1969, the proportion of the total U.S. population in poverty fell from 60 percent to 12 percent (Allen, 1952; Census Bureau, 1970). Median family incomes rose, in 1969 dollars, from $2100 (estimated) in 1939 to $9433 in 1969 and
will rise to an estimated $22,000 by the year 2000 (Census Bureau, 1970; Population Commission, 1972). There can be no doubt that this unprecedented material wealth, acquired so rapidly, represents a quantum departure from past conditions. From this evidence alone, it is clear that one could expect a disjunction between the functional role of our traditional images of humankind and the new material reality they confront. In the words of the social psychologist, Kenneth Keniston (1965):
With the age-old goal of universal prosperity within sight, we must question whether the methods — technological values and virtues, the instrumental goals of our affluent society — that help us approach this goal will serve to take us beyond it. (p. 428)
Obviously, the foregoing data and comments should not be interpreted as a suggestion that there are no longer serious problems of poverty in our society. This cannot be the case when 12 percent of the U.S. population in poverty translates as 25 million people. What can be questioned is whether a continuation of scarcity notions will help people get out of poverty. In many respects, the societal reforms necessary to cope with poverty (e.g. redistribution of income) have much in common with the reforms necessary to cope with the problems of affluence. Therefore, these are more complementary than competing concerns.
For those who now exist in relative affluence, scarcity premises may still seem appropriate for psychological rather than material reasons. The nature of this perennial scarcity is discussed by Easterlin (1973) in his article, "Does money buy happiness?":
Each person acts on the assumption that more money will bring more happiness; and, indeed, if he does get more money, and others do not (or get less), his happiness increases. But when everyone acts on this assumption and incomes generally increase, no one, on the average, feels better off. Yet each person goes on, generation after generation, unaware of the self-defeating process in which he is caught up. (p. 10)
Thus, the purchase of happiness is an illusory phenomenon, "a distant, urgently sought, but never attained goal" (Easterlin, 1973, p. 10).
Despite the contemporary success in creating
scarcity which is increasingly psychological, there are reasons to believe that "manufactured want" will not long endure in our society. First,
we are destined to run, sooner or later, against the limits of world resources. For example, we are seeing these limits reached in food and energy shortages. Second,
our material abundance seems to have been accompanied by a disturbing spiritual, personal, and social poverty. Etzioni suggests that the hedonistic thrust of the more recent period of industrialism arises when "old patterns of meaning erode without being replaced by a new set" (1972, p. 6). Thus, we have found only ephemeral and transient meaning through our consumption behavior. However, human needs are hierarchically ordered such that
higher needs emerge when lower needs are satisfied (Maslow, 1962; Graves, 1967). This implies that
as we become relatively satiated materially, other needs will arise — friendship, love, self-actualization, community with others — to assume a place of primary importance in people's lives. In turn, this suggests that
profound disorientation may occur when our underlying image of economic man continues to exhort us to behave and find meaning in a way of life that is inimical to the fulfillment of these newly emergent needs. The Present Mismatch between Premises and Societal Realities There are a number of inferable value premises that characterize the workings of our society. They may never have been declared as guiding premises, but the behaviors and policies during the industrial period suggest that they, or their close relatives, must have been at work. Below we list a number of such premises which seem possibly obsolescent. Since these are too many to discuss in any detail, seven that have particular relevance to the image of economic man are amplified in the discussion.
POSSIBLY OBSOLESCENT PREMISES THAT TYPIFY THE RECENT INDUSTRIAL ERA
(1) That progress is synonymous with growth of GNP, that quality of life is furthered by a system of economics based on ever-increasing consumption.
(2) That the individual should be free to make his own choice of "the good," and that the choices he makes in pursuit of self-interest will somehow add up to desirable overall societal choices.
That people are essentially separate, so that little intrinsic responsibility is felt for the effect of present actions on remote individuals or future generations.
(3) That humankind is separate from nature, and hence it is our destiny to master nature.
(4) The "technological imperative" that any technology that can be developed, and any knowledge that can be applied, should be.
That the search for knowledge is appropriately dominated by utilitarian values — science supported to the extent that it promises new manipulative technologies. That the aggregate knowledge of specialized experts constitutes wisdom. That both societal growth and protection of one's own interests are best served by competitive aggressive behaviors.
(5) That man is rational and that reductionism in positivistic scientific thinking is the approach to knowledge most to be trusted.
(6) That individual identity is to be equated with material possessions acquired and/or occupational status achieved.
(7) That there is freedom in affluence, that it is possible for people to earn "enough" money, and simultaneously have full freedom of choice.
That the future of the planet can safely be left to autonomous nation-states, operating essentially independently.
The "political premise" that "what ought to be" is not a meaningful concept because it is not achievable.
That economic efficiency should be pursued indefinitely through the organization and division of labor and the replacement of humans by machines.
Premise One: that progress is synonymous with growth of GNP and that growth is inherently good. It is now well accepted that gross measures of growth such as GNP do not tell us a great deal about our society's welfare. For example, the level of pollution is correlated with the level of GNP: the question arises, what is growing — pollution or social well-being? Given the destructive as well as benevolent potential of our powerful economy, we can no longer afford blindly to accept the premise that "bigger is better" and "growth is good." The momentum of such an ideology may be suicidal.
When we combine our growth ethic with a passion for hard, numerical evidence of growth, we find that we tend to maximize most what we can measure best: the GNP, the rate of employment, years of education received, the number of cars produced, and so on. While these indices of success are useful, they tend to relegate more subjective measures of success (aesthetic maturity, capacity for love, environmental quality) to an inferior status. Further, "hard" measures of growth such as GNP give a false sense of security, as long as they are going up, because they sidestep the crucial question: abundance for what?
Premise Two: that there is a natural law of beneficial self-interest which assures us that when persons act in their own competitive, material self-interest, the public good is well served. In its economic form, this belief in a harmony between individual self-interest and the welfare of society as a whole was the essence of the laissez-faire concept.
There are several problems with this premise. A different description of this "natural" law is that: if we set up a social framework in which people are encouraged to be generous, most of them will rise to the occasion; set up one which encourages them to be selfish, and most will sink to that level. Thus, the assumption that humankind is motivated only by immediate self-interest may well be another of the self-fulfilling hypotheses of society. Having helped create a world in which human relationships are increasingly forced into the marketplace, we find superb confirmation of the initial dogma, that humankind is governed by marketplace motives (Claiborne, 1971). The incompatibility of this motivation with human actualization is summarized by Melvin Tumin (1964):
. . . one may fairly say that what business stands for, ideologically insists upon and tries to get adopted as general principles of conduct, run directly against and reduce the chances of evoking affection and love as principles of relationship ... in promoting themes quite inimical to identification, affection, and significant membership, business thereby and to that extent tends to bring out, standardize, and reward the most unsocial impulses in man. (p. 130)
Not only does this diminished conception of persons exist in the realm of business practice, it is supported by economic theory which has "still an unmistakable aura of eighteenth-century pleasure-pain psychology ..." (Rima, 1967).
Premise Three: that humankind is separate from nature and it is its obligation to conquer nature. Humankind, so long subservient to nature, now finds itself in an increasingly powerful role as the creator of its own environmental context. However, given the highly interdependent links in the ecological chain, our capacity for manipulation of the environment must give way to an enlarged sense of symbiotic responsibility.
Premise Four: that the technological imperative, the increasing ability and hence requirement to shape and control the environment, including people, is an unqualified good. This is related to the utilitarian bias in the search for knowledge, so that only that knowledge is pursued which promises new manipulative technologies. The "technological imperative" — that any technology which is possible is, ipso facto, necessary and desirable to apply — is now conflicting on occasion with what may become "social imperatives." For example, because the SST was possible it was presented to the American public as necessary and desirable. The public, however, decided that it was neither, and after an extended national furor, the project had to be abandoned. We are beginning to weigh the social, psychological, and environmental costs against the worth of such products of technology.
Premise Five: that we are first and foremost rational beings and feeling should be subordinated as an inferior aspect of our nature. This is an understandable premise in that it supported development of the cognitive skills needed in the industrializing process. However, this empirical view relegates the speculative world of art, music, poetry, and religion to a position of lesser reality. How then are we to give meaning to life in an affluent society if the "higher" pursuits of people must be subordinated as "lower" in order to produce that affluence? We must realize the dehumanizing influence in the suppression of the non-rational human potentials.
Premise Six: that individual identity and success in life are to be measured by material possessions acquired and/or occupational status achieved. The biblical injunction against this kind of thinking is to inquire what it profits a person to gain the world but to lose his soul. However, one's soul has become redundant in a world secularized by affluence; "the most effective way to establish [identify] distinctions is through styles of consumption" (Downs, p. 64). Fortune magazine recently reported that in the consumer market of the 1970s there is
an increasing insistence by the customers on using consumption to express themselves, to help in fashioning their own identities. . . . For increasing numbers of Americans, the clothes they wear are not simply material objects; on the contrary, they are viewed ... as the most basic expression of life style, indeed of identity itself.
-- Silberman, 1971
Premise Seven: that there is freedom in affluence. We have traditionally assumed that if people can simultaneously earn "enough" money and be given "freedom" of choice, they can take care of themselves. The fallacy of this view lies in believing there is no conflict between earning the money and the freedom of choice that is then available. The very act of earning "enough" money constrains the number of social, psychological, political, and physical choices that one can make. Margaret Mead has pointed out that to introduce cloth garments (effectively) into a grass- or bark-clad population, one must simultaneously introduce closets, soap, sewing, and furniture. Cloth is part of a complex cultural pattern that includes storing, cleaning, mending, and protecting (Slater, 1970). Imagine, then, the cultural constraints implicit in our society which is so laden with goods and services. Thus, the real philosophy underlying "freedom in affluence" is that once you have enough money to be free from want, then all further income gives you the freedom to want — as long as you want only more material goods and services. This premise runs afoul if wants arise that cannot be largely satisfied by material means.
The preceding discussion is only suggestive of the potential mismatch between our inferable value premises and the societal context in which they are operable. This lack of congruence calls into question, at a deeper level, the utility and desirability of the economic "image of man." It is difficult to tell when and how congruence — and thereby meaning and direction — will be reestablished in our social order. There are, however, several forces for resolution that will likely be involved as a higher level of reintegration emerges.
GOING BEYOND: IN SEARCH OF IMAGE/SOCIETY RESOLUTION There are two distinguishable methods by which congruence might be reestablished:
1. The trajectory of the industrial state dynamic may be sustained and the image of humankind adapted to fit that dynamic.
2. The industrial state dynamic may be either self-limiting or limited by society so as to conform to the guiding influence of a newly emergent image of man.
In either event, the economic image is hypothesized to require change; however, the nature of that change is quite different for the two responses. Although these two alternatives are an oversimplification of the interdependent process of societal evolution which inevitably implies the dialectical interaction between images and environment, nonetheless they do alert us to the following questions:
• How powerful is the industrial dynamic?
• Can we control that power?
• Do we have emerging images of man to direct it?
The Power of the Industrial State Technological change has an unquestioned primacy in virtually every area of our collective existence. It provides the motor for the continual social change to which we must somehow adapt (Keniston, 1965). During the industrial period, the forces of economic/technological change were unleashed but the agencies for the control or guidance of technology were still rudimentary (Heilbroner, 1967). Thus technological advance became a near-autonomous driving force, bringing about major changes in the total social fabric. The society is under pressure to revise its underlying "metaphors of meaning" or images of man so as to conform to the new conditions technology has created.
The powerful structuring influence of economic forces upon developed societies is dramatically illustrated by the fact that industrialism creates standardized societal forms which are strong enough to transcend traditionally distinctive cultural boundaries and differences. Alex Inkeles, who has done extensive and detailed cross-cultural studies of this phenomenon, writes that:
There is substantial evidence, over a wide attitudinal and experimental range, that perceptions, opinions and values are systematically ordered in modern societies. . . . Modern society ... is more or less unique in the extent to which it produces standardized contexts of experience.
-- Inkeles, 1969, p. 2
Other extensive cross-cultural studies have reached similar conclusions. Adelman and Morris (1967), in a study of economic growth and socio-political change in seventy-four countries, state that:
During this process of successive differentiation [which accompanies economic development], the economic aspects of the society become increasingly more important and more explicit until, at the fully developed stage, economic considerations have become a powerful force in shaping national behavior, (p. 267)
Thus, it does seem plausible to conclude that economic processes and products are creating an interlocking network of values, institutions, incentives, physical structures, and social structures that exact conformity as the price for inhabiting this societal environment. Once we have created a living environment, we are destined to be products of that which we have created. We cannot start afresh. Rene Dubos makes the point that:
The environment men create through their wants becomes a mirror that reflects their civilization; more importantly it also constitutes a book in which is written the formula of life that they communicate to others and transmit to succeeding generations. The characteristics of the environment are therefore of importance not only because they affect the comfort and quality of present-day life, but even more because they condition the development of young people and thereby of society.
-- Dubos, 1968, pp. 170-171
Although it is clear that the "imprinting" force of the industrial state is strong, it seems by no means certain that the industrial dynamic is sustainable. The industrial dynamic may be self-limiting as it runs up against the limits of world resources, as it no longer provides people with a sense of self-identity and meaning, as its structure reaches a point of increasing instability and vulnerability.
The self-limiting character may already be reflected in our apparent need to make major modification of our economic institutions. It might seem quite unrealistic to think of drastic change in the massive and powerful business organizations were it not for a historical parallel. Probably it would have seemed quite preposterous in the mid-eighteenth century to imagine that, over major portions of the globe, governments would soon be considered legitimate only if they derived "their just powers from the consent of the governed," if they became "governments of the people, by the people, and for the people." The social power of granting or withholding legitimacy, though its mechanisms are subtle and little understood, has impressive force — as monarchies and colonial powers came to realize.
An analogous challenge to legitimacy appears to be building up with respect to business institutions. The legitimacy which in the past was granted on the basis of ownership and managerial expertise is being attacked. Consumers, environmentalists, civil-rights groups, and modern feminists are placing new requirements on business for social responsibility. Workers are demanding not only a voice in the policy-making and decision processes hitherto reserved for management, but also improved work environments and "meaningful work." The emergence of huge multinational corporations with economic powers comparable to those of nations has brought awareness that these private-sector institutions have impacts on human lives comparable to the impacts of political governments, and hence should be subject to the demand made of governments to assume responsibility for the welfare of those over whom they wield power.
The Control of the Industrial State Although the industrializing process has a very powerful impact upon the rest of society, it is itself largely dependent upon technological change, which tends to be an uncontrolled and undirected process. The reasoning behind this contention is as follows:
• Economic growth depends largely upon technological change — economic studies typically attribute between 60 percent and 90 percent of economic growth to the forces of technological change (Hollander, 1965; Kuznets, 1966).
• The direction of technological change in the short run depends largely upon profit potentials and, therefore, technological change occurs as an unplanned and un- governed process in the unrelated profit pursuits of many independent firms (Schmookler, 1966; Rogers, 1962).
• The direction of technological change in the long run depends largely upon the state of scientific knowledge, which develops haphazardly through the accretion of many small bits of knowledge from many independent sources (Mesthene, 1970).
In both the long and short runs, the regulation of technological change is peculiarly difficult owing to systemic shortcomings. Control over its direction requires a great deal of expertise; however, the demands for specialization inherent in the development of expertise necessarily narrow the focus of regulating agencies at the same time that the consequences of our technologies are having an increasingly broad impact. Therefore, from a systemic perspective, the possibility of effective regulation of technological change would seem to be declining at the same time that the need for guidance is increasing.
There are forces beyond the rather accidental convergence and impact of technology which reinforce the feeling that "the course of social change is quite beyond our capacity to control or even influence" (Keniston, 1965). For example, the market mechanism largely reacts to short-term profit potentials and substantially discounts the dysfunctional consequences that might accrue from decisions based upon short-time horizons. Also, the result of using such criteria as net profits, units produced, and attendance levels as measures of societal progress is that:
. . . each sub-component of society tends to define its values and goals, not in terms of quality, inner satisfactions or fulfillments, but with respect to position relative to other like components within the competitive context, irrespective of the state or direction of movement of that context.
-- Wilson, 1970, p. 21
In addition, there may be fundamental, systemic "control deficiencies" that inevitably emerge as a society becomes highly developed (e.g. with increasing urbanization, growth of the economy, growth of political institutions, interlocked transportation and communications networks, and so on). It appears that "industrial man" has created an interdependent societal environment of such proportions that it has inadvertently reached a critical, systemic mass which is beyond his direct control. We have aggregated what were comprehensible smaller systems into larger and oftentimes incomprehensible supersystems:
[there is a] . . . growing reliance on supersystems that were perhaps designed to help people make analyses and decisions, but which have since surpassed the understanding of their users while at the same time becoming indispensable to them. . . .
-- Weizenbaum, 1972
The simultaneous need for and lack of control over societal changes at the macro-systemic level can be visualized as follows:
Industrialization implies This schematic suggests that as a society becomes increasingly developed, a logical consequence is for the system to become increasingly complex and interdependent. An increasingly complex system — given biological, learning, and mechanical limitations to human decision-making capacity — implies the need for division of labor and increasing specialization, i.e. the need for expertise. Further, an increasingly interdependent system requires increasing regulation to insure smooth functioning and to prevent damaging perturbations. Several conclusions follow from these characteristics of large societal systems:
• Increasing interdependence implies increasing vulnerability of the system: one hijacker can take over a multimillion dollar airliner; a localized power grid failure can plunge the whole U.S. eastern seaboard into darkness; the shutdown of a brake plant can stop production at major auto assembly plants and also at "upstream" plants. The entire system, then, is no stronger than its weakest or most vulnerable component. This weakness, which becomes more pronounced as interdependence increases, necessitates increasing predictability, order, control, and regulation of societal processes (human and mechanical). As Donald Michael has pointed out, this weakness is further aggravated by the fact that as the size of the population increases, "even if the percent of disturbing events that occur doesn't increase, the number of events that occur will increase" (1968). Further, as more people and processes are grouped together, the number of linkages (vulnerability points) increases more than proportionately — perhaps exponentially.
• Increasing complexity requires increasing expertise in order to cope with that complexity. However, this trend may seriously compromise our much prized democratic processes. If people do not have the capacity to make informed decisions, they may feel obliged to defer to the expert. We see evidence of this in the common belief that "the President has all the facts and knows many things that we do not — therefore, trust in his decisions." Another way of stating this is that the viability of a democracy depends upon the informed decision-making capacity of its citizenry, i.e. the "relative political maturity" of the people must at least maintain parity with the complexity of the issues confronting the public. If the acquisition of relevant knowledge does not proceed at about the same pace at which the decisions become complex, then relative political maturity will decline. This may have two consequences: (1) increasing reliance placed upon the "expert" to maintain order and control, with a resulting compromise of our democratic processes, or (2) reluctance to give control to the "expert" but, with an increasing inability to make informed decisions, the result is that the system may truly go "out of control."
• Increasing interdependence requires that the whole system be guided — to allow any element to exist outside of the domain of guidance is to threaten the entire, intertwined network. An increasing scope of control, in turn, implies governance by that body whose powers extend over the entire system — the national government. Thus, a predictable consequence of economic growth (with its systemic concomitants) is an increasingly broad focus of federal involvement. Increasing expertise, on the other hand, implies an increasingly narrow focus of specialization and division of labor (whether intellectual or physical). A disturbing thought arises: Who is the overall expert with overall control? Can we expect any single person, such as the President, or group, such as the Domestic Council, to have the human capacity to aggregate all relevant expertise and maintain their own relative political maturity? Are they not subject to the same human limitations that have necessitated the demise of the "Renaissance man" for the sake of developing many narrow if deeper extensions of knowledge?
In earlier times, when our society was comprised of many small and virtually self-sufficient units, a wrong decision usually had very limited consequences. Today, an inappropriate decision can have vast consequences for the entire societal system. While the interdependence, vulnerability, and need for effective control of the system are increasing, the means of control may be decreasing.
Even this cursory analysis suggests that we cannot attain a post-industrial society with industrial-era means of regulating human and institutional conduct. There is the further suggestion that our societal system may become increasingly destabilized and vulnerable to chaotic disruptions. Thus, the "undirected" power of the industrial system has contrasting implications. On the one hand, it could be extremely difficult to redirect our society in any direction other than where the natural momentum seems to be taking it. On the other hand, this natural momentum may be strongly self-limiting when a critical mass of systemic complexity and interdependence is reached. The latter point suggests that out of the ensuing disorganization may come a sufficient freeing-up of the system to allow the injection of fresh images and corresponding institutional structures in such a way as to give us a new burst of momentum into the post-industrial era.
The Growing Impotence of the Economic Image While our economic image has become less and less capable of guiding the societal context created by technological change, there has also been a decline of constructive Utopian thinking. Indeed, the words "utopian" and "myth" currently connote impracticality, fantasy, and irrelevance to everyday concerns. When we label something Utopian it is often to dismiss it out of hand. When we speak of myth it is often to characterize something as false. These pejorative connotations suggest that we live today without the benefit of positive anticipatory myths, symbols, images:
... as thinkers, Americans rarely if ever now attempt to construct an imaginary society better than that in which they live; and at the same time, the faith that our society is in some sense a Utopia has surely disappeared. . . . But if we define Utopia as any attempt to make imaginatively concrete the possibilities of the future, Utopias have not in our own day ceased to exist, but have merely been transvalued. . . . Our visions of the future have shifted from images of hope to vistas of despair; Utopias have become warnings, not beacons. Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy, and ironically even Skinner's Walden Two — the vast majority of our serious visions of the future are negative visions, extensions of the most pernicious trends of the present.
-- Keniston, 1965, p. 327
This wave of negative visions of the future suggests that the image of humankind which proved so powerful in the Industrial Revolution is increasingly impotent as an organizing metaphor. Rather than being pulled by an anticipatory image of a positive future and pushed by the momentum of a realized past, we are now only being pushed by the momentum of our realized past without the attraction of a magnetic image of the future. To the extent that this is true, it would seem that our society is out of control, with guiding images virtually non-existent and the system operating on its own complex of micro-decisions. This loss of guidance via positive images might be tolerable if the internal dynamic of the industrial system were sufficiently organized that the numerous individual decisions yielded a desirable result. But our experience and present situation make all too clear how haphazard is the internal dynamic. We are thus doubly disadvantaged: we have no guiding images to impose upon the industrial system and the system itself seems to have no internal macro-guiding processes.
Thus the industrial state at this point has immense drive but no direction, marvelous capacity to get there but no idea of where it is going. Somehow the breakdown of the old images has seemed to lead more to despair than to a search for new images.
CONCLUSION— PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE The material abundance associated with the industrial era has not been acquired without tremendous costs. Accompanying industrialism was an erosion of Western man's sense of a cosmological order:
Contemporary man no longer "naturally" sees himself as a useful and necessary member of a social whole geared into a meaningful plan of existence within the totality of a cosmic or divine order.
-- Luckman, 1970, p. 584
A meaningful existence is largely derived from the existence of, and congruence between, the human being's relationships to self, society, and universe. Although profitable, the industrial period has thus been very costly as it has left us alienated, to varying degrees, from these sources of meaning. Mysteries of the cosmos have seemingly been displaced by the cold rationality of science. A sense of community has been displaced by an incomprehensible urban existence. Social pressures have created an "other-directed" mentality such that many are alienated even from themselves. This would suggest that the next phase of our societal evolution should be the reintegration of man with his sources of meaning — to find the deep roots of significance among the ephemeral artifacts of our society. The continued extension of the industrial state seems poorly suited to this task. We are challenged now to look beyond the technological and material frontier to a new American frontier which is essentially that of man searching for himself.
To summarize: The interrelationship between the power of the industrial state, the control of the industrial dynamic and the lead-lag relationship of images can be woven into two distinct societal fabrics which could plausibly emerge out of the present. Stripped of all refinement, the skeletal outlines of two responses to the current image-society mismatch might be:
1. A "technological extrapolationist" response. This hypothesized response assumes that: (a) the industrial dynamic would be sustained, (b) it would continue to be relatively "uncontrolled," and (c) the economic image of man would continue to lag and be forced to make adaptive changes in accordance with the dictates of the evolving industrial dynamic.
2. An "evolutionary transformationalist" response. This hypothesized response assumes that: (a) the industrial dynamic is either self-limiting or else will be limited by society, (b) the dynamism of the "American Creed" will regain control (a greater degree of societal direction in response to the will of the people) over our societal system and subsystems, and (c) a new humanistic image of humankind will emerge which will guide us into a post-industrial era.
Despite the seeming clarity of these two responses, we are still faced with a dilemma. To the extent that modern people and their images are being shaped by the urban-industrial environment, it would seem fruitless to try to change "the image" without changing the environment which demands certain patterns of behavior. On the other hand, it would seem equally fruitless to try to change the powerful dynamic of industrialism without the help of a potent image of humankind to guide us toward a different societal trajectory. One alternative is to attempt to do both. The other alternative is to accept — and some would suggest suffer — the consequences of the working out of the logical extensions of the industrial-state paradigm. What is implied by both of these alternatives is considered in greater detail in Chapter 7, where they are developed at greater length.
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Notes:i. For purposes of emphasis, the generic term "man" was not changed to "humankind” as in other sections.
ii.
"You have made superb use of Polak, and your diagrams have added significantly to his own conceptualizations of the process and ingredients of image change."
— Elise Boulding
"This diagram is too simplistic."
— Margaret Mead
iii. Readers may want to refer back to Table 2 (page 6) for additional illustrations of "overshoot."
[Albert] I resolves we'll go right on with our fight against pollution!
[Little Alligators] Right on! Wooy. Yow! Immediately!
[Albert] Bravely! Right after lunch at Pogo's place ____?
[Mouse] Here's to each and all; Bless 'em!
[Turtle] Hear! Hear!
[Animal] C'mon Albert, Toast up!
[Albert] I'm still broodin' about pollution! All them characters what dumps anything anywhere ... they is enemies of the people!
[Animal] Albert!
[Animal] We have met the enemy and he is us.
[Cigar in the lemonade]
Reproduced by permission of Simon & Schuster, a Division of Gulf and Western Corporation, © 1970, Walt Kelly.