Abstract
Intellectual engineering movements in early 20th century America – including scientific management, the progressive engineering platform, and technocracy – have received a great deal of attention from historians. Contemporaneous with these American movements, a British engineer was also developing a system of social and economic reform: the engineer was Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952) and the reforms would form the foundations of the Social Credit philosophy. While Social Credit has been studied extensively as a political and economic system, little consideration has been given to the influence of Douglas’ engineering career on his ideology or to the relationship between Douglas and the American engineering reformists. This paper remedies this lacuna by analyzing Douglas’ proposed reforms in an engineering context. It is argued that the set of reforms proposed by Douglas in the final years of the First World War was an engineer’s view of the economic re-organization necessary for the betterment of the lower classes, the alleviation of scarcity, and the loosening of the noose which the existing financial system held around the neck of productive industry. Developed contemporaneously with, but ideologically independent from, the American intellectual engineering movements, Douglas’ reforms represent a technical response to the ills of World War I British society. It is concluded that Douglas’ engineering training and experience was central to his reform platform.
Highlights
Intellectual engineering reform movements in early twentieth century America—including scientific management, the progressive engineering platform, and technocracy—have received a great deal of attention from historians.1 Contemporaneous with these American movements, a British engineer working at a Royal Aircraft installation in the south of England was developing a system of social and economic reform: the engineer was Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879‐1952) and the reforms would become the foundations of the Social Credit political philosophy
The philosophies of Douglas and of the American progressive engineers had several parallels: both were frustrated with the control of existing institutions over productive industry, both sought to apply engineering methodology and principles to socio‐economic problems, and both believed in the capacity of technology to support a better world
An article published in the National Post in September 2006 went so far as to draw a close link between Douglas and technocracy (Owen 2006)
Summary
Development of his political system, this study focuses on Douglas’ early work (that is, from 1916 to 1920). The philosophies of Douglas and of the American progressive engineers had several parallels: both were frustrated with the control of existing institutions over productive industry, both sought to apply engineering methodology and principles to socio‐economic problems, and both believed in the capacity of technology to support a better world. This paper argues that while Douglas and the American engineers were stimulated by similar observations and built their platforms with comparable engineering methods, their ideologies were in conflict with each other. This paper comprises two sections: in Part I, Douglas’ socio‐economic philosophy is examined in the context of his engineering background, and it is argued that his experience as an engineer shaped the methodology he brought to bear on economic questions. In Part II, the relationship between Douglas and the American progressive engineers is studied, and it is argued that the two movements differed fundamentally in terms of ideological impetus, community circumstances, and proposed reform solutions. For the American intellectual engineering movements, secondary works by William Akin and Edwin Layton were useful (Akin 1977, Layton 1973, Layton 1986)
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