Life in a Technocracy: What It Might Be Like by Harold Loeb

Abstract

126 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and Yves Cohen’s 1930s-era comparison of political hostility to mar­ ket concerns in the USSR and French “market[s] that pushed entre­ preneurs into politics” (p. 227) are both finely drawn yet, like most of the empirical studies, rest unconnected to the theoretical cohort. Two small gems close this collection: Thomas Hughes’s examination of managing technical and organizational complexity in U.S. mili­ tary projects circa 1940-60 and Donald MacKenzie’s strong-pro­ gramme SCOT reflection on social ways of knowing the “properties of artifacts.” The latter, with its evocation of the underexamined importance of technological testing, its concept of the “certainty trough” as a dimension of social knowledge (p. 256), and its por­ trayal, however speculative, of formal logic and mathematics as also historicosocial conventions, pushes the boundaries of the discipline in innovative and critical ways. This volume does not cohere, to be sure, but some ofits individual elements are certain to hold genuine interest for historians of tech­ nology, most of whom will find within it essays to savor and to use in courses. In a sense the book maps both the diversity and the decentered nature of the discipline, as well as some ofits most vigorous venues for research. This is no small contribution to our ongoing discussions. Philip Scranton Dr. Scranton is Melvin Kranzberg Professor in the History' of Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the Center for the History of Busi­ ness, Technology and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. His Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925 is a 1997 Princeton Uni­ versity Press publication. Life in a Technocracy: What It Might Be Like. By Harold Loeb. Reprint, with a new introduction by Howard P. Segal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Pp. xliv+209. $16.95 (paper). In a noteworthy move, Syracuse’s Utopianism and Communitarianism Series has reprinted Harold Loeb’s 1933 Life in a Technocracy: What It Might Be Like, with a new introduction by Howard Segal. Loeb’s intriguing vision offers modern historians continuing insight into some Depression-era thinking about the relationship between industrialization, economics, and the well-being of ordinary Ameri­ cans. Segal’s introduction nicely sets out the historical context for un­ derstanding Life in a Technocracy, providing a brief analysis of the rapid rise and equally rapid discrediting of the Technocrats. More important, Segal draws on Loeb’s biography and correspondence to detail his personal and intellectual development, contrasting Loeb’s wealthy background and artistic interests to the lower-class origins TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 127 of Howard Scott (cofounder of the Technocracy movement). Dur­ ing his 1920s Paris expatriate life, Loeb began rethinking his initial impulse to deplore modern industry for condemning the world to “ugliness” and hence, from his aesthetic viewpoint, misery (p. xix). Instead, he came to believe, technological gains might free humans from the burdens ofwage labor, producing enough material goods to give all citizens not only the wealth to relieve economic stress but also leisure to achieve happiness and spiritual peace through artistic pleasures. Segal neady explains how this perspective led Loeb to a vision which fit in with fundamental Technocratic principles, blaming De­ pression unemployment and misery on modern mechanization, which had thrown traditional economic structures out of balance. The solution, Technocrats argued, lay in using rational engineering analysis to redefine America’s outdated economy, superseding con­ ventional price and monetary values with a new system setting costs according to energy units ofproduction. Loeb promised that ending the “mysticism of money” would eliminate speculation, vulgar com­ petition, and other sources ofwaste, creating opportunity to release the full potential of efficient continuous-production machinery. The initial chapters of Life in a Technocracy recapitulate this basic Technocratic theory, explaining how everyone would receive gener­ ous certificates of consumption in return for just a sixteen-hour workweek. Yet the later sections prove even more fascinating. As Segal points out, while Scott concentrated on statistics and economic modeling to justify Technocracy, Loeb extended this concept to new levels of analysis, exploring the social and intellectual implica­ tions ofsuch radical changes in American life. The leisure and mate...