If we read between the lines, technocracy — both the old and the new — offers familiar utopian themes. Technocracy promises “complete economic security for every man, woman and child from birth to death; complete health care; modern, energy-efficient housing for all; education to the full extent of each individual’s ability; viable mass transit; employment for all who are able to work; careful stewardship of the Continent’s natural resources and environment.”

There is, of course, not a word about individual’s freedom here; nor a realization that real wealth must be produced and cannot simply be wished into existence by the creation of a new currency. There is not the slightest doubt about what F.A. Hayek called “scientism,” which expresses doubt that the methods applicable to the study and manipulation of natural phenomena can be imported into the study of human beings essentially unchanged. Thus there is no fear that the concentration of power would unleash a totalitarian nightmare akin to that of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, or Orwell’s 1984.

Neither the early technocrats nor their present-day disciples have any interest in national sovereignty. People will not live in sovereign nation states but in Technates. Readers will have noticed the references to North America as a single political unit, or Technate. Howard Scott and his group were the first advocates of a North American Union before the idea had that name.

Behind the technocratic agenda, though, is the idea, rooted as it is in the materialism of the nineteenth century philosophers, that human nature is exclusively a product of its material environment and is therefore as malleable as potter’s clay and can be changed wholesale by changing the economic arrangements — an idea whose best known exponent was Karl Marx (“from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”). All that is needed to change human nature is skilled technicians of human behavior who know what interventions to make. For example, technocrats believe that crime can be almost eliminated by ending the price system:

As practically all crime of the Price System results from the attempts of individual to acquire the property of others illegally to alleviate their own insecurity, crime would practically cease to exist in a Technocratic society. Technocracy defines a criminal to be a human being with predatory instincts, living under a Price System, without sufficient capital to start a corporation.



In a Technate, human beings would be treated for the first time in social history, not as willful entities, subject to legalistic prohibitions, restraints and penalizations, but as energy consuming people whose capacities as producers and consumers necessitate the development of the highest state of both capacities in order that human beings may be conditioned to living in a world of plenty where man's advantage over his fellowmen will no longer be socially profitable.



All worthy social projects are implied in the one big objective of Technocracy, which is to give to every human being adequate economic security.

But in a Technate will human beings still be allowed to ask, "What about basic freedoms, such as personal financial privacy or the freedom to travel?"

Today’s technocrats have an answer for those who presently ask, “What do you propose to do with those who do not choose to live under technocracy?”

They answer disarmingly, “Nothing. We are seeking people who are intelligent and open-minded enough to embrace a new idea.  However, deteriorating economic and social conditions will force many people not presently interested to look in our direction.”

Read between the lines here. The elites who control the flow of resources through the economy now will be able to ensure that those not embracing the new status quo will pay dearly for what is therefore a Pickwickian choice at best. 

“In the Technate,” the passage continues, “even the people who are not interested in Technocracy will enjoy the same high standard of living and increased leisure along with greater opportunity for cultural activities. Should they still prefer to live somewhere else, there will be no restriction on emigration.”

But under the world government that technocracy both imagines and requires, the obvious next question: where will would-be emigrants go?

Read all three parts to this series:

Technocracy and the New World Order: Part 1
Technocracy and the New World Order: Part 2

Steven Yates earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1987. He is the author of one book, Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1994) and numerous articles both in academic journals and elsewhere. He has taught philosophy at Clemson University, Auburn University, Wofford College, the University of South Carolina, Southern Wesleyan University--Columbia, and Midlands Technical College, and has held fellowships with or worked on projects with the Institute for Humane Studies, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty.

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RP said:

Flawed view of the nature of man The major flaw with technocracy lies in its erroneous view of the nature of mankind. A proper picture of the nature of man can be found in Romans chapter 3. 10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood: 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17 And the way of peace have they not known: 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes. Those who do not accept the supremacy of the One True Living God over man and nature are all doomed to commit the same error.

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January 30, 2010
Votes: +7

Pat Henry said:

Ha! For its denunciation of a 'freedom from' the "greed" of capitalism (as if money is the root of greed and envy rather than the heart), Technocracy is the ultimate in material cosumerism. As marxism says It's the economy, stupid, the technate asserts it's the consuming. Both miss the gift of God, who says He gives power to CREATE wealth. Indeed, from mining to manufacturing to marketing, wealth is not simply transferred, but created. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (as well as The Anthem) shows how assinine such Utopian rhetoric is in the real world, though one can hardly follow her philosophy. Yes, the West is being shaken. It is time to find the ancient paths where the good way is. I suggest faith is indeed a great starting place. But not in the vain imaginations of communism and technocracy and environmentalistic Romance theories. I suggest a postmillennial Biblical view, espoused by such as Ken Gentry and John Jefferson Davis (in his excellent, short "primer") is the "future memory" that will be our guiding star. That prophetic declaration and action such as practiced by Chuck Pierce (see Isaiah 51:15-16), spiritual war (against true enemies, as opposed to violent bloodshed among our fellows for whom Christ died) as practiced by Cindy Jacobs (Reformation Prayer Network and books Possessing the Gates and The Reformation Manifesto), and governmental restraint as is being forwarded by The Oak Initiative are viable, powerful, and 'reality-based' solutions. The vision was sen long ago by the prophets: "Everyone under his vine and his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid." Technocracy, Marxism, Illuminism, etc. are words without reality, being motivated in imagination that lacks forethought and practical sense, by the same demonic impulse that moved Nimrod to construct Babel, and Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome after them. (Richard Wurmbrand's $5 book Marx & Satan is a good expose of this as well.

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January 30, 2010
Votes: +3

DDW said:

	These Thing Are the from the mind of none other than Satan himself. Since he's a creature and not God, he has to control because he cannot create. He WILL pull this off but it will be short lived. Even with all his power, he is the biggest loser of all time. His doom was pronounced millenia back and it is certain, the sentence was merely suspended.
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January 30, 2010
Votes: +5

Kenneth Creech said:

	... Amen and amen.
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January 30, 2010
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Thomas Paine said:

Aaron Russo was right In his famous interview he said that Nick Rockefeller told him that the end game of the New World Order elite was to have everyone chipped with an RFID chip. Then if anyone protested what the NWO wanted to do, they would turn off your chip. You couln't buy or sell anything. Remember revelations said whoever accepts the mark of the beast will be cursed. God is telling us in advance that he is real. No more excuses not to believe. When the chip arrives you must reject it, even if it means your life.

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February 02, 2010
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John M Coffey said:

	... Basically, it is 'the love of money' that causes people to do things that maybe otherwise they would not; money is necessary, a unit of measurement, not evil in and of itself. Everything is a 'heart matter'.....Lot more to this 'picture'; just wanted to add my 2 cents....
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February 03, 2010
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J. C. said:

Sounds like the responses here are mostly from religious nuts All Technocracy is,... science applied to society. Trying to use scare tactics to keep the same Libertarian or Progressive Liberal system is pointless. Adam Smith was the basis of Capitalism as we know it and Communism. Both. Wealth of Nations is an 18th. century document that failed to take into account energy conversion and the current lack of purchasing power and the future lack of human labor being a significant force as in 'productivity'. Anyway, embrace Technocracy as something creative and pretty much inevitable for survival. It is also a uniquely American idea.

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February 05, 2010
Votes: +0