<li><ahref="#the-bad-parts-of-technology-cannot-be-separated-from-the-good-parts">The ‘Bad’ Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated from the ‘Good’ Parts</a></li>
<li><ahref="#technology-is-a-more-powerful-social-force-than-the-aspiration-for-freedom">Technology is a More Powerful Social Force than the Aspiration for Freedom</a></li>
<li><ahref="#simpler-social-problems-have-proved-intractable">Simpler Social Problems Have Proved Intractable</a></li>
<li><ahref="#revolution-is-easier-than-reform">Revolution is Easier than Reform</a></li>
<li><ahref="#control-of-human-behavior">Control of Human Behavior</a></li>
<li><ahref="#human-race-at-a-crossroads">Human Race at a Crossroads</a></li>
<pid="5">5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we
<pid="19">19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong
produce his unpleasant behavior. [<ahref="#footnote-1">1</a>] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he
cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as
a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.
</p>
<pid="20">20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally
provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to
an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.
</p>
<pid="21">21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a
role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist
activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior
is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one
believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at
least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist
activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real
goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing
so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race
hatred.
</p>
<pid="22">22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves
with an excuse for making a fuss.
</p>
<pid="23">23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a
leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.
<pid="26">26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important
means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to
society’s expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling
ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society’s
expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty
behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful
things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if
he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience,
without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And
socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the
heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that
society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be
a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human being inflict on one
another.
</p>
<pid="27">27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization
is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals
or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [<ahref="#footnote-3">3</a>] constitute the most highly socialized segment of
explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications
media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these
principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these
principles.
</p>
<pid="29">29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes
of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people
into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black
“underclass” they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business
executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is
to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what does
this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can
express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the
black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a
scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black
fathers “responsible,” they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn’t care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
<pid="38">38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized. For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking
into decadent hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became distinguished. When people do not
have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves. In many cases they then
pursue these goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put into the search for
physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretensions; many European aristocrats a few
centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting, though they certainly didn’t need the meat; other aristocracies
have competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.
</p>
<pid="39">39. We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for
themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they
get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes
much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying
his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way,
would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a
surrogate activity. Hirohito’s studies in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if
Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would
not have felt deprived because he didn’t know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the
pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence were otherwise
satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite
sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a surrogate activity.)
</p>
<pid="40">40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a
training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to
hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has
those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take the physical necessities for
granted, but we are speaking here of mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is full of surrogate
activities. These include scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the
corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional
physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist personally, as in the
case of white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These are not always PURE surrogate activities, since
for many people they may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some goal to pursue. Scientific work may
be motivated in part by a drive for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings, militant social activism by hostility.
But for most people who pursue them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For example, the majority of
scientists will probably agree that the “fulfillment” they get from their work is more important than the money and prestige
they earn.
</p>
<pid="41">41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals (that is, goals that people
would want to attain even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in
many or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the moneymaker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next.
The long-distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say
that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the “mundane” business of satisfying their biological
needs, but that is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More
importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an
immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.
<pid="42">42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for every individual. But most people need a greater or
lesser degree of autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their own initiative and must be
under their own direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this initiative, direction and control as single
individuals. It is usually enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen people discuss a goal among
themselves and make a successful joint effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be served. But if they
work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on a collective basis if the group
making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant. [<ahref="#footnote-5">5</a>]
</p>
<pid="43">43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it
by identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types
who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by
developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).
</p>
<pid="44">44. But for most people it is through the power process having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goal
-- that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go
through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted)
<pid="51">51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a
<pid="59">59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be
satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one
makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third
group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.
</p>
<pid="60">60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group
tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives.
</p>
<pid="61">61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious
effort. But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone [<ahref="#footnote-9">9</a>] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence
physical needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is
stand where you are told to sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do you have to
exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not
well served.)
</p>
<pid="62">62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group 2 in modern society, depending on the situation of the
individual. [<ahref="#footnote-10">10</a>] But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort required to fulfill the social
drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process.
</p>
<pid="63">63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group 2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising
and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never
desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall into
group 2. (But see paragraphs <ahref="#80">80</a>-<ahref="#82">82</a>.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the
artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry [<ahref="#footnote-11">11</a>], and through surrogate activities.
</p>
<pid="64">64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that
appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that
afflicts many people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called by other names such as “anomie” or “middle class vacuity.”) We suggest that the so-called “identity crisis” is actually a search for a sense of purpose, often for commitment
to a suitable surrogate activity. It may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the purposelessness of modern life.
[<ahref="#footnote-12">12</a>] Very widespread in modern society is the search for “fulfillment.” But we think that for the majority of people an activity
whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a surrogate activity) does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other words,
it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. (See paragraph <ahref="#41">41</a>.) That need can be fully satisfied only through
activities that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.
</p>
<pid="65">65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder or functioning as part of the system
in some other way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone
else’s employee and, as we pointed out in paragraph <ahref="#61">61</a>, must spend their days doing what they are told to do in the way they
are told to do it. Even people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of
small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these
regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our
extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the
Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a
personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such persons are not
sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who
most need autonomy.
</p>
<pid="66">66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for
themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities
tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules and regulations [<ahref="#footnote-13">13</a>], and
techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success.
</p>
<pid="67">67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in the
pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot
adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on
decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who
that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process – with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with
go through the power process.” This won't work for those who need autonomy in the power process. For such people the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to
have relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least relatively little need for autonomy in the power process.
These are docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the Old South. (We don’t mean to sneer at the
“plantation darkies” of the Old South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their servitude. We do sneer at
people who ARE content with servitude.)
</p>
<pid="79">79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power process. For
example, those who have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole lives climbing the status ladder
without ever getting bored with that game.
</p>
<pid="80">80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. Some are so susceptible that, even if they make
a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles
before their eyes. So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is large, and their cravings are frustrated.
</p>
<pid="81">81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren’t interested in
money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.
</p>
<pid="82">82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy
their craving for goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in overtime, taking a second job, earning
promotions, etc.). Thus material acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not necessarily follow that their
need is fully satisfied. They may have insufficient autonomy in the power process (their work may consist of following orders)
and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g., security, aggression). (We are guilty of oversimplification in paragraphs <ahref="#80">80</a>-<ahref="#82">82</a>
because we have assumed that the desire for material acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing
industry. Of course it’s not that simple. [<ahref="#footnote-11">11</a>]
</p>
<pid="83">83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement.
An individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his own, then works toward
those goals. When some of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have played only an
insignificant part in the attainment of the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement or organization) as if he
Americans, because of their identification with the U.S., experienced the power process vicariously. Hence the widespread
public approval of the Panama invasion; it gave people a sense of power. [<ahref="#footnote-15">15</a>] We see the same phenomenon in armies,
corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological movements. In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people identification with a large
organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power.
</p>
<pid="84">84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in
paragraphs <ahref="#38">38</a>-<ahref="#40">40</a>, a surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the
sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is
no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage
stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting. Some people
are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because
the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very
serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who
are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never
attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way. It only remains to point out that in
many cases a person’s way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate activity, since part of the
motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status and the luxuries that advertising
makes them want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status
they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that
accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with
negative consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph <ahref="#131">131</a>). Especially, for the most creative scientists and engineers,
work tends to be largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that it deserves a separate discussion, which we shall
give in a moment (paragraphs <ahref="#87">87</a>-<ahref="#92">92</a>).
</p>
<pid="85">85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern society do satisfy their need for the power process to a
greater or lesser extent. But we think that for the majority of people the need for the power process is not fully satisfied. In the
first place, those who have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly “hooked” on a surrogate activity, or who identify
strongly enough with a movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that way, are exceptional personalities.
Others are not fully satisfied with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization (see paragraphs <ahref="#41">41</a>, <ahref="#64">64</a>). In the
second place, too much control is imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which results in a
deficiency of autonomy, and in frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and the necessity of restraining too
<pid="87">87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are
motivated by “curiosity” or by a desire to “benefit humanity.” But it is easy to see that neither of these can be the principal
motive of most scientists. As for “curiosity,” that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly specialized problems
that are not the object of any normal curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an entomologist curious
about the properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is curious about such a thing, and he is
curious about it only because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a
new species of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the entomologist, and he is interested in it only because
entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the
physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit, then they
wouldn’t give a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for
postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case he would have
been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared nothing about isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not
normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work. The
“curiosity” explanation for the scientists’ motive just doesn’t stand up.
</p>
<pid="88">88. The “benefit of humanity” explanation doesn’t work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the
welfare of the human race most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present
obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop
vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn’t Dr. Teller
get emotional about other “humanitarian” causes? If he was such a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb?
As with many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit
humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and the risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side
of the question. Clearly his emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to “benefit humanity” but from a
personal fulfillment he got from his work and from seeing it put to practical use.
</p>
<pid="89">89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to
benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort
(research) and to attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the
fulfillment they get out of the work itself.
</p>
<pid="90">90. Of course, it’s not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists. Money and status for example. Some
scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see paragraph <ahref="#79">79</a>) and this may provide much of
the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the general population, are more or less
susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods and services. Thus
science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is in large part a surrogate activity.
</p>
<pid="91">91. Also, science and technology constitute a power mass movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power through
identification with this mass movement (see paragraph <ahref="#83">83</a>).
</p>
<pid="92">92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient
only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the
make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us
for example. If we (FC)[<ahref="#my-footnote-1">A1</a>] had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers,
clean up political corruption in a society rarely has more than a short-term effect; sooner or later the reformers relax and
corruption creeps back in. The level of political corruption in a given society tends to remain constant, or to change only slowly
with the evolution of the society. Normally, a political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by widespread social
changes; a SMALL change in the society won’t be enough.) If a small change in a long-term historical trend appears to be
permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in which the trend is already moving, so that the trend is not
altered by only pushed a step ahead.
</p>
<pid="101">101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at
random rather than following a definite direction; in other words it would not be a long-term trend at all.
</p>
<pid="102">102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, then
it will alter the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which all parts are interrelated, and you can’t
permanently change any important part without changing all other parts as well.
</p>
<pid="103">103. THIRD PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is large enough to alter permanently a long-term trend, then the
consequences for the society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various other societies have passed through the same change and have all experienced the same consequences, in which case one can predict on empirical grounds that
another society that passes through the same change will be like to experience similar consequences.)
</p>
<pid="104">104. FOURTH PRINCIPLE. A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of
society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.
</p>
<pid="105">105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the
economy of a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the environment and vice versa, and the changes in
the economy and the environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways; and so forth. The network of
causes and effects is far too complex to be untangled and understood.
</p>
<pid="106">106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their society. Societies develop through
processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control.
</p>
<pid="107">107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.
</p>
<pid="108">108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which the
society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change that would have occurred in any case) or else it has only a
transitory effect, so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To make a lasting change in the direction of
development of any important aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is required. (A revolution does not
necessarily involve an armed uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a revolution never changes
only one aspect of a society, it changes the whole society; and by the third principle changes occur that were never expected or
desired by the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never
works out as planned.
</p>
<pid="109">109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The American “Revolution” was not a revolution in our
sense of the word, but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political reform. The Founding Fathers did not
change the direction of development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They only freed the development of
American society from the retarding effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any basic trend, but only
pushed American political culture along its natural direction of development. British society, of which American society was
an offshoot, had been moving for a long time in the direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of
Independence the Americans were already practicing a significant degree of representative democracy in the colonial
assemblies. The political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the British system and on the colonial
assemblies. With major alteration, to be sure -- there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very important step. But it
was a step along the road that English-speaking world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies
that were populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially
similar to that of the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of
Independence, our way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe we would have had somewhat closer
ties to Britain, and would have had a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President. No big deal. Thus the
American Revolution provides not a counterexample to our principles but a good illustration of them.
</p>
<pid="110">110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles. They are expressed in imprecise language that allows
latitude for interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present these principles not as inviolable laws but as
rules of thumb, or guides to thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas about the future of society. The
principles should be borne constantly in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with them one should
carefully reexamine one’s thinking and retain the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.
<pid="114">114. As explained in paragraphs <ahref="#65">65</a>-<ahref="#67">67</a>, <ahref="#70">70</a>-<ahref="#73">73</a>, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, and his
fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence. This is not accidental or a result
of the arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any technologically advanced society. The system
HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in order to function. At work people have to do what they are told to do, when they are told to do it, and in the way they are told to do it, otherwise
but GENERALLY SPEAKING the regulation of our lives by large organizations is necessary for the functioning of industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however, that formal
<pid="116">116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society's requirements: welfare leeches, youth-gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.</p>
production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then
<h2id="the-bad-parts-of-technology-cannot-be-separated-from-the-good-parts">The ‘Bad’ Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated from the ‘Good’ Parts</h2>
through use of insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases susceptibility to which is affected by genetic factors (e.g. childhood cancer)
<h2id="technology-is-a-more-powerful-social-force-than-the-aspiration-for-freedom">Technology is a More Powerful Social Force than the Aspiration for Freedom</h2>
<pid="125">125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the
more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises. Imagine the case of
two neighbors, each of whom at the outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other.
The powerful one demands a piece of the other’s land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, “OK, let’s compromise.
Give me half of what I asked.” The weak one has little choice but to give in. Some time later the powerful neighbor demands
another piece of land, again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a long series of compromises on the weaker man,
the powerful one eventually gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology and freedom.
</p>
<pid="126">126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom.
</p>
<pid="127">127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For
example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without
observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were
introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an
automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a
walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s
freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car,
especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the
flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing
registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized
transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such
a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and
recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public
transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s
freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to
serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this
important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced
as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the
new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)
</p>
<pid="128">128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance
CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications ... how
could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern
society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no
disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs <ahref="#59">59</a>-<ahref="#76">76</a>, all these technical advances taken together have created a world in
which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of
politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power
to influence. [<ahref="#footnote-21">21</a>] The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering, for example. Few people will resist
the introduction of a genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease. It does no apparent harm and prevents much
suffering. Yet a large number of genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an engineered product
rather than a free creation of chance (or of God, or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).
</p>
<pid="129">129. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological
progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people
usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced
innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a
whole becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if computers, for example, were eliminated.)
Thus the system can move in only one direction, toward greater technologization. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to
take a step back, but technology can never take a step back -- short of the overthrow of the whole technological system.
</p>
<pid="130">130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules
and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques,
genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the
threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by
the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist.
To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a
whole; but that is revolution, not reform.
</p>
<pid="131">131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to describe all those who perform a specialized task that requires training)
tend to be so involved in their work (their surrogate activity) that when a conflict arises between their technical work and
freedom, they almost always decide in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it also appears
technological civilization itself). Any illusions about achieving anything permanent through social arrangements should be
dispelled by what is currently happening with environmental legislation. A few years ago its seemed that there were secure
legal barriers preventing at least SOME of the worst forms of environmental degradation. A change in the political wind, and
those barriers begin to crumble.
</p>
<pid="134">134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. But this
statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades the industrial-technological
system will be undergoing severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of
human behavior (alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We hope that the stresses
through which the system is likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution
against it becomes possible. If such a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment the aspiration for
freedom will have proved more powerful than technology.
</p>
<pid="135">135. In paragraph <ahref="#125">125</a> we used an analogy of a weak neighbor who is left destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land
by forcing on him a series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor gets sick, so that he is unable to defend
himself. The weak neighbor can force the strong one to give him his land back, or he can kill him. If he lets the strong man
survive and only forces him to give the land back, he is a fool, because when the strong man gets well he will again take all the
land for himself. The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance. In the same
way, while the industrial system is sick we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will
<pid="136">136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system in such a way as to protect freedom from
technology, let him consider how clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully our society has dealt with other social problems
that are far more simple and straightforward. Among other things, the system has failed to stop environmental degradation,
political corruption, drug trafficking or domestic abuse.
</p>
<pid="137">137. Take our environmental problems, for example. Here the conflict of values is straightforward: economic expedience now
versus saving some of our natural resources for our grandchildren. [<ahref="#footnote-22">22</a>] But on this subject we get only a lot of blather and
obfuscation from the people who have power, and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action, and we keep on piling up
environmental problems that our grandchildren will have to live with. Attempts to resolve the environmental issue consist of
struggles and compromises between different factions, some of which are ascendant at one moment, others at another moment.
The line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion. This is not a rational process, nor is it one that is
likely to lead to a timely and successful solution to the problem. Major social problems, if they get “solved” at all, are rarely or
never solved through any rational, comprehensive plan. They just work themselves out through a process in which various
competing groups pursuing their own (usually short-term) self-interest [<ahref="#footnote-23">23</a>] arrive (mainly by luck) at some more or less stable
modus vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated in paragraphs <ahref="#100">100</a>-<ahref="#106">106</a> make it seem doubtful that rational long-term
social planning can EVER be successful.
</p>
<pid="138">138. Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social
problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology?
Technology presents clear-cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means different things to different
<pid="139">139. And note this important difference: It is conceivable that our environmental problems (for example) may some day be
settled through a rational, comprehensive plan, but if this happens it will be only because it is in the long-term interest of the
system to solve these problems. But it is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On
the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent. [<ahref="#footnote-24">24</a>] Thus,
while practical considerations may eventually force the system to take a rational, prudent approach to environmental problems,
equally practical considerations will force the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely (preferably by indirect
means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom). This isn’t just our opinion. Eminent social scientists (e.g. James Q.
Wilson) have stressed the importance of “socializing” people more effectively.
devote themselves with single-minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on genetic engineering, but under suitable conditions large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the industrial-technological system.
As we noted in paragraph <ahref="#132">132</a>, reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of technology would be
working to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward – fulfillment of their revolutionary
<pid="143">143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings of the sake of the
functioning of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another. Some of the pressures are
physical (poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise, crowding, forcing human
behavior into the mold that society requires). In the past, human nature has been approximately constant, or at any rate has
varied only within certain bounds. Consequently, societies have been able to push people only up to certain limits. When the
limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or
depression and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a declining birth rate or something else, so that either the
society breaks down, or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is (quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or
evolution) replaced by some more efficient form of society. [<ahref="#footnote-25">25</a>]
</p>
<pid="144">144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies. People could be pushed only so far
and no farther. But today this may be changing, because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.
</p>
<pid="145">145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away
their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of
clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process,
as explained in paragraphs <ahref="#59">59</a>-<ahref="#76">76</a>. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME
conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives
them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to
enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of
purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)
</p>
<pid="146">146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the new methods of controlling human behavior that modern society is
developing. Let us look at some of the other methods.
</p>
<pid="147">147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many
other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained
greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). [<ahref="#footnote-26">26</a>] Then there are the methods of propaganda,
for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning
elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of
the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with
an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration,
dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing
nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied
or entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.
</p>
<pid="148">148. Other techniques strike deeper than the foregoing. Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid’s behind when
he doesn’t know his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for
controlling the child’s development. Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in motivating children to
study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools. “Parenting”
techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in
ways that the system finds desirable. “Mental health” programs, “intervention” techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are
ostensibly designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict
with the system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to suffer from
stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system
is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms
is disapproved in most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls
almost everyone. But many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is spanking, when used as part of
a rational and consistent system of discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by whether or not
spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word
“abuse” tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system.
Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for preventing “child abuse” are directed
toward the control of human behavior on behalf of the system.
</p>
<pid="149">149. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human
behavior. But we think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of
society that technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be used. We have already mentioned the use of
drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues for modifying the human mind. Genetic engineering of human
beings is already beginning to occur in the form of “gene therapy,” and there is no reason to assume that such methods will not
eventually be used to modify those aspects of the body that affect mental functioning.
</p>
<pid="150">150. As we mentioned in paragraph <ahref="#134">134</a>, industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to
problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the
system’s economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem,
depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won’t study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe
sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (e.g., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very
survival of the system. The system will therefore be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.
</p>
<pid="151">151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of mere chance. It can only be a result of the conditions
of life that the system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most important of these conditions is disruption of the
power process.) If the systems succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new
watershed in human history will have been passed. Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on
the development of societies (as we explained in paragraphs <ahref="#143">143</a>, <ahref="#144">144</a>), industrial-technological society will be able to pass
those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social
systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the
intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom. [<ahref="#footnote-28">28</a>] Each new step in the assertion of control over the
human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime
rate or inducing young people to study science and engineering. In many cases there will be a humanitarian justification. For
example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It
would be inhumane to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When Parents send their children to Sylvan Learning
Centers to have them manipulated into becoming enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their children’s
welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one didn’t have to have specialized training to get a job and that their
kid didn’t have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can they do? They can’t change society, and their
child may be unemployable if he doesn’t have certain skills. So they send him to Sylvan.
</p>
<pid="153">153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities but through a process
of social evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible to resist, because each advance, considered by
itself, will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will appear to be beneficial, or at least the
evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that which would result from not making it (see paragraph <ahref="#127">127</a>).
Propaganda for example is used for many good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. [<ahref="#footnote-14">14</a>] Sex education is
obviously useful, yet the effect of sex education (to the extent that it is successful) is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes
away from the family and put it into the hands of the state as represented by the public school system.
</p>
<pid="154">154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal, and suppose
some sort of gene therapy can remove this trait. [<ahref="#footnote-29">29</a>] Of course most parents whose children possess the trait will have them
undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise, since the child would probably have a miserable life if he grew up
to be a criminal. But many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with that of our society, even though they have neither high-tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment. Since there is no reason to
suppose that more modern men than primitive men have innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must be
due to the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which many cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed
to remove potential criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of
the system.
</p>
<pid="155">155. Our society tends to regard as a “sickness” any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is
plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the
system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a “cure” for a “sickness” and therefore as
good.
</p>
<pid="156">156. In paragraph <ahref="#127">127</a> we pointed out that if the use of a new item of technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not
necessarily REMAIN optional, because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or
impossible for an individual to function without using that technology. This applies also to the technology of human behavior.
In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be
forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking,
an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or suppose a biological treatment is discovered that, without undesirable sideeffects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of
people choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced, so that it will be possible for
the system to increase the stress-producing pressures.
This will lead more people to undergo the treatment and so forth so that eventually the pressures may become so heavy that few people will be able to survive without undergoing the stress-reducing treatment.
In fact, something like this seems to have happened already with one of
our society’s most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape from) stress,
namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph <ahref="#147">147</a>). Our use of mass entertainment is “optional”: No law requires us to watch
television, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most
of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few
have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using ANY form of mass
entertainment. (Yet until quite recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no other entertainment than
that which each local community created for itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not have
been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure on us as it does.
</p>
<pid="157">157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching
complete control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior
have a largely biological basis. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be
turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of
the brain or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by
drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one it clearly is less powerful that the biological
mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate human
feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.
</p>
<pid="158">158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be
controlled by the authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the
problem of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons, hormones and complex
molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in solving
technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in the control of human behavior.
</p>
<pid="159">159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? It certainly would if an
attempt were made to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be introduced through a long
sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs <ahref="#127">127</a>, <ahref="#132">132</a>, <ahref="#153">153</a>.)
</p>
<pid="160">160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday’s science fiction is today’s fact.
The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man’s environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as
technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment
<pid="162">162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome certain problems that threaten its survival, among
which the problems of human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over
human behavior quickly enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will most likely be
resolved within the next several decades, say 40 to 100 years.
</p>
<pid="163">163. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several decades. By that time it will have to have solved, or at least
brought under control, the principal problems that confront it, in particular that of “socializing” human beings; that is, making
people sufficiently docile so that heir behavior no longer threatens the system. That being accomplished, it does not appear that
there would be any further obstacle to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance toward its logical
conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth, including human beings and all other important organisms.
The system may become a unitary, monolithic organization, or it may be more or less fragmented and consist of a number of
organizations coexisting in a relationship that includes elements of both cooperation and competition, just as today the
government, the corporations and other large organizations both cooperate and compete with one another. Human freedom
mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with
super-technology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides
instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these
probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too will be regulated; just as today our politicians and
corporation executives can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains within certain fairly narrow
limits.
</p>
<pid="164">164. Don’t imagine that the systems will stop developing further techniques for controlling human beings and nature once the
crisis of the next few decades is over and increasing control is no longer necessary for the system’s survival. On the contrary,
once the hard times are over the system will increase its control over people and nature more rapidly, because it will no longer
be hampered by difficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing. Survival is not the principal motive for extending
control. As we explained in paragraphs <ahref="#87">87</a>-<ahref="#90">90</a>, technicians and scientists carry on their work largely as a surrogate activity; that
is, they satisfy their need for power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this with unabated enthusiasm, and
among the most interesting and challenging problems for them to solve will be those of understanding the human body and
mind and intervening in their development. For the “good of humanity,” of course.
</p>
<pid="165">165. But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming decades prove to be too much for the system. If the system
breaks down there may be a period of chaos, a “time of troubles” such as those that history has recorded at various epochs in
the past. It is impossible to predict what would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate the human race would be
given a new chance. The greatest danger is that industrial society may begin to reconstitute itself within the first few years after
the breakdown. Certainly there will be many people (power-hungry types especially) who will be anxious to get the factories
running again.
</p>
<pid="166">166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First,
we must work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that it will break down or be
weakened sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop and propagate an
ideology that opposes technology and the industrial society if and when the system becomes sufficiently weakened. And such
an ideology will help to assure that, if and when industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair, so
that the system cannot be reconstituted. The factories should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc.
<pid="167">167. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to
revolutionary attack unless its own internal problems of development lead it into very serious difficulties. So if the system
breaks down it will do so either spontaneously, or through a process that is in part spontaneous but helped along by
revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many people will die, since the world’s population has become so over-grown that
it cannot even feed itself any longer without advanced technology. Even if the breakdown is gradual enough so that reduction
of the population can occur more through lowering of the birth rate than through elevation of the death rate, the process of deindustrialization probably will be very chaotic and involve much suffering. It is naive to think it likely that technology can be
phased out in a smoothly managed, orderly way, especially since the technophiles will fight stubbornly at every step. Is it
therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system? Maybe, but maybe not. In the first place, revolutionaries will not be
able to break the system down unless it is already in enough trouble so that there would be a good chance of its eventually
breaking down by itself anyway; and the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of its breakdown will
be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of the breakdown, will be reducing the extent of the disaster.
</p>
<pid="168">168. In the second place, one has to balance struggle and death against the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom
and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain. Besides, we all have to die some time, and it may
be better to die fighting for survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless life.
</p>
<pid="169">169. In the third place, it is not at all certain that survival of the system will lead to less suffering than breakdown of the system
would. The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause, immense suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures, that
for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with their environment, have been shattered
by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of economic, environmental, social and
psychological problems. One of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much of the world
traditional controls on population have been thrown out of balance. Hence the population explosion, with all that that implies.
Then there is the psychological suffering that is widespread throughout the supposedly fortunate countries of the West (see
paragraphs <ahref="#44">44</a>, <ahref="#45">45</a>). No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and other
environmental problems that cannot yet be foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology cannot be kept
out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible Third World nations. Would you like to speculate about what Iraq or North
Korea will do with genetic engineering?
</p>
<pid="170">170. “Oh!” say the technophiles, “Science is going to fix all that! We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering,
make everybody healthy and happy!” Yeah, sure. That’s what they said 200 years ago. The Industrial Revolution was supposed
to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The technophiles are hopelessly
naive (or self-deceiving) in their understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to ignore) the fact that
when large changes, even seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other
changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph <ahref="#103">103</a>). The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable
that in their attempts to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create
social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present once. For example, the scientists boast that they will end
famine by creating new, genetically engineered food plants. But this will allow the human population to keep expanding
indefinitely, and it is well known that crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is merely one example of the
PREDICTABLE problems that will arise. We emphasize that, as past experience has shown, technical progress will lead to
other new problems that CANNOT be predicted in advance (paragraph <ahref="#103">103</a>). In fact, ever since the Industrial Revolution,
technology has been creating new problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old ones. Thus it will take a
long and difficult period of trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New World (if they every
do). In the meantime there will be great suffering. So it is not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve
less suffering than the breakdown of that society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is
elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be
superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of
humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate
until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they
may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs
are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to
keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will
be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the
power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings
may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic
animals.
</p>
<pid="175">175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work
remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing
surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it
difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training
necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be
placed: They will need more and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and
docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so that
their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will
have to use any means that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that
the system requires and to “sublimate” their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of
such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that
ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society
in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach
the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph <ahref="#163">163</a>). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his
need for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for
power.
</p>
<pid="176">176. One can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For
instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings
will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of
the service industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people would spent their time shining each other’s shoes,
driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other’s tables, etc. This seems to us
a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such
pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, crime, “cults,” hate groups) unless they were
biologically or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.
</p>
<pid="177">177. Needless to say, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes
that seem to us most likely. But we can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable than the ones we’ve just
described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by
that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the “bourgeois” type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large
organizations; they will be more “socialized” than ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly
to a very great extent) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God’s will, or
whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under
the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from
now) it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once
you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the
modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.
</p>
<pid="178">178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human beings a new physical and social
environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race
physically and psychologically. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will
be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter.
</p>
<pid="179">179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.
<pid="180">180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of
what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC)
don’t think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it.
</p>
<pid="181">181. As we stated in paragraph <ahref="#166">166</a>, the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial
society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system becomes
sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the
French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revolutions,
showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world view
that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old
order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in
Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines.
</p>
<pid="182">182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were failures. But most revolutions have two goals. One is to
destroy an old form of society and the other is to set up the new form of society envisioned by the revolutionaries. The French
and Russian revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of society of which they dreamed, but they were quite
successful in destroying the old society. We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new, ideal form of society. Our
goal is only to destroy the existing form of society.
</p>
<pid="183">183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR
something as well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature: those aspects
of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference
and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human
individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on
your religious or philosophical opinions).
</p>
<pid="184">184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the
system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that
nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that
exalts nature and opposes technology. [<ahref="#footnote-30">30</a>] It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any
new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society,
and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount
of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve
the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial
society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will
take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial societies can do significant damage to nature.
Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so
that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most
people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is no other way that people CAN live. To
feed themselves they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunters, etc. And, generally speaking, local autonomy
should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments
or other large organizations to control local communities.
<pid="186">186. Most people hate psychological conflict. For this reason they avoid doing any serious thinking about difficult social
issues, and they like to have such issues presented to them in simple, black-and-white terms: THIS is all good and THAT is all
bad. The revolutionary ideology should therefore be developed on two levels.
</p>
<pid="187">187. On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address itself to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational.
The object should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the industrial system on a rational, thought-out basis,
with full appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved, and of the price that has to be paid for getting rid of the
system. It is particularly important to attract people of this type, as they are capable people and will be instrumental in
influencing others. These people should be addressed on as rational a level as possible. Facts should never intentionally be
distorted and intemperate language should be avoided. This does not mean that no appeal can be made to the emotions, but in
making such appeal care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the truth or doing anything else that would destroy the
intellectual respectability of the ideology.
</p>
<pid="188">188. On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see
the conflict of technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. But even on this second level the ideology should not be expressed
in language that is so cheap, intemperate or irrational that it alienates people of the thoughtful and rational type. Cheap,
intemperate propaganda sometimes achieves impressive short-term gains, but it will be more advantageous in the long run to
keep the loyalty of a small number of intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of an unthinking, fickle mob
who will change their attitude as soon as someone comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. However, propaganda of
the rabble-rousing type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of collapse and there is a final struggle between
rival ideologies to determine which will become dominant when the old world-view goes under.
</p>
<pid="189">189. Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is
made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really
wants. Until the time comes for the final push toward revolution [<ahref="#footnote-31">31</a>], the task of revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow
support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people. As for the majority, it will be enough to make
them aware of the existence of the new ideology and remind them of it frequently; though of course it will be desirable to get
majority support to the extent that this can be done without weakening the core of seriously committed people.
</p>
<pid="190">190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but one should be careful about what kind of conflict one
encourages. The line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the power-holding elite of industrial
society (politicians, scientists, upper-level business executives, government officials, etc.). It should NOT be drawn between
the revolutionaries and the mass of the people. For example, it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn
Americans for their habits of consumption. Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising
and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn’t need and that is very poor
compensation for his lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a matter of attitude whether you
blame the advertising industry for manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing itself to be manipulated. As a
matter of strategy one should generally avoid blaming the public.
</p>
<pid="191">191. One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power-holding elite (which
wields technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to
distract attention from the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature); for
another thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such a conflict wants to
use technological power to gain advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also appears
in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in America many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African
Americans by placing back individuals in the technological power-elite. They want there to be many black government
officials, scientists, corporation executives and so forth. In this way they are helping to absorb the African American subculture
into the technological system. Generally speaking, one should encourage only those social conflicts that can be fitted into the
framework of the conflicts of power-elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs. nature.
</p>
<pid="#192">192. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT through militant advocacy of minority rights (see paragraphs <ahref="#21">21</a>, <ahref="#29">29</a>).
Instead, the revolutionaries should emphasize that although minorities do suffer more or less disadvantage, this disadvantage is
influx of leftish types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the original
goals of the movement.
</p>
<pid="214">214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must
avoid all collaboration with leftists. Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the
elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to bind together the entire world (both nature and the human
race) into a unified whole. But this implies management of nature and of human life by organized society, and it requires
advanced technology. You can’t have a united world without rapid transportation and communication, you can’t make all
people love one another without sophisticated psychological techniques, you can’t have a “planned society” without the
necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective
basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because
technology is too valuable a source of collective power.
</p>
<pid="215">215. The anarchist [<ahref="#footnote-34">34</a>] too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small
groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups
dependent on large organizations.
</p>
<pid="216">216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the
technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system
becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be
repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they
vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but
as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than
any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United
States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of
academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves
ready to take away from everyone else’s academic freedom. (This is “political correctness.”) The same will happen with leftists
and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.
</p>
<pid="217">217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist
revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to seize power for
themselves. Robespierre did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution, the communists did
it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for
non-leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate with leftists.
</p>
<pid="218">218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because
leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But, for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role
much like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his
psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has a deep conviction that leftism is morally
Right with a capital R, and that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone. (However, many of
the people we are referring to as “leftists” do not think of themselves as leftists and would not describe their system of beliefs
as leftism. We use the term “leftism” because we don’t know of any better words to designate the spectrum of related creeds
affinity with the old left. See paragraphs <ahref="#227">227</a>-<ahref="#230">230</a>.)
</p>
<pid="219">219. Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power it tends to invade every private corner and force
every thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftist
beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftists’ drive for power. The leftist seeks
to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement and he tries to go through the power process by
helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph <ahref="#83">83</a>). But no matter how far the movement has gone in
attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph <ahref="#41">41</a>). That is, the
leftist’s real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from
struggling for and then reaching a social goal. [<ahref="#footnote-35">35</a>] Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already
attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for
minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors
and against violence, but he often finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the common
catch-phrases of the left, like “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “capitalism,” “imperialism,” “neocolonialism,” “genocide,”
“social change,” “social justice,” “social responsibility.” Maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the following movements: feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights, political
correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these movements is almost certainly a leftist. [<ahref="#footnote-36">36</a>]
</p>
<pid="230">230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a
dogmatic approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocialized types who avoid
irritating displays of aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote
collectivist values, “enlightened” psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the individual on the
system, and so forth. These crypto-leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as far as practical action
is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under
control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional. The
crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivist ideology. The
crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is
weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that
there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself in a
collectivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois.
<li><pid="footnote-1">1. (Paragraph <ahref="#19">19</a>) We are asserting that ALL, or even most, bullies and ruthless competitors suffer from feelings of inferiority.
<li><pid="footnote-2">2. (Paragraph <ahref="#25">25</a>) During the Victorian period many oversocialized people suffered from serious psychological problems as a
<li><pid="footnote-4">4. (Paragraph <ahref="#28">28</a>) There are many individuals of the middle and upper classes who resist some of these values, but usually their
resistance is more or less covert. Such resistance appears in the mass media only to a very limited extent. The main thrust of
propaganda in our society is in favor of the stated values. The main reason why these values have become, so to speak, the
official values of our society is that they are useful to the industrial system. Violence is discouraged because it disrupts the
functioning of the system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic conflicts also disrupt the system, and discrimination wastes
the talents of minority-group members who could be useful to the system. Poverty must be “cured” because the underclass
causes problems for the system and contact with the underclass lowers the morale of the other classes. Women are encouraged
to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and, more importantly, because by having regular jobs women
become better integrated into the system and tied directly to it rather than to their families. This helps to weaken family solidarity. (The leaders of the system say they want to strengthen the family, but they really mean is that they want the family
to serve as an effective tool for socializing children in accord with the needs of the system. We argue in paragraphs <ahref="#51">51</a>, <ahref="#52">52</a> that
the system cannot afford to let the family or other small-scale social groups be strong or autonomous.)
<li><pid="footnote-5">5. (Paragraph <ahref="#42">42</a>) It may be argued that the majority of people don’t want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do
<li><pid="footnote-6">6. (Paragraph <ahref="#44">44</a>) Some of the symptoms listed are similar to those shown by caged animals. To explain how these symptoms
<li><pid="footnote-7">7. (Paragraph <ahref="#52">52</a>) A partial exception may be made for a few passive, inward-looking groups, such as the Amish, which have
<li><pid="footnote-8">8. (Paragraph <ahref="#56">56</a>) Yes, we know that 19th century America had its problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of brevity we
<li><pid="footnote-10">10. (Paragraph <ahref="#62">62</a>) Some social scientists, educators, “mental health” professionals and the like are doing their best to push the
<li><pid="footnote-11">11. (Paragraphs <ahref="#63">63</a>, <ahref="#82">82</a>) Is the drive for endless material acquisition really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing
industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people
have desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines,
traditional Mexican peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been many pre-industrial
cultures in which material acquisition has played an important role. So we can’t claim that today’s acquisition-oriented culture
is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry
has had an important part in creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldn’t be spending
that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales
manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to tell him, “Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and
don’t need.” He then described how an untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that
people are manipulated into buying things they don’t really want.
<li><pid="footnote-12">12. (Paragraph <ahref="#64">64</a>) The problem of purposelessness seems to have become less serious during the last 15 years or so, because
<li><pid="footnote-13">13. (Paragraph <ahref="#66">66</a>) Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average
<li><pid="footnote-14">14. (Paragraph <ahref="#73">73</a>) When someone approves of the purpose for which propaganda is being used in a given case, he generally
<li><pid="footnote-15">15. (Paragraph <ahref="#83">83</a>) We are not expressing approval or disapproval of the Panama invasion. We only use it to illustrate a point.
<li><pid="footnote-16">16. (Paragraph <ahref="#95">95</a>) When the American colonies were under British rule there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of
freedom than there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal freedom in preindustrial America, both before and after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in
this country. We quote from “Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” edited by Hugh Davis Graham
and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, pages 476-478: “The progressive heightening of standards of propriety, and
with it the increasing reliance on official law enforcement (in l9th century America) ... were common to the whole society....
The change in social behavior is so long term and so widespread as to suggest a connection with the most fundamental of
contemporary social processes; that of industrial urbanization itself....”Massachusetts in 1835 had a population of some
660,940, 81 percent rural, overwhelmingly pre-industrial and native born. It’s citizens were used to considerable personal
freedom. Whether teamsters, farmers or artisans, they were all accustomed to setting their own schedules, and the nature of
their work made them physically independent of each other.... Individual problems, sins or even crimes, were not generally
cause for wider social concern....” But the impact of the twin movements to the city and to the factory, both just gathering force
in 1835, had a progressive effect on personal behavior throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The factory demanded
regularity of behavior, a life governed by obedience to the rhythms of clock and calendar, the demands of foreman and
supervisor. In the city or town, the needs of living in closely packed neighborhoods inhibited many actions previously
unobjectionable. Both blue- and white-collar employees in larger establishments were mutually dependent on their fellows; as
one man’s work fit into anther’s, so one man’s business was no longer his own. “The results of the new organization of life and
work were apparent by 1900, when some 76 percent of the 2,805,346 inhabitants of Massachusetts were classified as urbanites.
Much violent or irregular behavior which had been tolerable in a casual, independent society was no longer acceptable in the
more formalized, cooperative atmosphere of the later period.... The move to the cities had, in short, produced a more tractable,
more socialized, more ‘civilized’ generation than its predecessors.”
If copyright problems make it impossible for this long quotation to be printed, then please change Note 16 to read as follows: 16. (Paragraph <ahref="#95">95</a>) When the American colonies were under British rule there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of
freedom than there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal freedom in preindustrial America, both before and after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in
this country. In “Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted
Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, it is explained how in pre-industrial America the average person had greater
independence and autonomy than he does today, and how the process of industrialization necessarily led to the restriction of
<li><pid="footnote-17">17. (Paragraph <ahref="#117">117</a>) Apologists for the system are fond of citing cases in which elections have been decided by one or two
<li><pid="footnote-18">18. (Paragraph <ahref="#119">119</a>) “Today, in technologically advanced lands, men live very similar lives in spite of geographical, religious,
<li><pid="footnote-20">20. (Paragraph <ahref="#124">124</a>) For a further example of undesirable consequences of medical progress, suppose a reliable cure for cancer
<li><pid="footnote-21">21. (Paragraph <ahref="#128">128</a>) Since many people may find paradoxical the notion that a large number of good things can add up to a bad
<li><pid="footnote-22">22. (Paragraph <ahref="#137">137</a>) Here we are considering only the conflict of values within the mainstream. For the sake of simplicity we
<li><pid="footnote-23">23. (Paragraph <ahref="#137">137</a>) Self-interest is not necessarily MATERIAL self-interest. It can consist in fulfillment of some
<li><pid="footnote-24">24. (Paragraph <ahref="#139">139</a>) A qualification: It is in the interest of the system to permit a certain prescribed degree of freedom in some
<li><pid="footnote-25">25. (Paragraph <ahref="#143">143</a>) We don’t mean to suggest that the efficiency or the potential for survival of a society has always been
<li><pid="footnote-26">26. (Paragraph <ahref="#147">147</a>) If you think that more effective law enforcement is unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then
<li><pid="footnote-27">27. (Paragraph <ahref="#151">151</a>) To be sure, past societies have had means of influencing human behavior, but these have been primitive
<li><pid="footnote-28">28. (Paragraph <ahref="#152">152</a>) However, some psychologists have publicly expressed opinions indicating their contempt for human
<li><pid="footnote-29">29. (Paragraph <ahref="#154">154</a>) This is no science fiction! After writing paragraph <ahref="#154">154</a> we came across an article in Scientific American
<li><pid="footnote-30">30. (Paragraph <ahref="#184">184</a>) A further advantage of nature as a counter-ideal to technology is that, in many people, nature inspires the
<li><pid="footnote-31">31. (Paragraph <ahref="#189">189</a>) Assuming that such a final push occurs. Conceivably the industrial system might be eliminated in a
<li><pid="footnote-32">32. (Paragraph <ahref="#193">193</a>) It is even conceivable (remotely) that the revolution might consist only of a massive change of attitudes
<li><pid="footnote-33">33. (Paragraph <ahref="#195">195</a>) The economic and technological structure of a society are far more important than its political structure in
determining the way the average man lives (see paragraphs <ahref="#95">95</a>, <ahref="#119">119</a> and Notes <ahref="#footnote-16">16</a>, <ahref="#footnote-18">18</a>).
<li><pid="footnote-34">34. (Paragraph <ahref="#215">215</a>) This statement refers to our particular brand of anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been
<li><pid="footnote-35">35. (Paragraph <ahref="#219">219</a>) Many leftists are motivated also by hostility, but the hostility probably results in part from a frustrated
<li><pid="footnote-36">36. (Paragraph <ahref="#229">229</a>) It is important to understand that we mean someone who sympathizes with these MOVEMENTS as they