Everything's A Psyop

Industrial Society and Its Future 

Theodore Kaczynski 

1995 


INTRODUCTION 

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have 
been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly 
increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in 
“advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, 
have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings 
to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffe¬ 
ring (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and 
have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The 
continued development of technology will worsen the si¬ 
tuation. It will certainly subject human being to greater in¬ 
dignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, 
it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psy¬ 
chological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical 
suffering even in “advanced” countries. 

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it 
may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve 
a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but 
only after passing through a long and very painful period 
of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently redu¬ 
cing human beings and many other living organisms to 
engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. 
Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will 
be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying 
the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of 
dignity and autonomy. 

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still 
be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more 
disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is 
to break down it had best break down sooner rather than 
later. 

4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the in¬ 
dustrial system. This revolution may or may not make use 
of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively 
gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict 
any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the 
measures that those who hate the industrial system should 
take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against 
that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revo¬ 
lution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments 
but the economic and technological basis of the present 
society. 

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 regard these other developments as unim¬ 
portant. For practical reasons we have to confine our dis¬ 
cussion to areas that have received insufficient public at¬ 
tention or in which we have something new to say. For 
example, since there are well-developed environmental 
and wilderness movements, we have written very little 
about environmental degradation or the destruction of 
wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly 
important. 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM 

6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply 
troubled society. One of the most widespread manifesta¬ 
tions of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discus¬ 
sion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduc¬ 
tion to the discussion of the problems of modern society 
in general. 

7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th 
century leftism could have been practically identified with 
socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not 
clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak 
of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, 
collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and 
disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But 
not everyone who is associated with one of these move¬ 
ments is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discus¬ 
sing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a 
psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. 
Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly 
in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology. (Also, 
see paragraphs 227-230.) 

8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good 
deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t seem 
to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is 
indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psycho¬ 
logical tendencies that we believe are the main driving 
force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be tel¬ 
ling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our 
discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We 
leave open the question of the extent to which our discus¬ 
sion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 
20th centuries. 

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie mo¬ 
dern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “over¬ 
socialization”. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of 
modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is cha¬ 
racteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; 
but this segment is highly influential. 


FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY 

10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only infe¬ 
riority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum 
of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerless¬ 
ness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, 


1 



etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such 
feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these 
feelings are decisive in determining the direction of mo¬ 
dern leftism. 

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost any¬ 
thing that is said about him (or about groups with whom 
he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings 
or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among 
minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the 
minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hy¬ 
persensitive about the words used to designate minorities 
and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The 
terms “negro”, “oriental”, “handicapped” or “chick” for an 
African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman origi¬ 
nally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” 
were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy”, “dude” or 
“fellow”. The negative connotations have been attached 
to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal 
rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word 
“pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal compa¬ 
nion”. Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid 
saying anything about primitive peoples that could concei¬ 
vably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the 
word “primitive” by “nonliterate”. They seem almost para¬ 
noid about anything that might suggest that any primitive 
culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply 
that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely 
point out the hyper sensitivity of leftish anthropologists.) 

12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically in¬ 
correct” terminology are not the average black ghetto- 
dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled per¬ 
son, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not 
even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from 
privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its 
stronghold among university professors, who have secure 
employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority 
of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to 
upper-middle-class families. 

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the 
problems of groups that have an image of being weak 
(women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homo¬ 
sexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel 
that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to 
themselves that they have such feelings, but it is preci¬ 
sely because they do see these groups as inferior that they 
identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest 
that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only ma¬ 
king a point about leftist psychology.) 

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that wo¬ 
men are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are 
nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and 
as capable as men. 

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image 
of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, 
they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they 
hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating 
the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real 
motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is war¬ 
like, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but 
where these same faults appear in socialist countries or 


in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, 
or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whe¬ 
reas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly 
exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western 
civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the 
leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He 
hates America and the West because they are strong and 
successful. 

16. Words like “self-confidence”, “self-reliance”, “ini¬ 
tiative”, “enterprise”, “optimism”, etc., play little role 
in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti- 
individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve 
every one’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs 
for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person 
who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve 
his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is 
antagohistic to the concept of competition because, deep 
inside, he feels like a loser. 

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellec¬ 
tuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or 
else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational 
control as if there were no hope of accomplishing any¬ 
thing through rational calculation and all that was left was 
to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment. 

18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, 
science, objective reality and to insist that everything is 
culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious ques¬ 
tions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and 
about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can 
be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philoso¬ 
phers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically 
analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply 
involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. 
They attack these concepts because of their own psycho¬ 
logical needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for 
hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satis¬ 
fies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates 
science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs 
as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false 
(i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority 
run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of 
some things as successful or superior and other things as 
failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many 
leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of 
IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations 
of human abilities or behavior because such explanations 
tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to 
others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame 
for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is 
“inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has 
not been brought up properly. 

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 de¬ 
ficit 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 un¬ 
pleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for 
that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he 


2 



cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and va¬ 
luable. 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. 

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. 

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 calcula¬ 
ted to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim 
to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that af¬ 
firmative 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. 

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the lef¬ 
tists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide 
themselves with an excuse for making a fuss. 

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 ge¬ 
neral tendency of leftism. 


OVERSOCIALIZATION 

24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to desi¬ 
gnate the process by which children are trained to think 
and act as society demands. A person is said to be well 
socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of 
his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that 
society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are 
over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Ne¬ 
vertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are 
not such rebels as they seem. 

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that 
no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. 
For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet 
almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, 
whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are 
so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and 
act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order 


to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive 
themselves about their own motives and find moral ex¬ 
planations for feelings and actions that in reality have a 
nonmoral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to des¬ 
cribe such people. [2] 

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 oversocia¬ 
lized person are more restricted by society’s expectations 
than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majo¬ 
rity 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 can¬ 
not do these things, or if he does do them he generates 
in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The over¬ 
socialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, 
thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted mo¬ 
rality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And socializa¬ 
tion 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 over¬ 
socialized 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. 

27. We argue that a very important and influential seg¬ 
ment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their 
oversocialization is of great importance in determining 
the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the overso¬ 
cialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the 
upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3] 
constitute the most highly socialized segment of our so¬ 
ciety and also the most leftwing segment. 

28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off 
his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebel¬ 
ling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against 
the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the 
goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accep¬ 
ted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted 
moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses 
mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: 
racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, 
peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom 
of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, 
the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty 
of society to take care of the individual. All these have 
been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its 
middle and upper classes [4] for a long time. These va¬ 
lues are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed 
in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream 
communications media and the educational system. Lef- 


3 



tists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually 
do not rebel against these principles but justify their hos¬ 
tility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) 
that society is not living up to these principles. 

29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the over¬ 
socialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conven¬ 
tional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in 
rebellion aginst it. Many leftists push for affirmative ac¬ 
tion, 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 execu¬ 
tive, 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; ins¬ 
tead, 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 ea¬ 
ting black-style food, listening to black-style music, wea¬ 
ring black-style clothing and going to a black-style church 
or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in su¬ 
perficial 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 be¬ 
come 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 religion he believes in as long 
as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the 
status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is nonviolent and 
so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the over¬ 
socialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the 
system and make him adopt its values. 

30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the 
oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamen¬ 
tal values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some 
oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel against 
one of modern society’s most important principles by en¬ 
gaging in physical violence. By their own account, vio¬ 
lence is for them a form of “liberation.” In other words, 
by committing violence they break through the psycholo¬ 
gical restraints that have been trained into them. Because 
they are oversocialized these restraints have been more 
confining for them than for others; hence their need to 
break free of them. But they usually justify their rebellion 
in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence 
they claim to be fighting against racism or the like. 

31. We realize that many objections could be raised to 
the foregoing thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology. The 
real situation is complex, and anything like a complete 
description of it would take several volumes even if the 
necessary data were available. We claim only to have in¬ 
dicated very roughly the two most important tendencies 
in the psychology of modern leftism. 

32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the pro¬ 


blems of our society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depres¬ 
sive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the left. 
Though they are especially noticeable in the left, they are 
widespread in our society. And today’s society tries to so¬ 
cialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We 
are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how 
to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth. 


THE POWER PROCESS 

33. Human beings have a need (probably based in bio¬ 
logy) for something that we will call the power process. 
This is closely related to the need for power (which is 
widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The 
power process has four elements. The three most clear- 
cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. 
(Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires 
effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of 
his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define 
and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it auto¬ 
nomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44). 

34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can 
have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man 
has power, but he will develop serious psychological pro¬ 
blems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he 
will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he 
may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisu¬ 
red aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true 
of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain 
their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no 
need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonis¬ 
tic and demoralized, even though they have power. This 
shows that power is not enough. One must have goals to¬ 
ward which to exercise one’s power. 

35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the 
physical necessities of life: food, water and whatever clo¬ 
thing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But 
the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort. 
Hence his boredom and demoralization. 

36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death 
if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if 
non-attainment of the goals is compatible with survival. 
Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in 
defeatism, low self-esteem or depression. 

37. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological pro¬ 
blems, a human being needs goals whose attainment re¬ 
quires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of suc¬ 
cess in attaining his goals. 


SURROGATE ACTIVITIES 

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 


4 



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 physi¬ 
cal 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 ela¬ 
borate displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats, like Hiro- 
hito, have turned to science. 

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 qake 
of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. 
Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surro¬ 
gate 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 interes¬ 
ting 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 or¬ 
der to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have 
felt deprived because he didn’t know all about the ana¬ 
tomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand 
the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surro¬ 
gate 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 exces¬ 
sive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a 
surrogate activity.) 

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 requi¬ 
rements 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 under¬ 
class 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 achieve¬ 
ment, 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 ac¬ 
tivism 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 ac¬ 
tivities are in large part surrogate activities. For example, 
the majority of scientists will probably agree that the “ful¬ 
fillment” they get from their work is more important than 
the money and prestige they earn. 

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 sa¬ 
tisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly 
strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no soo¬ 
ner 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 ac¬ 
tivities than they do from the “mundane” business of sa¬ 
tisfying 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 AUTO¬ 
NOMOUSLY 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. 


AUTONOMY 

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 to¬ 
ward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on 
their own initiative and must be under their own direc¬ 
tion 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 them¬ 
selves 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 ini¬ 
tiative, 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. 
[5] 

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 power¬ 
ful 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). 


5 



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) boredom, demo¬ 
ralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, 
depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or 
child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual beha¬ 
vior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6] 


SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any 
society, but in modern industrial society they are present 
on a massive scale. We aren’t the first to mention that the 
world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is 
not normal for human societies. There is good reason to 
believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and 
frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life 
than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweet¬ 
ness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women was 
common among the Australian aborigines, transexuality 
was fairly common among some of the American Indian 
tribes. But it does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the 
kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding pa¬ 
ragraph were far less common among primitive peoples 
than they are in modern society. 

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems 
of modern society to the fact that that society requires 
people to live under conditions radically different from 
those under which the human race evolved and to be¬ 
have in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior 
that the human race developed while living under the 
earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already 
written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly 
experience the power process as the most important of 
the abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects 
people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with dis¬ 
ruption of the power process as a source of social pro¬ 
blems we will discuss some of the other sources. 

47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern 
industrial society are excessive density of population, iso¬ 
lation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social 
change and the breakdown of natural small-scale commu¬ 
nities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe. 

48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and 
aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and 
the isolation of man from nature are consequences of tech¬ 
nological progress. All pre-industrial societies were pre¬ 
dominantly rural. The Industrial Revolution vastly increa¬ 
sed the size of cities and the proportion of the population 
that lives in them, and modern agricultural technology 
has made it possible for the Earth to support a far den¬ 
ser population than it ever did before. (Also, technology 
exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increa¬ 
sed disruptive powers in people’s hands. For example, a 


variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, 
motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestric¬ 
ted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by 
the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use the 
devices are frustrated by the regulations. But if these ma¬ 
chines had never been invented there would have been no 
conflict and no frustration generated by them.) 

49. For primitive societies the natural world (which 
usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework 
and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world it 
is human society that dominates nature rather than the 
other way around, and modern society changes very ra¬ 
pidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no 
stable framework. 

50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the 
decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically sup¬ 
port technological progress and economic growth. Appa¬ 
rently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, 
drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a 
society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects 
of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevi¬ 
tably break down traditional values. 

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 technological society 
HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is 
to function efficiently. In modern society an individual’s 
loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to 
a smallscale community, because if the internal loyalties 
of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to 
the system, such communities would pursue their own ad¬ 
vantage at the expense of the system. 

52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation exe¬ 
cutive appoints his cousin, his friend or his co-religionist 
to a position rather than appointing the person best qua¬ 
lified for the job. He has permitted personal loyalty to su¬ 
persede his loyalty to the system, and that is “nepotism” 
or “discrimination,” both of which are terrible sins in mo¬ 
dern society. Would-be industrial societies that have done 
a poor job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to 
loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. (Look at 
Latin America.) Thus an advanced industrial society can 
tolerate only those small-scale communities that are emas¬ 
culated, tamed and made into tools of the system. [7] 

53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of com¬ 
munities have been widely recognized as sources of social 
problems. But we do not believe tbey are enough to ac¬ 
count for the extent of the problems that are seen today. 

54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crow¬ 
ded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have suffered 
from psychological problems to the same extent as mo¬ 
dern man. In America today there still are uncrowded ru¬ 
ral areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban 
areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the ru¬ 
ral areas. Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive 
factor. 


6 



55. On the growing edge of the American frontier du¬ 
ring the 19th century, the mobility of the population pro¬ 
bably broke down extended families and small-scale so¬ 
cial groups to at least the same extent as these are bro¬ 
ken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by 
choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within seve¬ 
ral miles, that they belonged to no community at all, yet 
they do not seem to have developed problems as a result. 

56. Furthermore, change in American frontier society 
was very rapid and deep. A man might be born and rai¬ 
sed in a log cabin, outside the reach of law and order and 
fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he arrived at 
old age he might be working at a regular job and living 
in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. 
This was a deeper change than that which typically occurs 
in the life of a modern individual, yet it does not seem 
to have led to psychological problems. In fact, 19th cen¬ 
tury American society had an optimistic and self-confident 
tone, quite unlike that of today’s society. [8] 

57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has 
the sense (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on 
him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense 
(also largely justified) that he created change himself, by 
his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of land 
of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his 
own effort. In those days an entire county might have only 
a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more iso¬ 
lated and autonomous entity than a modern county is. 
Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a member of a 
relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered 
community. One may well question whether the creation 
of this community was an improvement, but at any rate it 
satisfied the pioneer’s need for the power process. 

58. It would be possible to give other examples of so¬ 
cieties in which there has been rapid change and/or lack 
of close community ties without the kind of massive beha¬ 
vioral aberration that is seen in today’s industrial society. 
We contend that the most important cause of social and 
psychological problems in modern society is the fact that 
people have insufficient opportunity to go through the po¬ 
wer process in a normal way. We don’t mean to say that 
modern society is the only one in which the power process 
has been disrupted. Probably most if not all civilized so¬ 
cieties have interfered with the power process to a greater 
or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society the pro¬ 
blem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least in its 
recent (mid- to late-20th century) form, is in part a symp¬ 
tom of deprivation with respect to the power process. 


DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN 
MODERN SOCIETY 

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 pro¬ 
cess of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more 


drives there are in the third group, the more there is frus¬ 
tration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc. 

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. 

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 gua¬ 
ranty the physical necessities to everyone [9] 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 “minimal”; but usually, 
in lower- to middle-level jobs, whatever effort is required 
is merely that of OBEDIENCE. You sit or 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.) 

62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often re¬ 
main in group 2 in modern society, depending on the si¬ 
tuation of the individual. [10] But, except for people who 
have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort re¬ 
quired to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy 
adequately the need for the power process. 

63. So certain artificial needs have been created that 
fall into group 2, hence serve the need for the power pro¬ 
cess. Advertising and marketing techniques have been de¬ 
veloped 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 80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for 
the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial 
needs created by the advertising and marketing industry 
[11], and through surrogate activities. 

64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majo¬ 
rity, these artificial forms of the power process are insuffi¬ 
cient. A theme that appears repeatediy 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 “anomic” 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 mo¬ 
dern life. [12] 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 satis¬ 
factory fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy 
the need for the power process. (See paragraph 41.) That 
need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have 
some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, 
status, revenge, etc. 

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 po- 


7 



sition to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most wor¬ 
kers are someone else’s employee and, as we pointed out 
in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they 
are told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even most 
people who are in business for themselves have only limi¬ 
ted autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small-business 
persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by 
excessive government regulation. Some of these regula¬ 
tions are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part go¬ 
vernment 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 appli¬ 
cants for franchises to take a personality test that is de¬ 
signed to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initia¬ 
tive, 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. 

66. Today people live more by virtue of what the sys¬ 
tem 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 [13], and techniques prescri¬ 
bed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance 
of success. 

67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society 
through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of au¬ 
tonomy 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 make them. 
(“We live in a world in which relatively few people — 
maybe 500 or 1,000 — make the important decisions”, 
Philip B. Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by An¬ 
thony Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives 
depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power 
plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is 
allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into 
our air; on how skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; 
whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions 
made by government economists or corporation execu¬ 
tives; and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position 
to secure themselves against these threats to more [than] 
a very limited extent. The individual’s search for security 
is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of power¬ 
lessness. 

68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically 
less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shor¬ 
ter life expectancy; hence modern man suffers from less, 
not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for 
human beings. But psychological security does not closely 
correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL se¬ 
cure is not so much objective security as a sense of confi¬ 


dence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive 
man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight 
in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no cer¬ 
tainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means 
helpless against the things that threaten him. The mo¬ 
dern individual on the other hand is threatened by many 
things against which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, car¬ 
cinogens in food, environmental pollution, war, increasing 
taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, na¬ 
tionwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt 
his way of life. 

69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against 
some of the things that threaten him; disease for example. 
But he can accept the risk of disease stoically. It is part of 
the nature of things, it is no one’s fault, unless it is the fault 
of some imaginary, impersonal demon. But threats to the 
modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They are not 
the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other 
persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable 
to influence. Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated 
and angry. 

70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his se¬ 
curity in his own hands (either as an individual or as a 
member of a SMALL group) whereas the security of mo¬ 
dern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that 
are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to 
influence them. So modern man’s drive for security tends 
to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter 
etc.) his security is assured at the cost of only trivial ef¬ 
fort, whereas in other areas he CANNOT attain security. 
(The foregoing greatly simplifies the real situation, but it 
does indicate in a rough, general way how the condition 
of modern man differs from that of primitive man.) 

71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that 
are necessarily frustrated in modern life, hence fall into 
group 3. One may become angry, but modern society can¬ 
not permit fighting. In many situations it does not even 
permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one 
may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel 
slowly, but one generally has no choice but to move with 
the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals. One may 
want to do one’s work in a different way, but usually one 
can work only according to the rules laid down by one’s 
employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is 
strapped down by a network of rules and regulations (ex¬ 
plicit or implicit) that frustrate many of his impulses and 
thus interfere with the power process. Most of these regu¬ 
lations cannot be dispensed with, because they are neces¬ 
sary for the functioning of industrial society. 

72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely per¬ 
missive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning 
of the system we can generally do what we please. We 
can believe in any religion (as long as it does not encou¬ 
rage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can 
go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice 
“safe sex”). We can do anything we like as long as it is 
UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the sys¬ 
tem tends increasingly to regulate our behavior. 

73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules 
and not only by the government. Control is often exer- 


8 



cised through indirect coercion or through psychological 
pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than 
the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large 
organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to ma¬ 
nipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not 
limited to “commercials” and advertisements, and some¬ 
times it is not even consciously intended as propaganda 
by the people who make it. For instance, the content of 
entertainment programming is a powerful form of propa¬ 
ganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law 
that says we have to go to work every day and follow our 
employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us 
from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from 
going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is 
very little wild country left, and there is room in the eco¬ 
nomy for only a limited number of small business owners. 
Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s em¬ 
ployee. 

74. We suggest that modern man’s obsession with lon¬ 
gevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual at¬ 
tractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unful¬ 
fillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the po¬ 
wer process. The “mid-lffe crisis” also is such a symptom. 
So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly 
common in modern society but almost unheard-of in pri¬ 
mitive societies. 

75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. 
The needs and purposes of one stage having been ful¬ 
filled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on 
to the next stage. A young man goes through the power 
process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for 
fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In 
young women the process is more complex, with greater 
emphasis on social power; we won’t discuss that here.) 
This phase having been successfully passed through, the 
young man has no reluctance about settling down to the 
responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some mo¬ 
dern people indefinitely postpone having children because 
they are too busy seeking some kind of “fulfillment.” We 
suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate expe¬ 
rience of the power process — with real goals instead 
of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, ha¬ 
ving successfully raised his children, going through the 
power process by providing them with the physical neces¬ 
sities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and 
he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) 
and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are 
disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and 
death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend 
trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance 
and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment re¬ 
sulting from the fact that they have never put their physi¬ 
cal powers to any practical use, have never gone through 
the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It 
is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for 
practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but 
the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his 
body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the 
man whose need for the power process has been satisfied 
during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of 


that life. 

76. In response to the arguments of this section so¬ 
meone will say, “Society must find a way to give people 
the opportunity to 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 them. 
What they need is to find or make their own opportuni¬ 
ties. As long as the system GIVES them their opportunities 
it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy they must 
get off that leash. 


HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST 

77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suf¬ 
fers from psychological problems. Some people even pro¬ 
fess to be quite satisfied with society as it is. We now dis¬ 
cuss some of the reasons why people differ so greatly in 
their response to modern society. 

78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength 
of the drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for 
power may have relatively little need to go through the 
power process, or at least relatively little need for auto¬ 
nomy 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.) 

79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in 
pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power pro¬ 
cess. For example, those who have an unusually strong 
drive for social status may spend their whole lives clim¬ 
bing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that 
game. 

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 the shiny new toys that the 
marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they al¬ 
ways feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is 
large, and their cravings are frustrated. 

81. Some people have low susceptibility to adverti¬ 
sing and marketing techniques. These are the people who 
aren’t interested in money. Material acquisition does not 
serve their need for the power process. 

82. People who have medium susceptibility to adverti¬ 
sing 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, ta¬ 
king a second job, earning promotions, etc.). Thus mate¬ 
rial 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 po¬ 
wer 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 para¬ 
graphs 80-82 because we have assumed that the desire 


9 



for material acquisition is entirely a creation of the ad¬ 
vertising and marketing industry. Of course it’s not that 
simple. [11] 

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 per¬ 
sonal 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 had gone 
through the power process. This phenomenon was exploi¬ 
ted by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our society uses 
it too, though less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was 
an irritant to the U.S. (goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. 
invaded Panama (effort) and punished Noriega (attain¬ 
ment of goal). Thus the U.S. went through the power pro¬ 
cess and many Americans, because of their identification 
with the U.S., experienced the power process vicariously. 
Hence the widespread public approval of the Panama in¬ 
vasion; it gave people a sense of power. [15] We see the 
same phenomenon in armies, corporations, political par¬ 
ties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological 
movements. In particular, leftist movements tend to at¬ 
tract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for po¬ 
wer. But for most people identification with a large organi¬ 
zation or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need 
for power. 

84. Another way in which people satisfy their need 
for the power process is through surrogate activities. As 
we explained in paragraphs 38-40, a surrogate activity 
is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal 
that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfill¬ 
ment” 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, hit¬ 
ting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete se¬ 
ries 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 impor¬ 
tance 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 ef¬ 
fort 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 in¬ 


vestment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent 
forces acting toward the continual development and per¬ 
fecting of the system, with negative consequences for in¬ 
dividual freedom (see paragraph 131). 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 87-92). 

85. In this section we have explained how many people 
in modern society do satisfy their need for the power pro¬ 
cess 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 po¬ 
wer in that way, are exceptional personalities. Others are 
not fully satisfied with surrogate activities or by identifi¬ 
cation with an organization (see paragraphs 41, 64). In 
the second place, too much control is imposed by the sys¬ 
tem through explicit regulation or through socialization, 
which results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in frustra¬ 
tion due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and 
the necessity of restraining too many impulses. 

86. But even if most people in industrial-technological 
society were well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed 
to that form of society, because (among other reasons) we 
consider it demeaning to fulfill one’s need for the power 
process through surrogate activities or through identifica¬ 
tion with an organization, rather than through pursuit of 
real goals. 


THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS 

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 “be¬ 
nefit humanity.” But it is easy to see that neither of these 
can be the principal motive of most scientists. As for “cu¬ 
riosity,” 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 ma¬ 
thematician or an entomologist curious about the proper¬ 
ties 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 be¬ 
cause 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 exerci¬ 
sed their abilities in an interesting way but in some nons- 
cientific 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 


10 



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 “cu¬ 
riosity” explanation for the scientists’ motive just doesn’t 
stand up. 

88. The “benefit of humanity” explanation doesn’t work 
any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable rela¬ 
tion to the welfare of the human race most of archaeo¬ 
logy 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 pol¬ 
lution. 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 acci¬ 
dents? 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. 

89. The same is true of scientists generally. With pos¬ 
sible 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. 

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 79) 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 cra¬ 
ving for goods and services. Thus science is not a PURE 
surrogate activity. But it is in large part a surrogate acti¬ 
vity. 

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 83). 

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 of ficials and corporation 
executives who provide the funds for research. 


THE NATURE OF FREEDOM 

93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological 
society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it 
from progressively narrowing the sphere of human free¬ 
dom. But, because “freedom” is a word that can be inter¬ 
preted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind 
of freedom we are concerned with. 

94. By “freedom” we mean the opportunity to go 
through the power process, with real goals not the artifi¬ 
cial goals of surrogate activities, and without interference, 
manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from 
any large organization. Freedom means being in control 
(either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) 
of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence: food, clo¬ 
thing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there 
may be in one’s environment. Freedom means having po¬ 
wer; not the power to control other people but the power 
to control the circumstances of one’s own life. One does 
not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organi¬ 
zation) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, 
tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. 
It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permis¬ 
siveness (see paragraph 72). 

95. It is said that we live in a free society because 
we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed 
rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The 
degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is de¬ 
termined more by the economic and technological struc¬ 
ture of the society than by its laws or its form of govern¬ 
ment. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England 
were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian 
Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading 
about these societies one gets the impression that they al¬ 
lowed far more personal freedom than our society does. 
In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms 
for enforcing the ruler’s will: There were no modern, well- 
organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communi¬ 
cations, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of informa¬ 
tion about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was rela¬ 
tively easy to evade control. 

96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for 
example that of freedom of the press. We certainly don’t 
mean to knock that right; it is very important tool for li¬ 
miting concentration of political power and for keeping 
those who do have political power in line by publicly ex¬ 
posing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the 
press is of very little use to the average citizen as an in¬ 
dividual. The mass media are mostly under the control 
of large organizations that are integrated into the system. 
Anyone who has a little money can have something prin¬ 
ted, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such 
way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast 
volume of material put out by the media, hence it will 
have no practical effect. To make an impression on society 
with words is therefore almost impossible for most indivi¬ 
duals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. If we 
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 been accepted and 


11 



published, they probably would not have attracted many 
readers, because it’s more fun to watch the entertainment 
put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even ff 
these writings had had many readers, most of these rea¬ 
ders would soon have forgotten what they had read as 
their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which 
the media expose them. In order to get our message before 
the public with some chance of making a lasting impres¬ 
sion, we’ve had to kill people. 

97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but 
they do not serve to guarantee much more than what 
might be called the bourgeois conception of freedom. Ac¬ 
cording to the bourgeois conception, a “free” man is essen¬ 
tially an element of a social machine and has only a cer¬ 
tain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms 
that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine 
more than those of the individual. Thus the bourgeois’s 
“free” man has economic freedom because that promotes 
growth and progress; he has freedom of the press because 
public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; 
he has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the 
whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This 
was clearly the attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people 
deserved liberty only if they used it to promote progress 
(progress as conceived by the bourgeois). Other bourgeois 
thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere 
means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, “Chinese Politi¬ 
cal Thought in the Twentieth Century,” page 202, explains 
the philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han-min: 
“An individual is granted rights because he is a member 
of society and his community life requires such rights. By 
community Hu meant the whole society of the nation.” 
And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum 
Chang (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party 
in China) freedom had to be used in the interest of the 
state and of the people as a whole. But what kind of free¬ 
dom does one have if one can use it only as someone else 
prescribes? FC’s conception of freedom is not that of Bo¬ 
livar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble 
with such theorists is that they have made the develop¬ 
ment and application of social theories their surrogate ac¬ 
tivity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the 
needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people 
who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which 
the theories are imposed. 

98. One more point to be made in this section: It should 
not be assumed that a person has enough freedom just 
because he SAYS he has enough. Freedom is restricted in 
part by psychological controls of which people are uncons¬ 
cious, and moreover many people’s ideas of what consti¬ 
tutes freedom are governed more by social convention 
than by their real needs. For example, it’s likely that many 
leftists of the oversocialized type would say that most 
people, including themselves, are socialized too little ra¬ 
ther than too much, yet the oversocialized leftist pays a 
heavy psychological price for his high level of socializa¬ 
tion. 


SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY 

99. Think of history as being the sum of two compo¬ 
nents: an erratic component that consists of unpredictable 
events that follow no discernible pattern, and a regular 
component that consists of long-term historical trends. 
Here we are concerned with the long-term trends. 

100. FIRST PRINCIPLE. If a SMALL change is made that 
affects a long-term historical trend, then the effect of that 
change will almost always be transitory — the trend will 
soon revert to its original state. (Example: A reform move¬ 
ment designed to 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 re¬ 
main constant, or to change only slowly with the evolution 
of the society. Normally, a political cleanup will be perma¬ 
nent 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 per¬ 
manent, 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. 

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 direc¬ 
tion; in other words it would not be a long-term trend at 
ah. 

102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is 
sufficiently large to alter permanently a long-term histori¬ 
cal trend, then it will alter the society as a whole. In other 
words, a society is a system in which all parts are inter¬ 
related, and you can’t permanently change any important 
part without changing ah other parts as well. 

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 pre¬ 
dicted in advance. (Unless various other societies have 
passed through the same change and have all experien¬ 
ced the same consequences, in which case one can pre¬ 
dict on empirical grounds that another society that passes 
through the same change will be like to experience similar 
consequences.) 

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. 

105. The third and fourth principles result from the 
complexity of human societies. A change in human be¬ 
havior will affect the economy of a society and its physi¬ 
cal 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, un¬ 
predictable ways; and so forth. The network of causes and 
effects is far too complex to be untangled and understood. 

106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and 
rationally choose the form of their society. Societies de¬ 
velop through processes of social evolution that are not 
under rational human control. 


12 



107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other 
four. 

108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally spea¬ 
king an attempt at social reform either acts in the direction 
in which the society is developing anyway (so that it me¬ 
rely accelerates a change that would have occurred in any 
case) or else it has only a transitory effect, so that the so¬ 
ciety 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 ar¬ 
med uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the 
second principle, a revolution never changes only one as¬ 
pect 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 so¬ 
ciety, it never works out as planned. 

109. The American Revolution does not provide a coun¬ 
terexample. The American “Revolution” was not a revo¬ 
lution in our sense of the word, but a war of indepen¬ 
dence followed by a rather far-reaching political reform. 
The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of de¬ 
velopment 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 prac¬ 
ticing 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 popula¬ 
ted predominantly by people of British descent ended up 
with systems of representative democracy essentially si¬ 
milar 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 lffe today would not have been 
significantly different. Maybe we would have had somew¬ 
hat 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. 

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 thin¬ 
king, 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 conciu- 
sion that conflicts with them one should carefully reexa¬ 


mine one’s thinking and retain the conclusion only if one 
has good, solid reasons for doing so. 

INDUSTRIAL-TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY CANNOT BE 
REFORMED 

111. The foregoing principles help to show how hope¬ 
lessly difficult it would be to reform the industrial system 
in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narro¬ 
wing our sphere of freedom. There has been a consistent 
tendency, going back at least to the Industrial Revolu¬ 
tion for technology to strengthen the system at a high 
cost in individual freedom and local autonomy. Hence 
any change designed to protect freedom from technology 
would be contrary to a fundamental trend in the develop¬ 
ment of our society. Consequently, such a change either 
would be a transitory one — soon swamped by the tide 
of history — or, if large enough to be permanent would 
alter the nature of our whole society. This by the first 
and second principles. Moreover, since society would be 
altered in a way that could not be predicted in advance 
(third principle) there would be great risk. Changes large 
enough to make a lasting difference in favor of freedom 
would not be initiated because it would be realized that 
they would gravely disrupt the system. So any attempts at 
reform would be too timid to be effective. Even if changes 
large enough to make a lasting difference were initiated, 
they would be retracted when their disruptive effects be¬ 
came apparent. Thus, permanent changes in favor of free¬ 
dom could be brought about only by persons prepared to 
accept radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of 
the entire system. In other words by revolutionaries, not 
reformers. 

112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacri¬ 
ficing the supposed benefits of technology will suggest 
naive schemes for some new form of society that would re¬ 
concile freedom with technology. Apart from the fact that 
people who make such suggestions seldom propose any 
practical means by which the new form of society could 
be set up in the first place, it follows from the fourth prin¬ 
ciple that even if the new form of society could be once 
established, it either would collapse or would give results 
very different from those expected. 

113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly 
improbable that any way of changing society could be 
found that would reconcile freedom with modern tech¬ 
nology. In the next few sections we will give more speci¬ 
fic reasons for concluding that freedom and technological 
progress are incompatible. 


RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS 
UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 

114. As explained in paragraphs 65-67, 70-73, modern 
man is strapped down by a network of rules and regula¬ 
tions, and his fate depends on the actions of persons re¬ 
mote 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 technolo¬ 
gically advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate hu¬ 
man behavior closely in order to function. At work people 


13 



have to do what they are told to do, otherwise production 
would be thrown into chaos. Bureaucracies HAVE TO be 
run according to rigid rules. To allow any substantial per¬ 
sonal discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would disrupt 
the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to dif¬ 
ferences in the way individual bureaucrats exercised their 
discretion. It is true that some restrictions on our freedom 
could be eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the re¬ 
gulation 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 ave¬ 
rage person. It may be, however, that formal regulations 
will tend increasingly to be replaced by psychological tools 
that make us want to do what the system requires of us. 
(Propaganda [14], educational techniques, “mental heal¬ 
th” programs, etc.) 

115. The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways 
that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of 
human behavior. For example, the system needs scientists, 
mathematicians and engineers. It can’t function without 
them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in 
these fields. It isn’t natural for an adolescent human being 
to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in 
study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in ac¬ 
tive contact with the real world. Among primitive peoples 
the things that children are trained to do tend to be in rea¬ 
sonable harmony with natural human impulses. Among 
the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in 
active outdoor pursuits — just the sort of thing that boys 
like. But in our society children are pushed into studying 
technical subjects, which most do grudgingly. 

116. Because of the constant pressure that the system 
exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual in¬ 
crease in the number of people who cannot or will not ad¬ 
just to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth gang 
members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical envi¬ 
ronmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various 
kinds. 

117. In any technologically advanced society the indivi¬ 
dual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally 
cannot influence to any great extent. A technological so¬ 
ciety cannot be broken down into small, autonomous com¬ 
munities, because 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 each 
of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one- 
millionth share in making the decision. What usually hap¬ 
pens in practice is that decisions are made by public offi¬ 
cials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, 
but even when the public votes on a decision the number 
of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one 
individual to be significant. [17] Thus most individuals 
are unable to influence measurably the major decisions 
that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to re¬ 
medy this in a technologically advanced society. The sys¬ 
tem tries to “solve” this problem by using propaganda to 
make people WANT the decisions that have been made for 
them, but even if this “solution” were completely success¬ 


ful in making people feel better, it would be demeaning. 

118. Conservatives and some others advocate more “lo¬ 
cal autonomy.” Local communities once did have auto¬ 
nomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less pos¬ 
sible as local communities become more enmeshed with 
and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, 
computer networks, highway systems, the mass communi¬ 
cations media, the modern health care system. Also ope¬ 
rating against autonomy is the fact that technology ap¬ 
plied in one location often affects people at other locations 
far way. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may 
contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downs¬ 
tream, and the greenhouse effect affects the whole world. 

119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy 
human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to 
be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has no¬ 
thing to do with the political or social ideology that may 
pretend to guide the technological system. It is not the 
fault of capitalism and it is not the fault of socialism. It 
is the fault of technology, because the system is guided 
not by ideology but by technical necessity. [18] Of course 
the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally 
speaking it does this only to the extend that it is to the 
advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the sys¬ 
tem that are paramount, not those of the human being. 
For example, the system provides people with food be¬ 
cause the system couldn’t function if everyone starved; it 
attends to people’s psychological needs whenever it can 
CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn’t function if too 
many people became depressed or rebellious. But the sys¬ 
tem, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant 
pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs 
of the system. To much waste accumulating? The govern¬ 
ment, the media, the educational system, environmenta¬ 
lists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda 
about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus 
of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask 
whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the 
bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. 
When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical 
advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks 
whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in 
this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must 
bow to technical necessity, and for good reason: If human 
needs were put before technical necessity there would be 
economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse. 
The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined 
largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in 
accord with the needs of the system and does so without 
showing signs of stress. 

120. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and 
for autonomy within the system are no better than a joke. 
For example, one company, instead of having each of its 
employees assemble only one section of a catalogue, had 
each assemble a whole catalogue, and this was supposed 
to give them a sense of purpose and achievement. Some 
companies have tried to give their employees more auto¬ 
nomy in their work, but for practical reasons this usually 
can be done only to a very limited extent, and in any case 
employees are never given autonomy as to ultimate goals 


14 



— their “autonomous” efforts can never be directed to¬ 
ward goals that they select personally, but only toward 
their employer’s goals, such as the survival and growth of 
the company. Any company would soon go out of business 
if it permitted its employees to act otherwise. Similarly, in 
any enterprise within a socialist system, workers must di¬ 
rect their efforts toward the goals of the enterprise, other¬ 
wise the enterprise will not serve its purpose as part of the 
system. Once again, for purely technical reasons it is not 
possible for most individuals or small groups to have much 
autonomy in industrial society. Even the small-business 
owner commonly has only limited autonomy. Apart from 
the necessity of government regulation, he is restricted by 
the fact that he must fit into the economic system and 
conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone 
develops a new technology, the small- business person of¬ 
ten has to use that technology whether he wants to or not, 
in order to remain competitive. 

THE ’BAD’ PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SE¬ 
PARATED FROM THE ’GOOD’ PARTS 

121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be 
reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology 
is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on 
one another. You can’t get rid of the “bad” parts of techno¬ 
logy and retain only the “good” parts. Take modern medi¬ 
cine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on 
progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science 
and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require ex¬ 
pensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available 
only by a technologically progressive, economically rich 
society. Clearly you can’t have much Progress in medicine 
without the whole technological system and everything 
that goes with it. 

122. Even if medical progress could be maintained wi¬ 
thout the rest of the technological system, it would by it¬ 
self bring certain evils. Suppose for example that a cure 
for diabetes is discovered. People with a genetic tendency 
to diabetes will then be able to survive and reproduce as 
well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for 
diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout 
the population. (This may be occurring to some extent al¬ 
ready, since diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled 
through use of insulin.) The same thing will happen with 
many other diseases susceptibility to which is affected by 
genetic degradation of the population. The only solution 
will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive gene¬ 
tic engineering of human beings, so that man in the fu¬ 
ture will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, 
or of God (depending on your religious or philosophical 
opinions), but a manufactured product. 

123. If you think that big government interferes in your 
life too much NOW, just wait till the government starts re¬ 
gulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such re¬ 
gulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic 
engineering of human beings, because the consequences 
of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous. 
[19] 

124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk 
about “medical ethics.” But a code of ethics would not 
serve to protect freedom in the face of medical progress; 


it would only make matters worse. A code of ethics appli¬ 
cable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means of 
regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. So¬ 
mebody (probably the upper-middle class, mostly) would 
decide that such and such applications of genetic enginee¬ 
ring were “ethical”, and others were not, so that in effect 
they would be imposing their own values on the genetic 
constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of 
ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the 
majority would be imposing their own values on any mi¬ 
norities who might have a different idea of what consti¬ 
tuted an “ethical” use of genetic engineering. The only 
code of ethics that would truly protect freedom would be 
one that prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human 
beings, and you can be sure that no such code will ever 
be applied in a technological society. No code that redu¬ 
ced genetic engineering to a minor role could stand up for 
long, because the temptation presented by the immense 
power of biotechnology would be irresistible, especially 
since to the majority of people many of its applications 
will seem obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating 
physical and mental diseases, giving people the abilities 
they need to get along in today’s world). Inevitably, gene¬ 
tic engineering will be used extensively, but only in ways 
consistent with the needs of the industrial-technological 
system. [20] 


TECHNOLOGY IS A MORE POWERFUL 
SOCIAL FORCE THAN THE ASPIRATION FOR 
FREEDOOM 

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 en¬ 
croaches 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. 

126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful 
social force than the aspiration for freedom. 

127. A technological advance that appears not to threa¬ 
ten 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 


15 



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 ex¬ 
tensively. 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 obliga¬ 
tions: license requirements, driver test, renewing registra¬ 
tion, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly 
payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of moto¬ 
rized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduc¬ 
tion 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 opportuni¬ 
ties, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for 
transportation. Or else they must use public transporta¬ 
tion, 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 conti¬ 
nually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are desi¬ 
gned 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 ne¬ 
cessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new techno¬ 
logy changes society in such a way that people eventually 
find themselves FORCED to use it.) 

128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE conti¬ 
nually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new techni¬ 
cal advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be de¬ 
sirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance 
communications... how could one argue against any of 
these things, or against any other of the innumerable tech¬ 
nical advances that have made modern society? It would 
have been absurd to resist the introduction of the tele¬ 
phone, for example. It offered many advantages and no 
disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, 
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 re¬ 
mote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he 
as an individual has no power to influence. [21] The same 
process will continue in the future. Take genetic enginee¬ 
ring, 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 toge¬ 
ther will make the human being into an engineered pro¬ 
duct rather than a free creation of chance (or of God, or 
whatever, depending on your religious beliefs). 

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 re¬ 
placed 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 be¬ 
comes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to 
the system today if computers, for example, were elimi¬ 
nated.) 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. 

130. Technology advances with great rapidity and 
threatens freedom at many different points at the same 
time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing depen¬ 
dence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda 
and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, 
invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and com¬ 
puters, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to free¬ 
dom 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. 

131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to 
describe all those who perform a specialized task that re¬ 
quires 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 de¬ 
cide in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in 
the case of scientists, but it also appears elsewhere: edu¬ 
cators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations 
do not hesitate to use propaganda[14] or other psycholo¬ 
gical techniques to help them achieve their laudable ends. 
Corporations and government agencies, when they find it 
useful, do not hesitate to collect information about indi¬ 
viduals without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement 
agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitu¬ 
tional rights of suspects and often of completely innocent 
persons, and they do whatever they can do legally (or so¬ 
metimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent those rights. 
Most of these educators, government officials and law offi¬ 
cers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, 
but when these conflict with their work, they usually feel 
that their work is more important. 

132. It is well known that people generally work bet¬ 
ter and more persistently when striving for a reward 
than when attempting to avoid a punishment or negative 
outcome. Scientists and other technicians are motivated 
mainly by the rewards they get through their work. But 
those who oppose technological invasions of freedom are 
working to avoid a negative outcome, consequently there 
are few who work persistently and well at this discoura¬ 
ging task. If reformers ever achieved a signal victory that 
seemed to set up a solid barrier against further erosion of 
freedom through technical progress, most would tend to 


16 



relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits. 
But the scientists would remain busy in their laboratories, 
and technology as it progresses would find ways, in spite 
of any barriers, to exert more and more control over in¬ 
dividuals and make them always more dependent on the 
system. 

133. No social arrangements, whether laws, institu¬ 
tions, customs or ethical codes, can provide permanent 
protection against technology. History shows that all so¬ 
cial arrangements are transitory; they all change or break 
down eventually. But technological advances are perma¬ 
nent within the context of a given civilization. Suppose 
for example that it were possible to arrive at some so¬ 
cial arrangements that would prevent genetic engineering 
from being applied to human beings, or prevent it from 
being applied in such a way as to threaten freedom and di¬ 
gnity. Still, the technology would remain waiting. Sooner 
or later the social arrangement would break down. Proba¬ 
bly sooner, given the pace of change in our society. Then 
genetic engineering would begin to invade our sphere of 
freedom, and this invasion would be irreversible (short 
of a breakdown of technological civilization itself). Any 
illusions about achieving anything permanent through so¬ 
cial arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently 
happening with environmental legislation. A few years 
ago its seemed that there were secure legal barriers pre¬ 
venting at least SOME of the worst forms of environmen¬ 
tal degradation. A change in the political wind, and those 
barriers begin to crumble. 

134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a 
more powerful social force than the aspiration for free¬ 
dom. But this statement requires an important qualifica¬ 
tion. 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 (alie¬ 
nation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psy¬ 
chological 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 re¬ 
volution 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 power¬ 
ful than technology. 

135. In paragraph 125 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 compro¬ 
mises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor gets sick, 
so tha he is unable to defend himself. The weak neigh¬ 
bor 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 wea¬ 
ker 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 reco¬ 
ver from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all of our 
freedom. 


SIMPLER SOCIAL PROBLEMS HAVE PROVED 
INTRACTABLE 

136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible 
to reform the system in such a way as to protect free¬ 
dom 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 
straighfforward. Among other things, the system has fai¬ 
led to stop environmental degradation, political corrup¬ 
tion, drug trafficking or domestic abuse. 

137. Take our environmental problems, for example. 
Here the conflict of values is straightforward: economic 
expedience now versus saving some of our natural re¬ 
sources for our grandchildren. [22] 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 ratio¬ 
nal process, nor is it one that is likely to lead to a timely 
and successful solution to the problem. Major social pro¬ 
blems, 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 compe¬ 
ting groups pursuing their own (usually short-term) self- 
interest [23] arrive (mainly by luck) at some more or less 
stable modus vivendi. In fact, the principles we formula¬ 
ted in paragraphs 100-106 make it seem doubtful that ra¬ 
tional long-term social planning can EVER be successful. 

138. Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a 
very limited capacity for solving even relatively straight¬ 
forward social problems. How then is it going to solve the 
far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling free¬ 
dom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut ma¬ 
terial advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that 
means different things to different people, and its loss is 
easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk. 

139. And note this important difference: It is concei¬ 
vable 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 longterm interest of the system to solve these pro¬ 
blems. But it is NOT in the interest of the system to pre¬ 
serve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, 
it is in the interest of the system to bring human beha¬ 
vior under control to the greatest possible extent. [24] 
Thus, while practical considerations may eventually force 
the system to take a rational, prudent approach to envi¬ 
ronmental 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 opi¬ 
nion. Eminent social scientists (e.g. James Q. Wilson) 
have stressed the importance of “socializing” people more 
effectively. 


17 



REVOLUTION IS EASIER THAN REFORM 

140. We hope we have convinced the reader that the 
system cannot be reformed in such a way as to reconcile 
freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense 
with the industrialtechnological system altogether. This 
implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but 
certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature 
of society. 

141. People tend to assume that because a revolution 
involves a much greater change than reform does, it is 
more difficult to bring about than reform is. Actually, un¬ 
der certain circumstances revolution is much easier than 
reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement can 
inspire an intensity of commitment that a reform move¬ 
ment cannot inspire. A reform movement merely offers 
to solve a particular social problem. A revolutionary mo¬ 
vement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and 
create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal 
for which people will take great risks and make great sa¬ 
crifices. For this reasons it would be much easier to over¬ 
throw the whole technological system than to put effec¬ 
tive, permanent restraints on the development or appli¬ 
cation of any one segment of technology, such as gene¬ 
tic engineering, for example. Not many people will de¬ 
vote themselves with single-minded passion to imposing 
and maintaining restraints on genetic engineering, but un¬ 
der suitable conditions large numbers of people may de¬ 
vote themselves passionately to a revolution against the 
industrial-technological system. As we noted in paragraph 
132, reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of tech¬ 
nology would be working to avoid a negative outcome. 
But revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward — 
fulfillment of their revolutionary vision — and therefore 
work harder and more persistently than reformers do. 

142. Reform is always restrained by the fear of painful 
consequences if changes go too far. But once a revolutio¬ 
nary fever has taken hold of a society, people are willing 
to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of their revo¬ 
lution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian 
Revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority 
of the population is really committed to the revolution, 
but this minority is sufficiently large and active so that it 
becomes the dominant force in society. We will have more 
to say about revolution in paragraphs 180-205. 


CONTROL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR 

143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized so¬ 
cieties 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 ano¬ 
ther. Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, exces¬ 
sive labor, environmental pollution), some are psycholo¬ 
gical (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 va¬ 
ried 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 corrup¬ 
tion, 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 evo¬ 
lution) replaced by some more efficient form of society. 

[25] 

144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain li¬ 
mits on the development of societies. People could be pu¬ 
shed only so far and no farther. But today this may be 
changing, because modern technology is developing ways 
of modifying human beings. 

145. Imagine a society that subjects people to condi¬ 
tions 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 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the in¬ 
creasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME 
conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of remo¬ 
ving the conditions that make people depressed, modern 
society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antide¬ 
pressants are a means of modifying an individual’s inter¬ 
nal 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.) 

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. 

147. To start with, there are the techniques of sur¬ 
veillance. 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 in¬ 
dividuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the 
effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). 

[26] 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 psycho¬ 
logical tool of the system, possibly even when it is dis¬ 
hing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertain¬ 
ment provides modern man with an essential means of es¬ 
cape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can for¬ 
get stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primi¬ 
tive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite 
content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, be¬ 
cause they are at peace with themselves and their world. 
But most modern people must be constantly occupied or 


18 



entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fid¬ 
gety, uneasy, irritable. 

148. Other techniques strike deeper than the foregoing. 
Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a ki¬ 
d’s behind when he doesn’t know his lessons and patting 
him on the head when he does know them. It is beco¬ 
ming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s deve¬ 
lopment. Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had 
great success in motivating children to study, and psycho¬ 
logical 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 ac¬ 
cept 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 beha¬ 
vior 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 be¬ 
haves as the system requires. In that sense the system 
is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brain¬ 
washes 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 ques¬ 
tion 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. 

149. Presumably, research will continue to increase the 
effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling 
human behavior. But we think it is unlikely that psycholo¬ 
gical 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 al¬ 
ready 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. 

150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial so¬ 
ciety 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 consi¬ 
derable proportion of the system’s economic and envi¬ 
ronmental problems result from the way human beings 


behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, 
rebellion; children who won’t study, youth gangs, ille¬ 
gal 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, sa¬ 
botage, 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. 

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 condi¬ 
tions is disruption of the power process.) If the systems 
succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human beha¬ 
vior to assure its own survival, a new watershed in hu¬ 
man 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 
143, 144), 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 ad¬ 
justed to suit the needs of the system. [27] 

152. Generally speaking, technological control over hu¬ 
man behavior will probably not be introduced with a to¬ 
talitarian intention or even through a conscious desire 
to restrict human freedom. [28] Each new step in the 
assertion of control over the human mind will be ta¬ 
ken as a rational response to a problem that faces so¬ 
ciety, such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate 
or inducing young people to study science and enginee¬ 
ring. In many cases there will be a humanitarian justifica¬ 
tion. 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 manipu¬ 
lated 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. 

153. Thus control over human behavior will be intro¬ 
duced 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, be¬ 
cause 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 para¬ 
graph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many 
good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race 
hatred. [14] Sex education is obviously useful, yet the ef- 


19 



feet of sex education (to the extent that it is successful) is 
to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the fa¬ 
mily and put it into the hands of the state as represented 
by the public school system. 

154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that in¬ 
creases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a cri¬ 
minal, and suppose some sort of gene therapy can remove 
this trait. [29] Of course most parents whose children pos¬ 
sess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It would 
be inhumane to do otherwise, since the child would pro¬ 
bably 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 condi¬ 
tions put on people, to which many cannot or will not 
adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove potential cri¬ 
minal tendencies is at least in part a way of re-engineering 
people so that they suit the requirements of the system. 

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. 

156. In paragraph 127 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 tech¬ 
nology tends to change society in such a way that it be¬ 
comes difficult or impossible for an individual to func¬ 
tion 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 enthu¬ 
siastic 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 spea¬ 
king, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or sup¬ 
pose a biological treatment is discovered that, without un¬ 
desirable side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychologi¬ 
cal stress from which so many people suffer in our society. 
If large numbers of people choose to undergo the treat¬ 
ment, then the general level of stress in society will be re¬ 
duced, 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 hap¬ 
pened 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 en¬ 
tertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use of mass enter¬ 
tainment is “optional”: No law requires us to watch tele¬ 
vision, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass en¬ 
tertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on 
which most of us have become dependent. Everyone com¬ 


plains about the trashiness of television, but almost eve¬ 
ryone 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 re¬ 
cently in human histoy 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 stressproducing pressure 
on us as it does. 

157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is li¬ 
kely that technology will eventually acquire something ap¬ 
proaching 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 hun¬ 
ger, 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 stimu¬ 
lation. 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. 

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 hu¬ 
man 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 pro¬ 
blems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances 
will be made in the control of human behavior. 

L59. 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 intro¬ 
duced through a long sequence of small advances, there 
will be no rational and effective public resistance. (See 
paragraphs 127, 132, 153.) 

160. To those who think that all this sounds like science 
fiction, we point out that yesterday’s science fiction is to¬ 
day’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 ra¬ 
dically as his environment and way of life have been. 


HUMAN RACE AT A CROSSROADS 

161. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one 
thing to develop in the laboratory a series of psychologi¬ 
cal or biological techniques for manipulating human beha¬ 
vior and quite another to integrate these techniques into a 


20 



functioning social system. The latter problem is the more 
difficult of the two. For example, while the techniques of 
educational psychology doubtless work quite well in the 
“lab schools” where they are developed, it is not neces¬ 
sarily easy to apply them effectively throughout our edu¬ 
cational system. We all know what many of our schools 
are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and guns 
away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques 
for making them into computer nerds. Thus, in spite of 
all its technical advances relating to human behavior, the 
system to date has not been impressively successful in 
controlling human beings. The people whose behavior is 
fairly well under the control of the system are those of the 
type that might be called “bourgeois.” But there are gro¬ 
wing numbers of people who in one way or another are 
rebels against the system: welfare leaches, youth gangs, 
cultists, satanists, nazis, radical environmentalists, militia¬ 
men, etc. 

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 acqui¬ 
ring sufficient control over human behavior quickly en¬ 
ough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break 
down. We think the issue will most likely be resolved wi¬ 
thin the next several decades, say 40 to 100 years. 

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, in¬ 
cluding human beings and all other important organisms. 
The system may become a unitary, monolithic organiza¬ 
tion, 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, be¬ 
cause individuals and small groups will be impotent vis- 
a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology 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 proba¬ 
bly will have only very limited freedom, because their be¬ 
havior 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 cer¬ 
tain fairly narrow limits. 

164. Don’t imagine that the systems will stop develo¬ 
ping 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 dif¬ 
ficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing. Survi¬ 
val is not the principal motive for extending control. As we 
explained in paragraphs 87-90, technicians and scientists 
carry on their work largely as a surrogate activity; that is, 
they satisfy their need for power by solving technical pro¬ 
blems. They will continue to do this with unabated enthu¬ 
siasm, 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 deve¬ 
lopment. For the “good of humanity,” of course. 

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 espeeially) who will be anxious to get the 
factories running again. 

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 op¬ 
poses technology and the industrial system. Such an ideo¬ 
logy can become the basis for a revolution against indus¬ 
trial 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, tech¬ 
nical books burned, etc. 


HUMAN SUFFERING 

167. The industrial system will not break down purely 
as a result of revolutionary action. It will not be vulne¬ 
rable to revolutionary attack unless its own internal pro¬ 
blems of development lead it into very serious difficulties. 
So if the system breaks down it will do so either sponta¬ 
neously, 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 popula¬ 
tion has become so overblown that it cannot even feed 
itself any longer without advanced technology. Even if the 
breakdown is gradual enough so that reduction of the po¬ 
pulation can occur more through lowering of the birth rate 
than through elevation of the death rate, the process of de¬ 
industrialization 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, 


21 



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 di¬ 
sastrous 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. 

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. 

169. In the third place, it is not at all certain that sur¬ 
vival of the system will lead to less suffering than break¬ 
down of the system would. The system has already cau¬ 
sed, 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 coun¬ 
tries of the West (see paragraphs 44, 45). No one knows 
what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the green¬ 
house effect and other environmental problems that can¬ 
not 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? 

170. “Oh!” say the technophiles, “Science is going to 
fix all that! We will conquer famine, eliminate psychologi¬ 
cal suffering, make everybody healthy and happy!” Yeah, 
sure. That’s what they said 200 years ago. The Indus¬ 
trial 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 intro¬ 
duced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other 
changes, most of which are impossible to predict (para¬ 
graph 103). 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 ter¬ 
ribly troubled, even more so than the present one. 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 in¬ 
creased stress and aggression. This is merely one example 
of the PREDICTABLE problems that will arise. We empha¬ 
size that, as past experience has shown, technical progress 
will lead to other new problems that CANNOT be predic¬ 
ted in advance (paragraph 103). In fact, ever since the 
Industrial Revolution, technology has been creating new 
problems for society far more rapidly than it has been sol¬ 
ving 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 mean¬ 
time 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. Tech¬ 
nology has gotten the human race into a fix from which 
there is not likely to be any easy escape. 


THE FUTURE 

171. But suppose now that industrial society does sur¬ 
vive the next several decades and that the bugs do even¬ 
tually get worked out of the system, so that it functions 
smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider 
several possibilities. 

172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists 
succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all 
things better than human beings can do them. In that case 
presumably all work will be done by vast, highly orga¬ 
nized systems of machines and no human effort will be 
necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines 
might be permitted to make all of their own decisions wi¬ 
thout human oversight, or else human control over the 
machines might be retained. 

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their 
own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the 
results, because it is impossible to guess how such ma¬ 
chines might behave. We only point out that the fate of 
the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. 
It might be argued that the human race would never be 
foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. 
But we are suggesting neither that the human race would 
voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the 
machines would willfully seize power. What we do sug¬ 
gest is that the human race might easily permit itself to 
drift into a position of such dependence on the machines 
that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of 
the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that 
face it become more and more complex and as machines 
become more and more intelligent, people will let ma¬ 
chines make more and more of their decisions for them, 
simply because machine-made decisions will bring better 
results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be 
reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the sys¬ 
tem running will be so complex that human beings will be 
incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the 
machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able 
to just turn the machine off, because they will be so de¬ 
pendent on them that turning them off would amount to 
suicide. 


22 



174. On the other hand it is possible that human control 
over the machines may be retained. In that case the ave¬ 
rage man may have control over certain private machines 
of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, 
but control over large systems of machines will be in the 
hands of a tiny elite — just as it is today, but with two dif¬ 
ferences. Due to improved techniques the 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 hu¬ 
manity. 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, lea¬ 
ving 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 condi¬ 
tions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him 
busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied un¬ 
dergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life 
will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologi¬ 
cally 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 en¬ 
gineered 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. 

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 impos¬ 
sible to get work, because for intellectual or psychologi¬ 
cal reasons they cannot acquire the level of training ne¬ 
cessary 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 concentra¬ 
ted 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 po¬ 
wer 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 competi¬ 
tion 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 163). 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. 

176. One can envision scenarios that incorporate as¬ 
pects 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 impor¬ 
tance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being 
given relatively unimportant work. It has been sugges¬ 
ted, 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. 

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 pala¬ 
table than the ones we’ve just described. It is overwhel¬ 
mingly 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 preser¬ 
ved 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 impor¬ 
tant organisms will exist as we know them today, because 
once you start modifying organisms through genetic engi¬ 
neering 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. 

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 spec¬ 
trum of environments to which natural selection has adap¬ 
ted the human race physically and psychologically. If man 
is not adjusted to this new environment by being artifi¬ 
cially 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. 

179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking sys¬ 
tem and take the consequences. 


23 



STRATEGY 

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. 

181. As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks 
for the present are to promote social stress and instabi¬ 
lity in industrial society and to develop and propagate an 
ideology that opposes technology and the industrial sys¬ 
tem. 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. Meanw¬ 
hile, 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. 

182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Re¬ 
volutions 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 revolutiona¬ 
ries 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. 

183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic sup¬ 
port, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; 
it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST some¬ 
thing. 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). 

184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to techno¬ 
logy 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 environmen¬ 
talists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and 
opposes technology. [30] 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 Indus¬ 
trial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature 
become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on na¬ 
ture 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 preindustrial 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 na¬ 
ture) . 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 advan¬ 
ced technology and rapid communications will limit the 
capacity of governments or other large organizations to 
control local communities. 

185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating 
industrial society — well, you can’t eat your cake and have 
it too. To gain one thing you have to sacrifice another. 

186. Most people hate psychological conflict. For this 
reason they avoid doing any serious thinking about diffi¬ 
cult social issues, and they like to have such issues pre¬ 
sented to them in simple, black-and-white terms: TFIIS is 
all good and THAT is all bad. The revolutionary ideology 
should therefore be developed on two levels. 

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 appre¬ 
ciation 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 inten¬ 
tionally 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 any¬ 
thing else that would destroy the intellectual respectabi¬ 
lity of the ideology. 

188. On a second level, the ideology should be propa¬ 
gated in a simplified form that will enable the unthin¬ 
king 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 thoughfful and rational type. Cheap, intemperate pro¬ 
paganda sometimes achieves impressive short-term gains, 


24 



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, fi¬ 
ckle mob who will change their attitude as soon as so¬ 
meone 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 de¬ 
termine which will become dominant when the old world¬ 
view goes under. 

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 [31], the task of revolutiona¬ 
ries 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 ma¬ 
jority support to the extent that this can be done without 
weakening the core of seriously committed people. 

190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabi¬ 
lize 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 of¬ 
ficials, etc.). It should NOT be drawn between the revo¬ 
lutionaries 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. Ei¬ 
ther approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a 
matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising in¬ 
dustry 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. 

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 impor¬ 
tant 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 techno¬ 
logical 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 technologi¬ 
cal power-elite. They want there to be many black go¬ 
vernment officials, scientists, corporation executives and 
so forth. In this way they are helping to absorb the Afri¬ 
can American subculture into the technological system. 


Generally speaking, one should encourage only those so¬ 
cial conflicts that can be fitted into the framework of the 
conflicts of power-elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs 
nature. 

192. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT 
through militant advocacy of minority rights (see para¬ 
graphs 21, 29). Instead, the revolutionaries should em¬ 
phasize that although minorities do suffer more or less 
disadvantage, this disadvantage is of peripheral signifi¬ 
cance. Our real enemy is the industrial- technological sys¬ 
tem, and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinc¬ 
tions are of no importance. 

193. The kind of revolution we have in mind will not 
necessarily involve an armed uprising against any govern¬ 
ment. It may or may not involve physical violence, but it 
will not be a POLITICAL revolution. Its focus will be on 
technology and economics, not politics. [32] 

194. Probably the revolutionaries should even AVOID 
assuming political power, whether by legal or illegal 
means, until the industrial system is stressed to the dan¬ 
ger point and has proved itself to be a failure in the eyes 
of most people. Suppose for example that some “green” 
party should win control of the United States Congress 
in an election. In order to avoid betraying or watering 
down their own ideology they would have to take vigrous 
measures to turn economic growth into economic shrin¬ 
kage. To the average man the results would appear di¬ 
sastrous: There would be massive unemployment, shor¬ 
tages of commodities, etc. Even if the grosser ill effects 
could be avoided through superhumanly skillful manage¬ 
ment, still people would have to begin giving up the luxu¬ 
ries to which they have become addicted. Dissatisfaction 
would grow, the “green” party would be voted out o,f off- 
fice and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe 
setback. For this reason the revolutionaries should not try 
to acquire political power until the system has gotten it¬ 
self into such a mess that any hardships will be seen as 
resulting from the failures of the industrial system itself 
and not from the policies of the revolutionaries. The revo¬ 
lution against technology will probably have to be a revo¬ 
lution by outsiders, a revolution from below and not from 
above. 

195. The revolution must be international and world¬ 
wide. It cannot be carried out on a nation-by-nation ba¬ 
sis. Whenever it is suggested that the United States, for 
example, should cut back on technological progress or 
economic growth, people get hysterical and start screa¬ 
ming that if we fall behind in technology the Japanese 
will get ahead of us. Holy robots! The world will fly off its 
orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do! (Na¬ 
tionalism is a great promoter of technology.) More rea¬ 
sonably, it is argued that if the relatively democratic na¬ 
tions of the world fall behind in technology while nasty, 
dictatorial nations like China, Vietnam and North Korea 
continue to progress, eventually the dictators may come 
to dominate the world. That is why the industrial system 
should be attacked in all nations simultaneously, to the 
extent that this may be possible. True, there is no assu¬ 
rance that the industrial system can be destroyed at ap¬ 
proximately the same time all over the world, and it is 


25 



even conceivable that the attempt to overthrow the sys¬ 
tem could lead instead to the domination of the system 
by dictators. That is a risk that has to be taken. And it is 
worth taking, since the difference between a “democra¬ 
tic” industrial system and one controlled by dictators is 
small compared with the difference between an industrial 
system and a non-industrial one. [33] It might even be 
argued that an industrial system controlled by dictators 
would be preferable, because dictator-controlled systems 
usually have proved ineffficient, hence they are presuma¬ 
bly more likely to break down. Look at Cuba. 

196. Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures 
that tend to bind the world economy into a unified whole. 
Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are probably 
harmful to the environment in the short run, but in the 
long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they 
foster economic interdependence between nations. It will 
be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide 
basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown 
in any one major nation will lead to its breakdown in all 
industrialized nations. 

197. Some people take the line that modern man has 
too much power, too much control over nature; they argue 
for a more passive attitude on the part of the human 
race. At best these people are expressing themselves un- 
clearly, because they fail to distinguish between power 
for LARGE ORGANIZATIONS and power for INDIVIDUALS 
and SMALL GROUPS. It is a mistake to argue for power¬ 
lessness and passivity, because people NEED power. Mo¬ 
dern man as a collective entity — that is, the industrial 
system — has immense power over nature, and we (FC) 
regard this as evil. But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL 
GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far less power than pri¬ 
mitive man ever did. Generally speaking, the vast power 
of “modern man” over nature is exercised not by indivi¬ 
duals or small groups but by large organizations. To the 
extent that the average modern INDIVIDUAL can wield 
the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only 
within narrow limits and only under the supervision and 
control of the system. (You need a license for everything 
and with the license come rules and regulations.) The in¬ 
dividual has only those technological powers with which 
the system chooses to provide him. His PERSONAL power 
over nature is slight. 

198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS ac¬ 
tually had considerable power over nature; or maybe it 
would be better to say power WITHIN nature. When pri¬ 
mitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare 
edible roots, how to track game and take it with home¬ 
made weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat 
cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc. But primitive man did 
relatively little damage to nature because the COLLEC¬ 
TIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared 
to the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society. 

199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passi¬ 
vity, one should argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL 
SYSTEM should be broken, and that this will greatly IN¬ 
CREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS and 
SMALL GROUPS. 

200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly 


wrecked, the destruction of that system must be the re¬ 
volutionaries’ ONLY goal. Other goals would distract at¬ 
tention and energy from the main goal. More importantly 
if the revolutionaries permit themselves to have any other 
goal than the destruction of technology, they will be temp¬ 
ted to use technology as a tool for reaching that other 
goal. If they give in to that temptation, they will fall right 
back into the technological trap, because modern techno¬ 
logy is a unified, tightly organized system, so that, in or¬ 
der to retain SOME technology, one finds oneself obliged 
to retain MOST technology, hence one ends up sacrificing 
only token amounts of technology. 

201. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took 
“social justice” as a goal. Human nature being what it 
is, social justice would not come about spontaneously; 
it would have to be enforced. In order to enforce it the 
revolutionaries would have to retain central organization 
and control. For that they would need rapid long-distance 
transportation and communication, and therefore all the 
technology needed to support the transportation and com¬ 
munication systems. To feed and clothe poor people they 
would have to use agricultural and manufacturing tech¬ 
nology. And so forth. So that the attempt to insure social 
justice would force them to retain most parts of the tech¬ 
nological system. Not that we have anything against social 
justice, but it must not be allowed to interfere with the ef¬ 
fort to get rid of the technological system. 

202. It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to at¬ 
tack the system without using SOME modern technology. 
If nothing else they must use the communications media 
to spread their message. But they should use modern tech¬ 
nology for only ONE purpose: to attack the technological 
system. 

203. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine 
in front of him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, “Wine 
isn’t bad for you if used in moderation. Why, they say 
small amounts of wine are even good for you! It won’t 
do me any harm if I take just one little drink....” Well you 
know what is going to happen. Never forget that the hu¬ 
man race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a 
barrel of wine. 

204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as 
they can. There is strong scientific evidence that social at¬ 
titudes are to a significant extent inherited. No one sug¬ 
gests that a social attitude is a direct outcome of a per¬ 
son’s genetic constitution, but it appears that persona¬ 
lity traits are partly inherited and that certain persona¬ 
lity traits tend, within the context of our society, to make 
a person more likely to hold this or that social attitude. 
Objections to these findings have been raised, but the ob¬ 
jections are feeble and seem to be ideologically motiva¬ 
ted. In any event, no one denies that children tend on the 
average to hold social attitudes similar to those of their 
parents. From our point of view it doesn’t matter all that 
much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or 
through childhood training. In either case they ARE pas¬ 
sed on. 

205. The trouble is that many of the people who are 
inclined to rebel against the industrial system are also 
concerned about the population problems, hence they are 


26 



apt to have few or no children. In this way they may be 
handing the world over to the sort of people who sup¬ 
port or at least accept the industrial system. To ensure 
the strength of the next generation of revolutionaries the 
present generation should reproduce itself abundantly. In 
doing so they will be worsening the population problem 
only slightly. And the important problem is to get rid of 
the industrial system, because once the industrial system 
is gone the world’s population necessarily will decrease 
(see paragraph 167); whereas, if the industrial system 
survives, it will continue developing new techniques of 
food production that may enable the world’s population 
to keep increasing almost indefinitely. 

206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only 
points on which we absolutely insist are that the single 
overriding goal must be the elimination of modern tech¬ 
nology, and that no other goal can be allowed to compete 
with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an 
empirical approach. If experience indicates that some of 
the recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs 
are not going to give good results, then those recommen¬ 
dations should be discarded. 


TWO KINDS OF TECHNOLOGY 

207. An argument likely to be raised against our pro¬ 
posed revolution is that it is bound to fail, because (it is 
claimed) throughout history technology has always pro¬ 
gressed, never regressed, hence technological regression 
is impossible. But this claim is false. 

208. We distinguish between two kinds of technology, 
which we will call smallscale technology and organiza- 
tiondependent technology. Small-scale technology is tech¬ 
nology that can be used by small-scale communities wi¬ 
thout outside assistance. Organization-dependent tech¬ 
nology is technology that depends on large-scale social 
organization. We are aware of no significant cases of 
regression in small-scale technology. But organization- 
dependent technology DOES regress when the social or¬ 
ganization on which it depends breaks down. Example: 
When the Roman Empire fell apart the Romans’ small- 
scale technology survived because any clever village 
craftsman could build, for instance, a water wheel, any 
skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so 
forth. But the Romans’ organization- dependent techno¬ 
logy DID regress. Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and 
were never rebuilt. Their techniques of road construction 
were lost. The Roman system of urban sanitation was for¬ 
gotten, so that not until rather recent times did the sani¬ 
tation of European cities equal that of Ancient Rome. 

209. The reason why technology has seemed always to 
progress is that, until perhaps a century or two before the 
Industrial Revolution, most technology was small-scale 
technology. But most of the technology developed since 
the Industrial Revolution is organization-dependent tech¬ 
nology. Take the refrigerator for example. Without factory- 
made parts or the facilities of a postindustrial machine 
shop it would be virtually impossible for a handful of local 


craftsmen to build a refrigerator. If by some miracle they 
did succeed in building one it would be useless to them 
without a reliable source of electric power. So they would 
have to dam a stream and build a generator. Generators 
require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to 
make that wire without modern machinery. And where 
would they get a gas suitable for refrigeration? It would 
be much easier to build an icehouse or preserve food by 
drying or picking, as was done before the invention of the 
refrigerator. 

210. So it is clear that if the industrial system were once 
thoroughly broken down, refrigeration technology would 
quickly be lost. The same is true of other organization- 
dependent technology. And once this technology had been 
lost for a generation or so it would take centuries to re¬ 
build it, just as it took centuries to build it the first time 
around. Surviving technical books would be few and scat¬ 
tered. An industrial society, if built from scratch without 
outside help, can only be built in a series of stages: You 
need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools... 
A long process of economic development and progress in 
social organization is required. And, even in the absence 
of an ideology opposed to technology, there is no reason 
to believe that anyone would be interested in rebuilding 
industrial society. The enthusiasm for “progress” is a phe¬ 
nomenon peculiar to the modern form of society, and it 
seems not to have existed prior to the 17th century or the¬ 
reabouts. 

211. In the late Middle Ages there were four main ci¬ 
vilizations that were about equally “advanced”: Europe, 
the Islamic world, India, and the Far East (China, Japan, 
Korea). Three of those civilizations remained more or less 
stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one knows 
why Europe became dynamic at that time; historians have 
their theories but these are only speculation. At any rate, 
it is clear that rapid development toward a technological 
form of society occurs only under special conditions. So 
there is no reason to assume that a long-lasting technolo¬ 
gical regression cannot be brought about. 

212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward 
an industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no 
use in worrying about it, since we can’t predict or control 
events 500 or 1,000 years in the future. Those problems 
must be dealt with by the people who will live at that 
time. 


THE DANGER OF LEFTISM 

213. Because of their need for rebellion and for mem¬ 
bership in a movement, leftists or persons of similar psy¬ 
chological type often are unattracted to a rebellious or 
activist movement whose goals and membership are not 
initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish types can ea¬ 
sily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so that 
leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the mo¬ 
vement. 

214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature 
and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist 


27 



stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists. Lef¬ 
tism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with 
human freedom and with the elimination of modern tech¬ 
nology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to bind together the 
entire world (both nature and the human race) into a uni¬ 
fied whole. But this implies management of nature and 
of human life by organized society, and it requires advan¬ 
ced technology. You can’t have a united world without ra¬ 
pid transportation and communication, you can’t make all 
people love one another without sophisticated psychologi¬ 
cal techniques, you can’t have a “planned society” without 
the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is dri¬ 
ven 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. 

215. The anarchist [34] too seeks power, but he seeks 
it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants indivi¬ 
duals and small groups to be able to control the circum¬ 
stances of their own lives. He opposes technology because 
it makes small groups dependent on large organizations. 

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 tech¬ 
nological 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 cen¬ 
sorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any 
that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed eth¬ 
nic 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 do¬ 
minant, they have shown themselves ready to take away 
from everyone else’s academic freedom. (This is “politi¬ 
cal 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. 

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 li¬ 
bertarian 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 Re¬ 
volution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Cas¬ 
tro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history 
of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revo¬ 
lutionaries today to collaborate with leftists. 

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 lef¬ 
tist 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 that includes the feminist, gay rights, political cor¬ 
rectness, etc., movements, and because these movements 
have a strong affinity with the old left. See paragraphs 
227-230.) 

219. Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is 
in a position of power it tends to invade every private cor¬ 
ner 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 pa¬ 
ragraph 83). But no matter how far the movement has 
gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, be¬ 
cause his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph 
41). That is, the leftist’s real motive is not to attain the os¬ 
tensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the 
sense of power he gets from struggling for and then rea¬ 
ching a social goal. [35] 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 mino¬ 
rities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equa¬ 
lity of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone 
harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude 
toward some minority, the leftist has to re-educated him. 
And ethnic minorities are not enough; no one can be allo¬ 
wed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals, di¬ 
sabled people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on 
and on and on. It’s not enough that the public should be 
informed about the hazards of smoking; a warning has to 
be stamped on every package of cigarettes. Then cigarette 
advertising has to be restricted if not banned. The activists 
will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after 
that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc. Activists have 
fought gross child abuse, which is reasonable. But now 
they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that 
they will want to ban something else they consider unw¬ 
holesome, then another thing and then another. They will 
never be satisfied until they have complete control over 
all child rearing practices. And then they will move on to 
another cause. 

220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL 
the things that were wrong with society, and then suppose 
you instituted EVERY social change that they demanded. 
It is safe to say that within a couple of years the majority 
of leftists would find something new to complain about, 


28 



some new social “evil” to correct; because, once again, 
the leftist is motivated less by distress at society’s ills than 
by the need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his 
solutions on society. 

221. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts 
and behavior by their high level of socialization, many lef¬ 
tists of the over-socialized type cannot pursue power in 
the ways that other people do. For them the drive for po¬ 
wer has only one morally acceptable outlet, and that is in 
the struggle to impose their morality on everyone. 

222. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, 
are True Believers in the sense of Eric Hoffer’s book, The 
True Believer. But not all True Believers are of the same 
psychological type as leftists. Presumably a true-believing 
nazi, for instance, is very different psychologically from a 
true-believing leftist. Because of their capacity for single- 
minded devotion to a cause, True Believers are a useful, 
perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any revolutionary mo¬ 
vement. This presents a problem with which we must ad¬ 
mit we don’t know how to deal. We aren’t sure how to 
harness the energies of the True Believer to a revolution 
against technology. At present all we can say is that no 
True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution 
unless his commitment is exclusively to the destruction of 
technology. If he is committed also to another ideal, he 
may want to use technology as a tool for pursuing that 
other ideal (see paragraphs 200, 201). 

223. Some readers may say, “This stuff about leftism is 
a lot of crap. I know John and Jane who are leftish types 
and they don’t have all these totalitarian tendencies.” It’s 
quite true that many leftists, possibly even a numerical 
majority, are decent people who sincerely believe in tole¬ 
rating others’ values (up to a point) and wouldn’t want 
to use high-handed methods to reach their social goals. 
Our remarks about leftism are not meant to apply to every 
individual leftist but to describe the general character of 
leftism as a movement. And the general character of a 
movement is not necessarily determined by the numeri¬ 
cal proportions of the various kinds of people involved in 
the movement. 

224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist 
movements tend to be leftists of the most power-hungry 
type, because power-hungry people are those who strive 
hardest to get into positions of power. Once the power- 
hungry types have captured control of the movement, 
there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly 
disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but can¬ 
not bring themselves to oppose them. They NEED their 
faith in the movement, and because they cannot give up 
this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME lef¬ 
tists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies 
that emerge, but they generally lose, because the power- 
hungry types are better organized, are more ruthless and 
Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a 
strong power base. 

225. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and 
other countries that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, 
before the breakdown of communism in the, USSR, lef¬ 
tish types in the West would, seldom criticize that coun¬ 
try. If prodded they would admit that the USSR did many 


wrong things, but then they would try to find excuses for 
the communists and begin talking about the faults of the 
West. They always opposed Western military resistance 
to communist aggression. Leftish types all over the world 
vigorously protested the U.S. military action in Vietnam, 
but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan they did nothing. 
Not that they approved of the Soviet actions; but because 
of their leftist faith, they just couldn’t bear to put them¬ 
selves in opposition to communism. Today, in those of our 
universities where “political correctness” has become do¬ 
minant, there are probably many leftish types who priva¬ 
tely disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom, 
but they go along with it anyway. 

226. Thus the fact that many individual leftists are per¬ 
sonally mild and fairly tolerant people by no means pre¬ 
vents leftism as a whole form having a totalitarian ten¬ 
dency. 

227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It 
is still far from clear what we mean by the word “leftist.” 
There doesn’t seem to be much we can do about this. To¬ 
day leftism is fragmented into a whole spectrum of activist 
movements. Yet not all activist movements are leftist, and 
some activist movements (e.g., radical environmentalism) 
seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and 
personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought to 
know better than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of 
leftists fade out gradually into varieties of non-leftists and 
we ourselves would often be hard-pressed to decide whe¬ 
ther a given individual is or is not a leftist. To the extent 
that it is defined at all, our conception of leftism is defined 
by the discussion of it that we have given in this article, 
and we can only advise the reader to use his own judg¬ 
ment in deciding who is a leftist. 

228. But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diag¬ 
nosing leftism. These criteria cannot be applied in a cut 
and dried manner. Some individuals may meet some of 
the criteria without being leftists, some leftists may not 
meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have to use your 
judgment. 

229. The leftist is oriented toward large-scale collecti¬ 
vism. He emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve 
society and the duty of society to take care of the indi¬ 
vidual. He has a negative attitude toward individualism. 
He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be for gun 
control, for sex education and other psychologically “en¬ 
lightened” educational methods, for social planning, for 
affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to iden¬ 
tify with victims. He tends to be against competition and 
against violence, but he ofte finds excuses for those lef¬ 
tists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the 
common catch-phrases of the left, like “racism,” “sexism,” 
“homophobia,” “capitalism,” “imperialism,” “neocolonia¬ 
lism,” “genocide,” “social change,” “social justice,” “so¬ 
cial 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 al¬ 
most certainly a leftist. [36] 

230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who 


29 



are most power-hungry, are often characterized by arro¬ 
gance or by a dogmatic approach to ideology. However, 
the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocia¬ 
lized types who avoid irritating displays of aggressiveness 
and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly 
and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values, “enligh¬ 
tened” 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 concer¬ 
ned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and mo¬ 
tivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people un¬ 
der control of the system in order to protect his way of life, 
or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventio¬ 
nal. The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control 
of the system because he is a True Believer in a collec- 
tivistic 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 se¬ 
curely 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 collec¬ 
tivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is 
stronger than that of the average bourgeois. 


FINAL NOTE 

231. Throughout this article we’ve made imprecise sta¬ 
tements and statements that ought to have had all sorts 
of qualifications and reservations attached to them; and 
some of our statements may be flatly false. Lack of suf¬ 
ficient information and the need for brevity made it im¬ 
possible for us to formulate our assertions more precisely 
or add all the necessary qualifications. And of course in 
a discussion of this kind one must rely heavily on intui¬ 
tive judgment, and that can sometimes be wrong. So we 
don’t claim that this article expresses more than a crude 
approximation to the truth. 

232. All the same, we are reasonably confident that the 
general outlines of the picture we have painted here are 
roughly correct. Just one possible weak point needs to be 
mentioned. We have portrayed leftism in its modern form 
as a phenomenon peculiar to our time and as a symptom 
of the disruption of the power process. But we might pos¬ 
sibly be wrong about this. Oversocialized types who try to 
satisfy their drive for power by imposing their morality on 
everyone have certainly been around for a long time. But 
we THINK that the decisive role played by feelings of infe¬ 
riority, low self-esteem, powerlessness, identification with 
victims by people who are not themselves victims, is a pe¬ 
culiarity of modern leftism. Identification with victims by 
people not themselves victims can be seen to some extent 
in 19th century leftism and early Christianity, but as far as 
we can make out, symptoms of low self-esteem, etc., were 
not nearly so evident in these movements, or in any other 
movements, as they are in modern leftism. But we are not 
in a position to assert confidently that no such movements 


have existed prior to modern leftism. This is a significant 
question to which historians ought to give their attention. 


NOTES 

1. (Paragraph 19) We are asserting that ALL, or even 
most, bullies and ruthless competitors suffer from feelings 
of inferiority. 

2. (Paragraph 25) During the Victorian period many 
oversocialized people suffered from serious psychological 
problems as a result of repressing or trying to repress their 
sexual feelings. Freud apparently based his theories on 
people of this type. Today the focus of socialization has 
shifted from sex to aggression. 

3. (Paragraph 27) Not necessarily including specialists 
in engineering or the “hard” sciences. 

4. (Paragraph 28) 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 re¬ 
sistance 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. Vio¬ 
lence is discouraged because it disrupts the functioning of 
the system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic conflicts 
also disrupt the system, and discrimination wastes the ta¬ 
lents of minority-group members who could be useful to 
the system. Poverty must be “cured” because the under¬ 
class 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 fami¬ 
lies. 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 51, 52 that 
the system cannot afford to let the family or other small- 
scale social groups be strong or autonomous.) 

5. (Paragraph 42) It may be argued that the majority 
of people don’t want to make their own decisions but 
want leaders to do their thinking for them. There is an 
element of truth in this. People like to make their own de¬ 
cisions in small matters, but making decisions on difficult, 
fundamental questions requires facing up to psychologi¬ 
cal conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. 
Hence they tend to lean on others in making difficult de¬ 
cisions. But it does not follow that they like to have deci¬ 
sions imposed upon them without having any opportunity 
to influence those decisions. The majority of people are 
natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have di¬ 
rect personal access to their leaders, they want to be able 
to influence the leaders and participate to some extent in 
making even the difficult decisions. At least to that degree 
they need autonomy. 


30 



6. (Paragraph 44) Some of the symptoms listed are si¬ 
milar to those shown by caged animals. To explain how 
these symptoms arise from deprivation with respect to the 
power process: common-sense understanding of human 
nature tells one that lack of goals whose attainment re¬ 
quires effort leads to boredom and that boredom, long 
continued, often leads eventually to depression. Failure 
to attain goals leads to frustration and lowering of self¬ 
esteem. Frustration leads to anger, anger to aggression, 
often in the form of spouse or child abuse. It has been 
shown that long-continued frustration commonly leads to 
depression and that depression tends to cause guilt, sleep 
disorders, eating disorders and bad feelings about oneself. 
Those who are tending toward depression seek pleasure 
as an antidote; hence insatiable hedonism and excessive 
sex, with perversions as a means of getting new kicks. Bo¬ 
redom too tends to cause excessive pleasure-seeking since, 
lacking other goals, people often use pleasure as a goal. 

The foregoing is a simplification. Reality is more com¬ 
plex, and of course, deprivation with respect to the power 
process is not the ONLY cause of the symptoms descri¬ 
bed. By the way, when we mention depression we do not 
necessarily mean depression that is severe enough to be 
treated by a psychiatrist. Often only mild forms of depres¬ 
sion are involved. And when we speak of goals we do not 
necessarily mean long-term, thought-out goals. For many 
or most people through much of human history, the goals 
of a hand-to-mouth existence (merely providing oneself 
and one’s family with food from day to day) have been 
quite sufficient. 

7. (Paragraph 52) A partial exception may be made for 
a few passive, inwardlooking groups, such as the Amish, 
which have little effect on the wider society. Apart from 
these, some genuine small-scale communities do exist in 
America today. For instance, youth gangs and “cults.” Eve¬ 
ryone regards them as dangerous, and so they are, be¬ 
cause the members of these groups are loyal primarily 
to one another rather than to the system, hence the sys¬ 
tem cannot control them. Or take the gypsies. The gypsies 
commonly get away with theft and fraud because their 
loyalties are such that they can always get other gypsies 
to give testimony that “proves” their innocence. Obviously 
the system would be in serious trouble if too many people 
belonged to such groups. Some of the early-20th century 
Chinese thinkers who were concerned with modernizing 
China recognized the necessity breaking down small-scale 
social groups such as the family: “(According to Sun Yat- 
sen) the Chinese people needed a new surge of patrio¬ 
tism, which would lead to a transfer of loyalty from the 
family to the state.... (According to Li Huang) traditional 
attachments, particularly to the family had to be abando¬ 
ned if nationalism were to develop in China.” (Chester C. 
Tan, “Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century,” 
page 125, page 297.) 

8. (Paragraph 56) Yes, we know that 19th century Ame¬ 
rica had its problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of 
brevity we have to express ourselves in simplified terms. 

9. (Paragraph 61) We leave aside the “underclass.” We 
are speaking of the mainstream. 

10. (Paragraph 62) Some social scientists, educators, 


“mental health” professionals and the like are doing their 
best to push the social drives into group 1 by trying to see 
to it that everyone has a satisfactory social life. 

11. (Paragraphs 63, 82) Is the drive for endless mate¬ 
rial acquisition really an artificial creation of the adverti¬ 
sing 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 Mexi¬ 
can 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 marke¬ 
ting industry has had an important part in creating that 
culture. The big corporations that spend millions on ad¬ 
vertising wouldn’t be spending that kind of money wi¬ 
thout solid proof that they were getting it back in in¬ 
creased 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 no¬ 
vice could present people with the facts about a product, 
and make no sales at all, while a trained and experien¬ 
ced 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. 

12. (Paragraph 64) The problem of purposelessness 
seems to have become less serious during the last 15 years 
or so, because people now feel less secure physically and 
economically than they did earlier, and the need for se¬ 
curity provides them with a goal. But purposelessness has 
been replaced by frustration over the difficulty of attai¬ 
ning security. We emphasize the problem of purposeless¬ 
ness because the liberals and leftists would wish to solve 
our social problems by having society guarantee everyo¬ 
ne’s security; but if that could be done it would only bring 
back the problem of purposelessness. The real issue is not 
whether society provides well or poorly for people’s se¬ 
curity; the trouble is that people are dependent on the 
system for their security rather than having it in their own 
hands. This, by the way, is part of the reason why some 
people get worked up about the right to bear arms; pos¬ 
session of a gun puts that aspect of their security in their 
own hands. 

13. (Paragraph 66) Conservatives’ efforts to decrease 
the amount of government regulation are of little benefit 
to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the 
regulations can be eliminated because most regulations 
are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation 
affects business rather than the average individual, so that 
its main effect is to take power from the government and 
give it to private corporations. What this means for the 
average man is that government interference in his life 
is replaced by interference from big corporations, which 
may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals 
that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The 
conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, 


31 



exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote 
the power of Big Business. 

14. (Paragraph 73) When someone approves of the pur¬ 
pose for which propaganda is being used in a given case, 
he generally calls it “education” or applies to it some simi¬ 
lar euphemism. But propaganda is propaganda regardless 
of the purpose for which it is used. 

15. (Paragraph 83) We are not expressing approval or 
disapproval of the Panama invasion. We only use it to illus¬ 
trate a point. 

16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were 
under British rule there were fewer and less effective le¬ 
gal guarantees of freedom than there were after the Ame¬ 
rican Constitution went into effect, yet there was more 
personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before 
and after the War of Independence, than there was af¬ 
ter the Industrial Revolution took hold in this country. We 
quote from “Violence in America: Historical and Compara¬ 
tive 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 enfor¬ 
cement (in 19th century America)... were common to the 
whole society.... [T]he 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 ru¬ 
ral, overwhelmingly preindustrial and native born. It’s ci¬ 
tizens were used to considerable personal freedom. Whe¬ 
ther teamsters, farmers or artisans, they were all accusto¬ 
med 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 gene¬ 
rally 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 neigh¬ 
borhoods inhibited many actions previously unobjectio¬ 
nable. Both blue- and white-collar employees in larger es¬ 
tablishments 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 organiza¬ 
tion 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 be¬ 
havior 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 predeces¬ 
sors.” 

17. (Paragraph 117) Apologists for the system are fond 
of citing cases in which elections have been decided by 
one or two votes, but such cases are rare. 

18. (Paragraph 119) “Today, in technologically advan¬ 


ced lands, men live very similar lives in spite of geogra¬ 
phical, religious, and political differences. The daily lives 
of a Christian bank clerk in Chicago, a Buddhist bank clerk 
in Tokyo, and a Communist bank clerk in Moscow are far 
more alike than the life of any one of them is like that 
of any single man who lived a thousand years ago. These 
similarities are the result of a common technology....” L. 
Sprague de Camp, “The Ancient Engineers,” Ballantine 
edition, page 17. The lives of the three bank clerks are 
not IDENTICAL. Ideology does have SOME effect. But all 
technological societies, in order to survive, must evolve 
along APPROXIMATELY the same trajectory. 

19. (Paragraph 123) Just think an irresponsible genetic 
engineer might create a lot of terrorists. 

20. (Paragraph 124) For a further example of unde¬ 
sirable consequences of medical progress, suppose a re¬ 
liable cure for cancer is discovered. Even if the treatment 
is too expensive to be available to any but the elite, it will 
greatly reduce their incentive to stop the escape of carci¬ 
nogens into the environment. 

21. (Paragraph 128) Since many people may find pa¬ 
radoxical the notion that a large number of good things 
can add up to a bad thing, we illustrate with an analogy. 
Suppose Mr. A is playing chess with Mr. B. Mr. C, a Grand 
Master, is looking over Mr. A’s shoulder. Mr. A of course 
wants to win his game, so if Mr. C points out a good move 
for him to make, he is doing Mr. A a favor. But suppose 
now that Mr. C tells Mr. A how to make ALL of his moves. 
In each particular instance he does Mr. A a favor by sho¬ 
wing him his best move, but by making ALL of his moves 
for him he spoils his game, since there is not point in Mr. 
A’s playing the game at all if someone else makes all his 
moves. The situation of modern man is analogous to that 
of Mr. A. The system makes an individual’s life easier for 
him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him 
of control over his own fate. 

22. (Paragraph 137) Here we are considering only the 
conflict of values within the mainstream. For the sake of 
simplicity we leave out of the picture “outsider” values like 
the idea that wild nature is more important than human 
economic welfare. 

23. (Paragraph 137) Self-interest is not necessarily MA¬ 
TERIAL self-interest. It can consist in fulfillment of some 
psychological need, for example, by promoting one’s own 
ideology or religion. 

24. (Paragraph 139) A qualification: It is in the interest 
of the system to permit a certain prescribed degree of free¬ 
dom in some areas. For example, economic freedom (with 
suitable limitations and restraints) has proved effective in 
promoting economic growth. But only planned, circum¬ 
scribed, limited freedom is in the interest of the system. 
The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the 
leash is sometimes long (see paragraphs 94, 97). 

25. (Paragraph 143) We don’t mean to suggest that the 
efficiency or the potential for survival of a society has al¬ 
ways been inversely proportional to the amount of pres¬ 
sure or discomfort to which the society subjects people. 
That certainly is not the case. There is good reason to be¬ 
lieve that many primitive societies subjected people to less 
pressure than European society did, but European society 


32 



proved far more efficient than any primitive society and 
always won out in conflicts with such societies because of 
the advantages conferred by technology. 

26. (Paragraph 147) If you think that more effective law 
enforcement is unequivocally good because it suppresses 
crime, then remember that crime as defined by the sys¬ 
tem is not necessarily what YOU would call crime. Today, 
smoking marijuana is a “crime,” and, in some places in 
the U.S., so is possession of an unregistered handgun. To¬ 
morrow, possession of ANY firearm, registered or not, may 
be made a crime, and the same thing may happen with 
disapproved methods of child-rearing, such as spanking. 
In some countries, expression of dissident political opi¬ 
nions is a crime, and there is no certainty that this will 
never happen in the U.S., since no constitution or politi¬ 
cal system lasts forever. If a society needs a large, power¬ 
ful law enforcement establishment, then there is some¬ 
thing gravely wrong with that society; it must be subjec¬ 
ting people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow 
the rules, or follow them only because forced. Many so¬ 
cieties in the past have gotten by with little or no formal 
law-enforcement. 

27. (Paragraph 151) To be sure, past societies have 
had means of influencing human behavior, but these have 
been primitive and of low effectiveness compared with the 
technological means that are now being developed. 

28. (Paragraph 152) However, some psychologists have 
publicly expressed opinions indicating their contempt for 
human freedom. And the mathematician Claude Shannon 
was quoted in Omni (August 1987) as saying, “I visualize 
a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, 
and I’m rooting for the machines.” 

29. (Paragraph 154) This is no science fiction! After wri¬ 
ting paragraph 154 we came across an article in Scien¬ 
tific American according to which scientists are actively 
developing techniques for identffying possible future cri¬ 
minals and for treating them by a combination of biolo¬ 
gical and psychological means. Some scientists advocate 
compulsory application of the treatment, which may be 
available in the near future. (See “Seeking the Criminal 
Element,” by W. Wayt Gibbs, Scientific American, March 
1995.) Maybe you think this is okay because the treatment 
would be applied to those who might become violent cri¬ 
minals. But of course it won’t stop there. Next, a treatment 
will be applied to those who might become drunk drivers 
(they endanger human life too), then perhaps to peel who 
spank their children, then to environmentalists who sabo¬ 
tage logging equipment, eventually to anyone whose be¬ 
havior is inconvenient for the system. 

30. (Paragraph 184) A further advantage of nature as 
a counter-ideal to technology is that, in many people, na¬ 
ture inspires the kind of reverence that is associated with 
religion, so that nature could perhaps be idealized on a re¬ 
ligious basis. It is true that in many societies religion has 
served as a support and justification for the established 
order, but it is also true that religion has often provided 
a basis for rebellion. Thus it may be useful to introduce 
a religious element into the rebellion against technology, 
the more so because Western society today has no strong 
religious foundation. Religion, nowadays either is used as 


cheap and transparent support for narrow, short-sighted 
selfishness (some conservatives use it this way), or even is 
cynically exploited to make easy money (by many evange¬ 
lists), or has degenerated into crude irrationalism (funda¬ 
mentalist protestant sects, “cults”), or is simply stagnant 
(Catholicism, main-line Protestantism). The nearest thing 
to a strong, widespread, dynamic religion that the West 
has seen in recent times has been the quasi-religion of lef¬ 
tism, but leftism today is fragmented and has no clear, 
unified, inspiring goal. Thus there is a religious vacuum 
in our society that could perhaps be filled by a religion fo¬ 
cused on nature in opposition to technology. But it would 
be a mistake to try to concoct artificially a religion to fill 
this role. Such an invented religion would probably be a 
failure. Take the “Gaia” religion for example. Do its adhe¬ 
rents REALLY believe in it or are they just play-acting? If 
they are just play-acting their religion will be a flop in the 
end. It is probably best not to try to introduce religion into 
the conflict of nature vs. technology unless you REALLY 
believe in that religion yourself and find that it arouses a 
deep, strong, genuine response in many other people. 

31. (Paragraph 189) Assuming that such a final push 
occurs. Conceivably the industrial system might be elimi¬ 
nated in a somewhat gradual or piecemeal fashion (see 
paragraphs 4, 167 and Note 32). 

32. (Paragraph 193) It is even conceivable (remotely) 
that the revolution might consist only of a massive change 
of attitudes toward technology resulting in a relatively 
gradual and painless disintegration of the industrial sys¬ 
tem. But if this happens we’ll be very lucky. It’s far more 
probably that the transition to a nontechnological society 
will be very difficult and full of conflicts and disasters. 

33. (Paragraph 195) The economic and technological 
structure of a society are far more important than its po¬ 
litical structure in determining the way the average man 
lives (see paragraphs 95, 119 and Notes 16, 18). 

34. (Paragraph 215) This statement refers to our par¬ 
ticular brand of anarchism. A wide variety of social at¬ 
titudes have been called “anarchist,” and it may be that 
many who consider themselves anarchists would not ac¬ 
cept our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, 
by the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement 
whose members probably would not accept FC as anar¬ 
chist and certainly would not approve of FC’s violent me¬ 
thods. 

35. (Paragraph 219) Many leftists are motivated also by 
hostility, but the hostility probably results in part from a 
frustrated need for power. 

36. (Paragraph 229) It is important to understand that 
we mean someone who sympathizes with these move¬ 
ments as they exist today in our society. One who believes 
that women, homosexuals, etc., should have equal rights 
is not necessary a leftist. The feminist, gay rights, etc., mo¬ 
vements that exist in our society have the particular ideo¬ 
logical tone that characterizes leftism, and if one believes, 
for example, that women should have equal rights it does 
not necessarily follow that one must sympathize with the 
feminist movement as it exists today. 

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