LEISURE & PLENTY

Hokitika Guardian, 26 January 1933, Page 3

LEISURE & PLENTY

GOAL OF “TECHNOCRACY

LONDON, January 10. What, Europeans are inquiring, Is this “technocracy’ of which so much is heard from the United States, and which in> hue isubjOct of heated arguments there r It thus explained ; -The worrU must abandon it B age-long ideas ol pr-c e value s for a new guiding principle m which th e ba.de factor of social life js the amount of energy avaLaole .for productive purposes and which enables the proper synchronisation of production and consumption by which human needs are fully met and the necessary amount of human work is equally divided.” It is the doctrine of a group of distinguished scientists who are investigating tho technical development of America, in the course of which they have ascertained such astounding facts a? that modem machinery will t nab.e the farmer to accomplish in a:i hour a task that required 3000 hours a century ■ago'. It is emphasised that American factories even if they resumed the peak production of 1929 ? could employ only on e -half of the present unemployed owing to recent mechanical developments. Indeed, they could supply their own needs if adults worked four hours a day for a four-day week. Technocracy’s main thesis .is the scientific discovery that engineering skill, if properly employed, would empower man. kind to obtain a life of leisure and plenty.

Technocracy declares that “America cannot longer deal with the lack of purchasing power, unemployment, and ejebt by individual establishments. They can lie dealt with only as part of opr in., d u stria 1 complex.” This revolutionary • thesis is keenly discussed by thoughtful Americans, including some of Mr Franklin Roosevelt’s advisors. Professor Spddy, Oxford professor of chemistry, denies that he is the originator of technocracy, but agrees that.techno logical advances have already rendered existing social institutions and economic s ystems obsolete and dangerous. Ho also agrees that the world Vs physical needs can be -supplied in far greater abundance than at present with a shorter working day and week. He condemns as a “blasphemy against truth” the current idea that everyone must severely economise because much was wasted in wartime. “This is as idle,” he says, “a s trying to recoup the overload -on a po\ve r -station by shutting it down. Thp present unemployment, is caused by the attempt to recoup the wartime overloading by partially shutting down the station.”