- Email: [email protected]
Science, technology, and liberal democratic theory
0160-791X/$3.00 + .OO Copyright @1981 Pcrgamon Press Ltd
Techndogy In Sociery, Vol. 6, pp. 249-262 (1984) Printed in the USA. All tights tcxrved.
Science, Technology, and Liberal Democratic Theory Patrid W. Han&t
ABSTUACT. TbiE article explores the relationships between modern science and technology and Libera/ Democratic theory, as expressed in the writings of Canadian political philosopher, C. B. MacPherson. It begins by noting the changes which have occurred in Liberal Democratic theory, as outlined by MacPberson, emphasizing first the absence of moral content in Bentbarn, the appearance of moral signrjkance in John Stuart MU, and $nai.. tb e d isapp earance of morality in contemporary pluralist wn’tings. The article then attempts to show the connections between these phdosophical changes and the evolution of industkl technology during the same periods. It con&de; with a cri2ique of MacPherson for his unwarranted optimism that modem technology itselfposes no threat to the integrity of Liberal Democracy. The centraipoint made in the article is that contemporary Liberal Democracy may well be so permeated with essentiUy instrumentalist technological values that it may be impossible to accomplish MacPberson’s goal of reestablishing the moraI basis of MzVs vrjion of Liberal Democratic &ought.
A common theme in the voluminous literature dealing with the social and political impacts of modern technology is the apparent difficulty of ever successfully integrating that technology with the institutional and operational demands of democracy. This is especially true of the writings of leftist and neo-Marxist critics, from Herbert Marcuse (1964) to Jurgen Habermas (1970) David Dickson (1974), and Bernard Gendron (1977). For these authors, in particular, the imperatives of modern technology are an acid eating away the foundations of any truly democratic regime, and not only because of the intimate connections they see between modern technology and modern capitalism. For these critics, the technocratic /managerial imperatives of complex, large-scale, integrated technological systems make popular participation in decision-making or institutional responsiveness to popular demands nearly impossible. This apparent incompatibility is all the more vexing when seen from the historical perspective: perhaps never before in human history have two complex sets of social, economic and political values been so widely accepted and pursued as modern technology and democracy. Even the most egregious tyrant today finds himself defending his actions in “democratic” terms, while political systems which Pat&k W. Ham&t received& Ph.D. fbm the University of CahfoonrzdSanta Barbara, and teaches in the Department of History and Politica/ Science at the University of Mtisouri/Ro//a. Hti reseanh interests include science and technology policy-ma&g and internatiod technology transfer tisues. 249
2so
Pat&4 W. Hamlett
regularly abuse their own citizens frequently find it necessary to describe themselves as democratic, however tortured the definition they employ. At the same time, the goal of technological sophistication and development seems to be the guiding light for all kinds of national economic policies, whether centralized and state-directed or iairsez faire. A question of central importance is whether the core values and practical imperatives of democracy are, in fact, compatible with those of modern technology. Most leftist and neo-Marxist writers see modern technology as moving further away from democratic control, rather than contributing to the growth of democracy. A few do mention the potential contributions of electronic technologies to widespread political participation, but most see such developments as very far away in the future, or as simply attempts to find some redemptive promise in technology, however realistic. For most, the only hope is to radically recast the direction of technological growth, as in the “appropriate technology” movement, or in other “back to the land,” anti-technology efforts to escape from the social and political relationships formed by modern technology. C. B. MacPherson Among contemporary leftist/neo-Marxist writers, Crawford Brough MacPherson does not fit this mold. In a long series of books, articles, reviews, and responses to critics, C.B. MacPherson has developed a complex and sophisticated philosophy, which tries to blend the best, as he sees it, of the classical Liberal Democratic thinkers (especially John Stuart Mill) with the insights of Marx and other 20th century radical critics of modern capitalist society. His stated purpose is to find a way to lead Liberal Democracy to jettison its least beneficial premises in favor of others which he feels more closely accord with the growing aspirations of people around the world. In The Politica/ Theory of Possessive Individualism: Ho&es to Lode (1962), MacPherson outlines what he sees as the core value of early liberal thought: the right to unlimited possession and consumption of material property. This assumption undergirds the entire edifice of early capitalist industrialism, and greatly encouraged the growth of modern technology. The view of human nature which asserts that humans are “infinite appropriators and consumers” of material utilities, MacPherson argues, permits and even encourages a variety of social, economic and political relationships which are subject to serious moral and ethical challenge. MacPherson, however, quite explicitly does not blame modern technology for the perpetuation of those morally and ethically questionable relationships. Indeed, throughout his writings he expresses supreme confidence that the growth of modern technology, far from undermining democracy, may well make it possible for Liberal Democracy to finally shed that no longer needed conception of “infinite appropriator and consumer” and replace it with a concept of human nature as “exerter and enjoyer of human capacities,” through modern technology’s potential for eliminating material scarcity: . . . the technological
revolution
could enable men to discard the concept
of
Science, Techno/ogy and LiberaL Democratak Theoty
251
themselves as essentially acquirers and appropriators. For as we have seen, that concept was needed as an incentive to continual exertion of human productive energy and continual accumulation of capital. These incentives will no longer be needed. The problem will not be to enlist men’s energies in the material productive process, but to provide alternative outlets for those energies; not to accumulate ever more capital, but to find socially profitable uses for future accumulation at anything like the rate to which we have become accustomed. The technological revolution in the West thus offers the possibility of our discarding the market concept of the essence of man, and replacing it with a morally preferable concept, in a way that was not possible when previous generations of liberaldemocratic thinkers, from John Stuart Mill on, attempted it (MacPherson: 1973, p. 37). And again: The chief new factor which seems to make the assumption about unlimited desire dispensable is the prospect now present in people’s minds that scarcity can be ended once and for all by the technological conquests of nature that are now so rapidly advancing. The exploitation of new sources of energy and new methods of productive control of energy- automation and all that-seem capable of ending the need for incessant compulsory labour . . . the vision of a society in which a fraction of the present compulsory labour can produce plenty for all is a vision not likely now to be extinguished by the disclaimers of experts (Ibid., pp. W-20). MacPherson may be far too optimistic about the compatibility of a reformed liberal democracy, as he understands it, and modern technology. Ironically, one of the best ways to explore MacPherson’s possibly unwarranted optimism is through another of his books, The Lif and Times of Liberal Democracy (1977).
MacPherson succeeds in this slim volume not only in disclosing the major stages in the evolution of what is the dominant political philosophy of the Western world, but also in explaining its most significant conceptual premises. MacPherson’s analysis is superior to many of the others, because he carefully distinguishes the twin philosophical roots of liberal democracy: liberalism and democratic theory. In much of the literature, these two different philosophical streams are already blended, blurring their sometimes fundamental differences. MacPherson’s historical perspective is additionally useful because it allows references to various historical phases of technological industrialism. Reviewing the historical amalgamation of liberalism and democracy, MacPherson delineates three historical models of liberal democracy: Protective Democracy, Developmental Democracy, and Equilibrium Democracy. Although he does not develop the thought, each of his models corresponds to a different stage of technological development.
2fi2
Path& W. Hamlett
Protective Democtslcy Protective Democracy, MacPherson’s first model, emerges during the early phase of industrialism, when the rising commercial middle classes finally broke the stranglehold of the monarchy and aristocracy upon the political and economic life of England. The middle classes sought to release their creative and entrepreneurial ambitions from the restraining grasp of a dying mercantilism, and used Locke, Smith, Montesquieu , Bentham, and Mill for theoretical and philosophical justification. The lower classes, recently enclosed agricultural workers forced from the farms into urban slums, had only begun fragmentary efforts at organized protests of their living and working conditions. Such “worker armies” were viewed as necessary and inevitable components of advancing industry, with little or no hope of significant improvement in their sorry estate. Bentham summarized their position this way: In the highest state of social prosperity, the great mass of citizens will have no resources except their industry; and consequently will be always near indigence (Bentham: 1931, p. 127). Thus, just at the time technological industrialism most required both freedom from arbitrary governmental restrictions and a ready, but politically impotent labor force, Liberal political theorists were at hand to argue that both conditions were at the same time natural and beneficial. Their Liberal doctrines, combined with utilitarian ethics and philosophy, led them to support constitutional limits upon governmental authority, the separation of governmental powers into distinct and independent branches, formalized civil liberties, etc., while also supporting the operations of the free market economy and the protection - even sanctity-of property rights. These early Liberals, however, and the governments they formed, were a long way from being democratic. As a class, they feared radical and uncontrolled social change, and thus closely restricted the right to vote. After all, they watched in horror the rising tide of revolutionary fever on the European continent, culminating in the Paris Commune and other acts of civil unrest in the mid- 1840s. It was only after they had received assurance that an expanded suffrage would not undermine existing economic relations that the Liberals gradually allowed a more democratic franchise to emerge, which included the working classes. MacPherson’s discussion of the early reluctance of liberalism to accept even so fundamental a democratic value as universal suffrage throws sobering light upon a number of rather too optimistic arguments for technology’s supportive relationship to liberal democratic practice. Deveiopmentd
Democracy
MacPherson’s second model, Developmental Democracy, received its first expression in the writings of the second-generation utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, son of Bentham’s associate. Although the model evolved over time, it remained the predominant model of Liberal Democracy well into the first half of the 20th century. By the middle of the 19th century, the younger Mill was unavoidably faced with
Science, Tecbno/ogy andliberal
Democratic Theory
253
the social conditions produced in England by a rapidly maturing technological industrialism, Two developments shaped his thinking: on the one hand, the working classes had begun to gain in organized political strength, bringing to the surface Liberal fears of their potential for disrupting existing property relationships. On the other hand, the degradation, oppression, poverty and immiseration of the laboring classes had become so blatantly inhuman that Mill was no longer able to justify such conditions as socially or economically inevitable: I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading upon each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress (John Stuart Mill: 1965, pp. 754-55). Mill, moreover, had developed a healthy respect for the growing power of labor, especially as a result of the upheavals in 1848. He was convinced that a return to labor’s former docility was an illusion: Of the working man, at least in the more advanced countries of Europe, it may be pronounced certain, that the patriarchal or paternal system of government is one to which they will not again be subject. That question was decided, when they were taught to read, and allowed access to newspapers and political tracts , . . (Mill: 1965, p. 761). Mill’s response was to look upon Liberal Democracy as a vehicle for the improvement of the average citizen, as a school for political participation. Since the growing demands of the lower classes could not be denied forever, even with violence, better to bring them into the system through a gradual expansion of their rights and privileges. Greater democracy, Mill urged, contributed to the “highest and more harmoneous development of [man’s] powers to a complete and consistent whole,” and made the best use of the “moral, intellectual, and active worth already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs,” thereby promoting “the advancement of community . . . in intellect, in virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency” (Mill: 1965, p. 392). MacPherson summarizes the changes from Protective Democracy to Developmental Democracy: This takes us to the root of Mill’s model of democracy. The root is a model of man very different from that on which model 1 [Protective Democracy] was based. Man is a being capable of developing his powers or capacities. The human essence is to exert and develop them. Man is essentially not a consumer and appropriator (as he was in Model 1) but an exerter and developer and enjoyer of his capacities. The good society is one which permits and encourages everyone to act as an exerter, developer, and enjoyer of the exertion and development of his or her own capacities (MacPherson: 1977: p. 48).
254
Pathk
W. Ham/ett
Mill’s concept of democracy was a distinctly moral one, an ideal toward which democratic society must strive, and thus a transcendence of Bentham’s instrumental Protective Democracy. Mill’s hope was that the moral development endangered by wider political participation would serve to blunt the most radical tendencies of the disenfranchised and unhappy working classes, and thereby facilitate their safe entry into active political life. Eqzdibnirm
Democracy
At about the midpoint of the 20th century, MacPherson sees Liberal Democratic thought take yet another turn, this time abandoning the developmental model of Mill and later theorists who shared and developed his perspective, This new model of Liberal Democracy MacPherson calls Equilibrium Democracy. The idealistic and moral tenor of the Developmental Model came under increasing criticism from a range of sources. Several authors challenged the descriptive accuracy of the Developmental Model. Close and scientifically careful inspection revealed that virtually none of the social and psychological attributes of the Developmental Model actually characterize the operations of modern, technologically advanced states. Instead, advanced technological society had become dominated by conflicting oligarchies of power, with the power unevenly distributed among competing groups. Most of these “private governments” operated in more or less total freedom from popular interference, much less control. Psychologically, empiricist studies thoroughly undermined the developmental model of the informed, rational voter, who carefully weighs candidates and issues. The average voter, it turns out, is a rather ill-informed, apathetic sort, given to voting his emotions, prejudices, or from simple habit, rather than from rational evaluation or calculation. Liberal Democratic theory faced a thorough rethinking, if these facts were to be assimilated. Empirical data controverted the Developmental Model’s presuppositions at virtually every turn, while elistist theories competed vigorously for the allegiance of the younger generation of thinkers, who were not so fully caught up in the traditions of their elders. Revision of the Developmental Model was the order of the day, if outright abandonment was to be averted. A revamped Liberal Democratic theory was propounded, one whose subtlety, sophistication, and empiricism won it a large following in academe. MacPherson calls the new model “The Equilibrium Model” (sometimes the “Pluralist, Elitist, Equilibrium Model”), and it fully embraced the data and findings which had upset the Developmental Model. MacPherson characterizes the new model this way: The main stipulations of this model are that democracy is simply a mechanism not a kind of society nor a set of for choosing and authorizing governments, moral ends, and second, that the mechanism consists of a competition between two or more self-chosen sets of politicians (elites), arrayed in political parties, for the votes which will entitle them to rule until the next election. The voters’ role is not to decide political issues and then choose representatives who will carry out these decisions; it is rather to choose the men who will do the deciding. (MacPherson: 1877, p. 78).
Science, Technoiogy and Liberal Democratzi Theory
2ss
Thus, the voters are allowed to select from various sets of elites those promising to deliver that particular package of policies they prefer. The existence of certain procedural conditions and mechanisms, e.g., regular free elections, the rights of freedom of speech, press, assembly, etc., insures that whatever particular constellation of politicians and policies are chosen at any one time, the system as a whole quite mechanically avoids tyranny. The Equilibrium Model affords several theoretical advantages: first of all, it accepts the data on voter behavior and attitudes. Additionally, it accepts, and then neutralizes, the existence of small, powerful elites and large organized interests by placing them within a “political marketplace” where they are constrained to “produce” desirable “political goods” or perish. Indeed, the Equilibrium Model is largely the application of the market model to the operations of the political system: elites are political entrepreneurs offering competitive packages of policies to the consumer/voter. The Equilibrium Model is, essentially, a morally neutral, instrumental mechanism, whereas the Developmental Model had a clear and strong ethical component. Indeed, the Equilibrium Model functions whatever the personal moral goals of its users; it functions because of its automatic procedural mechanisms. It supports no central notion of human betterment, development, or improvement. It takes mankind as it is, not as it could or should be, or as it might become. The theorists associated with the Equilibrium Model consider themselves simple realists. The Developmental Model is simply unworkable; it was unworkable in the past century and is even more so under advancing technology. The Developmental Model operating in advanced technological society would require too much time and effort. The average citizen would weigh the costs of such intense participation against the expected benefits, and conclude that his time would be better spent in other pursuits. In the end, these theorists argue that the Equilibrium Model is best because anything loftier simply would not work.
III. MacPherson’s historical excursion points out the many ways Liberal Democratic theory has had to accommodate itself to an evolving and maturing technological industrialism. Each of the changes in perspective and theoretical orientation of the various models can be seen as a response to social, economic and political changes occasioned by advancing technological development. Even in its infancy, technological industrialism has had an affinity for Liberal policies and Liberal principles. It was the effectiveness of Liberal arguments which loosened the rigid mercantilist restrictions upon free enterprise. Economic and political liberty worked hand in hand to transform society, to release society’s productive capabilities, and to strengthen the position of the adventurous, enterprising individual against the demands of social conformity. This was the spirit of the times when Bentham wrote, and his philosophy was in part an expression of that spirit. Finally freed from the strictures of both Church dogma and feudal lord, the entrepreneur set about constructing a world view which accorded with his newfound freedom and powers. Ancient and metaphysical moral notions were overturned in favor of rationality, science and a dedication to empiricism. In the combination
256
Patrich W. Hadett
of the free market and the Liberal state, the true engine of economic prosperity and social well-being was found. But this remained a distinctly non-democratic, even anti-democratic social order. The right of political participation was still tightly controlled by the emerging middle classes, whose chief concerns were to be left alone by a traditionally highly intrusive state, and to protect their new-found material prosperity from other groups whom they saw as threatening to the new order. Mill’s world, on the other hand, was formed by a more mature industrialism. Mill faced the degrading and debilitating social conditions produced by an advanced factory system, the concentration of economic and political power in fewer hands, and the aggressive pushing and shoving that capitalism seemed to require in his day. He recognized and sympathized with (up to a point) the growing demands of the poor and laboring classes, sensing that such force could not long be denied. He knew that some means had to be found to accommodate the burgeoning democratic demands of the workers. Mill and those who followed him sought to make liberal principles serve egalitarian purposes. The broad social and personal improvements they sought to bring about through education and political participation, combined with the material prosperity of a reformed and regulated capitalism, held the promise of economic prosperity and social order without the heavy hand of political authority. But this model of Liberal Democarcy was being rapidly outmoded by 20th century technology. The demands of centralized technological systems, huge and impersonal corporations, the complexity of modern life, the penetration of communications and information technologies into all areas of life, private and public, all served to undermine the goals and prerequisites of the Developmental Model. In place of participation and control by the average citizen, advanced technological society offered only control by “technostructures” and decision-making by anointed “technocracies” of unaccountable, distant technical experts. The new model of Liberal Democracy saw traditional moral values dominated by the language, imagery and values of impersonal, mechanistic technology. The Equilibrium Model of Liberal Democracy is the product of more than just sophisticated survey research techniques and polling results. Its roots reach back to broad cultural and philosophical changes which were triggered in large measure by technology itself. Philosophy in the technological age is marked by an acute ambiguity about an array of beliefs and values previously held to be certain. Advances in science, technology, philosophical and psychological criticism have stripped these beliefs of their foundations, thereby undermining the Developmental Model built upon them. Such criticisms attacked the heart of the Developmental Model, questioning, first, the possibility of even defining, much less achieving, an objective moral ideal for society, and, second, doubting the existence and definability of the human personality itself. Disappearance of the Objective Moral Idea/ The criticisms which eventually undid the Developmental Model trace their beginnings to the tremendous intellectual revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Science, Tecbno/ogy and Liberal Democratic Theory
2S7
The empiricism of Bacon, of Galilieo, of Hume came to dominate educated thought in the West, standing against a prioti and scholastic metaphysics. The scientific frame of mind came to be the very definition of clear, precise thinking, the measure of reason and sanity. But it proved to be a relentless empiricism, and no realm of the mind stood beyond its judgment. A central tenet of the Developmental Model was its insistence upon the moral ideal of personal growth and improvement through the institutions of Liberal Democracy. However, scientific naturalism found that the moral claims of the Developmental Model, as well as the moral claims of all philosophy, hold no cognitive weight. They may express feelings or emotions, or be used in moving or motivating others to accede to moral demands, but they do not describe or explain reality, and they contribute no knowledge except of personal preferences. If value judgments cannot be verified, or are no more than expressions of nonrational and subjective preferences, then Bentham was right and Mill wrong: there is no hierarchy of values, no definable better toward which society should suive. A theory of Liberal Democracy based upon such an assertion of values, then, is erected upon shifting, very subjective sands. Value subjectivism left democratic theorists with no basis for ranking the subjective preferences of citizens: each person’s set of preferences was the equal of any other’s, as each stood on equally subjective ground. Value neutrality proved to be easily adopted by Equilibrium Model theorists. It freed such theorists, who had become fully committed to a uuly scientific explanation of society, from the nettlesome and sticky problem of defending specific value systems. Since values cannot be hierarchically structured, the existing distribution of values must be taken as the given from which analysis begins, rather than as the subject of that analysis. Events in the early decades of the 20th century served to further integrate value neutrality with the emerging Equilibrium Model of Liberal Democracy. Absolutist moral and political systems came to power in Europe, resulting in oppressive, belligerent, repressive “redemptive” regimes inimical to both freedom and democracy. Several theorists, focusing upon the absolutist nature of such regimes, identified democracy with a thorough-going moral relavitism. The crisis of European totalitarianism, according to Edward Purcell, . . . led a majority of intellectuals to fully transfer the issue of philosophical absolutism out of the area of epistemology and into the realm of politics. Nazism seemed the complete institutionalization of nonempirical, ideological absolutism, and hence the perfect example of what a number of anti-absolutists had been suggesting for many years. By the early forties philosophical naturalists . . . were almost unanimous in maintaining that theoretical absolutism of any kind was the logical concomitant of totalitarianism. Allow an absolute into social or political theory, argued the political scientist, John D. Lewis, in 1940, and a Fuhrer or a Duce had a perfect rationale for action. “It invites the dangerous conclusion that since otte right course exists, since there is an absolute common good,” he maintained, “an elite group, however small, which is able to rise above petty and partial interests to a vision of the true national interest is the best guardian of the welfare of the state” (Purcell: 1973, p. 202).
258
Patnk.4 W. Ham/ett
And, while the Developmental Model was certainly not an absolutist ideology, its emphasis upon moral improvement proved to be all too similar for comfort. Thus, Liberal Democratic theory moved away from the moral perspectives of the Developmental Model, impelled by a value-neutral, empirical, scientific naturalism and by the barbarisms of European totalitarianism armed with the best of modern technologically sophisticated weaponry. Disappearance of the Human Personality The second attack upon the Developmental Model was part of a psychological and philosophical broadside aimed at the Model’s understanding of the nature of the human personality. Ultimately, what was questioned was the very existence of that personality. Of all the phenomena for which such empirical analyses were sought, by far the most complex and most resistant to empirical discussion was man himself. Man, the special creation of God, stood within but apart from the rest of nature. The descriptive categories appropriate to brute nature seemed inadequate when applied to the human personality. It was against this background of the special status of mankind that the work of scientists must be viewed. Slowly, but irresistibly, the scientific frame of mind undermined man’s special status and position, placing him squarely and wholly within the realm of nature. Advances in astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry, etc., first reduced the centrality of the earth in the heavens, and then the unique position of mankind on the earth. Advances in physiology, endocrinology, etc., locate more and more of man’s distinguishing traits within the biological realm, and out of the religious and metaphysical domains. Many of his moods, emotions, sentiments and drives seem to stem from, and be manipulable by, his physiological structure and metabolism. Perhaps the most telling blow comes in the field of natural history. With the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, the act of divine providence are made “special creation” and the need for continuous superfluous in a natural system perfectly capable of creating and sustaining species through its own mechanisms, employing only purely mechanical, nonpersonal laws. Man, once only slightly less than the angels, is now only slightly more than the monkeys. Nor is man’s mental life secure. The discovery of the subconscious must rank with the most important products of the scientific venture, and one which threatens both pillars of the traditional conception of the human personality: rationality and volition. Citing instincts and subconscious urges beyond rational understanding and control, Freudian psychoanalysis works to place even the mind of man with the sphere of determined natural phenomena. Freud argues that . . . the “ego” of each one of us . . . is not even master of his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going unconsciously in his own mind (cited in Mazlich: 1972).
In sociology, economics and political science, the role of the human personality
Science, Technologyand Liberal Democratic Theory
39
has also been reduced by a theoretical emphasis upon groups, organizations, and other forms of mass behavior. Such a change of perspective, from the individual to the group, pays handsome dividends to disciplines hungry for the status of “science.” It completely diffuses the impossible problems of adequately describing, much less predicting, the complex forces acting upon separate individuals, by subsuming them all into larger collectives which are amenable to analysis and, at least, statistical prediction. Imperatives
of Technology
This change in perspective accords well with changes in society induced by technological industrialism. Advancing technology, now buttressed by the very sophisticated statistical studies it makes possible, permits-even demands -larger, more impersonal organizations in order to achieve top efficiency. There is thus a sort of self-fulfilling rationality at work, as noted by Marcuse (1964) Ellul(1964) Mumford (1970) Habermas (1970) and others, a rationality which paints opposition or even criticism of its operations and demands as near-madness. Efficient operation becomes the guide for all forms of social organization, an efficiency outlined by graphs, flow-charts, and computer print-outs. What is needed for such efficiency are standardized, replaceable human components, not the unpredictable, emotional, creative personalities of an earlier age. Thus, a neat circle is closed: the scientific frame of mind perceives reality within a nonpersonal, mechanical framework, permitting and abetting the creation of a social and economic technology requiring predictable, standardized human components, which modern philosophy, psychology, sociology and political science assert are the only kind of human components which exist, in any case. The ultimate attack upon the human personality as an explanatory variable is itself a product of the symbiosis of empirical science and technology, and comesironically -from that branch of social sciences most directly concerned with the human personality: psychology. In the behaviorism of Skinner (1958) and Watson (1924), the very existence of an interior, mental life is discarded as so much prescientific jargon. Behaviorism finds cognitive value exclusively in the external, observable behavior of human beings. It argues that all references to “states of mind, ” “personality, ” “moods” or “sentiments,” etc., are unnecessary metaphysical complications of scientific explanation. Thus the cornerstone of the Developmental Model is exposed as a myth, a metaphysical smokescreen for ignorance. The contribution of technology to the demise of the human personality is even more ominous. If “human nature” can be fully explained and predicted using only behavioral categories, the behaviorist asserts that the external forces which explain behavior can be manipulated to produce very nearly whatever complement of traits may be desired. Where, for Mill, Liberal Democracy conuibutes to the development and perfection of the individual personality, for extreme behaviorists, science and technology are together capable of mass-producing humans to order. But this is perhaps too extreme a position to lay at the door of the Equilibrium Model of Liberal Democracy. Most of the theorists of the model are, indeed, behaviorists, in the sense of being dedicated to a thorough-going scientific empiri-
260
Pat&A W. Hamlett
cism. Most of them, however, would recoil from the starker claims of “operant conditioning” made by Skinner and his associates. Nonetheless, the logic of extreme behaviorism is but an extension of the basic thrust of scientific naturalism, an extension rejected by Equilibrium Model theorists not on scientific, but on moral grounds. Both of these trends, i. e. , value neutrality and the progressive emasculation of the importance of the individual, worked to destroy the Developmental Model of Liberal Democracy. The Equilibrium Model was propounded in its place, as the model most in accord with the new data and demands of scientific naturalism. Purcell summarizes: Although older attitudes-belief in nature as part of a comprehensive divine order and in science as part of a larger and morally oriented natural philosophy continued to influence American thought into the twentieth century, intellectuals were moving through a transition stage toward a wholly naturalistic and empirically oriented world view . . . They saw . . . change as given, order as accidental, process as nonteleological, behavior as adaptive, values as experiential, and absolutes of any kind as superstitions. . . . The new evolutionary science thus appeared hostile to certain traditional democratic beliefs. If the struggle for survival was the law of life, humanitarian morals were merely unwarranted handicaps in the fight. If a harsh and relentless nature determined his fate, then man was helpless to create a more just society. And finally, if men were divided into the fit and the unfit, then the ideal of equality was an unattainable illusion (Purcell: 1973, p. 8). Under the Equilibrium Model, Liberal Democracy - no longer a moral ideal-had been made over into a sort of technique, a method, a mechanism, embodying its own particular technology. Without a moral foundation, it joins other technologies with about the same status and significance. Without its moral content, agnostic as to goals and values (other than pragmatic political stability and economic efficiency), Liberal Democracy lowered the condition of the individual within advanced technological society. just as the individual has become little more than a “servo-mechanism” for the technologies of society, the political doctrines of traditional Liberal Democracy have been reduced to a value-neutral assemblage of social and political mechanisms through which varying ruling elites are symbolically ratified in their power. Loftier ambitions, after all, are simply unworkable. Conclusion The conclusion is that the currently dominant model of Liberal Democracy, itself a part of a broader scientific, technological and philosophical movement, is the most recent in a series of attempts to accommodate both democratic and Liberal values to the conditions and requirements of modern technology. In effect, the Equilibrium Model has-if the barbarism can be allowed - “technologized” Liberal Democracy: its emphasis upon the dignity, significance and potential of the individual human personality has been dissolved by the acid of a behaviorist and value-
Science,
Technoiogy at&La&era/ Democratic Theory
261
neutral social science, by the social and economic complexity of life in the technological society, and by the requirement that the nonrational and unpredictable aspects of people give way before the demands of efficiency. Liberal Democracy’s requirement that government function at the behest and in the interests of all of the people has been superseded by a faith in an evermore rapid and complex pace of progress, in which an apathetic populace is actually welcomed and molded to fit the needs of ever larger and more impersonal organizations. And, finally, Liberal Democracy’s insistence that the people have a right to participate meaningfully in the establishment of the social agenda has been set aside, and the growing need to buffer crucial technocratic decision-makers from unwarranted and uninformed intrusions has been set in its place. The result is a society claiming to remain both Liberal and democratic, while in truth remaining fully committed to technological industrialism and scientific naturalism. It seems that the question of compatibility between Liberal Democracy and modern science and technology can be answered in the affirmative, but only at a cost unseen and unmentioned by the more optimistic of theorists. C.B. MacPherson’s optimism that modern technology can relieve the need for compulsory labor through the elimination of scarcity, appears to be overly optimistic. His own reconstruction of the history of Liberal Democratic thought serves as the foundation for a more pessimistic view. The perpetuation of a “market model” of human nature as infinite appropriator and consumer of material goods appears to be only the tip of the iceberg, and its removal-unless accompanied by a substantial rethinking of all the other philosophical and scientific themes derived from the accommodation of Liberal Democratic values to the demands of modern technology - insufficient to achieve the goals MacPherson hopes to see. Indeed, the history of interactions between the twin social forces of Liberal Democracy and technology more nearly resembles a protracted conflict, with Liberal Democracy conceding more and more of its central values to the irresistible progress of modern technology. In the end, this may be judged to be a very costly compatibility, indeed!
References Bcntham, James, quoted in C.K. Ogden, cd., Benthrrm: The Theory oflcgfibtion (London: George Routledge, 1931). Dickson, David, The Po/iticr of Altertzahe Technology (New York: Universe Books, 1974). Ellul, Jacques, Tbc Tecbno/ogical Society (New York: Knopf, 1964). Gcndron, Bernard, Technology aBd:be Human Condihn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977). Habcrmas, Jurgcn, Towarda Rationa/ Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970). MacPhcrson, C.B.. The Poh&al Tbcory of Possessive Individualtjm: Hobbes to Lo&c (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). The Real World of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). -1 Democratic Theory: hays in Retnkd (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). --1 The La+ and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). -1 Marcusc, Herbert, One-Dimcnrionul Man (Boston; Beacon Press. 1964). Mazlich, Bruce, “The Fourth Discontinuity” in M. Kranzbcrg and W. Davenport, cds., Technology and Ctdtrue (New York: New American Library, 1972). Mill, John Stuart, “Essays in Economics and Society,” in J.M. Robson, cd.. John Shut? Mi//: His Collected W0rk.r Vols. IV and V (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1967). Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine, vof. II: The Pentugon of Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1970).
262
P~tnbh W. Ham&t
Purcell. Edward, The Cririr of Democratic Theory: Scienttjk Natfnahm and the Problem of Value (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1973). Skinner, B.F., Science and Human Behavior (New York: MacMillan, 1958). Watson, John B., Bebaviotim (New York: Norton & Co., 1924).
Techndogy In Sociery, Vol. 6, pp. 249-262 (1984) Printed in the USA. All tights tcxrved.
Science, Technology, and Liberal Democratic Theory Patrid W. Han&t
ABSTUACT. TbiE article explores the relationships between modern science and technology and Libera/ Democratic theory, as expressed in the writings of Canadian political philosopher, C. B. MacPherson. It begins by noting the changes which have occurred in Liberal Democratic theory, as outlined by MacPberson, emphasizing first the absence of moral content in Bentbarn, the appearance of moral signrjkance in John Stuart MU, and $nai.. tb e d isapp earance of morality in contemporary pluralist wn’tings. The article then attempts to show the connections between these phdosophical changes and the evolution of industkl technology during the same periods. It con&de; with a cri2ique of MacPherson for his unwarranted optimism that modem technology itselfposes no threat to the integrity of Liberal Democracy. The centraipoint made in the article is that contemporary Liberal Democracy may well be so permeated with essentiUy instrumentalist technological values that it may be impossible to accomplish MacPberson’s goal of reestablishing the moraI basis of MzVs vrjion of Liberal Democratic &ought.
A common theme in the voluminous literature dealing with the social and political impacts of modern technology is the apparent difficulty of ever successfully integrating that technology with the institutional and operational demands of democracy. This is especially true of the writings of leftist and neo-Marxist critics, from Herbert Marcuse (1964) to Jurgen Habermas (1970) David Dickson (1974), and Bernard Gendron (1977). For these authors, in particular, the imperatives of modern technology are an acid eating away the foundations of any truly democratic regime, and not only because of the intimate connections they see between modern technology and modern capitalism. For these critics, the technocratic /managerial imperatives of complex, large-scale, integrated technological systems make popular participation in decision-making or institutional responsiveness to popular demands nearly impossible. This apparent incompatibility is all the more vexing when seen from the historical perspective: perhaps never before in human history have two complex sets of social, economic and political values been so widely accepted and pursued as modern technology and democracy. Even the most egregious tyrant today finds himself defending his actions in “democratic” terms, while political systems which Pat&k W. Ham&t received& Ph.D. fbm the University of CahfoonrzdSanta Barbara, and teaches in the Department of History and Politica/ Science at the University of Mtisouri/Ro//a. Hti reseanh interests include science and technology policy-ma&g and internatiod technology transfer tisues. 249
2so
Pat&4 W. Hamlett
regularly abuse their own citizens frequently find it necessary to describe themselves as democratic, however tortured the definition they employ. At the same time, the goal of technological sophistication and development seems to be the guiding light for all kinds of national economic policies, whether centralized and state-directed or iairsez faire. A question of central importance is whether the core values and practical imperatives of democracy are, in fact, compatible with those of modern technology. Most leftist and neo-Marxist writers see modern technology as moving further away from democratic control, rather than contributing to the growth of democracy. A few do mention the potential contributions of electronic technologies to widespread political participation, but most see such developments as very far away in the future, or as simply attempts to find some redemptive promise in technology, however realistic. For most, the only hope is to radically recast the direction of technological growth, as in the “appropriate technology” movement, or in other “back to the land,” anti-technology efforts to escape from the social and political relationships formed by modern technology. C. B. MacPherson Among contemporary leftist/neo-Marxist writers, Crawford Brough MacPherson does not fit this mold. In a long series of books, articles, reviews, and responses to critics, C.B. MacPherson has developed a complex and sophisticated philosophy, which tries to blend the best, as he sees it, of the classical Liberal Democratic thinkers (especially John Stuart Mill) with the insights of Marx and other 20th century radical critics of modern capitalist society. His stated purpose is to find a way to lead Liberal Democracy to jettison its least beneficial premises in favor of others which he feels more closely accord with the growing aspirations of people around the world. In The Politica/ Theory of Possessive Individualism: Ho&es to Lode (1962), MacPherson outlines what he sees as the core value of early liberal thought: the right to unlimited possession and consumption of material property. This assumption undergirds the entire edifice of early capitalist industrialism, and greatly encouraged the growth of modern technology. The view of human nature which asserts that humans are “infinite appropriators and consumers” of material utilities, MacPherson argues, permits and even encourages a variety of social, economic and political relationships which are subject to serious moral and ethical challenge. MacPherson, however, quite explicitly does not blame modern technology for the perpetuation of those morally and ethically questionable relationships. Indeed, throughout his writings he expresses supreme confidence that the growth of modern technology, far from undermining democracy, may well make it possible for Liberal Democracy to finally shed that no longer needed conception of “infinite appropriator and consumer” and replace it with a concept of human nature as “exerter and enjoyer of human capacities,” through modern technology’s potential for eliminating material scarcity: . . . the technological
revolution
could enable men to discard the concept
of
Science, Techno/ogy and LiberaL Democratak Theoty
251
themselves as essentially acquirers and appropriators. For as we have seen, that concept was needed as an incentive to continual exertion of human productive energy and continual accumulation of capital. These incentives will no longer be needed. The problem will not be to enlist men’s energies in the material productive process, but to provide alternative outlets for those energies; not to accumulate ever more capital, but to find socially profitable uses for future accumulation at anything like the rate to which we have become accustomed. The technological revolution in the West thus offers the possibility of our discarding the market concept of the essence of man, and replacing it with a morally preferable concept, in a way that was not possible when previous generations of liberaldemocratic thinkers, from John Stuart Mill on, attempted it (MacPherson: 1973, p. 37). And again: The chief new factor which seems to make the assumption about unlimited desire dispensable is the prospect now present in people’s minds that scarcity can be ended once and for all by the technological conquests of nature that are now so rapidly advancing. The exploitation of new sources of energy and new methods of productive control of energy- automation and all that-seem capable of ending the need for incessant compulsory labour . . . the vision of a society in which a fraction of the present compulsory labour can produce plenty for all is a vision not likely now to be extinguished by the disclaimers of experts (Ibid., pp. W-20). MacPherson may be far too optimistic about the compatibility of a reformed liberal democracy, as he understands it, and modern technology. Ironically, one of the best ways to explore MacPherson’s possibly unwarranted optimism is through another of his books, The Lif and Times of Liberal Democracy (1977).
MacPherson succeeds in this slim volume not only in disclosing the major stages in the evolution of what is the dominant political philosophy of the Western world, but also in explaining its most significant conceptual premises. MacPherson’s analysis is superior to many of the others, because he carefully distinguishes the twin philosophical roots of liberal democracy: liberalism and democratic theory. In much of the literature, these two different philosophical streams are already blended, blurring their sometimes fundamental differences. MacPherson’s historical perspective is additionally useful because it allows references to various historical phases of technological industrialism. Reviewing the historical amalgamation of liberalism and democracy, MacPherson delineates three historical models of liberal democracy: Protective Democracy, Developmental Democracy, and Equilibrium Democracy. Although he does not develop the thought, each of his models corresponds to a different stage of technological development.
2fi2
Path& W. Hamlett
Protective Democtslcy Protective Democracy, MacPherson’s first model, emerges during the early phase of industrialism, when the rising commercial middle classes finally broke the stranglehold of the monarchy and aristocracy upon the political and economic life of England. The middle classes sought to release their creative and entrepreneurial ambitions from the restraining grasp of a dying mercantilism, and used Locke, Smith, Montesquieu , Bentham, and Mill for theoretical and philosophical justification. The lower classes, recently enclosed agricultural workers forced from the farms into urban slums, had only begun fragmentary efforts at organized protests of their living and working conditions. Such “worker armies” were viewed as necessary and inevitable components of advancing industry, with little or no hope of significant improvement in their sorry estate. Bentham summarized their position this way: In the highest state of social prosperity, the great mass of citizens will have no resources except their industry; and consequently will be always near indigence (Bentham: 1931, p. 127). Thus, just at the time technological industrialism most required both freedom from arbitrary governmental restrictions and a ready, but politically impotent labor force, Liberal political theorists were at hand to argue that both conditions were at the same time natural and beneficial. Their Liberal doctrines, combined with utilitarian ethics and philosophy, led them to support constitutional limits upon governmental authority, the separation of governmental powers into distinct and independent branches, formalized civil liberties, etc., while also supporting the operations of the free market economy and the protection - even sanctity-of property rights. These early Liberals, however, and the governments they formed, were a long way from being democratic. As a class, they feared radical and uncontrolled social change, and thus closely restricted the right to vote. After all, they watched in horror the rising tide of revolutionary fever on the European continent, culminating in the Paris Commune and other acts of civil unrest in the mid- 1840s. It was only after they had received assurance that an expanded suffrage would not undermine existing economic relations that the Liberals gradually allowed a more democratic franchise to emerge, which included the working classes. MacPherson’s discussion of the early reluctance of liberalism to accept even so fundamental a democratic value as universal suffrage throws sobering light upon a number of rather too optimistic arguments for technology’s supportive relationship to liberal democratic practice. Deveiopmentd
Democracy
MacPherson’s second model, Developmental Democracy, received its first expression in the writings of the second-generation utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, son of Bentham’s associate. Although the model evolved over time, it remained the predominant model of Liberal Democracy well into the first half of the 20th century. By the middle of the 19th century, the younger Mill was unavoidably faced with
Science, Tecbno/ogy andliberal
Democratic Theory
253
the social conditions produced in England by a rapidly maturing technological industrialism, Two developments shaped his thinking: on the one hand, the working classes had begun to gain in organized political strength, bringing to the surface Liberal fears of their potential for disrupting existing property relationships. On the other hand, the degradation, oppression, poverty and immiseration of the laboring classes had become so blatantly inhuman that Mill was no longer able to justify such conditions as socially or economically inevitable: I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading upon each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress (John Stuart Mill: 1965, pp. 754-55). Mill, moreover, had developed a healthy respect for the growing power of labor, especially as a result of the upheavals in 1848. He was convinced that a return to labor’s former docility was an illusion: Of the working man, at least in the more advanced countries of Europe, it may be pronounced certain, that the patriarchal or paternal system of government is one to which they will not again be subject. That question was decided, when they were taught to read, and allowed access to newspapers and political tracts , . . (Mill: 1965, p. 761). Mill’s response was to look upon Liberal Democracy as a vehicle for the improvement of the average citizen, as a school for political participation. Since the growing demands of the lower classes could not be denied forever, even with violence, better to bring them into the system through a gradual expansion of their rights and privileges. Greater democracy, Mill urged, contributed to the “highest and more harmoneous development of [man’s] powers to a complete and consistent whole,” and made the best use of the “moral, intellectual, and active worth already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs,” thereby promoting “the advancement of community . . . in intellect, in virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency” (Mill: 1965, p. 392). MacPherson summarizes the changes from Protective Democracy to Developmental Democracy: This takes us to the root of Mill’s model of democracy. The root is a model of man very different from that on which model 1 [Protective Democracy] was based. Man is a being capable of developing his powers or capacities. The human essence is to exert and develop them. Man is essentially not a consumer and appropriator (as he was in Model 1) but an exerter and developer and enjoyer of his capacities. The good society is one which permits and encourages everyone to act as an exerter, developer, and enjoyer of the exertion and development of his or her own capacities (MacPherson: 1977: p. 48).
254
Pathk
W. Ham/ett
Mill’s concept of democracy was a distinctly moral one, an ideal toward which democratic society must strive, and thus a transcendence of Bentham’s instrumental Protective Democracy. Mill’s hope was that the moral development endangered by wider political participation would serve to blunt the most radical tendencies of the disenfranchised and unhappy working classes, and thereby facilitate their safe entry into active political life. Eqzdibnirm
Democracy
At about the midpoint of the 20th century, MacPherson sees Liberal Democratic thought take yet another turn, this time abandoning the developmental model of Mill and later theorists who shared and developed his perspective, This new model of Liberal Democracy MacPherson calls Equilibrium Democracy. The idealistic and moral tenor of the Developmental Model came under increasing criticism from a range of sources. Several authors challenged the descriptive accuracy of the Developmental Model. Close and scientifically careful inspection revealed that virtually none of the social and psychological attributes of the Developmental Model actually characterize the operations of modern, technologically advanced states. Instead, advanced technological society had become dominated by conflicting oligarchies of power, with the power unevenly distributed among competing groups. Most of these “private governments” operated in more or less total freedom from popular interference, much less control. Psychologically, empiricist studies thoroughly undermined the developmental model of the informed, rational voter, who carefully weighs candidates and issues. The average voter, it turns out, is a rather ill-informed, apathetic sort, given to voting his emotions, prejudices, or from simple habit, rather than from rational evaluation or calculation. Liberal Democratic theory faced a thorough rethinking, if these facts were to be assimilated. Empirical data controverted the Developmental Model’s presuppositions at virtually every turn, while elistist theories competed vigorously for the allegiance of the younger generation of thinkers, who were not so fully caught up in the traditions of their elders. Revision of the Developmental Model was the order of the day, if outright abandonment was to be averted. A revamped Liberal Democratic theory was propounded, one whose subtlety, sophistication, and empiricism won it a large following in academe. MacPherson calls the new model “The Equilibrium Model” (sometimes the “Pluralist, Elitist, Equilibrium Model”), and it fully embraced the data and findings which had upset the Developmental Model. MacPherson characterizes the new model this way: The main stipulations of this model are that democracy is simply a mechanism not a kind of society nor a set of for choosing and authorizing governments, moral ends, and second, that the mechanism consists of a competition between two or more self-chosen sets of politicians (elites), arrayed in political parties, for the votes which will entitle them to rule until the next election. The voters’ role is not to decide political issues and then choose representatives who will carry out these decisions; it is rather to choose the men who will do the deciding. (MacPherson: 1877, p. 78).
Science, Technoiogy and Liberal Democratzi Theory
2ss
Thus, the voters are allowed to select from various sets of elites those promising to deliver that particular package of policies they prefer. The existence of certain procedural conditions and mechanisms, e.g., regular free elections, the rights of freedom of speech, press, assembly, etc., insures that whatever particular constellation of politicians and policies are chosen at any one time, the system as a whole quite mechanically avoids tyranny. The Equilibrium Model affords several theoretical advantages: first of all, it accepts the data on voter behavior and attitudes. Additionally, it accepts, and then neutralizes, the existence of small, powerful elites and large organized interests by placing them within a “political marketplace” where they are constrained to “produce” desirable “political goods” or perish. Indeed, the Equilibrium Model is largely the application of the market model to the operations of the political system: elites are political entrepreneurs offering competitive packages of policies to the consumer/voter. The Equilibrium Model is, essentially, a morally neutral, instrumental mechanism, whereas the Developmental Model had a clear and strong ethical component. Indeed, the Equilibrium Model functions whatever the personal moral goals of its users; it functions because of its automatic procedural mechanisms. It supports no central notion of human betterment, development, or improvement. It takes mankind as it is, not as it could or should be, or as it might become. The theorists associated with the Equilibrium Model consider themselves simple realists. The Developmental Model is simply unworkable; it was unworkable in the past century and is even more so under advancing technology. The Developmental Model operating in advanced technological society would require too much time and effort. The average citizen would weigh the costs of such intense participation against the expected benefits, and conclude that his time would be better spent in other pursuits. In the end, these theorists argue that the Equilibrium Model is best because anything loftier simply would not work.
III. MacPherson’s historical excursion points out the many ways Liberal Democratic theory has had to accommodate itself to an evolving and maturing technological industrialism. Each of the changes in perspective and theoretical orientation of the various models can be seen as a response to social, economic and political changes occasioned by advancing technological development. Even in its infancy, technological industrialism has had an affinity for Liberal policies and Liberal principles. It was the effectiveness of Liberal arguments which loosened the rigid mercantilist restrictions upon free enterprise. Economic and political liberty worked hand in hand to transform society, to release society’s productive capabilities, and to strengthen the position of the adventurous, enterprising individual against the demands of social conformity. This was the spirit of the times when Bentham wrote, and his philosophy was in part an expression of that spirit. Finally freed from the strictures of both Church dogma and feudal lord, the entrepreneur set about constructing a world view which accorded with his newfound freedom and powers. Ancient and metaphysical moral notions were overturned in favor of rationality, science and a dedication to empiricism. In the combination
256
Patrich W. Hadett
of the free market and the Liberal state, the true engine of economic prosperity and social well-being was found. But this remained a distinctly non-democratic, even anti-democratic social order. The right of political participation was still tightly controlled by the emerging middle classes, whose chief concerns were to be left alone by a traditionally highly intrusive state, and to protect their new-found material prosperity from other groups whom they saw as threatening to the new order. Mill’s world, on the other hand, was formed by a more mature industrialism. Mill faced the degrading and debilitating social conditions produced by an advanced factory system, the concentration of economic and political power in fewer hands, and the aggressive pushing and shoving that capitalism seemed to require in his day. He recognized and sympathized with (up to a point) the growing demands of the poor and laboring classes, sensing that such force could not long be denied. He knew that some means had to be found to accommodate the burgeoning democratic demands of the workers. Mill and those who followed him sought to make liberal principles serve egalitarian purposes. The broad social and personal improvements they sought to bring about through education and political participation, combined with the material prosperity of a reformed and regulated capitalism, held the promise of economic prosperity and social order without the heavy hand of political authority. But this model of Liberal Democarcy was being rapidly outmoded by 20th century technology. The demands of centralized technological systems, huge and impersonal corporations, the complexity of modern life, the penetration of communications and information technologies into all areas of life, private and public, all served to undermine the goals and prerequisites of the Developmental Model. In place of participation and control by the average citizen, advanced technological society offered only control by “technostructures” and decision-making by anointed “technocracies” of unaccountable, distant technical experts. The new model of Liberal Democracy saw traditional moral values dominated by the language, imagery and values of impersonal, mechanistic technology. The Equilibrium Model of Liberal Democracy is the product of more than just sophisticated survey research techniques and polling results. Its roots reach back to broad cultural and philosophical changes which were triggered in large measure by technology itself. Philosophy in the technological age is marked by an acute ambiguity about an array of beliefs and values previously held to be certain. Advances in science, technology, philosophical and psychological criticism have stripped these beliefs of their foundations, thereby undermining the Developmental Model built upon them. Such criticisms attacked the heart of the Developmental Model, questioning, first, the possibility of even defining, much less achieving, an objective moral ideal for society, and, second, doubting the existence and definability of the human personality itself. Disappearance of the Objective Moral Idea/ The criticisms which eventually undid the Developmental Model trace their beginnings to the tremendous intellectual revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Science, Tecbno/ogy and Liberal Democratic Theory
2S7
The empiricism of Bacon, of Galilieo, of Hume came to dominate educated thought in the West, standing against a prioti and scholastic metaphysics. The scientific frame of mind came to be the very definition of clear, precise thinking, the measure of reason and sanity. But it proved to be a relentless empiricism, and no realm of the mind stood beyond its judgment. A central tenet of the Developmental Model was its insistence upon the moral ideal of personal growth and improvement through the institutions of Liberal Democracy. However, scientific naturalism found that the moral claims of the Developmental Model, as well as the moral claims of all philosophy, hold no cognitive weight. They may express feelings or emotions, or be used in moving or motivating others to accede to moral demands, but they do not describe or explain reality, and they contribute no knowledge except of personal preferences. If value judgments cannot be verified, or are no more than expressions of nonrational and subjective preferences, then Bentham was right and Mill wrong: there is no hierarchy of values, no definable better toward which society should suive. A theory of Liberal Democracy based upon such an assertion of values, then, is erected upon shifting, very subjective sands. Value subjectivism left democratic theorists with no basis for ranking the subjective preferences of citizens: each person’s set of preferences was the equal of any other’s, as each stood on equally subjective ground. Value neutrality proved to be easily adopted by Equilibrium Model theorists. It freed such theorists, who had become fully committed to a uuly scientific explanation of society, from the nettlesome and sticky problem of defending specific value systems. Since values cannot be hierarchically structured, the existing distribution of values must be taken as the given from which analysis begins, rather than as the subject of that analysis. Events in the early decades of the 20th century served to further integrate value neutrality with the emerging Equilibrium Model of Liberal Democracy. Absolutist moral and political systems came to power in Europe, resulting in oppressive, belligerent, repressive “redemptive” regimes inimical to both freedom and democracy. Several theorists, focusing upon the absolutist nature of such regimes, identified democracy with a thorough-going moral relavitism. The crisis of European totalitarianism, according to Edward Purcell, . . . led a majority of intellectuals to fully transfer the issue of philosophical absolutism out of the area of epistemology and into the realm of politics. Nazism seemed the complete institutionalization of nonempirical, ideological absolutism, and hence the perfect example of what a number of anti-absolutists had been suggesting for many years. By the early forties philosophical naturalists . . . were almost unanimous in maintaining that theoretical absolutism of any kind was the logical concomitant of totalitarianism. Allow an absolute into social or political theory, argued the political scientist, John D. Lewis, in 1940, and a Fuhrer or a Duce had a perfect rationale for action. “It invites the dangerous conclusion that since otte right course exists, since there is an absolute common good,” he maintained, “an elite group, however small, which is able to rise above petty and partial interests to a vision of the true national interest is the best guardian of the welfare of the state” (Purcell: 1973, p. 202).
258
Patnk.4 W. Ham/ett
And, while the Developmental Model was certainly not an absolutist ideology, its emphasis upon moral improvement proved to be all too similar for comfort. Thus, Liberal Democratic theory moved away from the moral perspectives of the Developmental Model, impelled by a value-neutral, empirical, scientific naturalism and by the barbarisms of European totalitarianism armed with the best of modern technologically sophisticated weaponry. Disappearance of the Human Personality The second attack upon the Developmental Model was part of a psychological and philosophical broadside aimed at the Model’s understanding of the nature of the human personality. Ultimately, what was questioned was the very existence of that personality. Of all the phenomena for which such empirical analyses were sought, by far the most complex and most resistant to empirical discussion was man himself. Man, the special creation of God, stood within but apart from the rest of nature. The descriptive categories appropriate to brute nature seemed inadequate when applied to the human personality. It was against this background of the special status of mankind that the work of scientists must be viewed. Slowly, but irresistibly, the scientific frame of mind undermined man’s special status and position, placing him squarely and wholly within the realm of nature. Advances in astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry, etc., first reduced the centrality of the earth in the heavens, and then the unique position of mankind on the earth. Advances in physiology, endocrinology, etc., locate more and more of man’s distinguishing traits within the biological realm, and out of the religious and metaphysical domains. Many of his moods, emotions, sentiments and drives seem to stem from, and be manipulable by, his physiological structure and metabolism. Perhaps the most telling blow comes in the field of natural history. With the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, the act of divine providence are made “special creation” and the need for continuous superfluous in a natural system perfectly capable of creating and sustaining species through its own mechanisms, employing only purely mechanical, nonpersonal laws. Man, once only slightly less than the angels, is now only slightly more than the monkeys. Nor is man’s mental life secure. The discovery of the subconscious must rank with the most important products of the scientific venture, and one which threatens both pillars of the traditional conception of the human personality: rationality and volition. Citing instincts and subconscious urges beyond rational understanding and control, Freudian psychoanalysis works to place even the mind of man with the sphere of determined natural phenomena. Freud argues that . . . the “ego” of each one of us . . . is not even master of his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going unconsciously in his own mind (cited in Mazlich: 1972).
In sociology, economics and political science, the role of the human personality
Science, Technologyand Liberal Democratic Theory
39
has also been reduced by a theoretical emphasis upon groups, organizations, and other forms of mass behavior. Such a change of perspective, from the individual to the group, pays handsome dividends to disciplines hungry for the status of “science.” It completely diffuses the impossible problems of adequately describing, much less predicting, the complex forces acting upon separate individuals, by subsuming them all into larger collectives which are amenable to analysis and, at least, statistical prediction. Imperatives
of Technology
This change in perspective accords well with changes in society induced by technological industrialism. Advancing technology, now buttressed by the very sophisticated statistical studies it makes possible, permits-even demands -larger, more impersonal organizations in order to achieve top efficiency. There is thus a sort of self-fulfilling rationality at work, as noted by Marcuse (1964) Ellul(1964) Mumford (1970) Habermas (1970) and others, a rationality which paints opposition or even criticism of its operations and demands as near-madness. Efficient operation becomes the guide for all forms of social organization, an efficiency outlined by graphs, flow-charts, and computer print-outs. What is needed for such efficiency are standardized, replaceable human components, not the unpredictable, emotional, creative personalities of an earlier age. Thus, a neat circle is closed: the scientific frame of mind perceives reality within a nonpersonal, mechanical framework, permitting and abetting the creation of a social and economic technology requiring predictable, standardized human components, which modern philosophy, psychology, sociology and political science assert are the only kind of human components which exist, in any case. The ultimate attack upon the human personality as an explanatory variable is itself a product of the symbiosis of empirical science and technology, and comesironically -from that branch of social sciences most directly concerned with the human personality: psychology. In the behaviorism of Skinner (1958) and Watson (1924), the very existence of an interior, mental life is discarded as so much prescientific jargon. Behaviorism finds cognitive value exclusively in the external, observable behavior of human beings. It argues that all references to “states of mind, ” “personality, ” “moods” or “sentiments,” etc., are unnecessary metaphysical complications of scientific explanation. Thus the cornerstone of the Developmental Model is exposed as a myth, a metaphysical smokescreen for ignorance. The contribution of technology to the demise of the human personality is even more ominous. If “human nature” can be fully explained and predicted using only behavioral categories, the behaviorist asserts that the external forces which explain behavior can be manipulated to produce very nearly whatever complement of traits may be desired. Where, for Mill, Liberal Democracy conuibutes to the development and perfection of the individual personality, for extreme behaviorists, science and technology are together capable of mass-producing humans to order. But this is perhaps too extreme a position to lay at the door of the Equilibrium Model of Liberal Democracy. Most of the theorists of the model are, indeed, behaviorists, in the sense of being dedicated to a thorough-going scientific empiri-
260
Pat&A W. Hamlett
cism. Most of them, however, would recoil from the starker claims of “operant conditioning” made by Skinner and his associates. Nonetheless, the logic of extreme behaviorism is but an extension of the basic thrust of scientific naturalism, an extension rejected by Equilibrium Model theorists not on scientific, but on moral grounds. Both of these trends, i. e. , value neutrality and the progressive emasculation of the importance of the individual, worked to destroy the Developmental Model of Liberal Democracy. The Equilibrium Model was propounded in its place, as the model most in accord with the new data and demands of scientific naturalism. Purcell summarizes: Although older attitudes-belief in nature as part of a comprehensive divine order and in science as part of a larger and morally oriented natural philosophy continued to influence American thought into the twentieth century, intellectuals were moving through a transition stage toward a wholly naturalistic and empirically oriented world view . . . They saw . . . change as given, order as accidental, process as nonteleological, behavior as adaptive, values as experiential, and absolutes of any kind as superstitions. . . . The new evolutionary science thus appeared hostile to certain traditional democratic beliefs. If the struggle for survival was the law of life, humanitarian morals were merely unwarranted handicaps in the fight. If a harsh and relentless nature determined his fate, then man was helpless to create a more just society. And finally, if men were divided into the fit and the unfit, then the ideal of equality was an unattainable illusion (Purcell: 1973, p. 8). Under the Equilibrium Model, Liberal Democracy - no longer a moral ideal-had been made over into a sort of technique, a method, a mechanism, embodying its own particular technology. Without a moral foundation, it joins other technologies with about the same status and significance. Without its moral content, agnostic as to goals and values (other than pragmatic political stability and economic efficiency), Liberal Democracy lowered the condition of the individual within advanced technological society. just as the individual has become little more than a “servo-mechanism” for the technologies of society, the political doctrines of traditional Liberal Democracy have been reduced to a value-neutral assemblage of social and political mechanisms through which varying ruling elites are symbolically ratified in their power. Loftier ambitions, after all, are simply unworkable. Conclusion The conclusion is that the currently dominant model of Liberal Democracy, itself a part of a broader scientific, technological and philosophical movement, is the most recent in a series of attempts to accommodate both democratic and Liberal values to the conditions and requirements of modern technology. In effect, the Equilibrium Model has-if the barbarism can be allowed - “technologized” Liberal Democracy: its emphasis upon the dignity, significance and potential of the individual human personality has been dissolved by the acid of a behaviorist and value-
Science,
Technoiogy at&La&era/ Democratic Theory
261
neutral social science, by the social and economic complexity of life in the technological society, and by the requirement that the nonrational and unpredictable aspects of people give way before the demands of efficiency. Liberal Democracy’s requirement that government function at the behest and in the interests of all of the people has been superseded by a faith in an evermore rapid and complex pace of progress, in which an apathetic populace is actually welcomed and molded to fit the needs of ever larger and more impersonal organizations. And, finally, Liberal Democracy’s insistence that the people have a right to participate meaningfully in the establishment of the social agenda has been set aside, and the growing need to buffer crucial technocratic decision-makers from unwarranted and uninformed intrusions has been set in its place. The result is a society claiming to remain both Liberal and democratic, while in truth remaining fully committed to technological industrialism and scientific naturalism. It seems that the question of compatibility between Liberal Democracy and modern science and technology can be answered in the affirmative, but only at a cost unseen and unmentioned by the more optimistic of theorists. C.B. MacPherson’s optimism that modern technology can relieve the need for compulsory labor through the elimination of scarcity, appears to be overly optimistic. His own reconstruction of the history of Liberal Democratic thought serves as the foundation for a more pessimistic view. The perpetuation of a “market model” of human nature as infinite appropriator and consumer of material goods appears to be only the tip of the iceberg, and its removal-unless accompanied by a substantial rethinking of all the other philosophical and scientific themes derived from the accommodation of Liberal Democratic values to the demands of modern technology - insufficient to achieve the goals MacPherson hopes to see. Indeed, the history of interactions between the twin social forces of Liberal Democracy and technology more nearly resembles a protracted conflict, with Liberal Democracy conceding more and more of its central values to the irresistible progress of modern technology. In the end, this may be judged to be a very costly compatibility, indeed!
References Bcntham, James, quoted in C.K. Ogden, cd., Benthrrm: The Theory oflcgfibtion (London: George Routledge, 1931). Dickson, David, The Po/iticr of Altertzahe Technology (New York: Universe Books, 1974). Ellul, Jacques, Tbc Tecbno/ogical Society (New York: Knopf, 1964). Gcndron, Bernard, Technology aBd:be Human Condihn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977). Habcrmas, Jurgcn, Towarda Rationa/ Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970). MacPhcrson, C.B.. The Poh&al Tbcory of Possessive Individualtjm: Hobbes to Lo&c (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). The Real World of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). -1 Democratic Theory: hays in Retnkd (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). --1 The La+ and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). -1 Marcusc, Herbert, One-Dimcnrionul Man (Boston; Beacon Press. 1964). Mazlich, Bruce, “The Fourth Discontinuity” in M. Kranzbcrg and W. Davenport, cds., Technology and Ctdtrue (New York: New American Library, 1972). Mill, John Stuart, “Essays in Economics and Society,” in J.M. Robson, cd.. John Shut? Mi//: His Collected W0rk.r Vols. IV and V (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1967). Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine, vof. II: The Pentugon of Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1970).
262
P~tnbh W. Ham&t
Purcell. Edward, The Cririr of Democratic Theory: Scienttjk Natfnahm and the Problem of Value (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1973). Skinner, B.F., Science and Human Behavior (New York: MacMillan, 1958). Watson, John B., Bebaviotim (New York: Norton & Co., 1924).