Livre sur le mouvement anti-tech, qui se veut plus radical que Ivan Illich…

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

Highlights

Preface

There are many people today who see that modern society is heading toward disaster in one form or another, and who moreover recognize technology as the common thread linking the principal dangers that hang over us.1 Nearly all such people fall into one of two categories: First, there are those who are appalled at what technology is doing to our society and our planet, but are not motivated to take any action against the technological system because they feel helpless to accomplish anything in that direction. They read an anti-tech book-say, for example, Jacques Ellul’s Technological Society-and it makes them feel better because they’ve found someone who has eloquently articulated their own anxieties about technology. But the effect soon wears off and their discomfort with the technological world begins to nag them again, so they turn for relief to another anti-tech book-Ivan Illich, Kirkpatrick Sale, Daniel Qyinn, my own Industrial Society and Its Future, or something else-and the cycle repeats itsel£ In other words, for these people anti-tech literature is merely a kind of therapy: It alleviates their discomfort with technology, but it does not serve them as a call to action.

Preface

The purpose of this book is to show people how to begin thinking in practical, grand-strategic terms about what must be done in order to get our society off the road to destruction that it is now on.

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

In specific contexts in which abundant empirical evidence is available, fairly reliable short-term prediction and control of a society’s behavior may be possible

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

For example, economists can predict some of the immediate consequences for a modern industrial society of a rise or a fall in the interest rates. Hence, by raising or lowering interest rates they can manipulate such variables as the levels of inflation and of unemployment

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

Indirect consequences are harder to predict, and prediction of the consequences of more elaborate financial manipulations is largely guesswork. That’s why the economic policies of the U.S. government are subject to so much controversy: No one knows for certain what the consequences of those policies really are.

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

Outside of contexts in which abundant empirical evidence is available, or when longer-term effects are at issue, successful prediction-and therefore successful management of a society’s development-is far more difficult. In fact, failure is the norm.

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

The so-called “Green Revolution” of the latter part of the 20th century-the introduction of new farming technologies and of recently developed, highly productive varieties of grain-was supposed to alleviate hunger in the Third World by providing more abundant harvests. It did indeed provide more abundant harvests. But: “[A]lthough the ‘Green Revolution’ seems to have been a success as far as the national total cereal production figures are concerned, a look at it from the perspective of communities and individual humans indicates that the problems have far outweighed the successes … . “16 In some parts of the world the consequences of the Green Revolution have been nothing short of catastrophic. For example, in the Punjab (a region lying partly in India and partly in Pakistan), the Green Revolution has ruined “thousands of hectares of [formerly] productive land,” and has led to severe lowering of the water table, contamination of the water with pesticides and fertilizers, numerous cases of cancer (probably due to the contaminated water), and many suicides. “‘The green revolution has brought us only downfall,’ says Jarnail Singh … . ‘It ruined our soil, our environment, our water table. Used to be we had fairs in villages where people would come together and have fun. Now we gather in medical centers.’ ”

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

politicians often do things for propaganda purposes and not because they really believe in them.

The Development of a Society can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control

the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste from the peaceful uses of nuclear energy still has not been solved

In order to control the development of a society you would have to be able to predict how the society would react to any given action you might take, and such predictions have generally proven to be highly unreliable. Human societies are complex systems-technologically advanced societies are most decidedly complex-and prediction of the behavior of complex systems presents difficulties that are not contingent on the present state of our knowledge or our level of technological development.

Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist, was the first to call widespread attention to the fact that even the most minute inaccuracy in the data provided can totally invalidate a

prediction about the behavior of a complex system. This fact came to be called the “butterfly effect” because in 1972, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Lorenz gave a talk that he titled “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?

Lorenz’s work is said to have been the inspiration for the development of what is called “chaos theory

[O]nce it becomes clear how many systems are sufficiently nonlinear to be considered for chaos, it has to be recognized that prediction may be limited to short stretches set by the horizon of predictability. Full comprehension … must frequently remain a tentative process … with frequent recourse to observation and experiment in the event that prediction and reality have diverged too far

It should be noted that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle sets an absolute limit to the precision of data used for the prediction of physical phenomena. This principle, which implies that certain events involving subatomic particles are unpredictable, is inferred mathematically from other known laws of physics; hence, successful prediction at the subatomic level would entail violations of the laws of physics

Of course, the behavior of a human society is not in every respect chaotic; there are empirically observable historical trends that can last for centuries or millennia. But it is wildly improbable that a modern technological society could be free of all chaotic subsystems whose behavior is capable of affecting the society as a whole, so it is safe to assume that the development of a modern society is necessarily chaotic in at least some respects and therefore unpredictable.

This doesn’t mean that no predictions at all are possible. In reference to weather forecasting the Britannica writes: It is highly probable that atmospheric movements … are in a state of chaos. If so, there can be little hope of extending indefinitely the range of weather forecasting except in the most general terms. There are clearly certain features of climate, such as annual cycles of temperature and rainfall, which are exempt from the ravages of chaos. Other large-scale processes may still allow long-range prediction, but the more detail one asks for in a forecast, the sooner it will lose its validity.

Much the same can be said of the behavior of human society (though human society is far more complex even than the weather). In some contexts, reasonably reliable and specific short-term predictions can be made, as we noted above in reference to the relationship between interest rates, inflation, and unemployment.

it is well to note that predictions that something will not work can generally be made with greater confidence than predictions that something will work

There are exceptions. Moore’s Law makes a specific prediction about the rate of growth of computing power, and as of 2012 the law has held true for some fifty years. 36 But Moore’s Law is not an inference derived from an understanding of society, it is simply a description of an empirically

observed trend, and no one knows how long the trend will continue.

The complexity of a society will grow right along with its computing power, because the society’s computational devices are part of the society.

There are in fact certain paradoxes involved in the notion of a system that predicts its own behavior. These are reminiscent of Russell’s Paradox in set theory38 and of the paradoxes that arise when one allows a statement to talk about itself (e.g., consider the statement, “This statement is false”).

When a system makes a prediction about its own behavior, that prediction may itself change the behavior of the system, and the change in the behavior of the system may invalidate the prediction. Of course, not every statement that talks about itself is paradoxical. For example, the statement, “This statement is in the English language” makes perfectly good sense. Similarly, many predictions that a system may make about itself will not be self-invalidating; they may even cause the system to behave in such a way as to fulfill the prediction

But it is too much to hope for that a society’s predictions about itself will never be (unexpectedly) self-invalidating.

III

A society’s ability to predict its own behavior moreover would seem to require something like complete self-knowledge, and here too one runs into paradoxes. We need not discuss these here; some thought should suffice to convince the reader that any attempt to envision a system having complete self-knowledge will encounter difficulties. Thus, from several points of view-past and present experience, complexity, chaos theory, and logical difficulties (paradoxes)-it is clear that no society can accurately predict its own behavior over any considerable span of time. Consequently, no society can be consistently successful in planning its own future in the long term.

III

Astute observers of history have known for a long time that a society can’t plan its own future.

III

Norbert Elias wrote: “[T]he actual course of … historical change as a whole is intended and planned by no-one.”42 And: “Civilization … is set in motion blindly, and kept in motion by the autonomous dynamics of a web of relationships

III

Even granting that the behavior of a society is unpredictable in the long term, it may nevertheless be possible to steer a society rationally by means of continual short-term interventions. To take an analogy, if we let a car without a driver roll down a rugged, irregular hillside, the only prediction we can make is that the car will not follow any predetermined course but will bounce around erratically. However, if the car has a driver, he may be able to steer it so as to avoid the worst bumps and make it roll instead through relatively smooth places. With a good deal ofluck he may even be able to make the car arrive approximately at a preselected point at the foot of the hill. For these purposes the driver only needs to be able to predict very roughly how far the car will veer to the right or to the left when he turns the steering wheel. If the car veers too far or not far enough, he can correct with another turn of the wheel.

III

Perhaps something similar could be done with an entire society. It is conceivable that a combination of empirical studies with increasingly sophisticated theory may eventually make possible fairly reliable short-term predictions of the way a society will react to any given change-just as fairly reliable short-term weather forecasting has become possible.

III

Perhaps, then, a society might be successfully steered by means of frequent, intelligent interventions in such a way that undesirable outcomes could usually be avoided and some desirable outcomes achieved. The steering process would not have to be infallible; errors could be corrected through further interventions. Just possibly, one might even hope to succeed in steering a society so that it would arrive in the long run at something approximating one’s conception of a good society. But this proposal too runs into difficulties of a fundamental kind.

III

The first problem is: Who decides what outcomes are desirable or undesirable, or what kind of “good” society should be our long-term goal? There is never anything resembling general agreement on the answers to such questions.

III

Friedrich Engels wrote in 1890: History is made in such a way that the final result always arises from the conflicts among many individual wills, each of which is made into what it is by a multitude of special conditions of life; thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite collection of parallelograms of forces, and from them emerges a resultant-the historical event-which from another point of view can be regarded as the product of one power that, as a whole, operates unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wants runs up against the opposition of every other, and what comes out of it all is something that no one wanted

III

Even in those rare cases in which almost everyone agrees on a policy, effective implementation of the policy may be prevented by what is called the “problem of the commons.” The problem of the commons consists in the fact that it may be to everyone’s advantage that everyone should act in a certain way, yet it may be to the advantage of each individual to act in a contrary way

III

For example, in modern society it is to everyone’s advantage that everyone should pay a portion of his income to support the functions of government. Yet it is to the advantage of each individual to keep all his income for himself, and that’s why hardly anyone pays taxes voluntarily, or pays more than he has to

III

Abraham Lincoln wrote: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me

III

Mandela, when you join me [as a member of the government] you will realise I do not have the power which you think I have.”51 It’s possible that de Klerk was pleading powerlessness as an excuse for tolerating violence that in reality he might have been able to prevent. Nevertheless, when Mandela himself became President, he “quickly realized, as de Klerk had warned him, that a President had less power than he appeared to. He could rule effectively only through his colleagues and civil servants, who had to be patiently persuaded … .

III

It’s not only jail administrators whose power is far more limited than it appears to an outsider. Julius Caesar reportedly said, “The higher our station, the less is our freedom of action.

III

According to an English author of the 17th century: “Men in great place (saith one) are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign, or state; servants of fame; and servants of business. So as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times.

III

One of our most powerful presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt, complained: The Treasury is so large and far-flung and ingrained in its practices that I find it is almost impossible to get the actions and results I want

III

even the most absolute government is helpless in the face of the dynamisms of social development

III

Revolutionary dictators of the 20th century, such as Hitler and Stalin, were probably more powerful than traditional “absolute” monarchs, because the revolutionary character of their regimes had done away with many of the traditional, formal or informal social structures and customary restraints that had curbed the “legitimate” monarchs’ exercise of their power. But even the revolutionary dictators’ power was in practice far less than absolute.

III

It is said that, from 1938, resistance to the regime included some ten attempts to kill Hitler or otherwise remove him from power

III

In Frank Norris’s immortal novel, The Octopus-about wheat farmers whose livelihood is destroyed by railroad rate increases-the protagonist, Presley, confronts the apparently ruthless businessman Shelgrim, President of the railroad. But Shelgrim tells him: “‘You are dealing with forces, young man, when you speak of wheat and the railroads, not with men . … Men have only little to do with the whole business . … Blame conditions, not men.’ “‘But-but’, faltered Presley, ‘You are the head, you control the road.’ ”’ … Control the road! … I can go into bankruptcy if you like. But otherwise, if I run my road as a business proposition, I can do nothing. I can not control it.‘”

III

The Octopus is a work of fiction, but it does truthfully represent, in dramatized form, the economic realities of the era in which Norris wrote (about the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century).

III

At that time, “railway labor and material costs” had increased, and “many American railroads, already struggling to stay alive economically, could not afford rate reductions.”

III

State railroad commissions “seeking … ways of establishing fair, ‘scientific’ rates” found that “there was no such thing as ‘scientific’ rate making. They discovered that it was extraordinarily difficult to define the ‘public interest’ or to take the rate question ‘out of politics.’ Setting rates meant assigning economic priorities, and someone-shipper, carrier, consumer-inevitably got hurt

III

So it’s likely that a railroad like Shelgrim’s would indeed have gone bankrupt if it had tried to set rates in such a way as to treat everyone “fairly” and humanely.

III

It is probably true in general that the ruthless behavior of business enterprises is more often compelled by economic realities than voluntarily chosen by a rapacious management.

III

A recent (2012) article by Adam Davidson discusses some of the reasons behind the problem of unemployment in the U.S. Taking as an example a company he has personally investigated, Davidson writes: “It’s tempting to look to the owners of Standard Motor Products and ask them to help [unskilled workers]: to cut costs a little less relentlessly, take slightly lower profits, and maybe even help solve America’s jobs crisis in some small way.” Davidson then goes on to explain why a company like Standard Motor Products would not be able to survive in the face of competition if it did not cut costs relentlessly and, therefore, replace human workers with machines whenever it was profitable to do so. 87 Here again we see that ” [t]he businessman … [is] only the agent of economic forces and developments beyond his control.”

III

A dictator cannot run an economy the way a general runs an army-by giving orders from above-because the economy won’t follow orders

III

media propaganda portrayed Fidel Castro as motivated by a lust for power, but actually Castro started out with generalized humanitarian and democratic goals.92 Once he had overthrown the Batista government, he found that, despite the immense power conferred on him by his personal charisma,93 the options open to him were extremely limited. Circumstances forced him to choose between democracy and the deep social reforms that he envisioned; he couldn’t have both. Since his basic goals were his social ones he had to abandon democracy, become a dictator, and Stalinize and militarize Cuban society.

III

Notwithstanding the regime’s strong ideological opposition to racism, “the drive to promote … blacks and mixed race Cubans to leadership positions within the government and Party” was only partly successful, as Castro himself acknowledged.98 In fact, Cuban efforts to combat racism do not seem to have been any more successful than those of the United States

Almost certainly, however, the decisive factor in Cuba’s failure has been the Castro regime’s refusal to comply with the technical requirements for economic success: The regime compromised its ideology only as far as was necessary for bare survival, and declined to accept those elements of the free market and of capitalism that might have made vigorous development possible. That this factor was decisive is shown by the fact that purely socialist economies have failed all over the world

There is yet another-and critically important-reason why a society cannot “steer” itself in the manner suggested at the beginning of Part III of this chapter: Every complex, large-scale society is subject to internal developments generated by “natural selection” operating on systems that exist within the society

Through a process analogous to biological evolution there arise, within any complex, large-scale society, self-preserving or self-reproducing systems large and small (including, for example, business enterprises, political parties or movements, open or covert social networks such as networks of corrupt officials) that struggle to survive and propagate themselves. Because power is a cardinal tool for survival, these systems compete for power.

Biological organisms, evolving through natural selection, eventually invade every niche in which biological survival is possible at all, and, whatever measures may be taken to suppress them, some organisms will find ways of surviving nonetheless. Within any complex, large-scale society, a similar process will produce self-propagating systems that will invade every corner and circumvent all attempts to suppress them. These systems will compete for power without regard to the objectives of any government (or other entity) that may try to steer the society

argument-admittedly impossible at present to prove conclusively-is that these self-propagating systems will constitute uncontrollable forces that will render futile in the long run all efforts to steer the society rationally.

the philosopher-king, once in power, might use propaganda or other techniques of human engineering to bring the values of the majority into line with his own

hold on … let’s pause and take stock of the assumptions we’ve been making. We’re assuming, among other things, that the problems of complexity, chaos, and the resistance of subordinates, also the purely technical factors that limit the options open to leaders, as well as the competitive, power-seeking groups that evolve within a society under the influence of natural selection, can all be overcome to such an extent that an all-powerful leader will be able to govern the society rationally; we’re assuming that the “conflicts among many individual wills” within the society can be resolved well enough so that it will be possible to make a rational choice of leader; we’re assuming that means will be found to put the chosen leader into a position of absolute power and to guarantee forever the succession of competent and conscientious leaders who will govern in accord with some stable and permanent system of values. And if the hypothetical possibility of steering a society rationally is to afford any comfort to the reader, he will have to assume that the system of values according to which the society is steered will be one that is at least marginally acceptable to himself-which is a sufficiently daring assumption.

It’s now clear that we have wandered into the realm of fantasy. It is impossible to prove with mathematical certainty that the development of a society can never be guided rationally over any significant interval of time, but the series of assumptions that we’ve had to make in order to entertain the possibility of rational guidance is so wildly improbable that for practical purposes we can safely assume that the development of societies will forever remain beyond rational human control

not everyone does know that the development of societies can never be subject to rational human control;

Again and again we find seemingly intelligent people proposing elaborate schemes for solving society’s problems, completely oblivious to the fact that such schemes never, never, never are carried out successfully

Ivan Illich asserted that “society must be reconstructed to enlarge the contribution of autonomous individuals and primary groups to the total effectiveness of a new system of production designed to satisfy the human needs which it also determines,” and that a “convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others”

as if a society could be consciously and rationally “reconstructed” or “designed.”

we often find technophiles making such absurd statements as: “humanity is in charge of its own fate”; “[we will] take charge of our own evolution”; or, “people [will] seize control of the evolutionary process.”118 The technophiles want to “guide research so that technology improve[s] society”; they have created a “Singularity University” and a “Singularity Institute” that are supposed to “shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications” of technological progress, and “make sure … that artificial intelligence … is friendly” to humans

Note

In 2013

the technophiles won’t be able to “shape the advances” of technology or make sure that they “improve society” and are friendly to humans. Technological advances will be “shaped” in the long run by unpredictable and uncontrollable power-struggles among rival groups that will develop and apply technology for the sole purpose of gaining advantages over their competitors

In practice, Singularity University serves mainly to promote the interests of technology-oriented businessmen,120 while the fantasies about “improving society” function as propaganda that helps to forestall public resistance to radical technological innovation. But such propaganda is effective only because many laymen are naive enough to take the fantasies seriously.

In another example (2011), Naomi Klein proposes massive, elaborate, worldwide “planning”127 that is supposed to bring global warming under control,128 help with many of our other environmental problems,129 and at the same time bring us “real democracy,“130 “rein in”131 the corporations, alleviate unemployment,132 reduce wasteful consumption in rich countries133 while allowing poor countries to continue their economic growth, 134 foster “interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance and cooperation rather than hierarchy,“135 “elegantly weav[e] all these struggles into a coherent narrative about how to protect life on earth,” 136 and overall promote a “progressive” agenda 137 so as to create a “healthy, just world

One is tempted to ask whether the schemes concocted by people like Ashford, Hall, and Klein are meant as an elaborate joke of some sort; but no, the intentions of these authors are quite serious. How can they possibly believe that schemes like theirs will ever be carried out in the real world? Are they totally devoid of any practical sense about human affairs? Maybe. But a more likely explanation is unwittingly offered by Naomi Klein herself: “[I]t is always easier to deny reality than to watch your worldview get shattered … . “139 The worldview of most members of the upper middle class, including most intellectuals, is deeply dependent on the existence of a thoroughly organized, culturally “advanced,” large-scale society characterized by a high level of social order. It would be extremely difficult psychologically for such people to recognize that the only way to get off the road to disaster that we are now on would be through a total collapse of organized society and therefore a descent into chaos. So they cling to any scheme, however unrealistic, that promises to preserve the society on which their lives and their worldview are dependent; and one suspects that the threat to their worldview is more important to them than the threat to their lives.

Notes

When Elias claims that “we can make of [society] … something that functions better in terms of our needs and purposes,” he fails to explain who this “we” is. Obviously, “we” don’t all have the same purposes, and the effort to fulfill some of “our” needs (e.g., status, power) inevitably brings us into conflict with others among the “we.”

Notes

Without using the term “problem” or “tragedy of the commons,” Surowiecki, p. 25, has illustrated the concept by giving several excellent examples of ways in which “individually rational decisions [can] add[ ] up to a collectively irrational result.

Why the Technological System Will Destroy Itself

Power is in nature the essential measure of right. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why the Technological System Will Destroy Itself

We were recently entertained by a na’ive fable of the happy arrival of the ‘end of history,’ of the overflowing triumph of an all-democratic bliss; the ultimate global arrangement had supposedly been attained. But we all see and sense that something very different is coming, something new, and perhaps quite stern. -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Social Darwinism didn’t merely call attention to natural selection as a factor in the development of societies; it also assumed that the winners in the contest of “survival of the fittest” were better, more desirable human beings than the losers were

businessmen transformed their sense of material superiority into a sense of moral and intellectual superiority … . Social Darwinism became a means of excusing as well as explaining the competitive process from which some emerged with power and some were ground into poverty

Here our purpose is merely to describe the role that natural selection plays in the development of societies. We do not mean to suggest any favorable value-judgment concerning the winners in the struggle for power.

This chapter deals with self-propagating systems. By a selfpropagating system (self-prop system for short) we mean a system that tends to promote its own survival and propagation. A system may propagate itself in either or both of two ways: The system may indefinitely increase its own size and/or power, or it may give rise to new systems that possess some of its own attributes.

The most obvious examples of self-propagating systems are biological organisms.

Groups of biological organisms can also constitute self-prop systems; e.g., wolf packs or hives of honeybees. Particularly important for our purposes are self-prop systems that consist of groups of human beings

For example, nations, corporations, labor unions, churches, and political parties; also some groups that are not clearly delimited and lack formal organization, such as schools of thought, social networks, and subcultures. Just as wolfpacks and beehives are self-propagating without any conscious intention on the part of wolves or bees to propagate their packs or their hives, there is no reason why a human group cannot be self-propagating independently of any intention on the part of the individuals who comprise the group.

self-propagating systems having the traits that best suit them to survive and propagate themselves tend to survive and propagate themselves better than other self-propagating systems. This of course is an obvious tautology, so it tells us nothing new. But it can serve to call our attention to factors that we might otherwise overlook.

For example, suppose a forested region is occupied by a number of small, rival kingdoms. Those kingdoms that clear the most land for agricultural use can plant more crops and therefore can support a larger population than other kingdoms. This gives them a military advantage over their rivals. If any kingdom restrains itself from excessive forest-clearance out of concern for the long-term consequences, then that kingdom places itself at a military disadvantage and is eliminated by the more powerful kingdoms. Thus the region comes to be dominated by kingdoms that cut down their forests recklessly. The resulting deforestation leads eventually to ecological disaster and therefore to the collapse of all the kingdoms. Here a trait that is advantageous or even indispensable for a kingdom’s short-term survival-recklessness in cutting trees-leads in the long term to the demise of the same kingdom

This example illustrates the fact that, where a self-prop system exercises foresight, 8 in the sense that concern for its own long-term survival and propagation leads it to place limitations on its efforts for short-term survival and propagation, the system puts itself at a competitive disadvantage relative to those self-prop systems that pursue short-term survival and propagation without restraint. This leads us to Proposition 2. In the short term, natural selection favors selfpropagating systems that pursue their own short-term advantage with little or no regard for long-term consequences

A corollary to Proposition 2 is Proposition 3. Self-propagating subsystems of a given supersystem tend to become dependent on the supersystem and on the specific conditions that prevail within the supersystem

This means that between the supersystem and its self-prop subsystems, there tends to develop a relationship of such a nature that, in the event of the destruction of the supersystem or of any drastic acceleration of

changes in the conditions prevailing within the supersystem, the subsystems can neither survive nor propagate themselves.

as long as the supersystem exists and remains more or less stable, natural selection favors those subsystems that take fullest advantage of the opportunities available within the supersystem, and disfavors those subsystems that “waste” some of their resources in preparing themselves to survive the eventual destabilization of the supersystem. Under these conditions, self-prop systems will tend very strongly to become incapable of surviving the destabilization of any supersystem to which they belong.

Proposition 1. In any environment that is sufficiently rich, selfpropagating systems will arise, and natural selection will lead to the evolution of self-propagating systems having increasingly complex, subtle, and sophisticated means of surviving and propagating themselves.

Like the other propositions put forward in this chapter, Proposition 3 has to be applied with a dose of common sense. If the supersystem in question is weak and loosely organized, or if it has no more than a modest effect on the conditions in which its subsystems exist, the subsystems may not become strongly dependent on the supersystem

Because tribes of hunter-gatherers are loosely organized it seems certain that in most cases a hunting-and-gathering band would be able to survive independently of the tribe to which it belongs. Many labor unions might be able to survive the demise of a confederation of labor unions such as the AFL-CIO, because such an event might not fundamentally affect the conditions under which labor unions have to function. But labor unions could not survive the demise of modern industrial society, or even the demise merely of the legal and constitutional framework that makes it possible for labor unions as we know them to operate. Nor would many present-day business enterprises survive without modern industrial society.

Domestic sheep, if deprived of human protection, would soon be killed off by predators. And so forth.

Clearly a system cannot be effectively organized for its own survival and propagation unless the different parts of the system can promptly communicate with one another and lend aid to one another. In order to operate effectively throughout a given geographical region, a self-prop system must be able to receive prompt information from, and take prompt action within, every part of the region

Proposition 4. Problems of transportation and communication impose a limit on the size of the geographical region over which a self-prop system can extend its operations.

Proposition 5. The most important and the only consistent limit on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating human groups extend their operations is the limit imposed by the available means of transportation and communication.

Pre-industrial civilizations built empires that extended over vast distances, but these empires actively created, if they did not already have, relatively rapid means of transportation and communication.10 Such empires grew to a certain geographical size, after which they stopped growing and, in many cases, became unstable; that is, they tended to break up into smaller political units. Though the hypothesis would be difficult to prove conclusively, it is at least highly plausible that these empires stopped growing and became unstable because they were at the limit of what was possible with the existing means of transportation and communication

Today there is quick transportation and almost instant communication between any two parts of the world. Hence, Proposition 6. In modern times, natural selection tends to produce some self-propagating human groups whose operations span the entire globe. Moreover, even if human beings are some day replaced by machines or other entities, natural selection will still tend to produce some selfpropagating systems whose operations span the entire globe.

As long as rapid, worldwide transportation and communication remain available, natural selection will tend to produce or maintain self-prop systems whose operations span the entire globe.

Current experience strongly confirms this proposition: We see global “superpowers,” global corporations, global political movements, global religions, global criminal networks

Let’s refer to such systems as global self-prop systems. Instant worldwide communications are still a relatively new phenomenon and their full consequences have yet to be developed; in the future we can expect global self-prop systems to play an even more important role than they do today.

Proposition 7. Where (as today) problems of transportation and communication do not constitute effective limitations on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating systems operate, natural selection tends to create a world in which power is mostly concentrated in the possession of a relatively small number of global self-propagating systems. This proposition too is suggested by human experience

But it’s easy to see why the proposition should be true independently of anything specifically human: Among global self-prop systems, natural selection will favor those that have the greatest power; global or other large-scale self-prop systems that are weaker will tend to be eliminated or subjugated. Smallscale self-prop systems that are too numerous or too subtle to be noticed individually by the dominant global self-prop systems may retain more or less autonomy, but each of them will have influence only within some very limited sphere

It may be answered that a coalition of small-scale self-prop systems could challenge the global self-prop systems, but if small-scale self-prop systems organize themselves into a coalition having worldwide influence, then the coalition will itself be a global self-prop system.

We can speak of the “world-system,” meaning all things that exist on Earth, together with the functional relations among them. The worldsystem probably should not be regarded as a self-prop system, but whether it is or not is irrelevant for present purposes.

the world-system i s approaching a condition in which it will be dominated by a relatively small number of extremely powerful global self-prop systems.

These global systems will compete for power-as they must do in order to have any chance of survival-and they will compete for power in the short term, with little or no regard for longterm consequences (Proposition 2). Under these conditions, intuition tells us that desperate competition among the global self-prop systems will tear the world-system apart.

Let’s try to formulate this intuition more clearly. For some hundreds of millions of years the terrestrial environment has had some degree of stability, in the sense that conditions on Earth, though variable, have remained within limits that have allowed the evolution of complex life-forms such as fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. In the immediate future, all self-prop systems on this planet, including self-propagating human groups and any purely machine-based systems derived from them, will have evolved while conditions have remained within these limits

This doesn’t mean that all of the world’s self-prop systems will die if future conditions, or the rapidity with which they change, slightly exceed some of these limits, but it does mean that if conditions go far enough beyond the limits many self-prop systems are likely to die, and if conditions ever vary wildly enough outside the limits, then, with near certainty, all of the world’s more complex self-prop systems will die without progeny.

With several self-prop systems of global reach, armed with the colossal might of modern technology and competing for immediate power while exercising no restraint from concern for long-term consequences, it is extremely difficult to imagine that conditions on this planet will not be pushed far outside all earlier limits and batted around so erratically that for any of the Earth’s more complex self-prop systems, including complex biological organisms, the chances of survival will approach zero.

Notice that the crucial new factor here is the availability of rapid, worldwide transportation and communication, as a consequence of which there exist global self-prop systems.

There is another way of seeing that this situation will lead to radical disruption of the world-system. Students of industrial accidents know that a system is most likely to suffer a catastrophic breakdown when (i) the system is highly complex (meaning that small disruptions can produce unpredictable consequences), and (ii) tightly coupled (meaning that a breakdown in one part of the system spreads quickly to other parts).11 The world-system has been highly complex for a long time. What is new is that the world-system is now tightly coupled.

This is a result of the availability of rapid, worldwide transportation and communication, which makes it possible for a breakdown in any one part of the world-system to spread to all other parts. As technology progresses and globalization grows more pervasive, the world-system becomes ever more complex and more tightly coupled, so that a catastrophic breakdown has to be expected sooner or later

It will perhaps be argued that destructive competition among global self-prop systems is not inevitable: A single global self-prop system might succeed in eliminating all of its competitors and thereafter dominate the world alone; or, because global self-prop systems would be relatively few in number, they could come to an agreement among themselves whereby they would refrain from all dangerous or destructive competition. However, while it is easy to talk about such an agreement, it is vastly more difficult actually to conclude one and enforce it. Just look: The world’s leading powers today have not been able to agree on the elimination of war or of nuclear weapons, or on the limitation of emissions of carbon dioxide.

But let’s be optimistic and assume that the world has come under the domination of a single, unified system, which may consist of a single global self-prop system victorious over all its rivals, or may be a composite of several global self-prop systems that have bound themselves together through an agreement that eliminates all destructive competition among them. The resulting “world peace” will be unstable for three separate reasons.

First, the world-system will still be highly complex and tightly coupled. Students of these matters recommend designing into industrial systems such safety features as “decoupling,” that is, the introduction of “barriers” that prevent malfunctions in one part of a system from spreading to other parts.12 Such measures may be feasible, at least in theory, in

any relatively limited subsystem of the world-system, such a s a chemical factory, a nuclear power-plant, or a banking system, though Perrow13 is not optimistic that even these limited systems will ever be consistently redesigned throughout our society to minimize the risk of breakdowns within the individual systems

To reverse this process and “decouple” the world-system would require the design, implementation, and enforcement of an elaborate plan that would regulate in detail the political and economic development of the entire world. For reasons explained at length in Chapter One of this book, no such plan will ever be carried out successfully.

Second, prior to the arrival of “world peace” and for the sake of their own survival and propagation, the self-prop subsystems of a given global self-prop system (their supersystem) will have put aside, or at least moderated, their mutual conflicts in order to present a united front against any immediate external threats or challenges to the supersystem (which are also threats or challenges to themselves).

Benjamin Franklin pointed out that “the great affairs of the world, the wars, revolutions, etc. are carried on and effected by parties.” Each of the “parties,” according to Franklin, is pursuing its own collective advantage, but “as soon as a party has gained its general point”-and therefore, presumably, no longer faces immediate conflict with an external adversary-”each member becomes intent upon his particular interest, which, thwarting others, breaks that party into divisions and occasions … confusion

History does generally confirm that when large human groups are not held together by any immediate external challenge, they tend strongly

to break up into factions that compete against one another with little regard for long-term consequences

What we are arguing here is that this does not apply only to human groups, but expresses a tendency of self-propagating systems in general as they develop under the influence of natural selection. Thus, the tendency is independent of any flaws of character peculiar to human beings, and the tendency will persist even if humans are “cured” of their purported defects or (as many technophiles envision) are replaced by intelligent machines.

Third, let’s nevertheless assume that the most powerful self-prop subsystems of the global self-prop systems will not begin to compete destructively when the external challenges to their supersystems have been removed. There yet remains another reason why the “world peace” that we’ve postulated will be unstable.

But once a global self-prop system has eliminated its competitors, or has entered into an agreement that frees it from dangerous competition from other global self-prop systems, there will no longer be any immediate external threat to induce unity or a moderation of conflict among the self-prop subsystems of the global self-prop system. In view of Proposition 2-which tells us that self-prop systems will compete with little regard for long-term consequences-unrestrained and therefore destructive competition will break out among the most powerful self-prop subsystems

Note

Contre-exemple: les animaux deviennent ils tous cancéreux s’ils n’ont pas de compétition écologique ?

By Proposition 1, within the “peaceful” world-system new self-prop systems will arise that, under the influence of natural selection, will evolve increasingly subtle and sophisticated ways of evading recognition-or, once they are recognized, evading suppression-by the dominant global self-prop systems. By the same process that led to the evolution of global self-prop systems in the first place, new self-prop systems of greater and greater power will develop until some are powerful enough to challenge the existing global self-prop systems, whereupon destructive competition on a global scale will resume.

Note

He forgets to say that a system can outgrow another without destructing it, simply making it irrelevant

But it’s more likely that new self-prop systems will be arising all along to challenge the existing global self-prop systems, and will prevent the hypothesized “world peace” from ever being consolidated in the first place

Note

There will never be an end to the show…

more significant for the present and the near future are emerging self-prop systems that use entirely legal methods, or at least keep their use of illegal methods to the minimum necessary for their purposes, and justify those methods with a claim, not totally outrageous, that their actions are necessary for the fulfillment of some widely accepted ideal such as “democracy,” “social justice,” “prosperity,” “morality,” or religious principles.

In Israel, the ultra-orthodox sect-strictly legal-has become surprisingly powerful and seriously threatens to subvert the values and objectives of the hitherto secular state.

A subordinate system that a government creates for its own purposes can turn into a self-prop system in its own right, and may even become dominant over the government. Thus, bureaucracies commonly are concerned more with their own power and security than with the fulfillment of their public responsibilities. 26 “[E]very .. . bureaucracy develops a tendency to preserve itself, to fatten itself parasitically. It also develops a tendency to become a power in and of itself, autonomous, over which governments lose all real control.

It may be objected that a mammal (or other complex biological organism) is a self-prop system that is a composite of millions of other self-prop systems, namely, the cells of its own body. Yet (unless and until the animal gets cancer) no destructive competition arises among cells or groups of cells within the animal’s body. Instead, all the cells loyally serve the interests of the animal as a whole. Moreover, no external threat to the animal is necessary to keep the cells faithful to their duty. There is (it may be argued) no reason why the world-system could not be as well organized as the body of a mammal, so that no destructive competition would arise among its self-prop subsystems.

But the body of a mammal is a product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution through natural selection. This means that it has been created through a process of trial and error involving many millions of successive trials.

Note

Weak counterargument

To put it another way, the lineage has had to pass through a series of many millions of filters, each of which has allowed the passage only of those lineages that were “fittest” (in the Darwinian sense)

Note

Justement, ce passage “à travers la tête de l’épingle” est un point commun de tout ce qui existe aujourd’hui, qu’il soit nouveau comme ancien…

But once self-propagating systems have attained global scale, two crucial differences emerge. The first difference is in the number of individuals from among which the ” fittest” are selected. Self-prop systems sufficiently big and powerful to be plausible contenders for global dominance will probably number in the dozens, or possibly in the hundreds; they certainly will not number in the millions. With so few individuals from among which to select the “fittest,” it seems safe to say that the process of natural selection will be inefficient in promoting the fitness for survival of the dominant global self-prop systems.

Note

Weak argument: this is only in a pure restricted darwinism that the argument could work

species that consist of a relatively small number of large individuals are more vulnerable to extinction than species that consist of a large number of small individuals.

Note

where rapid, worldwide transportation and communication have led to the emergence of global self-prop systems, the breakdown or the destructive action of any one such system can shake the whole world-system. Consequently, in the process of trial and error that is evolution through natural selection, it is highly probable that after only a relatively small number of”trials” resulting in “errors,” the world-system will break down or will be so severely disrupted

Note

Je ne vois pas pourquoi… Un corps humain est “global” dans les limites du corps… Et pourtant ça fonctionne

evolution through natural selection cannot continue long enough to create global self-prop systems possessing the subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that prevent destructive internal competition within complex biological organisms.

Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth’s climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.

The theory we’ve outlined here provides a plausible explanation for the so-called Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox consists in the fact that our astronomers have never yet been able to detect any radio signals that seem to have originated from an intelligent extraterrestrial source

III

there is nothing implausible about the foregoing explanation of the Fermi Paradox if there is a process common to all technologically advanced civilizations that consistently leads them to self-destruction. Here we’ve been arguing that there is such a process.

III

Our discussion of self-propagating systems merely describes in general and abstract terms what we see going on all around us in concrete form: Organizations, movements, ideologies are locked in an unremitting struggle for power. Those that fail to compete successfully are eliminated or subjugated

III

The struggle is almost exclusively for power in the short term; 35 the competitors show scant concern even for their own long-term survival, 36 let alone for the welfare of the human race or of the biosphere.

III

That’s why nuclear weapons have not been banned, emissions of carbon dioxide have not been reduced to a safe level, the Earth’s resources are being exploited at an utterly reckless rate, and no limitation has been placed on the development of powerful but dangerous technologies.

III

The purpose of describing the process in general and abstract terms, as we’ve done here, is to show that what is happening to our world is not accidental; it is not the result of some chance conjunction of historical circumstances or of some flaw of character peculiar to human beings. Given the nature of self-propagating systems in general, the destructive process that we see today is made inevitable by a combination of two factors: the colossal power of modern technology and the availability of rapid transportation and communication between any two parts of the world.

III

Recognition of this may help us to avoid wasting time on nai:ve efforts to solve our current problems. For example, on efforts to teach people to conserve energy and resources. Such efforts accomplish nothing whatever.

III

It seems amazing that those who advocate energy conservation haven’t noticed what happens: As soon as some energy is freed up by conservation, the technological world-system gobbles it up and demands more. No matter how much energy is provided, the system always expands rapidly until it is using all available energy, and then it demands still more. The same is true of other resources. The technological world-system infallibly expands until it reaches a limit imposed by an insufficiency of resources, and then it tries to push beyond that limit regardless of consequences.

Note

It looks like cancer to me

III

This is explained by the theory of self-propagating systems: Those organizations (or other self-prop systems) that least allow respect for the environment to interfere with their pursuit of power here and now, tend to acquire more power than those that limit their pursuit of power from concern about what will happen to our environment fifty years from now, or even ten years. (Proposition 2.) Thus, through a process of natural selection, the world comes to be dominated by organizations that make maximum

III

possible use of all available resources to augment their own power without regard to long-term consequences.

III

Environmental do-gooders may answer that if the public has been persuaded to take environmental concerns seriously it will be disadvantageous in terms of natural selection for an organization to abuse the environment, because citizens can offer resistance to environmentally reckless organizations. For example, people might refuse to buy products manufactured by companies that are environmentally destructive. However, human behavior and human attitudes can be manipulated. Environmental damage can be shielded, up to a point, from public scrutiny; with the help of public-relations firms, a corporation can persuade people that it is environmentally responsible; advertising and marketing techniques can give people such an itch to possess a corporation’s products that few individuals will refuse to buy them from concern for the environment; computer games, electronic social networking, and other mechanisms of escape keep people absorbed in hedonistic pursuits so that they don’t have time for environmental worries.

Note

Greenwashing, propaganda and hedonistic pursuit will kills us

III

More importantly, people are made to see themselves as utterly dependent on the products and services provided by the corporations. Because people have to earn money to buy the products and services on which they are dependent, they need jobs

III

Economic growth is necessary for the creation of jobs, therefore people accept environmental damage when it is portrayed as a price that must be paid for economic growth.

III

Nationalism too is brought into play both by corporations and by governments. Citizens are made to feel that outside forces are threatening: “The Chinese will get ahead of us if we don’t increase our rate of economic growth. Al Qgeda will blow us up if we don’t improve our technology and our weaponry fast enough.”

III

These are some of the tools that organizations use to counter environmentalists’ efforts to arouse public concern; similar tools can help to blunt other forms of resistance to the organizations’ pursuit of power

III

The organizations that are most successful in blunting public resistance to their pursuit of power tend to increase their power more rapidly than organizations that are less successful in blunting public resistance. Thus, through a process of natural selection, there evolve organizations that possess more and more sophisticated and effective means of blunting public resistance to their power-seeking activities, whatever the degree of environmental damage involved. Because such organizations have great wealth at their disposal, environmentalists do not have the resources to compete with them in the propaganda war

This is the reason, or an important part of the reason, 38 why attempts to teach people to be environmentally responsible have done so little to slow the destruction of our environment.

People who know something about the biological past of the Earth and see what the technological system is doing to our planet speak of a “sixth mass extinction,” which they think is now in progress.

human organizations, self-prop systems that assiduously pursue their own short-term advantage without scruple and without concern for long-term consequences.

This can be compared to what happens in biology: In the course of evolution organisms develop means of exploiting every opportunity, utilizing every resource, and invading every corner where life is possible at all.

Scientists have been surprised to discover living organisms surviving, and in some cases even thriving, in locations where there seemingly is nothing on which they could support themselves. There are communities of bacteria, worms, molluscs, and crustaceans that flourish near hydrothermal vents so deep in the ocean that no sunlight whatever can reach them and the downward drift of nutrients from the surface is entirely inadequate. Some of these creatures actually use hydrogen sulfide-to most organisms a deadly poison-as a source of energy. 43 Elsewhere there are bacteria that live a hundred feet beneath the seafloor in an environment almost completely devoid of nutrients.44 Other bacteria nourish themselves on nothing more than “bare rock and water” at depths of up to 1.7 miles beneath the surface of the continents.45 Everyone knows that there are organisms called parasites that find a home within other organisms, but many people may be surprised to learn that there are parasites that live in or on other parasites; in fact, there are parasites of parasites of parasites of parasites

Like biological organisms, the world’s leading human self-prop systems exploit every opportunity, utilize every resource, and invade every corner where they can find anything that will be of use to them in their endless search for power. And as technology advances, more and more of what formerly seemed useless turns out to be useful after all, so that more and more resources are extracted, more and more corners are invaded, and more and more destructive consequences follow

Certainly by the 16th century, and probably much earlier, it was clearly recognized that mining poisoned streams and rivers and ruined the countryside where it occurred.50 But in those days mining affected only a few districts where there were known deposits of relatively high-grade ore, and people who lived elsewhere probably never gave a thought to the damage caused by the extraction of metals. In recent times, however, more sophisticated means of detecting deposits of valuable minerals have been devised, 51 as well as methods for utilizing low-grade ores that formerly were left undisturbed because the extraction of metal from them was too difficult to be profitable.

As a result of these developments mining activities have continually invaded new areas, and severe environmental damage has followed.53 It is said that the water flowing out of many old mining sites is so heavily contaminated that it will have to be treated “forever” to remove the toxic metals.54 Of course, it won’t be treated forever, and when the treatment stops, rivers will be irremediably poisoned.

Mining activities are invading still other areas because new uses have been found for elements that several decades ago had few if any practical applications. Most of the “rare earth” elements were oflimited utility before the middle of the 20th century, but they are now considered indispensable for many purposes. 55 The rare earth neodymium, for example, is needed in large quantities for the lightweight permanent magnets used in wind turbines.56 Unfortunately, most deposits of rare earths contain radioactive thorium, hence the mining of these metals generates radioactive waste

In quantitative terms, at least, uranium was of little importance prior to the development of atomic weapons and nuclear power-plants; it is now mined on a large scale. Relatively small amounts of arsenic were no doubt sufficient for medical applications and for the manufacture of rat poison and artists’ pigments, but today the element is used in large quantities, e.g., to harden lead alloys and as a wood preservative. Fence posts treated with cupric arsenate are extremely common in the western United States58-there must be many millions of them. These posts last far longer than untreated ones, but they are not indestructible. They will eventually disintegrate, and when they do the arsenic they contain will spread through

Petroleum, long known as a substance that seeped from the ground in places, originally had few uses. But during the 19th century it was discovered that kerosene, distilled from petroleum, could be burned for illumination in lamps, and for that purpose was superior to whale oil.

As a result of this discovery the first “oil well” was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, and drilling elsewhere soon followed. The petroleum industry at that time was based mainly on kerosene; there was little demand for other petroleum products, such as natural gas and gasoline. But natural gas later came to be used on a large scale for heating, cooking, and illumination, and after the advent of the gasoline-powered automobile around the beginning of the 20th century the petroleum industry won a position of central importance in the economy of the industrialized world

From that time on, new uses for petroleum products have continually been discovered. In addition, processes have been developed for transforming hydrocarbons so that formerly useless petroleum distillates can be turned into useful products, and oil deposits that, because of their undesirable characteristics (e.g., high sulfur content), might not have been worth extracting, can now be made valuable

Drillers penetrate deeper and deeper into the Earth’s crust, and are even able to drill horizontally; “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing) releases new reserves of oil, and especially gas, from shale rock; techniques are under development for utilizing the vast deposits of methane hydrate found on the ocean floor. 60 As a result of all these technical advances more and more of the Earth’s surface is raped by the petroleum industry

Anyone who thinks the technological world-system i s ever going to stop burning fossil fuels (while any are left) is dreaming.63 But whether or not the system ever renounces such fuels, other destructive sources of energy will be utilized. Nuclear power-plants generate radioactive waste; no provably safe way of disposing of such waste has yet been indentified

the world’s leading self-prop systems aren’t even trying very hard to find a permanent home for the accumulating radioactive garbage

the self-prop systems need energy for the maintenance of their power here and now, whereas radioactive waste represents only a danger for the future and, as we’ve emphasized, natural selection favors self-prop systems that compete for power in the present with little regard for longterm consequences. So nuclear power-plants continue to be built, while the problem of dealing with their burned-out fuel is largely neglected

In fact, the problem of nuclear waste is on track to become totally unmanageable because, instead of a few of the big, old-style reactors, numerous small ones (“mini-nukes”) will soon be built, 66 so that every little town can have its own nuclear power-plant.67 With the big, old-style reactors at least the radioactive wastes have been concentrated at a relatively small number of sites, but with numerous mini-nukes scattered over the world radioactive wastes will be everywhere.

One would have to be extraordinarily naive, or else gifted with a remarkable capacity for self-deception, to believe that each little two-bit burg is going to handle its nuclear waste responsibly. In practice, much of the radioactive material will escape into the environment.

green energy sources don’t look so green when one examines them closely. “There’s no free lunch when it comes to meeting our energy needs,” says the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s land program. “To get energy, we need to do things that will have impacts.”

The construction of wind farms entails the creation of radioactive waste because, as noted earlier, the lightweight permanent magnets in wind turbines require the rare-earth element neodymium. In addition, wind farms kill numerous birds, which fly into the “propellers” of the turbines

The United States has been developing a military robot called the EATR that relies on green energy inasmuch as it ” fuels itself by eating whatever biomass”-a renewable resource-” it finds around it.”72 But you can imagine the devastation that would result from a war fought by armies of robots that gobble for fuel whatever biomass they find

But solar energy is harmless, right? Well, not quite, for solar panels compete with biological organisms for the light of the Sun

If fossil fuels and nuclear power aren’t going to satisfy the system’s ever-growing demand for energy,73 then solar panels will be placed wherever sunlight can be collected. This means, inter alia, that solar panels will progressively invade the habitats ofliving things, depriving them of sunlight and therefore killing most of them. This is not speculation-the process has already begun. There are plans “to create huge solar energy plants in the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada and elsewhere in the West … . The open deserts are prime habitat for threatened plants and animals

In all probability, the development of solar energy will expand until there is no habitat left for living organisms other than the domesticated crops that the system grows to satisfy its own needs.

Notwithstanding the folly of Ray Kurzweil’s fantasies of a future technological utopia, he is absolutely right about some things. He quite correctly points out that in thinking about the future most people make two errors: (i) They “consider the transformations that will result from a single trend [or from several specified trends that are already evident] in today’s world as if nothing else will change.” 76 And (ii) they “intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods,” neglecting the unending acceleration of technological development.

Just as the use of petroleum distillates in internal combustion engines was undreamed of before 1860 at the earliest,78 just as the use of uranium as fuel was undreamed of before the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938-39,79 just as most uses of the rare earths were undreamed of until recent decades, so there will be future uses of resources, future ways of exploiting the environment, future corners for the technological system to invade that at present are still undreamed of.

we can’t just project into the future the effects of currently known causes of environmental harm; we have to assume that new causes of environmental harm, which no one today can even imagine, will emerge in the future. Moreover, we have to remember that the growth of technology, and with it the exacerbation of the harm that technology does to our environment, will accelerate ever more rapidly over the coming decades. All this being taken into consideration we have to conclude that, in all probability, little or nothing on our planet will much longer remain free of gross disruption by the technological system.

Most people take our atmosphere for granted, as if Providence had decreed once and for all that air should consist of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1 % other gasses. In reality our atmosphere in its present form was created, and is still maintained, through the action ofliving things. 80 Originally the atmosphere contained far more carbon dioxide than it does today, 81 and we may wonder why the greenhouse effect didn’t make the Earth too hot for life ever to begin. The answer, presumably, is that the Sun at that time radiated much less energy than it does now. 82 In any case, it was the biosphere that took the excess carbon dioxide out of the air: As primitive bacteria and cyanobacteria had, through photosynthesis or related life processes, captured atmospheric carbon, depositing it on the seafloor, carbon was removed from the atmosphere

Cyanobacteria also were the first organisms to utilize water as a source of electrons and hydrogen in the photosynthetic process. Free oxygen was released as a result of this reaction and began to accumulate in the atmosphere, allowing oxygen-dependent life-forms to evolve

However that may be, it’s evident that a really radical disruption of the biosphere could cause an atmospheric disaster: a lack of oxygen, a concentration of toxic gasses such as methane or ammonia, a deficiency or an excess of carbon dioxide that would make our planet too cold or too hot to support life.

even if the Earth warms no more than it did 56 million years ago, the consequences will be unacceptable to the powerful classes in our society. The world’s dominant self-prop systems will therefore resort to “geo-engineering,” that is, to a system of artificial manipulation of the atmosphere designed to keep temperatures within acceptable limits.94 The implementation of geo-engineering will entail immediate, desperate risks,95 and even if no immediate disaster ensues the eventual consequences very likely will be catastrophic.

All this relates merely to the greenhouse effect. To it we have to add numerous other factors that tend to disrupt the biosphere

living organisms will be progressively robbed of sunlight by continual expansion of the system’s solar-energy installations. There will be no limit to the contamination of our environment with radioactive waste, with toxic elements such as lead, arsenic, mercury, and cadmium,97 and with a variety of poisonous chemical compounds.98 There will be oil spills from time to time, since the safety measures taken by the petroleum industry are never quite sufficient,99 and in some parts of the world the industry doesn’t even make any serious effort to prevent spills.100 The phasing-out of chlorofluorocarbons is supposed to allow the ozone layer, which protects living organisms from the Sun’s u�traviolet radiation, to recover from the damage it has already suffered, but the recovery (if indeed it occurs) will take decades, 101 and meanwhile the damage that ultraviolet radiation does to the biosphere has to be taken into account

The foregoing effects of the technological system’s activities have long been recognized as harmful, but there can be little doubt that many effects not recognized as harmful today will turn out to be harmful tomorrow, for this has often happened in the past

Here we’ve done no more than scratch the surface. A full assessment of the ways in which the functioning of the technological world-system currently threatens to disrupt the biosphere would require a vast amount of research, and the results would fill several volumes.

Let’s not forget that the technological system is still in its infancy in comparison with what it will become over the next several decades. At a rapidly accelerating pace and in ways that no one has yet imagined, we can expect the world’s leading self-prop systems to find more and more opportunities to exploit, more and more resources to extract, more and more corners to invade, until little or nothing on this planet is left free of technological intervention

To sum up the thesis of this part of the present chapter: If the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, it will in all probability leave the Earth uninhabitable

This admittedly remains unproven; it represents the author’s personal opinion. But the facts and arguments offered here are enough at least to show that the opinion can be entertained as a plausible hypothesis

The author has occasionally been asked: “If the system is going to destroy itself anyway, then why bother to overthrow it?” The answer, of course, is that if the technological system were eliminated now a great deal could still be saved. The longer the system is allowed to continue its development, the worse will be the outcome for the biosphere and for the human race, and the greater will be the risk that the Earth will be left a dead planet

There is a current of thought that appears to be carrying many technophiles out of the realm of science and into that of science fiction.107 For convenience, let’s refer to those who ride this current as “the techies.”

What they have in common is that they take highly speculative ideas about the future of technology as near certainties, and on that basis predict the arrival within the next few decades of a kind of technological utopia

Some of the techies’ fantasies are astonishingly grandiose. For example, Ray Kurzweil believes that “[w]ithin a matter of centuries, human intelligence will have re-engineered and saturated all the matter in the universe.”

Most versions of the technological utopia include immortality (at least for techies) among their other marvels

The immortality to which the techies believe themselves destined is conceived in any one of three forms: (i) the indefinite preservation of the living human body as it exists today;111 (ii) the merging of humans with machines and the indefinite survival of the resulting man-machine hybrids; 112 (iii) the “uploading” of minds from human brains into robots or computers, after which the uploaded minds are to live forever within the machines

It is an index of the techies’ self-deception that they habitually assume that anything they consider desirable will actually be done when it becomes technically feasible. Of course, there are lots of wonderful things that already are and for a long time have been technically feasible, but don’t get done. Intelligent people have said again and again: “How easily men could make things much better than they are-if they only all tried together!“114 But people never do “all try together,” because the principle of natural selection guarantees that self-prop systems will act mainly for their own survival and propagation in competition with other self-prop systems, and will not sacrifice competitive advantages for the achievement of philanthropic goals

Note

Question: how such self prop systems pectine their own limits?

the techies take it for granted that some system to which they belong can and will keep them alive indefinitely, or provide them with what they need to keep themselves alive

Today it would no doubt be technically feasible to provide everyone in the world with everything that he or she

needs i n the way of food, clothing, shelter, protection from violence, and what by present standards is considered adequate medical care-if only all of the world’s more important self-propagating systems would devote themselves unreservedly to that task

But that never happens, because the self-prop systems are occupied primarily with the endless struggle for power and therefore act philanthropically only when it is to their advantage to do so. That’s why billions of people in the world today suffer from malnutrition, or are exposed to violence, or lack what is considered adequate medical care.

In view of all this, it is patently absurd to suppose that the technological world-system is ever going to provide seven billion human beings with everything they need to stay alive indefinitely. If the projected immortality were possible at all, it could only be for some tiny subset of the seven billion-an elite minority. Some techies acknowledge this.

many more recognize it but refrain from acknowledging it openly, for it is obviously imprudent to tell the public that immortality will be for an elite minority only and that ordinary people will be left out.

The techies of course assume that they themselves will be included in the elite minority that supposedly will be kept alive indefinitely

What they find convenient to overlook is that self-prop systems, in the long run, will take care of human beings-even members of the elite-only to the extent that it is to the systems’ advantage to take care of them. When they are no longer useful to the dominant self-prop systems, humans-elite or not-will be eliminated

In order to survive, humans not only will have to be useful; they will have to be more useful in relation to the cost of maintaining them-in other words, they will have to provide a better cost-versus-benefit balance-than any non-human substitutes. This is a tall order, for humans are far more costly to maintain than machines are

It will be answered that many self-prop systems-governments, corporations, labor unions, etc.-do take care of numerous individuals who are utterly useless to them: old people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, even criminals serving life sentences. But this is only because the systems in question still need the services of the majority of people in order to function. Humans have been endowed by evolution with feelings of compassion, because hunting-and-gathering bands thrive best when their members show consideration for one another and help one another.118

As long as self-prop systems still need people, it would be to the systems’ disadvantage to offend the compassionate feelings of the useful majority through ruthless treatment of the useless minority

than compassion, however, is the self-interest of human individuals: People would bitterly resent any system to which they belonged if they believed that when they grew old, or if they became disabled, they would be thrown on the trash-heap.

Note

More important than…

But when all people have become useless, self-prop systems will find no advantage in taking care of anyone

The techies themselves insist that machines will soon surpass humans in intelligence.119 When that happens, people will be superfluous and natural selection will favor systems that eliminate them-if not abruptly, then in a series of stages so that the risk of rebellion will be minimized.

Even though the technological world-system still needs large numbers of people for the present, there are now more superfluous humans than there have been in the past because technology has replaced people in many jobs and is making inroads even into occupations formerly thought to require human intelligence

, under the pressure of economic competition, the world’s dominant self-prop systems are already allowing a certain degree of callousness to creep into their treatment of superfluous individuals. In the United States and Europe, pensions and other benefits for retired, disabled, unemployed, and other unproductive persons are being substantially reduced;121 at least in the U. S., poverty is increasing;122 and these facts may well indicate the general trend of the future, though there will doubtless be ups and downs

It’s important to understand that in order to make people superfluous, machines will not have to surpass them in general intelligence but only in certain specialized kinds of intelligence.

For example, the machines will not have to create or understand art, music, or literature, they will not need the ability to carry on an intelligent, non-technical conversation (the “Turing test”123), they will not have to exercise tact or understand human nature, because these skills will have no application if humans are to be eliminated anyway. To make humans superfluous, the machines will only need to outperform them in making the technical decisions that have to be made for the purpose of promoting the short-term survival and propagation of the dominant self-prop systems. So, even without going as far as the techies themselves do in assuming intelligence on the part of future machines, we still have to conclude that humans will become obsolete

The techies of course will argue that even if the human body and brain as we know them become obsolete, immortality in the form (ii) can still be achieved: Man-machine hybrids will permanently retain their usefulness, because by linking themselves with ever-more-powerful machines human beings (or what is left of them) will be able to remain competitive with pure machines.

But man-machine hybrids will retain a biological component derived from human beings only as long as the human-derived biological component remains useful. When purely artificial components become available that provide a better cost-versus-benefit balance than human-derived biological components do, the latter will be discarded and the man-machine hybrids will lose their human aspect to become wholly artificial

The self-prop systems to which the man-machine hybrids belong will have no need for such human weaknesses as love, compassion, ethical feelings, esthetic appreciation, or desire for freedom.

Human emotions in general will get in the way of the self-prop systems’ utilization of the man-machine hybrids, so if the latter are to remain competitive they will have to be altered to remove their human emotions and replace these with other motivating forces.

In short, even in the unlikely event that some biological remnants of the human race are preserved in the form of man-machine hybrids, these will be transformed into something totally alien to human beings as we know them today.

when large, rapid changes occur in the environment of biological species, both the rate of appearance of new species and the rate of extinction of existing species are greatly increased.127 Technological progress constantly accelerates, and techies like Ray Kurzweil insist that it will soon become virtually explosive;128 consequently, changes come more and more rapidly, everything happens faster and faster, competition among self-prop systems becomes more and more intense, and as the process gathers speed the losers in the struggle for survival will be eliminated ever more quickly.

on the basis of the techies’ own beliefs about the exponential acceleration of technological development, it’s safe to say that the life-expectancies of human-derived entities, such as man-machine hybrids and human minds uploaded into machines, will actually be quite short.

Singularity University, which we discussed in Part VI of Chapter One of this book, purportedly was created to help technophiles “guide research” and “shape the advances” so that technology would “improve society.” We pointed out that Singularity University served in practice to promote the interests of technology-orientated businessmen, and we expressed doubt that the majority of technophiles fully believed in the drivel about “shaping the advances” to “improve society.” It does seem, however, that the techies-the subset of the technophiles that we specified at the beginning of this Part V of the present chapter-are entirely sincere in their belief that organizations like Singularity University130 will help them to “shape the advances” of technology and keep the technological society on the road to a utopian future.

But we showed in Chapter One that the development of our society can never be subject to rational control: The techies won’t be able to “shape

the advances” of technology, guide the course of technological progress, or exclude the intense competition that will eliminate nearly all techies in short order.

Some techies, e.g., Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized, 132 but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people.

Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it’s clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia

His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

The techies’ belief-system can best be explained as a religious phenomenon, 135 to which we may give the name “Technianity.” It’s true that Technianity at this point is not strictly speaking a religion, because it has not yet developed anything resembling a uniform body of doctrine; the techies’ beliefs are widely varied.136 ln this respect Technianity probably resembles the inceptive stages of many other religions. Nevertheless, Technianity already has the earmarks of an apocalyptic and millenarian cult: In most versions it anticipates a cataclysmic event, the Singularity,137 which is the point at which technological progress is supposed to become so rapid as to resemble an explosion. This is analogous to the Judgment Day138 of Christian mythology or the Revolution of Marxist mythology. The cataclysmic event is supposed to be followed by the arrival of techno-utopia (analogous to the Kingdom of God or the Worker’s Paradise). Technianity has a favored minority-the Elect-consisting of the techies (equivalent to the True Believers of Christianity or the Proletariat of the Marxists139). The Elect ofTechnianity, like that of Christianity, is destined to Eternal Life;

Historically, millenarian cults have tended to emerge at “times of great social change or crisis.”141 This suggests that the techies’ beliefs reflect

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

not a genuine confidence in technology, but rather their own anxieties about the future of the technological society-anxieties from which they try to escape by creating a quasi-religious myth.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

CHAPTER THREE How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

In studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to finding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved. -Mao Zedong1

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

In this chapter we will state some rules that deserve the attention of anyone who wants to bring about radical changes in a society

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

In the first part of this chapter we will give a brief and simplified explanation of the rules. Further on we will examine the meaning of the rules, illustrate them with examples, and discuss the limits of their applicability. In the last part of the chapter we will show how ignorance of the rules ensures the failure of present-day efforts to deal with the problems generated by modern technology, including the problem of environmental devastation

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

I. Postulates and Rules We begin by stating four postulates. We postpone a discussion of the extent to which the postulates are true.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Postulate 1. You can’t change a society by pursuing goals that are vague or abstract. You have to have a clear and concrete goal. As an experienced activist put it: “Vague, over-generalized objectives are seldom met. The trick is to conceive of some specific development which will inevitably propel your community in the direction you want it to go.”

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Postulate 2. Preaching alone-the mere advocacy of ideas-cannot bring about important, long-lasting changes in the behavior of human beings, unless in a very small minority.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Postulate 3. Any radical movement tends to attract many people who may be sincere, but whose goals are only loosely related to the goals of the movement.4 The result is that the movement’s original goals may become blurred, if not completely perverted.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Postulate 4. Every radical movement that acquires great power becomes corrupt, at the latest, when its original leaders (meaning those who joined the movement while it was still relatively weak) are all dead or politically inactive. In saying that a movement becomes corrupt, we mean that its members, and especially its leaders, primarily seek personal advantages (such as money, security, social status, powerful offices, or a career) rather than dedicating themselves sincerely to the ideals of the movement.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

From these postulates we can infer certain rules to which every radical movement should pay close attention.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Rule (i) In order to change a society in a specified way, a movement should select a single, clear, simple, and concrete objective the achievement of which will produce the desired change.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

It follows from Postulate 1 that the movement’s objectives must be clear and concrete. According to Postulate 3 there will be a tendency for the movement’s objectives to become blurred or perverted, and this tendency will be most easily resisted if the movement has only a single objective that is simple in addition to being clear and concrete

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

As seen in the epigraph, above, Mao emphasized the importance of identifying the “principal contradiction” in any situation, and this one principal contradiction commonly will point to a single, decisive objective that a movement needs to achieve in order to transform a society.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

In any conflict situation in which victory is uncertain, it is always essential to concentrate one’s efforts on the achievement of the single most critical objective. Military practitioners and theorists like Napoleon and Clausewitz recognized the importance of concentrating one’s forces at the

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

decisive point

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

this-it’s just common sense: When you’re facing a difficult struggle and have no strength to spare, you’d better concentrate what strength you have where it will do the most good: on the single most critical objective.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Rule (ii) If a movement aims to transform a society, then the objective selected by the movement must be of such a nature that, once the objective has been achieved, its consequences will be irreversible. This means that, once society has been transformed through the achievement of the objective, society will remain in its transformed condition without any further effort on the part of the movement or anyone else. In order to transform society, the movement will have to acquire great power and therefore, according to Postulate 4, will soon become corrupt. Once corrupted, the members of the movement or their successors will no longer exert themselves to maintain the transformed condition of society that corresponds to the ideals of the movement, but will be concerned only to gain and hold personal advantages. Consequently, society will not remain in its transformed condition unless the transformation is irreversible.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

Rule (iii) Once an objective has been selected, it is necessary to persuade some small minority to commit itself to the achievement of the objective by means more potent than mere preaching or advocacy of ideas. In other words, the minority will have to organize itself for practical action.

How to Transform a Society: Errors to Avoid

At least at the outset, this group will ordinarily include only a very small minority because, again by Postulate 2, prior to the application of methods more potent than the mere advocacy of ideas, only a very small minority can be persuaded to act.

Rule (iv) In order to keep itself faithful to its objective, a radical movement should devise means of excluding from its ranks all unsuitable persons who may seek to join it.

Rule (v) Once a revolutionary movement has become powerful enough to achieve its objective, it must achieve its objective as soon as possible, and in any case before the original revolutionaries (meaning those who joined the movement while it was still relatively weak) die or become politically inactive.

As noted earlier, the movement will have to become very powerful in order to achieve its objective, therefore, by Postulate 4, it will soon be corrupted. Once corrupted, the movement will no longer be faithful to its objective, so if the objective is to be achieved at all it must be achieved before the movement becomes corrupt.

Let’s take a careful look at the postulates and ask ourselves to what extent they are true.

Postulate 1. To see the truth of this postulate, we don’t need to rely on the opinion of the experienced activist quoted above. It should be obvious that vague or abstract goals can’t ordinarily serve as a basis for effective action.

For example, “freedom” by itself will not serve as a goal, because different people have different conceptions of what constitutes freedom and of the relative importance of different aspects of freedom. Consequently, effective and consistent cooperation in pursuit of an unspecified “freedom” is impossible. The same is true of other vague goals like “equality,” “justice” or “protecting the environment.” For effective cooperation you need a clear and concrete goal, so that everyone involved will have approximately the same understanding of what the goal actually is.

Moreover, where an objective is vague or abstract, it is too easy to pretend that the objective has been achieved, or that progress toward it is being made, when real achievements are minimal. For example, American politicians automatically identify “freedom” with the American way oflife regardless of the realities of day-to-day living in this country.

Look, for example, at the American Revolution. By May 1776 at the latest, the great majority of the American revolutionaries had accepted independence from Britain as their objective of highest priority. 8 This objective was clear and concrete, and it was achieved. But independence was not the revolutionaries’ only goal: They also wanted to set up a “republican” government in America.9 This was by no means a clear and concrete objective, since widely differing forms of government can be described as “republican.” Consequently, once independence had been achieved, there were intense disagreements among the revolutionaries over the precise form of the “republic” that was to be established.10 Nevertheless, the revolutionaries did succeed in setting up a government that was unquestionably republican in form and that has lasted to the present day. Notice, however, that the revolutionaries did not set up a successful republican government until they had already won independence from Britain and no longer faced stiff opposition. Furthermore, they enjoyed certain special advantages: They had as a model a form of governmentthe English one-that was already halfway to being a republic. Qefferson referred to the English constitution as a “kind of half-way house” between monarchy and “liberty.

In Part III of this chapter we will see other examples in which movements have succeeded in reaching vague or abstract goals. But we know of no well-defined examples of this kind in which the movement has faced stiff opposition and has not been favored by a pre-existing historical trend.

Yet, even in those situations in which the need for a clear and concrete objective is greatest, Postulate 1 does not imply that abstract goals are useless. Abstract goals often play an essential role in motivating and justifying a movement’s concrete objective. To take a crude example, an aspiration for “freedom” may motivate and justify a movement that seeks to overthrow a dictator.

Postulate 2 is a matter of common, everyday experience. We all know how useless it is to try to change people’s behavior by preaching to them-generally speaking. Actually there are some important exceptions to Postulate 2, but before we discuss those we need to point out that some seeming exceptions are not really exceptions at all.

It would be a mistake, for example, to suppose that the teachings of Jesus Christ have been effective in guiding human behavior

Christians comprised only a tiny minority. With the passage of years, the Christian way of life was progressively vitiated in proportion to the growing number of Christians,14 and by the time Christianity had become dominant in the Roman Empire few Christians still lived as those of the first century AD had done. The world went on as before, full of war, lust, greed, and treachery.

What happened, of course, was that Christian doctrines were reinterpreted to suit the convenience of the society that existed at any given stage of history.

during the Carolingian era, when Western Europe hardly had a money economy, the biblical prohibition against “usury”15 was held to bar all lending of money at interest.16 But this prohibition was relaxed when it became an obstacle to economic development, and today it would be a rare Christian who would claim that lending at interest was prohibited by his religion. Jesus himself-if we assume that the Gospels accurately reflect his views-was opposed to all accumulation of wealth,

Christians probably tried to live accordingly, for “as many as were possessors oflands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.”18 But that didn’t last long once Christianity became widespread.

For another example, take Karl Marx. As a practical revolutionary Marx was active only for about 12 years (1848-1852 , 1864-1872), and was not particularly successful;20 his role was primarily that of a theorist, an advocate of ideas. Yet it has sometimes been said that Marx exercised a decisive influence on the history of the 20th century. In reality, the people who exercised the decisive influence were the men of action (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc.) who organized revolutions in the name of Marxism. And these men, while calling themselves Marxists, never hesitated to set Marx’s theories aside when “objective” circumstances made it advisable for them to do so. Moreover, the societies that resulted from their revolutions resembled the kind of society envisioned by Marx only insofar as they were in a general way socialistic.

Marx did not invent socialism, nor did he originate the impulse to revolution. Both socialism and revolution were “in the air” in Marx’s day, and they weren’t in the air just because some ingenious fellow happened to dream them up. They were in the air because they were called forth by the social conditions of the time (as Marx himself would have been the first to insist

For similar reasons, probably very few if any of the “great thinkers” whose ideas supposedly influenced history ever achieved their goals, except where the thinkers were also men of action who were able to implement their own ideas (as in the case of the Prophet Mohammed, for example).

Nevertheless, some exceptions to Postulate 2 should be noted. Small children are highly receptive to the teaching of their parents and of other adults whom they respect, and principles preached to a small child may guide his behavior for the rest of his life.

Note

L’éducation est un outil très puissant qui conditionne toute ta vie

Ideas that people receive may have an important, long-lasting effect on their behavior if the ideas are ones that many individuals can apply for their own personal advantage. For example, the rational methods of empirical science were at first preached only by a tiny minority, but those ideas spread and were applied throughout the world because they were of great practical utility to those who applied them. (Even so, scientific rationality is consistently applied only where it is useful to those who apply it. Scientific rationality is commonly set aside when the irrational is more useful, for example, in certain aspects of the social sciences where the goal is not to describe reality accurately but to provide support for an ideology or a worldview.)

The power-structure of a modern society can change human behavior by preaching on a vast scale through the mass media with the help of skilled professional propagandists

Maybe a group outside the established power-structure could also change human behavior through propaganda alone, but only if the group were sufficiently rich and powerful to undertake a massive, sophisticated media campaign.

Note

Les réseaux sociaux

Even where human behavior is changed by professional propagandists, however, it is doubtful that the change is ever permanent. It seems that such changes are easily reversed when the propaganda ceases or is replaced by propaganda that promotes contrary ideas. Thus, the effects of Nazi propaganda in Germany, Marxist Leninist propaganda in the Soviet Union, and Maoist propaganda in China faded rather quickly when those systems of propaganda were discontinued.

Postulate 3. Probably every radical movement tends to some extent to attract persons who join it from motives that are only loosely related to the goals of the movement

A good example was the late Judi Bari, who was a radical feminist, demonstrated against U.S. involvement in Central America, and participated in the pro-choice and anti-nuclear movements. “Eventually, she added environmentalism to her list of causes”23 and became an Earth First!er. The influx of numerous individuals of this type did lead to the blurring of Earth First!‘s original mission, which became contaminated with “social justice” issues.

Because of the personal risk involved, it’s not likely that an illegal and persecuted movement would draw many cranks and do-gooders, though on the other hand such a movement might be attractive to adventurers who valued danger, conspiracy, or violence for their own sake.

Again, when a movement is fully absorbed in a hard struggle (legal or not) for a single, specific, clearly defined goal, one imagines it would attract few individuals who were not willing to commit themselves whole-heartedly to that goal.

it does seem true that even if many persons having varied and diffuse goals enter a movement, the movement’s objective does not necessarily become blurred or perverted if that objective is simple, concrete, and clear, and if the movement is committed to it exclusively. For example, it appears that most of the early feminist leaders were professional reformers who were interested in a variety of causes, such as temperance (anti-alcohol), peace (anti-war), pacifism, abolition of slavery, and so-called “progressive” causes generally.25 Yet, once the feminist movement had become clearly focused by about 1870 on the single, overriding goal of woman suffrage, it seems to have remained entirely faithful to that goal until the goal was achieved in the 1920s.26

Postulate 4. The meaning of Postulate 4 needs to be clarified: A movement will not necessarily be thoroughly corrupted unless it becomes so powerful that (i) membership in the movement entails little or no risk (whether of physical harm or of other negative consequences, such as drastic loss of social status); and (ii) the movement is able to offer its adherents such conventional satisfactions as money, security, positions of power, a career, or

social status

Even then the movement’s ideals may retain some residual effectiveness unless and until the movement achieves a secure position as the dominant force in society, after which corruption becomes complete.

Postulate 4 seems to be invariably true. People who join a radical movement while it is still relatively weak may have goals that diverge from those of the movement, but at least such people are not likely to be selfish in the conventional sense, because they cannot draw the conventional advantages from their membership in the movement. In fact, their membership may entail serious risks or sacrifices. They may be motivated in part by a drive for power, but they seek to satisfy that drive through participation in a movement that they hope will become powerful and attain its goals.27 There may also be struggles for power within the movement. But the members do not expect the safe and stable positions of power that are available in a movement that is already powerful and firmly established. However, once a movement can offer money, security, status, a career, stable positions of personal power, and similar advantages, it becomes irresistibly attractive to opportunists

At this stage the movement will already have grown to be a big one with an unwieldy administrative apparatus, so that the exclusion of opportunists will not be a practical possibility.

Moreover, when a movement has grown excessively strong, even some of the formerly sincere revolutionaries may give in to the temptations of power. “The history ofliberation heroes shows that when they come into office they interact with powerful groups: they can easily forget that they’ve been put in power by the poorest of the poor. They often lose their common touch, and turn against their own people.” (Nelson Mandela)30

Look at history: We know very well what happened to Christianity after the Church became powerful. It seems that the corruption of the clergy has usually been in direct proportion to the power of the Church at any given time. Some of the popes have actually been depraved. 31 Islam didn’t turn out any better. Twenty-four years after the Prophet’s death his son-in-law, the Caliph Uthman ibn Affan, was killed by rebels, and this

event was followed by power-struggles and violence among the Muslims and a prolonged period of conflict within Islam

The French Revolution was followed by the dictatorship of Napoleon, the Russian Revolution by that of Stalin

The sociologist Eric Hoffer wrote: Hitler, who had a clear vision of the whole course of a movement even while he was nursing his infant National Socialism, warned that a movement retains its vigor only so long as it can offer nothing in the present

According to Hitler, the more ‘posts and offices a movement has to hand out, the more inferior stuff it will attract, and in the end these political hangers-on overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest fighter of former days no longer recognizes the old movement … When this happens, the “mission” of such a movement is done for.’

With victory, certain moods may grow within the Party-arrogance, the airs of a self-styled hero, inertia and unwillingness to make progress, love of pleasure and distaste for continued hard living .. .. The comrades must be helped to remain modest, prudent, and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. The comrades must be helped to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle. 37 Needless to say, Mao’s warning was futile. Already in 1957 he complained: A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel-an unwillingness to share the joys and hardships of the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain

III

Today the Communist regime in China is notorious for its corruption: Not only are Party members and government officials concerned more with their own careers than they are with Communist ideals; 39 what is worse, the regime is pervaded by out-and-out criminal dishonesty.

III

the “conservative” (read “authoritarian”) PAN party

Note

Les conservateurs cherchent en fait un leader autoritaire…

III

Ever since the onset of the Industrial Revolution there has been a powerful trend toward “equality”-meaning the elimination of all distinctions between individuals other than those distinctions that are demanded by the needs of the technological system. Thus, a mathematician is to be evaluated in terms of his/her mathematical talent, a mechanic in terms of his/her knowledge of engines, a factory manager in terms of his/her ability to run a factory, and with the passage of time it has increasingly been expected that the religion, social class, race, gender, etc., etc. of the mathematician, the mechanic, and the manager are to be treated as irrelevant. Because the feminists’ goal of equality has been in harmony with this historical trend, opposition to feminism has steadily declined over time,

III

the stronger the opposition a movement has to face, the more important it is that the movement should concentrate all its energy on a single, clearly defined objective.

III

For example, the feminists’ achievement of woman suffrage is irreversible because (among other reasons) now that women have the right to vote, it cannot be taken away from them through democratic processes without the consent of most women-consent that they would hardly be likely to give even in the absence of an effective and uncorrupted feminist movement

III

Once a clear, simple, concrete objective has been achieved, its achievement no doubt is less easily reversed than that of a vague or complex objective, because its reversal would be too obvious, too hard to disguise. This is another reason why a movement should obey Rule (i).

III

A military coup usually represents not the corruption of democracy but a victory of those who never wanted democracy in the first place. But the death of a democracy through corruption (in our sense of the word) has probably been even more common than the military coup, and when this happens the external forms of democracy often are retained even while an individual or an oligarchy takes effective control of the country. We’ve seen this in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union: Vladimir Putin was originally a protege of Boris Yeltsin, the great champion of Russian democracy, and Russia still retains all the usual apparatus of parliamentary democracy. Yet it is said that Putin is now almost a dictator.

III

Today in Latin America functioning democratic governments seem to have a better chance of success than they did a few decades ago, probably because the cultural and economic changes associated with modernization have raised the level of social discipline in those countries. Another factor to be considered is that the international climate has become more unfavorable to obvious dictatorships (by an individual or by a party), and nations are now under pressure to maintain at least the appearance of democracy

III

Rule (ii) is important nevertheless. The essential point of the rule is that a movement builds its foundation on quicksand ifit bases its strategy on the assumption that faithfulness to the movement’s ideals will be sustained indefinitely and independently of the immediate self-interest of the people who are in positions of power

III

First, while ideas by themselves will not transform a society, the development and propagation of ideas must be a part of any rational effort to transform a society. Without some organized set ofideas to guide its action, a movement will flounder aimlessly.

III

Rule (iii) states that once an objective has been selected, some small minority must undertake organization for practical action (as opposed to mere preaching or advocacy of ideas) in the service of the objective. Three points must be noted, however:

III

Second, while both ideas and organization for practical action are necessary components of any rational and successful effort to change a society, the people who organize for practical action need not be the same individuals as the theorists who develop and propagate the ideas. In Ireland, again, nationalist ideas and the aspiration for independence from Britain were already well developed among the extremist minority prior to the advent of Michael Collins in 1917.

III

However, for theorists who do not themselves organize for practical action, there is a grave danger: The men of action who do organize, purportedly in the service of the theorists’ ideas, may reinterpret or distort the ideas so that the results are very different from what the theorists envisioned. Martin Luther was appalled at the social rebellion that his ideas called forth, 114 and we’ve already pointed out that Marxist revolutionaries like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and Castro deviated from Marx’s ideas whenever they found it convenient to do so. Here again we see the importance of Rule (i), that is, of the need to select a clear, simple, concrete objective: Neither Marx nor Luther formulated such an objective, and because their ideas were complex their ideas could easily be misunderstood or distorted.

III

Third, preaching, or the advocacy of ideas, is by far the easier part of an effort to change a society; organizing for practical action is vastly more difficult. This at least is true today; it may not always have been true in the past.

III

It appears that organization for practical action occurred quickly and easily once Luther’s ideas became widely

III

known. In those days the educated sector of society was relatively tiny, and the expression of dissident ideas could entail considerable personal risk. (Luther’s forerunner Jan Hus was burned at the stake for his ideas.117) Consequently, new ideas were a scarce commodity, and intense dissatisfactions could long fester unarticulated for lack of anyone to articulate them.

III

A thinker who was bold enough to express dissent publicly and able to do so eloquently might trigger a release of pent-up resentments. When this occurred it was probably much easier to organize a rebellion in those days than it is now, because people were much less effectively conditioned to obedience, docility, and passivity than they are today. In fact, by modern standards the people of Luther’s time were lawless.

III

Nowadays, however, there is a surfeit of ideas, including dissident and even outrageous ones. Artists and writers strive to outdo one another in thumbing their noses at conventional values. Consequently new ideas, however outrageous, evoke a yawn from many people, from others only an expression of irritation, and serve the remainder of the population as mere entertainment

III

To their contemporaries, the ideas of men like Hus and Luther suggested the possible opening of a new era, but no ideas do that today because new ideas are so commonplace that no one takes them seriously any more. Except, of course, technological ideas.

III

At present, organization for practical action is more difficult not only because new ideas no longer evoke a strong response, but also because of people’s docility, passivity, and “learned helplessness.”

III

Professional political operatives do exploit people’s discontents to organize support for their parties, candidates, or movements, but this only makes the task of organization more difficult for amateurs, who are poorly equipped to compete with skilled professionals for people’s attention and commitment.

III

Thus, whatever may have been the case in the past, in the modern world the critical challenge for anyone wishing to transform society is not the propagation of ideas, but organization for practical action.

III

Rule (iv) states that in order to keep itself faithful to its objective, a movement should devise means of excluding all unsuitable persons who may seek to join it.

III

It is difficult to examine this rule in the light of historical examples, because very little relevant information seems to be available in the histories of past movements.120 Hardly any evidence known to this writer suggests that past movements had explicit policies designed to exclude unsuitable persons, but probably many movements have had informal or

III

even unconscious means of excluding persons perceived as unsuitable. For example, such persons might simply have been given the cold shoulder at meetings. But one may doubt the effectiveness of such unsystematic ways of keeping a movement “pure.”

III

The fact that the 19th-century feminist movement lent its support to Victoria Woodhull, who was a spiritualist charlatan and an advocate of a crackpot variety of socialism, 126 suggests that the movement may not have been highly selective in accepting participants. If that is true, then the movement may have been saved by its focus on the single goal of woman suffrage

III

It is clear, however, that the kinds of people who join a movement necessarily have a profound effect on its character and can blur or change its goals.

III

If some of the movements we’ve looked at have remained faithful to their goals without any premeditated effort to exclude unsuitable persons, then they’ve been lucky

III

Rule (v) states that once a revolutionary movement has become powerful enough to achieve its objective it must achieve its objective soon thereafter, before the movement is corrupted (as Postulate 4 affirms it will be).

III

writer has found no exception to the law that when a radical movement grows too powerful it is soon corrupted; that is, it ceases to be faithful to its original goals and ideals

III

These politicians, like politicians everywhere, have no doubt been concerned primarily with their own careers. (They are “corrupt” in our sense.)

In many situations the interpretation of the rules may be difficult and complicated, or the application of some of the rules may be impossible or unnecessary. The rules nevertheless are important because, at the least, they set forth problems that every radical movement needs to study carefully

In the next section we will see how present-day efforts to deal with the problems generated by modern technology, including the problem of environmental devastation, are doomed to failure through neglect of the five rules.

IV. The Application Let’s start with Chellis Glendinning’s “Notes Toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto,” which can be found in an anthology compiled by David Skrbina.151 Glendinning’s statement of the goals of neo-luddism is long and complicated, and most of the stated goals are hopelessly vague. Here is a sample: We favor the creation ef technologies in which politics, morality, ecology, and technics are merged far the benefit ef life on Earth:

• Community-based energy sources utilizing solar, wind, and water technologies-which are renewable and enhance both community relations and respect for nature; • Organic, biological technologies … which derive directly from natural models and systems; • Conflict resolution technologies-which emphasize cooperation, understanding, and continuity of relationship; and • Decentralized social technologies-which encourage participation, responsibility, and empowerment … . We favor the development of a life-enhancing worldview in Western technological societies. We hope to instill a perception of life, death, and human potential into technological societies that will integrate the human need for creative expression, spiritual experience and community with the capacity for rational thought and functionality. We perceive the human role not as the dominator of other species and planetary biology, but as integrated into the natural world with appreciation for the sacredness of all life.

Note

The bad example

One can hardly imagine a more flagrant violation of Rule (i), which states that a movement needs a single, clear, simple, concrete goal. Nor is this a case in which vague, generalized goals may be attainable because a movement faces no serious opposition and is favored by a pre-existing historical trend. On the contrary, modern society is driven hard along its present technological path by the vigorous, determined, unremitting efforts ofinnumerable, deeply-committed scientists, engineers, and administrators, and by desperate competition for power among large organizations. Under these circumstances, the vagueness and complexity of Glendinning’s goals are by themselves sufficient to guarantee the failure of her proposals. What about Rule (v), which requires that a successful revolutionary movement achieve its goals promptly, before corruption sets in? As the basis for a thorough reorganization of society (radical enough to be called a revolution even if nonviolent), Glendinning’s proposal demands the creation of a broad range of technologies, most of which differ widely from any well-developed technologies that exist today. The creation of these technologies, if possible at all, would require extensive, systematic research, vast resources, and a great deal of time. A neo-luddite movement would

be able to gain control over the resources it needed only if it became big, powerful, and well-organized, hence ripe for corruption. In order to carry out the necessary social reorganization, the movement would even have to be the dominant force in society, and the process of reorganization would surely take at least a few decades-say forty years at a minimum. By that time the movement’s original leaders would all be out of action and the movement would be corrupt, as guaranteed by Postulate 4. Consequently, the reorganization of society in accord with neo-luddite principles would never be completed.

Let’s nevertheless make the improbable assumption that society had been transformed in the way advocated by Glendinning. Would the transformation be irreversible, as Rule (ii) requires? That is, would society remain in its transformed condition without continuing effort by the neo-luddites? Not a chance! As discussed in Chapter Two, natural selection guarantees that conflict and competition for power would re-emerge after the neo-luddite utopia had been established.

Even if one rejects the argument of Chapter Two, it is an observable fact that human affairs have usually if not always been characterized by conflict and competition, whether within societies or between different societies

Note

I don’t think that’s always the case… That exists for sure but is it prominent

Glendinning does not explain what would prevent conflict and competition from reappearing and wrecking the neo-luddite utopia.

In practice, the neo-luddite movement would be corrupted, just as every other radical movement that has become the dominant force in a society has been corrupted. Neo-luddite ideals would be forgotten or would receive only lip-service, and the continued existence of modern technology (which Glendinning does not contemplate eliminating) would ensure society’s inevitable return to its present destructive trajectory.

As for Rule (iii), Glendinning shows no awareness of the need to form an organized movement committed to practical action. Apparently, either she thinks she and other neo-luddites can transform society just by preaching, or else she hopes someone else will do the hard work of organizing an effective movement

As we noticed earlier, the advocacy of ideas is easy; what is difficult is the task of organizing for practical action. Confronted with this task, people like Glendinning feel intimidated. They are appalled at the catastrophic growth of the technological system and they want to do something about it, but they are too helpless and ineffectual to face up to the formidable challenge of building a movement. So to give themselves the illusion that they are “doing something” they preach about the way

There are of course groups that do organize themselves in pursuit of fairly definite goals oflimited scope; for example, groups like the Sierra Club that try to preserve wilderness. And they do accomplish something-a little bit-but what they accomplish is insignificant in relation to the problem of technology in general. The insignificance of their accomplishments is guaranteed by the limited scope of their goals.

Glendinning doesn’t even mention the need to form an organized movement, the question of Rule (iv) (that a movement should find means of excluding unsuitable persons) does not arise.

Glendinning is utterly naive; she doesn’t even show any awareness that the problems indicated by Rules (i) through (v) exist. Her neo-luddite scheme therefore is no better than any of the other unreal utopian fantasies that have misled the unwary ever since Plato dreamed up his ideal republic.

Skrbina’s anthology also contains an essay by Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher who coined the term “deep ecology

Naess’s goals are-if such a thing is possible-even more diffuse than those proposed by Glendinning. In fact, Naess in this essay does not explicitly enumerate his goals at all. But he does write: A crucial objective of the coming years is … decentralisation and differentiation as a means to increased local autonomy and, ultimately, as a means to unfolding the rich potentialities of the human person.153 The ultimate goal, “unfolding the rich potentialities of the human person,” is just beautiful; one can hardly conceive of a more elegant platitude. But as a practical proposal it is meaningless.

The intermediate goals of “decentralisation” and “local autonomy” are not meaningless, but they are still too vague to form the basis for an effective movement.

Naess also writes that it is “a major concern to find a kind of equilibrium” between “the requirements of reduced interference with nature and satisfaction of human vital needs.”154 This does not even remotely approach the degree of specificity that a goal must have in order to be practical.

Naess does slightly better when he quotes eight pairs of related goals stated by Johan Galtung.155 Two of the pairs are: Clothes [:] build down international textile business [-] try to restore patterns of local handicraft: symbiosis with food production Transportation/communication [:] less centralised, two-way patterns, collective means of transport [-] try to restore patterns of walking, talking, bicycling, more car-free areas, cable TV, local media Most of Galtung’s goals are still too vague to serve as the basis for an effective movement, but some at least are definite enough so that individually they might serve as starting points from which one could try to develop more precise goals. However, eight pairs of goals are too many; and the achievement even of every one of Galtung’s goals would not be anywhere near enough to solve the overall problem of technology. Thus, Naess’s scheme violates Rule (i)

Naess is ignorant of Rule (v): He thinks “big, centralised, hierarchical” social structures can be “phased out gradually.” 156 Evidently he envisions a transformation of society that is to take at least a couple of generations; but in that case “deep ecology” will be corrupted long before the transformation is complete.

Note

Rule 5 explains enshittification

Naess’s scheme also violates Rule (ii): Even if society had somehow been transformed in the way Naess desires, the transformation would not be irreversible. It seems clear that Naess expects the retention of a good deal of advanced technology, 157 and constant vigilance would be necessary to prevent that technology from being used in ways that were inconsistent with the kind of society that Naess proposes. In practice, such vigilance would not be long maintained, because corruption (in our sense of the word) inevitably would set in.

As for Rule (iii), Naess, like Glendinning, seems to think he can save the world just by preaching, for he gives no indication of any awareness of the need to organize the “deep ecology” movement for practical action.

We could review the work of other writers in this genre-Ivan Ilich, Jerry Mander, Kirkpatrick Sale, Daniel Qyinn, John Zerzan, the whole useless crew-but there would be little point in doing so, because we would only be repeating the same criticisms that we’ve directed at Glendinning and Naess

This entire body of literature suffers, by and large, from the same faults as the work of these last two writers: Authors express their well-grounded horror at what the technological system is doing, but the remedies they suggest are totally unrealistic.

To begin, let’s follow Mao’s advice and ask what is the principal contradiction in the situation with which we are faced. The principal contradiction, clearly, is that between wild nature and the technological system. This suggests that the objective chosen should be that of “killing” the technological system as we’ve described previously

The reader may well ask whether it is possible to conceive of any remedy at all for the problem of technology that would be consistent with the five rules. We think it is possible

other words, revolutionaries should aim to bring about the collapse of the system by any means necessary. Rule (i): This objective is sufficiently clear, concrete, and simple to form the basis for an effective movement. Rule (v): If a revolutionary movement once grew powerful enough to destroy the technological system in this way, it ought to be able to accomplish the destruction in a short time. Destruction is easier by far than construction. Rule (ii): If the system were thoroughly broken down the effect would be-at least for a long time-irreversible, because it would take several hundred years or more for a new technological system to develop.161 Some

Notes

people even believe that a technological system could never again be created on Earth.162 Rule (iv): A revolutionary movement aspiring to “kill” the technological system would need to find a way of preventing unsuitable persons from joining the movement. Most likely the chief danger would come from people of leftist type (as defined in ISAIF163) who attach themselves to “causes” indiscriminately.164 A movement could probably drive such people away by maintaining a continuous verbal and ideological attack on leftist beliefs, goals, and ideas.165 If that proved insufficient to repel leftists, or if other types of undesirables (e.g., rightists) were attracted to the movement, other means of keeping the movement “pure” would have to be found. Rule (iii): The hard part would be the task of organizing people for practical action. We can’t offer any formula or recipe for carrying out this task, but those who undertake such an effort will find their road less difficult if they apply the ideas and information provided in Chapter Four, which follows.

Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

CHAPTER FOUR Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

Force is the final arbiter, vigorous intervention is the keynote, and victory goes to those who have the courage and the discipline to see things through to the end. Such a view is characteristic of groups which seek to catapult themselves out of obscurity into history when, as it seems to them, all the forces of society are arrayed in opposition. -Philip Selznick1

Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

First, the movement must build its own internal sources of power. It will have to create a strong, cohesive organization consisting of individuals who are absolutely committed to the elimination of the technological system. Numbers will be a secondary consideration. A numerically small organization built of high-quality personnel will be far more effective than a much larger organization in which the majority of members are of mediocre quality. 2 The organization will have to develop its understanding of the dynamics of social movements so that it will recognize opportunities when they arrive and will know how to exploit them.

Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

Second, the movement must build power in relation to its social environment. It must win respect for its ideas, its vigor, its effectiveness. If it is widely feared and hated, so much the better; but it must earn for itself a reputation as the purest and most uncompromisingly revolutionary of all oppositional movements. Thus it will be the movement to which many individuals will turn upon the arrival of a severe crisis in which people have become desperate and have lost all respect for and all confidence in the existing form of society.

Section 2

Third, to help pave the way for this loss of respect and confidence, the movement should do what it can to undermine people’s faith in the technological system. This is likely to be the lightest of the movement’s burdens, because much of the work will be done without any effort on the part of the movement. For one thing, the system’s own failures will help to undermine confidence in it. For another, the spoken and written words of disenchanted intellectuals, especially those concerned with environmental issues, will act (and are already acting) to break down people’s confidence in the existing social order. Very few of these intellectuals are potential revolutionaries,3 therefore an anti-tech movement should not support them directly. But the movement can promote the decline of confidence in the existing social order by calling attention to the pervasiveness and the irremediable character of the system’s failures and by making the system look weak or vulnerable whenever possible

Section 2

Revolutions almost never are successfully planned out long in advance of their actual occurrence. This is merely one instance of the principle that specific historical events are, in general, unpredictable. 5 Irving Horowitz correctly observed that revolutions are carried out either without a previous program of action, or even in direct violation of such a program, 6 and Herbert Matthews noted that “of all the revolutionary leaders of modern times, only Hitler outlined his program and stuck to it.”

Section 2

Revolutionaries have to proceed by trial and error, and by grasping (usually unforeseen) opportunities as they arise.8 As Lenin put it: “We often have to grope our way along … Who could ever make a gigantic revolution, knowing in advance how to carry it through to the end?“9 In January 1917, Lenin did not believe that any kind of revolution would be possible in Russia during his own lifetime.

Section 2

He was able to make the Bolsheviks masters of Russia only because he had the acumen to recognize and exploit the unexpected opportunity presented by the February 1917 insurrection in St. Petersburg

Section 2

Major opportunities, however, may be a long time in coming; the revolutionary movement may have to lie in wait for them.12 This doesn’t mean that the movement can afford to relax and take it easy. On the contrary, while it is waiting the movement must remain hard at work, not only to build its strength

Section 4

but also because an inactive movement will die or shrink to an apathetic rump. If a movement’s members are not kept occupied with purposeful work, most will lose interest and drift away.

Section 4

Another reason why the movement must remain active is that it is not enough for revolutionaries to wait passively for opportunities; the opportunities may have to be created in part by the revolutionaries themselves.

Section 4

Some serious failure of the existing social order will probably have to occur independently of anything the revolutionaries can do, but whether such a failure is severe enough to provide an opportunity for overthrow of the system may depend on previous revolutionary activity

Section 4

In Russia, for example, the underlying weakness of the tsarist regime was not caused by revolutionaries. But the opportunity for revolution was based on the regime’s defeat in World War I, and revolutionary activity may have contributed to that defeat

Section 4

Later, it was the spontaneous and unexpected insurrection of the workers of St. Petersburg that gave the Bolsheviks their great opportunity, and that insurrection probably would have been no more than a disorganized and ineffective outburst of frustration if the Bolsheviks had not previously indoctrinated the workers with Marxist ideas,15 thus providing them with a theory and an ideal that made it possible for their insurrection to be purposeful, organized, and effective.

Section 5

[I]deas, theories, plans or programmes are usually altered partially

Section 5

and sometimes even wholly, because of the discovery of unforeseen circumstances in the course of practice. That is to say, it does happen that the original ideas, theories, plans or programmes fail to correspond with reality either in whole or in part and are wholly or partially incorrect. In many instances, failures have to be corrected many times before errors in knowledge can be corrected and … the anticipated results can be achieved in practice … .

Section 5

… [T]rue revolutionary leaders must not only be good at correcting their ideas, theories, plans or programmes when errors are discovered, … but … they must ensure that the proposed new revolutionary tasks and new working programmes correspond to the new changes in the situation

Section 5

As argued in Chapter Three, the single ultimate goal of a revolutionary movement today must be the total collapse of the worldwide technological system

Section 5

One of this writer’s correspondents has suggested that, because of the acute physical danger and hardship to which everyone would be exposed following a collapse of the technological system, a movement that takes such a collapse as its goal will be resisted by the overwhelming majority of the world’s population and therefore will be unable to accomplish anything.

Section 5

Undoubtedly, if you held a referendum today on the question of whether the system should be made to collapse, ninety percent, at the very least, of the inhabitants of industrialized countries would vote “no.” Even in a crisis situation in which people had lost all respect for and all confidence in the system, it may well be that a majority, though a much smaller one, would still vote against total collapse. But the assumption that this would be a serious obstacle to revolution is based on what we may call the “democratic fallacy”: the notion that the number of people favoring one side or another determines the outcome of social struggles as it determines the outcome of democratic elections

Section 5

Actually the outcome of social struggles is determined not primarily by numbers but by the dynamics of social movements.

Section 7

It goes without saying that the real revolutionaries-the members of the deeply committed cadre that forms the core of the movement-will be prepared to accept any amount of hardship and the greatest risk

Section 7

even a certainty, of death in the service of their cause. We need only think of the early Christian martyrs

Section 7

But it’s not only a tiny minority of hard-core revolutionaries who will accept suffering and the gravest risks in the service of what they regard as critically important goals. Many ordinary people become heroes and show astonishing courage when there is a severe disruption of their society or an acute threat to their most cherished values, or when they are inspired by what seems to them a noble purpose.

Section 7

It has been said that “man is capable of standing superhuman suffering if only he feels sure that there is some point and purpose to it.”

Section 7

In 1922, when the Irish War of lndependence had gone on long enough so that its desperate and bloody character was unmistakable, there was still no shortage of recruits, “new eager young warriors anxious to emulate their elders.”32 Nor does there seem to have been any shortage of recruits to the French and Polish resistance movements during World War II. These risked not only death, as the Irish did, but excruciating torture as well.

Section 7

T]he suicide rate among Belfast’s youth has risen sharply since the Troubles ended, largely because, the priest believes, the sense of camaraderie and shared struggle provided by the paramilitary groups has been replaced by ennui and despair. ‘So many young people get into drinking and drugs early on,’ Troy says.

Section 8

Celia Sanchez, who had been a revolutionary guerrillera in Cuba, reminisced in 1965 about the dangers and hardships she had gone through with Fidel Castro’s band in the Sierra Maestra: “Ah, but those were the best times, weren’t they? We were all so very happy then. Really. We will never be so happy again, will we? Never ..

Section 8

an American veteran of the Iraq war conceded that his return to civilian life had its drawbacks: “I miss that daily sense of purpose, survive or die, that simply can’t be replicated in everyday existence.”

Section 8

The purpose of the foregoing examples is not to glorify danger, suffering, or warfare. Their purpose is to show that people-even the members of modern technological society, who in normal times are oriented primarily toward security and comfort-will not necessarily choose the easiest road, or the one that seems least dangerous in the short term, when their society is in turmoil, when they are desperate, angry, or horrified at the turn that events are taking, or when it no longer seems possible to maintain their habitual pattern ofliving. Under such circumstances many will choose a heroic course of action, even a course that subjects themselves and their loved ones to the greatest risks and hardships … if only there are leaders who can energize them, organize them, and give them a sense of purpose. It will be the task of revolutionaries to provide that kind ofleadership when the system arrives at a crisis.

Section 8

that the revolutionary program entails. This is not to say that the revolutionaries will succeed in winning the support of a majority of the population. It’s much more likely that they will be able to organize and lead only a fairly small minority. But “it is not always the physical majority that is decisive; rather, it is superiority of moral force that tips the political balance.” (Simon Bolivar)

Section 9

In the event of a sufficiently serious failure of the existing social order the vast majority of the population will lose all respect for it and all confidence in it, hence will make no effective effort to defend it. Alinsky stated the case very clearly when he wrote that the “time is … ripe for revolution” when masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don’t know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do

Section 9

Under these circumstance a great many people will have become hopeless, apathetic, and passive, while most of the rest will be concerned only to save their own skins and those of their loved ones. It is to be expected that the existing power-structure will be in disarray, disoriented, and riven by internal conflict, so that it will do a poor job of organizing and leading any small minority that may still be motivated to defend the system.

Section 9

If, therefore, the revolutionaries act effectively to inspire, organize, and lead their own minority, they will hold the decisive share of power.

Section 9

A failure of the existing social order may not always be needed to provide revolutionaries with an opportunity. It’s not clear that there was any grave failure of the social order in Ireland prior to the revolution of 1916-1922; certainly the British authorities against whom the revolution was directed were by no means in disarray or otherwise weak. Yet the revolution did occur.

Section 9

Ordinarily, however, an opportunity for revolution depends on some serious failure of the existing social order.

Section 9

The Reformation was possible only because the corruption of the Catholic Church led many people to lose their respect for it

Section 9

The revolutions of the early 19th century that won independence for Spain’s American colonies probably would not have occurred if the weakness of the Spanish monarchy had not been demonstrated through its defeat by Napoleon and in other ways

Section 9

The Chinese revolution of 1911 was largely a result of the repeated humiliations inflicted on China by the Western powers and Japan, against which the Manchu (or Qing, Ch’ing) Dynasty was unable to defend itself.

Section 9

The Russian revolutionaries were given their opportunity by the ignominious military defeats of the Tsarist regime in World War I. In Germany, the Nazis were a minor party up to the onset of the Great Depression; Hitler was able to seize power only because the German government was weak and unable to deal with the economic crisis. 46

Section 9

In each of the foregoing examples there undoubtedly was a broadly generalized loss of respect for the prevailing social order, and in the last two cases it is probably safe to say that there was widespread anger and desperation on the part of some people, hopelessness on the part of others

Section 9

In today’s world a prerequisite for revolution most likely will be a situation of the latter type, involving widespread anger, desperation, and hopelessness. Revolutionaries need to be capable of making use of such a situation.

Section 9

To illustrate with a hypothetical example, let’s suppose that i n the coming decades the replacement of human workers by increasingly advanced technology will lead to severe, chronic unemployment throughout the technologically developed part of the world. 47 This will not necessarily produce a crisis serious enough to endanger the existence of the system, for people will tend to react to chronic unemployment with apathy, passivity, and hopelessness. There will be anger, too, which may lead to riots like those recently seen in Spain and Greece,48 but these poorly organized, largely purposeless outbursts of frustration (really manifestations of hopelessness) accomplished little or nothing.

Section 9

Compare this ineffectual rioting with the “Arab Spring” revolution in Egypt (2011), in which intelligent leadership harnessed people’s anger and made it into a tool for the extraction of major concessions from the power-structure.

Section 9

The point here is simply that skillful revolutionary leaders can harness people’s anger and frustration and turn it to useful purposes.

Section 9

Anti-tech revolutionaries, of course, can’t be satisfied with extracting concessions from the power-structure; they have to bring it down altogether.

Section 9

If, as we’ve hypothesized, there is severe, long-lasting unemployment throughout the technologically advanced part of the world, most of those who still have jobs will be frightened and will have lost their respect for the system, but will be motivated only to hold on to their jobs as long as they can. The unemployed will be either apathetic and hopeless, or angry and desperate, or both. If there is widespread rioting it will put the power-structure under stress, but will not seriously threaten its survival.

Section 9

Well-prepared revolutionaries, however, should be capable of organization and leadership that will put people’s anger and desperation to work, not in mere rioting, but for purposeful action

Section 9

From our present standpoint the nature of the purposeful action can only be a matter for conjecture, but, just to take a speculative example, the revolutionaries might extract concessions from the power-structure as the Egyptians did, with the difference that the concessions would have to go far enough so that they would deeply humiliate the power-structure. This could be expected to break down the morale of the individuals comprising the power-structure and lead to sharp internal divisions and conflicts within the power-structure, throwing it into disarray. Once this stage had been reached, the prospects for the overthrow of the power-structure would be excellent.

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

the foregoing scenario represents a purely hypothetical route to revolution that we’ve offered only for illustrative purposes. Revolution may take a very different route in reality.

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

It is important to recognize that a successful revolutionary movement may start out as a tiny and despised group of “crackpots” who are taken seriously by no one but themselves. The movement may remain insignificant and powerless for many years before it finds its opportunity and achieves success.

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

In 1847 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were just a couple of eccentrics who prepared the Communist Manifesto for an obscure group called the Communist League, which had only a few hundred members and soon dissolved

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

In Ireland, nationalist ideas were kept alive for several decades only by a minuscule minority of extremists who had very little support among the general population until the uprising of April 1916 reactivated the revolutionary process

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

Fidel Castro said, “I began a revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I would do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith.”

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

Castro actually started his revolution with only about a dozen men, because three days after he landed in Cuba with his eighty-two they were attacked by the forces of the dictator, Batista; nearly all were killed or captured, and no more than twelve, or possibly fifteen,54 were left to carry on the struggle in the Sierra Maestra. Even at its peak two years later the guerrilla band amounted to only about 800 men, as against Batista’s army of 30,000

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

Yet Castro won. Such a victory of course could not be a purely military one, nor was it achieved by Castro’s guerrilleros alone. Castro’s victory was primarily a political one, and was possible only because the Cuban people had no respect for or confidence in the Batista regime. The dictator was politically incompetent and unable to retain the loyalty even of his own army, which proved itself decidedly reluctant to fight the rebels. And Batista was really overthrown by a coalition of forces, of which Castro’s guerrilla band was not the only important component. What enabled Castro to prevail over the other elements of the coalition and emerge as master of Cuba was his skill as a politician, propagandist, and organizer.

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

The point to be emphasized here, though, is that when Castro, leading his tiny band of a dozen men, looked up at the Sierra Maestra and said, “Now Batista will be defeated!,“57 most people would have thought him mad. Yet Batista was indeed defeated and Castro did take control of Cuba.

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

In Russia at the beginning of the 20th century the revolutionaries comprised an insignificant minority and were regarded as “cranks.”58 The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, of which the Bolsheviks formed a part, consisted of only a few hundred individuals.59 According to Lenin: Prior to January 22 … 1905, the revolutionary party of Russia consisted of a small handful of people, and the reformists of those days .. . derisively called us a ‘sect’ … . Within a few months, however, the picture completely changed. The hundreds of revolutionary Social Democrats ‘suddenly’ grew into thousands; the thousands became leaders of between two and three million proletarians .

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

The 1905 revolution was a failure, but it did help prepare the way for the successful revolution of 1917

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

The Bolsheviks had prepared themselves long in advance of the outbreak of the revolution. They had built a cohesive cadre of professional revolutionists who were disciplined, purposeful, strongly motivated, well led, and reasonably unified. The Bolsheviks were effective organizers, and, because they understood better than anyone else the dynamics of social movements, they formulated policies that proved to be successful. Their chief rivals, the far more numerous Social Revolutionaries, were deficient in these qualities.

Anti-Tech Revolution Why and How

All this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Bolsheviks had the support-much less the active support-of a majority of Russians. The support of the peasants was shaky at best, and existed only when the Bolsheviks were (temporarily) giving them what they wanted. 67 But once the Bolsheviks had seized power in October68 1917, the only organized and efftctive resistance to them originated outside Russia with the numerous emigres who opposed the revolution. These assembled counterrevolutionary armies and, supported by several foreign powers, invaded Russia with the intention of ousting the Bolsheviks. During the ensuing Civil War of l918-1920: “The rate of desertions in the Red Army was unusually high: Trotsky instituted a veritable reign of terror to prevent defections, including placing in the rear of the troops machine-gun detachments with instructions to shoot retreating units.”69 But obviously the Bolsheviks couldn’t have maintained their control over a disaffected majority without the loyal support of at least a substantial minority; those machine-gunners wouldn’t have been willing to shoot down their fellow soldiers on orders from Trotsky if they hadn’t been committed to the Bolshevik cause. The Bolsheviks moreover had their minority well organized and disciplined; 70 consequently they prevailed over the invaders, who were not so well organized

Section 11

It’s important to notice that the crucial events of the Russian Revolution took place in St. Petersburg. This was true of the spontaneous insurrection of February 1917 and also of the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power the following October. Thus the Bolsheviks were able to concentrate their

Section 11

efforts on a single city; once they had won i n St. Petersburg the rest of the country was relatively easy.72 This shows how victory at the single most critical point can provide a basis for the assumption of power throughout an entire society-a further reason why it is possible for a numerically small revolutionary movement to prevail.

Section 11

To summarize, the expected pattern for a revolution against the technological system will be something like the following: A. A small movement, a cohesive cadre of committed, hard-core revolutionaries, will build its internal strength by developing its own organization and discipline. This movement should have branches in several of the world’s most important nations or groups of nations; say, the United States, China, Western Europe, and one or more of Russia, Latin America, and India. In each country, the movement will prepare the way for revolution by disseminating ideas-ideas that will be chosen for their soundness and not for their popularity. The movement will take pains to demonstrate the most uncompromising revolutionary integrity, and will strive to prove itself the most effective of all the factions opposed to the existing system

Section 11

B. A large minority of the general population will recognize that the revolutionaries’ ideas have some merit. But this minority will reject the revolutionaries’ solutions, if only through reluctance to change familiar ways of living or as a result of cowardice or apathy.

Section 11

C. Eventually there will arrive a crisis, or a failure of the system serious enough to enable the revolutionaries to create a crisis, in which it will no longer be possible to carry on with familiar ways of living, and in which the system’s ability to provide for people’s physical and psychological needs will be impaired to such an extent that most people will lose all respect for and all confidence in the existing social order, while many individuals will become desperate or angry. Their desperation and anger will soon degenerate into despair and apathy-unless the revolutionaries are able to step in at that point and inspire them with a sense of purpose, organize them, and channel their fear, desperation, and anger into practical action. Because these people will be desperate or angry and because they will have been energized by the revolutionaries, the risk to themselves, however great it may be, will not deter them from striving to bring down the system.

Section 12

D. Even so, the revolutionary movement will probably be able to gain the active support only of some fairly small minority of the population. But

Section 12

the great majority will be either hopeless and apathetic or else motivated merely to save their own skins, so they will not act to defend the system.

Section 12

E. The established authorities meanwhile will be disoriented, frightened, or discouraged, and therefore incapable of organizing an effective defense. Consequently, power will be in the hands of the revolutionaries.

Section 12

F. By the time revolutionaries have taken power in one nation-for example, the United States-globalization will have proceeded even farther than it has today, and nations will be even more interdependent than they are now.73 Consequently, when revolutionaries have brought the technological system to an abrupt halt in the United States, the economy of the entire world will be severely disrupted and the acute crisis that results will give the anti-tech revolutionaries of all nations the opportunity that they need.

Section 12

G. It is extremely important to realize that when the moment far decisive action arrives (as at C, above) the revolutionaries must recognize it, and then must press forward without any hesitation, vacillation, doubts, or scruples to the achievement of their ultimate goal. Hesitation or vacillation would throw the movement into disarray and would confuse and discourage its members.

Section 12

given the unpredictability of historical events, it is impossible to know for certain whether the route that a revolutionary movement will actually take will fit within the pattern we’ve described. But the pattern is an entirely plausible one, and it provides an answer to those who think the system is too big and strong ever to be overthrown.

Section 12

Moreover, the preparatory work that we have briefly indicated above, at A, will be appropriate for almost any route to revolution that a movement might take in reality.

Section 12

Trotsky claims that in a revolutionary situation there is a particular interval of time, limited to a few weeks or at most a few months, during which a society is primed for insurrection. Any attempt to bring about an insurrection must be undertaken during that interval or the opportunity will be lost

Section 12

Trotsky was speaking only of insurrections, but it should be obvious that a similar rule applies to many other kinds of revolutionary actions: One can hope to carry them out successfully only when circumstances are favorable for them, and since circumstances change rapidly when a society is in crisis one must act at the right time; to act too soon or too late will lead to failure.

Section 12

Here we are concerned mainly with the right moment to begin organizing on a mass basis for the final push toward the overthrow of the existing social order (as at C, above), a push that may or may not involve one or more insurrections but almost certainly will not consist merely of a single insurrection. The critical interval of time may be difficult to identify.

Section 12

Only an assiduous study of history and of revolutionary theory, with careful and thoughtful observation of current events, can develop the judgment necessary for recognition of the critical interval during which the push toward consummation of the revolution can be successfully initiated.

Section 12

Alinsky maintains that the organizers of a mass movement must “act in terms of specific resolutions and answers, of definiteness and certainty. To do otherwise would be to stifle organization and action, for what the organizer accepts as uncertainty would be seen by [the people he is organizing] as a terrifying chaos.

Section 12

Alinsky stresses the importance of avoiding moral ambiguity. The organizers of a mass movement need to delineate issues in black and white: Their own cause must be pure, noble, unequivocally good, while their adversaries represent nothing but evil

Section 12

All of the movement’s actions are automatically presumed to be fully justified, for any vacillation on moral or humanitarian grounds would be as fatal as vacillation on any other grounds. The fact that vacillation on moral or humanitarian grounds was likely to be fatal in any life-and-death conflict82 was understood by some of our most admired statesmen and soldiers-those who led the Western democracies when they were locked in struggles for survival. E .g., Lincoln and Grant during the U. S. Civil War, or Churchill and Roosevelt during World War II.

Section 12

Similarly, it is a fatal error to delay action, or to act timidly, in order to avoid offending people. For example: The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were the two revolutionary parties derived from the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In the period immediately following the St. Petersburg insurrection of February 1917, Trotsky says, “the official Social Democratic program was still… common to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, [and] the practical tasks of the democratic revolution looked the same on paper to both parties.” But, while the Bolsheviks promptly undertook radical measures, the Mensheviks temporized in order to avoid antagonizing the bourgeoisie and the liberals

Section 12

The remarks in the last four paragraphs are intended to provide general guidelines for hard-core revolutionaries to take into consideration in the process of acquiring and leading a mass following when the system moves into a state of crisis; it is the volatile mass that will be incapable of tolerating uncertainty, moral ambiguity, defeats, or periods of inactivity.

Section 12

During the earlier stages of the movement’s life, while it is diligently and patiently preparing the way for revolution, the hard-core revolutionaries, the committed cadre, will have to be able to endure-up to a point-the uncertainties that will inevitably arise, as well as the long periods without spectacular activity and the tactical defeats that will occur

Section 12

But once the revolutionary process has arrived at its final stage-the time of crisis during which the revolutionaries are pushing directly toward the overthrow of the system-the committed cadre must strive to eliminate even within its own ranks all uncertainties, hesitations, vacillations, doubts, and scruples. For one thing, such internal vacillations would inevitably be communicated to the revolutionaries’ mass following. For another, at this critical time it will be especially important for the committed cadre to be capable of prompt, decisive, unified action, and such action will be rendered impossible by vacillations or disagreements within the cadre

Section 12

In practice, of course, vacillations and disagreements will probably arise among the revolutionary leaders even during the final push toward overthrow of the system. The revolutionaries will need to resolve these conflicts quickly and completely, so that they can show unity in action and provide their mass following with consistent, unambiguous, decisive leadership

Section 12

As always, the reader must remember that in the real world events are unpredictable. The preceding paragraphs provide only general guidelines,

Section 13

Some time ago this writer received a letter from an individual who asked whether revolutionaries should strive to bring about the collapse of the technological system even though the chaos attendant on the collapse would entail an increased risk of nuclear war. The answer is that revolutionaries should not be deterred by such a risk. First, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to unstable or irresponsible countries (e.g., Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, possibly Myanmar) continues and is unlikely to be permanently halted. 87 Consequently, the risk of nuclear war can only increase as long as the technological system survives, and the sooner the system collapses the less will be the risk of nuclear war in the long run. Second, though many people assume that a major nuclear war would result in the extinction of the human race and of most species of mammals, that assumption is probably incorrect. Undoubtedly the consequences of such a war would be horrible, but serious students of these matters do not believe that most species of mammals would be completely wiped out or that the human race would disappear. 88 Third, if nothing intervenes to prevent the technological system from proceeding to its logical conclusion, there is every reason to believe that the eventual result will be a planet uninhabitable for all of the more complex forms oflife as we know them today. See Chapter Two, Part IV. So if we had to choose between a major nuclear war and the continued existence of the system, we would have to take nuclear war as the lesser evil. Fourth, if we allow the defenders of the system to deter us with the threat of nuclear war or of any other dire consequences, then we may as well give up

Section 14

Revolutionaries must take their goal to be the collapse of the system no matter what. You have to make a decision: Is the elimination of the technological system worth all of the desperate risks and terrifying disasters that it will entail? If you don’t have the courage to answer “yes” to that question, then you’d better quit whining about the evils and hardships of the modern world

Section 14

and just adapt yourself to them as best you can, because nothing short of the collapse of the system will ever get us off the road that we are on now.

Section 14

In a revolutionary situation-as we’ve pointed out already in section I-victory is determined not primarily by numbers but by the dynamics of social movements. In section 10 we’ve seen examples of numerically tiny movements that have initiated successful revolutions. A small but well-organized, 89 unified, and deeply committed movement will have a far better chance of success than will a vastly larger movement that lacks these characteristics. In other words, quality is more important than quantity.90

Section 14

Consequently, while an organization is building its strength for a future revolution, it must strictly subordinate the goal of increasing its numbers to that of recruiting high-quality people who are capable of total commitment to the cause. Their commitment must be exclusive; they must have no competing loyalty to any other cause. Because the membership of the revolutionary organization has to be limited, as far as possible, to people of this type, selectiveness in recruitment is essential

Section 14

If the goal of revolutionaries is the complete elimination of the technological society, then they must discard the values and the morality of that society and replace them with new values and a new morality designed to serve the purposes of revolution.

Section 14

Suitable recruits to the revolutionary movement will include only those who are prepared to abandon the old values and morality and adopt

Section 14

in their place the revolutionary values and morality

Section 14

The revolutionary message needs to be addressed to and designed for, not the general public, but the small minority of people who have the potential to become committed members of the revolutionary organization.

Section 16

16. It follows that the revolutionaries should never retreat from their extreme positions for the sake of popularity or to avoid offending the moral or other sensibilities of the general public

Section 16

If the revolutionary organization were to dilute its message or prevaricate in order to avoid offending people it would discourage its own members and lose their respect, weakening their commitment to the organization; it would lose the respect of the best kind of potential recruits while attracting many who were incapable of total commitment to the organization; and it would lose the respect of the general public

Section 16

A revolutionary organization should seek not to be liked, but to be respected, and it should have no aversion to being hated and feared. Mao regarded hatred of a revolutionary organization as a sign that it was effective.95 It is to such an organization that many people will turn in a time of crisis when they have lost all confidence in the existing social order and are desperate or angry.

Section 16

17. Revolutionaries will not suddenly become effective agitators, propagandists, organizers and leaders at the moment when the system reaches a crisis. They will need to begin developing these abilities through practical experience long before the crisis arrives. In order to acquire such experience, revolutionaries will have to involve themselves in political efforts that are peripheral to the central issue of technology. For example, an anti-tech organization might join other groups in addressing some environmental issue of special importance-though it will be necessary for the revolutionaries to make very clear that the environmental issue is a sideshow and that the long-term goal must be to eliminate the entire technological system.

Section 16

In all such activities the revolutionary organization should strive to prove itself more determined and more effective than the other groups involved, for when a crisis arrives the organization will more readily acquire a mass following if it has already demonstrated its superior effectiveness.

Section 16

“[I]n the course of struggle … broad masses must learn from experience that we fight better than the others, that we see more clearly than the others, that we are more audacious and resolute.”

Section 18

Another way revolutionaries can acquire practical experience will be through the publication of a newspaper or journal devoted to anti-tech work. Lenin wrote: A paper is not merely a collective propagandist and collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer… . With the aid of, and around a paper, there will automatically develop an organization that will be concerned, not only with local activities, but also with regular, general work; it will teach its members carefully to watch political events, to estimate their importance and their influence on the various sections of the population, and to devise suitable methods to influence these events through the revolutionary party. The mere technical problem of procuring a regular supply of material for the newspaper and its regular distribution will make it necessary to create a network of agents … who will be in close contact with each other… .

Note

ATR

Section 18

Stalin stressed the need for “unity of will” and “absolute and complete unity of action on the part of all members of the Party.” He set forth an admirable theory: [Unity] does not mean of course that there will never be any conflict of opinion within the Party. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and conflicts of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that this discipline must be ‘blind’ discipline. On the contrary iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline. But after a discussion has been closed, after criticism has run its course and a decision has been made, unity of will and unity of action become indispensable

Section 18

conditions without which Party unity and iron discipline in the Party are inconceivable.

Section 18

Nelson Mandela would have agreed with Stalin’s theory (though not, of course, with Stalin’s practice), for he “believed passionately in democracy” within the African National Congress,100 yet insisted on party discipline: Once a decision had been made by the organization, all members had to comply with it. “Having subjugated his own will to the movement, he was determined that others should do so too.”

Section 18

But it has to be conceded that in practical terms the theory is not as democratic as it sounds. First, many decisions will need to be made quickly, with no time for discussion by the rank and file. The organization will have to have some sort of executive body that is empowered to make such decisions, and the rank and file will have to obey the decisions so made. Second, even when there is sufficient time, the organization can’t be effective if many decisions are made by a simple head-count, so many votes on one side, so many on the other. However offensive it may be to our democratic sensibilities, the plain truth is that some individuals will have vastly more knowledge and experience relevant to the functioning of the organization than others will. Every member of the organization should be listened to, but the main responsibility for decision-making will have to rest with a relatively small group of leaders102 comprising those members who are best informed and have the highest level of political and organizational skill. Thus, an effective revolutionary organization will require a significant measure of hierarchy and discipline.

Section 19

The so-called “democratic” countries in today’s world are in reality governed by political parties. In even the most democratic of these parties, decisions are made primarily by a limited inner circle ofleaders

Section 19

A close approximation to true democracy can exist only in societies

Section 19

organized on a very small scale, such as the nomadic bands of African pygmies.104 In any modern, large-scale society, a political organization that attempts to maintain a truly democratic internal structure will condemn itself to impotence.

Section 19

Recognition of the importance of unity might lead to an erroneous conclusion, namely, that a revolutionary organization should never split when there are disagreements over principles, strategy, or tactics. Of course, a faction shouldn’t split from its parent organization for slight reasons or while there is a good prospect of resolving disagreements through discussion, or when there is an acute, immediate need to present a united front against adversaries. But an organization cannot be truly unified when there is within it a persistent, irreconcilable disagreement over a question of far-reaching importance. If such a disagreement develops among the members of a revolutionary organization, and if there is no apparent likelihood of resolving the disagreement within a reasonable time, it will usually be best if the dissident minority separates itself from the parent group. This will leave the parent group and the minority each with its own independent unity. If the minority is wrong it presumably will remain weak, while the parent group leads the revolution. On the other hand, if the minority’s view is proven right through practice, then the minority can be expected to assume leadership when the time is ripe and leave its parent organization in the dust.

Section 19

Lenin said, “We must not be afraid to be a minority,“105 and he never hesitated to act accordingly when he was sure he was right. Trotsky makes clear that Lenin always insisted on pursuing his own line no matter what the rest of the Bolsheviks thought. Lenin preferred to be a member of a small minority that was right rather than compromise his views in order to get broader support.106 Thus he and his Bolsheviks, though they constituted a minority within the Social Democratic Party, split from their rivals, the Mensheviks (effectively in 1903, formally in 1912) and took their own road.107 Because their road turned out to be the right one, they eventually prevailed over the Mensheviks.

Section 20

20. A revolutionary movement needs to be self-confident. Alinsky, in explaining the techniques he had used throughout his long and successful career as a social and political activist, emphasized that a community organizer had to have confidence in himself112 and had to instill confidence in the people he was organizing. As long as people lacked confidence in their own power to bring about great changes they remained passive and apathetic, but once they were imbued with a sense of their own power they could become energetic, active, and effective

Section 20

Trotsky noted the significance of the fact that the Bolsheviks “believed in their own truth and their victory.”

Section 20

When Fidel Castro claimed that he could start a revolution with ten or fifteen men (see above, section 10), he added an important condition: His men had to have “absolute faith,” presumably meaning absolute faith in their own eventual victory. The term “absolute faith” must be taken with a grain of salt.

Section 20

nowadays well-informed people are more sophisticated, more skeptical. If you try to tell them that your movement is absolutely certain to achieve victory, you will attract only those who are either thoroughly irrational or extraordinarily naive.

Section 20

Castro, however, in speaking of “absolute faith,” may have been referring not to a literal belief in the certainty of victory but to a psychological state: to buoyant self-confidence and a subjective sense of power-qualities that encourage people to exert themselves to the limit, to recover from repeated defeats, and to persist in the face of difficulties that less inspired individuals would see as insurmountable. This psychological state does not require an absolute certainty of success, but it does at least require a belief that one will have an excellent chance of success if only one works hard enough and long enough and shows sufficient energy, courage, willpower, skill, and determination. Such a belief can be rationally sustained. Self-confidence tends to be self-justifying, in the sense that confidence that one can succeed tends to lead to actual success. A chief determinant, if not the chief determinant, of success for a revolutionary movement is its faith in itsel£ Faith leads to deep commitment; it inspires heroic efforts and persistence in the face of overwhelming difficulties. Given such faith and commitment, a movement may achieve things that no one thought possible

Section 21

It follows that the goal a revolutionary movement sets itself must be nothing less than the total collapse of the technological system. The movement moreover must consistently insist that its chances of achieving that goal will be excellent ifits members show a sufficient level of commitment, energy, courage, willpower, skill, and persistence

Section 21

An important note of clarification: The rule that a revolutionary movement should be self-confident refers to confidence in its ability to reach its ultimate goal-that of consummating the revolution. Overconfidence in carrying out particular projects or operations must be carefully guarded against, because overconfidence leads to carelessness and carelessness leads to failure. That’s why Lenin habitually exaggerated the potential risks involved in any action and worked out his plans with meticulous care.

Section 21

Underestimation of the adversary leads to overconfidence, thence to carelessness and defeat. In general, it is safer to overestimate one’s adversary. Such was the policy of Lenin.119 Mao emphasized that while one must have confidence in one’s ability to defeat the enemy in the long run, one must never slacken one’s efforts through overconfidence during the actual process of struggle

Section 21

Comrade Mao Tsetung has repeatedly pointed out: strategically, with regard to the whole, revolutionaries must despise the enemy, dare to struggle against him and dare to seize victory; at the same time, tactically, with regard to each part, each specific struggle, they must take the enemy seriously, be prudent, carefully study and perfect the art of struggle

Section 22

However, in contemplating any project or action, revolutionaries should cautiously balance the advantages to be gained through success against the risk of defeat. Trotsky pointed out: “Every defeat … changes [the correlation of forces] … to the disadvantage of the vanquished, for the victor gains in self-confidence and the vanquished loses faith in himself.”

Section 22

The hard core of a revolutionary movement needs to have the confidence, the commitment, and the psychological toughness to recover from repeated defeats and carry on in spite of them. But even the most deeply committed revolutionaries are, after all, human, and may be weakened by defeats or failures. Therefore one should risk a defeat or a failure only when there is a strong reason for doing so.

Section 22

Even more impressive is the case of Robert Bruce.125 Toward the end of the 13th century, Edward I of England occupied Scotland and made it into something like an English colony. The Scots were restive under English rule, and in 1306 Robert Bruce, whose ancestry gave him a claim to the kingship, had himself inaugurated as King of Scotland. But within three months he was defeated in battle by the forces of Edward I and became a hunted fugitive, forced at times to survive under conditions of the greatest hardship.126 At this stage his cause seemed hopeless. He had hardly any money or troops,127 and the weakness of his position

Section 22

was “almost ludicrous.” 128 Nevertheless, over the succeeding years Bruce waged a savage guerrilla campaign, gradually increasing the territory he controlled and the number of his followers until, in 1314, he defeated the English decisively at the Battle of Bannockburn. After that he reigned in effect as King of Scotland, though he did not secure English recognition of Scotland’s independence until 1328. Bruce’s rise from a hunted fugitive to ruler of an independent kingdom is seen by some as incredible, 129 but it does not look incredible to those who have noticed how often in history seemingly lost causes have eventually triumphed.

Section 22

In the autumn of 1878, the Social Democratic movement in Germany was very nearly destroyed by the Socialist Law of October 19 of that year, which was enforced with extreme severity and had the effect of abolishing any “societies with ‘social-democratic, socialistic, or communist’ tendencies.”130 “As their foes were encouraged, many of the Social Democrats lost heart … . [T]he movement nearly disintegrated completely.”131 But within a year some of the tougher and more persistent Social Democrats were publishing a paper in Switzerland and devising ways of smuggling it into Germany. 132 Meanwhile, other members of the movement developed legal and illegal subterfuges that enabled them to circumvent the Socialist Law and build a new organization for the party, 133 so that by the autumn of 1884 German Social Democracy was stronger than ever134-even though it was still illegal.

Section 22

We’ve emphasized that any major defeat is dangerous. But if a revolutionary organization has a hard core that is absolutely committed and determined, the organization in some cases may actually be strengthened

Section 22

by a defeat because its weaker members are weeded out: If they don’t leave the organization, they at least reveal themselves by their wavering during the period of failures and difficulties. Thus the hard core is consolidated, because its members are clearly distinguished from the weaker members of the organization

Section 23

This ability to bounce back from severe defeats is a trait that seems characteristic of successful revolutionary leaders. The trait is delineated with particular clarity in the case of Fidel Castro. Matthews emphasizes “Fidel’s incorrigible optimism and fighting spirit”148 : ‘The most important feature of Fidel’s character,’ his brother Raul said to me … , ‘is that he will not accept defeat.’

Section 23

Fidel Castro was like Lenin in having the gift of inspiring all those around him by his faith in himself and in what he was doing … . [l]t showed up best in the worst and apparently most hopeless periods

Section 23

23. In these pages we may seem to be making heroes of such men as Robert Bruce, Lenin, Mao, Castro, the extreme Irish nationalists, and so forth. Certainly the deeds of all these people were of heroic magnitude. But this doesn’t mean that we should admire them as human beings, still less that we should respect their goals or their values

Note

And it doesn’t mean that we should do like them either: la fin est dans les moyens

Section 23

Here we’ve taken notice of some of the revolutionaries of the past only because we can learn something from their experience and their methods.

Section 25

Professional propagandists know that people usually accept only those new ideas that they are already predisposed to accept.156 A revolutionary movement should try to identify the sectors of the population whose members are most likely to be predisposed to accept the revolutionary message, and should give special attention to those sectors in propagating its

Section 25

ideas and in its efforts at recruitment.

Section 25

Nevertheless, anti-tech ideas should be made known not only to the predisposed sectors but to the population at large.

Section 25

a mass following will be more easily acquired if most people already have at least some superficial acquaintance with anti-tech ideas. Moreover, even long before the arrival of a crisis and even in sectors where the revolutionaries cannot hope to win any active support, their message can promote discontent and disillusionment and thus help to set the stage for the arrival of the crisis

Section 25

25. A revolutionary movement must maintain clear lines of demarcation that separate it from other radical groups holding ideologies that to some extent resemble its own.158 This is a corollary to the need for unity that we stressed in section 17: A social or political movement can’t be unified if it has many members whose loyalty is divided between their own movement and some other. Moreover, a movement needs to have a clear and unmistakable identity of its own; this is necessary not only for the internal cohesion of the movement itself, but also so that outsiders will easily recognize the movement and will respect it

Section 25

In addition, the movement needs to keep itself strictly independent of all other groups. Dependence upon or too close a linkage with another group will prevent a revolutionary organization from acting in the interest of its own goals when these conflict with the goals of the other group.

Section 25

One movement from which an anti-tech organization needs to separate itself definitively is that of the radical environmentalists; another is anarchoprimitivism. Most radical environmentalists do not contemplate the elimination of the entire technological system. An anti-tech organization can’t afford to have members who are not sure they really want to eliminate modern technology, nor can it afford to be linked with a movement that holds an ambivalent position respecting technology.

Section 25

The anarchoprimitivists do want to eliminate modern technology, but other goals are at least equally important to them: gender equality, gay rights, animal liberation, etc.-the whole catalog of leftist issues.159 Elsewhere we’ve explained why an anti-tech movement must emphatically distance itself from leftism.

Section 26

a revolutionary organization should avoid getting entangled in sterile, interminable wrangles over ideology. Such wrangles have been prevalent, for example, in anarchist circles. Some anarchists seem to spend most of their time and energy on theoretical squabbles with other anarchists and very little on efforts to bring about the social changes that they advocate. Neither side in these disputes ever succeeds in persuading the other, and no one but the participants has any interest in the arguments offered.

Section 26

in an ideological dispute. Therefore, in any such dispute, your arguments should be designed not to persuade your opponents but to influence undecided third parties who may hear or read the arguments. For this purpose you should state your case concisely, as clearly and convincingly as possible, and in a way that will make it interesting to third parties. Then do what you can to ensure that your arguments are widely heard or read. Address only the most important points and leave out the minor ones, for third parties will be interested only in the main lines of the arguments. Squabbles over arcane technical points are worse than a waste of time because third parties, if they read them at all, will probably view them with disdain and may compare you to the medieval theologians who quarreled over the number of angels that could dance on the point of a pin. Similar principles apply to debates with the defenders of the existing system, and with those who don’t defend the system as it now exists but think it can be reformed.

Section 26

attack one’s ideas or one’s group one is strongly tempted to answer them, and the more unreasonable the arguments are, the stronger is the temptation to answer them. But before one gives in to this temptation one should ask what advantages, if any, one’s answer can win for the revolutionary organization, and one should consider whether there are other ways of spending one’s time and energy that will be more useful for revolutionary purposes than an answer to the offensive arguments would be. The way to prevail over rival radical groups is not to argue with them but to outflank them: Focus on recruiting to your organization any suitable persons who are predisposed to reject modern technology but are undecided among the various factions. Show that your organization is more active and effective than other radical groups. This will bring more people over to your viewpoint than any amount of argument will do.

Section 27

27. “[T]he most precious of all revolutionary qualities, loyalty, has its inevitable counterpart in treachery.”161 Members of any radical organization need to bear in mind at all times the likelihood that their group includes informers who will report their activities to law-enforcement or intelligence agencies, and they should remember that even individuals who are currently loyal may turn traitor at some later date.

Note

Je n’ai pas envie de faire la révolution mais je veux bien faire la paix

Section 27

Fidel Castro’s guerrilleros felt it necessary to execute many traitors whom they discovered in their ranks

Section 28

The pattern is consistent and the lesson is clear: A radical group can never safely assume that its plans or its activities are unknown to the government. Thus, a legal revolutionary organization is well advised to remain exactly that: strictly legal.175 Any sort of dabbling in illegal activities is extremely dangerous.

Section 28

A prominent Bolshevik named Malinovsky, who was the party’s spokesman in the Duma and played a critical role in the founding of Pravda, later turned out to be a police agent. Even after it should have been evident that Malinovsky was a spy, Lenin refused to believe it

Section 28

Neither history nor the principles laid down by past leaders will provide formulas or recipes for success that can be applied in cookbook fashion. But they provide ideas, of which some may lead to methods that are suitable for anti-tech use while others may call our attention to dangers or stumblingblocks that we need to avoid.

Section 28

Mao emphasized not only the importance oflearning from the experience of the past as recorded in history, but also that theories derived from past experience were often incomplete and needed to be corrected through further experience. Similarly, principles of action found to be valid in other contexts might not be applicable to the concrete situations arising in the development of a given revolution. Consequently, from among such principles revolutionaries needed to sort out what was useful for their purposes from what was useless, discard the useless, and modify the useful to adapt it to their own needs.

Section 28

It takes hard work to study the history and the methods of past movements and to sort out the useful from the useless. But if you fail to learn from the past then you condemn yourself to learning everything all over again, by trial and error. This is a slow, halting, and difficult process. A good deal of trial and error will be necessary anyway

Section 28

trials needed and the number of errors committed will be greatly reduced if you put out the effort demanded by a careful study of earlier movements and their methods. A refusal to make this effort will seriously diminish your chances of success

Section 29

This writer has had no opportunity to study more than a few of the works of history, political science, sociology, and revolutionary theory that may be relevant to the anti-tech enterprise. Worthy of careful attention are the works of Alinsky, Selznick, Smelser, and Trotsky that appear in our List of Works Cited. But there is a vast amount of other relevant literature that deserves to be explored; for example, the literature of the academic field known as “Organizational Behavior,” and the works of Lenin to the extent that they deal with revolutionary strategy and tactics

Section 29

Let’s illustrate the foregoing with a concrete example. Selznick explains how Communists operating in countries outside the socialist bloc would infiltrate non-Communist organizations, find their way into key positions within such organizations, and use those positions to influence the activity of the organizations in question. In some cases the organizations were taken over completely and made into appendages of the Communist Party. The Communists did not find it necessary to place large numbers of their people in the organizations that they sought to influence or control; a relatively small number of individuals, strategically placed and well organized, could exercise great power.

Section 29

For an anti-tech movement today there can be no question of simply copying Communist tactics. But careful study of a book like Selznick’s can lead to ideas such as the following ones: An anti-tech organization will have some degree of affinity with radical environmentalism. Many people tend to associate the term “radical environmentalist” only with illegal groups like Earth Liberation Front (ELF), but here we apply the term to any individual or group advocating environmental solutions that are too radical to have any chance of acceptance by the mainstream in modern society

Section 29

members of such an organization should avoid any involvement in illegal actions by radical environmentalists. But this need not prevent anti-tech revolutionaries from participating in the legal activities of radical environmentalist groups and seeking positions of power and influence within such groups. This power and influence could be used to the advantage of an anti-tech organization in various ways. For example: (i) The anti-tech organization may be able to find suitable recruits for itself among the members of radical environmentalist groups. (ii) If a member of the anti-tech organization can find a place on the editorial board of a radical environmentalist periodical (for instance, the Earth First! journal), he will be able to influence the content of the periodical. If a majority of anti-tech people can be placed on the editorial board, they will be able in effect to take the periodical over, minimize its leftist content, and use it systematically for the propagation of anti-tech ideas. (iii) If an anti-tech organization decides to undertake action on an environmental issue as suggested in section 17 of this chapter, and if it has power and influence within radical environmentalist groups, then it should be able to secure support and cooperation from these groups in carrying out the action in question. (iv) In some cases the anti-tech revolutionaries may be able to take over a radical environmentalist group altogether and turn it into an antitech group. Under these circumstances leftists can be expected to drift away from the group, and in their place the group will attract recruits who are predisposed to anti-tech. (v) Work in radical environmentalist groups will provide anti-tech revolutionaries with valuable training and experience in leadership and organizational work.178 (vi) When an acute crisis of the system arrives, the power and influence that anti-tech revolutionaries wield within radical environmentalist groups will be useful in the effort to organize on a mass basis. None of this is inconsistent with the rule that the anti-tech movement must maintain clear lines of demarcation between itself and other radical movements

Section 29

Of course, members of the anti-tech organization who are asked to work within radical environmentalist groups will have to be clearly aware of the importance of the lines of demarcation.

Section 29

How can anti-tech revolutionaries get themselves into positions of power and influence in radical environmentalist groups?

Note

I agree that technological system will collapse but with this quest for power the only result they will get is a new power struggle and a new hierarchy and a new institution of violence… I prefer to organize peaceful, self-organizing groups that work without violence and can sustain themselves

Section 29

The most important way will be through the moral authority of hard work. In every organization which they seek to capture, the communists are the readiest volunteers, the most devoted committee workers, the most alert and active participants. In many groups, this is in itself sufficient to gain the leadership; it is almost always enough to justify candidacy [for leadership].

Note

Moral authority of hard work gains respects almost everywhere like if it was a good thing to sacrifice its own life for the sake of a cause like work. I advocate for a balanced life instead and hard workers have no moral authority over me

Section 29

The [Communists] in penetrating an organization … become the ‘best workers’ for whatever goals the organization seeks to attain.181 This approach can be supplemented with a technique that Nelson Mandela used with outstanding success to get and keep leadership of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa: He strictly controlled his emotions, rarely allowed himself to show anger, remained always calm, self-possessed, even-tempered.182 This kind of deportment wins respect and encourages others to look to an individual for leadership. Among the Andaman Islanders, a potential chief was “a young adult in the camp who possessed the virtues that attract even younger men to seek his company. He was usually a good hunter, generous, and, above all, even-tempered.”

Section 30

A revolutionary working in a radical environmentalist group won’t need to conceal his anti-tech commitment. But for obvious reasons he must avoid pushing anti-tech ideas aggressively, and he must not show disrespect for radical environmentalists’ ideas. If he argues in favor of anti-tech he must do so in a good-humored way, and if an ideological discussion becomes heated or angry he must withdraw from it.

Section 30

30. A revolutionary organization will need a section or a committee devoted to studying technology and keeping up with technological developments, and not only for the purpose of attacking technology politically. The organization also needs to be able to apply technology for its own revolutionary purposes.

Section 30

Revolutionaries therefore need to be well informed about eavesdropping and spying technology, and need to have the technical capacity to defend themselves against its illegal use.

Section 30

As time passes, it becomes less and less likely that revolutions in technologically advanced countries can be consummated by traditional methods; for example, by crowds of people taking to the streets. A careful study has shown that, for the traditional type of revolution, aid to the revolutionaries by elements of the military, or at least the neutrality of the latter, is usually required for success.

Section 30

In the recent (2011) “Arab Spring” revolution in Egypt, for instance, it is probable that the top military leaders gave in to many of the protesters’ demands only because they feared that if it ever came to a showdown and they found it necessary to order crowds to be machine-gunned, many of their troops would refuse to obey and might even defect to the revolutionaries

Section 30

But techniques of crowd control are becoming ever more sophisticated: People can now be dispersed or incapacitated with superpowerful sound-blasters and strobe torches,189 and a soldier who would refuse to shoot into a crowd of his fellow citizens might have no qualms about blasting them off the streets with unendurable volumes of sound. Following a riot, police will be able to track down participants with the help of images from surveillance cameras, face-recognition technology, and records of telephone traffic.

Section 30

given the accelerating rate of technological development, it is all too possible that within a couple of decades police and military forces may consist largely of robots. These presumably will be immune to subversion and will have no inhibitions about shooting down protesters.

Notes

Of course, technology can be used by rebels, too, against the established power-structure.192 Thus, a future revolution probably will not be carried out in the same way as any of the revolutions of the past or present. Instead, the outcome will depend heavily on technological manipulations, both by the authorities and by the revolutionaries. The importance for revolutionaries of technological competence is therefore evident.

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Anti-Tech Revolution - T.J Kaczynski

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