Technocracy and Tradition

 

Analysis on the technocratic thinking and on the work of Juan Vallet de Goytisolo

 

by Miguel Anxo Bastos Boubeta 

 

Taken from: https://www.navarraconfidencial.com/2020/08/13/tecnocracia-y-tradicion-analisis-sobre-el-pensamiento-tecnocratico-y-la-obra-de-goytisolo/

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

 

 

The growing role given to technicians in the design of policy has been strengthened, both in their growing legitimacy as in their operation, by the exceptional situation derived from the Covid-19 pandemic. The form it is being dealt with makes us recall the writings of traditionalists such as those which Juan Vallet de Goytisolo devoted to the study of technocracy. These are texts written in the Spain of late Francoism, during which both technocratic ideas such as El Estado de Obras¹ (The State of Works) or El Crepúsculo de las Ideologías² (The Twilight of Ideologies), works written by one of the most enlightened Spanish technocrats, Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, as well as the technified politics made concrete in development plans, achieved their maximum influence among us Spaniards.

The same way as the old theoreticians of Hispanic traditionalism criticized the drift of the liberal State which they saw as the main enemy of rights and liberties, Vallet de Goytisolo did not lack the intuition to become immediately aware of the menaces to freedoms in Spain contained in latent form in the technocratic tenets of the second half of the twentieth century. The old traditionalists succeeded in foreseeing that the dynamics of the liberal State would lead, at greater or lesser speed, to the statization of society or to socialism (as it can be easily confirmed in the theoretical evolution of liberals such as Stuart Mill or his disciples, who got to defend it explicitly, or in the drift of the modern states which already control almost half of all rents produced.)

At that time, those criticisms might have seemed to be exaggerated, beyond the tough language used, but at bottom they sensed the laws of motion of the liberal state quite well. Vallet de Goytisolo makes a very similar prediction with respect to the power dynamics of the modern technocratically ruled states, and makes them in a very original form, precisely when that type of state is in its apogee and is presented as the solution to the evils of traditional politics.

The Drift of the Technocratic State

The idea of a government by wise or technical men has been considered since antiquity, though it has not been until the twentieth century when governments have been conformed, whose legitimization principle is based on knowledge or, more recently, on science as principle³. Aside from Plato, and after him some Utopian thinkers, it is not until the emerging of the scientific method when a government with these characteristics begins to be conceived. It is no coincidence that in a British chancellor with a scant reputation of honesty, Francis Bacon, concur at the same time a parliamentarian, a philosopher developer of the scientific method and a deviser of Utopias ruled by wise men as is his New Atlantis, nor that from him originate the hallucinations of technical governments.

I say it is no coincidence, since such an illustrious theoretician, when he came to hold positions of responsibility seems not to have applied his noble principles to the science of government but he used them to get involved in venality and even crimes. However, the current development of technocracy⁴ appeared in France in the nineteenth century, first with the work of Saint Simon, who conceived a parliament of bankers and engineers to rule the country scientifically. His disciple, Auguste Comte, the initiator of positivism, developed a true religion of the engineers, based on the cult of progress and technique. His Ideas influenced the creation of polytechnic schools and study centers to form the elites, elites which would, up to now, make up the French ruling class. Technocracy flourished also in the United States, in the progressive era of the early twentieth century, and had its bards in institutional economist Thorstein Veblen, who conceived a world lead by engineers, and King C. Gillette who, aside from manufacturing razors, contributed to the creation of a powerful movement favoring a government by scientists and technicians.

The advent of socialism, first in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern European countries, and along with it, of centrally planned economy, gave rise to an enormous increase in the influence of experts in the formulation of public policy, at the same time that their prestige became extraordinarily enhanced. The supposed successes (the statistics in the Soviet Union and its satellites are not, shall we say, characterized for being too accurate) of this model lead to its being imitated in many other countries throughout the world, both Western, as France with its Plan Commission, and in recently de-colonized territories. Even at some stage of Francoism, this supposed efficacy of the model lead it to try to imitate it partially. Certainly, we cannot say that these models were purely technocratic, since the decisions were ultimately taken by politicians, be they of the Communist party, of a developist dictatorship, or of democratic governments, but what it could certainly be affirmed is that legitimization of the political decisions was based on their technical character, and on them being made to derive from the judgment of the experts, who would function as firewalls in case the policies should fail.

Precisely because of this, it is not less true to affirm that the technicians saw their power reinforced and, above all, got to position themselves as new actors in the class conflict between the workers and the bourgeois. Alvin Gouldner, great analyst and critic of the technocratic phenomenon, refers to them as "the new class"⁵. An analysis in Marxist terms of the history of class struggle, reveals to us that none of the classes in conflict ever triumphed. From the conflict between patricians and plebeians, the feudal lord came out triumphant, and from the struggle of the latter with the serfs, it was the bourgeoisie who did. At the moment of writing this book, Gouldner warned of the possibility of the new class of experts and technicians becoming the triumphant one in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; not only in the political combat but also in the ideological one. The proof would be found in the development of theories such as that of political modernization (which would require a large pool of experts to be put in charge of designing policy) by the Western academic media which stand very close to the technocratic power (as the famous eggheads who surrounded Kennedy in his mythified Camelot) ⁶, or those of economic development, or those of the rational taking of political decisions with the use of tools such as game theory, cost-benefit analysis, or SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), among many others.

These tools are joined to the post-industrial society theories of Alain Touraine⁷, and especially of the prince of them all, Daniel  Bell⁸, theories that argue for the advent of a de-ideologized society in which the sole purpose is social modernity and economic growth, principles these to which all the rest of social demands should be subordinated, and what's more, only the technicians would count with the tools and the recipes required to attain such ends, and consequently also count with the necessary legitimacy to lead the societies. It is the era of the theory of convergence of economic systems, between communists and capitalists, reached by those experts who had achieved preeminence in both blocks, and which are socially and culturally interchangeable.

Reception of Technocracy in Spain, and critique by Vallet de Goytisolo.

At the same time that the modernization and development theoreticians formulated their theories in the 1950s and 1960s, a double process of introduction of the same took place in Spain. In the first place, in the realm of public policy, the Stabilization Plan of 1959⁹, implemented by a group of experts attached to Opus Dei produced quick economic fruit, and economic growth rates similar, or even higher, than those that had been achieved by other European countries such as Germany and Italy after the postwar economic reforms inspired on ordoliberal principles. These successes were quickly attributed to the technocratic control of the economy, which reinforced greatly their prestige within political circles. It is not here the place to analyze deeply the causes of the economic process, but I am afraid it was due more to what they did not do than to what they did. The success was not so much due to development poles or to industrial dirigism in the style of the Japanese MITI, as in the liberation of prices and the deregulation which accompanied the process, but the political effect was the same, the reinforcement of the technocratic power in Spain for at least a decade.

The other phenomenon, correlated to the one mentioned above experienced in the Spain of the time, took place in the intellectual realm and consisted in the emergence of a technocratic ideology in Spain¹⁰, promoted this time by sectors of the regime itself. The most brilliant of its theoreticians was, undoubtedly, ambassador and minister Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora¹¹. He seems to have followed the technocratic ideology in each and all of its tenets, though tinged by his Catholicism. In his time, his work was considered to be a kind of plagiarism of that of Daniel Bell, something which is not true in its form (for his books are very different and it is evident that they come from very different intellectual traditions) but it is so in substance, as his work touches upon many of the topics with which Bell is concerned and reaches quite similar conclusions. His work El Crepúsculo de las Ideologías could well be related to Bell's The End of Ideologies even though, I repeat, they are quite different books, and topics present in Fernández de la Mora's El Estado de Obras can be also found in Bell's The Advent of Post-industrial Society. Both authors enjoyed in greater or lesser degree their proximity to power, and were able to see how many of their ideas had embodied in works and projects. Both shared a faith in a de-ideologized State, ruled by technicians and experts and oriented to political development and economic progress. Aside from Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, Spanish technocracy left little written work but quite a legacy of influence and power in political life, which lasts until today. In fact, recurring criticism of a good part of the regimes of the current Spanish democracy is more about its lack of experts and managers in command positions than about their ideological drift.

It is in these years of apogee of technocracy when Juan Vallet de Goytisolo writes his works on technocracy¹². His toughness against such form of government, which would ultimately derive in some form of totalitarianism, is surprising, But also surprising is that his criticism is made at a time in which technocracy is associated with significant economic achievement, such as the improvement of the standards of living, or the technological development, not only in Spain but in many places around the world. In addition, he enjoys a doubtless intellectual prestige and to him cannot be attributed any crimes or human rights violations analogous to those that occur in the great totalitarianisms. But his great intuition sees the problem very clearly and composes a very profound criticism, more intuitive than elaborated but with an enormous potential for development.

If it were to be synthesized in a single point. this could be that technocracy sees human beings not as persons but as things, as materials that can be shaped and shoved toward the ends that the rulers wish. Communities and traditions do not count, but only the designs of the technobeaurocratic elites. What's more, just as there are techniques to shape physical matter such as clay, iron, or glass, to which the shape desired can be given, they, making use of the sciences on which they are inspired and those they envy, pretend to establish scientific technologies of government. Hence the development of behaviorist social sciences or the use of mathematical formulations to legitimize their decisions as political as any other¹³. Let's take, for example, the modern and mathematicized neoclassical economy, which treats human actions as mere functions (in the mathematical sense) of variables which they take care to modulate properly.

To be able to knead the human beings properly and make bread figurines with them, it is first necessary to convert them into a moldable dough¹⁴, as our author quite well notes in referring to the destruction of communities and the creation of the mass-man to which Ortega y Gasset referred. To get to massify man, the technocratic state needs to eliminate the intermediary buffer bodies, paradoxically the ones in which the human being is really an individual. We are really individuals only in our family, in our community or in our parish. In these institutions we are known, they know our tastes, our ideas, how we are, but before the State the individual is nothing more than a number in an identity card. Only depriving us of communitarian references will the technocrats be able to achieve their ultimate objectives, as well pointed out by Vallet. When we read the theoreticians of 'political modernization', we see that they deliberately seek to attack the traditions and forms of social organization considered backward by them, and to replace them with massive forms considered to be modern. The models to emulate as examples of modern society are the populations of the great Western metropolis or, to a lesser degree, the Soviet Union, an also modern albeit deviated form. They not only seek to westernize, whatever the definition of such thing may be, but to urbanize; that is, to massify that population which has not yet become aware of the advantages of the modern technified society. Vallet's denunciation was, as we said before, very courageous at the time, and counted with enormous development potential, but unfortunately it was not continued nor fertilized, save for some exception; not even within the traditionalist thinking. The Left proposed similar models in the 1970s, and the Right which perhaps wished to vindicate the developist legacy of francoism, never dared to challenge the model, and Vallet's legacy became forgotten little by little.

Why should we vindicate Vallet de Goytisolo's legacy about technocracy?

Discussion of the value of technocracy as a form of government has been present in the last few decades and especially at times of crisis. Let us recall that during the economic crisis of 2008, several European governments, those of Italy and Greece at least, have replaced in more or less cunning ways their elected rulers by technicians coming from financial institutions (with scant success in their management, by the way.) In the crisis scenario which approaches as a consequence of the global pandemic, voices start to be heard in the Western world, calling for government by de-politicized experts, to the image and likeness of the Popular Republic of China, placing value on its supposed efficacy in the way of dealing with the problems that resulted from the pandemic. That is, it is intended to grant the governments the authority to suppress a good potion of our liberties in exchange for a better management capacity. In fact a good portion of the governments around us have incorporated in their cabinet, specialists in fields proximate to public health or virology, which pretend to be able to dictate the acting procedures, even in areas outside their competence, without them having any kind of democratic legitimacy. It is even argued that these be the ones who decide very substantial aspects, from the regulation of economic life to the school calendars.

The first problem is that most of these experts, along the lines noted above, tend to have a very specialized vision of the problems¹⁵, in such way that the epidemiologists will seek to defeat the virus with the weapons of their profession, unconcerned with the sinking of the economy, while the experts in the economy will prioritize solutions at the expense of damages to health. In second place comes the question of who is the one who selects the experts, and in which fields they should be expert. In a crisis like this one, it can be recurred to experts in health, microbiology, economics, crisis management or logistics, to name but a few examples. There is no criterion to determine what type of expert should be the predominant one; this is an ultimately political decision. Lastly, it would remain to be determined what decision criterion to use when opinions of different experts contradict each other. Experts in natural fields differ among themselves, the same way that those in the social fields, both in their explanation of the phenomenons and in the strategy to follow. The question is how to select the right position, and I'm afraid that there is also no other criterion but the political one, which is ultimately the one who has the power. I am afraid that, as it always happens, technocracy is nothing more than a political legitimization formula of the already established power, except that it is a potentially more oppressive legitimization than the traditional formulas, as professor Vallet de Goytisolo could clearly see.

Bibliographical references:
1Vid., Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, El Estado de obras, Doncel, Madrid, 1976.
2Vid.,, Gonzalo Férnandez de la Mora, El crepúsculo de las ideologías, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1986.
3Sobre el concepto de tecnocracia vid., Manuel Garcia Pelayo, “Burocracia y tecnocracia” en Manuel Garcia Pelayo, Burocracia, tecnocracia y otros escritos, Alianza, Madrid, 1974, pp. 9-127.
4Vid., W.H.G. Armytage, Historia social de la tecnocracia, Península, Barcelona, 1970.
5Vid., Alvin Gouldner, El futuro de los intelectuales y el ascenso de la nueva clase, Alianza, Madrid, 1979
6Vid., Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2003.
7Vid., Alain Touraine, La sociedad post-industrial, Ariel, Barcelona, 1973.
8Vid., Daniel Bell, El fin de las ideologías, Tecnos, Madrid, 1964; Idem, El advenimiento de la sociedad post-industrial, Alianza, Madrid, 1976.
9Vid., Manuel Jesús Gónzalez Gónzalez, La economía política del franquismo (1940-1970): dirigismo, mercado y planificación, Tecnos, Madrid, 1979.
10Vid., Jesús María Zaratiegui Labiano, La tecnocracia y su introducción en España, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, 2020.
11Sobre el pensamiento político de Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora vid.,; Pedro Carlos Gónzalez Cuevas, La razón conservadora: Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, una biografía politico-intelectual ,Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 2015: Alvaro Rodríguez Nuñez, Contra la oligarquía y el caciquismo del siglo XXI. El pensamiento político de Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, CSED, Astorga, 2015,
12 Vallet dedicated several essays to the topic on society of the masses, in addition to the aforementioned book . See: Juan Vallet de Goytisolo, Ideología, praxis y mito de la tecnocracia, Escelicer, Madrid,; Idem, “La tecnocracia” en Verbo, nº 158, September-October 1977, pp. 1153-1172; Idem, En torno a la tecnocracia, Speiro, Madrid, 1982; Idem, “Tecnocracia” en Juan Vallet de Goytisolo, Mas sobre temas de hoy, Speiro, Madrid, 1979, pp. 333-361.
13Vid., Frank Fischer, Technocracy and the politics of expertise, Sage, Newbury Park,1990.
14 Indispensable on the social massificación process: Juan Vallet de Goytisolo, Sociedad de masas y derecho, Taurus, Madrid, 1968.
15 On these topics vid. : Philip E. Tetlock, El jucio político de los expertos, Capitán Swing, Madrid, 2016.