Sorry if this isn’t fully relevant, but no where else to ask it.

So I’ve ran into some technocrats a few times who proudly proclaim the achievements of technocracy. Naturally, the ideology seems opposed to communism, which suggests it is a bourgeois ideology.

What is technocracy, is it good or bad, and what are the best arguments to refute it?

  • Muad'DibberA
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    3 years ago

    Naturally, the ideology seems opposed to communism, which suggests it is a bourgeois ideology.

    Technocracy is not a bourgeois ideology. It means rule by experts, rather than politicians, and gives decision-making power to experts in those fields, whatever those fields may be.

    I don’t think you could call western bourgeois democracies technocracies in the slightest. They sometimes have a thin veneer of “experts”, whose only purpose is to provide justification for the decisions the capitalists already made to increase their profits.

    Its 100% a goal of communism to elevate the level of education of all, and empower experts in science, ecology, women’s issues, etc to the level of political decision-making. The main point is that as long as experts don’t constitute a separate class (IE private owners of production who extract value from producers), and we’ve removed the capitalist class, then there shouldn’t be any problems. This was basically Marx’s refutation of Plato’s republic, which idealized a state run by experts (who would be impotent if they hold no economic power, and there’s no such thing as political power without economic power). In short you’ll never get a society run by experts, if economic power remains in the hands of a property-owning class. A technocracy requires a workers state.

    I also think there’s a weird “left brain vs right brain” or “liberal arts vs sciences” false-dichotomy that some leftists hold that really makes no sense, which leads to all these strange arguments. Why is there a separation between things like women’s issues, and electrical power distribution into “science” and “not science”? Don’t both fields have experts who analyze evidence and come up with solutions to problems?

    • lemmygrabber
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      63 years ago

      I’d argue there is little to no technocracy under capitalism. Taking the US for example, the policy to respond to COVID was not devised by experts. Same with the response to climate change. I’m sure there are many more examples.

      Sure there is an attempt to appear scientific but the ecologists who ask for an immediate action to reduce fossil fuel usage and the economists who ask for degrowth and reduction in consumption are ignored. Science is selectively chosen and sometimes mangled to uphold the status quo. The only experts in power are the warmongers and those who destabilise other countries.

      • Muad'DibberA
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        23 years ago

        V good point, environmental scientists are completely ignored at this point by bourgeois democracies.

    • @The_Lobster_EmperorOP
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      3 years ago

      Same hombre who’s trying to argue the “Holodomor” is exactly the same as the Holocaust is also an unironic technocrat. No idea whether they are pro or anti-socialist, but given the fact they’re super inclined to believe Nazi propaganda, I’d say they support capitalism.

      Turns out they also believe in eugenics: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/14965

  • @SovietIntl
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    23 years ago

    Technocracy is good, in fact the early socialists spoke of a kind of utopian technocratic society. But we have now a historical tradition ever since then, and their ideas of technocracy are antiquated compared to our current level of development. China is a good example id say of technocracy in a way that benefits the common good of their society as a whole, the PRC. Ours in America and the west do not have the same interests.

  • @WTOS
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    3 years ago

    It’s fine. One thing to note is that technocracy’s flaws can only be found in capitalist nations, but never attributed, and hand-waved as an inherent flaw in design, whereas its successes can only be found in AES, but always de-fanged from its clear ideological / political perspective.

    The Good:

    • policy based on expertise / merit
    • cool trains and nice city planning
    • that’s about it.
    • China. USSR.

    The Bad 1:

    • Even highly educated / trained people can make mistakes.

    The Bad 2: Only Happens Under Capitalism But People Make Mistakes Guys Please Edition:

    • Tuskegee (racist, exploitative, common denominator of capitalism)
    • History of eugenics and scientific racism (racist, exploitative, common denominator of capitalism)
    • Wall St. economists (exploitative, common denominator of capitalism)
    • Military actions (racist, imperialistic, common denominator of capitalism)
    • “China will collapse by the year 1999, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2020 because of ghost cities, inflation, debt, COVID” - that dude who keeps shilling his book

    *** There’s more to it obviously, and I remember there being a couple of lectures / papers that seriously discussed the potential flaws in technocracy wrt bureaucracy, lags in policy and differences in opinion (e.g., doctors’ vs economists’ opinions on healthcare), but it’s all sorta meh to me? I don’t see it happening in a socialist state tbh. I can try and dig those back up if I can find them.