Did Ellul take the blindpill? What to read after 'The Technological Society'?

Vraisemblablement Ellul a volé toutes ses idées du même Kaczynski.

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theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crisso-and-odoteo-barbarians-the-disordered-insurgence

Attached: barbarians.jpg (208x320, 21K)

Ferme ta bouche, putain. Ellul, c'est le GOAT.

how good is the technological society? what is his thesis?

If atomic research is encouraged, it is obligatory to pass through the stage of the atomic bomb; the bomb represents by far the simplest utilization of atomic energy. The problems involved in the military use of atomic energy are infinitely more simple to resolve than are those involved in its industrial use. For industrial use, all the problems involved in the bomb must be solved, and in addition certain others, a fact corroborated by J. Robert Oppenheimer in his Paris lecture of 1958. The experience of Great Britain between 1955 and 1960 in producing electricity of nuclear origin is very significant in this respect. It was, then, necessary to pass through the period of research which culminated in the bomb before proceeding to its normal sequel, atomic motive power. The atomic-bomb period is a transitory, but unfortunately necessary, stage in the general evolution of this technique. In the interim period represented by the bomb, the possessor, finding himself with so powerful an instrument, is led to use it. Why? Because everything which is technique is necessarily used as soon as it is available, without distinction of good or evil. This is the principal law of our age. We may quote here Jacques Soustelle’s well-known remark of May, 1960, in reference to the atomic bomb. It expresses the deep feeling of us all: “Since it was possible, it was necessary." Really a master phrase for all technical evolution. Even an author as well disposed toward the machine as Mumford recognizes that there is a tendency to utilize all inventions whether there is need for them or not. “Our grandparents used sheet iron for walls although they knew that iron is a good conductor of heat . . . The introduction of anesthetics led to the performance of superfluous operations. . . " To say that it could be otherwise is simply to make an abstraction of man.

Another example is the police. The police have perfected to an unheard of degree technical methods both of research and of action. Everyone is delighted with this development because it would seem to guarantee an increasingly efficient protection against criminals. Let us put aside for the moment the problem of police corruption and concentrate on the technical apparatus, which, as I have noted, is becoming extremely precise. Will this apparatus be applied only to criminals? We know that this is not the case; and we are tempted to react by saying that it is the state which applies this technical apparatus without discrimination.

Venus in Furs.

If we are placed in a period of history and in a society in which necessity becomes ever more exacting, then nothing is truly continuous or durable. Our entire civilization is ephemeral. When one glorifies increased consumption, one must discard machine-made objects in the course of rapid usage. We no longer repair things: we throw them away. Plastics, nylons, are made to be new for an infinitesimal period of time and, as they cost nothing, are destroyed as soon as the gloss of newness is gone. Houses are constructed for the duration of their mortgage; automobiles must be replaced every year. And in the world of art we no longer build cathedrals, but we make moving pictures, which—though real works of art in which man has fully committed himself and expressed his most profound message—are forgotten after a few weeks and disappear into movie libraries where only a few connoisseurs can find them again. We bring all our care, all our intelligence to bear on the production of a TV broadcast that will last only twenty minutes and survive only in the spectator's fleeting memory. This is one of the most distressing aspects of contemporary man. Treasures of ingenuity, immense amounts of work, the passions of men believing in what they are doing, end in ephemeral objects—in all spheres of activity—of which nothing will remain. Today's newspaper ef- faces yesterday's ( it does not provide continuity in the mind of the reader), just as a new technique blots out an older one. History is accelerating while at the same time all that could make our presence endure scatters like ashes. Man, who has always worked to leave behind some eternal work that would mark his passage on earth, is driven by a strange renunciation and works for the most futile and volatile ends. And our new huge dams, these cathedrals of modern times? We know that they are built to last for centuries, but the production of electricity by new processes will make them useless, and they will remain incomprehensible, crumbling monuments in stone. We will not leave a single straight furrow behind us.

In this realm of the ephemeral, politics takes place in all its multiple forms. We must unfortunately include here all that agitates us so much and weakens those passionately given to politics, whether it be contemporary fascism (which proved so inane in France), Gaullism (this epiphenomenon without sequence), elections, the importance of parties—questions that, like some decoy or bait, distract men from real problems in the actual political world. This ephemerality has several aspects and several causes. A general symptom is the often heard formula: This does not commit me to anything. We know well that a political party's program does not commit a man to anything. He can make promises, give his word, sign posters: tomorrow all will be forgotten, and only a few troublesome people will be disagreeable enough to recall the formulas. All these are nothing but weathercocks.

Industrial labor likewise tends more and more to dispense with orders and personal contact. This was pushed to an extreme in the concentration camps, where men of different nations were mixed together so that they should have no contacts and yet be able to perform collective work. It was hasty and superficial work, to be sure, but a little more rigor could easily make this labor really productive (as seems to be the case in the Soviet Union). One cannot speak merely of isolation. These men work in teams, but there is no need for them to know or understand one another. They need only understand the technique involved and know in advance what their teammate will do. It is not necessary for the crew to understand one another in order to run an aircraft. The indicator panel controls the actions to be performed; and every crew member, submitting by necessity and conscience to the automatic indications, obeys for the safety of all. Each man's actions are dictated by the conditions of life and its preservation. This is clear in the case of flying an aircraft. But it is equally clear in every other situation involving technique—and this encompasses the most important areas of life. Men do not need to understand each other in order to carry out the most important endeavors of our times. Technique is of necessity, and as compensation, our universal language. It is the fruit of specialization. But this very specialization prevents mutual understanding. Everyone today has his own professional jargon, modes of thought, and peculiar perception of the world. There was a time when the distortion of overspecialization was the butt of jokes and a subject for vaudeville. Today the sharp knife of specialization has passed like a razor into the living flesh. It has cut the umbilical cord which linked men with each other and with nature. The man of today is no longer able to understand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed universe. He no longer understands the vocabulary of the others. Nor does he comprehend the underlying motivations of the others. Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges the specializations because it produces a new type of man always and everywhere like his duplicate, who develops along technical lines. He listens to himself and speaks to himself, but he obeys the slightest indications of the apparatus, confident that his neighbor will do the same. Technique has become the bond between men. By its agency they communicate, whatever their languages, beliefs, or race. It has become, for life or death, the universal language which compensates for all the deficiencies and separations it has itself produced. This is the major reason for the great impetus of technique toward the universal.

We are today at the stage of historical evolution in which everything that is not technique is being eliminated. The challenge to a country, an individual, or a system is solely a technical challenge. Only a technical force can be opposed to a technical force. All else is swept away. Serge Tchakotin reminds us of this constantly. In the face of the psychological outrages of propaganda, what reply can there be? It is useless to appeal to culture or religion. It is useless to educate the populace. Only propaganda can retort to propaganda, or psychological rape to psychological rape.

There is no personal choice, in respect to magnitude, between, say, 3 and 4; 4 is greater than 3; this is a fact which has no personal reference. No one can change it or assert the contrary or personally escape it. Similarly, there is no choice between two technical methods. One of them asserts itself inescapably: its results are calculated, measured, obvious, and indisputable. A surgical operation which was formerly not feasible but can now be performed is not an object of choice. It simply is. Here we see the prime aspect of technical automatism. Technique itself, ipso facto and without indulgence or possible discussion, selects among the means to be employed. The human being is no longer in any sense the agent of choice. Let no one say that man is the agent of technical progress (a question I shall discuss later) and that it is he who chooses among possible techniques. In reality, he neither is nor does anything of the sort. He is a device for recording effects and results obtained by various techniques. He does not make a choice of complex and, in some way, human motives. He can decide only in favor of the technique that gives the maximum efficiency. But this is not choice. A machine could effect the same operation, Man still appears to be choosing when he abandons a given method that has proved excellent from some point of view. But his action comes solely from the fact that he has thoroughly analyzed the results and determined that from another point of view the method in question is less efficient. A good example is furnished by the attemnts to deconcentrate our industrial plants after we had concentrated them to the maximum possible degree. Another example would be the decision to abandon certain systems of high production in order to obtain a more constant productivity, although it might be less per capita. It is always a question of the improvement of the method in itself.

The worst reproach modem society can level is the charge that some person or system is impeding this technical automatism. When a labor union leader says: "In a period of recession, productivity is a social scourge,’* his declaration stirs up a storm of protest and condemnation, because he is putting a personal judgment before the technical axiom that what can he produced must be produced. If a machine can yield a given result, it must be used to capacity, and it is considered criminal and antisocial not to do so. Technical automatism may not be judged or questioned; immediate use must be found for the most recent, efficient, and technical process.

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From the moment efficacy becomes the criterion of political action, new limitations restrict all decisions. That is exactly what is happening today. Even with the best of intentions, no one nowadays could select any other political criterion than efficacy. Already democracy's game rests entirely on success. The man will be elected who can bring some project to its successful conclusion, who is the most likely to succeed; a goverment that fails in some enterprise will inevitably be overthrown. Failure is never forgiven; the leaders of a defeated state are judged as war criminals, though they would have been the judges had they won. In times when people oriented themselves by other values it was possible to preserve a government that had been defeated but was legitimate. Jean II, the Good, remained king of France, as did Francis I; honor was saved, therefore everything was possible though all had been lost. This would be unthinkable today. The law of politics is efficacy. It is not the best man who wins, but the most powerful, the cleverest; and all these terms can be reduced to one: effectiveness.

We have known for a long time that only a dictatorial regime can oppose a dictatorial movement on the rise (Rumania between 1935 and 1939, for example); that only propaganda can oppose propaganda; that only a rationalized— a planned—economy can withstand the competition of another planned economy. All of which means that ultimately Hitler really won the war. To be sure, one can dissemble for a while and maintain a liberal appearance, but, in the long run, competition becomes overwhelming and one must pick the shortest route. Yet the choice of efficiency, if not dictated in advance or unanimous, is, at a given moment and under the prevailing cir- cumstances, not a free choice at all. At the same time, the penalty for not making it is all the harder and faster: simply to disappear from the surface of the earth. The time is over when men could say: "After me the flood." The flood now comes before our end. Thus we can formulate another constant with regard to contemporary political affairs: efficiency renders our choices more limited and the penalties harder and more immediate. The political man cannot choose between what would be more or less efficient. The choice is made independently of him. Because he may err in evaluating a situation, he must take recourse to men who are more competent than he, and place the choice in the hands of technicians.

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Of course technicians can propose different solutions. And some cling to that fact in order to say: political man remains master of his decision after all. That is a fallacy. The politician finds himself inside a framework designed by technicians, and his choice, if it is serious, will be made on technological grounds: he will have another technician establish what is "the best technique." Surely there can be errors. I have never said that technology was infallible.

The important thing is that necessity subordinates political decisions to technical evaluations with the consequence that "Political" decisions become increasingly rare. If politics is still defined as the art of the possible, nowadays it is the technician who determines with growing authority what is possible. All this is the result of innumerable forces that I cannot analyze at length: the increasingly technological nature of society at the moment when the state takes charge of that society, glorification of the technicians in public opinion, which, in turn, has been pushed to the point at which nothing is taken seriously that is not the fruit of technology, etc. However that may be, the importance of the technicians in every political decision brings opposite regimes closer together. All far-seeing political men desire a technological apparatus, and the United States, like the U.S.S.R., is traveling along the road leading to the increasing subordination of politics to technology. Despite appearances to the contrary, Pierre Mendes-France and President de Gaulle conceive of politics really in the same way, because they both insist on the pre-eminent role of the technician. Moreover, they are thinking of the same technicians.

Despite appearances? They are not just appearances: for example, we see a parliament receiving bouquets from Pierre Mendes-France, contempt from de Gaulle—but equally impotent in either instance; an executive apparently sovereign in the one case and responsible in the other, but, in each case, entirely dependent on the technological structure; and the great decisions really being necessities in all instances.5 Another important aspect of the technological apparatus that we attempt to retain is the necessary continuity of decisions once they have been taken. Precisely because the decisions are based primarily on technical considerations and are of technical content, they cover a long space of time and presuppose some continuity. No political change can alter what has been done or what must be done in the future, for technological factors condition each other. Will a change in government or the legislature, or even a change of regime, modify an established plan? Can it change decisions concerning the petroleum industry or atomic research?

good posts

anti tech bump

>Chomsky
>Bourdieu

Rest is ok.

What's wrong with based Bordieu?