Technocracy and the Global Political Consensus
Michael Matheson Miller
Research Fellow, Acton Institute
“Come us build for ourselves a city edit tower whose top will reach into heaven and let us make for ourselves a
name”
Genesis, 11:4
“I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional
morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.”
“For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make
other men what they please…
“At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual
men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational
impulses…“Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Introduction
• General Framework: the tension between liberalism and capitalism on one hand, and and
socialism and communism on the other.
• Context has changed, especially in the last 25 years and what has emerged is neither liberal
capitalism nor socialism, but a new political hybrid—a type of technocratic global secular
consensus
Part I: Global Technocracy: The Political and Ideological Context
What has emerged, especially in the last decade is not so much the victory of democracy and free
market economies over socialism and communism, but rather a new political hybrid
Political Centralization: Layers of complex rules that encourage individualism and crowd out
intermediary institutions and put pressure on the family. It identifies community and solidarity
with the political community and sees other forms of attachments and —as obstacles to political
consolidation
Managerial Capitalism: Uses both the language and the institutions of market economies, but
integrated and managed by the state to benefit elites and powerful interest groups.
Socialist Culture: Gramsci: “Long march through the institutions of culture” Things that were
unthinkable and radical 70 years ago are considered normal today. The socialist ideas about
family, marriage, culture, etc have moved from a small minority have increasingly become the
norm.
Philosophical Underpinnings of New Global Hybrid
1. Relativism
Rejection of truth, universals leads to ideology
1. Reductionist Reason
• Justice, beauty, friendship, goodness, hope, charity, compassion, forgiveness and love are
pushed outside the realm of reason and are reduced to private sentiment.
• Serious implications for politics.
• Politics is reduced to power and efficiency, and all other human and moral questions simply
become about utility or pleasure.
3. Egalitarian
Much of the impetus behind equality comes from Judaism and Christianity’s commitment to the
dignity of each individual
Equality also has a dark side.
•
Love of comfort,
•
Turning inward to the self,
•
Vulgarization and lowest common denominator
•
Egalitarianism affects Church
Equality becomes especially dangerous when it is divorced from any consideration of the human
nature.
4. Radical Autonomy
Liberty understood as radical autonomy. Freedom has become reduced to a simple exercise of
the will.
5. Humanitarianism
• Humanitarianism is a secular, hollowed out version of Christian love.
• Humanitarian ethic is a sentimental ethic—it feels feelings on behalf of the poor or weak, it
loves them only because they are weak.
“…Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be
filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey
to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the
point where it comes to mean the opposite…” Spe Salvi paragraph 3.
• Sentimentalism turns into condescension and disregard for the poor
• Sentimentalism becomes especially dangerous when humanitarianism is combined with
technocratic social engineering.
• One of the challenges for the Christians and our charitable work is not to absorb
humanitarianism as the guiding principle.
6. Technocracy + Techno-utopian
• All problems—social, economic, and human problems are technical problems to be solved
never a mysteries to be experienced or contemplated
• Progress has become an idol and the secular substitute for Christian Hope.
•
•
•
•
•
Subset of technocracy is Social Engineering.
Industrial societies: education, healthcare, welfare programs
Dominant approach to poverty in the developing world.
Population Control
Gendercide
Impacts include Human Trafficking and Commoditization of Women
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those
sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and
labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded,
carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with
white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state
or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." C.S. Lewis
7. Plastic Anthropology
• Human nature does not exist—humans are fundamentally malleable.
• Combination and fulfillment of the previous elements—technology, radical autonomy,
equality, and humanitarian comfort divorced from any teleological considerations.
• CS Lewis: man’s power over nature always means some men's power of other men
Part II: Social Challenges of the 21st Century
Technology the State and Human Nature
• Marriage
• Gender
• Eugenics and Genetic Manipulation
• Challenge of morality and limitations: what should be allowed, prevented?
• Eugenics and genetic manipulation: humanitarian and compassionate or totalitarian
manipulation?
• Persons used/created for instrumental purposes
• What is human nature?
Consumerism
• Consumerism is in many ways a summary description of many of the other problems.
• Not just an economic problem or limited to capitalist societies
• Modern state has interest in promoting consumerism.
• Consumerism in Democracy: Tocqueville: Equality leads to a love of comfort
• Being vs. Having: Consumerism a spiritual problem that requires spiritual solution
Part III Conclusions
• In what is fundamentally a debate about what it means to be a human being and what a good
life looks like: We are created in the image of God--neither God nor animal
“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments,
namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which as grown in her womb.
Better witness is born to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art…than by clever
excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so
frequent in the Church’s human history. If the Church is to continue to transform and
humanize the world, how can she dispense with the beauty in her liturgies, that beauty
which is so closely linked with the radiance of the resurrection? No. Christians must not
be too satisfied. They must make their Church into a place where beauty—and hence
truth—is at home. Without this the world will become the first circle of Hell.” Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger
Suggested Readings:
C.S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man, That Hideous Strength, The Srewtape Letters
Leon Kass: Life, Liberty and Dignity
Joseph Ratzinger: Values in a Time of Upheaval
Todd Huizenga: The New Totalitarian Temptation
Aldous Huxley: A Brave New World