Although the label "technocrat" has come to be generally applied to the economy's technical elite, the technocracy movement was a short-lived episode of the thirties. It had little direct influence on the politics of the New Deal years. Nor has it influenced subsequent American thought to any lasting extent.
More broadly, technocracy may be understood as ‘a theory of governmental decision making designed to promote technical solutions to political problems’ (Fischer, 1990, p. 18). The models and practices of engineering, honed and refined in the manipulation of the material world, are promised as the tools to produce progress and harmony in the social world (Akin, 1977; Segal, 1985).
This book describes the role of technological experts and expertise in a democratic society. It places decision-making strategies - studied in organization theory and policy studies - into a political context. Fischer brings theory to bear on the practical technocratic concerns of these disciplines and hopes to facilitate the development of nontechnocratic discourse within these fields. The book adopts a critical perspective and addresses the restructuring of the policy sciences.
[Technocracy is] a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions.
As Antonio Gramsci recognized in his prison reflections from the end of the 1920s, the impact of United States technology offered a valuable key for understanding recent European development:'The European reaction to Americanism... must be examined attentively. Analysis of it will provide more than one element necessary for understanding the present situation of a series of states of the old continent and the political events of the post-war period.
By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.
When a Nation - exercising its freedom of choice - discards Autocracy and selects Democracy as its social principle it cannot successfully retain the working elements of the discarded social organization. If it is to survive, it must adopt ways and means and methods of life in consonance with its chosen principle.
As industrial processes involve specialized skill and expert technical training, made effective by intelligent co-ordination, it is clear that a humanly efficient Industrial Democracy necessitates leadership by those who possess the requisite knowledge, skill, and technical training.