Excellent diagnosis of the technocratic centrist mindset.
I’d extend your argument slightly: the problem is not only that politics has become managerial rather than democratic, but that it has also become internationalised.
Large parts of the political class now orient themselves less around the sentiments of “Middle England” and more around elite transnational discourse — UN frameworks, EU legal regimes, Davos priorities, climate targets, migration conventions.
In that world, legitimacy flows horizontally from peer institutions rather than vertically from voters. Agreement with fellow elites matters more than consent from the electorate.
This helps explain the sense of cultural and political dislocation many voters feel. Their representatives are not simply ignoring them; they are operating within an entirely different moral and institutional universe — one where the nation state is just one stakeholder among many.
Excellent point, Michael. You’re absolutely right. I’ll pin this comment because it very helpfully extends the argument. I may return to it in a future post.
This is part three in a loose trilogy on left, right, and centre (links to the earlier pieces above). Comments open for a bit. Probably lots to disagree with here, so have at it.
If you found this useful or interesting, click the article 'like' button – it helps others see it.
Reminds me about the old one-liner: "The operation went well, though the patient died".
I think the technocratic centrist, a manager, struggles to accept that management is the problem. The solution isn't better management, but less management. Cf. Communism.
Also, a small detail, the technocrats love of procedure partly explains woke infiltration. No matter how crazy an idea, if it comes from someone with a degree in "gender studies and critical theory", it must be accepted. To refuse would be to break procedure and distrust the experts.
I tell people to ping me when their articles drop. Mr Alexander is one of the extremely rare few (maybe two) who actually followed through. That's worth a "like" and a comment just by itself.
This piece is a useful look at managerial politics, and how it can often subordinate or outright substitute the Will of the People and Consent of the Governed for something closer to straight paternalistic power plays. The context is obviously more local to his native UK, but I so plenty of parallels to my USA. Good work.
"The technocratic response to Brexit and Trump wasn’t introspection but blame and contempt"
Yup. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. But then I saw what the technocrats, which I pretty much equate with progressives, did to Trump. I don't tolerate that in anyone. I keep saying, and they keep not hearing, I was never drawn to Trump, they pushed me to him.
When I was in grad school, I had an advisor who compelled me to read some obscure books and articles that were a departure from my main philosophical focus but were still interesting. The theme that united them could be called "the critique of technology."
I have since discovered a website called Reclaim the Net, which documents the incremental use of technocracy and censorship in Western nations, and I would recommend it if you want to track the changes in legislation that are gradually turning the West, the birthplace of freedom, into something more akin to Communist China.
The texts were, as I recall, Jacques Ellul's book The Technological Society, Martin Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology, Ursula Franklin's The Real World of Technology, Lawrence Schmidt's book The End of Ethics in a Technological Society, and Hans Jonas' The Imperative of Responsibility. Also, Jerry Mander, Ivan Illich, Albert Borgmann, Theodore Roszak, Hans Jonas, George Grant, Simone Weil. And not least, the Unabomber's Manifesto. They were largely philosophical, analyzing technocratic thinking, a certain mindset. That's an important point: it's not the machines as much as the mindset behind them, and what it does to us.
This is not new: you may recall Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940), and his speech against "men with machine minds and machine hearts." He was referring to fascists, but today the speech is relevant to globalist technocrats and government apparatchiks. Bill Gates is well known, but his thinking is not isolated or unique; it increases as government bureaucracies expand.
Years later, as medical tyranny descended on us in 2020, I penned a screed, arguing that Kazynski had been vindicated. With the rise of AI and the globalist push for transhumanism since then, all the more so, it seems. Here is some of it:
In 1995, Theodore Kaczynski released his manifesto, titled "Industrial Society and Its Future." It is an articulate critique of an impending technocratic totalitarian society. Setting aside the fact that he was a domestic terrorist, does his manifesto stand up? Was his prediction correct?
Lawrence E. Schmidt argues that Kaczynski's thought bears striking similarities to that of another critic of technology, the French theologian Simone Weil. Both were concerned with the way in which we are increasingly losing our autonomy of thought and action to machines and the elite technocratic class who control them. The degree to which computers now shape our lives, and our almost total dependency on them at every stage of production and consumption, is a clear example of this.
Kaczynski's prediction, made before the Internet and personal computers became widespread, seems to anticipate their centralization of control over our lives, and the accompanying invasion of privacy and loss of autonomy this has led to. There is one passage in the Manifesto that has not yet come true but could very well do so, and which should greatly concern us. He is referring to the increased automation through computers and robotics, and the job losses they've led to:
"... the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite — just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have greater control over the masses, and because human work will no longer be necessary, the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless, they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane, they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite.
"Or, if the elite consists of softhearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals."
Is this prediction far-fetched? One might have been forgiven for thinking so prior to 2020, but it could now be argued that we are well on our way to a system of governance conducive to the eventual elimination of "problematic" people.
First, take into account the climate of division and fear that has become the new norm. Conservative Christians have been increasingly dehumanized. The growth of "critical race theory" contributes to racial divisions, tribalism, and the rhetoric of violence. Woke mobs tearing down historic statues and the growth of "cancel culture" and state censorship portend something far more ominous in the future. History has shown that such rhetoric, if unchecked, leads to mass violence.
Those who object to reckless mass immigration policies are silenced with ugly (and for the most part entirely untrue) accusations of racism. Pitting the citizens of Western nations against each other along racial lines and through the imposition of a manufactured collective guilt is a diabolical strategy for dividing and conquering the population.
Secondly, take into account the job losses in recent years. The lockdowns of 2020 led to the loss of employment and increased dependence on the state for many. It crippled the economy and increased our national debt.
What's next? Those who call for Universal Basic Income (UBI), digital IDs and a cashless society and increased surveillance and censorship are slowly succeeding in getting their plans approved in places like Western Europe. Covid mass hysteria was the crisis they needed to get the ball rolling. This appears to be planned well in advance by a cabal of ruthless people who know that citizens will accept their own subjugation in the name of "safetyism" if it's fed to them incrementally, slowly eroding individual rights and freedoms until that subjugation becomes the norm.
This manufactured crisis is coming on the heels of decades of job losses due to increased automation and the export of manufacturing jobs overseas due to the globalist policy of free trade, which decimated the middle class. [NB -- now with AI, job losses will accelerate rapidly]
Kaczynski also wrote, rather prophetically, that "If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this, they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, and advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities. But as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done."
His main point, which we would do well to heed, is that technology will be used to control us, and this control is inherent in its design and that Leftism is increasingly using technocratic means to control us. China's social credit system is a harbinger of what's to come in the West, where cancel culture and wokeism are increasingly the normative values and where "ubiquitous computing" infringes on our privacy rights - just as occurs in China and was anticipated by Orwell in 1984.
Kaczynski continues: "Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology because technology is too valuable a source of collective power."
While most will dismiss this analysis as far-fetched, history has shown that tyranny can happen to any nation. In fact, it is happening now, incrementally, and we are the proverbial boiling frog, largely unaware that we're being cooked to death in degrees by the imposition of a technocratic autocracy.
Greatly appreciate the British historical context. Just a bit of USA context--shortly after the resignation of President Nixon, there commenced a decline in trust of elected officials that finally plateaued around 2020. Whilst not necessarily a popular sentiment across the tapestry that is America, abandonment of the "business as usual", Democrat-Republican trading/compromising stuff made popular between the 1880s to the 1960s, the focus currently upon definitive action without compromise is the "next phase of the American experiment". As a physician/research scientist, exploratory studies must come before confirmatory studies for "acceptance of proven truth". When it comes to opinion, the exploratory studies phase can go on for years and decades. Confirmatory studies are still in the offing for the "current USA democracy explorations". Uncomfortable? yes; part of a process? probably; Attention grabbing? you bet it is. The rates at which Americans turn out to vote continue to rise--experiment still in progress and honored to be a participant in the American experiment.
We Yanks who are still thankful for British literature, philosophy, history, and intolerance of Hitler are saddened to watch the continued inculcation of Islamism into British society and politics now compounded by close ties to the nation that paid off the British to gain control of Hong Kong. More than the adoption of Islamism, the selling off of the last vestiges of the British Empire (the actual British Isles themselves) is deeply saddening. As the British Isles become broadcasting centers for Al-Jazeera and the Chinese Communist Party, please know that we Yanks will gladly sponsor Brits for asylum in America--as long as vetting does not show Islamist or Chinese Communist financial and ideological ties.
All the best and let us know when the need for asylum arises.
Thanks, Gary. America remains the most interesting country on earth, and I wish it every success – not least because my own homeland, the UK, has fallen so badly. We need at least one strong democracy to carry forward the ideals of freedom and liberty it helped bring into the world.
And thank you very much for your support of this publication – much appreciated.
Interesting article Frederick as always and though a lot of it is insightful and informative personally I wouldn't call technocrats centrist as they are often also the 'progressives' as well, as their values align. The managerial class with their social sciences degrees from left wing universities (i.e. all of them) and lanyards exist at the top of corporate culture, politics, the civil service and media. Their globalist neo liberal values embrace immigration and the support of fashionable (to them) issues that are the luxury beliefs that personally don't affect them directly.
That’s a very fair point – one I wrestled with when writing this. The managerial class is progressive in cultural outlook, no question. Perhaps less driven by deep ideological conviction than convenience and moral cover. There’s also a distinction to be made between centrist method (the technocratic part) and cultural values that I could have made sharper here. But broadly speaking, I think you’re right.
Excellent diagnosis of the technocratic centrist mindset.
I’d extend your argument slightly: the problem is not only that politics has become managerial rather than democratic, but that it has also become internationalised.
Large parts of the political class now orient themselves less around the sentiments of “Middle England” and more around elite transnational discourse — UN frameworks, EU legal regimes, Davos priorities, climate targets, migration conventions.
In that world, legitimacy flows horizontally from peer institutions rather than vertically from voters. Agreement with fellow elites matters more than consent from the electorate.
This helps explain the sense of cultural and political dislocation many voters feel. Their representatives are not simply ignoring them; they are operating within an entirely different moral and institutional universe — one where the nation state is just one stakeholder among many.
Excellent point, Michael. You’re absolutely right. I’ll pin this comment because it very helpfully extends the argument. I may return to it in a future post.
Thanks for reading and for your support.
Appreciate that, Frederick — and glad it was useful.
This is part three in a loose trilogy on left, right, and centre (links to the earlier pieces above). Comments open for a bit. Probably lots to disagree with here, so have at it.
If you found this useful or interesting, click the article 'like' button – it helps others see it.
Thanks for reading.
Reminds me about the old one-liner: "The operation went well, though the patient died".
I think the technocratic centrist, a manager, struggles to accept that management is the problem. The solution isn't better management, but less management. Cf. Communism.
Also, a small detail, the technocrats love of procedure partly explains woke infiltration. No matter how crazy an idea, if it comes from someone with a degree in "gender studies and critical theory", it must be accepted. To refuse would be to break procedure and distrust the experts.
Ha! Great line. That’s a very good insight on woke infiltration too. Thanks.
I tell people to ping me when their articles drop. Mr Alexander is one of the extremely rare few (maybe two) who actually followed through. That's worth a "like" and a comment just by itself.
This piece is a useful look at managerial politics, and how it can often subordinate or outright substitute the Will of the People and Consent of the Governed for something closer to straight paternalistic power plays. The context is obviously more local to his native UK, but I so plenty of parallels to my USA. Good work.
Thank you - much appreciated.
"The technocratic response to Brexit and Trump wasn’t introspection but blame and contempt"
Yup. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. But then I saw what the technocrats, which I pretty much equate with progressives, did to Trump. I don't tolerate that in anyone. I keep saying, and they keep not hearing, I was never drawn to Trump, they pushed me to him.
Thank you! Our thinking is much alike.
When I was in grad school, I had an advisor who compelled me to read some obscure books and articles that were a departure from my main philosophical focus but were still interesting. The theme that united them could be called "the critique of technology."
I have since discovered a website called Reclaim the Net, which documents the incremental use of technocracy and censorship in Western nations, and I would recommend it if you want to track the changes in legislation that are gradually turning the West, the birthplace of freedom, into something more akin to Communist China.
The texts were, as I recall, Jacques Ellul's book The Technological Society, Martin Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology, Ursula Franklin's The Real World of Technology, Lawrence Schmidt's book The End of Ethics in a Technological Society, and Hans Jonas' The Imperative of Responsibility. Also, Jerry Mander, Ivan Illich, Albert Borgmann, Theodore Roszak, Hans Jonas, George Grant, Simone Weil. And not least, the Unabomber's Manifesto. They were largely philosophical, analyzing technocratic thinking, a certain mindset. That's an important point: it's not the machines as much as the mindset behind them, and what it does to us.
This is not new: you may recall Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940), and his speech against "men with machine minds and machine hearts." He was referring to fascists, but today the speech is relevant to globalist technocrats and government apparatchiks. Bill Gates is well known, but his thinking is not isolated or unique; it increases as government bureaucracies expand.
Years later, as medical tyranny descended on us in 2020, I penned a screed, arguing that Kazynski had been vindicated. With the rise of AI and the globalist push for transhumanism since then, all the more so, it seems. Here is some of it:
In 1995, Theodore Kaczynski released his manifesto, titled "Industrial Society and Its Future." It is an articulate critique of an impending technocratic totalitarian society. Setting aside the fact that he was a domestic terrorist, does his manifesto stand up? Was his prediction correct?
Lawrence E. Schmidt argues that Kaczynski's thought bears striking similarities to that of another critic of technology, the French theologian Simone Weil. Both were concerned with the way in which we are increasingly losing our autonomy of thought and action to machines and the elite technocratic class who control them. The degree to which computers now shape our lives, and our almost total dependency on them at every stage of production and consumption, is a clear example of this.
Kaczynski's prediction, made before the Internet and personal computers became widespread, seems to anticipate their centralization of control over our lives, and the accompanying invasion of privacy and loss of autonomy this has led to. There is one passage in the Manifesto that has not yet come true but could very well do so, and which should greatly concern us. He is referring to the increased automation through computers and robotics, and the job losses they've led to:
"... the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite — just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have greater control over the masses, and because human work will no longer be necessary, the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless, they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane, they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite.
"Or, if the elite consists of softhearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals."
Is this prediction far-fetched? One might have been forgiven for thinking so prior to 2020, but it could now be argued that we are well on our way to a system of governance conducive to the eventual elimination of "problematic" people.
First, take into account the climate of division and fear that has become the new norm. Conservative Christians have been increasingly dehumanized. The growth of "critical race theory" contributes to racial divisions, tribalism, and the rhetoric of violence. Woke mobs tearing down historic statues and the growth of "cancel culture" and state censorship portend something far more ominous in the future. History has shown that such rhetoric, if unchecked, leads to mass violence.
Those who object to reckless mass immigration policies are silenced with ugly (and for the most part entirely untrue) accusations of racism. Pitting the citizens of Western nations against each other along racial lines and through the imposition of a manufactured collective guilt is a diabolical strategy for dividing and conquering the population.
Secondly, take into account the job losses in recent years. The lockdowns of 2020 led to the loss of employment and increased dependence on the state for many. It crippled the economy and increased our national debt.
What's next? Those who call for Universal Basic Income (UBI), digital IDs and a cashless society and increased surveillance and censorship are slowly succeeding in getting their plans approved in places like Western Europe. Covid mass hysteria was the crisis they needed to get the ball rolling. This appears to be planned well in advance by a cabal of ruthless people who know that citizens will accept their own subjugation in the name of "safetyism" if it's fed to them incrementally, slowly eroding individual rights and freedoms until that subjugation becomes the norm.
This manufactured crisis is coming on the heels of decades of job losses due to increased automation and the export of manufacturing jobs overseas due to the globalist policy of free trade, which decimated the middle class. [NB -- now with AI, job losses will accelerate rapidly]
Kaczynski also wrote, rather prophetically, that "If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this, they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, and advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities. But as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done."
His main point, which we would do well to heed, is that technology will be used to control us, and this control is inherent in its design and that Leftism is increasingly using technocratic means to control us. China's social credit system is a harbinger of what's to come in the West, where cancel culture and wokeism are increasingly the normative values and where "ubiquitous computing" infringes on our privacy rights - just as occurs in China and was anticipated by Orwell in 1984.
Kaczynski continues: "Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology because technology is too valuable a source of collective power."
While most will dismiss this analysis as far-fetched, history has shown that tyranny can happen to any nation. In fact, it is happening now, incrementally, and we are the proverbial boiling frog, largely unaware that we're being cooked to death in degrees by the imposition of a technocratic autocracy.
Thanks – a lot to think about here.
Greatly appreciate the British historical context. Just a bit of USA context--shortly after the resignation of President Nixon, there commenced a decline in trust of elected officials that finally plateaued around 2020. Whilst not necessarily a popular sentiment across the tapestry that is America, abandonment of the "business as usual", Democrat-Republican trading/compromising stuff made popular between the 1880s to the 1960s, the focus currently upon definitive action without compromise is the "next phase of the American experiment". As a physician/research scientist, exploratory studies must come before confirmatory studies for "acceptance of proven truth". When it comes to opinion, the exploratory studies phase can go on for years and decades. Confirmatory studies are still in the offing for the "current USA democracy explorations". Uncomfortable? yes; part of a process? probably; Attention grabbing? you bet it is. The rates at which Americans turn out to vote continue to rise--experiment still in progress and honored to be a participant in the American experiment.
We Yanks who are still thankful for British literature, philosophy, history, and intolerance of Hitler are saddened to watch the continued inculcation of Islamism into British society and politics now compounded by close ties to the nation that paid off the British to gain control of Hong Kong. More than the adoption of Islamism, the selling off of the last vestiges of the British Empire (the actual British Isles themselves) is deeply saddening. As the British Isles become broadcasting centers for Al-Jazeera and the Chinese Communist Party, please know that we Yanks will gladly sponsor Brits for asylum in America--as long as vetting does not show Islamist or Chinese Communist financial and ideological ties.
All the best and let us know when the need for asylum arises.
Thanks, Gary. America remains the most interesting country on earth, and I wish it every success – not least because my own homeland, the UK, has fallen so badly. We need at least one strong democracy to carry forward the ideals of freedom and liberty it helped bring into the world.
And thank you very much for your support of this publication – much appreciated.
We will gladly welcome you to our nation. The bonds between us as peoples with so many points of commonality are very real.
Interesting article Frederick as always and though a lot of it is insightful and informative personally I wouldn't call technocrats centrist as they are often also the 'progressives' as well, as their values align. The managerial class with their social sciences degrees from left wing universities (i.e. all of them) and lanyards exist at the top of corporate culture, politics, the civil service and media. Their globalist neo liberal values embrace immigration and the support of fashionable (to them) issues that are the luxury beliefs that personally don't affect them directly.
That’s a very fair point – one I wrestled with when writing this. The managerial class is progressive in cultural outlook, no question. Perhaps less driven by deep ideological conviction than convenience and moral cover. There’s also a distinction to be made between centrist method (the technocratic part) and cultural values that I could have made sharper here. But broadly speaking, I think you’re right.