Patrick Wood has a website Technocracy News and Trends that argues we are now degenerating into a form of government called Technocracy. He argues this is a more apt description of our current circumstances than communism or fascism. There is no question we have had incremental socialism over the last 80 years or so, by leaps and bounds. I think if you look at this critically, you will see we have elements of all three. The following is a graphic from his website:
| TECHNOCRACY | COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM | FASCISM |
| Endgame: Scientific Dictatorship | Endgame: Classless society | Endgame: National strength |
| Hates Communists, favored Fascists | Hates Fascists & Technocrats | Hates all types of Marxists |
| Has contempt for electoral democracy | Promotes electoral democracy | Has contempt for electoral democracy |
| Seeks totalitarian system by scientific methods | Seeks totalitarian system by communitarianism | Seeks totalitarian system by nationalistic submission |
| Relies upon cult of science (Scientism) | Relies upon cult of personality (Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Che) | Relies upon cult of personality (Hitler, Mussolini) |
| Promotes Scientism | Promotes atheism | Promotes a form of Christianity |
| Promotes cities, is anti-rural | Promotes rural development | Anti-urban, promotes rural identity |
| Replaces Capitalism with resource-based economic system | Managed Capitalism | Generally supports Capitalism for its own purposes |
| Despises Capitalism | Marx believed Capitalism was a necessary step to Communism | Viewed as a ‘third way’ between Capitalism and Communism |
| Apolitical | Mostly viewed as ‘left wing’ | Often viewed as ‘conservative’ |
| Racially agnostic | Stalin condemned anti-Semitism | Tends toward anti-Semitism and racism |
| Highly reveres intellectuals who agree with them | Killed intellectuals in their own countries, on multiple occasions | Killed intellectuals in other countries |
| Generally pacifist | Mostly killed their own citizens | Mostly killed citizens of other countries, plus Jews and other ‘undesirables’ |
| Controls people with the system/technology | Controls people with people | Controls people with dictator |
| Population: over-populated | Population: non-issue | Population: non-issue |
| Genetic cleansing, general population reduction | Ideological cleansing | Genetic cleansing, but selective |
| Universal Basic Income (UBI) | Stratified pay structure, according to the need of each citizen | Stratified pay structure, according to merit and value to leadership |
| Advances according to the advancement of technology | Advances according to the development of ideology | Advances according to the strength of the nation |
| Human conditioning to live within the system | Education supports ideology | Education supports nationalism |
| Global citizen, city-state oriented | Nation-state oriented | Nation-state oriented |
| Dissolves the state | Empowers the state | Empowers the state |
| Science knows best | People know best | People know best |
| Social engineers hide behind facade of science | Leadership easily identified | Leadership easily identified |
| “Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population…” (The Technocrat, 1938) Eradicates profit completely and all private property, establishes a resource-based economy controlled by a scientific elite using data-driven scientific method. | Communism: Political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. (Encyclopedia Britannica) | Fascism, a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. (Merriam-Webster) A political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on a relationship between business and the centralized government, business-and-government control of the marketplace, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights. By extension, Any system of strong autocracy or oligarchy usually to the extent of bending and breaking the law, race-baiting and violence against largely unarmed populations. (Wikitionary) |
| ”We are building this global society without a global leader. Global order is no longer something that can be dictated or controlled from the top down. Globalization is itself the order.” Dr. Parag Khanna | Stepping-stone to Technocracy Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in Between Two Ages: America’s Role In the Technetronic Era (1970), that Communism and Socialism were necessary stepping stones to get to the end game, but they were not the end game in themselves. The final stage was to be Brzezinski’s Technetronic Era, which is Technocracy |
Yes, we have elements of all three. The question what will we look like in, say, 50 years. Will we have resisted or submitted to the worst of those ?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, Fred, but the trajectory is not favorable.