Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:50:47.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Technology and American Political Thought: The Hidden Variable and the Coming Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Technology does not, at first glance, appear to have been a subject of importance in American political thought. One can peruse the writings of American political thinkers — from lofty philosophers to campaign agitators — and find few references to technology as such, even in the contemporary period. Political writings concentrate on other, apparently more “political” topics — liberty, equality, and justice, states' rights, civil liberties, and the distribution of powers. To argue that technology constitutes a hidden but centrally important variable in American political thought might seem to many to be elevating an esoteric personal interest into a central concern, to be rewriting the history of ideas in order to provide a track on which one's own personal hobbyhorse can be ridden.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Leiss, William, The Domination of Nature (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

2 The phrase, of course, is that of Easton, David, from The Political System (New York, 1963), p. 146.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Oliver, John W., A History of American Technology (New York, 1956), p. 454.Google Scholar

4 The phrase is borrowed from Galbraith, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State (Boston, 1972).Google Scholar

5 On the origins of current disenchantment with technology and pessimism about the future see Ferkiss, Victor, “The Pessimistic View of the Future,” in Handbook of Futures Research, ed. Fowles, Job, (Westport, Connecticut, 1978), pp. 479–96.Google Scholar

6 See Armytage, W. H. G., The Rise of the Technocrats (London, 1965)Google Scholar. On the history of technology in America see Oliver, , American TechnologyGoogle Scholar; Kouwenhoven, John A., The Arts in Modern American Civilization (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Burlingame, Roger, Machines That Built America (New York, 1953)Google Scholar; and generally Boorstin, Daniel, The Americans, 3 vols. (New York, 1958–74).Google Scholar

7 The classic exposition of the theme of liberal dominance in America is Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar. See also Boorstin, Daniel, The Genius of American Politics (Chicago, 1953).Google Scholar

8 This issue is explored in Ferkiss, Victor, The Future of Technological Civilization (New York, 1974), pp. 156–63Google Scholar; and Ferkiss, , “Creating Chosen Futures: The New Meaning of Freedom in America's Third Century,” in Freedom in America. A 200-year Perspective, ed. Graebner, Norman A. (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1911), pp. 249–64.Google Scholar

9 On the issue of “technological determinism” see Mesthene, Emmanuel, Technological Change (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970)Google Scholar; Ferkiss, Victor, “Man's Tools and Man's Choices: The Confrontation Between Political Science and Technology,” American Political Science Review, 67 (1973), 973–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Heilbroner, Robert L., “Do Machines Make History?Technology and Culture, 8 (1967), 335–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also generally Ferkiss, Victor, Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

10 On republican ideology see Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969), esp. pp. 96117Google Scholar. On its relationship to technology see Kasson, John F., Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America 1776–1900 (New York, 1976), esp. chap. 1.Google Scholar

11 Jefferson's views are summarized in Dorfman, Joseph, The Economic Mind in American Civilization 1606–1865, vol. 1 (New York, 1946), pp. 435–45Google Scholar. See also Parrington, Vernon Louis, Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1927), vol. 2Google Scholar, The Colonial Mind 1620–1800, pp. 342–56.Google Scholar

12 See Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962).Google Scholar

13 On Hamilton's ideas see Parrington, , Main Currents, II:292307Google Scholar; Minar, David W., Ideas and Politics. The American Experience (Homewood, Illinois, 1964), pp. 151–73, esp. 166–73Google Scholar. The significant parts of the report are excerpted in Dolbeare, Kenneth, Directions in American Political Thought (New York, 1969), pp. 151–65.Google Scholar

14 Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, p. 35Google Scholar. On the early enthusiasm for industrialism and attempts to reconcile it with both the republican ideal and the tradition of an ordered society see Dorfman, , Economic Mind, pp. 246–57Google Scholar; 290–313. On Hamilton's views see ibid., pp. 404–417. See also Sanford, Charles L., The Quest for Paradise: Europe and the American Moral Imagination (Urbana, Illinois, 1961), esp. pp. 117–77.Google Scholar

15 Quoted in Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, p. 32Google Scholar. On Coxe see Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York, 1964), pp. 155–69.Google Scholar

16 Yet not without bitter regret. “Our enemy,” he wrote at the time of the War of 1812, “has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise; from a peaceful and agricultural nation, he makes us into a military and manufacturing one” (quoted in Marx, , Machine in the Garden, p. 144).Google Scholar

17 Quoted ibid., p. 133.

18 Quoted in Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, p. 40.Google Scholar

19 Quoted in Marx, , Machine in the Garden, p. 249Google Scholar. On Thoreau see Parrington, , Main Currents, II:400413.Google Scholar

20 On Emerson see Parrington, , Main Currents, II:386–99Google Scholar; and Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, pp. 109135.Google Scholar

21 On Webster see Marx, , Machine in the Garden, pp. 209220Google Scholar; and Mondale, Clarence, “Daniel Webster and Technology,” American Quarterly, 13 (1962), 3747.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Quoted in Dorfman, , Economic Mind, 1:484Google Scholar. On currents of thought during this period see also Meier, Hugo A., “Technology and Democracy, 1800–1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1957), pp. 618–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 See Dorfman, , Economic Mind, 1:324–28.Google Scholar

24 Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, p. 29.Google Scholar

25 On the Lowell experiment see Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, chap. 2.Google Scholar

26 Quoted in Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, pp. 9192Google Scholar. On Brownson see Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., Orestes A. Brownson, A Pilgrim's Progress (Boston, 1939)Google Scholar; Dorfman, , Economic Mind: 661–67Google Scholar; and Beitzinger, A. J., A History of American Political Thought (New York, 1972), pp. 348–53Google Scholar. Selections from Brownson's works are available in Kirk, Russell, ed., Orestes Brownson: Selected Essays (Chicago, 1955).Google Scholar

27 On Fitzhugh see Hartz, , Liberal Tradition, pp. 145200Google Scholar; and Minar, , Ideas and Politics, pp. 260–64.Google Scholar

28 See Ware, Norman, The Industrial Worker 1840–1860 (Chicago, 1964), esp. pp. 163–80Google Scholar. See also Taylor, Keith, “Politics as Harmony: Utopian Responses to the Impact of Industrialism 1830–1848,” Alternative Futures, 2 (1979), 6075.Google Scholar

29 This was the conclusion of Ware's classic study, Industrial Worker, originally published in 1924. Writing of the American working class he says, “By 1853 they had accepted the inevitable loss of status involved in the industrial Revolution and had organized to demand, in lieu of that status, wages, hours, and conditions of work, not for the worker as a whole, but for their own crafts” (p. 227). This is contrary to the later assumption of Daniel Bell that it was Gompers who signified the coming of bread and butter unionism (see Marxian Socialism in the United States [Princeton, 1967], pp. ii, 37).Google Scholar

30 Cf. Marx, , Machine in the Garden.Google Scholar

31 They were not alone in their antiurban feelings. See Morton, and White, Lucia, The Intellectual vs The City (Cambridge, 1962).Google Scholar

32 Actually the Homestead Act never fulfilled its promise, “… only half, and probably not the best half” of the public lands “was being given away. Capital was still needed to buy a farm, and was usually secured by going into debt” (Weisberger, Bernard A., The New Industrial Society [New York, 1968], p. 81).Google Scholar

33 On this aspect of populism see especially Pollack, Norman, The Populist Response to Industrial America (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962)Google Scholar. The classic history of populism is Hicks, John D., The Populist Revolt (Minneapolis, 1931)Google Scholar. The classic interpretation of populism as a regressive force is Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York, 1955), p. 3130Google Scholar. A more favorable recent study is Goodwyn, Lawrence, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Nye, Russell B., Midwestern Progressive Politics (East Lansing, Michigan, 1951), pp. 1126Google Scholar. For a representative sample of Populist thought see McKenna, George, ed., American Populism (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

34 Weisberger, , New industrial Society, p. 121.Google Scholar

35 On Donnelly see Hofstadter, , Age of Reform, pp. 6770Google Scholar; Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, pp. 215–33Google Scholar; and Rhodes, Harold V., Utopia in American Political Thought (Tucson, Arizona, 1967), pp. 7179.Google Scholar

36 For George, 's ideas see his Progress and Poverty (New York, 1940)Google Scholar (originally published 1879). On George see Wolfe, Don C., The Image of Man in America, 2nd ed. (New York, 1977), pp. 186–98Google Scholar; Minar, , Ideas and Politics, pp. 315–26Google Scholar, and Rhodes, , Utopia, pp. 4558.Google Scholar

37 On social Darwinism see Beitzinger, , American Political Thought, pp. 397434Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston, 1955)Google Scholar; and Fleming, Donald, “Social Darwinism,” in Paths of American Thought, eds. Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., and White, Morton (Boston, 1970), pp. 123–46.Google Scholar

38 Bellamy, 's political works are Looking Backward 2000–1888 (New York, 1951)Google Scholar (first published in 1888) and Equality (New York, 1897)Google Scholar. On Bellamy see Kasson, , Civilizing the Machine, pp. 191202Google Scholar; Wolfe, D., Image of Man in America, pp. 179–86Google Scholar, Minar, , Ideas and Politics, 326–34Google Scholar; Rhodes, , Utopia, pp. 2744Google Scholar, Roemer, Kenneth M., The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings 1888–1890 (Kent, Ohio, 1976)Google Scholarpassim; and Hansot, Elizabeth, Perfection and Progress: Two Modes of Utopian Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973), pp. 113–44.Google Scholar

39 See Ferkiss, Victor, “Post-Industrial Society: Theory, Myth, Ideology,” Political Science Reviewer (forthcoming)Google Scholar; and on the relationship of the ideas of Comte, and Bell, , Kumar, Krishnan, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society (Baltimore, 1978).Google Scholar

40 For Croly, 's major ideas see his The Promise of American Life (New York, 1914)Google Scholar. On Croly see Forcey, Charles, The Crossroads of Liberalism: Croly, Weyl, Lippmann and the Progressive Era 1900–1925 (New York, 1961), esp. pp. 351.Google Scholar

41 On the industrial revolution in America generally see Cochran, Thomas C., Social Change in Industrial Society: Twentieth Century America (London, 1972)Google Scholar. On the effects of the industrial revolution on American society and thought see Gutman, Herbert, Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Diamond, Sigmund, ed., The Nation Transformed: The Creation of an Industrial Society (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Rodgers, Daniel T., The Work Ethic in Industrializing America 1850–1920 (Chicago, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilbert, James P., Work Without Salvation: American Intellectuals and Industrial Alienation 1880–1910 (Baltimore, 1977)Google Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959)Google Scholar; Bendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Haber, Samuel, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar; Noble, David, America By Design: Science, Technology and the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

On the increasing integration of economics and politics under corporate control see Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History 1900–1916 (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Wolfe, Alan, The Limits of Legitimacy (New York, 1977), esp. pp. 42175Google Scholar; Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State 1900–1918 (Boston, 1968)Google Scholar; and Sklar, Martin J., “Woodrow Wilson and the Political Economy of Modern United States Liberalism,” in For a New America: Essays in History and Politics from ‘Studies on the Left’ 1959–1967, ed. Weinstein, James and Eakins, David W., (New York, 1970), pp. 46100.Google Scholar

On the progressive era generally see Wiebe, Robert W., The Search for Order 1877–1920 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967)Google Scholar; and “The Progressive Years 1900–1917” in The Reinterpretation of American History and Culture, eds. Cartwright, William H. and Watson, Richard L. (Washington, 1973)Google Scholar. See also O'Neill, William, The Progressive Years: America Comes of Age (New York, 1975)Google Scholar. The continuity between Populist and Progressive politics is stressed in Nye, , Midwestern Progressive Politics, pp. 127309Google Scholar and essentially denied in Hofstadter, , Age of Reform, pp. 131270Google Scholar. See also Gabriel, Ralph H., The Course of American Democratic Thought (New Haven, 1956), pp. 351–66.Google Scholar

42 Some thinkers of the era, however, saw technology making possible a return to presuppositions of republicanism. Henry Ford believed the automobile would end the city and permit a return to rural life (which he regarded as highly desirable) while the noted social psychologist Robert A. Cooley believed modern communications would make possible a return to the supposed spontaneous community of an earlier era. See Noble, David W., The Progressive Mind 1890–1917 (Chicago, 1970), pp. 41, 70Google Scholar. The resemblance of these speculations to those of many contemporary “futurists” hardly needs belaboring.

43 On American Marxism and Marxist thought during the precontemporary period see Weinstein, James, Ambiguous Legacy: The Left in American Politics (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Cantor, Milton, The Divided Left: American Radicalism 1900–1975 (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Bell, , Marxian SocialismGoogle Scholar; and Beitzinger, , American Political Thought, pp. 434–38.Google Scholar

44 On the Adamses, see Wolfe, D., Image of Man in America, pp. 225–48Google Scholar, Gabriel, , Course of American Democratic Thought, pp. 323–33Google Scholar, and Beitzinger, , American Political Thought, pp. 426–27.Google Scholar

45 (New York, 1943) (first published 1896).

46 On Henry Adams see Marx, , Machine in the Garden, pp. 345–50Google Scholar; and Tanner, Tony, “The Lost America — The Despair of Henry Adams and Mark Twain,” Modern Age, 5 (1961), 299310.Google Scholar

47 On Veblen see Diggins, John P., The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (New York, 1978)Google Scholar. See also Wolfe, D., Image of Man in America, pp. 295306Google Scholar; Lerner, Max, ed., The Portable Veblen (New York, 1948), pp. 148Google Scholar; Commager, Henry Steele, The American Mind (New Haven, 1954), pp. 227–46Google Scholar; and White, Morton, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar, passim.

48 (New York, 1944) (first published 1921).

49 On Veblen's influence on technocratic ideology see Eisner, Henry Jr., The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation (Syracuse, New York, 1967), pp. 17135.Google Scholar

50 On Dewey see Beitzinger, , American Political Thought, pp. 469–79Google Scholar; Minar, , Ideas and Politics, pp. 361–79Google Scholar; White, , Social ThoughtGoogle Scholar, passim; and Lawson, R. Alan, The Failure of Independent Liberalism 1930–1941 (New York, 1971), pp. 99134.Google Scholar

51 On the nonideology of the New Deal see Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition (New York, 1954), pp. 315–52Google Scholar. In a sense the New Deal was the heir of much of progressivism, though many old Progressives were personally wary of it. See Graham, Otis L. Jr., An Encore for Reform (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, on relations with the Progessive tradition. See also Nye, , Midwestern Progressive Politics, pp. 310–86Google Scholar; Hofstadter, , Age of Reform, pp. 236–70Google Scholar; and Lawson, , Independent Liberalism, generally.Google Scholar

52 As Roosevelt confidante Robert E. Sherwood noted, the New Deal “was, in fact, as Roosevelt conceived it and conducted it, a revolution of the Right, rising up in its own defense” (quoted in Fine, Sidney, Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State [Ann Arbor, 1964], p. 382)Google Scholar. See also Berstin, Barton J., “The Causes and Achievements of Liberal Reform,” in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, ed. Berstin, (New York, 1969), pp. 263–88.Google Scholar

53 The long-range impact of the New Deal in fostering a planned technostructure on the nation is discussed in Graham, Otis L. Jr., Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

54 On technocracy see Eisner, , Technocrats, passimGoogle Scholar; Akin, William E., Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocratic Movement 1900–1941 (Berkeley, 1977)Google Scholar; and Wagar, W. Warren, “The Steel-Grey Savior,” Alternative Futures, 2 (1979), 3854.Google Scholar

55 On Dennis see his The Coming American Fascism (New York, 1936)Google Scholar; Beitzinger, , American Political Thought, pp. 522–24Google Scholar; and Ferkiss, Victor, “The Political and Economic Philosophy of American Fascism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1954).Google Scholar

56 On the social gospel movement see Gabriel, , Course of American Democratic Thought, pp. 256–80Google Scholar and Beitzinger, , American Political Thought, pp. 447–56.Google Scholar

57 See Golden, Clinton S. and Ruttenberg, Harold J., The Dynamics of Industrial Democracy (New York, 1942).Google Scholar

58 On the Southern Agrarians see Nash, George T., The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York, 1979), pp. 3839, 5758, 202206Google Scholar; Crunden, Robert M., ed., The Superfluous Men: Conservative Critics of American Culture 1900–1945 (Austin, Texas, 1977), pp. 161208Google Scholar. Paradoxically, they are also discussed in a liberal context in Lawson, , Independence Liberalism, pp. 135–41Google Scholar, neatly illustrating the extent to which reactions to technology cross traditional liberal-conservative ideological boundaries. A recent expression of agrarian ideas is Berry, Wendell, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (San Francisco, 1978).Google Scholar

59 Kasson writes of the period ending at the turn of the century as witnessing “the difficulty — ultimately leading to failure — of achieving a technological society consonant with republican ideals” (Civilizing the Machine, p. ix)Google Scholar. Perhaps his judgment is harsh or premature.

60 See du Plessix Gray, Francine, Divine Disobedience: Profiles in Catholic Radicalism (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Segers, Mary C., “Equality and Christian Anarchism: The Political and Social Ideas of the Catholic Worker Movement,” Review of Politics, 40 (1978), pp. 196230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 On the New Class see Bazelon, David T., Power in America: The Politics of the New Class (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; and Bruce-Briggs, B., The New Class (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1978).Google Scholar

62 (New York, 1941).

63 See Ferkiss, , “Post-industrial Society.”Google Scholar

64 For historical overviews of intellectual and ideological responses to technology on an international basis, see Susskind, Charles, Understanding Technology (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 79101Google Scholar; Gendron, Bernard, Technology and the Human Condition (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Armytage, W. H. G., Yesterday's Tomorrows (Toronto, 1968)Google Scholar. Literature during the fifties and sixties is annotated in the Harvard University Program on Technology and Society, Research Report No. 4, Technology and the Polity (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969)Google Scholar. Relevant readings drawn from students of technology and society are found in Teich, Albert H., ed., Technology and Man's Fate (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Burke, John G., The New Technology and Human Values (Belmont, California, 1967), esp. pp. 373408Google Scholar; and Burke, John G. and Eakin, Marshall C., Technology and Change (San Francisco, 1979)Google Scholar. See also Sinai, I. Robert, The Decadence of the Modern World (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 152–57Google Scholar; Bereano, Philip L., Technology as a Social and Political Phenomenon (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; and Anderson, Walt, Politics and the New Humanism (Santa Monica, California, 1973), pp. 113–27Google Scholar. This dialogue is being carried on virtually without the participation of any of the major figures in American political theory, academic or otherwise.

65 For a critical view of contemporary liberalism see Dolbeare, , Directions, pp. 340–60.Google Scholar

66 On contemporary conservatism and its origins see Rossiter, Clinton, Conservatism in America (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Nash, , Conservative Intellectual Movement, passim.Google Scholar; Young, James P., The Politics of Affluence: Ideology in the U.S. Since World War II (Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1968), pp. 85144Google Scholar; and Zoll, Donald Atwell, Twentieth Century Political Philosophy (Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1974), pp. 118–35Google Scholar. For an authoritative collection of conservative writings see Buckley, William F. Jr., ed., American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century (Indianapolis, 1978)Google Scholar. For a critique see Newman, William J., The Futilitarian Society (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

67 On the neo-conservative movement see Coser, Lewis A. and Howe, Irving, eds., The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Steinfels, Peter, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

68 On contemporary liberalism see Young, , Politics of Affluence, pp. 4184Google Scholar; Dolbeare, Kenneth M., Dolbeare, Patricia, and Hadley, Jane, American Ideologies: The Competing Political Beliefs of the 1970's, 2nd ed., (Chicago, 1973), pp. 55106.Google Scholar

69 Kariel, , The Decline of American Pluralism (Stanford, 1961), p. 3.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., p. 254.

71 Kariel, , The Promise of Politics (Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966), pp. 6265Google Scholar. Later Kariel moved away from liberalism toward a romantic political aestheticism, in part because of liberalism's inability to confront technology. See his Beyond Liberalism: Where Relations Grow (New York, 1978), esp. pp. 1819Google Scholar; 27–28.

72 Schlesinger, , The Vital Center (Boston, 1949).Google Scholar

73 See Young, , Politics of Affluence.Google Scholar

74 See Kaufman, , The Radical Liberal (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

75 See Harris, , The New Populism (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

76 Galbraith, , New Industrial State (Boston, 1972).Google Scholar

77 Galbraith, , The Affluent Society (Boston, 1958)Google Scholar; and American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston, 1956).Google Scholar

78 Galbraith, , New Industrial State, pp. 370–78.Google Scholar

79 See Rawls, , A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, 1971).Google Scholar On Rawls see Daniels, Norman, ed., Reading Rawls (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; de Crespigny, Anthony and Minogue, Kenneth, eds., Contemporary Political Philosophies (New York, 1974), pp. 272–89Google Scholar; and Chapman, John W., Harsanyi, John C., Van Dyke, Vernon, Fishkin, James, Rae, Douglas, Bloom, Allan, and Barber, Benjamin R., “Justice: A Spectrum of Responses to John Rawls's Theory,” American Political Science Review, 69 (1975), 588674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 See fn. 66, above.

81 See on this issue Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 107128Google Scholar, and Nash, , Conservative Intellectual Movement, passim.Google Scholar

82 On Hayek see de Crespigny, and Minogue, , Contemporary Political PhilosophiesGoogle Scholar, and especially Hayek, 's Constitution of Liberty (Chicago, 1960).Google Scholar

83 For Friedman's basic ideas see his Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, 1962).Google Scholar

84 See Anarchy, Nozick, State and Utopia (New York, 1974).Google Scholar On libertarian ideas see also Hospers, John, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Our Time (Santa Barbara, California, 1971).Google Scholar

85 Indeed, “The fashionable attack on technology and affluence is palpably an attack by comfortable, contented upper-class liberals” (For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, rev. ed. [New York, 1978], p. 244).Google Scholar But many Libertarians may be having second thoughts about the party's tendency to endorse new technology per se. See Libertarian Review, 8 (0708 1979) and 8 (October, 1979).Google Scholar

86 Rand, , The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

87 Kirk's most important works are The Conservative Mind (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar, and A Program for Conservatives (Chicago, 1954).Google Scholar For a sympathetic analysis of his ideas see Nash, , Conservative Intellectual Movement, passim.Google Scholar

88 Belloc, 's The Servile StateGoogle Scholar, originally published in 1913, was recently reissued with an introduction by the conservative sociologist Robert A. Nisbet by the conservative publishers Liberty House of Indianapolis (1977). See also McCarthy, James P., Hilaire Belloc: Edwardian Radical (Indianapolis, 1978).Google Scholar However, Belloc and Chesterton were also major influences on Catholic anarchist Dorothy Day and are discussed as liberals in Lawson, , Independent Liberalism, pp. 135–47.Google Scholar

89 Quoted in Nash, , Conservative Intellectual Movement, p. 204.Google Scholar

90 Strauss, , Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle, 1969), p. 298.Google Scholar See also his What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, Illinois, 1959), pp. 310–11.Google Scholar

91 Former Conservative United States Senator James Buckley of New York, brother of William F. Buckley, Jr., is a notable exception.

92 This paper deliberately slights the impact of foreign affairs upon the technologizing of America. But just as Jefferson's perceptions of the relationship of industry to national security led him to abandon his pastoral ideals, the upsurge of imperialism in the late nineteenth century helped create a centralized state in America and speed the abandonment of republican ideals. William Graham Sumner had seen clearly the contradiction between the Lockean laissez-faire society and imperialism in his essay, “The Conquest of the U.S. by Spain”; and one historian sums up the situation by saying that “The anti-imperialist debate provides a final footnote in the story of the years from 1877 to 1900. Many of the most outspoken opponents of annexation came from the ranks of the intellectuals and reformers who were past fifty, and had been birthright republicans … But the republic of which they were dreaming had been disappearing for years. 1896 was its funeral rite” (Weisberger, New Industrial Society, pp. 136–37).Google Scholar On Sumner generally see Minar, , Ideas and Politics, pp. 293303.Google Scholar Useful excerpts from his “conquest” essay are accessible in Dolbeare, , Directions, pp. 244–48.Google Scholar

93 Nash, , Conservative Intellectual Movement, pp. 255, 397.Google Scholar

94 An exception to conservative ignoring of the importance of technology is the essay, “The Impact of Technology on Ethical Decision Making,” in Nisbet, Robert A., Tradition and Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays (New York, 1970), pp. 183202.Google Scholar

95 See especially her The Human Condition (Garden City, New York, 1959), esp. pp. 129–33, 262–63.Google Scholar On Arendt see de Crespigny, and Minogue, , Contemporary Political Philosophies, pp. 228–52.Google Scholar

96 See Harrington, Michael, Socialism (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and The Twilight of Capitalism (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; and Baran, Paul A. and Sweezy, Paul M., Monopoly Capitalism (New York, 1966).Google Scholar See also Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 217–54.Google Scholar

97 On the theory of the scientific technological revolution in the USSR see Ferkiss, , “Post-Industrial Society.” For an example of European Marxist thinking see Mathilde Noel, “The Phenomenon of Technology: Liberation or Alienation of Man?” in Socialist Humanism, ed. Fromm, E. (Garden City, New York, 1966), pp. 334–46.Google Scholar There is of course a voluminous European Marxist-oriented literature on the concept of a technologically conditioned “new working class” by writers such as Alain Touraine, Andre Gorz, etc.

98 Ironically, American Marxists have given little attention to the writing of Marx and Engels on the technology-associated problems of the environment, though during the height of popular interest Communist party stalwarts such as Gus Hall published tracts on the subject. For the classic views see Parsons, Harold L., ed., Marx and Engels on Ecology (Westport, Connecticut, 1977).Google Scholar

99 Bookins, , Post Scarcity Anarchism (Berkeley, 1971).Google Scholar

100 See Hess, , Dear America (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; also Community Technology (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

101 On the New Left see Long, Priscilla, ed., The New Left (Bostan, 1969)Google Scholar; Jacobs, Paul and Landau, Saul, The New Radicals (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; and Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 188216.Google Scholar For representative New Left statements see Ogilsby, Carl, ed., The New Left Reader (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Lothstein, Arthur, ed., “All We Are Saying.…” The Philosophy of the New Left (New York, 1971).Google Scholar An exception to the general New Left failure to deal squarely with technology is the work of Erich Fromm, an important influence upon if not an actual activist of the movement. See especially his Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

102 Marcuse's major statement is of course One Dimensional Man (Boston, 1964).Google Scholar On Marcuse see de Crespigny, and Minogue, , Contemporary Political Philosophy, pp. 148Google Scholar; and Maclntyre, Alastair, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

103 On SDS see Kirkpatrick, Sale, SDS (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

104 For instance the attention given to technology and “limits to growth” in the critiques of Clecak, Peter, Radical Paradoxes: Dilemmas of the American Left 1945–1970 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; and Crooked Paths: Reflections on Socialism, Conservatism, and the Welfare State (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

105 On the U.S. Labor party see Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 256–63Google Scholar and the party periodicals, New Solidarity and The Campaigner. See also “U.S. Labor Party: Cult Surrounded by Controversy,” New York Times, 7 10 1979Google Scholar; and “One Man Leads U.S. Labor Party on Its Erratic Path,” Ibid., 8 October 1979.

106 On the counter-culture see Roszak, Theodore, The Making of a Counter-Culture (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; and, less reliably, Dickstein, Morris, Gates of Eden (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

107 See Reich, 's The Greening of America (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and Roszak, 's edited volume Sources (New York, 1972).Google Scholar See also his Where the Wasteland Ends (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and Person/Planet (Garden City, New York, 1978).Google Scholar

108 See especially Goodman, 's The New Reformation and Notes of a Neolithic Conservative (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

109 On black liberation see Essien-Odom, E. U., Black Nationalism (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; Carmichael, Stokely and Hamilton, Charles V., Black Power (Baltimore, 1967)Google Scholar; Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 131–63Google Scholar; and Lasch, Christopher, The Agony of the American Left (New York, 1969), pp. 115–68.Google Scholar

110 On the Chicago movement see Rendon, Armando, Chicana Manifesto (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; and Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 163–68.Google Scholar

111 On the American Indian movement see Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 168–78.Google Scholar

112 On white ethnicity see Novak, Michael, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; and Krikus, Richard, Pursuing the American Dream: White Ethnics and the New Populism (Bloomington, Indiana, 1976).Google Scholar

113 On feminism see Dolbeare, , Dolbeare, , and Hadley, , American Ideologies, pp. 177–87Google Scholar; Firestone, Shulamith, The Dialectic of Sex (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Morgan, Robin, ed., Sisterhood Is Powerful (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and especially Griffin, Susan, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

114 This issue is touched on in Germino, Dante, “The Contemporary Relevance of the Classics of Political Philosophy,” in Greenstein, Fred L. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., Handbook of Political Science, vol. 1, Political Science: Scope and Theory (Reading, Massachusetts, 1975), esp. p. 274.Google Scholar A pioneering symposium, not limited to academic political theorists is Thrall, Charles A. and Stokes, Jerold M., eds., Technology, Power and Social Change (Lexington, Massachusetts, 1972).Google Scholar

115 See Ferkiss, , “Post-Industrial Society.”Google Scholar

116 Ibid.

117 Skinner, 's ideas are found most notably in his Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, 1972).Google Scholar On Skinner see Stillman, Peter J., “The Limits of Behaviorism: A Review Essay on B.F. Skinner's Social and Political Thought,” American Political Science Review, 69 (1973), 202–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watts, Meredith W., “B.F. Skinner and the Technological Control of Social Behavior,”Google ScholarIbid., 214–27; and Skinner, B. F., “Comment,”Google ScholarIbid., 228–29. See Fuller, 's Utopia or Oblivion (New York, 1969)Google Scholar. On Fuller see Kuhns, William, The Post-Industrial Prophets: Interpretations of Technology (New York, 1971), pp. 220–46.Google Scholar

118 Ellul's major work is The Technological Society (New York, 1964).Google Scholar On Ellul see Lasch, Christopher, The World of Nations (New York, 1974), pp. 270–93Google Scholar; and Kuhns, , Post-Industrial Prophets, pp. 82111.Google Scholar

119 See Stover, Carl F., ed., The Technological Order (Detroit, 1963)Google Scholar, for an early example of Ellul's influence.

120 Winner, , Autonomous Technology: Technics Out Of Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977).Google Scholar

121 Ibid., pp. 89–92.

122 For Heilbroner, see his Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; and “The Human Prospect: Second Thoughts,” Futures, 7 (1975), 3140.Google Scholar See also Gilkey, Langdon, “Robert L. Heilbroner's View of History,” Zygon, 10 (1975), 215–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ferkiss, Victor, “Christianity and the Fear of the Future,”Google ScholarIbid., 250–62.

123 See Ophul, 's Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: Prolegomena to a Political Theory of the Steady State (San Francisco, 1977)Google Scholar; and Allen, William R., “Scarcity and Order: The Hobbesian Problem and the Human Resolution,” Social Science Quarterly, 57 (1976), 263–75.Google Scholar

124 In this general genre are the works of Anderson, Walt, A Place of Power: The American Episode in Human Evolution (Santa Monica, California, 1976)Google Scholar; and Miles, Rufus E. Jr., Awakening from the American Dream: The Social and Political Limits to Growth (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

125 See Ferkiss, Victor, “Technology Assessment and Appropriate Technology,” National Forum, 58 (Fall 1978), 37.Google Scholar

126 See Schumacher, 's Small Is Beautiful (New York, 1973)Google Scholar and A Guide to the Perplexed (New York, 1977).Google Scholar Schumacher has had strong influence on the conservatively oriented neodistributist thinker Andrew Greeley. See his No Bigger Than Necessary (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

127 For Kohr see his Breakdown of Nations (New York, 1978)Google Scholar (originally published 1957).

128 See Lovins, Amory, Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace (San Francisco, 1977)Google Scholar, and “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken,” Foreign Affairs, 55 (1976), 6596.Google Scholar A critical view of Lovins is Perry, Harry and Streiter, Sally H., Multiple Paths for Energy Policy (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

129 See most notably his Poverty of Power (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

130 See his Nature and Civilization, Some Implications for Politics (Itasca, Illinois, 1977).Google Scholar Related literature includes Edmunds, Stahrl W., Alternate U.S. Futures (Santa Monica, California, 1978)Google Scholar; and Moor, Rudolf and Brownstein, Robert, Environment and Utopia: A SynthesisGoogle Scholar (New York, n.d.).

131 See his The Limits of Satisfaction (Toronto, 1976).Google Scholar See also Satin, Mark, New Age Politics (West Vancouver, 1978).Google Scholar

132 See Devall, William B., “Reformist Environmentalism,” Humboldt Journal of Social Science, 6 (1979), 129–58.Google Scholar

133 See The Old Ways (San Francisco, 1977), pp. 5766.Google Scholar

134 For example see his “The Liberation of Nature?” Inquiry, 20 (1977), 83131.Google Scholar

135 Callenbach, Ernest, Ecotopia (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

136 Traditional American attitudes toward growth and current changes in attitudes are discussed in Cooper, Chester L., ed., Growth in America (Westport, Connecticut, 1976).Google Scholar