Jacques Ellul's Technological Society

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) was an illustrious French scholar who wrote about social philosophy and theology. In his highly acclaimed book “The Technological Society” (1954/1964), he addressed the question of what it means to live within a society that is run by an ever larger number of technicians. He tried to elucidate what this may mean to present and future human beings. According to Ellul, technique must be understood as the set or regime of means (or techniques) that are employed to execute a rationale toward a predetermined end. Risk and uncertainty are increasingly excluded from the world of the Technical Man. At the same time, ends themselves are turned into means, while means become ends. The criterion that determines these processes is the idea of efficiency. Economics and governance become subject to this doctrine, which places performance above achievement. With the acceleration of standardization, technique pervades an ever larger segment of social life until it becomes a global phenomenon. Along this course, Ellul introduced the controversial thesis that both American and Soviet society are increasingly ruled by the idea of efficiency and by technique, therefore both becoming illiberal societies in which technology becomes a new god, replacing the god of Christianity. In his own words, in the end "technique is nothing more than means and the ensemble of means."

Keywords Biocracy; Equilibrium; Economic Man; Fact; Mass vs. Community; Propaganda; Technique; Zweckwissenschaft

Jacques Ellul's Technological Society

Overview

It is nearly impossible to separate The Technological Society from its author and his illustrious biography. On occasion, the book has been criticized for its subjective attitude and tone. Ellul himself openly admitted that he made strong statements, yet maintained that he had never done so without elaborate reasoning. The book managed to transcend the genre of pure sociological analysis and became a milestone of critical thought on modernity and technology.

Jacques Ellul was both a social philosopher and a theologian. He was active in the Ecumenical Movement and a follower of Karl Barth (1886–1968). During the Second World War he was one of the intellectual leaders of the French Resistance. Because of his critical attitude towards technology and his literate references to Karl Marx, he was often described as being a socialist or Marxist. However, his work, particularly The Technological Society, shows that he was very cautious and critical in his reception of Marx and highly adverse to the totalitarian impetus of practiced socialism.

Aside from his technological critique, Ellul became famous for his statement that anarchy and Christianity had the same goal. He believed that science, and more importantly what he calls technique, have "desacralized" not only the scriptures but also humanity itself. In their stead, he argued, the object of worship has become the phenomenon of technique. Ellul promoted this conviction, most explicitly expressed in The Technological Society, throughout out his career.

The Technological Society was published in French in 1954, and translated into English ten years later thanks to the efforts of influential American scholars like Robert M. Hutchins, Scott Buchanan, and Robert K. Merton, who wrote the foreword. In it, Ellul outlined his view of technique, which he described as "the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity" (1964, p. xxv). Thus, even if it originated with machines, technique means more than just "machines" or some technological procedures or devices that have been crafted to achieve some goal. Rather, technique increasingly interpenetrates with every aspect of social life. Though the machine stood as the ideal-type of the nineteenth century, in the twentieth century technique has taken over people and the entirety of their activities. Thus, in Ellul's view, capitalism is not to blame for the developments that followed it, for capitalism itself has become governed by technique. It is technique that integrates capitalism into the fabric of society, just as it integrates the machine into society, for it "clarifies, arranges, rationalizes" (Ellul, 1964, p. 5).

In this regard, Ellul viewed reason and science as the combined forces behind the development of technique. Traditionally, claimed Ellul, technique is perceived as the application of science: it is the medium between material reality and scientific formula. However, Ellul stands this relation on its head. He argued that technique preceded science, thus reducing the gains of nineteenth century physical science to just a tiny period in the history of technique. In truth, Ellul said, technique had to wait for science to develop in human civilization, for technique rendered explicit problems of human progress that only science could solve. According to Ellul's account, if technique had not preceded science, science would only be hypothesis and speculation.

Essential for technique is its relation to organization, which is a central feature of modern society. The two processes that organization enables and that take hold of society's progress are standardization and rationalization. Society's progress itself is intertwined with the progress of technique. The technological society differs from prior forms of society in that it is characterized by technique, which rests not on tradition but rather on prior technical procedures. Therein, technique has reached its own form of autonomy.

According to Ellul, every technical operation, every actual application of technique in the real world, produces a "technical phenomenon." This phenomenon is rendered explicit in the two processes that lie within each actor: consciousness and judgment (i.e., reason). Consciousness creates the awareness of the advantages and accomplishments of the application of technique, while reason enables the progress towards new methods as well as the efficient use of existing means. The concrete phenomenon that emerges from the relation between reason and consciousness is found in the "one best means" to accomplish a task.

Aside from the application of technique as "mechanical technique" (machines) and "intellectual technique" (the storage of knowledge, e.g. in libraries, data-bases, and the like), Ellul discusses three interdependent divisions, he calls economic technique, technique of organization (or of the state), and human techniques.

Economic Technique

Ellul was an attentive reader of Marx, yet he was also a critical one. In Ellul's iconoclastic interpretation of Marx, it is not the economy or capitalism that produces technique. Quite the contrary, only through technique can the economy develop. Economics must therefore be seen from two angles: as the dynamic force behind technical innovation, and as innovation's static counterpart, the organization of economy.

Marx and his followers believed that a society's economic base determined its superstructure, or its socio-political institutions. Ellul called this belief a "self-deception." Ellul viewed Marx's analysis as correct only in regard to the nineteenth century and not relevant for other periods. Instead, he held that technique is the actual base, in that it guides not only production, but also distribution.

Thus, economics is subsumed to technique and, as it intervenes in the sphere of the state through political economy, efficiency becomes the criterion for political agendas. Just as technique pushes economists to establish "exact procedures," so policy-making becomes characterized by "exact procedures" meant to make policy-making more efficient.

In following the ideals of physics, economists hope to establish "exact procedures." Thereby, in political economy, this ideal is adapted to be the maximum of efficiency in policy-making. But at the same time, economics fails to accomplish this goal, as is illustrated in the repeated occurrence of economic crises. What remains is the public's trust in the force (i.e. technique) behind both the science of physics and economics, even while it loses faith in economics. The basic instruments that policy-makers and economists in the "technical state of mind" therefore rely upon are the means of statistics, accounting and the likes — all methods that can be broken down to technical performances.

In this regard, Ellul argued, both planning and liberty are in a conflict, wherein both socialist and democratic societies increasingly drift toward planning and away from liberty, for the two techniques of intervention into macro-relations — norm and plan — have proven their ability to increase efficiency.

Planning suggests itself in all forms of modern society, for it is not the best economic but rather "the best technical solution" (Ellul, 1964, p. 184). The two remaining types of economy, corporate economy and planned economy, display equal characteristics that relate back to the prerequisites of technique. However, both types of economy are not found in the real world in their extremes. Instead they are ideal-types, or heuristic devices. For even in a planned society, not "every detail is integrated into the plan."

In actuality, there will be a highly unstable equilibrium between technique and freedom, state and private enterprise. This tendency, however, seemed for Ellul to be a pendulum swing toward technique. In this pendulum swing, the conflict between politics (or better: the polity) and economics is forced into a mulled synthesis where "politics disappears and economics is forced into submission" (1964, p. 197). Subsequently, both the market and the state are organized and structured by technique. That the Soviet Union of Ellul's era was in his view very close to the fulfillment of that state, he supplemented by the controversial statement that the United Sates was also "oriented in this direction very rapidly" (Ellul, 1964, p. 197).

The realization of technique would therefore be the end of liberal economy, which aims at profit, since the goal of technique is found in a combination of rationality and efficiency.

Additionally, technique is anti-democratic. The engineers, statisticians, accountants, judges and other technicians who are responsible for the proliferation of technical progress are not elected, but merely join their creed through another increasingly technical process of education.

According to Ellul, production, consumption and education alike are increasingly subject to the same technical process: standardization. While the "price" for a consumer good or to attain an education is reduced, the number of possible choices (diversity) is at the same time reduced. The effect is felt both in market circumstances and education issues. It is finalized in the creation of the same technical state of mind.

And, finally, since civilization is becoming a mass civilization with the progress of technique, the problems of economy must be posed, suggests Ellul (in 1954, long before modern theories of globalization), "in global terms, in terms of global income, global employment, global demand, and so." (1964, p. 205)

Technique & the State

In the historic evolution of the state, its own forms of technique emerged: financial, administrative, and judicial technique. Each emerged to fulfill a specific function. Yet during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, they were conflated in administrative law, with the political function providing the general direction that combined the other functions toward a global perspective.

The state, in the course of history, began to wedge into areas it had previously ignored and had so far left to the interest and care of individuals, including education, faith, and so on. With the "massification" of the individuals into society, large areas of the "private sphere" merged with the public sphere. The state in turn became a technical organism. The techniques need and make the state, and the state needs and makes the techniques. The technical organism is similar to a biological organism in which the organs and the body as a whole are mutually dependent: the organs are defined by the function they perform for the whole body, while the whole body is dependent upon the organs.

The motive force behind the state, and therefore behind technique, is the human being. But people-in-mass are eliminated from the actual processes of the state. The politician's capacities are reduced from decision making to the mere application of technique. Each politician is left with a choice: uphold democracy, which will eventually lose importance and diminish the role of the politician; or become a political technician and transform statesmanship into a synthesis of technique and politics.

But "the state machine," as Ellul called his era's state, "is not yet well adjusted." He saw the transformed state as being in its infancy. However, he also believed that the transformation is a steadily growing process that is changing the state into a synthesis of technical organizations at the expense of the autonomy of decision-making. The latter is a capacity that will decrease, while an ever increasing number of processes and goals are predetermined by the available technical processes.

This transformation will eventually affect the progress of justice and law, until the guiding rationale becomes: "Better injustice than disorder" (Ellul, 1964, p. 295). The criterion for laws and law-making will thus become the establishment of order, which is nothing else but, once again, the criterion of efficiency. Law would thus transform the institutions that regulate the organization of individual life and social relations at an ever higher rate. This is the result, on the one hand, of the general belief in the power of "facts" in the realm of public opinion on the one hand, and, on the other, of the subsequent general belief that only technical problems are to be taken seriously, and that, therefore, every problem or conflict has a technical solution.

Human Techniques

Ellul emphasized the demand that the increasing amount of technique makes on the human mind and life: never before have so many mechanisms demanded to be integrated into the process of everyday labor. According to him, technique pervades and structures even the basic components of life: time, space, and motion. And at the same time, in accordance with the processes of massification and standardization, the effects of technique have become inescapable. It is increasingly impossible to evade participation in the rhythms and attitudes of a society that is regulated by technique. To even try would result in either neurosis and/or total exclusion.

The actual goal of participation in society is set towards the elimination of the "nightmare of industrial labour": the fatigue factor. Therefore, the application of technique runs from state to individual, contrary to the romantic idea of humanism and democracy that rested on the idea of bottom-up decision making and thought that social resolution can be found in art. Action has subsequently three criteria:

• Generality: The elimination of the importance of individuals

• Objectivity: Independence from subjective motives

• Permanence: Each person must be immersed in the technical complex all his life

This is exemplified in the changing educational technique. The actual goal of technical education, which replaces the liberal arts, is for the child to adapt to technological society: "it is not the child in and for himself who is being educated, but the child in and for society. And the society, moreover, is not an ideal one, with full justice and truth, but society as it is." (Ellul, 1964, p. 348). Therefore, society becomes totalitarian. Society creates an increasing number of problems that further the process of adaptation and require conformism.

This process is promoted by propaganda. While this technique had previously been studied as a tool of the totalitarian states of Nazi-Germany or Soviet Communism, Ellul claimed that every form of government employs some means of propaganda. The effects of propaganda are difficult to discern, and only a few corollaries seem obvious:

• That the creation of "collective passions" undermines the development of the capability of critical thought in individuals.

• Additionally, a collective conscience appears. People who have adapted their personality to technique will share a universal idea of what is collectively good and just.

• Finally, a new "sphere of the sacred and sphere of taboo" is created.

What follows is that technique will not only structure the psyches of people, but it will increasingly rule the body and the biological functions. Technique will establish a biocracy. It will make the person into a machine. This will result in a loss, though. Creativity and spontaneity — and with them, real innovation — will disappear. This must lead to "disequilibration." Feeling unfulfilled, humanity will end in psychological crisis. The modern society seeks to counter this effect in the concept of "leisure." People supposedly are enabled to realize creative power in their spare time. But leisure itself becomes part of technique: rationalized, efficient, and predetermined.

Ellul's book was a controversial, but certainly also to a large degree, a prognostic effort. In 1954, he saw clearly how the processes of standardization and globalization would progress in the future while his contemporaries lacked the same foresight. Even over fifty years after its initial publication, Ellul's book offers insightful elaborations of the development of modern society in regard to the progress of social techniques that are still worth reflecting upon when thinking about our own future.

Further Insights

While being highly pessimistic, Ellul's book was also very much ahead of its time. The proliferation of technique can be certainly be diagnosed today. Even still, one must not necessarily share Ellul's perspective that this will lead — or has led — to the total elimination of liberty. But in a few instances, the effects of Ellul's technique should give rise to critical reflection.

Starting with science itself, it is necessary to look at the question of how scientific progress is guided today. It is not much of a secret that the demands of efficiency and utility have gained strength in the choices that researchers make. Additionally, there is a tendency to eliminate risk and uncertainty in advance. Institutions that finance science require more and more detailed research proposals that feature ever more bureaucratic standards of science along with exhaustive research proposals that feature results and possible applications, all before the actual research has even been executed. This process affects not only the natural sciences, but has also become common within the social sciences and humanities alike.

Since one of the largest organizations enabling science is the state, we can see clearly that technique is becoming a universal aspect of policy-making. Current political debates are less and less about what goal is to be accomplished, but rather whether a suggested policy makes sense in regard to budgeterian constraints, or whether an existing system is efficient.

The question of health care, for example, currently centers not on what it means to be a healthy human being, but rather whether the existing system efficiently includes all of those who actively participate in society as self-sustaining laborers and, if it does not do so, whether a financially sound transformation can be effected to reach this predetermined goal. The question of the quality of life, whether physical or psychological, is not so much the issue. It is still left to the decreasing amount of leisure time.

But even within leisure time, the effects of standardization can be felt. The technical demands of modern life require schedules to be synchronized and standardized. Temporal slots for meeting with friends must be negotiated according to sports clubs' opening hours, the availability of daycare for one's children or pets, or the time it takes to download a movie off of the Internet. Cell phones render people available at all times, but this can only seem to increase leisure. In reality, each person is rendered available to be called to work at any moment. Cell phones can be turned into instruments for tracking the movements of one's own children. Similarly, integrated GPS can tell a driver the most efficient route to his or her destination, though it is not necessarily the most picturesque one. GPS can lead shoppers directly to the shops they are looking for, disabling the possibility for a surprise discovery on the way. But standardization has reached into the stores as well, limiting shoppers' choice of warehouses, supermarkets, and so forth. Within stores, too, choice is limited. In comparison to the actual number of products on the market, shelf-space is restricted. Rationalization and standardization in the shelves follows complicated technical processes. For instance, a chain of grocery stores may collect information about shoppers' zip codes and document their purchases with privileged customer-cards that offer discounts.

The effects of technique pervade everyday life, still and increasingly. But technique itself is neutral. Even Ellul made this point. Therefore, the issue at hand is not so much the pessimism of Ellul. Rather, it is the critical attitude in making explicit the effects of technique and showing where they lead to a reduction of freedom.

Conclusion

Certainly, most of Ellul's criticisms and concepts are, in themselves, not original, yet he still managed to apply them in a unique and provocative way.

Many of Ellul's "leitmotifs" were present in the prior literature. Titchener's psychological writings (1918, 1972) feature similar depictions of the roles of, on the one hand, the scientist and the politician, and, on the other, the ordinary person, with the new breed of the technological person having an intermediate role between the two. Also foreshadowing Ellul's work is G. Stanley Hall's Fall of Atlantis (1920), which told the tale of the negative effects that came from the turn from independent research to a research guided only by "practical goals." Additionally, the idea of total integration is very close to the concept of total ideology criticized by Ellul's contemporaries, especially the members of the Frankfurt School.

But certain corollaries of Ellul are unique and prognostic. Two decades after Ellul, Michel Foucault was (and his successors are still) discussing the concept of biopolitics. Ellul's concept of biocracy is more than an accidental resemblance. At the same time, modern theories of globalization that are now taken for granted in social and political science, as well as in public discourse, were not conceived of when Ellul inferred that technique would eventually require its effects to attain a global reach. Finally, Ellul definitely must be counted as a forerunner of the current debate on "post-democracy" (Crouch, 2004). The disillusionment with democracy that many people in Western countries presently experience has created anti-democratic sentiments, which yet seek to receive proper explication in new concepts of government. What emerges in these discussions as "solutions" often resembles the diagnosis of Ellul.

Ellul certainly was not a prophet, but he was a keen observer and analyst, whose insights still have validity. His work's influence in current debates can still be felt.

Terms & Concepts

Biocracy: Technique that has shaped political economy as the technique of policy-making and administration as well as propaganda as the technique of the adaptation of the psychological makeup of its members. But this does not satisfy the totalitarian impetus of technique. It seeks to regulate the organism of society and of the people that make society, so that a person is turned into a man-machine. The political invasion of the organism occurs in the form of biocracy, a forerunner of the biopolitics, identified by Michel Foucault.

Equilibrium: The concept of equilibrium is introduced by Ellul without further specification and without any evaluation. Although in sociology the concept has a long history, it became controversial in the 1960s. Leftist critics of that time interpreted the idea of equilibrium as a static and conformist state of society. The concept, which was introduced into social and economic thought in the nineteenth century with Cournot's adaptation of Lagrange's mechanics, and was made popular first by Vilfredo Pareto and then by Talcott Parsons. For these scholars, it was a dynamic concept that allowed for social conflict and change, while for later critics the idea of equilibrium displayed the inability of sociological theory to account for progress, conflict, and social change.

Economic Man: With the differentiation of anthropology and economics in the nineteenth century, the concept of the economic man became the leitmotif of liberalism. Every person, being a homo economicus, would seek to increase his or her own (monetary) profit. The new economic man, which Ellul saw emerge, does not follow this goal. Since, in Ellul's view, economics had changed from the profit-motive to efficiency, the new economic man no longer seeks profit maximization, but rather increased efficiency. He or she lives in an artificial paradise where he or she has become human capital

Fact: According to Ellul, the raw material that constitute the justifications of the technological society. These facts are the uninterpreted data from instruments like statistical analyses or public opinion polls.

Mass vs. Community: In the traditional account, social cohesion is constituted within and via communities. When communities start engaging another on a social level (e.g. in trade), potentials of freedom are enabled within these communities. Mass is the opposite of community. Sociologically, mass means not simply a great number of people. It means that these people are not organized in separate communities, but rather are following a common rationale. Ellul claimed that the process of massification has standardized individual goals to the point where a single person no longer follows an individually unique and private goal, but rather a goal that is the same as that of each anonymous next person, even if the illusion of individuality is upheld through the means of propaganda.

Propaganda: In 1954, research into mass communication was still young. This kind of research had its first climax with the analysis of the rise of fascism. The first studies on the effects of propaganda, however, can be found in Gustav Le Bon's The Crowd (1895) and Walter Lippman's Public Opinion (1922). For Ellul, propaganda is a human technique. But in spite of the fact that propaganda studies usually focus on the Third Reich or communism, Ellul claimed that every form of government employs propaganda techniques to achieve adaptation of all of a society's members.

Technique: Ellul's conception of technique describes an ensemble or a regime of means that constitute a rationale towards the realization of predetermined goals.

Zweckwissenschaft : Originally applied by the Nazis, the concept means "practical or purposive science." However, according to Ellul, this was a premature application. Only now, with the eradication of the possibility of "independent research," has the concept reached its realization. The opportunities to find a public forum for one's research decrease and are increasingly regulated by technical procedures (peer-review, standardized research proposals etc.). Research involves ever higher costs that preclude private researchers from entering into new projects. Research must now be previously marketed to "potential financiers," who in turn seek to derive applicable results from the research.

Bibliography

Crouch, C. (2004). Post-democracy. Oxford: Polity.

Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society. (J. Wilkinson, Trans.). New York: Knopf. (Original work published 1954).

Hall, S. G. (1920). The fall of Atlantis. In Recreations of a psychologist (pp. 1-127). New York: Appleton.

Melman, S. (1975). The impact of economics on technology. Journal of Economic Issues, 9, 59–72. Retrieved May 21, 2008 from EBSCO online database Business Source Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=4679767&site=ehost-live

Rustum, R. (2005). Scientism and technology as religions. Zygon, 40, 835–844. Retrieved May 21, 2008 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=18942582&site=ehost-live

Titchener, E. B. (1972). Systematic pychology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univerisity Press. (Original work published 1929).

Titchener, E. B. (2005). A beginner's psychology. Boston: Adamant Media Corporation. (Original work published 1915).

van der Laan, J. M. (2012). Language and being human in technology. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 32, 241–252. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=82379650

Vanderburg, W. H. (2012a). The desymbolization of human life in contemporary mass societies. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 32, 213–221. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=82379647

Vanderburg, W. H. (2012b). The life and work of Jacques Ellul. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 32, 183–186. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=82379651

Suggested Reading

Ellul, J. (1955–56). Histoire des institutions (Vols. 1–5). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Ellul, J. (1967). Political illusion. (K. Kellen, Trans.). New York: Knopf. (Original work published 1965).

Ellul, J. (1972). The politics of God, the politics of man. (G. W. Bromiley, Trans.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. (Original work published 1966).

Ellul, J. (1973). Propaganda: The formation of men's attitudes. (J. Lerner, Trans.). New York: Vintage. (Original work published 1962).

Ellul, J. (1984). Money & power. (L. Neff, Trans.). Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press. (Original work published 1954).

Ellul, J. (1991). Anarchy and Christianiy. (G. W. Bromiley, Trans.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. (Original work published 1988).

Ellul, J. (2010). On freedom, love, and power. W. H. Vanderburg (Ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics. (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Original work published 1978).

Rose, N. (2008). The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.