The Doubter's Companion (37 page)

But there was nowhere else for the burden to shift because the corporate managers had carried their organizations still farther away from taxability by embracing globalization. To any attempts at serious taxation they began invoking the demands of international competition. Tax them and they'll be gone to some land of lower taxes and cheap labour.

What is now called the debt crisis is in good part the taxation crisis. The managers and the academic consultants endlessly repeat, sometimes accurately, that the state must cut back to deal with the debt. But the shrinkage is never enough. Besides, most cuts are not to the state but to the citizens' services.

That the ability to tax fairly and effectively the full national wealth has now escaped the nation state is not so serious as it at first appears. After all, the problem is fundamentally that of the individual citizen who, throughout the West, continues to believe in a basic social contract.

Received wisdom has it that nothing can be done because globalization and
TECHNOLOGY
dominate. In fact a simple decision by the Group of Seven that they want their taxes and intend to collect them would be enough to force a change of direction. After all, the billion-odd citizens of the Group of Seven represent the bulk of the consumer market for the products of the large corporations.

Ensuring that they carry their fair tax load is a simple matter of cooperation among those who have a right to a percentage of the national wealth.

TAYLOR, FREDERICK
   Founder of the Harvard Business School, management consultancy and the modern technocratic manager-led concept of capitalism. Lenin's favourite economist, after Marx.

TAYLORISM
   A management system in which workers are viewed as additional pieces of machinery.

Invented by Frederick Taylor in 1895, Taylorism or Scientific Management was a precursor of automatized production. Ironically, it also improved the treatment of workers. They could no longer be exploited in the traditional sense because machinery must be looked after or it will break down. Taylorism also brought increased general prosperity and the workers benefited from this.

However, their status had been fundamentally altered. The system no longer saw them as human individuals, but as elements in a system to be managed by experts.

Taylorism was central in the rise of the United States to world power. When democracy and capitalism are cited as an explanation for America's success, it is more accurately a reference to democracy and scientific management.

Taylorism was also a great hit in Nazi Germany. Albert Speer, Hitler's economics minister, was a disciple of the movement and this is one of the explanations for Germany's success in holding out against superior Allied forces later in the war.

Taylorism is the ultimate abstract structure. Not only can it impose itself on reality for limited periods, it is more effective in a crisis than in normal times. Speer's approach was like a gigantic Harvard Business School case study (both the school and the case study are a Taylorist invention).

Curiouser than Speer's admiration was that of Lenin. He had been seduced by Taylorism while still in exile and carried its message back to Russia. Lenin spoke repeatedly of the necessity to Communize Taylorism. The first Five Year Plan was written largely by American Taylorists and directly or indirectly they built some two-thirds of Soviet industry. The collapse of the Soviet Union was thus in many ways the collapse of Scientific Management.

Yet the Russian government immediately hired a Harvard professor of economics, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, to help them out of the crisis. His methods—filled with complete abstract systems—were strangely reminiscent of Taylor's. Underlying his proposals was the need for an absolute break with the past. These brilliant financial and structural reforms lacked only one element: a recognition that several hundred million people live in Russia, that they must eat every day. Or at least every second day. And that if they did not, they would reject the new regime and return to the old patterns of bureaucratic communism.

The various attempted coups and electoral reversals suffered by the forces of reform are in part the responsibility of this Harvard economist. When in 1994 his policies were finally rejected by a frustrated electorate, who opted for a return to the old ways under the old technocrats, Sachs resigned in protest, claiming that the crisis had been caused by an insufficiently absolute application of his policies.

Note
: In his defence it should be said that he had also called for a halt to Russian debt payments. The finance officials of the
G7
countries, whose leaders enjoy making speeches about the victory of democratic capitalism, continued to insist on regular payments. This helped to sabotage the Russian reform movement. See:
DEBT
.

TECHNOCRAT
   A word which means what it says, but perhaps not as we normally understand it.

The roots appear to be describing someone who has power (
crat
) thanks to their specialized knowledge or skills (
techne
). Observation of the technocrat at work is enough to tell us that the roots have been inversed. This is someone whose skill is the exercise of power. It follows quite naturally that there is no suggestion of purpose, direction, responsibility or ethics. Just power. John Ruskin described this function as “intricate bestiality.”
³
See:
TECHNOLOGY.

TECHNOLOGY
   Inanimate, passive material which is not science.

In any civilization, technology is shaped, directed and controlled by the conscious effort of society. Individuals who treat technology as an animated force capable of deciding the direction of society are engaged in the destruction of civilization.

Science is not technology. Science, as Samuel Johnson pointed out in his dictionary, is knowledge.
⁴
And knowledge is understanding. It is easy to argue that science is animate and inevitable. But once it is applied it is no longer science.

The application of science—that is, technology—is a matter of options, matching chosen means to chosen ends. Societies have often decided not to use technological breakthroughs made possible by science. After several experiments with gas warfare, most societies decided to abandon it. After dropping two atomic bombs, society dropped no more. Although capable of altering the disposition of habitual criminals through surgical and technical intervention (lobotomy, shock treatment, castration), few societies do this. Although DDT was an effective insecticide, most societies have decided to stop using it.

With the explosion in activities known as the industrial revolution, a growing number of people began to believe that technology was inevitable. This created a conflict within society which first crystallized in the
LUDDITE
rebellion of 1811. The new rational technocracy—itself devoid of social direction—tended to accept the idea that technological development would provide not simply economic but social and political direction. This pushed those who disagreed into the realms of romanticism and idealism—that is, into a rejection of reality. They mistook the destruction of rural society and of nature itself by the industrial revolution for a fatal opposition between progress and preservation.

This was a false opposition. Civilization implies integration. Both progress and preservation, if they are seen as self-contained truths, imply exclusion. Civilization desires progress through science as actively as it desires a healthy society and a natural environment. Integration or
BALANCE
makes both possible, providing neither is allowed to run wild.

It is often forgotten that World War II was seen on the Allied side as a battle against the dictatorship of technology in a corporatist world indifferent to the individual. Charles de Gaulle, speaking at Oxford in 1941, examined the threat of technology to the individual. What makes de Gaulle's attitude particularly interesting is that he had devoted his career, before and after the war, to the advancement of technology and professionalism. The only way out, he said, was for “society to preserve liberty, security and the dignity of man. There is no other way to assure the victory of spirit over matter.”
⁵
The message we repeatedly receive from the postwar technocracy is that the Axis was right after all.

One of the few things expected of our technocracy by the citizenry is that they will use their administrative skills to manage the integration of technology with the interests of society as a whole. Unsuited as they are to this simple task, the technocracy have responded that they would rather manage the citizen.

TENNIS
   A middle-class version of professional wrestling.

These gladiator sports provide easily identifiable stereotypes of mythological Heroes. Team sports soften and confuse the spectators' topology. Two-on-two or, better still, one-on-one leaves no room for doubt as to who is the prince or princess, who the beautiful but spoiled Achilles, who the strong but dull Hector, who the Menelaus moaner always betrayed by fate.

The secret to the success of tennis may be that the racquet is an ambiguous, blunted weapon suitable to the business class, but nevertheless with the feel of having descended from the more aristocratic rapier of the duellist. After all, the game originated with the French nobility, a fact which has always endeared it to the
nouveau riche
. And the word itself comes from “Tenez!”—which was shouted out by the person hitting the ball. At first glance this means, “Look out! Here it comes.” But the aggressivity of the stroke suggests that it really means “Take that!”

TENURE
A system of academic job security which has the effect of rating intellectual leadership on the basis of seniority. This may explain why universities are rarely centres of original thought or creativity.

The initial justification for tenure was the need to protect freedom of speech, due to the justifiable fear that controversial professors might suffer at the hands of disapproving financial or governmental interests. The continued development of law now means that this essential freedom could be protected in far simpler ways.

A subsequent justification for tenure turned on the idea that stability and peace are necessary for thought and creativity. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that academics are or have been for some time at the centre of original thought or creativity in Western civilization. There are happy exceptions, particularly in the sciences. But it could far more easily be argued that the stultifying isolation and stability of a university career has discouraged originality.

This is certainly one of the explanations for the return of
SCHOLASTICISM,
with its highly sophisticated
a priori
approach to learning. The scholastic uses the tyranny of expert rhetoric to suck the life out of free speech; and the tyranny made possible by their position of authority to force this rhetorical approach on their students.

THE
   A very definite beginning to an assertion.

The truth. The answer. The solution. The true god. The dialectic. The rules of the market. The right thing to do. The only thing to do. The leader.

But how do they know? It might be possible to assert, for example, that in so far as pastry goes, the best
opéra
can be found at Auer in the old city in Nice. Some people may disagree. They may assert that another
opéra
in another
pâtisserie
—Dalloyau in Paris, for example—is the best. However I am prepared to demonstrate that they are wrong; that they are giving in to habit, personal interest or romanticism. The fundamental questions are the quality of the chocolate, the restraint in using sugar and the resulting variety of separate tastes.

Auer makes the best
opéra
. This is the most definite assertion I would be willing to make. See: A.

THINK TANK
   An organization which invents disinterested intellectual justifications for the policies of the corporate groups that fund it. The result is an unfortunate confusing of knowledge and power. This growth industry now involves 226 important think tanks in the United States, sixty-seven in the United Kingdom, forty-six in Germany, forty-two in France and forty-two in Japan.
⁶
Thinking for money is a venerable
SOPHIST
tradition which has found its place again in the late twentieth century. See:
ACADEMIC CONSULTANTS.

THIRD WORLD
   More a social than an economic model.

It can be opposed to the balanced, integrated model of middle-class compromise which is generally sought after in the West. The Third World is characterized by civilized, rich, highly trained, multilingual élites who govern a weak middle class and, further down, the vast majority of the population. What we call Third World is, in reality, a reconstitution of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western model.

The European and North American technocratic élites, who are generally unilingual, provincial and relatively illiterate except in their particular area of specialization, are often confused by the remarkable sophistication of élites such as the Mexican, who are clearly superior to those of the middle-class model. Our élites conclude that they cannot be the products of a Third World country, but of a more natural, open system better able to respond to the needs of the
GLOBAL
economy.

TOUGH A
   characteristic claimed by presidents and prime ministers as the most important quality for a leader. Their most onerous responsibility.

This suggests a real or false naïveté about the position they occupy. Anyone can be tough once they have the levers of power in their hands. It is the easiest possible attitude, requiring neither courage nor reflection—and least of all intelligence.

Compassion is far more difficult. Effective and fair compassion—not the paternalistic or opportunistic sort—is even more so. Resisting the myriad corruptions of office is hard. Actually creating the best policies and turning them into effective actions requires hard work and intuition. Balancing the long term with the short requires remarkable common sense and intelligence. But being tough is leadership as defined by a sergeant-major.