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Title: Afterthoughts to Technological Slavery
Author: Ted Kaczynski
Date: April 26, 2017
Language: en
Topics: primitivism, anthropology, democracy, revolution
Source: https://www.wildwill.net/blog/2017/04/26/ted-kaczynski-afterthoughts-to-technological-slavery/

Ted Kaczynski

Afterthoughts to Technological Slavery

1.

Ăšltimo Reducto has recently called attention to some flaws in my work.

For example, in ISAIF, paragraph 69, I wrote that primitive man could

accept the risk of disease stoically because “it is no one’s fault,

unless it is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon.” Último

Reducto pointed out that this often is not true, because in many

primitive societies people believe that diseases are caused by

witchcraft. When someone becomes sick the people will try to identify

and punish the witch—a specific person—who supposedly caused the

illness.

Again, in paragraph 208 I wrote, “We are aware of no significant cases

of regression in small-scale technology,” but Último Reducto has pointed

out some examples of regression of small-scale technology in primitive

societies.

The foregoing flaws are not very important, because they do not

significantly affect the main lines of my argument. But other problems

pointed out by Ăšltimo Reducto are more serious. Thus, in the second and

third sentences of paragraph 94 of ISAIF I wrote: “Freedom means being

in control…of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence: food,

clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in

one’s environment. Freedom means having power…to control the

circumstances of one’s own life.” But obviously people have never had

such control to more than a limited extent. They have not, for example,

been able to control bad weather, which in certain circumstances can

lead to starvation. So what kind and degree of control do people really

need? At a minimum they need to be free of “interference, manipulation

or supervision…from any large organization,” as stated in the first

sentence of paragraph 94. But if the second and third sentences meant no

more than that, they would be redundant.

So there is a problem here in need of a solution. I’m not going to try

to solve it now, however. For the present let it suffice to say that

ISAIF is by no means a final and definitive statement in the field that

it covers. Maybe some day I or someone else will be able to offer a

clearer and more accurate treatment of the same topics.

2.

In “The Truth About Primitive Life” and in “The System’s Neatest Trick”

I referred to the “politicization” of American anthropology, and I came

down hard on politically correct anthropologists. See pages [144-149]

and [202-203] of this book. My views on the politicization of

anthropology were based on a number of books and articles I had seen and

on some materials sent to me by a person who was doing graduate work in

anthropology. My views were by no means based on a systematic survey or

a thorough knowledge of recent anthropological literature.

One of my Spanish correspondents, the editor of Isumatag, argued that I

was being unfair to anthropologists, and he backed up his argument by

sending me copies of articles from anthropological journals; for

example, Michael J. Shott, “On Recent Trends in the Anthropology of

Foragers,” Man (N.S.), Vol. 27, No. 4, Dec., 1992, pages 843-871; and

Raymond Hames, “The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate,”Annual Review of

Anthropology, Vol. 36, 2007, pages 177-190.

The editor of Isumatag was right. As he showed me, I had greatly

underestimated the number of American anthropologists who made a

conscientious effort to present facts evenhandedly and without

ideological bias. But even if my point about the politicization of

anthropology was overstated, it still contained a significant element of

truth. First, there are some anthropologists whose work is heavily

politicized. (I discussed the case of Haviland on pages [145, 202-203]

of this book.) Second, some of the anthropologists’ debates seem clearly

to be politically motivated, even if the participants in these debates

do strive to be honest and objective. Consider for example the article

by Raymond Hames cited above, which reviews the anthropological

controversy over whether primitive peoples were or were not good

conservationists. Why should this question be the subject of so much

debate among anthropologists? The reason, obviously, is that nowadays

the problem of controlling the environmental damage caused by industrial

society is a hot political issue. Some anthropologists are tempted to

cite primitive peoples as moral examples from whom we should learn to

treat our environment with respect; other anthropologists perhaps would

prefer to use primitives as negative examples in order to convince us

that we should rely on modern methods to regulate our environment.

Until roughly the middle of the 20th century, industrial society was

extremely self-confident. Apart from a very few dissenting voices,

everyone assumed that “progress” was taking us all to a better and

brighter future. Even the most rebellious members of society—the

Marxists—believed that the injustices of capitalism represented only a

temporary phase that we had to pass through in order to arrive at a

world in which the benefits of “progress” would be shared equally by

everyone. Because the superiority of modern society was taken for

granted, it seldom occurred to anyone to draw comparisons between modern

society and primitive ones, whether for the purpose of exalting

modernity or for the purpose of denigrating it.

But since the mid-20th century, industrial society has been losing its

self-confidence. Thinking people are increasingly affected by doubts

about whether we are on the right road, and this has led many to

question the value of modernity and to react against it by idealizing

primitive societies. Other people, whose sense of security is threatened

by the attack on modernity, defensively exaggerate the unattractive

traits of primitive cultures while denying or ignoring their attractive

traits. That is why some anthropological questions that once were purely

academic are now politically loaded. I realize that the foregoing two

paragraphs greatly simplify a complex situation, but I nevertheless

insist that industrial society’s loss of self-confidence in the course

of the 20th century is a real event.

3.

Disposal of Radioactive Waste. In a letter to David Skrbina dated March

17, 2005, I expressed the opinion, based on “the demonstrated

unreliability of untested technological solutions,” that the

nuclear-waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada likely would prove

to be a failure. See page [315] of this book. It may be of interest to

trace the subsequent history of the Yucca Mountain site as reported in

the media.

On March 18, 2005, The Denver Post, page 4A, carried an Associated Press

report by Erica Werner according to which then-recent studies had found

that water seepage through the Yucca Mountain site was faster than what

earlier studies had reported. The more-rapid movement of water implied a

greater risk of escape of radioactive materials from the site, and there

were reasons to suspect that the earlier studies had been intentionally

falsified.

The Week, January 26, 2007, page 24, reported a new study: “Special new

containers designed to hold nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years

may begin to fall apart in just 210 years,” the study found.

“Researchers…had pinned their hopes on zircon, a material they thought

was stable enough to store the waste…” The scientists had based this

belief on computer simulations, but they were “startled” when they

discovered how alpha radiation affected the “zircon” in reality.

Zircon is a gemstone. The substance referred to in the article

presumably is a ceramic called zirconia. See The New Encyclopdaedia

Britannica, 15th ed., 2003, Vol. 21, article “Industrial Ceramics,”

pages 262-63.

On September 25, 2007, The Denver Post, page 2A, reported: “Engineers

moved some planned structures at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump

after rock samples indicated a fault line unexpectedly ran beneath their

original location…”

On March 6,2009, The Denver Post, page 14A, carried an Associated Press

report by H. Josef Hebert according to which the U.S. Government had

abandoned the plan to store reactor waste at Yucca Mountain. This after

having spent 13.5 billion dollars on the project.

So it appears that the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste is

no closer to a solution than it ever was.

4.

Why is Democracy the Dominant Political Form of the Modern World? The

argument about democracy set forth in my letters to David Skrbina of

October 12 and November 23, 2004 (pages [283-285] and [292-296] of this

book) is incomplete and insufficiently clear, so I want to supplement

that argument here.

The most important point that I wanted to make was that democracy became

the dominant political form of the modern world not as the result of a

decision by human beings to adopt a freer or a more humane form of

government, but because of an “objective” fact, namely, the fact that in

modern times democracy has been associated with the highest level of

economic and technological success.

To summarize the argument of my letters to Dr. Skrbina, democratic forms

of government have been tried at many times and places at least since

the days of ancient Athens, but democracy did not thrive sufficiently to

displace authoritarian systems, which remained the dominant political

forms through the 17th century. But from the advent of the Industrial

Revolution the (relatively) democratic countries, above all the

English-speaking ones, were also the most successful countries

economically and technologically. Because they were economically and

technologically successful, they were also successful militarily. The

economic, technological, and military superiority of the democracies

enabled them to spread democracy forcibly at the expense of

authoritarian systems. In addition, many nations voluntarily attempted

to adopt democratic institutions because they believed that these

institutions were the source of the economic and technological success

of the democracies.

As part of my argument, I maintained that the two great military

contests between the democracies and the authoritarian regimes—World

Wars I and II—were decided in favor of the democracies because of the

democracies’ economic and technological vigor. The astute reader,

however, may object that the democracies could have won World Wars I and

II simply by virtue of their great preponderance in resources and in

numbers of soldiers, with or without any putative superiority in

economic and technological vigor.

My answer is that the democracies’ preponderance in resources and

numbers of soldiers was only one more expression of their economic and

technological vigor. The democracies had vast manpower, territory,

industrial capacity, and sources of raw material at their disposal

because they—especially the British—had built great colonial empires and

had spread their language, culture, and technology, as well as their

economic and political systems, over a large part of the world. The

English-speaking peoples moreover had powerful navies and therefore,

generally speaking, command of the sea, which enabled them to assist one

another in war by transporting troops and supplies to wherever they

might be needed.

Authoritarian systems either had failed to build empires of comparable

size, as in the case of Germany and Japan, or else they had indeed built

huge empires but had left them relatively backward and undeveloped, as

in the case of Spain, Portugal, and Russia. It was during the 18th

century, as the Industrial Revolution was gathering force, that

authoritarian France lost to semidemocratic Britain in the struggle for

colonization of North America and India. France did not achieve stable

democracy until 1871, when it was too late to catch up with the British.

Germany as a whole was politically fragmented until 1871, but the most

important state in Germany—authoritarian Prussia—was already a great

power by 1740[1] and had access to the sea,[2] yet failed to build an

overseas empire. Even after the unification of their country in 1871,

the Germans’ efforts at colonization were half-hearted at best.

Like the English-speaking peoples, the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking

peoples colonized vast territories and populated them thickly, but the

manpower of their territories could not have been used very effectively

in a European war, because these peoples lacked the economic, technical,

and organizational resources to assemble, train, and equip large armies,

transport them to Europe, and keep them supplied with munitions while

they were there. Moreover, they lacked the necessary command of the sea.

The Russians did not need command of the sea in order to transport their

men to a European battlefield, but, as pointed out on page [340] of this

book, note 34, the Russians during World War II did need massive aid

from the West. without which they could not have properly equipped and

supplied their troops.

Thus the Allies’ preponderance in resources and numbers of troops, at

least during World War II, was clearly an expression of the democracies’

economic and technological vigor. The democracies’ superiority was a

consequence not only of the size of their economics, but also of their

efficiency. Notwithstanding the vaunted technical efficiency of the

Germans, it is said that during World War II German productivity per

man-hour was only half that of the United States, while the

corresponding figure for Japan was only one fifth that of the U.S.[3]

Though the case may not have been as clear-cut in World War I, it does

appear that there too the Allies’ superiority in resources and in

numbers of troops was largely an expression of the democracies’ economic

and technological vigor. “In munitions and other war material Britain’s

industrial power was greatest of all…Britain…was to prove that the

strength of her banking system and the wealth distributed among a great

commercial people furnished the sinews of war…”[4] Authoritarian Russia

was not a critical factor in World War I, since the Germans defeated the

Russians with relative ease.

Thus it seems beyond argument that democracy became the dominant

political form of the modern world as a result of the democracies’

superior economic and technological vigor. It may nevertheless be

questioned whether democratic government was the cause of the economic

and technological vigor of the democracies. In the foregoing discussion

I’ve relied mainly on the example of the English-speaking peoples. In

fact, France, following its democratization in 1871 and even before the

devastation wrought by World War I, was not economically vigorous.[5]

Was the economic and technological vigor of the English-speaking peoples

perhaps the result, not of their democratic political systems, but of

some other cultural trait?

For present purposes the answer to this question is not important. The

objective fact is that since the advent of the Industrial Revolution

democracy has been generally associated with economic and technological

vigor. Whether this association has been merely a matter of chance, or

whether there is a causative relation between democracy and economic and

technological vigor, the fact remains that the association has existed.

It is this objective fact, and not a human desire for a freer or a more

humane society, that has made democracy the world’s dominant political

form.

It is true that some peoples have made a conscious decision to adopt

democracy, but it can be shown that in modern times (at least since,

say, 1800) such decisions have usually been based on a belief (correct

or not) that democracy would help the peoples in question to achieve

economic and technological success. But even assuming that democracy had

been chosen because of a belief that it would provide a freer or a more

humane form of government, and even assuming that such a belief were

correct, democracy could not have thriven under conditions of

industrialization in competition with authoritarian systems if it had

not equalled or surpassed the latter in economic and technological

vigor.

Thus we are left with the inescapable conclusion that democracy became

the dominant political form of the modern world not through human choice

but because of an objective fact, namely, the association of democracy,

since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, with economic and

technological success.

It is my opinion that we have now reached the end of the era in which

democratic systems were the most vigorous ones economically and

technologically. If that is true, then we can expect democracy to be

gradually replaced by systems of a more authoritarian type, though the

external forms of democratic government will probably be retained

because of their utility for propaganda purposes.

5.

Popular Rebellion as a Force for Reform. On pages [345 note 121,

322—323] of this book I stated that in the early 20th century labor

violence in the United States impelled the government to carry out

reforms that alleviated the problems of the working class. This

statement was based on my memory of things read many years earlier.

Recent reading and rereading lead me to doubt that the statement is

accurate.

It’s true that labor violence during the 1890s seems to have spurred

efforts at reform by the government and by industry between about 1896

and 1904, but the effect was short-lived.[6] The great turning point in

the struggle of the American working class was the enactment in the

1930s of legislation that guaranteed workers the right to organize and

to bargain collectively, and this turning point was followed by a “sharp

decline in the level of industrial violence.”[7] But I’m not aware of

any evidence that the legislation was motivated by a desire to prevent

labor violence.

The data support the conclusion that labor violence was damaging to

labor unions and counterproductive in relation to the workers’ immediate

goals.[8] On the other hand, it seems clear that labor violence could

not have been ended except by addressing the grievances of the working

class.[9] Thus, the threat of violence could have impelled the

government to enact legislation guaranteeing the workers’ right to

organize and to bargain collectively. But, again, I don’t know of any

evidence that this was actually what happened.

Be that as it may, we can dispense with the labor movement for present

purposes. The revolt of American black people (the “civil rights

movement”) of the 1950s and 1960s can serve to illustrate the points I

tried to make on page [345 note 121] and pages [322-323] of this book.

And it’s easy to give other examples of cases in which popular revolt,

short of revolution, has forced governments to pay attention to people’s

grievances. Thus, the Wat Tyler Rebellion in England (1381) failed as a

social revolution, but it impelled the government to refrain from

enforcing the poll tax that was the immediate cause of the revolt.[10]

The Sepoy Mutiny in India (1857-58) was ruthlessly crushed, but it

caused the British to drop their effort to impose westernizing social

changes upon Hindu civilization.[11]

[1] Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 20, article “Germany,” page 96.

[2] The fact that Prussia’s access was to the Baltic Sea rather than

directly to the Atlantic was not a terribly important factor in the 18th

century, when round-the-world voyages were nothing very extraordinary;

still less was it important in the 19th century, when sailing ships of

advanced design, and later steamships, made voyages to all parts of the

world a routine matter. Even the tiny duchy of Courland, situated at the

eastern end of the Baltic, made a start at overseas colonization during

the 17th century (Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 3, article “Courland,”

page 683), so there was certainly no physical obstacle to Prussia’s

doing the same in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[3] John Keegan, The Second World War, Penguin, 1990, page 219.

[4]

B. H. Liddell Hart, The Real War, 1914-1918, Little, Brown and

Company, 1964, page 44.

[5] Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 19, article “France,” page 521.

[6] Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America: A History, third edition, AHM

Publishing Corporation, Northbrook, Illinois, 1966, pages 166-179,

183-88, 193-99, 204-05.

[7] Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (editors), Violence in

America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Signet Books, New

York, 1969, pages 343-45, 364-65.

[8] Ibid., pages 361-62.

[9] Ibid., pages 364-66.

[10] Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 9, article “Peasants’ Revolt,” pages

229-230.

[11] Ibid., Vol. 6, article “Indian Mutiny,” pages 288-89.