Chapter 2. The Sociology of Technique
According to Jacques Ellul, technique refers to the rational methodology developed to attain organizational goals in the most efficient manner possible, given the present level of technology and the degree of social organization. In modern society, technique has expanded its reach into all areas of human life. The development of technique in the contemporary era dwarfs all previous societies in its reach and effectiveness. In his seminal work, The Technological Society (1964), Ellul analyzes technique as a sociological phenomenon: that is, how its development has affected political, economic, and social life.
Although most social scientists have associated technique with machine production, it is much more than that. As an efficient organization of parts to achieve a desired end, the machine is a model of pure technique. Mechanization was introduced to traditional societies on a massive scale in the 19th century and created inhuman conditions for many men, women, and children—hard labour, low wages, long hours, and ghettos—as well as environmental exploitation. The initial Industrial Revolution caused tremendous human misery, calling into question governments, economic systems, and the entire social order. Technique is an integrating mechanism of technological society, bringing traditional institutions, norms, and values in line with the needs of technical civilization. It rationalizes economic, political, and social life to serve the needs of efficiency and productivity of the entire society (Ellul, 1964, p. 5). It places great power and authority in the hands of elites who dominate the institutional structure of modern societies.
For Ellul, rational social organization is another form of technique. Organizational technique consists of a hierarchically organized structure, a specialized and detailed division of labour, standardized rules of procedure, hiring and promotion based on achievement, and a focus on efficiently attaining organizational goals. It embodies the technical process applied to human organization and carries that process to other areas of social life.
As humans spend more time in these rational organizations—daycares, educational institutions, workplaces, unions, professional and social organizations—they are socialized to value observation, logic, and rationality and to control their emotions and personal values in social interactions. This rationalized form becomes integral to the social order and internalized by individuals. Technique precedes science; indeed, it existed from the beginning of human history. Much of the early development of machine technology was the work of tinkerers and experimental geniuses rather than scientists. However, since its modern beginning, science has formed a close association with technique and furthered its scope and power. The technical process is continuous with the Industrial Revolution. Its “true aspect” is mechanical and organizational, and it is enveloping the world (Ellul, 1964, p. 12).
Ellul focuses on the immediate future and the probable expansion of technique over the next century. Societies have not restricted technique to production. The principal front of its expansion today lies in controlling individual behaviour and the ever finer regulation of human societies. Modern civilization is always searching for the most efficient means to achieve desired ends, the spur for developing technical forms and procedures. These forms then replace “natural and spontaneous” actions, Ellul says; they become the right and best way to achieve desired ends (1964, p. 20).
The search for the most efficient means to achieve the goals of an organization—be it simple profit, government distribution of vaccines, provision of primary education for children, or career training for young adults—constantly calls into question actions based on traditions, values, and emotions. Rationality encourages more extensive experimentation and observation in its search for efficiency. The technical process is similar across organizations. The technician analyzes the problem (or the steps needed to achieve a goal) and considers the means available to address it, the probabilities of success by employing various means, and the costs that the organization will bear for employing these means. The technician then selects the most efficient and productive means available to achieve the desired end and then makes appropriate recommendations for action (along with the analysis) to the supervisor in the hierarchy. Thus, Ellul notes, rationality lies at the heart of technical phenomena as it expands into areas historically left to instinct, tradition, values, or chance (1964, p. 20).
The “one best means,” of course, depends on the knowledge base and existing techniques (physical technology and organization) available at the time. In effect, it is a continuous quest. The technological society comprises the “aggregate” of these technical means (Ellul, 1964, p. 21). In addition to physical techniques such as machines (which Ellul declines to discuss because they are so well known) and intellectual techniques such as books, libraries, journals, and the like, he identifies three significant areas where technique is expanding its search for more efficient means.
The first area that Ellul outlines is “economic technique.” He points out that it is concerned almost entirely with production and consumption and consists of the organization of labour around production and distribution technology. Since growth is integral to the health and vitality of capitalist economies, economic planning by governments and corporations is a dominant feature. Although the objects and goals differ from the other areas, the problems and potential solutions within this area are purely technical.
The second area that Ellul discusses is the “technique of organization” and applies to commercial, industrial, government (at all levels), justice, and military organizations. The military applies organizational techniques to warfare, ensuring that weapons, ammunition, water, food, and supplies reach the troops continuously and on time. Logistics “[e]nsures the power of an army at least as much as its weapons” (1964, p. 22). Analogously, organizational techniques are critical to the efficient functioning of the various institutions that comprise modern society’s formal organizational structure.
The third area that Ellul focuses on is “human technique,” such as genetic manipulation, medicine, drugs, propaganda, public relations, advertising, pedagogy, media, and counselling. Here the individual “becomes the object of technique” (1964, p. 22). Technique touches every area of social life, and technology and organization dominate every area. The individual is surrounded by technique and profoundly affected by the technological milieu.
Ellul contends that early hominids were motivated by animal instinct. He asserts that there is a vast gulf between early instinctual behaviour and technical acts performed by later sapiens. Our worship of technique, he writes, might well stem from our “ancestral worship” of the mystery of consciousness and our subsequent creations under its influence (1964, p. 23). Ellul traces the development of technique throughout history, commenting on its growth concurrent with the knowledge base of societies. These advances in knowledge were based on previous technical advances within the culture, though more often through cultural contact with others (1964, p. 27). In his review, Ellul comments on developments in material techniques such as metallurgy, plant and animal domestication, water wheels, mills, and forges as well as organizational developments in civil, judicial, and military techniques.
In addition, Ellul writes of the growth of a “technical state of mind” or the rationalization process (1964, p. 34). Rational behaviour was not prevalent in early human affairs, perhaps because of an intense focus on religious beliefs and a lack of interest in practical activity. Medieval Christianity, for example, would judge technique by religious criteria rather than its success in attaining its goal. This situation only began to change with the Renaissance and the rise of humanism. This “technical state of mind”—or rationality based on experience, observation, and reason—became one of the primary causes of technical development (1964, p. 38).
The 15th century saw the development of the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder, all of which were essential precursors to the Industrial Revolution. The printing press was instrumental in the proliferation, preservation, and retrieval of accurate knowledge. In addition to books and religious tracts, early presses were busy publishing news, technical manuals, maps, and documents for governments and commercial firms. Moreover, with the material inventions of gunpowder and the compass, that century saw advances in navigation, banking, arms, furniture, and architecture. However, Ellul reports almost a complete lack of technical development in the 16th century. He finds little concern in that century for efficiency, systematization, or invention—almost a complete absence of rational goal-oriented behaviour (1964, p. 38). Although he reports significant material advances in agriculture and gun making, the period immediately following the Renaissance had few genuine technological or organizational innovations.
In examining books on law, medicine, and history published between the 16th and 18th centuries, Ellul reports that they are bereft of logical order. There is little connection among the materials, arguments, examples, and proofs. The authors’ stream of consciousness is the only organizing principle (1964, p. 39). As purely personal reflections, such works often contain bits of esoteric and unconnected knowledge in various fields. For example, Ellul recounts that treatises on law might contain bits on alchemy, history, or medicine. The books overflow with personal reflections, a lack of references to previous works by others, and no effort to “search for the best method, all of which are indispensable for technique” (1964, p. 39). He further reports almost a complete lack of specialization within the intellectual classes; instead, the ideal was to seek broad knowledge in various disciplines.
Technical development exploded, of course, with the Industrial Revolution. The revolution was not restricted to machinery and included the development of organizations. Ellul points to the emergence of the modern state, conscious of itself and expanding its functions in coordinating society as a product of the French Revolution. Nation-states developed economic policies, codified laws, and created labour regulations, poor houses, and police and fire departments. The state applied techniques to everything, including fiscal policy, taxation, budgets, plans for roads and bridges, and weights and measures. Militaries were professionalized and more efficiently organized, with mass recruitment and training and an increasing emphasis on mechanization and logistics. All of this represented the expansion of technique into areas long dominated by traditional organizations, customs, and informal community relations. In this sense, Ellul writes, technique is an attempt to master material things as well as social relations utilizing rational plans to “make quantitative what is qualitative, make clear and precise the outlines of nature, take hold of chaos and put order to it” (1964, p. 43).
In his view, mechanical inventions were secondary in importance to organizational techniques in the overall socio-cultural system. Most of these organizational techniques were developed before widespread machine technology was adopted. Why, after centuries of slow technical progress, did technique suddenly erupt in the latter half of the 18th century and into the 19th century? Ellul asserts that a change of attitude began the revolution in organizational and mechanical techniques. He hypothesizes why this change occurred when it did (1964, pp. 43–44).
According to Ellul, the standard answer of relating early technical development to the rise of science does not stand up to close examination. Early technical development resulted from practical application, not from pure scientific research. Ellul writes that the close connection between science and technical invention did not develop until late in the 19th century. The relationship blossomed in the 20th century only when science became captured by technique—its funding and focus becoming a handmaiden to technical development (1964, pp. 44–45). I will explore this relationship in more detail later.
Ellul admits that the utilitarian and pragmatic philosophy of the 18th century did play a limited role in stimulating the development of technique. Such philosophies favoured knowing and exploiting nature, making life easier, and simplifying labour. However, these ideas influenced only a small elite, scarcely enough to mobilize entire populations. There was also general optimism in the latter half of the 18th century, perhaps engendered by better living conditions. Nevertheless, though this might have created conditions favourable to technical development, Ellul argues, it was not enough to explain the incredible blossoming of technique in the 19th century.
Instead, he identifies four phenomena that best explain the transition from traditional civilization to modernity. They were a long and gradual accumulation of technical experience, agricultural development that led to population expansion, an economic environment favourable to innovation, and a weakening of traditional institutions. These factors led to the development of techniques, an increasing emphasis on rationalization, and the application of logic and experience to problem solving and goal seeking in all areas of life—material, organizational, and personal matters (1964, p. 47).
Technical experience refers to the fact that every technique has its roots in previous discoveries and inventions. Often what appears new is the process of combining previous techniques into a coherent whole. Much depends on experience, growth in society’s knowledge base, and a social milieu favourable to the new synthesis. Technical advances in one field—for example, innovations in finance such as joint-stock companies (corporations)—often lead to advances in other fields such as banking, manufacturing, or transportation (Ellul, 1964, p. 48). A long incubation period preceding the 19th century laid the foundation for the seeming explosion of innovation, invention, and discovery.
Ellul identifies population growth as the second factor of the blossoming of technique in the 19th century. He asserts that the literature closely links this growth and technical development. A larger population needs more food, housing, clothing, other necessities, and luxuries that only technical development can supply. He also points out that population growth provides growing markets and labourers, as well as a stimulant to specialization and a more detailed division of labour, all of which are part of the technical process.
Ellul asserts that the third trait of the transformations in the 19th century is an economic structure both stable and flexible enough to encompass massive change. Stability is necessary to encourage innovation and technical research, yet too much rigidity can stifle innovation. The milieu must be able to absorb technical innovation, experiment with different techniques, and engage in further research and development. According to Ellul, Western civilization in the latter half of the 18th-century economy had these characteristics. Although he does not mention it, the rise of capitalism is undoubtedly an important development that provides this needed flexibility.
Ellul identifies the plasticity of the social milieu as the most critical condition for the flowering of technique in the 19th century. Here he refers to the loosening of religious and sociological norms. The Christian Church represented a serious impediment to the development of technique in Western Europe. Many precepts of Christianity were hostile to technical development, and the church was a very conservative institution. Anything new was frowned upon, subject to moral judgment. Traditional and religious values held sway not only among the clergy but also among the laity. These values held fast through the 17th century. In addition, Ellul notes, social norms and values, particularly belief in a social hierarchy, could not be modified (1964, p. 49). These conservative influences were under assault and waning by the 18th and 19th centuries because of the social turmoil caused by technical innovation.
A second impediment to technological development in the 17th and 18th centuries was the existence of strong kinship ties and guilds. Individuals found their occupations, security, and life satisfaction within these small groups. Even though they might have been poor in material goods, these collectives answered the needs of individuals, giving them a sense of community and stability. They were living in balance with their environment; there was no push for constant innovation or creation of new secondary needs. The existence of these solid primary groups serves as an obstacle to the spread of technical innovation since they form a social barrier that can be difficult to cross. Guilds often take this to the extreme, protecting their manufacturing secrets and forbidding available innovations to their members. Guilds and other social divisions can block the diffusion of new techniques from other areas. Ellul adds that modern people have difficulty understanding such traditional environments since they do not know the satisfaction derived from living in such a balanced social world (1964, p. 50).
He points to several causes of the weakening of these ties in the middle of the 18th century, such as the spread of philosophical materialism and the appearance of new religious sects. Materially, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Enclosure Movement took land held in common by village members for growing food or pasturing animals, separating peasants from their means of production and forcing them from the land. The nobility privatized the land, walled it off with fences or hedges, and used it for their own agricultural pursuits. Enclosures threw many rural peasants into crowded cities that were dangerous, crime-ridden, unsanitary environments.
The actions of these elite landowners forced entire families to work long hours for meagre wages in dangerous and unhealthy factories. The industrial machine created the urban proletariat, but it was possible only because of the increasing number of dispossessed people who had nowhere else to live and no other way of providing food and shelter for themselves and their families. Many were ripped from their social mooring—their families and communities destroyed in the process. This “atomization” isolated individuals from their rural surroundings and traditional family and community social groups. Isolation from their traditional milieu made them vulnerable to the direct influence of the state and the economic market, a perfect condition, according to Ellul, for the expansion of technique (1964, p. 51).
In addition to this atomization, technical development created a general intentionality. Invention, innovation, discovery, and change became expected parts of life. Rather than look to a golden age, people began to look to the future and the idea that progress was possible and desirable. Ellul attributes these changes to the “special interests” of the bourgeoisie. The industrial self-interest of this class demanded efficiency to achieve the goals of mass production and profit maximization.
The bourgeoisie also developed financial and business techniques that expanded their capital. This rising middle class saw the potential for ever greater profits from the system by expanding techniques. Those in the capitalist class put their interests in profits, and thus techniques, ahead of the interests of workers’ comfort, safety, and health. The capitalists sacrificed all such considerations so that technique could be free to generate greater profit. Techniques embodied in mechanical devices to increase production made money. Economic organizations that rationally invested resources in labour, mechanical devices, distribution, and marketing increased capital. Moreover, rationalized techniques became favourite methods of capital development (Ellul, 1964, p. 53).
Nevertheless, the motive force behind technical development was not purely economic. The modern state was also interested in political, military, and judicial techniques and sponsored development in the sciences and arts to further its resources, power, and authority. Many of the techniques developed by capitalists were applicable to the development of the modern nation-state.
Techniques employed solely to benefit the bourgeoisie did not endear them to the proletariat or peasant class. The masses, many of whom had been removed from rural life, subjected to inhuman working conditions, 12-hour working days, and terrible living conditions, were often against technique. However, Ellul notes, the capitalists were for it because it created wealth, and the state was for it because it increased its power (1964, p. 54). Marx (and other radicals) wrote that the problem with technique was with the masters of the economy and state, not with technique itself. Marx wrote that the proletariat would eventually liberate all people by taking control of the developed industrial structure and employing it for the benefit of all.
This socialist philosophy—combined with reform movements, protests, popular revolutions, and labour unions—led to the eventual diffusion of a more significant share of the benefits of technology among the working classes. The benefits included shorter working days, less manual labour, improved nutrition and sanitation, and ever-increasing consumer goods. With the growth of corporate and government bureaucracy and the development of professions, a managerial and professional class developed around expertise. This convinced many people that the development of technique could provide ever greater material benefits. Increasing faith in progress was particularly true for the familiar techniques of organizational and material technologies.
The Character of Technique
According to Ellul, the character of technique today is qualitatively different from historical norms. Modernity marked a transition in the number of techniques applied to different areas of social life and the nature of its relationships with society. Traditional societies restricted techniques to certain areas of social life, such as production, consumption (food, clothing, housing), and warfare. However, production and consumption techniques themselves were still limited. Work was considered a curse, not a virtue, as in the modern era, and most premodern people would rather have limited their consumption than worked harder. The goal for most individuals in traditional societies was simply put by the adage “work to live rather than live to work.” Tools used to fashion material life were simple, and any technique was inherent in the worker’s skill rather than the tool or, later, the machine. In addition, traditional societies tended to be local and closed to the outside world, in which family, community, and religious groups were dominant. Transportation and communication were limited, so the diffusion of physical and organizational techniques was slow. Technique was embedded in the local milieu and slowly evolved through trial and error, experience, and happenstance (Ellul, 1964, p. 70).
Because technique evolved slowly before the 18th century, there was time for the social order to adapt. Many Western societies had time to absorb changing technologies and the growth of formal organizations and to control their influence. People adapted techniques to their needs, Ellul argues, accepting those that fit their society or modifying or rejecting them if needed (1964, p. 72). He emphasizes that it was not technical considerations alone that determined traditional operations and tools; many aesthetic considerations were also incorporated.
These other considerations are at the heart of Max Weber’s and Jacques Ellul’s views on premodern societies: “To obey a multiplicity of motives and not reason alone seems to be an important keynote of man. When, in the nineteenth century, society began to elaborate an exclusively rational technique which acknowledged only considerations of efficiency, it was felt that not only the traditions, but the deepest instincts of humankind had been violated” (Ellul, 1964, p. 73). One can easily suppose that by “instincts” in this context Ellul is referring to human values, traditions, and emotions. Weber maintained that there are four primary motivators of human behaviour—tradition, emotions, values, and formal rationality—with formal goal-oriented rationality becoming ever more dominant in modern societies. According to Weber, the increasing dominance of formal rationality has been the result of the growth of population, a complex industrial infrastructure, and the resulting bureaucratization of the social structure. Ellul’s theory of technique is an independently arrived-at theory of rationalization, which Ellul follows with detailed analyses of its effects on both individuals and society.
To support his contention of aesthetic concerns affecting technical products, Ellul remarks that many early manufactured goods added decorative flourishes, such as sewing machines with cast-iron flowers or tractors with iron bulls’ heads on their hoods. He also carries this observation to more abstract techniques and their relations to moral values, commenting on political and economic techniques in the initial stages of development concerned with moral theories and rights, liberty, freedom, equality, and justice. Many of our social institutions are steeped in these values and even have them expressed in their mission statements. However, these values are anachronisms, Ellul writes, and have no significant impact on further technique development. When these “moral flourishes” stand in the way of progress, they are abandoned and then forgotten. “This is the state we are in today” (1964, p. 73). The gradual elimination of the non-rational and the focus on immediate goals are characteristic of Weber’s rationalization process.
The continued evolution of technique is based on two factors: efficient attainment of goals and adaptation to the social and natural environments. There is now an emphasis on differentiated technical instruments—mechanical and organizational—to achieve specialized ends. For example, Ellul points to French military aircraft (five broad categories from tactical bombers to transport planes and 13 different subtypes) and lubricating oils (15 distinct types for automobiles from one major refiner). One can also observe differences in organizational structures among manufacturing corporations, universities, financial institutions, hospitals, and service organizations. However, the fundamental bureaucratic hierarchy of specialized offices and a focus on efficiency remains intact.
A second general characteristic of modern techniques that Ellul describes parallels the “iron cage” that Weber outlines. Ellul argues that technique was not overwhelming in traditional societies, and individuals and their primary groups had opportunities to reject material and organizational innovations and still live productive lives. The reach of centralized governments was limited, and individuals could often evade their reach by moving to the countryside to evade military service, Nazis (in Ellul’s case), or taxes. In premodern societies, there was not yet a critical mass of techniques that would feed off one another. There was no general belief in progress, no push for discovery or invention. Innovation and its implementation in the social order were slower paced, and human decisions often blocked or delayed wholesale adaptation (1964, p. 77). Ellul argues that human choice regarding technological development is now almost absent in modern society. One can certainly see this with general artificial intelligence; the discussion among technicians repeatedly asserts that there is no stopping or even slowing down its development despite the apparent dangers of the technology.
Modern Technique
Technique has many positive attributes, material and organizational, making it almost irresistible. Nevertheless, modernity marked a change in the relationship between technique and society. Ellul offers nine characteristics of this changed relationship: (1) technique knows no limits; (2) it encompasses all areas of social life; (3) it has led to a multiplication of means; (4) it is constantly perfecting these means; (5) it is evolving at an ever-quickening pace; (6) its transmission is rapid through technical development of communication and transportation systems; (7) it extends throughout the globe; (8) it poses severe problems to the natural environment and human groups and organizations; and (9) it leads to a homogenization of civilizations (1964, p. 78). The relationship between technique and society continues to change and become more encompassing and profound each year.
According to Ellul, five essential characteristics of modern technique bear some elaboration. The first is application of a rational process that brings logic and experience to bear on all that was informal and spontaneous in the past (1964, p. 78). This rationality again parallels Weber’s analysis and consists of applying logic, experiment, observation, calculability, standardization, and rational thought processes in fashioning means to achieve goals. From there, Ellul goes further than Weber in elaborating additional characteristics of the process of rationalization.
The second characteristic of modern technique, according to Ellul, is artificiality. At best, the means used to attain goals are artificial, seeking to manipulate and redirect elements of the natural or social world. However, they are often worse. Rather than living in a symbiotic relationship with nature, technique seeks to conquer nature, bend natural forces to its will, and exploit the Earth and its creatures. The technological imperative, as well as capitalism pushing that imperative, seeks perpetual growth. However, endless growth is something that the world ecology cannot accommodate. The resulting problems—such as pollution, depletion, and mass extinction—must be addressed by further technical innovation. Such environmental impacts have worsened since Ellul wrote, including climate change, habitat destruction, widespread extinctions, and water and air pollution. However, if we weather all that (which is doubtful without massive social change), Ellul foresees a day when there will not be any natural environment; it will all be crafted for human use (1964, p. 79).
The third characteristic of modern technical means that Ellul identifies is technical automatism, meaning that once the “one best way” has been found the technique is adopted throughout the socio-cultural system (1964, p. 79). Measurement, observation, and rationality are all employed to find the most efficient technique to achieve a given goal. Once determined, there is no human choice in the matter; technique itself selects from among the available means. The individual simply becomes a recording device of the results of the various measurements and data determined by the various techniques; the “choice” can only be the one technique—organizational or physical technology—that produces the highest degree of efficiency.
Although technique might follow its automatic development, social structures can inhibit it. Most observers insist that capitalism is an excellent accelerator of technique. However, Ellul argues that capitalism can often check the advance of technical development if that development cannot produce a profit or preserve its monopoly on a less effective product. Patent protections and copyrights are legal devices to check technical development, but financial considerations also play a direct role in the suppression of innovation. Citing Thorstein Veblen, Ellul points out that, despite its reputation for being a powerhouse of innovation, corporate capitalism must often act to stifle it (1964, p. 81).
The goal of technical development is to fashion more efficient means to achieve higher rates of production. Capitalism cannot always adopt these innovations because of its investment in previous technologies; corporations need time to pay for the old machines before purchasing new ones (Ellul, 1964, p. 81). At one time, many people thought that competition would spur capitalists to adopt innovative technology or go out of business. However, this is a time of corporate capitalism, and many innovations can be ignored or even suppressed for profit.
Yet Ellul maintains that technical automatism continues to challenge the limits placed on it by capitalism. Capitalism has proven periodically to be incapable of distributing all of the goods that it has produced, leading to the crisis of overproduction, falling profit, recession, and high unemployment. Ellul points out that this is the “old schema of Marx,” which he believes has much validity. He agrees with Marx’s prediction that capitalism must ultimately be crushed by this automatism, “for everything can be called into question (God first of all), except technical progress” (1964, p. 82).
Ellul asserts that we are now in an era in which physical technologies and organizational techniques continue to advance and spread to areas of human society once closed to them. To be clear, there are still spontaneous and unorganized areas of life, and there might still be room for such human activities in the future. However, technique is expanding into many of these spontaneous events. Moreover, when it expands in these areas, it tends to transform or destroy them. Again, this expansion is the result not of a conscious effort or a directive of the will but of technique’s automatic process. When technique advances into non-technical activity, it transforms it into technical activity (1964, p. 83). It is goal-oriented behaviour, constantly questioning means and devising better ways to achieve ends. It is impossible to compete without developing ever more efficient technical means. One can see this today with the expansion of home health care, elderly daycare, assisted living, nursing homes, hospices, and other services for the elderly, progressively replacing non-technical family and community services in American society.
We live in an era when social evolution transforms much of social life into technical means. Previous technical developments have often caused present problems—environmental problems of climate change, pollution, and habitat destruction, to name the most severe. Socially, the growth of technique has led to changes in community and family life, workplace alienation, industrial warfare, and drug abuse, to name a few. Our posited solutions to these problems almost always involve further innovation or proliferation of material technology or organization. It is as if societies are addicted to technique; a technical fix is necessary to address the technical problems that previous technical solutions caused. Organizations rarely consider other solutions, such as abandoning or restricting harmful technologies. Technique is expanding. Like Midas, it transforms all that it touches and eventually touches all.
Technological self-augmentation is the fourth characteristic of modern technology that Ellul notes. He points out that technique has become so powerful and valuable in achieving goals that modern people all work to further it, almost without thought. In every field and organization, thousands of people work to improve procedural and mechanical means to attain the goals set by their organizations more efficiently. This collective effort—seeking minor improvements and advanced by informal and formal research—goes on worldwide. It is motivated by the drive for greater efficiency and productivity, part of the mindset of modern humanity. This “accretion of manifold minute details” is how technique advances through the joint efforts of thousands (1964, p. 86). Ellul remarks that the fact that many inventions are developed simultaneously in various parts of the world testifies to the nature of technological advance through this process of slow accretion and self-augmentation. He further posits that this exact process is present in scientific discoveries, which points not only to this cumulative process of small steps leading to significant discoveries but also to the fact that technique governs science.
Another element of the self-augmentation process is its connection to national wealth. Wealthy countries can employ techniques to maximum effect. Once deep history puts the nation-state in an ideal geographic location and capital is accumulated, a feedback loop is sometimes set in motion (“sometimes” because many economic, social, and political factors are involved as well). Technical advancement leads to wealth accumulation, Ellul points out, which is then employed in furthering technical advancement to accumulate even more wealth (1964, p. 87). This feedback loop, of course, is the capitalist system. Although Ellul tends to downplay the role of capital as one of the factors that initiated the technical age, it continues to supply much of the motive force behind the growth of technique.
However, another example of the self-augmentation of technique is more self-generating. Innovative techniques provide the conditions for further technical advancement. Ellul points to the internal combustion engine and its technological advances in transportation, military and civilian logistics, military strategy, and many other developments. For example, the automobile has changed living patterns, causing problems such as urban sprawl, pollution, traffic congestion, and accidents. Freeway and highway construction and accidents destroy neighbourhoods and often lead to even more congestion. Switching to the automobile as the primary system of transportation in the United States has led not only to unprecedented geographic mobility but also to many problems that further technical developments must address.
Technical developments in one field often spread to other fields. Another example is the introduction of garbage disposal units in kitchen sinks that allow people to flush food waste into our rivers and streams, causing pollution and fish die-off. Add to these problems the chemical and animal waste runoff from industrial farms, leading to developments in pollution regulation, water purification technologies, fish farming, and bottled water companies (Ellul, 1964, p. 87).
Ellul’s observation is that self-augmentation of technical development is an accelerating phenomenon. The more factors there are, the more they combine, and the more evident is the urgent need for each technical advance. Today one must look at the myriad problems caused by developments in social media, medical drugs, carbon dioxide, methane pollution, genetics, widespread habitat destruction, and war—all of which are rooted in technique. Furthermore, technological societies will require further development of techniques (organizational and physical technologies) to address these problems or die trying.
Ellul formulates two laws regarding the self-augmentation of technique. First, within a given society, technical progress is irreversible. This is true because technical advances in one area engender further advances in other areas. Ellul posits a caveat, though: if a society collapses, then some technical procedures will be lost to successor societies. Second, technical progress tends to advance geometrically. Ellul points to “operational research” in the military that spreads to other organizations in business and government. In addition, different techniques often combine and lead to further advances. The greater the accumulation of techniques, the greater the possible innovations and combinations (1964, p. 91).
The most important point that Ellul makes about the self-augmentation of technique is that it necessarily leads to a shrinking role for the individual in guiding technical evolution (1964, p. 92). Although people remain necessary for technical advancement, they are primarily anonymous technicians, taking the next small steps in an extensive number of small steps in development. Rather than individual genius, technical advancement increasingly depends on combining already-developed technologies. Furthermore, their development depends on the material, social, or individual problems that they are designed to address.
The fifth characteristic of technique that Ellul identifies is “monism.” He notes a unity or holism in technique, an essence common to all technical phenomena that sets it apart from all other aspects of nature. There are principles that radios and gasoline engines have in common, as do an office building, an airplane, a printing press, and a newspaper (1964, p. 95). Techniques might differ in many secondary respects, but they are all of a kind, making it relatively easy to discern technical from natural phenomena. This almost indefinable something that sets technique apart from nature might be the result of its inherent rationality and artificiality.
Whereas some people make distinctions among the uses to which technique is put—be they for good or ill—Ellul insists that such distinctions are futile. The use is inseparable from the technique itself. All techniques are of a standard form, and all are united. Employing techniques means that society must take all of the uses to which they can be applied. They cannot be abused; they are only used. To illustrate his point, Ellul imagines that a new machine is developed that increases the productive power of a factory, which throws hundreds of people out of work. The capitalist says that this is the nature of an economy. Technical innovation causes creative destruction, but the workers released will eventually find new jobs. Faced with a comparable situation, the socialist responds that the liberated workers can be used elsewhere and sends them to another part of the country to work at other jobs. Ellul points out that both “solutions” are inhumane. The worker for a capitalist firm must spend a significant period of time unemployed; the worker for a socialist firm must move to another part of the country, away from extended family members, friends, and roots. People are not things that can be moved at will or refashioned to suit the economy’s needs. Nonetheless, the economy treats them as things, an inevitable adaptation that individuals and societies make to the advancement of technique (1964, p. 104).
Technique evolves not to serve humankind or to achieve some moral end. It is a method to achieve an end as efficiently as possible given the contemporary level of knowledge. It is a blind evolutionary process; previous elements combine with new elements, Ellul argues, ever accelerating as the elements multiply “in a domain of integral causality” (1964, p. 97). As an example, he writes of the evolution of policing techniques. In his day, crime detection and action consisted of telephone taps, suspect files, and crowd control. Ellul asserts that these techniques will be applied everywhere possible to ensure that criminals are apprehended and that order is maintained. He posits that the police will have to cast an ever wider net and eventually monitor the activities of all citizens. In addition, physical technology and organization will develop to surveil, store, and access data more efficiently and correlate this information. Consistent with his predictions, today’s policing consists of cell phone and online tracking, pervasive surveillance monitoring (e.g., traffic, commercial establishments, pedestrian walkways, airports, and sports events), facial recognition software (combined with surveillance), identification of suspects through tip lines, and cell phone and traffic sign alerts. The development and employment of these policing techniques have accelerated in the age of international and domestic terrorism.
Ellul is not writing here about old-style authoritarian control of the population through tactics of terror, arbitrary arrest, and continual stop and frisk. The most efficient technique of control is more subtle and pervasive but hardly felt by citizens. In the modern surveillance state, all individuals are known to law enforcement; all actions can be traced and correlated, and all live under surveillance. Technical perfection is totalitarian; it means total control. There is a subjective aspect of the need for power and control among some law enforcement officers, for the profession attracts individuals with such needs. However, Ellul asserts that it is technique itself that demands order and control, creating the environment and parameters for police procedures (1964, p. 100).
Ellul foresees a time when constant and pervasive surveillance, combined and coordinated with administrative, organizational, and psychosocial (or human) techniques, will closely coordinate the thoughts and actions of a population. He writes that the most potent human technique, of course, is propaganda. This all-pervasive technique plays a leading role in conditioning a population on the necessity of police power to keep order, justifying its actions, and making it seem normal and reasonable. Ellul writes that this is true not only of dictatorial regimes but also of Western democracies, where movies and TV shows often depict the police as the protectors of society.
By necessity, Ellul predicts, security needs will grow over time. There will come a time when the police or some other social control agency will be responsible for the re-education of social misfits and deviants. This goal is inevitable in establishing social order (1964, p. 102). Ellul bases this projection not on some transitory authoritarian regime or an evil nation-state bent on authoritarian control but on the needs of technique. The increasing complexity and volume of our resource extraction and production processes and the environmental and human impacts of these activities have led to the tightening coordination of people and the need for order. Social order has become one of our highest priorities. The need for order results from the technical evolutionary process, the “accretion of a thousand technical details” (1964, p. 103).
Moreover, each step toward efficiency and order gives a mostly approving population a greater sense of security. Again, Ellul does not foresee a reign of terror, torture, and confinement for Western democracies. Instead, he asserts that technical necessity demands order, which surveillance and propaganda techniques can best achieve. Such techniques can soften and hide power so that the individual does not even recognize the manipulation. It is a new form of totalitarianism, made possible and necessary with the development of technique.
All techniques have intended consequences (manifest functions in sociology) and unintended consequences (latent functions and dysfunctions). The use of technique will inevitably involve manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions, many of which neither governments nor corporations can foresee. According to Ellul, history shows that every technical application has latent dysfunctions, many of which cause more harm to society or the planet than the positive manifest functions of employing the technique itself.
There are now techniques to analyze the latent functions of social programs and material technologies, planned environmental disruptions, and the like. For example, the United States has adopted a National Environmental Impact Assessment system that considers proposed environmental changes by systematically examining all relevant information about the proposed changes and possible alternatives and their impacts. These procedures advise decision makers on the most environmentally sound options for achieving proposed objectives. However, the assessment of technique’s impacts is not restricted to the environment, and impact assessments have been used to gauge the effects of proposed changes on health care, communities, cultural heritage, and political participation. “Impact assessment, simply defined, is the process of identifying the future consequences of a current or proposed action. IAIA [International Association for Impact Assessment] is the leading global network on best practices in the use of impact assessment for informed decision making regarding policies, programs, plans and projects. Members of IAIA believe that impact assessment is a practical tool for helping meet today’s needs without compromising the opportunities of future generations” (IAIA, 2024, para. 1). However, as we have learned through experience, protecting the environment, people, or our cultural heritage is not always the primary consideration of politicians and capitalists.
In addition, these impact techniques often fail to account for all of the consequences of a planned action, though as techniques their efficiency and effectiveness are constantly improving. For example, the development of powerful computers and big data helps to analyze planned changes, but they, too, are techniques and have many dysfunctions for the socio-cultural system. Furthermore, social and environmental problems are mounting, so social pressure exists to employ new techniques as rapidly as possible, often before all of the ramifications can be studied. Reality is complicated and interrelated, and it is impossible to assess a given technique from the perspective of all relevant disciplines before it is employed (Ellul, 1964, p. 105).
The use of any technique mixes both good and harmful effects. Ellul gives another example, medical techniques employed to save lives and increase longevity. These techniques have led to a population explosion, widespread poverty, and hunger. It is not that a technique is employed for good or bad use; it is that it is employed at all (1964, p. 109). The good cannot be accepted, and the bad rejected, for they are part of a whole. The manifest functions of all techniques are efficient ordering, and the latent functions are sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always present. Ellul writes that one cannot choose from among the effects of technique. Such a “belief means that the essence of the technical phenomenon has not been grasped” (1964, p. 111).
Linking Techniques
All of the different techniques are linked. Ellul illustrates this by reviewing the textile industry’s beginnings, with the flying shuttle’s invention in 1773 creating an oversupply of yarn, thus calling forth the invention of the spinning jenny, which then called forth the invention of the loom. Increasing the production of one machine upsets “the equilibrium of production” and calls forth the development of more technology to restore equilibrium at a higher level of production (1964, p. 112). Modern processes of production develop various machines and organizational techniques to process raw materials and fashion them into commodities at an ever-quickening pace.
Capitalists, communists, and socialists expanded factories to produce more products and create and market new products, and their organizations became more extensive and complex. Size and complexity demand organization and planning, not only of machines but also of workers and material resources. Tremendous amounts of capital must be secured to build the factories and purchase the machines. Furthermore, technicians must devise management systems to coordinate plants and supply chains, transportation systems to distribute goods, and commercial enterprises and advertising to sell the increasing volume and variety of the material and service goods produced.
Technological civilization built various systems over time in interaction with one another, with developments in one calling for innovations in others. However, there was still a need for a single entity to coordinate the multitude of techniques necessary for a fully functioning modern economic system. Coordination necessitated the development of the modern nation-state, much more powerful and effective in creating the conditions for economic development, establishing monetary policies and central banks, enforcing contracts and labour laws, and coordinating transportation and communication systems. The nation-state is a key component of capital development; without an active state, the capitalist economy would never have attained worldwide dominance (Ellul, 1964, p. 115).
Nevertheless, Ellul continues, technicians (managers, professionals, and government officials) recognized early on that compulsion and force were insufficient to coordinate the modern economy effectively. Reliance on coercion alone required significant effort in terms of labour and resources to keep individuals in line. In a society that depends on bureaucracy, professional services, and marketing, it is not enough to have people’s physical commitment; the people must believe in the system. This need for commitment necessitated the development of systems of education, propaganda, and psychic manipulation to reinforce the economic, political, and social order. The modern nation-state coordinates a complete and complicated socio-cultural system. Ellul claims that eliminating or changing any part will have ramifications for other parts and the entire system, though the entire system undergoes continuous rationalization and growth.
Ellul also identifies a technical universalism in which technique expands its influence geographically and qualitatively into new areas of social life. All countries increasingly apply technical procedures to economic, political, and social activities. Two primary forces drive this expansion: commerce and war. Colonial wars allowed European nations to export military technology—the machinery of war, military organization, strategies, and tactics—worldwide. Colonial people were initially awed by the power that such techniques gave to the conquerors and soon came to emulate them. Arms trafficking and rebellions against the colonial system were sporadic at first but eventually became better organized and armed. The Second World War also allowed many colonial peoples to participate in modern warfare, further training them in organized conflict. After that war, the colonies adapted modern warfare techniques to liberate themselves from their invaders.
The second factor of the spread of technique around the globe, also related to colonialism, was the need for commerce to expand its reach for raw materials, cheap labour, and growing markets. Beyond traditional colonialism, rapidly disappearing when Ellul wrote, there is “technical subordination.” Rather than exercising outright political control, powerful countries exert economic and political pressure to exploit the less powerful. The political competition between the two superpowers at the time, the Soviet Union and the United States, was fierce to subordinate and incorporate less developed nations into their spheres of influence (1964, p. 119). This Cold War competition served as a model for technical subordination for Ellul. However, economic neo-colonialism now goes beyond the superpowers. It consists of exploiting poor countries’ natural resources, labour, and markets to benefit prosperous economies throughout the global economic system (Wallerstein, 2000).
The speed of communication and transportation also aids this technical universalism. Technical information and products could be spread worldwide in a brief time during Ellul’s writing and instantly in the 21st century. Furthermore, all countries must standardize their development of infrastructure. Military and civilian ships’ enormous sizes and capacities necessitate “continually improved port installations” worldwide. Passenger and freight airlines require massive airports, air traffic control, and close coordination among nation-states (1964, pp. 119–120).
Another element of technical universalism is the movement of technicians among countries. After the Second World War, German scientists relocated to the United States and the Soviet Union. Thus, the war spread German technology internationally, including advanced military and civilian uses of rockets and jets. Cassidy quotes Douglass O’Reagan, a historian who studied the era (2019, para. 2), who said that it was “the largest-scale technology transfer program in history, aimed at almost every field of industrial technology and academic science.” In the present day, the movement of technicians among countries—say, oil and gas technicians to the Middle East—is a form of the assimilation of citizens of less developed countries into the technical way of life.
The extension of European- and American-style education and the long tradition of recruiting international students to American universities are also mechanisms of the technical invasion of the globe (Ellul, 1964, p. 120). This invasion, Ellul adds, is not the simple addition of new values and elements to old cultural ways and traditions. It is not a matter of putting “new wine into old bottles; it does not introduce new content into old forms. The old bottles are all being broken. The old civilizations collapse on contact with the new” (1964, p. 121). This collapse involves cultural, social, economic, and often political forms, affecting the entire life of the socio-cultural system for generations. The mode of subsistence changes, ecology is disrupted, people form new institutions and groups as geographic and social distances separate them, and new values supplant old ones. The collapse of traditional culture often critically affects the psychological health of individuals.
In Western societies, technical development occurred over many years, but even then it radically changed traditional structures such as the family and community, with which technological societies are still struggling. One only needs to think of how much more devastating its effects must be when traditional societies are suddenly hit with techniques in all of their forms. Ellul asserts that we are ill equipped to deal with the cultural breakdown that technique is causing throughout the world and to deal with the destruction of traditional rural life, urbanization, slums, soaring unemployment, widespread poverty, and malnutrition for many. He does not doubt that such techniques will destroy traditional cultures before they can develop new social, economic, or psychological adaptations. Technical societies continue to exploit the economies of these traditional societies, whose domestic production craters. In the political sphere, Ellul reports, the collapse of traditional societies has taken the form of either dictatorship or anarchy.
Traditional societies had a unity of economic, political, and social aspects in which the family and community had significant roles. In such societies, these primary groups held the allegiance of their members because they were essential in allocating goods, socialization, and education of the young as well as labour, power, and authority within society. They served as the mediators between larger economic and political institutions of society and individuals. However, in a technical society, many functions are separated from primary groups and allocated to specialized institutions. Primary groups no longer play significant roles in providing mutual aid, production, child care, education, distribution of goods and services, and welfare. Many of their essential functions, group meanings, and identities are lost, thus affecting the overall social system (Ellul, 1964, p. 126).
In addition to geographical expansion, technique is expanding into every area of social life, both inorganic and organic. Ellul writes that an inversion is taking place. In traditional societies, a technique was merely one of many elements integrated with traditions, customs, values, and beliefs. In technical civilization, its influence is expanded first to the inorganic, in which machines assist and replace human labour, and then, most recently, to the organic, in which human beings become its objects as means to technical ends. The necessity of efficient production and consumption mandates that the individual “submit to technical efficiency and systematization, the end point of the industrial assembly line” (Ellul, 1964, p. 128). This is Ellul at his most pessimistic (most Weber-like), positing humans as cogs in a social system.
He argues that technique is the prime mover in social evolution, despite the hubris of humans, and that social change is determined by their will, philosophy, and economic or political regime (1964, p. 133). As previously argued, technique advances by combining prior discoveries with small steps almost independent of human volition. Ellul asserts that individuals are mere “catalysts” in technical development. At one point, he compares individuals to “a slug inserted into a slot machine”; they start the process but have no further role in it—a cog in a social system (1964, p. 164).
Like Émile Durkheim, Jacques Ellul recognizes that specialization of the labour force, a characteristic of technical work, often destroys community bonds. Detail workers often lose connections to their fellow human beings, failing to understand each other’s vocabularies, interests, and motivations. Their professions often become their whole lives, with their jargon and world view, living in a closed universe to others (1964, p. 132).
Ellul forecasts a day when technological advances will free the worker from guiding the machine, only watching it and repairing it when necessary. The goal of freeing humans from toil is a long-held ideal, but it is not the only impetus behind automation. There is also the fact that people are unpredictable, make mistakes, and cause errors. We make terrible machines. We are subject to fatigue, need sick days, engage in labour strife and backtalk, and sometimes “make unpredictable choices” out of loyalty, emotional upset, or stupidity. Machines are precise, rational, and untiring, and their use demands the same from their human tenders. The tendency, Ellul notes, is thus to limit the human factor in production (1964, p. 136). He adds that computers (which he calls electronic brains) will soon be able to perform intellectual tasks that surpass human performance in many areas (1964, p. 137).
Because of the unpredictability of people, technique expands into work life, seeking to transform human beings into technical animals. Human techniques are psychosocial techniques designed to manipulate the behaviour of people to conform. These techniques include activities such as education, training, entertainment, psychological tests, bureaucratic rules, counselling, and propaganda. They have evolved to eliminate personal idiosyncrasies, thus limiting disruption to both production and social organization (Ellul, 1964, p. 138). For example, workers in many technical jobs—say, jet pilot or nuclear worker—must be calm and composed. Applicants for these careers are tested for these characteristics and selected accordingly. Although these examples might be extreme, Ellul writes, the more technique evolves, the more applicants will be selected based on meeting the job’s technical requirements. The human sciences will be tasked with testing, sorting, and directing people based on their personality traits and physical and mental capacities.
Again, Ellul contends that capitalism often retards technical advancement. Businesses will decline to adopt techniques if the cost-benefit ratio is negative. Historically, capitalism and its drive for ever-increasing profits have intensified technical developments in resource extraction, manufacturing, service industries, and administration. Capitalism has pushed rationalization of the political economy wherever it can be made to turn a profit. Nevertheless, as both Marx and Ellul point out, the need for profit can be a fetter on the growth of technique.
The point of all techniques is to be both efficient and effective. To be most effective, technical society will be adaptable and transparent, giving individuals the illusion of freedom and control over their lives. Power and authority will be exercised through the ever more sophisticated methods of surveillance and manipulation provided by science (including the social and psychological sciences) and technique. Through techniques of targeted propaganda, press management, big data, computer and phone tracking, and the rise of the therapeutic perspective, technological society will exert its power more efficiently than was possible in the past. Furthermore, with each passing year, social organizations will exercise that power more effectively. Individuals will not be able to escape it; it cannot tolerate the refusal of its bounty. Technique will integrate individuals into the social whole to the point that they will consider it wrong to aspire to any other form of life; it will be impossible to disengage from it. Because technique is autonomous, we cannot choose our means any more than our ends (Ellul, 1964, pp. 139–140).
Again, Ellul reminds us that we cannot choose which parts of a technique we will accept and which we will reject; it is an all-or-nothing proposition. Suppose we seek to use a technique to achieve a desired end. In that case, we must accept that, along with this end, there will be wider consequences for other parts of the socio-cultural system: that is, there will be latent functions and dysfunctions that cannot be avoided. Ellul concludes that because of the characteristics of modern techniques—rationalization, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, and universalism—there is no comparison between the techniques of today and the primitive techniques of traditional societies. Technique now is an “utterly different phenomenon” (1964, p. 146).
Parallel to the concerns of Weber’s writings on the rationalization process, Ellul asserts that the rise of technique demystifies social life. Mystery and the sacred are necessary to human life, and he claims that technique destroys them. Technique maintains that there is no mystery and that everything can be explained through evidence, logic, and reason. “Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it” (1964, p. 142). Technique turns mystery into the everyday, the sacred into the profane. Human beings, products of nature and nurture, or heredity and chance, are imperfect. Technique can make them more intelligent, more beautiful, and more adaptable to their functions in life. We will soon be able to create ideal men and women, soldiers, and bureaucrats through technique. We no longer need to rely on chance (1964, p. 143). As always, Ellul is imprecise on the timing of future technical advances, but he is certain of the direction of technical development.
Ellul writes that, for many citizens of technological society, belief in the traditional gods and sacred mysteries is waning. This weakening of belief is particularly true for technicians immersed daily in technique as part of their professions. Since humans cannot live without the sacred, according to Ellul, there is a tendency to transfer their sense of the sacred to the powers of technique itself. (This recalls Durkheim’s contention that the power of society is transfigured and imagined in physical form as God.) Many contemporary Wall Street bankers style themselves as “Masters of the Universe” or “Wizards of Wall Street” as they manipulate the economy for their own ends. Some government bureaucrats glory in their positions because they prove their power and social superiority. For these technicians, technique is sacred because, without it, Ellul argues, they would be “poor, alone, naked, and stripped of all pretensions” (1964, p. 145). Weber (1958/1904, pp. 181–182) presents similar themes in the closing paragraph of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: “For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has obtained a level of civilization never before achieved.’”