Chapter 4. Technique and the State
Political techniques are required to administer and coordinate the economy. The modern state has a relationship with technique (physical technologies, organizational practices, and goal-oriented rationality) far different from that of traditional states. Jacques Ellul mentions several general causes of this change, such as demography, the diffusion of ideas, nationalism, and the influence of finance on government. However, he wants to focus on causes directly related to technique (1964, p. 234).
The relationship between the nation-state and technique changed primarily because of the necessary expansion of the state into areas where it had not penetrated in the past. This enlargement of state interests includes the need for infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, and railways), education and training (primary, secondary, and higher), and welfare services. Private individuals first developed these domains. However, when they proved to be effective, and it became necessary to expand them nationwide, the state began to intervene and provide such infrastructure and services. Increasingly, private enterprises have been restricted or regulated in these areas since the private provision of these necessities interferes with state power.
To Ellul, it is unthinkable to have essential functions such as nuclear energy, electrical grids, or communication networks in private hands without state ownership or at least strong regulatory oversight. He writes that this need for oversight is especially true in the case of mass communication since private radio and television networks would allow private citizens to agitate against the state. At the least, the state must regulate if not own such networks (1964, p. 235). In the case of communication networks, including radio and television, Ellul was writing before the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and the subsequent media conglomeration headed by Rupert Murdoch. Ellul was wrong about such private communication empires; they have become thinkable. However, he was correct that the lack of state oversight has allowed such entities to agitate against the state. In addition, he wrote well before the rise of the internet and social media, which complicate the communication environment considerably.
Financial consideration is the second cause of the expansion of technique under state control or regulatory coordination. As technology becomes more efficient, complex, and centralized, it often becomes so expensive that the costs of initiation, maintenance, and continual improvement become prohibitive for individuals or even corporations. Ideological support and opposition affect the speed of government expansion in these areas, but it is not simply a question of ideology. In effect, the state expands into areas of technique because of the costs of technical advancement. In addition to implementation and maintenance costs, fundamental research on fusion energy, biotechnology, chemistry, and nanotechnology requires the state’s direct or indirect resources.
Finally, Ellul (1964) notes, applying technique often raises environmental, public health, and social problems that private enterprises cannot or will not address without state regulation (p. 237). He attributes state expansion in many areas to the decline of primary groups that traditionally performed these regulating functions at the community level. The resulting rise of individualism in the 20th century left some unable to manage their financial or physical affairs (p. 238). Ellul also attributes expansion to appeals to the state for law and order, social justice, and some measure of equality for its citizens (p. 266). In response to the proliferation of private bureaucratic organizations and new and powerful technologies, modern governments have expanded their role, taking on new responsibilities and activities to coordinate and regulate national life.
Nevertheless, the evolution of the economy was the primary reason for the creation and growth of the modern nation-state. Society had to adapt to the growth of the technical economy, and the state was the only institution able to tackle these overarching technical problems (Ellul, 1964, pp. 238–239). A superior power can only address such a problem if the nation-state is conscious of its technical means to adapt the social order to a hyper-industrial economy. The relationship between the economy and all other social activities is becoming ever tighter. The modern nation-state, particularly after the Second World War, is a state in which the social order—infrastructure, structure, and superstructure—is organized around economic performance and growth.
Ellul describes the state as having attained the status of “an enormous technical organism” in the United States (1964, p. 252). He enumerates a range of techniques applied by the modern state, including insurance and banking (social security, loan guarantees), coordinating commissions, education, subsidies for the arts, basic scientific research, subsidies for technical research (alternative energies, carbon sequestration), planning, food and drug testing and monitoring, vaccination programs, and state propaganda. The state is becoming integrated into supra-organizations, international agencies such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and others of increasing complexity that regulate and coordinate a variety of techniques of the modern world (1964, p. 254). Technicians base their decisions on the application of instruments and on the overall goals of the organization that employs them, to the exclusion of ideology, sentiment, or empathy.
For technicians, the nation-state is not something sacred, an expression of popular will, or the embodiment of God on Earth. It is a supra-organization that they need to manage to yield optimum efficiency (Ellul, 1964, pp. 263–264). National administration becomes a machine in which the various agencies and their employees are monitored and evaluated for efficiency through cost-benefit analyses. Government bureaucrats have become objects, much like factory workers became objects under Taylorism or “scientific management.” The national goal set by politicians is economic and military power, and technicians dictate the means to exploit workers and resources to achieve and optimize this power.
Regardless of the type of government, all nation-states face similar problems that demand planning. Mass transit, housing, air and water quality, and climate change: none of these issues can be addressed rationally except by using regulative plans. Ellul writes that no country can allow free movement into or out of it; all must control immigration. Countries that are stable politically and pay high wages will attract far too many potential immigrants with open borders; dictatorships will see their populations dwindle, which would mean a diminution of power. Both dictatorships and democracies must engage in immigration planning—employ police, judicial, and administrative techniques to control their borders—and no form of government can escape these technical necessities (1964, pp. 270–271). The structures of the modern state are dependent on technique, whether they be democratic or authoritarian. Each function of the modern state—defence, education, welfare, or coordination of the economy—is “becoming more and more alike, regardless of the theories of government under which they operate” (1964, p. 271).
Technical instruments are in response to economic and social necessities. More technical solutions will be needed as social and environmental problems mount—population increase, water and air pollution, habitat destruction, economic dislocation, supply chain issues, inflation, immigration, housing, food shortages, and climate change. National problems today are much more severe and complicated than those in previous centuries. Many can only be addressed through international efforts. There is only one way, Ellul claims, for the nation-state to address these problems: through technique (physical technologies, organizational practices, and goal-oriented rationality) (1964, p. 271).
Representative democracy of the nation-state in the modern age is purely formal. In such a democracy, people elect representatives whose supposed political authority is superior to that of all technical functionaries—foreign and domestic. It is through these representatives that the people exercise control over their lives. However, according to Ellul (1964) political intervention on behalf of constituents only disturbs the functioning of the bureaucracy and only subverts the functioning of technique (pp. 209–210). More seriously, over the long term, technique subverts democracy by creating a new elite. It creates political inequality between the technicians and the majority, between an elite of governors and “a majority of servants” (p. 274). This new elite is close to government power. The state depends on this class and responds to its needs and interests. Political equality and democracy have become mythical forms without substance (p. 275).
Propaganda is one of the most significant developments undermining democracy. Many people believe that in a democracy competing parties use propaganda, and the resulting flow cancels one another out, and the voter is encouraged to choose from among the rivals. Others claim that those most skillful in formulating and spreading propaganda are the ones who will get the most votes. However, according to Ellul, the absolute perversion of democracy is the result of the psychological assault on individuals caused by the accumulation of propaganda techniques pressuring them and dominating their thought processes. Democracies depend on free choice and individuals who follow their enlightened self-interests. A society that is the target of intensive propaganda eventually destroys the individuals’ “faculty of discernment” (1964, p. 276). It is also in democracies that rival propaganda machines flourish in the form of political parties.
There is only one propaganda source in authoritarian nations, which Ellul claims is usually weak because it has little competition. “In the so-called democracies, propaganda must become more and more intense in order to dominate its rivals” (1964, p. 276). Like the role of competition in early capitalism, propaganda in democracies must become more effective, efficient, and insidious. However, Ellul ignores the effects of complete immersion into what modern commentators term “the bubble,” far more prevalent in authoritarian than democratic regimes. The message becomes gospel if the individual receives all news and views from a single source or multiple sources promoting the same message.
Ellul (1964) writes that, in the same way that military hardware, weapons, and machines dictate military strategy, techniques also condition the structure of the modern state. These techniques focus on efficiency over all other goals (p. 277). Because of ever more powerful technical means, people pressure the modern state to perform efficiently. In Ellul’s view, this dooms parliamentary democracy, which is slow, ponderous, subject to frequent turnover of representatives, and has no facility in applying techniques. Technical advances compel governments to adapt in favourable ways to these changes. The United States has developed a “fourth branch of government,” or lobbyists, that liaises between Congress (as well as state legislatures) and technical business, labour, military, educational, medical, and other special interest and advocacy groups. Ellul believes that such arrangements are weak modes of adaptation and that the modern state will be compelled to go further over time (pp. 278–279).
Adapting the state to advancing techniques might be through a revolution, as occurred in the Nazi state, or it might change by degrees. If by degrees, then quaint old forms and trappings of democracy—elections, supreme courts, Congress, and the Constitution—will remain in place. The traditional names and slogans will continue to be called on and broadcast; freedom and democracy will continue to be the themes of presidential speeches and editorials. Moreover, certain freedoms will reign, but it will be an illusion of freedom, yet another softening of power. Ellul (1964) writes that “the conclusion seems unavoidable that this is the road upon which our democracies have already entered” (pp. 278–279). Such a regime might be considered democratic by its citizens; such beliefs and popular support can be secured through education and propaganda (p. 213).
Ellul (1964) contends that our modern democracies are far removed from the classical state that politicians ruled and will be more so in the future. The state becomes “an amalgam of organizations.” Like an automatic machine that replaces a worker, the politicians’ and bureau chiefs’ only remaining function is to see that the organizations continue to function. “Such an organization is not too rigid and knows of itself how to adapt to current problems. We are admittedly not yet in this situation, but we are rapidly approaching it” (p. 279). The classical state exists in the past and corresponds to a vanishing order of traditions, values, and emotions. The technological state appeals to people who place the highest premium on efficiency, power, order, and speed (p. 279).
The growth of technique also changes political doctrines. Technicians develop new doctrinal elements and slogans to buttress the development of state techniques, expressing the relationships between the state and the groups and individuals that make up its citizenry. Traditional democratic doctrine—ideas such as human rights, equality before the law, free and fair elections, and crimes against humanity—are ill adapted to the new realities of technical progress. Such ideas mean little to a nation whose rights are routinely abrogated by corporations and governments when doing so suits their interests. Ellul does not celebrate the disintegration of democracy; it is distressing but part of the social evolutionary process. Nothing lasts forever, he writes, and “no political doctrine is eternal”; as technique becomes more dominant, democracy retreats (1964, p. 281).
Political doctrines have changed not only in substance but also in function. In the past, they were statements of goals and ideals. Ellul asserts that they have become “rationalizing mechanisms” (in the colloquial sense), providing justifications for the state’s actions. He adds that it often takes considerable intellectual acrobatics to square state actions with democratic principles. One could see these acrobatics with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 with justifications of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and made-up links to the attacks of September 11, 2001. In February 2022, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which also claims to be democratic, invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine; the doctrine that justified the invasion was that the government of Ukraine, headed by a newly elected Jew, was dominated by Nazis intent on invading Russia. State power cannot be exercised without justification, and doctrine supplies that justification.
The Totalitarian State
The accumulation of techniques by the nation-state causes it to absorb the life of its citizens. Economic and political techniques are interconnected and influence one another, “forming a system that tightly encloses all our activities” (Ellul, 1964, p. 284). Under the influence of technique, all states, even those that profess to be democratic, evolve toward a totalitarian order.
Bureaucratic organizations and other technical procedures address themselves to the masses, at best to categories of people, not to individuals. As a mass instrument, it is not possible to limit the effects of technique. Not that technique denies that every individual has peculiarities and propensities. However, it does mean that individual characteristics are excluded from consideration by the rules of the organization and other forms of technique. This impersonality is how bureaucracies rule. Techniques are objective procedures, seeking the most efficient path to achieve a goal—controlling inflation, executing a war, educating students, and even considering that the subjective is counter to technique and interferes with efficiency. This is not to say that such subjective judgments are absent in modern life, but they are seen by many as an aberration and counterproductive to efficiency.
Large-scale social organizations (bureaucracies) would not be possible without abstracting these common traits. In a world now dominated by these organizations, individuals spend much of their lives interacting with the bureaucracies of education, the military, work, and consumption. Ellul asserts that technique now dominates these structures and that human beings can only be treated as things, categories, rather than individuals within these organizations. This impersonality is not to say that human interactions do not occur within these organizations; instead, such interactions are by-products and not supposed to interfere with the efficient attainment of organizational goals.
Furthermore, human techniques (primarily education and propaganda), which technicians systematically developed in the 20th century, are intended to transform the individual into becoming part of the mass: “that is, to transform the qualitative into the quantitative” (Ellul, 1964, p. 286). This transformation is in keeping, of course, with techniques’ needs for order and efficiency since individuals are untrustworthy and often act counter to organizational goals. Through these human techniques, Ellul asserts, the state becomes totalitarian (1964, p. 287). It has no alternative because technique sets the agenda, not human beings.
Ellul is not writing about a return to the past and is not predicting a 1984 type of totalitarian regime of terror, brutal labour camps, and Gestapo policing. The new technical totalitarian state wastes nothing. Coercion and torture are expensive and inefficient methods of maintaining social order and give opponents a target against which to rebel. There is also a recognition that the workforce and the military must be kept in good working order, and torture has a way of inhibiting optimal performance. The technical totalitarian state of the future, according to Ellul, will not engage in torture since it is unreliable in producing results and wasteful in terms of resources. “There is nothing arbitrary, for the arbitrary represents the very opposite of technique, in which everything ‘has a reason’” (1964, p. 287).
Ellul contrasts the two forms of totalitarian states in the 1960s, communism and fascism. On a superficial level, he asserts, the two forms are identical. He notes that both have concentration camps (now often called re-education centres), extensive police monitoring of behaviour, the torture of opponents, a single legitimate political party, and often a single person who exercises near-dictatorial powers at the top. There is much similarity between the two regimes. They are alike in their origins, attitudes, and commitments to further the development of techniques (1964, pp. 289–290). However, Ellul claims that communism still has some commitment to human welfare since it makes an appeal to workers and people experiencing poverty. In contrast, fascism is focused exclusively on national power.
Communism originated in the 19th century as an ideology that attempted to explain how technical development produced a capitalist society and, with further development (as well as periodic crises and a final push from workers), would break capitalism’s constraints on the economy and create a new social order. Marxism promotes technique development as the key to a just and equitable society (Ellul, 1964, p. 290).
Fascism, according to Ellul (1964), relates to technique in an equivalent way: that is, to maximize the state’s power through technique and efficiently adapt humans to the new social realities. Both forms of totalitarianism are committed to efficiency and the development and spread of mechanical, organizational, and human techniques (p. 291). As detailed earlier, technical advances occur as a process of self-augmentation, but totalitarian states push them as a matter of policy, an end to pursue without limitation. The goal is to improve the material lot of the people by exploiting all of the available technical means and enhancing the state’s power in the process (p. 291).
Ellul considers dictatorships’ ability superior to democracies’ ability to exploit technology to the maximum without internal opposition (1964, p. 288). This ability might well be accurate; however, such absolute power brings massive disadvantages, such as the suppression of dissent that might adjust a dictator’s actions, the hesitancy of underlings to tell the dictator disagreeable news, and the complete lack of checks and balances on dictatorial power. These are problems that Ellul must have been aware of given his experiences with Hitler’s Germany. The problems of dictatorships and additional problems of major corruption throughout society plagued Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and into 2025.
Democracies follow a similar path but differ from existing totalitarian states in a few respects. Primarily, democratic states have not attained consciousness regarding the possibilities of exploiting technique to the maximum extent possible. They still have scruples, Ellul writes, traditions, and democratic principles that prevent them from doing so (1964, p. 288), though he avers that these scruples might only amount to concerns about voters or the next election. However, he writes, these scruples are not much more than smokescreens to be disregarded when necessary.
Ellul writes that, when the democratic state wants to exploit a technique, it must debate its necessity and then provide justification for it to its citizens. When it then needs to go further, it must repeat the process. Everything is open to question; every step must be debated (1964, p. 288). In the end, Ellul asserts, the democratic state will have to give in, but its traditions and values act as a drag on applying such techniques.
For example, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, the United States passed the Patriot Act within 45 days (about one and a half months). Its official title is Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. The state had to justify the Patriot Act, which provided extensive security, internment, enhanced law enforcement, strengthened money laundering prevention, and data collection measures on American citizens. Although it has continued to be justified, debated, and slightly modified over the years, many of its provisions remain in force. Given the dangers of foreign economic competition, warfare, natural and manufactured disasters, and domestic and foreign terrorism, Ellul writes, the democratic state will increasingly be forced to adopt such technical actions. It has no other choice; according to him, it will either fully utilize available techniques or perish (1964, pp. 288–289).
Repercussion on Technique
Although the technical movement has transformed the nation-state since the mid-20th century, the reverse is also true. As mentioned, though technique advances according to its internal logic, the state has quickened the pace through its power and support. State and private partnerships, in which the state provides funds and direction, and private organizations retain the initiative and organization at the ground level, have served in advancing the spread of technique in democracies. Such partnerships also cancel some of the deficiencies of each type of organization (Ellul, 1964, p. 300). The advantages of massive infrastructural projects and government contracting of goods and services from the corporate sector can be seen in many capitalist countries. Some disadvantages include costs (government waste and corporate greed), corruption, and intense corporate lobbying for more “investment” and tax breaks.
Nevertheless, the increased pace of technical development and the state’s cumulative power have taken a toll on human support for technique. People are losing their “bedazzlement” by and illusions about technology; there is increasing awareness that the growth of technique, mainly when sponsored by the state, is not freeing them so much as forging a new set of chains (Ellul, 1964, p. 300). However, as Ellul notes, people attribute these new chains to the state; they are unwilling or unable to attribute the loss of freedom to techniques themselves, for there is still widespread belief in progress; it is often perceived as our “last hope” (1964, p. 301).
Every substantive change in the socio-cultural system encounters resistance in other parts of the system. Consider the changes in American society in the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of the feminist movement. Women who worked outside the home and the resulting rise of feminist ideology met tremendous resistance within the home, workplace, educational institutions, and churches as well as ideological resistance from several quarters. There are always obstacles to such fundamental changes, obstacles that, over time, reject and extinguish changes, modify them, or structurally adjust to them. The cause of this resistance to change is that each new factor—ideological, structural, or material—must be integrated into the socio-cultural system. The process often takes time since several parts of the system must adapt to the innovation. Fundamental changes, like those that occurred with women working outside the home, are so numerous that they add to revolutionary change. Whenever a change is introduced into a socio-cultural system, Ellul posits, several factors restrain its acceptance or rejection (1964, p. 301). He details four possible restraining factors: public opinion, morality, social structure (e.g., economic and social relations), and the state.
Public opinion is almost always in tune with the advancement of all forms of technique. Ellul points out that modern people are nearly obsessed with performance, be it in economics or sports, and technique is the way to achieve it in terms of numbers, records, and awards; the higher, the better, whatever the object (1964, p. 302). Technique has made daily life predictable, constraining our thoughts and actions and reducing or eliminating our personal power, particularly at work. Sports provide a mechanism of escape to offset the dull lives that technique requires many of us to live. We identify with and revel in our spectator sports, the achievements of the organizations that we work for, and our societies’ economic and military achievements. With these achievements, we sublimate all that we have repressed into the performance of a group (Ellul says “mob”). In doing so, he asserts, we fuse our identities with these groups; it is how modern individuals express their will to power in achievements and records that they did not establish themselves (1964, p. 302).
Many people identify with and worship the collective power of the state. Ellul calls this adoration mystical, with remembrances, memorials, and deference paid to those who gave their lives to further its powers (1964, p. 303). There is also a strong faith in the power of physical technology (particularly military technology) and that further technical development will solve the problems caused by earlier techniques. One can see this with the debates over global climate change. Many place their faith in technologies such as carbon sequestration, fusion energy, or other cheap alternative fuels, which technicians will someday develop to solve the problem. Or consider the hope of many that military technicians will be able to solve the problem of nuclear war by developing super-accurate antimissile systems. This faith in physical technology is widespread in modern society. However, it might not be as universal today, 60 years after Ellul’s writing.
Ellul also points to the widespread conviction among many people that technical issues are the only serious ones. He acknowledges the “amused glances” of people at philosophers and the lack of interest in theological and metaphysical questions (1964, p. 303). He notes the outright rejection of the humanities by those convinced that we live in a technical age, and that education must conform to its demands. Ellul is aware of the widespread conviction that education must focus on the practical and the technical and that subjects such as history and philosophy are useless and serve no practical end. This emphasis has carried over to universities, where subjects such as philosophy, history, grammar, and humanities have lost students to the more applied disciplines. Today this is particularly true for those disciplines that are part of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) or degrees that prepare one for business, medicine, or other careers. Such educational trends result from the conviction among many that “only technique is not mere gab,” as Ellul puts it (1964, p. 304). Only technique leads to practical achievements.
Ellul does concede that public opinion on technique is not always so simple. Although opinion tends to favour technical development, it tends to be retrospective: that is, past technical development. Members of the public tend to be supportive if an invention or discovery does not directly affect their interests. However, their enthusiasm diminishes if it threatens their fortunes, interests, or careers (1964, p. 310). In terms of the practical, public opinion is oriented toward advancing technique. Moreover, if this widespread approval of technique should lag, Ellul writes, another technique stands ready to recreate support—hence the propaganda machine. It was not employed much in the 1950s and 1960s to support technical progress (when he first wrote his opus) because technique still enjoyed widespread popular support. However, he writes, should this situation change, if public support were to turn against the further development of technique, propaganda campaigns would be employed to promote public support, “for the whole social edifice would be at stake” (1964, p. 304).
The third traditional restraining force on the evolution of technique is the social structure of a society. Typically, a society promotes technical development unless it challenges existing economic or political interest groups. In that case, for example with alternative energies, development is resisted, slow-walked, and channelled into existing social structures—massive wind turbines rather than energy produced at home, natural gas marketed as a green energy alternative. Economic growth dominates the modern world, and technique dominates economics. “The whole of the material world in which we live rests on this technical base,” Ellul writes (1964, p. 304).
Nineteenth-century Western society was an individualized and atomized culture and, thus, a prime target for technical development. In such a society, Ellul remarks, primary social groups such as the family and community functioned to serve human needs. The rise of technique weakened these groups, especially as government and commercial organizations absorbed many of their functions. In the latter half of the 20th century, there was a rise in group association. However, it was not in opposition to technique but a function of technical organization—industrial associations, labour unions, professional associations, special interest groups, educators’ unions, and homeowners’ groups. In modern societies, Ellul argues, secondary social groups organized in relation to functions dominate their social structures, a marked change from premodern societies. These secondary groups are not autonomous, with values, interests, and orientations apart from the organizations of which they are parts; they are secondary collectivities that represent technical organizations and interests (1964, p. 305).
Therefore, Ellul (1964) concludes, neither public opinion nor social structure is effective in braking further technical development. What about the nation-state? But we have already seen that it abdicated this role in favour of sponsoring the intensification of technical development. Indeed, Ellul summarizes, every possible restraining force on further technical growth has been eliminated or even inverted. There are no limiting factors and no countervailing trends to further technical development. The only possible limit is techniques’ “own powers (which seem unlimited and inexhaustible)” (p. 306). He also claims that technique is becoming independent of all human control. Society does not have the means “to limit it or even orient it” (p. 306).
Given the opposition’s weakness to unbridled technical growth, the claims that we are in control of technique or can rein it in at any time are empty. Technique, Ellul asserts, is a sociological phenomenon that must be opposed or checked by equally strong social forces. However, technique has changed all of these social forces; they now support technical growth rather than oppose it. We have lost control of technique; our only option is to submit to it and take from it the riches and comforts that it produces. Oppose it, and we are alone (1964, p. 306). However, considering the numerous social movements that have enjoyed some success in opposing technique since his original book, the role of social movements deserves more exploration.
Ellul’s opinion on countervailing forces to the growth of technique began to change in 1968 with the rise of the student revolutions in several industrial nations (1981, p. 56). The rise in the types of social movements since that time—such as the women’s, environmental, antiwar, antinuclear, and social justice movements—as well as the sophistication of their organizations, ideologies, propaganda, and political strategies have created a potent countervailing force to unbridled technical development. Social movements are a growing phenomenon in modern societies that, through the political process or action counter to that process, often succeed in blocking or modifying technical developments. I will examine this countervailing force in more detail in the concluding chapter.
The Role of the Nation-State
Before the rise of the modern state, private individuals developed techniques at the local level, with little coordination among them. The state has evolved to coordinate the complex techniques within its borders. The state integrates the complex of techniques into a coherent unity through planning. The state’s role is less that of the brain of the overall organization than that of the rational-relational apparatus that enables the different techniques to coordinate their actions. In the modern era, examples include coordinating air, rail, and automobile traffic and regulating private and public medical insurance, hospitals, and health-care providers.
The state also coordinates the manufacturing and service sectors with commerce, finance, military needs, and the like. In a very interrelated society, Ellul notes, with many distinct parts dependent on the proper functioning of many other parts, the state’s coordinating role is critical (1964, pp. 307–308). Private enterprises cannot perform this coordinating function because they are specialists and have private interests to serve. The nation-state has the resources to mobilize the bureaucracies and specialists to apply techniques to provide the ever-expanding coordinating role (1964, p. 308).
In addition to this coordinating role, the state provides resources for developing and utilizing techniques far beyond what individuals or private corporations can provide. One can see this in investments that the US government made in the electricity grid of the nation in the 1930s, the interstate highway system of the 1950s, and the development of rockets and space exploration in the 1960s through to today. Recent state initiatives include the development of vaccines, the internet, basic science, agricultural machinery, nuclear fission and fusion energy, high-speed rail transportation, and a host of other developments. When the public is directly affected by a technique, there can be some hesitancy to adopt innovations. This hesitancy is especially true when scientists and technicians disagree. Ellul gives the example of polyvalent vaccine hesitancy in France in the 1950s. In this case, the state used its authority to settle the dispute among technicians. It ruled the vaccines mandatory in France, stating that, unless children were vaccinated, the state would not let them attend school, and their parents would not receive family subsidies.
The French case paralleled the situation in the United States in 2021 with the development and distribution of the state-supported RNA COVID-19 vaccine:
The most frequently documented factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy included contextual factors, such as sex, age, and social inequalities; individual and group factors, such as trust in the healthcare system, public health authorities, and governments, and history of vaccination; vaccine-specific factors, such as concern for vaccine safety, perceived vaccine barriers, perceived effectiveness of vaccines, and concern about the rapid development of the vaccine; and disease-specific factors, such as fear of being infected with COVID-19, perceived severity of COVID-19, and knowledge of COVID-19. (Kafadar et al., 2023)
There was disagreement over the vaccine, and in this case hesitancy was promoted by political interests, though some sketchy technicians joined the resistance. The two political interests consisted of a largely unorganized group of anarchists and conspiracy theorists and an organized political right (a neo-fascist movement) intent on maintaining the status quo. This opposition to the state was enabled by the development of unregulated mass media, social media, and propaganda promoted by a state hostile to the United States (Kafadar et al., 2023; Yasmin et al., 2021).
Against this opposition, the state used its authority to push for widespread vaccinations through propaganda and by mandating the vaccine for all federal workers, contractors, service members, large employers, and health-care workers. However, it has not yet used its authority to mandate this vaccination for schoolchildren or tie any government benefits or penalties to COVID-19 vaccination status. The technical authority of the democratic state is being challenged in this and other areas by the development of the internet, domestic and foreign propaganda, unregulated cable networks, and social media. The state’s authority is a significant factor in technical development and utilization, but it is strongly challenged in democratic societies.
According to Ellul, science in the technological age is becoming subservient to technical applications. Research sponsored by the state must centre on applications to serve the public and aggrandize state power. The state emphasizes the practical rather than the esoteric or theoretical research (1964, pp. 313–314). The state assigns specific tasks to the scientific research that it funds through its agencies or grants to research universities, institutes, and large corporations. In 2022, there were some 22 “Grant Making Agencies” of the US government, allocating thousands of grants yearly (US Government, 2022).
For example, the US Department of Commerce offers financial and technical support for projects that enhance the global competitiveness of US products. The National Telecommunications & Information Administration, also under the Department of Commerce, administers grant programs to further the use of broadband and other technologies. These grants promote economic growth, education, public safety, health care, and other national priorities.
It is standard practice for states to disseminate this information to public and private entities. The United States has a decentralized system for the dissemination of statistical data consisting of 13 statistical agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Census Bureau, Economic Research Services, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, and many more. Other tools of dissemination include the Government Printing Office, which evaluates all government publications for inclusion in its dissemination programs. All federal agencies must submit their publications, regardless of medium, for evaluation to distribute print and electronic versions to the Federal Depository Libraries Program nationwide. The National Archives and Records Administration (much in the news of late) serves as the official archive for the electronic content of the Government Printing Office.
The technical operations of gathering and disseminating information have become necessary as the nation-state finances and directs technical investigations. The resources of the national government are much more significant than universities or even major corporations can afford. Thus, the state is directly interested in supporting these institutions by granting research and development funds. “All this means a much freer movement among government, industry, and technical research centers than would otherwise be the case” (Ellul, 1964, p. 316).
Ellul remarks that, in principle, it is still possible for science and scientists to be independent of the state. Nevertheless, the best and the brightest will be called on to submit requests for funding. Many scientists will succumb given the low pay of many university professors (a common complaint) and the need for expensive labs and equipment (a huge university expense often paid for through these grants). American businesses spent $441 billion on research and development in 2018 (Wolfe, 2019). Of this total, only about $29 million, or about 6.5%, was devoted to basic research; the rest went to applied research (15%) and developmental research (79%). “In current dollars, federal funding for R&D . . . grew from $3.5 billion in 1955 to $138.9 billion in 2019, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.9%” (Congressional Research Services, 2022).
At the same time, the federal government’s share of funding research fell between 1964 and 2000, whereas the share funded by businesses rose. This declining share was the result not of a decline in federal dollars devoted to research (as evident above) but of a steep rise in corporate funding of research and development. In 2019, business-related research reached 70.7% of all research expenditures in the United States. However, this is an example of how to mislead (lie) with statistics. The steep rise in business research is the result of federal and state tax policies. Research and development tax credit eligibility is extremely broad, and tax credits can apply to product development, new manufacturing processes, software development, and quality enhancements. So much of what passes for research in the private sector is indirect state-funded business development or the advancement of business techniques—another example of successful lobbying efforts on behalf of corporate America.
Ellul (1964) posits that “practical or purposive science,” instead of basic research, will dominate technical states over time (p. 317). This practical bent is valid for the United States, both directly by spending tax dollars and indirectly by sponsoring corporate research and development. The R&D system in the United States mobilizes technicians and scientists and orients them toward precise economic, military, and government objectives. Much state-sponsored research is devoted to practical and utilitarian ends to make government administrative and military functions more efficient (p. 317). Indirect funding of corporate research is aimed at making economic production more efficient. Ellul was confident in his prediction that techniques will multiply and become stronger over time. “The state and technique—increasingly interrelated—are becoming the most important forces in the modern world; they buttress and reinforce each other in their aim to produce an apparently indestructible, total civilization” (p. 318).