Chapter 3. 3 Technique and the Economy

Economic Science

Ellul asserts that there is a relationship between technical progress in economic life and economics as a social science discipline. The economy has become extraordinarily complex, with economic facts becoming more numerous and interrelated. As a result, economic science, according to Ellul, has become far more reliant on data and far more comprehensive in its technique (1964, p. 158). In the 1850s, he notes, economics was considered the “science of wealth.” Today it concerns itself with human needs, coordinating production, marketing, management, planning, and many other activities.

Economists have taken the physical sciences as their model, just as many other social scientists have. Research in economics focuses on measuring economic data over time, relating these variables to one another, and explaining and predicting economic behaviour through these relationships. As a result, economics abandoned its “dogmatic positions and deductive methods” and has become an empirical technique to accumulate facts about all facets of the economy and correlate them. With these interrelations, it attempts to predict their future behaviour and advise policy makers and businesses on corrective actions. Ellul notes that it aims to modify policy decisions previously based on errors in judgment, ideology, or too little information to formulate policies to ensure a vibrant and growing economy (1964, pp. 160–161). Macroeconomics has become a technical application; its research is motivated not by pure scientific interest but by action (1964, p. 164). He writes that it was still in its infancy in 1964 but that it would develop more certainty of prediction and become the increasing focus of national and international policies.

Economists have one trait in common with other technicians: pride of membership in a group essentially closed to the uninitiated. This pride might be an unconscious product of group membership and training. However, Ellul believes that it is also a fundamental part of being a technician, which includes knowledge of a secret technique and jargon that others are not privy to and a degree of contempt for whoever is not part of the group. Over time, their writing becomes incomprehensible to the layperson, requiring years of study to master. Technique gives power to an “aristocracy of technicians,” specialists who make consequential decisions based on hidden knowledge that often appears arbitrary and capricious to outsiders. This hidden knowledge is dangerous for the future of democracies since the direction of economic life will no longer be in popular control (e.g., the US Federal Reserve system). Members of the public and their elected representatives often hold simplistic and contradictory economic views, Ellul claims: “It is a grave illusion to believe that democratic control or decision-making can be reconciled with economic technique” (1964, pp. 162–163).

Over the 20th century, economists have developed mathematical techniques to understand and influence economic activities. These techniques are statistical data analysis, accounting procedures, modelling, and public opinion polling. Ellul reviews these technical procedures and how they are used to uncover information about the economy, predict its path in detail, and provide information to influence corporate and government policy.

Statistics are the basis for measuring and relating economic variables to one another. Economists (and other social scientists) are immersed in statistical procedures essential for the operation of the discipline and society. Once the preserve of amateurs, statistics has become dominant in the social sciences. In addition, statisticians have developed precise instruments in their work. When Ellul was writing, he mentioned punch cards, calculating machines, and microfilm. To show how far statistics have advanced in the 60 years since these techniques were current, one can mention powerful computers, more sophisticated statistical software, and reams of government and personal data to manipulate. Econometrics uses these statistical methods to develop theories and make forecasts about the future of economic activities and financial trends.

Ellul writes that accounting specialists have also modified the discipline in the modern era. Accounting is no longer concerned with simply keeping track of the funds of a business. Instead, it examines both the past and the future. With the greater complexity of manufacturing, banking, securities, insurance, and other economic activities, more specialized accounting procedures are necessary to keep track of capital, labour, taxes, and environmental and administrative regulations (1964, p. 166). Today, consistent with specialization and the detailed division of labour, there are at least five distinct types of accounting. Cost accounting focuses on the total production costs of a business. Financial accounting keeps track of a business’s financial statements, cash flow, income, and balance sheets. Tax accounting focuses on specific tax laws for businesses and individuals. Managerial accounting uses financial information to focus on strategic planning and decision making. Finally, forensic accounting helps to review the past operations of a business or an individual in investigating fraud and presenting evidence of it in court. Since 1964, we can add to the specializations in accounting by citing government accounting, public accounting, and auditing.

The third economic technique that Ellul identifies is modelling, representing elements of economic reality in relation to one another through mathematical equations. Modelling is a simplified description of reality designed to test hypotheses about economic behaviour. Some of the relations among variables in the model are quantitatively based on past empirical observation, and the researcher posits others. Ellul notes that the researcher’s addition is subjective and based on the modeller’s economic theory. Economists put the posited relationships in the form of equations and then add the time factor. The equations, now solved by the computer, are a model of the economic system and its evolution over time (1964, p. 167). Economists and policy makers use these economic models to test theory and identify economic policy functions and dysfunctions.

The last economic technique that Ellul describes is public opinion analysis. As a general method used in the social sciences, polling is a recent technological development that allows public opinion to be put in quantitative terms and is now used by economic, political, and social organizations (1964, p. 168). It allows the economist to measure opinions on prices, products, wages, or any other economic fact. According to Weber, predictability, measurability, and calculability are parts of the rationalization process, and Ellul appears to agree. Public opinion polling “brings into the statistical realm measures of things hitherto unmeasurable” (1964, p. 168). He states that most economists will dismiss anything from consideration that cannot be measured. This elimination of the unmeasurable is a necessary limitation of statistical techniques, making all non-technical variables somewhat opaque in policy research and development.

Ellul argues that the traditional economist abandoned all hope of affecting public policy through objective theories and ideological arguments. This assertion might have been premature since ideology continues to play a key role in economic policy. Regardless, many economists who seek to affect practical reality developed expertise in technical applications that can monitor and forecast national and international economic activity, often with considerable accuracy. However, doing so requires access to massive amounts of data that only nation-states can collect and distribute. Through their sponsorship, these states supply economic technicians with careers and the necessary tools and resources to perform their tasks. The economists thus gain power, Ellul maintains, and the state gets expert advice and assistance in its governance of the economy (1964, p. 169).

Economic Planning

According to Ellul (1964), the central goal of all techniques is to promote efficiency. Unless economic techniques end in actions, they become inefficient. Economic planning is a significant aspect of economic technique. Ellul points out that economic planning is not connected to any political doctrine. Communist and capitalist countries practise economic planning because it is integral to a technical economy (p. 174). Economic plans consist of an organization’s objectives and the elaboration of means to achieve them. Planners elaborate goals and means rationally, using techniques to attain the selected goals. The means to achieve the goals include the efficient use of resources and the labour force. As with all rationalizing activities, there is a constant search for the “one best way,” given the available resources to achieve the particular goal. The plan’s function is to devise the optimal organization of the various resources to achieve the overall goal (p. 175). Ellul also notes that, during the execution of an economic plan, there are constant adjustments of means and ends to coordinate the various parts of the plan more effectively (p. 176).

Planning in the modern economy is widely recognized as indispensable. Like all techniques, it is judged based on its efficiency in achieving its objectives and has proven to be far more effective than arbitrary action. Ellul asserts that economic planning has become essential because of modern society’s challenges; he mentions misery, distress, and hunger among a segment of the population. Today such challenges affect entire societies and include pandemic responses, climate change prevention and mitigation, and a host of other issues that make planning even more necessary. Given the complexity of national and international economic systems, how can a nation-state refuse to engage in economic planning that “orders incoherences, and rationalizes the excesses of production and consumption?” Ellul adds that all of the techniques of measurement and monitoring of the economy can only be effective if organizations use them in economic planning (1964, p. 177).

The collective needs of the men, women, and children who inhabit modern technical society determine social needs. These needs are collectivized by advertising, standardization of goods, mass communication, transportation systems, intellectual uniformity enforced by schools, and other instruments of conformity. Mass production necessitates mass consumption and gives rise to a “standardization of taste,” responsible for the remarkable sameness of various regions of US society, with every city, town, and village having much the same look and feel (Ellul, 1964, p. 175).

Planning and Freedom

Planning has an impact on human freedom. Every part of the economic system is related to every other part; one cannot do just one thing without affecting other things. It is not feasible to limit the scope or power of planning. Economic planning entails labour, resources, and finances and touches upon the natural environment, housing, education, roads, and other infrastructure. Once a nation-state engages in economic planning, it must extend it to additional areas of social life. To limit it to economics is to put an arbitrary limit on the method, thus destroying its efficiency in attaining its goals. Ellul writes that it is like building the most efficient automobile possible but not upgrading the narrow, muddy roads travelled by horse and wagon. The car would still run, but it would not be efficient (1964, p. 180). As society becomes ever more complicated, planning becomes more exact, and putting artificial limits on the scope of economic planning becomes ever more impractical.

Effective national planning fixes objectives that would not be attainable for corporations or individuals acting in self-interest and with limited scope. National planning goals do not always coincide with the immediate interests of all of the organizations affected or the individuals involved. The plan must marshal energy, productive resources, and finances with maximum efficiency. If individuals and organizations are free to pursue their interests, then such planning will come to naught. Ellul notes that, for planning to be successful, it is necessary to impose sanctions on organizations and individuals to promote actions in compliance with the plan. These sanctions include tax breaks, subsidies, fines, or criminal charges. Thus, economic planning is intricately bound with authority exercised through coercion and manipulation (1964, p. 181). National planning can only be a nation-state function because only the nation-state has the power required to marshal the resources needed, the ability to coordinate the various parts of the plan, and the authority to demand compliance with its dictates. Ellul argues that effective economic planning, a technique essential for coordinating a modern economy, restricts personal freedom and gives power and authority to a centralized state. Planning cannot be limited or abandoned (1964, p. 193).

Ellul points out that planning and the necessity of sanctions are compatible with several economic and political systems. However, he argues that only two systems are genuinely compatible with the full-scale economic planning needs of the modern economy: corporatism and the planned economy. He discounts the future of liberal capitalism because of its fundamental incompatibility with extensive economic planning. He writes that this is not because of his preferences but because of what he considers the “most probable,” and what is most probable is what is most efficient at this moment (1964, pp. 183–184). Ellul uses the phrase “at the present moment” because liberal capitalism was efficient in the initial industrializing process in the 19th century and early 20th century. However, there have been extraordinary social, political, and economic changes since then, and liberal capitalism continues to evolve to accommodate new needs and challenges.

The equilibrium among state, corporation, economic planning, and freedom is unstable. It is changing and “ceaselessly re-established,” Ellul argues (1964, p. 187). One can see this in US history since the beginning of the 20th century since state action in the economy has been growing, not in a linear fashion but seemingly with each economic and national crisis. Although the United States had a liberal economy for most of its history, the Progressive Era in the early 20th century marked a change in government involvement. However, the real sea change occurred with the Great Depression of the 1930s, which led to the New Deal and the beginning of the US welfare state and increased government involvement in regulating the economy. During the Second World War, the United States engaged in the extensive economic planning of the “Arsenal of Democracy.” It successfully supplied its military and many of its allies’ needs during the war and converted the wartime economy to a peacetime economy. With the rise of a national security state, the US political economy engaged in extensive planning and preparing for war and defensive and economic alliances.

The stagflation in the 1970s, the ongoing crisis in access to health care, the Great Recession of 2008, and the economic havoc created by COVID-19 are all more recent examples of when national and state governments have had to engage in economic planning. Over time, there has been a clear upward trend of state involvement in more extensive planning. Therefore, Ellul asserts, “the facts direct us toward the planned economy, regardless of our theoretical judgments in the matter” (1964, p. 184). He further insists that a planned economy must lead to a planned society.

Planning is part of the rationalization process; the current framework is continuously evaluated for optimal efficiency and further technical development. Will it be able to address additional economic, political, social, or military crises? If not, then there will be pressure to establish a new equilibrium between state action and a free-market economy, giving the state greater power in economic affairs. Since the means of state economic intervention are available when the economy comes under stress, the average person, used to comfort and ease, will agitate for their use, Ellul adds, unless their private interests lead them to prefer the freedom of the jungle (1964, p. 188). It is challenging to limit technique. Its full use is often in the interests of both economic and political elites.

Ellul asserts that liberal state intervention in the economy is a transitional form to a planned economy. The liberal capitalist state increasingly engages in economic intervention, leaving some flexibility for entrepreneurs and market freedoms when dictated by efficiency and productivity. Economic plans are adopted on an ever-widening scale—regardless of the political and economic doctrines of the decision makers involved—because planning allows an economy to achieve goals more thoroughly and quickly than otherwise. Successful economic plans formulate coherent action steps, marshal needed material and labour resources and generate an intense effort to achieve these goals. Ellul points out that planning allows the full use of economic knowledge and actionable techniques for coordinating the various parts of the political economy (1964, p. 184).

He posits that the nation-state’s interests will also undergo some changes because of its incorporation of economic techniques. Ellul describes a nation-state centred on economic efficiency and productivity and minimizing other motivations. The state increasingly focuses on continuous economic growth and planning to avoid depression, recession, and inflation; it also concerns itself with economic power and national pride (1964, p. 197). Technique is neutral, fixed on finding means to achieve ends. The economy becomes the servant of the nation-state, intent on these national goals.

As Ellul notes, liberal capitalist states also have some humanistic concerns with “nonconformist elements” (1964, p. 187). He considers these concerns desirable; however, since the state must take a strategic role in regulating the economy, he does not believe that such an arrangement will be viable in the long term. Humanistic concerns do not satisfy the conditions of full state action on economic intelligence and planning. Humanitarian goals, the radical redistribution of wealth, and the ownership of the means of production for the sake of ideology are inconsistent with and often contrary to these national goals. Over time, socialism became an anachronism as an aristocracy of technicians arose, and the working classes continued to be needed to staff the growing economy. Ellul predicts that many aspects of the welfare state will continue, not out of humanitarian concerns but in the interests of efficiency and domestic tranquility (1964, pp. 197–198).

Centralization

Once accepted, technique imposes centralization on the economy. Enlarged and centralized organizations produce most of the goods and services of modern society. Moreover, as we have seen, and as Ellul mentions, the state becomes essential in regulating and coordinating this activity (1964, p. 194). He asserts that this does not mean that the state controls the whole economy or that it is an authoritarian state in the mould of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Instead, the state becomes the controlling factor, the impersonal regulator of economic activity. The relationship between the state and the economy results from developing economic techniques. The enlargement of state powers is not just a quantitative change but also has led to a qualitative change. Ellul posits that we are witnessing the birth of the technical state, a super-organization that tightly regulates economic life by making it more predictable and efficient (1964, p. 197). Economic planning and regulation have become integral parts of the nation-state, managed in its interests.

The competition among dominant nation-states will force them to face the economic problems of extreme technical development. Which system will be the most capable of fostering technical progress? Which one can mobilize the resources for economic planning and development? In Ellul’s time, the competition was between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union. It now appears to be among China, the United States, and the European Union. Ellul maintains that states will increasingly regulate the economy to support further technical progress and integrate it into the socio-cultural system. This unceasing integration of technique is the evolutionary trajectory that we are on. The state, developing governance techniques and absorbing economic techniques, becomes the overseer of the economy. Liberal capitalism as a political-economic system is progressively weakened, with its remnants (consumer markets, small businesses) integrated into the system (1964, pp. 197–198).

Capitalist entities that assert principles of laissez-faire (when these principles align with their economic interests, jettisoned when they do not) means that the liberal capitalist state is not able to utilize all modern economic techniques. Techniques often entail unprofitable decisions, Ellul posits (1964, p. 201). For example, government regulations and incentives were necessary to force automobile manufacturers to equip cars with safety equipment such as seat belts and airbags or, more recently, to push them to switch from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles. Furthermore, the goals of technique are efficiency and rationality; the goal of liberal capitalism is profit. A state-planned economy does not ignore profit, but it is just one factor among a host of others—ecology, sustainability, safety, consumers, local communities, workers, and other stakeholders. Thus, there is an ongoing conflict between technique and liberal capitalist economy; Ellul predicts that technique will ultimately bend liberal capitalism “to its laws” (1964, p. 201). A technical economy is an antidemocratic economy, whether dominated by business, a government elite, or a combination of them.

The growth of technique (material technologies, organizational practices, and goal-oriented rationality) is weakening liberal capitalism and will continue to transform it. First, technique gives rise to monopolies that destroy competition. The various finance techniques allow the formation of trusts, stock exchanges, and banking institutions that promote large corporations. Second, technical progress allows some firms to gain an advantage over their competitors, eliminating or absorbing them through mergers, again destroying competition, the core market mechanism that ensures the highest quality of goods and services at the lowest possible prices. Ellul does not predict that competition in market economies will disappear. However, it will reach a point where it plays such a minor role in the economy that liberal capitalism will be a sham (1964, p. 204). The scale of the economy has been transformed by technology and associated techniques. The economic “laws” that held sway over capitalism in the early 20th century are no longer valid. At what point do we stop calling it capitalism and begin calling it a controlled or planned economy (1964, p. 204)?

Population growth necessitates expanding techniques to feed, house, clothe, and employ more people. Furthermore, technical development brings a more significant portion of the world’s population into fuller participation in economic life as producers and consumers. Technique inevitably leads to globalization (Ellul’s term is “intercontinental economy”), in which participation is reduced to a few essential functions of producer and consumer (1964, p. 206). This expansion of economic techniques also leads to mass society instead of community. Enormous economic and government institutions break down intermediate groups, absorbing the functions provided by family, community, and friendship networks. Individuals are enmeshed in impersonal relationships and anonymity and thus prone to government, corporate, and mass media influence. Such “malleable human ensembles” are ideal for developing the technical economy, with mobile masses of individuals available to advance techniques and meet production and consumption needs (1964, p. 207). Ellul concludes that mass society is the most compatible social form for a technical economy, giving the most unrestrained play to social manipulation and planning.

A world in which workers elect plant managers, construction workers elect engineers, privates elect generals, or citizens elect tax collectors would be anarchy, Ellul asserts (1964, p. 208). Technique sets the limits of popular sovereignty; many areas of technique are not subject at all to democratic control. Specialization and expertise, not popular will, guide a technical economy. The absence of democracy does not mean that labour regulation cannot include strong industrial relations with management, humane working conditions, good sanitation, and so forth. However, this is the result of vigorous internal and external regulations as parts of technique’s maximization of efficiency; the fact that they are in accord with the safety and desires of workers is a happy coincidence. Although many give lip service to workers’ safety and comfort, the goal is to improve efficiency and productivity, not to enhance worker well-being and freedom (1964, p. 210). For example, Ellul points to corporations that close unprofitable plants, throwing hundreds if not thousands of employees out of work and uprooting them from their communities. Against such economic necessities, human needs count little. People participate in the economy as producers and consumers, not as whole human beings but as things (1964, p. 215).

Modern times have developed economic techniques that transform chance and nature into the decisions of accountants, marketers, planners, and state regulators. With each success, technicians focus more on understanding and determining human behaviour through techniques such as public opinion polls, economic data, and statistics. Which stimulus produces a given response? Why do people conform to the latest social trends? What determines conformity to the general types that exist in society? With this knowledge of human behaviour, technicians devise techniques that transform the spontaneous behaviour of the majority into predetermined outcomes (Ellul, 1964, p. 216). Every technique tends to constrain nature and limit human freedom, transforming the natural and free into the artificial and planned. This artificiality is especially apparent with economic techniques.

Ellul notes that people who make personal decisions to follow the sociological currents of the day act “freely.” Nevertheless, if the same action results from a system of economic and social manipulations, it becomes obligatory (1964, p. 217). Some people might object that humans thus lost their freedom when they banded together in groups; the individual was very much subject to the norms and folkways of the group. Ellul’s answer to such objections is twofold. First, once such levers of human thought and behaviour are codified and integrated into a technical system, actions and thoughts become far more obligatory. Ellul draws the analogy of the transition from moral laws to state laws. Disobeying state laws has the force of sanctions up to and including death. However, he ignores the role of informal sanctions for breaking moral laws, not conforming to the group, or disobeying natural economic law in premodern societies. These sanctions included shunning, ostracism, and death. Premodern societies also had strict sanctions against non-conformists.

Second, and more important in restricting human freedoms, is that the levers of control over the beliefs and actions of the many are in the hands of a few. In premodern societies, social control was the product of a broad swath of the community. In modern times, Ellul notes, far more efficient technical instruments of manipulation and control are in the hands of an economic-political elite (1964, p. 217). At stake is human liberty, the freedom of action and thought, the ability to act in concert with our self-interests or decide to act in the interests of others. “We see in this loss of liberty the downward path into which technique is leading us” (1964, pp. 217–218).

Homo Economicus

The concept of homo economicus started as an abstraction, a hypothetical person used by economists to isolate the economic characteristics of humans as producers and consumers. That is a person who acts according to rational self-interest by omitting all other human characteristics. The planned economy is an attempt to make homo economicus a reality. According to Ellul (1964), the economic milieu changes humans into uncomplicated producers and consumers. He highlights the role of money in this process. Cash payments connect us to one another; money is essential in getting anything done, even in private life. Almost all human values can be reduced to money (p. 219). For many people, life revolves around doing work and making money, often excluding all other activities and enthusiasms. The 19th-century world was divided into two classes: the capitalist, who created the economy and reaped its rewards, and the proletariat, who produced the goods and services (p. 220). Work and money were related to God, who rewarded those who worked hard with money and punished those who were lazy with poverty and disease. Work became capitalism’s highest virtue, and money was its highest value. The capitalist conception is that a human is “only a machine for production and consumption” (p. 221).

For the proletariat, there was alienation. Workers were alienated from capitalists, their work, their products, and their very humanity. This alienation produced discontent and often revolutionary fervour. Nevertheless, they directed this fervour toward making money and overthrowing the rule of capitalists rather than ousting the power of the economy over human life. Some of the proletariat turned to labour unions and others to Marxist ideology to achieve their fair share of the wealth that they created and to find satisfaction within the economic sphere. Unfortunately, both subordinate individuals even further to the dictates of the economy, narrowing their lives to producers and consumers. The economy compels humans to produce and consume whatever it offers to avoid the crisis of overproduction. “The counterpart of the necessary reduction of human life to working is its reduction to gorging” (Ellul, 1964, p. 221). The goal of capitalist production is not to produce goods and services for humankind’s benefit but to produce and sell products of any kind at the increasing volume and profitability that technique allows. If people do not need a product, then techniques will be used to create that need through advertising, constructing a bridge between consumption of the product and the good life.

All other dimensions of humanity—traditions, spiritual values, emotions—are reduced in importance. Money, power, and status are everything. Nothing else—morality, art, values, emotions, religion—is “to be taken seriously,” Ellul claims (1964, p. 221). He notes that this is true for capitalist and communist societies. (Immanuel Wallerstein (2000) argues that this is because the communist world exists within the capitalist world-system.) Nevertheless, humans are not naturally homo economicus, Ellul insists. Yet the pressure of economic events has made them so. He equates this economic pressure with a “rolling-mill,” used to make of individuals what is necessary for the progress of the economic order. The process has not always been easy, with reversals and rebellions by some people. Many remained dissatisfied with this mangling of human nature, especially since inequality remained widespread and periodic economic crises continued (1964, p. 222).

The lure of spirituality, art, scholarship, and literature provides an escape for some. However, Ellul warns that, as the economic world develops, such avenues of escape will become more constricted. Each of these areas has become an industry, subject to technique’s ability to rationalize production and commodify products. Economic technique demands that people satisfy its requirements of calculability, order, and malleability. Individuals become human capital, resources to be exploited like any other resource. Technique mobilizes all individuals into the “production-consumption complex” (1964, p. 224). All must work to live and live to consume.

The production-consumption complex is part of our technical reality, and we cannot escape from the things that economic technique designs for us. Technique focuses on efficiency and productivity, so the complex is oriented toward the socialization of needs through education and media and then the meeting of those needs through production. Nor can we escape the needs of the economy regarding producers. Individuals must do their small parts in the production process. Education and training for many specialized jobs are arduous and often rigorous. The modern economy is specialized and interdependent; thus, workers must perform their (often mind-numbing) jobs with some devotion if not enthusiasm. The technical means for invoking this commitment include education, human relations techniques, and propaganda. Ellul asserts that, as these means develop, they become more unobtrusive, more reliant on data and science, and more efficient (1964, p. 226).

Using science, data, experience, and rationality, technique progressively makes individuals into production and consumption machines. Over time, we no longer feel the loss of the whole. We are not distressed or alienated because economic techniques (with assistance from human techniques such as education and propaganda) adjust individuals’ character—their goals and desires—to the economic regime. As economic technique becomes dominant, Ellul argues, the individual who endures capitalism’s booms and busts, its meaningless and alienating jobs, and its spiritual emptiness will be “released from suffering” (1964, p. 226). Technique demands our full participation in economic life and requires us to seek basic education and career training to serve the organization better. Economic technique requires a moral life because “no technique is possible among amoral and asocial” individuals (1964, p. 226). Rather than destroy the spiritual, technique subordinates it to economic life.

Under the influence of technique, individuals become objects, conditioned and assimilated into the economic regime to become homo economicus. The traditional concept of personal autonomy is redefined in the process. We believe ourselves free because technique gives us the illusion that we are rulers of our fate rather than products of subtle manipulation and control. According to Ellul, the ideal citizen for the artificial paradise is fashioned and shaped, the “detailed and necessary product” of technical means (1964, p. 227). Thanks to the success of economic techniques, Western people have become accustomed to the comforts of modern life: decent housing, abundant food, and all sorts of material goods to satisfy every basic and manufactured need. Despite the two world wars and economic setbacks, Ellul maintains that mid-20th-century men and women still believed in progress. However, that idea is now stained with the notion that material paradise can only be attained through the destruction of enemies. The atrocities of 20th-century wars, Ellul maintains, were fuelled by hatred of supposed foes who stood in the way of the attainment of the promised technological paradise, “be it Jew, Fascist, capitalist, or Communist” (1964, p. 191).