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"More than Planners, Less than Utopians:" 1960s Futurism and Post-Industrial Theory

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Jasper Verschoor

August 2017

This dissertation titled

"More than Planners, Less than Utopians:" 1960s Futurism and Post-Industrial Theory

JASPER VERSCHOOR

has been approved for

the Department of History

and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Kevin Mattson

Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History

Robert Frank

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3

ABSTRACT

VERSCHOOR, JASPER, Ph.D., August 2017, History

"More than Planners, Less than Utopians:" 1960s Futurism and Post-Industrial Theory

Director of Dissertation: Kevin Mattson

This dissertation studies the ideas of a group of thinkers described by Time

Magazine in 1966 as “Futurists.” The American sociologist Daniel Bell, the French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel, and the physicist Herman Kahn argued that the future could not be predicted but that forecasting certain structural changes in society could help avoid social problems and lead to better planning. In order to engage in such forecasting Jouvenel founded Futuribles, an international group that facilitated discussion about the future of advanced industrial societies. Bell chaired a Commission on the year

2000 that aimed to anticipate social problems for policy makers. The dissertation also focuses on work done by Kahn and others at the RAND Corporation and the Hudson

Institute.

The origin of 1960s futurism is traced to debates held under the auspices of the

Congress for Cultural Freedom, especially ideas about the “end of ideology.” The supposed exhaustion of left and right-wing political ideologies produced a desire for new theories of social change. Bell offered his theory of post-industrial society, a future shaped by theoretical knowledge and information in which computers played an important role. The importance of new intellectual techniques made possible by the computer could also be used to anticipate and plan for the future, or so the futurists hoped. A focus on social forecasting and social planning aligned in important ways with 4 the goals of President Johnson’s Great Society. Bell chaired a Presidential Commission on automation, and later a panel on social indicators. The later aimed to produce social statistics that could rival economic indicators, and ultimately lead to comprehensive planning for social goals.

The futurism of the 1960s fell far short of its ambitions, and failed to leave a lasting mark on society. This dissertation examines why this was the case and studies the tensions and problems inherent in the futurist efforts. Most importantly the futurists struggled to articulate how planning could be incorporated in a pluralist democracy, and how it could be commensurate with free market capitalism. The futurists wavered between normative and value-free understanding of their efforts, weakening their case for future-oriented governance. Ultimately this dissertation holds that futurist efforts are necessary but that the argument for futurism has to be political. Demanding a long-term perspective and planning for the future has to start in the political arena and cannot be value-neutral.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks first to Kevin Mattson. He has taught me much, made me a better writer, and a more critical thinker. It has been a joy to study under someone who constantly aims to find the connections between history and our contemporary world. Numerous other people at Ohio University have been good to me: John Brobst, Katherine Jellison, Jaclyn

Maxwell, Kevin Uhalde, and Stephen Cote. Thanks also to Chester Pach for teaching a killer grad seminar and being part of the dissertation committee. I am also thankful for the help and advice of Ingo Trauschweizer and Judith Grant.

Bethany J. Antos was very helpful at the Rockefeller Archive Center and the same goes for Jennifer S. Comins at Columbia University’s Butler Library. Chasity Gragg was a great problem solver at Ohio University’s Alden Library.

The late Herman Beliën inspired my interest in American history at the University of Amsterdam, and I’m grateful to have been his student. The love and support of my parents has been invaluable. They have always encouraged intellectual curiosity, even when it led me to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Finally, I’m grateful for the love and companionship of my wife Erin; I could not have done it without her.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ...... 3

Acknowledgments ...... 5

Introduction ...... 7

Chapter One: Possible Futures and the End of Ideology ...... 21

Chapter Two: The Art and Technique of Conjecture ...... 97

Chapter Three: Great Society Futurism ...... 169

Chapter Four: War, Technology, and the Critique against "Establishment Futurism" ... 283

Epilogue: A Futurism for Today? ...... 376

Bibliography ...... 386

INTRODUCTION

In February of 1967 an article in the New Republic noted that “future-planning” was “the most fascinating, and certainly the most fashionable thing to be doing this year in both government and the social sciences.”1 A month earlier, an article in Fortune discussed the emergence of “a new style of private and public planning, problem solving, and choosing.” In ten years this “new way of dealing with the future” would be

“recognized at home and abroad as a salient American characteristic,” the author predicted.2 Time Magazine, moreover, called these future-planners “futurists” and noted that “their work left utopians and science-fiction writers far behind.”3 In April, the New

York Times agreed, and noted that these “futurists” offered a different take on “the Jules

Verne business” and that they “live in the year 2000.”4 “The central figures of ‘future- planning,’” wrote Andrew Kopkind, the author of the New Republic article, were “more than planners and less than utopians.” They were “a new genus of social actors” who dreamed of using “social science instead of pressure politics to solve the nation's problems.”5

These articles, as well as numerous others, identified some of the key figures involved. Three people were always mentioned: they were the Columbia University sociologist Daniel Bell, former RAND Corporation physicist Herman Kahn, and the

French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel. The last of these was usually identified as the philosophical founding father of the new futurism; Bell’s futurist work

1 Andrew Kopkind, “The Future-Planners,” The New Republic, February 25, 1967, 19. 2 Max Ways, “The Road to 1977,” Fortune, January 1967, 94. 3 “The Futurists:Looking Toward A.D. 2000." Time, February 25, 1966, 34. 4 William H. Honan, “They Live in the Year 2000,” The New York Times, April 9, 1967, 57. 5 Kopkind, “the Future-Planners,” 19. 8 straddled the line between academia and government, while Kahn was the intellectual innovator who brought along “new techniques” of “systems analysis” and a reliance on computing power from military planning circles. All three also led their own futurist endeavors: there was Jouvenel’s international discussion group Futuribles, which was supported by the Ford Foundation; Bell’s Commission on the Year 2000, supported by the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences; and Kahn’s Hudson Institute, his own think tank which he had started after leaving the RAND Corporation.

In the New Republic Kopkind, a journalist best known for chronicling and celebrating the rise of the New Left and the anti-war movement, identified Daniel Bell’s theorizing on “the end of ideology” as a crucial idea of the future planners. According to

Kopkind, Bell had argued that class conflict and major social problems were “forever resolved in the U.S.” Marxism and radicalism, moreover, were discredited and “a dead letter.” All that society needed now were “intelligent, humanistic technicians”; the

“future-planners filled the bill perfectly.”6 Kopkind was clearly critical of this idea.

Inequality, racism, and the escalation of the Vietnam War were signs that conflict and radicalism were anything but a “dead letter.” He presented the Secretary of Defense,

Robert McNamara, as another problem solver, another “systems analyst” armed with computers. The future-planners, argued Kopkind, had their own ideology, even if they could not see it. It was one that tended towards “elitism” and was wary of democratic principles.7

6 Kopkind, “The Future-Planners,” 23. 7 ibid. 9

Where Kopkind was critical, the author of the article in Fortune, Max Ways, was greatly sympathetic to the new futurism. Ways, an editor at both Fortune and Time

Magazine with center-right and pro-business proclivities, also highlighted Bell’s “end of ideology” thesis. Unlike Kopkind, he claimed that the development of futurism invalidated not just ideology but major political conflict altogether. Radical ideologies were born from helplessness in the face of technological change and social upheaval, he argued. Yet now, “new ways of dealing with change can themselves generate in the public mind a sense of direction, of intelligent effective choice, a sense that our evolving capabilities and our evolving values will move hand in hand.”8 For Ways, the new futurism made the arguments “between liberals and conservatives” as relevant to the new society as “as a fistfight in the grandstand during a tense inning of a World Series game.”9

Kopkind and Ways were both astute observers in connecting the new efforts at

“future-planning” with discussions about the “end of ideology.” Yet, in offering rather crude renditions of the “end of ideology” thesis, both authors missed the way it had influenced the new futurists. For Bell “the end of ideology” never meant a celebration of consensus. The full title of Bell’s famous book, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, is often forgotten. The waning of ideological conflict brought to the surface new problems, most importantly political apathy amongst the populace, the lack of a long-term vision on the part of politicians, and a general failure to consider the social effects of technological change. Bell knew that ideology was a thing

8 Ways, “The Road to 1977,” 93-94. 9 Ways, “The Road to 1977,” 94. 10 of passion and “emotional energy,” and now society offered no outlet for this.10 Only in the developing states “of the east,” where ideology still reigned supreme, was the future

“all that counts.” In the west, however, the realization had set in that ideology came with a pitfall; it was “a vision of the future which cannot distinguish possibilities from probabilities, and converts the latter into certainties.”11 What Bell, and his fellow future planners, wanted to achieve was to rescue the energy and passion for the future from the pitfall of ideology. As chairman of the Commission on the Year 2000 Bell noted that the futurists aimed for “a more pragmatic” view of the future, and not “utopian” or

“apocalyptic” ones.12

First, this required offering warnings about a lack of vision in their society. We are like “a tourist who is planning a journey with the help of a guidebook that is already out of date,” wrote Jouvenel in the introduction to his philosophical study on forecasting,

The Art of Conjecture.13 It was now apparent, argued Bell, that while dealing with such problems as “urban renewal, education, medical needs, and air and water pollution” the

Kennedy-Johnson administrations were “handicapped” by a failure of foresight and planning. In crafting social policy “politicians and statesmen” had “little room for manoeuvre” because the institutional frameworks to deal with crises were “laid down in the past.” In a sense, wrote Bell, “we are trapped by the past.” Yet major crises in civil rights, medical care, and a shortage of educational facilities, “were foreseeable, and

10 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1960), 375. 11 Bell, The End of Ideology, 372. 12 Daniel Bell, Records of the Academy (American Academy of the Arts and Sciences), No. 1966/1967 (1966-1967), 24. 13 Bertrand De Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, trans. Nikita Leary (New York: Basic Books, 1967), 10. 11 planning could have begun ten and fifteen years ago.” Long-term social forecasting could serve to anticipate problems and allow policy makers to “strengthen” what was deemed socially desirable, while at the same time “deflecting” tendencies that promise to

“increase social ills.”14

Although they argued that the Johnson administration was in need of an anticipatory element, the futurists were no critics of post-war liberalism. They supported the expansion of the New Deal into a myriad of programs dealing with poverty, urban development, and civil rights. And they also welcomed the fact that these programs increasingly relied on social scientific expertise to determine plans and initiatives.

Johnson’s hope that the Great Society would be a place in which people were “more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods,” aligned nicely with the aims of the futurists.15 They shared the liberal faith in the ability of government to manage more than just economic security. Thinking in terms of “the quality of goals” meant offering “possible futures” and “alternative consequences of change in order to widen the area of choice.” This “normative commitment underlies any humanistic approach to social policy,” Bell wrote in an early document for the Commission on the year 2000.16 That Commission, moreover, featured many administration figures, and in studying the effects of automation, Bell’s work was directly commissioned by the

Johnson administration. Thus, the futurists agreed with President Johnson when he

14 Daniel Bell, “Report of the Commission on the Year 2000” Records of the Academy, no. 1965/1966, 24. 15 Lyndon Baines Johnson, “the Great Society” address at University of Michigan, May 22, 1964. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=26262&st=Great+society&st1= (accessed Dec. 16, 2016) 16 Daniel Bell, Grant proposal for the Commission on the year 2000, Grant Files Series III, Box 392, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Butler Library, New York. 12 captured the spirit of the time: “let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say, ‘It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.’”17

Today, however, “futurism” is still more likely to evoke the Italian art movement than efforts of social scientists in the 1960s. Or perhaps the term brings to mind the sensationalist bestsellers of Alvin Toffler or John Naisbitt from the 1970s and 80s, works that focused on technology and the wondrous futures it could produce. Bell developed a habit of describing Toffler’s Future Shock as “future schlock,” and Naisbitt’s 1982 bestseller Megatrends as “meshuga trends.” Behind such teasing critiques lay a serious charge against these popular futurists of later decades: they had perverted a serious undertaking, calling their work schlocky suggested that it was a cheap version of something valuable and important.

Still, the fact that the term “futurism” brings to mind Toffler before Bell or his

Commission on the Year 2000, indicates that the futurism of the mid-1960s did not carry the day; it did not become as Fortune predicted “a salient American characteristic.” There were too many problems in the ideas of people like Jouvenel, Kahn, and Bell. As we shall see, there was an undeserved optimism about forecasting and planning tools, clearly tied to exaggerated claims about the revolutionary potential of the computer. There was a deep and often debilitating confusion over the nature of planning, and its precise relationship to forecasting. And finally, there was a failure to explain how futurism could be made compatible with a pluralist political system.

17 Johnson, “The Great Society,” May 22, 1964. 13

All these problems related to an overarching confusion about the goal of futurism.

Was it to be a value-free social science that produced merely information about the way society was changing, and the potential effects of these changes? Bell and Jouvenel noted that forecasting structural change was about providing policy choices, and that this would lead to more thoughtful and reasoned decisions. But political choices determined the direction of society, and if this direction was to be forecasted then political decisions automatically came into play. By definition, then, forecasting could never be politically neutral. Abstractly, this fact was never lost on those involved in the futurism of the

1960s. Yet, practically, the exact relation between forecasting and political power proved a confounding issue.

Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, the culmination of his futurist work, announced the arrival of an information society. Within a growing service sector, jobs that required technical expertise became ever more important. All this meant that education became crucial, and the university became the central institution of society.

Bell put “theoretical knowledge” at the center of his worldview. Now innovation in industry was no longer the realm of talented tinkerers. In working on creating electric sparks, Edison had been unaware of “theoretical research in electromagnetism.” Yet subsequent development of electrodynamics could only come from engineers with formal training in mathematical physics.18 The most important innovation was the rise of

“intellectual technology:” things that made possible the organization of complexity.19

These were such things as probability theory, linear programming, and systems analysis.

18 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 20. 19 Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 29. 14

It meant the “substitution of algorithms (problem solving tools) for intuitive judgements.”

Computers were crucial in this respect; the rapid calculations they offered meant that the

“intellectual technology” could be applied and serve as new planning tools. Modern society aimed for “the social control of change” wrote Bell. It tried to “anticipate the future,” and the new intellectual technology offered ways to realize this.

During the 1960s, then, Bell forecast a post-industrial society that would engage in lots of forecasting. It would be a rationally planned society, in which those who mastered the “intellectual technologies” became centrally important. But here another tension emerged. If society could be rationally planned and optimal choices determined by new computer technology, then what was the role of the individual, and what of human freedom? Liberalism could never deny the individual choice, but in a desire to plan rationally for the common good, the individual could easily disappear from view.

More practically, there was the question of political resistance to forecasting. Bell wrote that the “hierophants” of the new society, “the scientists, engineers and technocrats” could “compete with the politicians or become their allies.” But would the politicians be interested? Did their constituents desire a long-term perspective and rational planning?

These problems vexed Bell and the futurists for most of the 1960s.

Yet, as Bell struggled with these problems he chaired the Commission on the year

2000. This effort brought together thirty experts from various fields in order to anticipate the problems of the year 2000. By the late 1960s a different group of futurists, already critical of Bell’s “end of ideology” thesis, perceived this effort as final proof that Bell’s 15 futurism was elitist and technocratic. They saw in his desire to get at the future through new techniques instead of ideology a refusal to question the existing power structure.

In 1968, the New Left historian and anti-war activist, Arthur Waskow, called

Bell’s futurism “establishment futurism.” He tied it to a liberal administration that was actively destroying the future of Vietnam. An older German Journalist and anti-nuclear activist, Robert Jungk, joined Waskow in calling for a futurism that was proudly utopian.

They opposed taking trends and structural changes as their starting point, and replaced them with a utopian vision worth working towards. This could not be the work of a social-scientific elite but had to be “participatory,” meaning a process that involved citizens. It took its cues from the civil rights and anti-war movement. Yet here too, there was confusion about the relationship between futurism and pluralist politics: was imagining a better future—and organizing in name of it—not just political activism?

Eventually, Waskow and Jungk became convinced that they too needed forecasting tools, or a methodology, and in looking for some they started to resemble the establishment futurists they opposed.

That 1960s futurism fell far short of its own grand ambitions is undeniable.

Improving the political process through forecasting was the aim, and in this it failed. Yet, this failure does not mean that the history of 1960s futurism should be ignored. Today, the most important and emotive of political issues, unemployment, healthcare, and climate change all demand a long-term perspective. Moreover, these issues cannot even be addressed without some sort of forecasting. How high will sea levels be by 2035? Will all truckers and bus drivers be out of a job by then? How many baby-boomers will need 16 hospice care? Any call for an anticipatory function in government, however, now has to be attentive to the problems and tensions that plagued the efforts of Bell and others.

Perhaps the most important reason for the failure of 1960s futurism was that the rational mindset that informed forecasting and long-term planning ran up against an emotive politics. In this respect the current political climate gives no great cause for optimism. Rarely, if ever, has a presidential election been characterized by a greater sense of irrationality and base emotions than in 2016. Today’s unprecedented aversion to scientific fact and expertise helped Donald Trump win the presidency. His campaign seemed to deny the complexity of advanced industrial society altogether; to “make

America great again” never meant solving structural problems, it only meant making better “deals.” In such a climate futurism seems to have no place. Yet, the West-Virginia coal miners who fell for Trump’s promise to end Obama’s war on coal, likely lost their jobs because of automation. A policy aimed at Appalachia informed by long-term technological trends will undoubtedly be better than whatever Trump proposes—or tweets out. How to convince voters in the grip of populist anti-intellectualism of such a thing will always be the crucial aspect. Yet, being alert to this difficulty means having learned at least one lesson from the futurism of the 1960s.

Other positive signs are perhaps emerging. In the recent fight over the repealing of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) about the long-term effect of an alternative health care bill, informed popular opinion.

Although it is impossible to say precisely what kind of role the CBO report played, it certainly seemed to have informed members of the public about serious long-range 17 consequences. Perhaps, then, today’s political atmosphere does not completely deny the possibility for a renewed focus on long-term forecasting.

Yet, all this means is that serious attention should now be given to the questions that proved so difficult for the futurists of the 1960s. How, in a society in which science and technology are ever more important but also ever less intelligible, can a representative democracy deal with the problems and potential of technological change.

How to value expertise while not admitting that the problems of post-industrial society are beyond the comprehension of average voters? How can policies informed by attentiveness to structural change and infused with a long-term perspective compete with emotive alternatives that cater to what is immediate and familiar?

To start tracing the history of 1960s futurism, the first chapter describes how discussions about “the end of ideology,” held under the auspices of the Congress for

Cultural Freedom in the 1950s, were the impetus for an interest in the future of advanced industrial society. The interaction between liberals like Bell and French anti-communist thinkers like Jouvenel and Raymond Aron explains how post-industrial theory took shape as an alternative to Marxism. This chapter also focuses on the way Cold War concerns influenced the decision of the Ford Foundation to fund Jouvenel’s Futuribles enterprise.

The second chapter investigates the futurist efforts of defense planners. The 1967

New York Times article that described the new futurism, somewhat hyperbolically stated that Bell and others saw in defense planning an example of “the technocracy of tomorrow.” These planners were thinking “a generation ahead of operations, preparing 18 simultaneously for a whole range of future possibilities.”20 The futurists of the 1960s certainly believed that defense planners employed tools that could be used for forecasting more generally. The RAND Corporation, therefore, became a source of endless fascination for many of the futurists. Bell was especially positive about the “defense intellectuals,” and he believed that their innovations—systems analysis, game theory, linear programming—held the key to post-industrial society.

Yet, as the second chapter also shows, the supposedly revolutionary technologies

RAND employed produced deep frustrations, and many analysts became aware of their limits. This led to new future-oriented experimentation, something the RAND mathematician Olaf Helmer positively described as “inexact sciences.” These were such tools as statistical simulations or the DELPHI method—formalized brainstorming by experts. Herman Kahn, first at RAND and later the founder of the Hudson Institute, was especially successful in producing data rich and extrapolative studies about post- industrial society. Although Bell, and many others, took the work of Kahn and Helmer very seriously, it was in essence an effort at speculation dressed up in scientific garb.

This vagueness about the nature of forecasting constituted a major weakness for the futurism of the 1960s. The second chapter also juxtaposes the work at RAND with a more humanistic focus on the future by Jouvenel. Ultimately, however, his ambitious epistemology of forecasting, The Art of Conjecture, identified only problems for futurism, and no solutions.

In the third chapter the focus is on the links between the Johnson administration and the futurism of Daniel Bell. Before he formed the Commission on the Year 2000,

20 Honan, “They Live in the Year 2000,” 72. 19

Bell evaluated the threat of automation as part of a Presidential Commission on technology and the economy. While downplaying the alarmism about technological job displacement, Bell’s arguments for a future orientation in government became stronger.

During the end of the Johnson administration Bell served on a government panel about

“social indicators.” This was an effort to formulate the kind of social statistics that could rival economic data, and make possible a rational social policy aimed at the “common good.” Once again, the main problems that surfaced during this work were the relationship between forecasting and planning, and the task of incorporating futurism into the democratic process. The efforts in which Bell was involved can be described as Great

Society futurism; its influence, however, was not contained to the Johnson administration. The Nixon administration, influenced by the presidential adviser and veteran of 1960s futurism, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, briefly established a futurist agency in the basement of the White House. This effort, the National Goals Research Staff, is the focus of the last part of this chapter.

The final chapter deals with critics of advanced industrial society, technology, and the Vietnam War. Critics such as Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse, Noam Chomsky,

Christopher Lasch, Theodore Roszak, and Paul Goodman, were troubled by Bell’s vision of industrial and post-industrial society. Arthur Waskow and Robert Jungk incorporated these critiques into an effort to develop an alternative futurism. Such a perspective on the future avoided reliance on scientific or military experts and instead took its inspiration from the New Left’s desire for participatory democracy. Yet, working out the relationship between utopia, activism, and forecasting, proved difficult and unsuccessful. 20

In 1970, right at the moment when the futurism of the 1960s seemed to have spent all its energy, Alvin Toffler published his bestseller, Future Shock. The title referred to a vertiginous sensation caused by a future that came at people too fast. The tumultuous end of the decade, and the year 1970 with all its unsettling events—from Kent State to

Charles Manson’s trial—produced in the public a desire to get a handle on the future.

Toffler pointed to the Commission on the Year 2000, the social indicator movement, and the National Goals Research Staff as positive steps. Yet, when he did so, the Commission on the Year 2000 had not met for three years and not produced any new material for just as long. Nixon had already given up on the National Goals Research Staff, and a Senate bill to incorporate “social indicators” into a new government agency was buried in committee. Perhaps the unease of experiencing future shock in 1970, and an interest in

Toffler’s book on the part of a mass audience, did not translate into a widespread sympathy for the goals of people like Jouvenel and Bell. Or perhaps it was simply unfortunate that their efforts to think about social change and gain some control over the future, had failed right as the public started paying attention.

In any case, this failure leaves us where we are today. While important reasons exist to engage in forecasting and long-term planning, it is not clear how such efforts can influence public policy. Taking seriously the history of 1960s futurism is perhaps the first step in resolving this problem.

CHAPTER ONE: POSSIBLE FUTURES AND THE END OF IDEOLOGY

When the French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel landed in New York on the evening of Saturday, October 13, 1962, he knew two very busy weeks lay ahead of him. He would be meeting countless people, mostly academics but also government officials, journalists, and members of various think tanks. He would be hurried from place to place, meeting people in New York, Washington D.C., and on the campuses of

Harvard and Yale. Yet he looked forward to it. He had made many trips to the United

States, and they never disappointed him.

The Americans who had cleared a few hours in their calendars to meet with

Jouvenel were professors of Ivy League universities, officials at RAND, IBM, and the

Brookings Institution. They met a man with piercing eyes, a pointy white beard, and a general seigneurial air about him. They noted that he spoke English very well and was interested in the latest American political news and gossip. Yet the reason they met him was a bit strange. Jouvenel was studying the future, or more precisely, the ways in which the future could be studied.

The Ford Foundation had paid for the trip, and Daniel Bell, the American sociologist who had published a selected set of essays entitled The End of Ideology two years earlier, had put together the itinerary. Bell had met Jouvenel many times before, through his work in Europe with the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). Bell was now in charge of touring the French philosopher up and down the East Coast because he had become an advisor to his project: Futuribles. It stood for possible futures, and this project 22 had been awarded a five-year 500,000-dollar grant from the Ford Foundation just a year earlier.

Jouvenel’s trip raised some obvious questions. What exactly was the idea behind

Futuribles? What were the goals of the organization, and what kind of benefits would a serious engagement with the future produce? Why, moreover, would a major American philanthropic institution provide funding for such an endeavor? In order to answer these questions this chapter will trace the ideas of both Jouvenel and Bell, and focus especially on how both were shaped by the ideological upheaval of the 1930s and 40s. The trans-

Atlantic intellectual network that was the CCF was crucial in the formation of Futuribles.

Especially important, in this respect, are ideas about the nature and development of modern industrial society. Finally, this chapter provides a detailed account of the Ford

Foundation’s decision to fund Futuribles, as well as the subsequent period in which members of Futuribles determined goals and methods.

Bertrand de Jouvenel and “Futuribles”

Before Bertrand de Jouvenel was awarded a large grant by the Ford Foundation in

1961, he had long been a familiar face at seminars and conferences of the Congress for

Cultural Freedom. The CCF had emerged in the late 1940s out of a series of international peace conferences during which a split between pro and anticommunist groups occurred.

The philosopher Sidney Hook formed Americans for Intellectual Freedom (AIF) in 1949, an organization that morphed into the Congress of Cultural Freedom a year later during a conference in Berlin.21 Soon the Congress’s main function was the propagation of left-

21 Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 5-6. 23 wing—or liberal in the American sense—political alternatives to communism, especially geared towards Western Europe. The CCF was funded by the ubiquitous Ford

Foundation, and, as was exposed in 1967, also indirectly by the Central Intelligence

Agency. Former wartime American intelligence officers, such as Michael Josselson and

Shepard Stone were architects of the anti-communist network of western intellectuals that emerged through the CCF, a network that would greatly benefit Jouvenel.22

Yet Jouvenel was not an obvious fit for the CCF. He was an aristocrat, had flirted with fascism during the war, and was a founding member of the Mont-Pèlerin society, an organization dominated by the champion of laissez-faire capitalism Friedrich Hayek.

Most CCF publications extolled the virtues of British Labor or the French socialists. The objective of the CCF, after all, was to prove to left-leaning European intellectuals that worthy alternatives to Marxism existed. But then again, Jouvenel’s life story fascinated many, and he seemed to defy easy political categorization. His major works combined liberal and conservative ideas, and in an anachronistic fashion that charmed especially

Americans, his mind always searched for the meaning and promise behind modern industrial society

Bertrand de Jouvenel was born on October 31, 1903 in Paris. His father was

Henry de Jouvenel des Ursins, an aristocratic newspaper editor, who was also a senator and ambassador. His mother was Claire Boas the daughter of a wealthy Jewish industrialist. Henry left his wife a year after Bertrand’s birth, and not until his late

22 On Shepard Stone see: Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone Between Philantropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). On CIA ties see: Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 1999). 24 adolescence did Bertrand regularly see his father. So while he had the name of a

Limousin aristocrat, Bertrand’s early life unfolded within the world of the Parisian

Jewish bourgeoisie. The Boas family owned an estate in Montmorency, a forested park north of Paris. Fit with riding stables, a professional tennis court, and an extensive library, Montmorency provided Bertrand his happiest childhood memories. Claire, an intelligent and energetic woman, established a salon that became a Parisian institution.

The salon was especially popular with prominent diplomats, and conversations often dealt with the major international affairs of the day. Most notably, Claire was involved in the cause of statehood for Czechoslovakia, and that country’s constitution owed its existence to Claire’s salon.23

As a young man Jouvenel was educated by a series of private tutors, his favorite of which was a young Irish woman who provided him with his fluency of the English language. If his mother’s salon had familiarized Bertrand with the world of international diplomacy, his formal schooling would provide him with an even more spectacular setting in this regard. Not long after entering the Lycée Hoche in Versailles in 1918,

Jouvenel found himself in the middle of the Peace Negotiations. Observing the proceedings, he became convinced that a Franco-German relationship based on mutual goodwill had to be the basis for a stable European peace. During the early 1920s his internationalist sensibilities led him to become involved in an organization his father had helped start, the Groupement Universitaire pour la Societé de Nations, an international student union in support of the League of Nations.

23 Pierre Hassner, “Bertrand De Jouvenel,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Free Press, 1979), 358-62. 25

Much of the 1920s were roaring for Jouvenel; he spent significant time at the beaches and clubs of the Riviera, skiing in the Alps, or exploring the night-life of Paris. A certain infamy had already attached itself to him by that point. In 1912, his father had married the writer, music-hall performer, and famous libertine Collette. When Bertrand was sixteen he started a five year long relationship with his forty-seven year old stepmother. Henry never stopped being a serial philanderer and was rarely home; young

Bertrand and his stepmother, meanwhile, were seen all around Paris. The plot of many of

Colette’s stories, most famously her novel Chéri, included love affairs with much younger men. Soon rumors started flying and eventually Henry and Claire tried to interfere by arranging an engagement for Bertrand. Colette bluntly stepped in and made him miss the official engagement dinner. Finally, in 1925, Bertrand and Colette called it quits and Bertrand decided to marry the writer Marcelle Prat, a niece of the Belgian playwright Maeterlinck.24

Despite the difficulties the affair surely caused between father and son, professionally at least, Jouvenel never saw his father as anything other than a role model.

It was politics and journalism at which Bertrand tried his hand during the 1920s. Henry’s political orientation can best be described as reformist liberalism; yet he also sympathized with the syndicalist movement. As John Ronald Braun has shown in an intellectual biography of Bertrand’s early thought, Henry’s syndicalism included an overt critique of the French political system; it had lost a “constructive aspect.” “On ne preparait pas, on

24 Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, Creating Colette:Volume Two, From Baroness to Woman of letters, 1912-1954 (South Royalton, Vermont:Steerforth Press, 1999), 82. 26 improvisait,” the elder Jouvenel wrote in an essay of the late 1920s.25 Henry’s syndicalism, however, should not be conflated with direct labor activism, or even direct involvement in the Confédération Générale du Travail the main syndicalist organization.

Henry, instead, was an aristocratic liberal whose interest in syndicalism was especially tied to his impatience with an aimless French political system.

In Bertrand de Jouvenel’s first major work, L’Economie Dirigée, the influence of his father’s ideas is obvious. In the book that came out in 1928, Jouvenel dealt with the transition from an agricultural society to a modern industrial one. He saw industrialization especially in terms of growth and progress, but, like his father, Jouvenel was most interested in how the process of modernization impacted the state. To aid poorly informed politicians he proposed sending “trained observers” to every region of the country in order to provide better information about the economy and industrial production.26 He also proposed replacing the Senate with a syndicalist “Chambre des

Intérêts,” a body that would combine the crucial interest groups of industrial society with technical expertise.

Yet, ultimately, L’Economie Dirigée was much less radical than it seemed at first glance. As historian Richard Kuisel has shown, “loyalty to small enterprise and the market restrained Jouvenel from asking for measures like planning.”27 What he meant by a “directed economy” relied on such established tools as fiscal and monetary policy, opening up markets, and promotion of domestic industry. The book, then, combined

25 Henry de Jouvenel, quoted in John Ronald Braun, Une Fidélité Difficile: The Early Life and Ideas of Bertrand de Jouvenel, 1903-1945 (PhD Diss., University of Waterloo, 1985), 19. 26 Braun, Une Fidélité Difficile, 112. 27 Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 82. 27 liberal solutions for a problem posed in statist terms; unsurprisingly, contradictions abounded. What Jouvenel was groping around for was a way to match in the state the modernizing impulse he found in industry. In his biography of Jouvenel, the French historian Olivier Dard has seen in L’Economie Dirigée an attempt to find a “third way” to modernization of the economy and the state, one beyond communism and liberalism.28

Kuisel has described it as “a take-charge republic” that would “govern in the name of the common good.”29

Jouvenel’s contradictory political ideas of the late 1920s can be partly explained by his party affiliation. While he was increasingly attracted to statist and technocratic ideas, he was also running for office for the Radical Party, a party that, despite its name, represented anti-clerical bourgeois interests and was committed to small-business, moderate labor reforms, and the free market. His run for deputy in a district around Le

Havre, close to where his in-laws had their estate, was an awkward affair. He was too young to run, and could not have held office should he have been elected. Yet, Jouvenel insisted on running anyway, something that seemed “fashionable” in his circles, as Braun has observed. His opponent, a seasoned moderate, had little to fear from Jouvenel, who struggled to connect with voters. Crowds chanted, “Chéri! Chéri! Chéri!” during rallies, in reference to Collette’s novel about a certain scandalous affair. Election posters also asked why Jouvenel had suddenly dropped the aristocratic “des Ursins” from his name.30

28 Olivier Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel (Paris: Perrin, 2008), 52. 29 Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France, 82. 30 Braun, Une Fidélité Difficile, 122. 28

He lost in a landslide, and although Jouvenel later liked to joke about what good fortune this was, since he was too young anyway, the loss surely stung.31

The ideological divide between liberalism and an attraction to a kind of planning for the “common good,” was responsible for the contradictions in Jouvenel’s L’Economie

Dirigée and produced an awkward political campaign. The Great Depression, however, called into question many of Jouvenel’s liberal certainties. By the early 1930s he was ready to embrace any economic or governmental experiment that promised relief and stability. As a journalist writing for various newspapers, he toured Europe and wrote favorably about the Belgian socialist Hendrik de Man and his “planisme,” Italian corporatism, and even Catalan nationalism. In 1932, he traveled to the U.S. to report on the severity of the Depression. He spent more than half the year in the U.S. crisscrossing the country with Martha Gellhorn, the future war correspondent with whom he had a long affair. Jouvenel was shocked by what he saw in the U.S., the most advanced economy, that pinnacle of modernity with all its mighty industrial prowess, had grinded to a halt.

When he sailed back to France not long before the American elections, he had little faith in any of the presidential candidates. He discovered few constructive ideas in Roosevelt’s campaign, and had only been inspired by “young Bob” LaFollete, the progressive senator from Wisconsin.

When the New Deal began to take shape, Jouvenel was enthusiastic and realized he had underestimated Roosevelt. By the mid-1930s he noted that the American President

“had not, like Hitler, merely substituted federal power for local power.” Instead, he had

31 Jouvenel quoted in “Bertrand de Jouvenel Urges Hoover and Laval Start Concerted Campaign,” New York Times, October 5, 1931, 15. 29 created “a national mentality, a citizenship beyond local frontiers.” This meant that “for the young generation, the country now appears as a whole on which one can act from the center in Washington.”32 Two elements in this statement on Roosevelt and the New Deal were crucial aspects of Jouvenel’s thinking during the 1930s. The first was the notion of forming an identity beyond the local, one that allowed dramatic political action for the common good. For Europeans this meant articulating a European identity that allowed a unified response to the Great Depression, and German-Franco cooperation remained a crucial aspect in all this.33 The second major element was his emphasis on youth.

Jouvenel identified a new political generation, one that included himself, with a mission of renewal and regeneration; it was a force that could produce an awakening of a stale and stagnant political system.

Disillusionment with the Third Republic animated young intellectuals of disparate ideologies during the interwar period, as historian Tony Judt has shown.34 The year 1934 was crucial in this regard; the Stavisky Affair, named after a conman who died mysteriously following a financial scandal involving numerous French ministers, caused

Jouvenel to leave the Radical Party alongside other youthful reformers. Jouvenel long felt the party did not represent his outlook and the scandal seemed to have been the final straw. The Stavisky Affair, however, had more immediate and dramatic effects on French politics. In February of 1934, at the height of the scandal, far-right and fascist groups

32 Jouvenel quoted in Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 55. (my translation.) 33 Daniel Knegt, “French Intellectual Fascism and the Third Way: The Case of Bertrand de Jouvenel and Alfred Fabre-Luce” in Salvador, Alessandro and Kjøstvedt, Anders G. (eds), New Political Ideas in the Aftermath of the Great War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 46. 34 Tony Judt, “’We have Discovered History:’ Defeat, Resistance, and the Intellectuals in France” in Michael Ceyer and John W. Boyer, eds., Resistance Against the Third Reich: 1933-1990 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 214-217. 30 rioted at the Place de la Concorde, leading to fears about a right wing coup-d’état. Fifteen people were killed by police. A year later the New York Times published a long article by

Jouvenel in which he tried to make sense of these chaotic events and the precarious state of the Third Republic in general.

The article centered on Colonel François De La Rocque’s Croix de Feu movement, a proto-fascist league, made up especially of veterans, that staged mass rallies during the mid-1930s. Jouvenel described how the Communists and Socialists saw in De

La Roque a French Mussolini or Hitler, a figure “conjured up by capitalists” fearful of a populace increasingly willing to vote leftists into power.35 Jouvenel admitted that the rallies, featuring airplanes flying over “torch-lit crowds,” were “reminiscent of

Hitlerism.” Anticipating the electoral victory of the Popular Front, Jouvenel noted that all this could produce a violent clash. But then, at the end of the article, Jouvenel shed his descriptive cloak and presented his own view on the topic. Although it did not fit the conclusions of the article itself, he now expressed the possibility of a political fusion of far-right nationalism and Popular Front socialism. He wrote that “the patriotic flame kindled by the Crosses of Fire, burns everyday more brightly within the ranks of the

Front Populaire, and the consciousness that something must be done to improve the social order is undoubtedly spreading among the rank and file of the Crosses of Fire.” If “a team of statesmen” would come to power “in sympathy with the aims of the Popular Front” but guided by “the spirit of the Crosses of Fire” then “the fever that burns within the blood of

35 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “France is stirred by Crosses of Fire,” New York Times, September 29, 1935, 10. 31 the French nation may be turned to a constructive effort rather than dissipated in internal warfare.”36

Considering such statements, Olivier Dard has described Jouvenel’s political orientation of the mid to late 1930s as “gauche fasciste,” or a left-wing fascism.37 Yet, this tenuous political ideology was made even more precarious by Jouvenel’s aristocratic internationalism and his hopes for Franco-German cooperation. During the mid-1930s, then, Jouvenel’s political orientation was an eclectic bundle of disparate ideas and allegiances that seemed to be pulled apart by historical events. Things inevitably came to a head when Jouvenel had the chance to interview Adolf Hitler for Paris-Midi.

It was a German friend, Otto Arbetz, who provided Jouvenel with this opportunity. Jouvenel and Arbetz had met through international youth organizations in the 1920s, and when the Francophile Arbetz rose in the Nazi Party, Jouvenel never stopped seeing in him anything other than a friend committed to peace. The interview placed Jouvenel in the international spotlight and wrapped him up in diplomatic intrigue of major consequence. The interview itself was a clear softball-job in which Hitler was given every opportunity to proclaim his friendly intentions toward France. The most critical Jouvenel got was when he asked Hitler to address the difference between his harsh words toward France in Mein Kampf, and his now friendly view. Hitler’s response was that his harsh words had been written in prison, when French troops still occupied

“the Ruhr.” Now, however, there was “no reason for conflict.” The affair became problematic when publication of the interview was delayed for a week, during which time

36 Jouvenel, “France Stirred by Crosses of Fire,” 21. 37 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 126. 32 the French assembly voted for the Franco-Soviet pact. A week later Hitler cited this pact but also the delay of publication as reasons for the military re-occupation of the

Rhineland. According to the Germans, Hitler’s peaceful outlook was denied a distribution amongst French citizens so that a sneaky French government could take hostile action.

What really happened is a continuing source of debate amongst diplomatic historians, but the most obvious conclusion about Jouvenel, at least, is that he was in over his head.38

Throughout most of the 1930s, Jouvenel viewed Nazi Germany through the prism that Arbetz provided him. The Nazis were associated with youth, virility, and most importantly, action. It offered a way beyond the ineffective Weimar Republic and, perhaps something of the same spirit could move France beyond the stale Third Republic.

Jouvenel made little effort to think critically about the dark side that others saw so clearly. Raymond Aaron, an ally and friend of Jouvenel’s after the war, had also been critical of the “decadent and aimless” Third Republic. But, for him, the violent anti-

Semitism of the Nazi’s inherently invalidated their ideology. Jouvenel, however, simply ignored what he did not want to see. That he could be hopeful about Léon Blum’s

Popular Front government—Blum was a friend—while also have sympathy for Nazi

Germany betrays serious naiveté and confusion. Yet his silence on the anti-Semitism of the Nazi’s and French nationalists seems to go beyond naiveté; considering his own

Jewishness, it is something that his biographers have struggled to explain.39

Soon Jouvenel committed himself to a new party, the Parti Populaire Français

(PPF) started by the former communist Jacques Doriot. In his article on the Croix de Feu

38 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “Adolf Hitler,” Paris Midi, February 28, 1936, 1,3. For the historical debate around the importance of the interview see Braun, Une Fidélité Difficile, 574-594. 39 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 126. 33 he had described Doriot as one of those young “progressives” who had been disillusioned by the politics of the left. Yet, the PPF quickly became a fascist party, and Doriot clearly aimed to emulate Hitler and Mussolini. The two years, from 1936 to 1938, during which

Jouvenel aligned himself with this party were “the peak of his infatuation with fascism.”

He became unambiguously anti-communist, supported the nationalist side in the Spanish

Civil War, and wrote a pro-fascist book Le Réveil de L’Europe. In this book Jouvenel juxtaposed youth, force, discipline and virility with the decadence of “café chatter” and

“potbellied parliamentarians.”40 His earlier benign view of modern industrial society now receded in favor of a critique of “individualism;” he spoke of the ugliness of industrial production, “a city without joy,” and “unnecessary consumption.” An appreciation of

Catholicism suddenly appeared in his writing as well.41

During the war, Doriot would become one of the most notorious collaborators.

Yet, Jouvenel did not accompany Doriot on his ever rightward trajectory. The Munich

Agreements suddenly put a stop to this. Although Jouvenel’s political ideas were not instantly transformed, the accords caused a clean break with Doriot and the PPF;

Jouvenel also gave up his faith in Franco-German cooperation. While many in the PPF wavered on the policy of appeasement, Jouvenel opposed it strongly once it became clear that Czechoslovakia, the country in which his mother had invested her energy and time, would be given up unsentimentally. On the eve of war, Jouvenel was now more confused about Germany than ever before. In a letter to the London Times he criticized

40 Bertrand de Jouvenel, La Réveil de L’Europe (Paris: Grasset, 1938), 234. 41 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 125. 34 appeasement and called for mobilization in a way that indicated both fear and sympathy for the Nazis.

The Führer will be impressed only if the British and French nations cure themselves laxity and slovenliness. What has been achieved in Germany has been achieved only because the ceaseless effort of every German man woman and child has built upon that platform of strength from which Herr Hitler speaks. If we do not show ourselves the equals of the Germans in patriotism we shall be neither worthy foes or desirable friends. The only logical sequel to Munich is the 52 hour workweek in French factories and conscription in England, then we can talk as great Nations, but not until then.42

Tony Judt has interpreted “the paradoxical case of Bertrand de Jouvenel” as an extreme illustration of a general climate of contradiction and confusion amongst French intellectuals of the 1930s. There was a “crossing of the lines” an “intersection at the extremes of radical sentiments” the foundation of which was a profound frustration with parliamentary republicanism. Jouvenel “half-Jewish, a friend of Blum and against the

Munich compromise” was also “constantly tempted by the appeal of order and stability associated with Nazi Germany.” Judt has emphasized the importance of a generational perspective in understanding the critical attitude toward republicanism that so characterized a younger generation. Those that came of age during the Dreyfus Affair often remained loyal to the idea of republicanism, even as they criticized individual politicians or parties. But those whose foundational experience was the Great War,

“never had the occasion to unite, in good faith and with clear conscience, in defense of democracy and rights.” Instead, “their political experience consisted of opposition and disaffection.” Judt, therefore, notes that the German victory in 1940 “marks not so much a break between a democratic and an authoritarian regime as the consummation of a

42 Bertrand De Jouvenel, “Letter to Editor,” The Times, October 19, 1938, 8. 35 process of decline and alienation, shared by many and articulated by a new generation of intellectuals.”43

Although it is clear that Jouvenel’s outlook on Germany changed in 1938, it is less clear what his role was during the early years of the German occupation. In 1983, the historian Zeev Sternhell claimed that Jouvenel had been a collaborator, upon which the eighty-year-old Jouvenel sued him for libel. Raymond Aaron left his hospital bed to testify on Jouvenel’s behalf. Aron did not deny that Jouvenel had flirted with fascism but he vehemently denied that his friend had ever collaborated with the Nazis. Leaving the courtroom after his testimony, Aron collapsed and died. Although much of what Sternhell wrote was true—six of the seven charges Jouvenel brought against him were dismissed— his notion of collaboration, and his understanding of French fascism, lacked nuance.

Sternhell argued that by 1940 French society was saturated with fascists, and that some of them had carefully re-written their history after the war. The historian Robert Wohl has noted that Sternhell’s argument essentially resuscitated the old French “gravedigger” theory about the war, namely that the French defeat and the Vichy regime could be tied to an intellectual and moral undermining from within.44 Sternhell, then, did not study the intellectuals of the 1930s with a desire to explore complexity, confusion, and contradiction, as Tony Judt has done, but he sought to accuse instead.

The most respectable sources indicate that Jouvenel’s actions during the first two years of the occupation continued a pattern of contradiction. He stayed in close contact with Otto Arbetz, who had become the German ambassador to France, but relayed

43 Judt, “We have Discovered History,” 222. 44 Robert Wohl, “French Fascism, Both Right and Left: Reflections on the Sternhell Controversy,” The Journal of Modern History, Mar., 1991, 92. 36 information to General Navarre, then head of intelligence for General Weygand in

Algiers. Both Navarre and Weygand initially cooperated with Pétain and the Vichy regime before actively fighting the oppressor and the collaborators. In September of 1945

Navarre testified that Jouvenel had been authorized to gain sensitive information from certain Germans, notably Arbetz. Other sources from that time corroborate this and state unequivocally that Jouvenel had not been a collaborator.45 Yet, Sternhell made much of

Jouvenel’s Après la Défaite a 1941 pro-fascist book that, once translated in German, became widely distributed by the Nazis. Although this book was likely written years earlier, Jouvenel certainly left a published record of his infatuation with fascism. After the war this produced a struggle to regain his respectable position in French intellectual life. As thinkers associated with the resistance, Sartre, Camus and Aron, rose to prominence, Jouvenel was unmistakably tainted.

Jouvenel had spent the last two years of the war in Switzerland where he had fled following a visit from the Gestapo that had spooked him. In Switzerland, his illusions about fascism and Franco-German peace shattered, he gained a tragic sensibility about life and politics. When his fifteen-year-old son died from typhoid in 1946, all this was heightened. He was working, during this period, on a grand philosophical treatise, one that betrayed a kind of over-correction to his previous ideas.

Du Pouvoir, published in 1945, traced the growth of power through history.

Jouvenel argued that the growth of centralized power, from warlords and kings to modern industrial states, was an unstoppable historical development. The outcome of ever greater concentrations of power seemed to be ever more violent warfare. That Jouvenel was

45 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 179-180. 37 slaying personal demons is easily gathered form the preface: “I know well the hopes that men have of it [power], and how their trust in the power which shall be, warms itself at the fire of the sufferings which the power that was inflicted on them.” Power, wrote

Jouvenel, was born from a desire for “social security.” There was “a certain grandeur” in any effort to “condition the minds and the bodies of men in order to fit each single person into his proper niche in society, and to ensure the happiness of all by the interlocking functions of each.” The goal of order and rationality, Jouvenel implied, fed the

“minotaur” that was power.

Parts of the book compared the modern period to the medieval period in favor of the latter. He claimed that monarchical power had at least been checked by the aristocracy and the moral obligations that came with divinely sanctioned rule. But the modern state, according to Jouvenel, could always hide behind the claim that it was advancing the will of the people, and therefore state power could never be checked. Thus

Jouvenel wrote: “All that has happened is that the royal power house has been improved on: its controls, moral and material, have been made progressively more efficient so as to drive ever deeper into society and to take from it in an ever tighter clutch its goods and men.”46 For Jouvenel, modern constitutional democracies did not challenge the centralization of power but functioned as power’s frightening end point. “The will of democratic power goes by the name of general. It crushes each individual beneath the

46 Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: Its Nature, and the History of its Growth, trans. J.F. Huntington (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 9. 38 weight of the sum of the individuals represented by it.” Therefore, “the democratic fiction confers on the rulers the authority of the whole.”47

In the immediate post-war years other European intellectuals were making similar libertarian arguments about the centralizing tendencies of the modern state. In April of

1947 Jouvenel joined Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises and Milton Friedman in the

Swiss Alps to establish the Mont Pèlerin Society. In the society’s “statement of aims” they called for the open discussion and study of “the moral and economic origins” of the

“present crisis.”48 This crisis, or so they argued, was the undermining of “the positions of the individual and the voluntary group” by “extensions of arbitrary power.” The statement also noted that the crisis was “fostered by a decline of belief in private property and the competitive market.” The first part of the statement perfectly fitted Jouvenel’s political sensibility during the late 1940s, and it could have been lifted straight out of Du

Pouvoir. But the second part of the statement—the one that stressed private property and free markets—was more problematic for Jouvenel.

As historian Angus Burgin has noted, Jouvenel did not champion laissez-faire economics.49 He saw the “present crisis” in terms of totalitarian regimes, and he didn’t automatically equate free markets with freedom on a more basic level. In Du Pouvoir, of which an English translation was published in 1949, he argued that capitalism carried a destructive element. He gave the example of a saddle maker living in the Temple Quarter of Paris and his son working for Citroën and living in the suburbs. The change between

47 Jouvenel, On Power, 257. 48 Mont Pelerin Society “Statement of Aims.” April 8, 1947. Accessed online November 2014. https://www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/mpsGoals.html 49 Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Great Depression (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012), 113-114. 39 generations had meant a transformation of “folkways, beliefs and sentiments” and impacted society in ways that had to be measured qualitatively not just quantitatively.50

In 1950 Jouvenel wrote Hayek that “when capitalism triumphs, there is a decline of culture.”51 Hayek responded that free market capitalism made cultural growth possible, whereas state power stifled it. Jouvenel, however, was not convinced. In Du Pouvoir he noted that all materialist political theories were susceptible to the same problems from which the science of economics suffered. This was a science that regarded “the race of men as a physical mass pin-pointed in place and acted upon only by the mechanical force of self-interest.”52 Such an idea of mankind ignored questions of societal morals and the desire for harmony, argued Jouvenel.

During the 1950s Jouvenel started to emphasize environmental concerns when he contemplated modern industry and capitalism. Although Jouvenel professed that he

“marveled” at mankind “living in a sort of symbiosis with an ever changing population of machines,” he wanted to temper “the juvenile pride in our ability to exploit the earth.” 53

What should not be ignored, argued Jouvenel, was that “we can blight the soil and corrupt the air, that we can produce smog and dustbowls; we could poison the sea; we could melt the icecaps at the poles.” If an absolute adherence the freedom of the market offered no check on such effects of capitalist production, then Jouvenel found them profoundly upending and dangerous.

50 De Jouvenel, On Power, 370. 51 De Jouvenel to Hayek, quoted in Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 114. 52 Jouvenel, On Power, 370. 53 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “A Place To Live In,” Modern Age, Winter 1959/60, 11. 40

The divergence between Hayek and Jouvenel, then, can be explained in terms of the historical periods from which they drew inspiration. Hayek, Von Mises, and

Friedman looked to the wisdom of the eighteenth century founding fathers of liberal economic thought. Jouvenel, however, was primarily interested in social harmony and looked to pre-capitalist medieval society for inspiration. Yet, Jouvenel also became critical of the rigidity of Hayek’s argument about the role of the state. He complained to

Milton Friedman that “The [Mont Pèlerin] Society has shifted more and more towards a

Manicheism in which the state can do no good while the private enterprise can do nothing wrong.”54 During the 1950s, then, Jouvenel seemed to have grown impatient with an argument that was entirely negative, and presented no positive theory on state power.

What he wanted now was to “tackle constructively the problems of the present and the future” and move beyond the “idealization of a mythical 19th century.”55 This new critical perspective towards the Mont-Pèlerin Society placed Jouvenel in a group of other dissatisfied members, especially Raymond Aron and Michael Polanyi. These intellectuals, staunchly anti-communist, looked to infuse liberalism with a new élan, but in doing so, wanted to avoid becoming merely cheerleaders for the free market. From the mid-1950s onwards this group stopped participating in the Mont-Pèlerin Society;

Jouvenel would formally quit in 1960.56

In order to consider “the problems of the present and future” Jouvenel now abandoned the grand historical sweep of Du Pouvoir, in favor of “a search for the criteria applicable in our own day to the conduct of public authorities.” He did this in De La

54 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 284. 55 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 285. 56 Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 123-124. 41

Souveraineté, a work translated and published by the Chicago University Press in 1957 as

Sovereignty: an Inquiry into the Public Good. Jouvenel noted that history was full of examples of thinkers who pictured an ideal role for government in a “static” society, and it was equally full of examples of utopian revolutionaries. “But is it possible for us who make no claim to stabilize either the present or the future, to find canons of conduct for the public authority of a dynamic society?”57 In order to answer this question Jouvenel explored some inherent tensions in democracy: the balance between social change and political stability, individual goals and “the common good,” and individual freedom and political consensus.

He did so, however, in a highly abstract way. He relied on enlightenment thinkers and examples from ancient history. His style was Socratic, getting at his material through a sort of dialogue with his reader. As a result, many reviewers were profoundly frustrated with the work. A reviewer for The American Sociological Review noted that Jouvenel’s book read like “an eighteenth century treatise using twentieth century materials, as if

Rousseau had invoked the concept of feed-back to specify what he meant by the self- correcting quality of the general will.”58 The political scientist Robert Dahl noted that

“Jouvenel does not ‘complete’ his themes. He does not seek solutions in the ordinary sense; at best he points to directions in which solutions might be found. As a result, there is a curiously inconclusive air to the whole book.” Dahl also noted that Jouvenel’s reasoning was rarely backed up by evidence. Dahl noted that “in the case of all of his

57 Bertrand de Jouvenel, Sovereignty: an Inquiry into the Public Good, Trans. J.F. Huntington (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1957), xii. 58 Melvin Richter, review of Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good, by Bertrand De Jouvenel, American Sociological Review Vol. 23(1958): 215-217. 42 important propositions the grasp of the argument far exceeds the reach of the evidence he presents.” This made his arguments hard to “test.” Dahl noted that one of Jouvenel’s propositions seemed to be that some sort of “unity of belief” was necessary for political stability, and that political stability was necessary for liberty. The conclusion, then, seemed to be that “disunity of belief” could produce “authoritarianism.” But belief in what? Societal disagreement on “whether Gina Lollobridgida was more attractive than

Marilyn Monroe” was “quite tolerable, wrote Dahl. Without getting specific and providing evidence or examples drawn from modern political reality, Jouvenel’s theorizing seemed more akin to “literary criticism” than modern political science. For

Dahl then, Jouvenel’s “political theory in the grand manner” was not all that useful.59

Despite such criticisms, Dahl’s review, and those of others as well, indicated that

Jouvenel’s work served an important function. Jouvenel was “the civilized Frenchman” who, like De Tocqueville provided an aristocratic balance to American democratic optimism. Dahl proceeded to draw a portrait for his reader:

Bertrand de Jouvenel is an aristocrat who is both attracted by liberalism and fearful of its consequences, sympathetic to liberty and suspicious of equality, historically minded in order to answer present problems, aware of the historic role of the aristocracy as a buffer between sovereign and people, preoccupied with the need, which is often unrecognized by liberals and positively rejected by the Left, for a modern social and political equivalent to the countervailing power once exercised by the aristocracy, and convinced that if the demand for equality results in the destruction of all such countervailing powers, then what begins in freedom must invariably end in tyranny.60

That Jouvenel received a warm welcome in England and America from those who also harshly criticized his work, should be interpreted against the backdrop of the Cold

59 Robert A. Dahl, “Political Theory: Truth and Consequences,” World Politics, October 1958, 89-102. 60 Dahl, “Political Theory: Truth and Consequences,” 93. 43

War. During the 1950s Jouvenel lectured at Berkeley and Cambridge, and his next work of political theory A Pure Theory of Politics was almost completely drawn from the

Storrs Lectures delivered at Yale. In reviews of Jouvenel’s work, his pro-fascist past was never mentioned. In his role as “the civilized Frenchman,” slightly anti-modern but friendly towards the west, anticommunist, and constantly worried about totalitarianism,

Jouvenel confirmed to an idealized image of the continental liberal intellectual.

That Jouvenel was celebrated less for his work on political theory and more for a certain role that he fulfilled, also becomes apparent when he is compared to the American intellectual he most resembled during the 1950s, Walter Lippmann.61 In 1955 Lippmann published Essays in the Public Philosophy a work that advanced once more his old discomfort with democracy. Like Jouvenel’s Sovereignty this work considered how the public interest—like Jouvenel’s “common good” a term clearly derived from Rousseau— existed in conflict with liberal democracy. Lippmann concluded:

The public philosophy is in a deep contradiction with the Jacobin ideology, which is in fact, the popular doctrine of the mass democracies. The public philosophy is addressed to the government of our appetites and passions by the reasons of a second, civilized, and, therefore, acquired nature. Therefore, the public philosophy cannot be popular. For it aims to resist and regulate those very desires and opinions which are most popular. The warrant of the public philosophy is that while the regime it imposes is hard, the results of rational and disciplined government will be good. And so, while the right but hard decisions are not likely to be popular when they are taken, the wrong and soft decisions will, if they are frequent and big enough, bring on a disorder in which freedom and democracy are destroyed.62

61 Hans Morgenthau noted the similarity between Jouvenel and Lippmann in 1963. See Hans, J. Morgenthau, “Has the Creative Imagination Lost Confidence in Itself?” New York Times, 06 May 1962, 301. 62 Walter Lippmann, Essays in the Public Philosophy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 162. 44

The similarity between the theses of Jouvenel and Lippmann was no coincidence.

Jouvenel moved in circles in which Lippmann had long been seen as one of the most important American thinkers. In 1938 Aron helped organize the Colloque Lippmann, a three day long seminar about Lippmann’s The Good Society, which appeared in France as

La Cité Libre. That book had attempted to define a new type of liberalism for the age of mass society and totalitarian threats. At that time Jouvenel was active in the PPF, and not ideologically aligned with the crowd that came to hear Lippmann speak. But some of the participants in this “collogue,” including Aron, joined the Mont-Pèlerin Society during the late 1940s, and during that time Jouvenel developed ideas narrowly in line with

Lippmann.63 The Public Philosophy, moreover, appeared in a French version and was widely read and discussed in France. Charles de Gaulle, a few years before making his grand comeback, sent Lippmann a private note conveying his deep agreement with its thesis.

Yet, crucially, in 1955, Lippmann’s harsh view of democracy was not favorably received in the U.S.64 Although he was respected enough never to be dismissed,

Lippmann’s anti-egalitarian views ill-fit the political atmosphere of the 1950s. A Time

Magazine reviewer noted that Lippmann “weakened his argument by not differentiating between the democracies—between the chronically sick French variety, for instance, and the vigorous but complex American form.”65 Such a view helps to explain Jouvenel’s appeal to certain American Cold War liberals. If he had aristocratic and anti-democratic

63 Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel, 273-274. 64 Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 494. 65 “The Mandate of Heaven” Time, February 28, 1955, 90. 45 tendencies, they could be explained in reference to problematic history of the continent, but not in relation to the U.S. Jouvenel, then, was seen as a pro-western intellectual, whose critique of democracy was ultimately aimed at saving it in Europe. The fact that the most notable French intellectuals of the time, especially Sartre, were fierce critics of the West, made Jouvenel all the more valuable as an asset in the ideological struggle that was the Cold War.

In this respect Jouvenel was tailor made for the Congress of Cultural Freedom, and he quickly became, with Aron, a crucial figure in the French CCF network. Aron and

Jouvenel both participated in the most important CCF conferences: the Milan conference in 1955, the Tokyo seminar in 1957, the Rhodes seminar in 1958, and the Rheinfelden seminar in 1959.

It was through his CCF connections that Jouvenel met Waldemar Nielsen, the

Ford Foundation’s young associate director for international affairs, who would become one of his great supporters at the Foundation. Nielsen had been a Paris-based special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce during the late 1940s, and after that, director of the State Department’s European Information Program at Marshall Plan headquarters.66

For the Ford Foundation he was a perfect intermediary between French intellectuals and liberal American anti-communists. In 1955 Nielsen procured Jouvenel a grant that paid for travel to various CCF activities. This was followed, in 1960, by a 15.000 dollar grant in order to set up something Nielsen described to his colleagues at the Ford Foundation as

66 Obituary of Waldemar Nielsen, New York Times, November 4, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/nyregion/waldemar-nielsen-expert-on-philanthropy-dies-at- 88.html?_r=0 46

“a small exploratory project on the evolution of political institutions in Europe.”67 This focus on political institutions was the result of Jouvenel’s theoretical works but also a paper he presented at the Rhodes seminar.

Sociologist Edward Shils was responsible for the seminar on the Greek island. He gathered about forty intellectuals to debate the prospects of democracy in the “new states,” by which was meant the newly independent post-colonial states in Africa and

Asia. Shills had traveled to India in the early 1950s in order to better understand the

Indian intellectuals and their role in state formation and modernization. That last term— modernization—was quickly becoming the focus of a wide intellectual network that greatly overlapped with the CCF and also owed much to Ford Foundation funding.68

Unlike some more sanguine modernization theorists however, at Rhodes no one was very optimistic about the prospects of transplanting western democratic models to post- colonial soil.

In the paper that Jouvenel delivered at Rhodes, he noted that his pessimism stemmed from the fact that the political system in the west was in trouble. Jouvenel then proceeded to offer a Lippmannesque critique of mass democracy. There was a

“dangerous degree of self-delusion in the current formulations of democracy,” he claimed.69 He elaborated that democratic participation became a difficult concept in

67 Waldemar A. Nielsen to Shepard Stone, March 25, 1961, Ford Foundation Records, Grant File “Futuribles,” 61922, Reel 662. Rockefeller Archival Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, (Hereafter FFR). 68 Six months after the Rhodes seminar Shils would present a paper at a meeting of the Committee on Comparative Politics—a subcommittee of the Social Science Research Council—in which he tried to offer a definition of modernity, something historian Nils Gilman has described as “a crucial moment in the genesis of modernization theory.”—see Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 141. 69 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “What is Democracy?” in Rhodes Seminar Papers (New Delhi, India: Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1959), 50. 47 modern industrial societies. Experts managed the complex workings of the state, and citizens seemed to want it that way. Jouvenel lamented that the citizenry of modern industrial states pressed “the particular claims of their interests or affections, but left it to others to find the ways and means of combining [this] with the claims and interest of other groups.”70 What Jouvenel seemed most troubled by was the lack of intelligent political debate. In Europe, parliamentary factions behaved as rigid voting blocs, and in the U.S. politicians used the tools of a mass media to cajole voters to accept the party platform whole. This somber evaluation of modern politics in the west was thus a call for modesty aimed at the westerners at Rhodes, and it didn’t directly address the Indians or

Indonesians.

Waldemar Nielsen thought Jouvenel’s learned pessimism about western democracy of great importance. He believed, like most American cold-warriors, that

Western Europe was the crucial variable in the global ideological struggle against communism. Not only was there always the risk of the European Communist parties— especially in France—but a weakening of democracy in Europe would also endanger losing the ideological struggle in the third world. “Lamentably…the western world, with its traditions of political thought, and with its moribund political science and political philosophy, has not been able to offer practical guidance to these emergent countries in the shaping of their political structures,” wrote Nielsen.71 And he added that “we [the west] give the impression to the leaders of the emergent countries that there are only two alternatives, something like 19th century British parliamentary democracy or else

70 Ibid. 71 Nielsen to Jouvenel, June 12, 1961, Grant File “Strengthening the Democratic Institutions of Europe and Other Areas of the World,” 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 48 totalitarianism…”72 Nielsen thus wanted Jouvenel to speculate about new political systems and forms of governing that fit advanced industrial democracies, and could therefore be worthwhile examples for developing nations.

Nielsen told Jouvenel that he wanted him to lead an effort that was “both intellectual and practical,” and would involve academics and professional people.

Jouvenel obliged happily; he now asked various intellectuals from across Europe to write essays about how political institutions would adapt to, and be shaped by, a changing industrial society. These essays would be published in the Bulletin SEDEIS (Société

D’Études et de Documentation Économiques et Sociale), a journal that Jouvenel edited.

The term “evolution” in the foundation grant implied that this was a continuing process, and thus invited speculation about the future of democratic societies. Realizing this,

Jouvenel gave the project the name “Futuribles,” a neologism that combined the words

“future” and “possible.”

Nielsen believed the Rhodes seminar was to be a point of departure for the

Futuribles project, but Jouvenel was greatly inspired by the following CCF seminar. Held in September of 1959, in Rheinfelden, a small resort town near Basel, this seminar was titled Industrial Society and Western Political Dialogue. Raymond Aron had organized it, and the seminar explored themes with which he had been engaged since the mid-1950s, when he had given a series of lectures at the Sorbonne on the nature of industrial society.

In these lectures Aron discussed the similarities between industry in the west and the

Soviet Union. He argued that scientific knowledge and industrial techniques transcended the ideological differences of the Cold War and influenced Soviet and western societies

72 Ibid. 49 in similar ways. With this idea of “convergence” Aron meant that societies on both sides of the iron curtain were moving to a mixed economy in which planning and market mechanisms could be observed.73

Crucially, however, Aron added another element to the seminar. In his opening paper he asked “what is the meaning, what is the nature of the society being shaped by science and industry?”74 Aron argued that industrial society, as the “child of the scientific spirit,” was a technical or rational society. Rational thought not only produced the science behind the ever more efficient factories, but also the rational management of the mixed economy. Ideology, either in its Marxist or laissez-faire form, seemed antiquated in such a world. Aron had titled the final chapter in his Opium des Intellectuels “The End of

Ideology,” and he had been present at the 1955 CCF conference in Milan at which “the end of ideology” was the major theme. Later on in this chapter we will revisit this topic trough the work of Daniel Bell. What is important here, however, is the fact that at

Rheinfelden Aron seemed to have grasped that by proclaiming ideology passé, discussion about the meaning of modern society had to be seen in a new light. He noted that production and consumption were not worthy goals in and of themselves. Neither was the increase of leisure through the mechanization of labor, since all this did was prompt the question: “What to do with the leisure which has become the goal in life?”75 It was time, said Aron, to ask “the old Socratic questions: What good is the science of shipbuilding if

73 Raymond Aron, 18 Lectures on Industrial Society, trans. M.K. Bottomore (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), 7. 74 Raymond Aron, Ed., World Technology and Human Destiny (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1963), 23. 75 Aron, World Technology and Human Destiny, 24. 50 you don’t know how to navigate? What good is the science of navigation if you don’t know where to go?”76

What Aron wanted to discuss at Rheinfelden was the relationship between industrial society and “the good life.” He stated, “the real question which confronts the west is knowing what it is and what it wants, aside from vast-factories and a rise in the standard of living.”77 Industrial society after the end of ideology thus seemed to lack a sense of direction and purpose. As Jouvenel had done in Rhodes, Aron now complained about western politics. “[T]here is no agreement as to either the method or goal of political philosophy,” he claimed. When Jouvenel was given the floor at Rheinfelden he again broached this theme. He worried that the necessarily deliberative nature of politics was vulnerable in an industrial society. Later, when Aron recapped the various statement made that day, he said that Jouvenel had made a distinction between economics and politics and that this meant a distinction between “producing…and living.”78

It is easy to interpret Aron’s comments at Rheinfelden as an anti-modern critique of industrial society, or at least an anti-materialist critique. Yet, Aron did not believe that industrial society had taken the place of some older society full of lofty philosophical reflection. It was actually quite the opposite; modern industrial society with its capacity to fulfill people’s primary needs, and freed from dogmatic ideologies, now offered room for the big questions. “What is the good life? What is the good society?” Industrial society had solved the materialist question and could move on to the philosophical ones.

Thus Aron concluded: “I believe that in the west we have reached a stage of

76 Aron, World Technology and Human Destiny, 26. 77 Aron, World Technology and Human Destiny 241, (emphasis in original). 78 Aron, World Technology and Human Destiny, 158. 51 philosophical and religious reflection, not directed against the successes of the positive scientists, but in fact, in terms of their success, for it has led us back to the fundamental issues.”79

The discussions at Rheinfelden greatly appealed to Jouvenel. He agreed with

Aron that modern society had arrived at a moment where it could consider long-term goals of a non-materialist nature. Yet, did modern democratic institutions help of hinder such an effort? This question occupied Jouvenel when he worked to fulfill the terms of the small Futuribles grant Nielsen had procured him. This required him to speculate about new democratic institutions for an advanced industrial society. He had asked around for people to submit papers on the short term future of British, French and various other

European political institutions, and he was now editing them for publication in SEDEIS.

He also organized a modest Futuribles conference in the spring of 1961 in Paris.

Professors of various fields, almost all of them French and from Paris, came to discuss the ways in which democratic institutions might be strengthened and updated for modern industrial society. Many more participants showed up than Jouvenel had expected and the next morning he sent Nielsen an excited letter in in which he proclaimed “futuribles” to be properly off and running.80

In the letter, Jouvenel also seemed to fish for a larger grant. He told Nielsen that he ran the project as something like a “cottage industry, a family venture.”81 He had enlisted his wife and daughter in the typing and mailing of letters, as well as planning of meetings. Jouvenel undoubtedly told Nielsen all this in order to convey the message that

79 Aron, World Technology and Human Destiny, 241-242. 80 Jouvenel to Nielsen, May 5, 1961, “Futuribles,”Grant File 61922, Reel 662, FFR. 81 Ibid. 52 a larger grant could give the enterprise a more professional character. Nielsen was willing to oblige and in the late summer of 1961, wrote the proposal for a 500,000 dollar grant.

Nielsen’s official grant proposal noted that even though democratic tendencies in

Western Europe had been reinforced by rapidly rising economic standards, there were

“fundamental weaknesses.”82 The persistence of communist parties in Europe, and authoritarian regimes in Spain and Portugal, betrayed the existence of these weaknesses.

Moreover, centrist political parties seemed ineffective. The end of western colonialism had led to the formation of many new nations whose parliamentary systems were

“generally patterned after those of Western Europe.” Yet, “these new systems, in many cases, have not worked; they have brought about neither internal stability, nor effective social and economic development,” wrote Nielsen. Instead, these regimes had collapsed and were replaced by dictatorial ones. What the grant aimed to do about this Nielsen described in vague and contradictory language. The “strengthening of democratic, constitutional government” was the main goal of the grant. In order to do this “fresh thought” was to be encouraged. This meant papers, work groups and conferences, yet all this had to offer guidance to “those responsible for the strengthening of democratic institutions.” It was not a “pure research project,” the proposal claimed, but a philosophical one that aimed at “practical impact.”

Although trustees of the Ford Foundation voted on grant proposals, it was, in reality, more important whether foundation operatives favored certain grants or not. Two people, therefore, were crucial in approving Nielsen’s proposal and getting Jouvenel his

82 Nielsen, “Grant Proposal,” Grant File “Strengthening the Democratic Institutions of Europe and Other Areas of the World,” 6241, Reel 663, FFR 53

500.000 dollar grant: Shepard Stone and Michael Josselson. Shepard Stone was the director of the Ford Foundation’s International Affairs Program, and as such he was in close contact with Nielsen. Stone had been a newspaper reporter in Germany during the

1930s. He later returned to Germany to serve in military intelligence during the war. In

1949 he became the director for the Office of Public Affairs under U.S. High

Commissioner John J. McCloy.83 In this position he secured government funding for the anti-Stalinist magazine Der Monat. After that, Stone quickly became a well-connected cultural cold warrior, especially after his employment at the Ford Foundation where his former boss, McCloy, had become director in 1958. In the early 1950s Stone also started working closely together with Michael Josselson and the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Josselson, like Stone, was a veteran of military intelligence. Able to speak four languages fluently, Josselson worked for the CIA and was a crucial link between the agency and the network of anti-communist thinkers in Europe.84 He was tasked with managing—and concealing—the covert funds the CIA spent on cultural propaganda in Europe. The Ford

Foundation was intimately involved in this scheme and both Nielsen and Stone were aware of the CIA involvement.85

When, in 1967, the truth about the CIA involvement was revealed in the press, the reputation of the CCF was damaged irreparably. During the 1950s the CCF claimed that the organization was anti-communist but not tied to any government, and as such very different from Soviet attempts at propaganda. After the truth was exposed, the efforts of

83 Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, 285. 84 Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, 11-12. 85 For Nielsen involvement with the CIA see Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, 143, and Edward H. Berman, The Ideology of Philanthropy: The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), 133. 54 the CCF received intense scrutiny. The involvement of Nielsen, Josselson, and Stone in the Futuribles grant has invited speculation about the money that Jouvenel eventually received. Francis Stoner Saunders claimed in her book, The Cultural Cold War, that the

CIA had “an involvement” in the publishing of de Jouvenel’s 1964 book The Art of

Conjecture.86 Such speculation about who was involved and who had known what about the covert funds became something of a parlor game in certain circles after 1967. Yet, in

Jouvenel’s case there is no direct evidence that he knew about Josselson’s CIA involvement, although he might have suspected it.

What is perhaps more interesting than speculation is the fact that Jouvenel shared

Josselson’s and Stone’s ideas about fighting communism on all fronts, and especially in the world of ideas. Moreover, he certainly realized that he was a beneficiary of the CCF’s and the Ford Foundation’s largesse because his work was pro-western and anti- communist. Getting funds from the Americans sometimes required work that Jouvenel only half-heartedly supported. Nielsen, for instance, was greatly interested in the developing world, and had written the grant proposal so as to include a joint focus on

Western Europe and the “new states.” He also wanted to set up an Indian branch of

Futuribles and sent Jouvenel there as an adviser as soon as possible. Jouvenel didn’t like the idea but only objected to it after the funding had been secured.87 All this did not mean, however, that Jouvenel only said what his beneficiaries wanted to hear. When

Nielsen, Stone and Josselson were working out the specifics of the grant, for instance,

86 Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, 245. 87 Jouvenel to Heaps, January 19, 1963, Grant File, 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 55

Jouvenel sent Nielsen a letter in which he suddenly proposed a new focus for Futuribles.

This letter could easily have jeopardized the entire grant.

He wrote that something occurred to him, “so very simple,” that he was ashamed he had not thought of it earlier. Just as there were “many forms of history—social, political, economic—there could be an enormous variety of potential researches into the future.”88 Could they not turn “Futuribles” into “the first clearing-house of researches into the future,” asked De Jouvenel. He now proposed to find various “centers” where forecasts were being produced and to collect their findings in a new periodical. He also speculated that this could lead to an “international association of futurists.” Realizing that Nielsen wanted the grant to focus on the evolution of democratic institutions, he noted that political developments could not be disentangled from social, technological, or economic developments. Thus, this warranted a broader outlook on the future than one that solely focused on democratic institutions. Jouvenel seemed to understand that if the grant proposal was rewritten to include this new focus, the foundation trustees might well vote it down. He therefore tactfully wrote Nielsen that he left it up to him whether to mention all this to Stone, Josselson and the trustees.

Nielsen chose to stay quiet on Jouvenel’s new desire to study the future instead of the evolution of democratic institutions. A compromise had just been reached about the nagging issue of institutionalizing the grant, and he did not want to compromise the whole enterprise. The Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS) in Geneva became the official grantee, and Jaques Freymond, a Swiss political scientists and

88 Jouvenel to Nielsen, November 8, 1961, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 56 director of GIIS would sit on the board alongside Jouvenel.89 The grant that was approved by the trustees thus claimed as its aim the “strengthening of democratic institutions.” Yet, Jouvenel sent a letter a day after he had been informed about the approval of the grant, in which he stressed the new focus on the future.90 Surprisingly

David Heaps, another Ford Foundation official, noted that “the discrepancy” between this statement and the grant docket could be “bridged without undue difficulty.”91 Nielsen too didn’t think that Jouvenel’s new focus was a threat to the enterprise. Instead, Jouvenel’s enthusiasm seemed to have been contagious and Nielsen left it up to him to work out the scope of the Futuribles enterprise.

Jouvenel’s early work already contained hints of a future orientation. In Du

Pouvoir, Jouvenel complained that the innovating elites of modern society—in both capitalism and socialism—failed in their duty to “guide mankind when they find themselves in novel situations.” In Sovereignty, when Jouvenel was working out the relationship between state power and individual liberty, he seemed to propose a forward looking regime. A dynamic society had to allow for interest group conflict and the occasional political “disturbance.” Yet this meant that government needed to develop a mechanism to absorb the instability that such dynamism produced. “Therefore, there must be in government a perpetual capacity for novel situations and an inventiveness to deal with unforeseen complications.”92

89 Also on the board were Emile Mireaux of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politique, Cambridge economist Michael Postan, dean of Yale Law School Eugene V. Rostow, and Edward Shils. 90 Jouvenel to David Heaps, December 9, 1961, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 91 David Heaps to Shepard Stone, December 18, 1961, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 92 Jouvenel, Sovereignty, 301. 57

Jouvenel’s interest in the future of advanced industrial society was further developed by his participation in a work group on France’s “fifteen year plan.” In the immediate post-war period French planning, done by the Commissariat au Plan, dealt especially with heavy industry.93 During the 1950s, however, the French economy grew more complex, more market oriented, and more integrated into the European economy, and this led the planning agency to lose influence. When Charles De Gaulle came to power in 1959, he chose Pierre Massé, a sixty-one-year-old engineer, turned economist, to be the new Commisaire Général au Plan. During Masse’s tenure, but not exclusively due to his influence, a revival of the planning ideology of the post-war era could be observed. In the discussions that lead to the Fourth French Plan—relating to the economy in the years 1962-1965—there was an emphasis on “the second industrial revolution:” the conquest of the atom, electronics, and automation.94 The French Fourth Plan was worked out in workgroups and Massé invited Jouvenel to join some of these as an outside participant.

In 1959 and 1960 De Jouvenel was thus privy to the planning process within the

French state. It didn’t take him long to realize that Massé and the industrial planners had recently taken to a new outlook on the future. This outlook was articulated most convincingly by Gaston Berger, a philosopher, entrepreneur, and Director of Higher

Education in the French ministry of Education. Berger, who died in a car crash in 1960, had started the journal Prospective in 1958. In 1959 he had been instrumental in

93 Barry Eichengreen, The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007), 106. 94 Niles M. Hansen, “French Indicative Planning and the New Industrial State,” Journal of Economic Issues, December 1969, 80. 58 establishing a research and graduate training center for the social sciences and humanities, the Maison des Sciences de L’Homme, with the help of a million dollar Ford

Foundation grant.95 Two years earlier he had published an article in Reveu de Deux

Mondes, titled “Social Science and Forecasting.” In this article he argued that while the pace of technological and social change was continually accelerating, the intellectual tools needed to anticipate the trajectory of this change were poor. Here Berger coined the term “prospective” for an enterprise he hoped would go beyond mere extrapolation of trends.

Change, Berger argued, was not new in itself, nor was the increasing pace of change. What was new, however, was the fact that the acceleration of technological change was now immediately perceptible. Understood in terms of transportation technology, a man of 60—in 1957— had lived through the age of railroads, automobile and airplane. Instead of merely trying to predict where this pattern of change might lead,

Berger wished to focus on what could be done now to make it easier for man to deal with a rapidly changing society. This enterprise would include the articulation of goals, an emphasis on the importance of human values, and the improvement of planning techniques. Tragically, in light of his death, he used the analogy of a speeding car to emphasize the absence of a “prospective orientation” in France: “We make desperate efforts to increase the power of the engine which propels us, but we neglect to adjust the aim of the headlights…”96

95 Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, 207. 96 André Cournand and Maurice Lévy, eds. Shaping the Future: Gaston Berger and the Concept of Prospective (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1973), 16. 59

Berger was especially influential in arguing for a more comprehensive attitude towards planning. Economists had their ways of anticipating the future, but combining their insights with philosophers and politicians would produce a more humanistic outlook, or so he argued: “One of the demands of Prospective is that of constant confrontation between the ends of human activity, the large number of available means, and the reality of the situation that in fact exists.”97 For all of Berger’s careful articulation of his “prospective” orientation, he was noticeably vague on what specific ends he liked to see realized in the future. His early death meant that he was denied the chance to make his idea more specific. Still, Berger’s notion of “Prospective” provided forecasting and planning with a new élan, stripping it of the stale post-war connotation of predicting next year’s steel and coal output.

When, in 1962, Jouvenel, was ready to fulfill the terms of the five year Ford

Foundation grant, he had internalized the CCF debates about the nature of advanced industrial society, the planning process of the French state, and the ideas of Gaston

Berger. His first order of business was the trip to the United States that Daniel Bell organized for him. Bell had been made an official advisor to the project by the Ford

Foundation. Shepard Stone also placed Eugene V. Rostow, dean of Yale Law School, on the board of Futuribles along with Edward Shils.

Jouvenel quickly noticed that convincing intellectuals to speculate about the future was no easy task. It had an obvious unscientific air about it, and it reminded the

French of Jules Verne and the British of H.G. Wells. It was the stuff of fictional stories about underwater life and space travel, fictions that rested on speculations about future

97 Cournand and Lévy, Shaping the Future, 32. 60 technology and inventions. While trying to remedy this, Jouvenel began to think about the methodology of prediction. In a Futuribles paper titled “Les Recherses Sur La

Decision,” he investigated decision making and the role that forecasting played in it. An early contributor to “Futuribles,” the political scientists Michel Massenet, wrote another influential paper titled “Etudes Methodologiques sur les Futuribles” in which he tried to establish some ground rules of speculation that could be followed by Futuribles as it moved forward.

In December of 1962 the “Futuribles” cast met up in Paris in preparation for the first conference that was to be held in June the next year. They agreed on the immediate course of action. Papers would be published in book form. Jouvenel would focus specifically on the methodology of forecasting, and Bell would “channel” relevant work done in the U.S. to Paris.98 Waldemar Nielsen was absent from the meeting, and only lip- service was paid to the official wording of the grant. Jouvenel did go to India in February of 1963 in order to set up an Indian branch of Futuribles. Yet before he went he protested to David Heaps that he thought this trip “of doubtful value” and wondered if it wasn’t better if he focused on the Futuribles papers.99 Unsurprisingly, Jouvenel’s visit seemed to have provoked no great enthusiasm amongst Indian intellectuals. Only a couple of papers by Indian intellectuals were published, and at later conferences few, if any, Indians were present. Thus, virtually from the beginning, Futuribles ignored “the strengthening of democratic institutions,” as well as its practical aim for democracy in the New States.

98 “Notes of Futuribles Board Meeting,” December 5, 1962, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 99 Jouvenel to Heaps, January 19, 1963, Grant File, 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 61

Instead, it took on social change in the industrialized west and the methodology of forecasting.

Daniel Bell and Futuribles - The Origins of Post Industrialism

When Daniel Bell joined Futuribles as an adviser, he sent Shepard Stone what he called “a rather unwieldy first draft” of his own “futurible.”100 The attachment was fifty pages long, and was titled “The Post-Industrial Society: A Speculative View of The

United States in 1985 and Beyond.” In the decade that followed, Bell would never stop thinking about the topic he introduced in this draft. He worked on it while writing books, articles, essays; chairing panels; presenting at conferences; and teaching sociology.

Almost all the activities that Bell committed to during the 1960s related in some way to his speculation about the future of the United States. As such, his commitment to

Futuribles was a first step in the direction of one of his major works: The Coming of the

Post Industrial Society: a Venture in Social Forecasting.

Daniel Bell was born Daniel Bolotsky in 1919 in the Lower East Side of New

York. His parents had both come from the very eastern part of Poland, but only met after emigrating to the United States. When Bell was only eight months old his father died, and since his mother worked long hours in a garment factory, he often spent entire weeks in a

Hebrew day orphanage. His legal guardian was Samuel Bolotsky, his father’s younger brother, who had become a dentist and moved up to the Bronx. It was this uncle who changed the family name to Bell.

Growing up, Bell spoke Yiddish and he learned English only later. He ran around with a juvenile gang in the Jewish neighborhood that stretched north from Second to

100 Bell to Stone, June 18, 1962, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 62

Twelfth Avenue. When the Depression hit, Bell saw “little tin shacks” emerge on the east side docks, inhabited by people who scavenged the garbage scowls for food.101 He had started reading extensively in Junior High School, and upon finishing Upton Sinclair’s

The Jungle, Bell joined the Young People Socialist League (YPSL). His mother had been a member of the International Ladies’ Garment Union Workers (ILGWU) and when Bell worked a summer pushing clothing racks down Seventh Avenue, he immediately tried to form a union of rack pushers.

The main activity of the members of the YPSL was reading Marx. Bell became obsessed with Das Kapital; he could tell by heart “on which page any footnote appeared…”102 Yet, Bell struggled to tie Marx to a contemporary political platform.

During a week spent with Anarchist relatives in Mohegan Colony, a radical settlement 50 miles north of New York, Bell expressed to being torn between a kind of reformist socialism, Soviet-style communism, and anti-Stalinist Trotskyism. The relatives, comfortable with radical Socialism but appalled at the totalitarianism that was gripping

Russia, took him to see an old Anarchist leader. This man, Rudolph Rocker, gave him a

Menshevik pamphlet “The Kronstadt Rebellion” to read. The pamphlet described a 1921 anti-Bolshevik uprising in which sailors had joined with disillusioned workers and peasants at St. Petersburg’s navy fortress only to be defeated by the Red Army.

Afterwards, the survivors withered away in work camps. This account impressed Bell deeply. When Communists broke up a mass meeting of Socialists in Madison Square

Garden in 1934, Bell saw the parallels with Kronstadt. He recognized how a rigidity of

101 Daniel Bell, “First Love Early Sorrows,” Partisan Review, December, 1981, 532. 102 Howard Simons, Jewish Times: Voices of the American Jewish Experience (Boston: Hougton Mifflin, 1988), 70. 63 ideology could inspire violence, and from the mid-1930s on, Bell turned to a more moderate form of socialism.103

These were the ideas and beliefs he took with him to City College in 1935. Here, during lunch hour, the debates between Stalinists and Trotskyists became intense, and more important than actual college classes. Bell’s friends—among them Irving Howe,

Nathan Glazer, and Irving Kristol—occupied the Trotskyists’ “alcove one.” They regarded Bell as somewhat of an oddity; he was more centrist and less revolutionary then they were.104 Bell studied ancient history on the advice of a young professor, and after graduating enrolled in Columbia law school. He quickly realized that he wasn’t particularly suited for this and switched to sociology. He studied at Columbia for a year and half but left to write for the New Leader. He later noted that all this had resulted in a

“patchy education.” Though he had taken much from study groups, overall his education was “a floating, undigested mass.”105

When fascism took hold in Germany, Bell’s views of war were influenced by his socialism and by the legacy of the Great War. Bell knew full well how the progressives of the 1910s had seen in war an opening for reform only to be confronted with mindless patriotism and repression. Even when the fighting started in Europe, Bell supported the

“Keep America out of the War Campaign” of socialist party leader Norman Thomas.106

In the summer of 1940, however, Bell changed his mind. Like many Americans he was

103 Simons, Jewish Times, 69. See also Malcolm Waters, Daniel Bell (New York: Routledge, 1996), 14-15. 104 Waters, Daniel Bell, 14. 105 Neil Jumonville, Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America (University of California Press, 1990), 213. 106 Howard Brick, Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism: Social Theory and Political Reconciliation in the 1940s (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 67. 64 swayed by the frightful prospect of total fascist victory in Europe. He was also influenced by Sidney Hook, a social democrat, who penned pro-war articles in the New Leader, and would be a mentor to Bell during those years. Bell got a draft deferral on medical grounds, and spent the war years intellectually engaged with the perils of fascism, the war economy, and the nature of the state that would emerge once the war was over.

During the early period of the war Bell now came close, at times, to mirroring the progressives of the 1910s with their benign interpretation of war as an opportunity for social reform. Bell hoped that the government, hand in hand with labor, would take center stage, plan their way to victory, and create a socialist democracy upon the war’s end. When Bell was critical of the Roosevelt war effort, it was because the administration was not antagonistic enough toward big business.107 When the United States had actually joined the fighting, however, Bell began to see things differently. He saw that Congress pushed anti-labor deals, and more importantly, he saw how the administration gave the

War Production Board the authority to exempt certain industries from antitrust action.108

He now began writing about the threat of government subservient to business, and compared this situation to fascist Germany: “we have taken a long step here in permitting industry to duplicate the practices of Nazi big business in the Weimar Republic, actions that led to the rise of Hitler.”109 Bell shared this somber outlook with his friend C. Wright

Mills, a sociologist, who—like Bell—had been influenced by the Frankfurt School intellectual Franz Neumann and his work Behemoth, an influential study of Nazism. This

107 Brick, Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism, 71. 108 Brick, Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism, 78. 109 Ibid. 65 somber outlook was a major departure from Bell’s earlier hope that the war might produce a socialist democracy.

By the war’s end Bell had set his sights on writing a book that was to be titled The

Monopoly State, in which he was to trace how big business utilized the state in order to secure markets and profits. It was to be a profoundly critical work, and it reflected Bell’s new role as somber social critic. Yet, despite writing hundreds of pages and laboring over the manuscript for two years, Bell never finished it. The reasons for this lay in the fact that the three years after the war were a period of intellectual struggle and adjustment for

Bell. It became increasingly harder to fit the post-war political reality into the theoretical framework behind his idea of the monopoly state. Against his earlier expectation, big business—specifically in the form of the National Association of Manufacturers— reverted to a free market ideology after the war, seeing in the state not a tool to dominate markets but an impediment to free enterprise. Moreover, labor didn’t seem coerced by a clique of industrialists controlling the state, but instead bargained for stability and higher wages. And these weren’t the only things with which Bell struggled. As an anti-Stalinist, the war-time popular front had been an uneasy arrangement for him, yet after the war he was also uncomfortable with right-wing attitudes toward the Soviet Union. Added to all this was the fact that Bell still held out hope for democratic socialism in the U.S., but saw the American Socialist Party falter.

Bell tried to come to grips with all this while teaching at the University of

Chicago. He had accepted a three year position there in 1945. The situation at Chicago was unique in that Bell did not join a special department, but the so-called Social Science 66

Staff. This was an interdisciplinary program of jointly-taught courses, where Bell worked closely together with sociologists Edward Shils and David Riesman. Most importantly,

Bell started reading more widely outside a Marxist framework. For a class he did on economic theory he now seriously studied the anti-Marxist arguments of the neo-classical economists. Yet, more than economics, he became influenced by the sociological theories of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim.110 Through Shils, Riesman, and others, Bell entered the sociological debates of the post war years. This concerned especially a focus on totalitarianism, “the masses,” and the concept of bureaucratization. He later said about this period that “the Marxism I’d learned became mechanical and sterile.” Historian

Howard Brick has noted that, in Chicago, Bell “was steadily working his way from reformist Marxism to sociology, where ‘mass society’ analyzed into the essential components of bureaucratization and alienation, supplanted an image of capitalism grounded in the exploitation of labor.”111 It is tempting to go a step further and claim that

Bell replaced socialism with sociology during this period, yet in 1946 and 1947 Bell still helped to organize an effort to launch a new social democratic party. Moreover, Bell would never give up his belief in the core principles of democratic socialism, even while rejecting most of Marx’s ideas.

The effort to launch a new Social Democratic Party was born out of the labor disputes of the late war years, and old socialist party leaders played a prominent role in the enterprise. Bell was recruited by Maynard C. Krueger, a University of Chicago economist who was Norman Thomas’s running mate in the 1940 election. It was Bell’s

110 Job L. Dittberner, The End of Ideology and American Social Thought: 1930-1960 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1977), 319. 111 Brick, Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism, 119. 67 task to coordinate a conference in Chicago where, if all went well, a new national political party would be launched. Yet, the effort proved a disappointment; big unions like Walter Reuther’s UAW were hesitant to break with the Democrats and the looming progressive party candidacy of Henry Wallace divided the left even further. By the summer of 1947 Bell realized that the socialist party effort was going nowhere.

While working on the third party effort, Bell became less enthusiastic about the social democratic potential of organized labor. Just as he was asked to organize the new party conference, Bell also committed to being a consultant for the Jewish Labor Committee’s study on anti-Semitism in the labor movement.112 Three years earlier Bell had published an article in the Jewish Frontier titled “The Grass roots of American Jew-Hatred,” in which he argued that American society could produce anti-Semitism similar, if not worse, than that of Nazi Germany. In that earlier article Bell still blamed capitalism for this situation, since it was a system that fostered “insecurities and fears” in the lives of the proletariat. By 1947, however, Bell viewed anti-Semitism not in terms of an exploited labor class, but in terms of theories about “mass men” and the gruesome reality of the death camps. A tragic attitude towards life now emerged in his thinking. He later noted that there was “a whole unsettled ambience about the world. It involved the fear of anti-

Semitism in the United States, the fear of mass politics; the fear of passionate politics.”113

The theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, with its tragic view of human nature and its emphasis on sin, loomed large over such concerns, and Bell was influenced greatly by his

112 Dittberner, The End of Ideology and American Social Thought, 316. 113 Ibid. 68 work during his three years in Chicago.114 Niebuhr, who had been a Social Gospel preacher in Detroit during the 1920s before joining New York’s Union Theological

Seminary, combined leftist political views with neo-orthodox Protestantism. His influential 1932 work Moral Man and Immoral Society combined pessimism about the role individual morality could play in the establishment of just societies, with an aggressively anti-capitalist message. By the time of his 1944 book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, he criticized utopian social movements for what he believed was a dangerously optimistic understanding of human nature. In the book he distinguished between two forces in the world, one driven by self-interest, the other aware of a higher good beyond self-interest. The latter were the children of light, and, paradoxically, it was their fate in the perfectibility of “man’s collective life” that opened the door for the forces of darkness. In other words, utopian schemes that aimed at the creation of harmonious communities could become the instruments of tyranny; and so did

Stalin use Marx’s utopian vision in order to ruthlessly pursue his self-interest. Bell agreed and was already moving towards a more conservative Cold War posture.

Yet, more than influence Bell’s views on the nascent Cold War, Niebuhr influenced Bell’s thinking about the role of the intellectual in modern society. Niebuhr’s emphasis on the sinful nature of humankind, and its logical extension, unjust and conflict-ridden communities, could potentially lead to a pessimistic withdrawal on the part of the critic. Yet, Niebuhr opted for a constructive pessimism. “The children of light must be armed with the wisdom of the children of darkness but remain free of their

114 Dittberner, The End of Ideology and American Social Thought, 178, 314. 69 malice,” he wrote.115 “They must have this wisdom in order that they may beguile, deflect, harness and restrain self-interest, individual and collective, for the sake of the community.” Niebuhr thus argued for a pragmatic political agenda that could fulfill the aims of the children of light without falling into utopian pitfalls. As a foundational figure of post-war American liberalism, Niebuhr carried this worldview to the heart of the

Union for Democratic Action (UDA) and latter Americans for Democratic action (ADA).

Sometime in 1948, Bell, influenced by Niebuhr and immersed in academic sociology, abandoned his antagonistic and somber attitude towards modern American society in favor of a new critical engagement. He now made it his task to try to investigate the imperfect community that was American democracy, and while always critical, he was no longer a radical. This important change in Bell’s outlook was not solely an intellectual adjustment, but also a social one. Irving Kristol, Bell’s friend and fellow member of a group that came to be called the New York Intellectuals, later noted that the war experience, and especially the post war years, changed everything. Now institutional doors opened for the former street kids of the lower east side, careers started, and first homes were purchased.116

Bell’s rejection of radicalism would not carry him to the political right as it eventually did for Kristol, but Bell’s attitude toward American society was similarly ameliorated by the prospects it offered him. While Bell was an instructor at the

University of Chicago, he also taught labor history at Roosevelt College. He did so in

115 Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness,” in Hollinger, David A., and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition: Volume II: 1865 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 285. 116 See, Arguing the World, directed by Joseph Dorman, Riverside Film Production, 1997. 70 order to support a daughter and ex-wife. When he was about to remarry he received an offer from Henry Luce to write for Fortune Magazine at three times his instructor’s salary at the University of Chicago. Although Bell was initially hesitant to leave academia for a pro-business publication, he accepted after talking to friends who worked for Luce. Both Dwight Macdonald and the ex-Trotskyist John McDonald assured him that Luce had created a congenial atmosphere and that he simply valued good writers. As historian Robert Vanderlan has shown, Luce’s publications were stocked with left wing thinkers such as Irving Howe and John Kenneth Galbraith. Bell later noted that those who came to Fortune to write only what they thought the magazine wanted “never lasted because they were quickly understood and resented.”117

In his writing on labor for Fortune, Bell traced how the labor movement gradually became incorporated into an American corporate system that valued growth and stability over any ideological commitment to laissez-faire. The labor movement, meanwhile, was prioritizing higher wages over social democratic goals. Bell highlighted the increasing irrelevance of traditional notions of left and right, and the declining power of utopian visions driven by ideological purity. Yet, he did not celebrate this development. He was disappointed that Walter Reuther’s early commitment to bold social welfare policies eventually dissipated into an effort “to make the American worker genuinely a middle class individual.” In a short book “work and its discontents” which Bell wrote while at

Fortune, he addressed his objections to this development. The Detroit auto worker, he argued, had once been seen as “the seedling of the indigenous class-conscious radical,”

117 Robert Vanderlan, Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce's Media Empire (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 278. And see: Brick, Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism, 252. 71 yet now he was “tamed” by the “consumption society.” This was a “devil’s bargain;” although “the style of life” was improved, there was no “future beyond the job.” The worker could not advance because he had forgone “hard years of study” for an attractive starting wage. The plight of the worker, then, was that he was allowed “instant gratification,” but no vision for advancement; the worker produced the goods he could buy as a consumer. Yet, what he could not do was dream about meaningful work, something tied to an existence beyond the shop-floor; a life lived as a citizen with a wider vision for social goals.118

In Bell’s writing on contemporary politics, he similarly combined a description of a new anti-ideological sensibility with a subtle lamentation about the effects of this development. A crucial article in this respect was his 1949 Commentary article on

Truman and the Fair Deal. The article was titled “America's Un-Marxist Revolution: Mr.

Truman Embarks on a Politically Managed Economy.” In the article Bell offered an overview of American history going all the way back to the founding fathers, and he did so in a decidedly non-materialist manner. He rejected the notion that only “a bald class struggle” could explain politics.119 “American history carries meaning, I think, largely through the prism of group struggles,” he wrote. He now emphasized “the tremendous diversity of interests, sectional and functional, that have arisen successively in our history and the permutations possible in such multiplicity.”

118 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1960), 250-252. 119 Daniel Bell, “America’s Un-Marxist Revolution: Mr. Truman Embarks on a Politically Managed Economy,” Commentary, March, 1949, 207-215. 72

During the 19th century, however, the growth of industrial society meant that various interests came to depend on each other. “Business enterprise and the farmer are dependent upon distant markets and governmental benevolence. Workers are dependent upon unions, efficient management, and social welfare benefits.” This growing dependency was by itself “sufficient to call for sweeping government intervention,” yet the Great Depression produced the definitive “convulsive drive to security.” And then, beyond the New Deal, there were “the after-effects of a war economy, and the demands of postwar reconstruction.” This meant an interventionist government, and Bell was pleasantly surprised that Truman seemed to be unreserved about this. His administration had meant “no Thermidorian reaction against FDR, as many liberals feared.”

Yet, just as Bell had pointed to some problems inherent in a deradicalized work force, this article too did not aim to celebrate Truman or post-war America more broadly. He identified American industrial society as being “a managed economy” in which politics was determined by “interest groups.” But this raised a question: for whom was the economy to be managed? Bell noted that “the powerful railway unions as well as the miners oppose the development of the St. Lawrence waterway…for the purpose of protecting their members’ livelihood, although such a step is necessary to provide cheap power to New England and cheaper water transportation for the mid-West.” The increasing interdependency of industrial society, Bell argued, necessitated “planning.”

Yet, “a general theory as to how the satisfaction of varied group interests may be harmonized with the general welfare remains to be worked out.” The crucial question about Truman’s Fair Deal and the future of the “American political community” was the 73 following: “just how is the managed economy to be managed, and how are we to achieve a popularly accepted definition of an over-all social interest?”120

For Bell conflict in modern industrial society had to be understood not in terms of class, but in terms of group identity. Yet, Bell’s abandonment of Marxism produced difficult questions, not complacency or a celebration of consensus. “If a democratic society is to survive—and by that term I mean simply the principle of toleration among groups—then some new sense of civic obligation must arise that will be strong enough to command the allegiance of all groups and provide a principle of equity in the distribution of the rewards and privileges of society.” That Bell used words like “civic obligation”

“overall-social interest” “political fundamentals,” and that he asked whether “transient majority coalitions” could provide a “theory of social justice,” reveals that he was uneasy with this new reality. This uneasiness with pluralism is a crucial aspects of Bell’s thinking during the 1950s and 1960s. Not unlike Jouvenel, Bell longed for a kind of rational planning for the common good. Yet, interest groups complicated this. The quest for “political fundamentals” and a “theory of social justice” would find their echo, some ten years later at the CCF in Aron’s search for “the good life, the good society,” and a return to the questions about the ultimate goal of industrial society.

Bell’s ideological trajectory made him a perfect fit for the CCF. Already during the 1930s, he had seen in Stalin’s Soviet Union a grotesque perversion of socialism.

Communism always needed to be opposed, and by the 1950s he believed this was especially the case in Western Europe. Domestically, Bell objected to McCarthy’s anti- communist hysteria, and viewed it as irrational; he understood it in terms of what Richard

120 Ibid. 74

Hofstadter called a “pseudo conservative revolt.” American anti-Communist witch hunts were evidence of “status anxiety” on the part of conservative groups challenged by an increasingly meritocratic society. Communism was weaker in America than at any point in the century. Bell noted that, especially for Europeans, McCarthy must have been a very strange figure. “After all, there are no mass Communist parties in the U.S. such as one finds in France and Italy.”121

Bell enthusiastically joined the effort to support and foster anti-communist intellectuals in Europe. Many of his ideas took shape amidst debates facilitated by the

CCF. In 1955, Bell presented a paper titled “The Breakup of Family Capitalism” at a conference in Milan. The paper argued that technical skill, instead of property, now determined one’s position in society. Bell also argued that political power was no longer associated with an upper class, but instead with a “ruling group” whose members were no longer defined by their property or wealth. In such a society, old ideological certainties gradually lost their persuasiveness. Edward Shils covered the Milan conference for

Encounter in an article titled “The End of Ideology?” He noted that it had been the unofficial theme of the conference. He wrote that, time and again, the participants had concluded that “[t]he once unequivocal distinction between ‘right’ and ‘left’ had been damaged by the knowledge that combinations once alleged by extremist doctrines to be impossible—combinations like collective ownership and tyranny, progressive social policies and full employment under capitalization [sic], large-scale governmental controls

121 Daniel Bell, “Interpretations of American Politics,” in Bell, Daniel ed. The Radical Right, 3rd Edition (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 56. 75 with public liberties—are actually possible.”122 Shils also noted that the decade’s most successful nations—the U.S., Britain, West-Germany, and the Scandinavian countries— all “considered their major domestic policies without regard for standard distinctions of

‘left’ and ‘right,’ of socialism and laissez-faire.”123

The “End of Ideology” remained a central theme for the CCF in the years after the

Milan Conference. Bell played an important role in working out what exactly this meant.

In 1956-57 he took a leave from Fortune to work for the CCF in Paris. Here he met every week with Raymond Aron, to work on the seminar program. He also worked with

Edward Shils, Shepard Stone, Michael Josselson, and Bertrand De Jouvenel. It was during this period that Jouvenel stressed the problems of politics in the west, and Aron inquired after the raison d’être of industrial society. Bell shared their interest in these topics, and after returning to the U.S. he was determined to investigate them further.

In order to do so Bell left Fortune, in 1958. He soon accepted a teaching position at Columbia University. In 1962 he became full professor after he had been awarded a

Ph.D. for a collection of work he published two years earlier as The End of Ideology: on the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. The book was a loosely organized collection of essays that Bell had written for Fortune and other publications. It included his essay on “Work and its Discontents,” a review of Galbraith’s American Capitalism, a piece on the radical right, as well as the paper presented at Milan. In the epilogue Bell wrote that “[f]ew serious minds believe any longer that one can set down ‘blueprints’ and

122 Edward Shils, “The End of Ideology?” Encounter, November 1952, 52. 123 Shils, “The End of Ideology?,” 54. 76 through ‘social engineering’ bring about a new utopia of social harmony.”124 This was fully in line with the discussions coming out of the Milan conference, and Shill’s characterization of the CCF debates.

In the years after publication of Bell’s End of Ideology, a debate ensued in which first C. Wright Mills and later a younger generation of New Left thinkers criticized Bell for proclaiming ideology dead. Mills and Bell had steadily drifted apart during the late

1940s, and The End of Ideology included a harsh review of Mills’s The Power Elite. In that book Mills argued that political and economic power was wielded by a shrinking group of increasingly more powerful men. The book reminded Bell of Franz Neuman’s

Behemoth and perhaps his own abandoned thesis about a “monopoly state.” As such,

Mills’s work now fundamentally challenged Bell’s more accommodating view of

American society. Mills, in a letter published in the newly founded British magazine The

New Left Review, argued that the “end of ideology thesis” celebrated “reasonableness” over reason.125 He wrote that “there is the assumption that in the West there are no more real issues or even problems of great seriousness. The mixed economy plus the welfare state plus prosperity—that is the formula.” But, for Mills, only the intellectuals themselves adhered to such an idea, and only those of the rich western countries. In the developing world and amongst the young, ideology was anything but dead. Thus, Mills noted, “the end of ideology is a slogan of complacency, circulating amongst the prematurely middle-aged…”126 A few years later a Harper’s writer went a step further

124 Bell, The End of Ideology, 373. 125 C. Wright Mills, “Letter to the New Left,” New Left Review, Sept-Oct, 1960, 22. 126 Ibid. 77 and noted that proclaiming the end of ideology was like an old man proclaiming the end of sex, “because he doesn’t feel it anymore, he thinks it’s disappeared.”127

Bell was annoyed with the critiques of the end of ideology thesis. He believed that in the words of his critics the end of ideology was equated with a celebration of the status quo, combined with a Panglossian optimism about post-war liberalism.128 Yet, his book not only resisted such an interpretation, but all efforts to interpret it in terms of affirmation or dissent. If in some parts Bell argued that capitalism had been tamed by the welfare state and interest group politics, in others he lamented “the cult of efficiency inherent in capitalism,” and what this did for the spirit of the factory worker. Moreover, in one chapter he defended mass society against its conservative critics while in others he noted that “the stultifying aspects of contemporary culture (e.g., television) cannot be addressed in political terms.”129 Crucially, the subtitle of Bell’s book—“on the

Exhaustion of Political Ideas”— was often ignored by his critics. Part of Bell’s argument was that no new political philosophy had emerged after the discrediting of the old ideologies. But when his critics took this as an attack on all forms of utopian thinking,

Bell felt the need to clarify his position. Thus in the 1961 edition of The End of Ideology,

Bell wrote:

The end of ideology is not—should not be—the end of utopia as well. If anything, one can begin anew the discussion of utopia only by being aware of the trap of ideology. The point is that ideologists are ‘terrible simplifiers.’ Ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their individual merits. One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae. …There is now, more than ever, some need for utopia in the sense that men need—as they have always needed—some vision of their potential, some

127 Steve Kelman, “The Feud Among the Radicals,” Harper’s, June 1966, 36. 128 Ditberner, The End of Ideology and American Social Thought, 278-290. 129 Bell, The End of Ideology, 374. 78

manner of fusing passion with intelligence. Yet the ladder to the city of heaven can no longer be a ‘faith ladder,’ but an empirical one; a utopia has to specify where one wants to go , how to get there, the costs of the enterprise, and some realization of, and justification for the determination of who is to pay.130

Bell realized that his critics—first Mills but later Irving Louis Horowitz and

Christopher Lasch—would argue that such a utopia was no utopia at all. But in response, he questioned the New Left’s optimism about third world revolutions. Bell was likely thinking especially about Mills’s 1960 work Listen Yankee, a rather crude defense of the

Castro revolution in Cuba. Here a defense of ideology equated “the suppression of civil rights and opposition.”131 For Bell this was falling into the trap of ideology, it was

Kronstadt and the fanatical Communists breaking up a socialist really in Madison square garden.

Bell’s pragmatic utopianism with its where, when and how questions, was his way of formulating new demands on a society that had solved the problems of the old ideologies. He followed Aron’s argument that in light of the materialist success of industrial society the time was ripe for the “old Socratic questions.” The opportunity to join Futuribles came in the middle of the debate about the “end of ideology” and the nature of utopian thinking. Jouvenel’s project allowed Bell to engage the future in a non- ideological way, and the first step in this effort required attentiveness to the direction in which industrial society was trending.

Thus, upon joining Futuribles, Bell sent Shepard Stone his article on “Post-

Industrial Society,” in which he speculated about America “forty or fifty years from

130 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (New York: The Free Press, 1961), 405. 131 Ibid. 79 now.”132 Bell noted that the “skeletal structure” of the new society that was replacing the old industrial one was already visible. He turned first to occupational trends, meaning specifically the decline of the working class. In 1956, Bell noted, American white collar workers had outnumbered blue collar workers for the first time in the history of any advanced industrial society. For a long period of time the service sector of the economy grew rapidly relative to other sectors. Yet this development could not be dissociated from declining numbers of farmers and miners. Only in the last decade, however, had the number of blue collar workers declined along with farmers, while the totals for white collar professionals increased. Interestingly, it was in the manufacturing sector itself that the change was most obvious. At companies like General Motors, U.S. Steel and Du

Pont, production jobs—manual labor—declined while the number of office jobs rose.

The truly important aspect of all of this became apparent, claimed Bell, when the white collar numbers were studied some more. Although the number of sales people and accountants rose, it was especially the group of technical professionals that increased dramatically. In some industries these professionals would likely be engineers or technicians, but they could also be teachers, or scientists.

The increasing centrality of technical expertise made education more important than ever; it was the “crucial ladder of ascent” for the post-industrial society. A high school education was the basis, but no longer enough. Colleges, technical and scientific schooling, as well as graduate degrees, were required for success. Bell noted: “if the dominant figures of the past hundred and fifty years have been the entrepreneur, the businessman, the executive, the ‘new men’ are the research scientists, the

132 Daniel Bell, “The Post-Industrial Society,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 80 mathematicians, the economists, and the managers of the new computer technology…”

The “intellectual institutions…the research corporations, the industrial laboratories, the experimental stations and the universities,” were the key to the emerging society.133

That “the basic institutions of the new age” would be “intellectual,” did not mean that “the majority of individuals” in the post-industrial future would be “intellectuals” or

“scientists.” Contemporary society, Bell clarified, was a business society, yet most people were not businessmen. The business corporation however was the dominant institution,

“the basic values of the society” were “focused” on it, and “the largest rewards” were paid out to those who ran it. That this role would be taken over by the university meant that “the crucial questions regarding the growth of the economy, and its balancing” would come from “research” and things like “simulation techniques to test alternative consequences of economic decisions.” Policy making in general would be “increasingly technical” because of the “intricately linked nature of the consequences.”134

In these passages Bell sounded like Thorstein Veblen, who, at the start of the century favorably compared “engineers” with “profit-seekers.” The former were the innovating force of industrial society, and they worked rationally and expertly. The

“captains of finance,” however subverted this rationality with their rapacious hunger for commercial success. Although Veblen believed the later were still in charge of the industrial system it was clear that “the general staff of production engineers driven by no commercial bias” should determine “industrial policy.” His provocative call for a

“practicable soviet of technicians” reflected such a desire. Although Bell did not make

133 Daniel Bell, “The Post-Industrial Society,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 134 Daniel Bell, “The Post-Industrial Society,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR 81 claims like this, he displayed a similar sympathy for the rational experts of “post- industrial society.” At times, computers seemed to be to Bell what machines had been to

Veblen.135

In the draft he sent Stone, Bell wrote enthusiastically about “the revolution wrought by computer technology.” Under the broad label of “decision theory,” he listed four areas in which computers would play a transformative role: data processing, linear programming, systems analysis, and simulations. The first was the most straight-forward of the four. It was simply the recording, storage, and analyzing of “mountainous amounts of data.”136 Bell explained to his readers that a “bit” stood for binary digit, but also that

“canned programs” were now available to perform all sorts of complex mathematical tasks. These “canned programs” were rudimentary computer programs that could help engineers who, when working out the stress of metal, no longer needed to consult their standardized tables.

In describing linear programming and systems analysis, Bell noted that these techniques had already become commonplace in large American industries. Linear programing was essentially an ordering tool for sequential processes. By using various mathematical formulas, such as those of probability theory, industries could find the best way—usually the cheapest—to mix chemicals, put together cars, or build the navy’s

Polaris submarine missiles. Bell noted that the New York Port Authority had recently used linear programing tools to deal with traffic in the new York-New Jersey tunnels.137

135 Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1921), 52-55. 136 Mountainous amounts of data in 1962 was “a million bits on a piece of plastic one inch square.” 137 Daniel Bell, “The Post-Industrial Society,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR 82

Since linear programming aimed at finding the ideal operational order, the logical next step was to have industries run this way while limiting manual adjustments in that process. This required thinking in terms of “systems” or systems analysis. This term, as we will see in the next chapter, meant different things to different people, but for Bell it meant studying how, in industry, the actions of workers, machines, or computers could be viewed comprehensively as a flow of information. Developing the perfect “feedback mechanism,” and thereby imbedding adjustment into a system, became a kind of Holy

Grail for systems thinkers. Norbert Wiener, a mathematician who had achieved such a breakthrough in feedback mechanisms while working on automated anti-aircraft guns during world War II, popularized the notion of self-regulating mechanisms with his 1948 book: Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.

Although the book treated a wide variety of dense mathematical topics, the term

“cybernetics” quickly became a popular—but imprecise—term denoting communication and control mechanisms in systems.

Wiener’s main insight, worked out in a team made up of medical scientists, engineers, and psychologists, was that the neuro system behaved in a way similar to a machine. Moreover, the communication inherent in a mechanical or organic system, broken down into messages, reactions, and adjustments, could be captured in the language of mathematics. Wiener and his team were working all this out in the years after

World War II, while also constructing computing mechanisms. “From that time,” wrote

Wiener, “it became clear to us that the ultra-rapid computing machine, depending as it does on consecutive switching devices, must represent almost an ideal model of the 83 problems arising in the nervous system.”138 Or, put more succinctly, “the synapse….must have its precise analogue in the computing machine.” Crucially, Wiener stressed that

“cybernetics,” a neologism he created out of the Greek word for “steersman,” could be a kind of overarching science that brought together various scientific disciplines such as biology, mathematics, physics, and clinical psychology. Almost immediately, sociologists and anthropologists recognized that their fields could be understood in terms of a theory of communication and information flows. The mathematical language of cybernetics, moreover, offered these fields a chance to appear more like the natural sciences. All this resulted in the rapid spreading of the cybernetic concept.

Wiener, however, was unequivocal in his skepticism about the suitability of cybernetics to the social sciences. “All the great successes in precise science have been made in fields where there is a certain degree of isolation of the phenomenon from the observer,” he wrote.139 He believed that good statistical data, crucial in cybernetic math, was impossibly deduced from a dynamic modern society, and therefore sociology could never truly capture societies in any logical scheme. Despite such warnings from Wiener, cybernetics nevertheless captured the imagination of a wide audience. Soon heads of large bureaucratic corporations, as well as those of government agencies, began thinking in terms of systems, and the flow of information between them. In his essay Bell gave as examples of large institutions that had adopted this mode of thinking the Pentagon, the

Metropolitan Insurance Company, and the University of California.140

138 Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948), 22. 139 Wiener, Cybernetics, 189-190. 140 Daniel Bell, “The Post-Industrial Society,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 84

The last of the new techniques Bell discussed was simulation, or modeling. Bell noted that computer models weren’t all that different from physical models, the ones of cars or planes used in wind tunnels. Just as physical models tested how an object behaved under certain conditions, so computer models could simulate the behavior of complex systems. Defense projects relied especially on modeling. The Distant Early Warning

Line, a system of radar stations in the Artic, was tested with the use of computer simulations, Bell explained. That simulation techniques emerged from defense concerns was no surprise since real Russian invasions could hardly be tested. Game theory, especially, became the next best thing. Like the other techniques Bell discussed, this too was a theory that rested on mathematics. Yet, game theory seemed particularly to benefit from increasing computing power since it was built on potentially unlimited schemas in which the consequences of decisions by multiple actors could be compounded. But more than the military applications, Bell was fascinated by economic and sociological simulations. He gave as an example an attempt to simulate an entire economy, so that computers could provide information about the effects of interest rate changes, or changes in public spending. He also noted that the political scientists Ithiel De Sola Pool and a team at M.I.T. had simulated the 1960 election, using survey data from the period

1952-1960 representing a hundred thousand voters.

The new advancements in information technology would play an important role in the post-industrial society, this Bell made clear. The computer seemed to open up the possibility of a rationally organized society:

What computer technology seeks, no more no less, is the unlocking of an alchemist’s dream of the “ordering” of the mass society—a society where 85

millions of persons daily make billions of decisions in the most varied areas of life: on the things to buy, the number of children to have, what house to build, for whom to vote, what trip to make what job to take. Any single choice may be as unpredictable as Heisenberg’s atom, yet in the aggregate, the multiple helix patterns are to be charted by the computer as neatly as the geometer triangulates the height and the horizon. An if the computer is the “tool” then “decision theory” is its master; for just as Pascal sought to play dice with God, or the physiocrats to draw the perfect grid which would array all economic exchanges among men, so the decision theorists seek their own tableau entiére—the compass of rationality itself.141

Bell’s teasingly hyperbolic language, here, indicates that he was not entirely comfortable with the contemporary hype about computers, and he wanted to check his own Veblenesque impulses. Subsumed in this passage was a realization that the promise of information technology contained utopian elements; the computer as a key to a perfectly managed society. Bell therefore now took a step back: “Every new revolution in thought and technique seems to produce a burst of optimism…only to expend itself years later in the dust of vanities.” He now asked whether “‘rational’ decision-making”—the goal of the new techniques—“can ever wholly encompass the uncertainties and complexities inherent…in social change.” This was not a question born from the idea that human life was ultimately a mystery and therefore planning could never really succeed,

Bell claimed. Instead he noted that he had a “theoretic and pragmatic” concern about the fact that “the rational often becomes the mechanical, that planning may become self- defeating, and that at some point barriers to the goals initially defined have become erected.” “In the sweeping enthusiasm for the technology of judgment, insufficient attention has been given to this problem,” he wrote.

141 Daniel Bell, “The Post-Industrial Society,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 86

Two contradictory elements of Bell’s thinking ran up against each other here. One was his desire for a type of democratic planning that could overcome interest group conflict in a pluralist system. This was a desire for the rational organization of society aimed at the common good. The potential of computing power “to specify all alternative consequences…that result from the interaction of multiple decisions” peaked Bell’s interest in this respect. The other element, however, was Bell’s skepticism toward utopian thinking, especially ideas that seemed absolutist and inflexible. In this light, he refused to see computers as a step towards a perfectly organized society.

Interestingly, in this respect, is that Bell opened his draft on the post-industrial society by discussing St. Simon. He noted that according to this “wildly brilliant…monomaniacal technocrat” a new “natural elite of industrialists” would organize society in a “rational positivist fashion.” St. Simon foresaw a breed of “’new men,’ engineers, builders, planners, who would provide the necessary leadership.” All this had “a comic air,” wrote Bell, since his followers soon “established a religious cult of

St. Simonianism to canonize his teachings.” Yet, “many of the self-same followers redrew the industrial map of Europe during the mid-19th century.” By discussing the famous utopian socialist as an opening to his paper, Bell seemed to acknowledge a utopian element in his own vision of the future. And, perhaps, he also admitted to a technocratic element. How these elements could be squared with his warning about the

“trap of ideology” he did not work out in this paper. Yet, this question would trouble

Bell, and the futurists of the 1960s, for the remainder of the decade. 87

After sharing his early draft of the post-industrial society, Bell’s role with

Futuribles can best be described as editorial and advisory. In the summer of 1963, he composed his first report for the executive board in which he evaluated the efforts of the organization that was now some eighteen months in operation. The report consisted of three sections, a review of a number of the Futuribles papers, an overview of different modes of forecasting in the social sciences, and some suggestions about the direction of the program. In the first section Bell reviewed 14 papers with topics that included the political future of Burma, the prospects for Italian democracy, and British society in the year 1972. Bell was mildly impressed with some papers, but privately thought most forgetful. Bell told David Heaps that of the sixty Futuribles papers he had seen only eight had “validity.”142 Bell’s main point of critique was that the papers didn’t go beyond the identification of current problems and basic extrapolations, and he complained that “few real predictions were made.”143 He noted that the time for papers had passed and that, now, two people should be selected to “chart the important research areas.”

When Bell evaluated various modes of prediction that were being used in the social sciences he claimed that a “sorting of approaches” was a necessary first step for the organization. Ultimately this would make it possible to match the appropriate forecasting tool with a specific problem under study. In somewhat altered form, this section of Bell’s

Futuribles report was published in Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, as “Twelve Modes of Prediction: a Preliminary Sorting of

Approaches in the Social Sciences.”

142 Bell to Heaps, April 1963, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 143 Daniel Bell, “Report to the International Council of Futuribles on the Identification of Fruitful Work on the Problems of Prediction,” July 1963, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 88

Trends and forecasts were the most familiar form of prediction, Bell claimed. This was the stuff of extrapolations and “straight-line projections.” The Futuribles papers had been full of them, whether they considered the future of Italy or India. Demographic forecasting was especially familiar since it involved relatively easy calculations of birth and death rates. Although the conclusions of Thomas Malthus no longer found many adherents, his methods were often repeated. In modern economics trends and projections played an important role, yet Bell felt that the topic of economic forecasting needed a more substantial treatment, and he left this task for someone else.

Another mode of prediction was something Bell labeled “accounting schemes.”

These too he encountered in various Futuribles papers. It was the effort to determine the important factors of a social system, such as a nation, and to assign to these factors certain behaviors. As the example of such an approach Bell used the Futurible paper of

British anthropologist Edmund Leach on the future of Burma. Leach picked a range of factors and ranked them from stable to “wholly fortuitous.” He then proceeded to simulate the passage of time.144 Stable factors were things such as climate and geography, and the fortuitous ones were the short term objectives of politicians and the pressures of foreign powers. Leach’s insight was essentially to determine what aspects of a social system were more likely to change then others, and predictions about the future of that system could therefore be classified as more or less likely. Bell, however, was not impressed. He noted that what one should be after was not “an inventory of factors” but

144 Edmund Leach, “The Political Future of Burma,” in Futuribles: Studies in Conjecture, ed. Bertrand De Jouvenel (Geneva: Droz, 1963), 1:124. 89 the relationship between different factors as they developed over time. Such relationships could be described as “social laws,” yet such a term led to a different set of problems.

“Social physics” was the name Bell gave to approaches that looked for such social laws in a given system. This was the Comtean dream of finding the sociological equivalent of Newton’s formulas. Bell noted that few social scientists were still so naïve about the viability of such an attempt. Yet, he noted that one of the most influential doctrines of the past century, namely Marx’s ideas about capitalism, had to be understood in this light. Marx had identified the laws of capitalism, and from these laws could be deduced the specific prediction of proletarian revolution. What, according to Bell, defined Marx’s model as social physics was the fact that his variables were impervious to the will of individuals or groups, and existed as a fixed reality above politics.

Contemporary economic theory proved Marx’s model wrong, Bell noted. Marx’s static formulas did not capture the true relationship between capital and labor, or the rate of return on capital in an industrializing economy. “The interesting question,” wrote Bell,

“was whether such comprehensive, dynamic models are possible…” And if one were to attempt to improve on Marx’s model “what would be the central variables that one would select to describe social and political action?”145 Trying to improve on Marxian “social physics” meant abandoning his distinction between base and superstructure in favor of a truly comprehensive theory of social action.

This effort lay at the heart of post-war sociology, and especially the work of

Talcott Parsons. In Toward a General Theory of Action, Parsons—with important

145 Bell, “Report to the International Council of Futuribles on the Identification of Fruitful Work on the Problems of Prediction,” July 1963, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 90 contributions from Edward Shils—had offered nothing less than a general theory applicable to all social sciences. One of Parsons’s students, Clifford Geertz, once noted that the aim of Parsons’s work was to produce “the sociological equivalent of the

Newtonian system.”146 Parsons’s background lay in neo-classical economics, and he fused this with the sociology of Durkheim and Weber. In the 1930s he had joined

Harvard’s new sociology department where, during the next two decades, he developed his structural-functionalist approach in which society was understood as a system in mechanical or biological terms that were reminiscent of Cybernetics. In Parsons’s scheme the social system was characterized by its tendency toward stability, consensus, and equilibrium. The aim of such an approach, as historian Nils Gilman has noted, was “the attainment of scientific predictability in social affairs, and eventually the creation of technologies to influence these social affairs.”147

In evaluating the modes of prediction, Bell discussed Parsons’s work under the header of “sequential development.” Durkheim, in The Division of Labor in Society, had identified certain stages that lead to industrial societies, and Bell noted that Parsons’s idea of “structural differentiation” essentially built on this work. Parsons argued that the history of Western development was made possible by a continuing process of the differentiation of societal roles. He used Weber’s concept of “bureaucratization” to describe how “functions are performed overwhelmingly in occupational roles, structurally segregated from the household…, arranged in a hierarchy of executive

146 Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 77. 147 Gilman, 85. 91 authority and differentiated in function on bases of technical competence…”148 The chapters of Parsons’s Structure and Process in Modern Societies that Bell cited, contained a lengthy section on the “problems of underdeveloped areas.”149 Here Parsons speculated on the various obstacles to development that existed in the recently decolonized nations, and the ways in which these obstacles could be overcome.

Commenting on these passages—typical of the burgeoning field of “modernization theory”—Bell noted that “the new states” were a “great laboratory,” and that the hypothesis about the sequential development of society could be tested there.

With such a statement Bell seemed to echo Parsons, Shils, and especially the father of modernization theory, Walt Rostow. Yet, at the same time Bell was vague about his allegiance to modernization theory. Ending his section on “sequential development” as a method of prediction, he asked whether the development from traditional to modern societies “could logically or sociologically be plotted.” Moreover, Bell’s statement about the “testing” of hypothesis in the new states held out to possibility that these theories could be disproven. This ambiguity on the part of Bell has to been seen in terms of his generally wavering attitude towards the work of Parsons. The fact that Bell only limited his discussion of Parsons to the sequential development section indicates that he avoided dealing with Parsons’s work in a more substantive manner. Bell’s piece, after all, was supposed to connect forecasting with the sociology of the day. And Parsons’s structural functional theory of action certainly seemed to relate to social change and the topic of prediction.

148 Talcott Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (New York: The Free Press, 1960), 113. 149 Parsons, Structure and process in Modern Societies, 116-131. 92

This Bell implicitly acknowledged when he presented three crucial issues for

Futuribles to take up as it moved forward: “social indicators,” societal “modeling,” and planning.150 Bell noted that indicators, usually economic, were almost automatically employed in predictions. Rising unemployment, for instance, could lead to social unrest.

In this example, economic data indicated possible social instability, but not all social change could be explained or predicted by economic indicators. What was necessary was the ability to index, chart, and possibly predict social and political change using social and political indicators, or so Bell proposed. He noted that modernization theory offered some possible examples. Daniel Lerner, Bell explained, had studied modernization in the

Middle East using categories like literacy, urbanization and exposure to mass media.

These were indicators that could potentially be used to study social and political change on its own terms.

Yet, social indicators, reasoned Bell, provided information about the state of a system, yet if one wanted to say something about the way a system developed into the future it was really the nature of a system that needed to be explored first. This could be done by constructing models of political systems, or entire societies. This, of course, brought Bell right back to Parsons. Bell admitted that thinking in terms of societal models, required capturing the structure of a society, and this was “coterminous with the quest of the social sciences as a whole.” More precisely, it was coterminous with the work of Talcott Parsons. Yet, Bell left the issue of social indicators and societal models

150 Bell, “Report to the International Council of Futuribles on the Identification of Fruitful Work on the Problems of Prediction,” July 1963, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 93 there; he was clearly unwilling to incorporate Parsons’s structural functionalist scheme into the methodological discussions around forecasting.

Bell’s avoidance of Parsons stems from a disagreement over the role and nature of academic sociology. By the late 1950s Parsons, even more directly, infused his systemic theories with cybernetic concepts.151 As a result of this, but also because of Parsons’s penchant for highly abstract theorizing, his work started to emphasize increasing levels of complexity and inter-relatedness. The various systems that he had identified over his long career, as well as the various subsystems, were now connected and mutually affected by a constant flow of information. For Bell such a theoretical framework stopped having the capacity to explain social change as an actual phenomenon, something that could be observed in society. The differences between Bell and Parsons can be captured in their understanding and use of cybernetics. What for Bell was an intellectual technique employed by the “theorists of judgement,” the vanguard of defense planners and industrial managers, was for Parsons a theoretical concept that could be used sociologically to describe the workings of an entire social system.

Although Bell and C. Wright Mills were feuding during the early 1960s, Bell seemed quietly to adhere to Mill’s devastating critique of Parsons’s “grand theory.” In his

1959 The Sociological Imagination, Mills described Parsons’s theory as being “on a level of thinking so general that its practitioners cannot logically get down to observation.”

What Parsons did not allow, argued Mills was the ability to consider problems “in their

151 A. Javier Trevino ed., Talcott Parsons Today: His Theory and Legacy in Contemporary Sociology (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), xlviii. 94 historical and structural contexts.”152 A passage from the Coming of Post-Industrial

Society, in which Bell hinted at his growing annoyance towards an abstract systems approach in sociology during the early 1960s, closely resembles Mills’s charge. In modern sociology, Bell wrote, “one posits a set of subsystems—the educational, the occupational, the political, the religious the socialization—which influence each other, yet there is no clues as to which is the most important, or why. Everything is dissolved into interacting forces.”153 “My purpose”, he countered, “is to restore some of the informing power of older modes of social analysis.”

How exactly Bell attempted to restore the older modes of social analysis will be dealt with in later chapters. What is important here is that Bell displayed an obvious ambiguity about the goals and claims of much of modern sociology during the early

1960s. He half-heartedly repeated some of the claims of the modernization theorists, while attempting to stay away from the dominant Parsonian paradigm of the day.

Despite his ambiguity about the social scientific methods of prediction, and despite his critique of the Futuribles papers, Bell believed that Jouvenel had been able to produce a real enthusiasm about prediction, forecasting, and the future of advanced industrial society. Moreover, both Bell and Ford Foundation officials were pleasantly surprised that many “first-rate” French intellectuals attended the Paris Futuribles seminar that was held July 6-8, 1963. Jouvenel’s acquaintances from French planning circles, such as Pierre Massé, attended the conference as well as top army general André Beaufre,

152 C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 33. 153 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 10. 95 economist Jean Fourastié, and anthropologist Claude Levy-Strauss. This was a decidedly different audience than had attended the smaller previous conferences.

Bell was disappointed, however, that the Paris conference failed to produce an agenda, or formal program for the organization.154 Jouvenel continued to call for papers, and an ever-growing number of these were published in his Journals SEDEIS. Yet, the organization had no library in which relevant publications could be collected, and although it was nominally associated with the GIIS in Geneva, there were no offices there, and no staff. Bell, Nielsen, and Heaps hoped that Jouvenel would use the momentum created by the Paris conference to establish Futuribles as a research program, imbedded in a university.

In his report to the Futuribles board, Bell advocated that a topic of research should be planning: “A future-oriented society necessarily commits itself more and more to the idea of planning.” And “the planning process” was “the chief means of inventing the future.” Naturally there were very different ways in which people, cities, or governments planned, and many different techniques could be used in the process. Here Bell was referring to some of the techniques he had discussed in his essay on the post-industrial society: “input-output schemes, systems analyses, simulation.” Yet, planning was not just setting goals and finding means to achieve these, but a much more complex endeavor that, by definition, always included forecasting. Planning included “the specifications of costs and benefit, the re-allocation of burdens, and the probable consequences of different kinds of actions.” The “true function of the planning process” was to “explicate the values of society and make people aware of the cost of achieving these.”

154 Bell to Heaps, Jul, 1963, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 96

Bell, then, wanted Futuribles to focus on the kind of practical and “empirical” utopianism he had proposed in The End of Ideology. The “trap of ideology” was seeing the future as a fixed point at the end of a “faith ladder.” The aim now was to approach the future differently. To understand how societies changed, and how goals, plans, and forecasts related to each other. This required, above all, a more precise definition of terms. To this effort Jouvenel now turned his attention, as he attempted to write a sort of epistemology of futurism: The Art of Conjecture. Bell, meanwhile, organized a conference at Yale University on the new tools of rational planning: “decision theory,” systems analysis, and other computer aided techniques. The goal of this gathering was to find out if these new “techniques,” those harbingers of post-industrial society, could serve a non-ideological orientation to the future. In his report to Futuribles Bell asked:

“Consonant with our belief in liberty and with full awareness of the problem of choosing between conflicting values, each of which may be cherished, is there some way of choosing the best planning process?”155

155 Bell, “Report to the International Council of Futuribles on the Identification of Fruitful Work on the Problems of Prediction,” July 1963, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 97

CHAPTER TWO: THE ART AND TECHNIQUE OF CONJECTURE

On November 30, 1964 Bertrand de Jouvenel visited the RAND Corporation in

Santa Monica, California to speak to an interdepartmental seminar about Futuribles and its activities. Nominally, an organization that originated out of the Congress for Cultural

Freedom and was supposed to study democratic institutions had little in common with a national security think tank. Yet, as we have seen, Jouvenel wanted to speculate about the future of advanced industrial societies more than he wanted to think about democracy in the west and the “new states.” RAND, meanwhile, was tasked to think about the next war, and long-term military needs. As such it had its own interest in the future of advanced industrial nations. It was for this reason that Daniel Bell and Eugene V. Rostow had helped set up this visit. Bell, moreover, believed that RAND had developed new rational planning “techniques” and had achieved all sorts of advances in the use of computers, things that had found their way into business and government. Clearly, such techniques were relevant for Futuribles. Jouvenel expressed the hope that a discussion at such a “hot-bed of intellectual creation” would result in inspiration and guidance for his organization. And, perhaps, Jouvenel’s efforts in France would be of interests to people at

RAND.156

In his talk, it took Jouvenel five minutes to quote Cicero, mention two French enlightenment figures (Maupertuis and Voltaire), and give an “example” that involved

156 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “Transcript of Lecture given to RAND Inter-Departmental Seminar,” November 30, 1964, Ford Foundation Records, Grant File, “Strengthening the Democratic Institutions of Europe and Other Areas of the World,” 6241, Reel 663, Rockefeller Archival Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, (Hereafter FFR). 98

William of Orange.157 How all this was received by the audience, archival material does not make clear. Yet, that his talk departed from the typical RAND presentation seems like a reasonable assumption. Jouvenel drew from his recently completed book The Art of

Conjecture, and the style of his address represented the style of that book. Although he believed that advanced industrial society demanded an engagement with the long-term,

Jouvenel’s mind seemed mostly to engage the 18th century. When he again leveled his critique against the functioning of mass democracies, he told the RAND analysts: “I don’t know how it is in this country but in mine, and all the European countries of which I am cognizant, the political system is fundamentally altered from the model assumed by

Locke.”158 Jouvenel was not just anachronistic in style; substantively his talk at RAND seemed discordant as well. He insisted that the future could never become a science, and called for modesty whenever one engaged the future. At its founding, however, RAND very much treated long-term military planning as a science, and strong vestiges of this sensibility remained. Moreover, Jouvenel noted that “nothing is less like the universe of social affairs than the artificial universe of a game of chance.”159 For an organization known for advancements in Game Theory, this was a serious critique.

One mode of forecasting could always count on Jouvenel’s blessing, and this was anything that incorporated experts. In light of this he was enthusiastic about the work of one RAND analyst, Olaf Helmer, who had extensively studied the ways in which experts could be employed in forecasting. A week after Jouvenel’s visit to Santa Monica,

157 Jouvenel, “Transcript of Lecture given to RAND inter-departmental seminar,” 2-5. 158 Jouvenel, “Transcript of Lecture given to RAND inter-departmental seminar,” 9. 159 Jouvenel, “Transcript of Lecture given to RAND inter-departmental seminar,” 4.

Futuribles held a conference in New Haven at Yale University, and here Olaf Helmer was an important participant. Bell and Rostow had also invited a more famous former RAND physicist Herman Kahn, along with a host of prominent American political scientists.

During this conference, many aspects of 1960s futurism came into view. The discussion centered on the possibility of computer simulations, war gaming, and Helmer’s experiments with experts. Jouvenel considered whether such techniques were compatible with the interest of Futuribles: forecasting as a way to give direction to an aimless industrial society. Some of the inherent problems of 1960s futurism also came into view, especially in a confrontation with American political scientists, who struggled to see how futurism fit a pluralist democratic system. In order to evaluate all this it is necessary to start with the work that served as the impetus for most of these discussions: Jouvenel’s study of forecasting.

The Art of Conjecture

In the preface to his new book, Jouvenel noted the goal of Futuribles had been “to instigate and stimulate efforts of social and political forecasting.” The organization had taken an important step toward “a continual commerce of visions of the future, fostered by contributions of the most diverse specialties, improved by mutual criticism.”160 Yet, this first step had also produced questions about “the mode of formation” of such visions of the future. The Art of Conjecture aimed to offer epistemological preciseness in talking about forecasting, predicting, anticipation, etc. It also was to evaluate various methods that were actually employed in predicting, or the making of “reasoned conjectures,”

160 Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture (New York: Basic Books, 1967), viii. 100

Jouvenel’s term for a kind of nuanced forecasting. In this way the reader could expect something akin to Bell’s article on the “Twelve Modes of Prediction.”

Jouvenel started with terminology. In Latin there were “facta” and “futura,” or past and future events. Facta related to the unalterable, to what had been completed, they were facts. Futura were open ended. “Knowledge of the future” was thus by definition impossible. Yet, Jouvenel argued that all “useful knowledge” related to futura more than facta. Life revolved around anticipation: “The real fact collector is at the opposite pole from the man of action.”161 Jouvenel noted a quarrel between Voltaire and the philosopher and mathematician Maupertuis in this regard. The later had insisted that memory and prévision were the aspects that defined the human mind. Voltaire countered that foreknowledge could never be attained by mere mortals and that foresight was the best we could do. Jouvenel implied that Voltaire had attacked his opponent on grounds of terminology but had failed to engage his argument, namely that an orientation to the future was an impulse inherent to the human mind.

Jouvenel rejected the term “futurology” because it hinted at the existence of “a science of the future,” and such a thing was impossible.162 The political scientist Ossip

Flechtheim had coined the term “futurology” in the 1940s, when he was immersed in the works of Toynbee and Spengler.163 Flechtheim, a Ukrainian-German Jew, was one of the lesser-known émigrés of the Institute for Social Research. He speculated about a

“division of sociology” that could “limit itself to actual prospective developments trying to establish the degree of their credibility or mathematical probability.” Yet, for Jouvenel

161 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 6. 162 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 17. 163 Ossip K. Flechtheim, History and Futurology (Meisenheim am Glam: Verlag Anton Hain, 1966), 69. 101 this was “disturbing.” The obvious fact was that this could never succeed. He noted that

“in all ages men have gathered about fortunetellers” and what was to be avoided was that such people could pass their divinations as science. Instead Jouvenel chose “conjecture” as a suitable term for the type of future orientation he had in mind. Bernoulli, the seventeenth century mathematician, had used the term in opposition to scientific certitude or knowledge, and Jouvenel used it for this reason. Conjecture was an art; it consisted of

“a composition of the mind.” Because conjecture was such a mental construct it was crucial to make it as transparent as possible, and thereby open to criticism. Thus Jouvenel wrote that it was “of vital importance for the progress of this art of conjecture” to have

“any assertion about the future” be “accompanied by the intellectual scaffolding which supports it…”164

This required a closer look at the different ways in which people actually engaged the future. Jouvenel noted that “the prolongation of a tendency” was the most common form of thinking about the future. The extrapolation of past trends seemed to be a kind of default methodology. “Things will go on that way, for they have already gone that way.”

Forecasts based on such an idea emphasized change, but change in a specific direction.

Although he did not want to “condemn” extrapolation, Jouvenel wanted to offer a warning about its defects. Jouvenel noted that the 19th century critic Auguste Émile

Faguet saw politics as trending towards “peaceful conservatism” and a sort of stable

“timidity.”165 Faguet’s prediction for the twentieth century therefore, had been that it would be devoid of vicissitudes, or great reforms. Another common mode of thinking

164 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 17. 165 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 72. 102 about the future involved “analogy.” This too could easily lead to problems. The prediction, made by many American economists at the end of World War II about an economic depression upon the war’s end, was based on the experience of the First World

War. In reality, the actual economic forces in operation were not very similar. Still, for

Jouvenel analogy was better than extrapolation. Since the former involved an articulated historical comparison, it was more likely to lead to a delineation of the present situation, and therefore more reasoned forecasts. Still, forecasting through analogy was difficult because one was simplifying the “complexity of present situations.”166

Economic forecasts had their origins in demographics, noted Jouvenel. Malthus’s attempt to capture a “law” of population assumed unchecked growth and therefore ultimately, calamity. Modern demographics was more nuanced and benefited from mathematical advances. Yet Jouvenel showed that American population forecasts of 1937 and 1947 had been wildly off the mark. These errors indicated that “a curve fitted to past data offers no guarantee that future values on this curve are valid.”167 More recently, noted Jouvenel, econometric models were a highly touted form of quantitative forecasting. He explained that Wassily Leontief’s famous input-output matrix had allowed others such as Jan Tinbergen and Richard Stone to construct models of various national economies with the aim to forecast. Jouvenel noted, however, that critical studies of Tinbergen’s model of the Dutch economy had indicated cause for modesty. In all models there was the need to insert unknown variables and although mathematical formulas could potentially capture certain laws of economic systems, economic forecasts

166 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 65. 167 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 167. 103 could never be obtained by relying only on current economic data. Predictions by econometric models still required “guesses.” According to Jouvenel, the faults in

Tinbergen’s predictions related more to the insertion of unknown variables than to the functional model itself. The important thing to remember, wrote Jouvenel was that “a mathematical formula is never more than a precise statement.” Such formulas “must not be made into a Procrustean bed…” Yet, that was exactly “what one is driven to by the desire to quantify at any cost.” People who believed that “a mathematical formula” could

“make the future know to us…would once have believed in witchcraft.”168

With so many critiques against the various forecasting methodologies, Jouvenel’s book built up an awkward tension. He had started out by noting the necessity of looking ahead, yet he seemed to quash all optimism about the ability to do so. “An immense task lies before us, Jouvenel wrote. Yet, “it would be quite unrealistic to think we are well equipped for it.”169 A reviewer for the American Political Science Review, noted that

“the reader feels he has been led up a mountain, atop which he expects to overlook a beautiful valley; instead, his expectations are dashed by another series of rugged climbs beyond the mist.”170 What added another frustrating element to The Art of Conjecture, was its poor editing. Many times Jouvenel seemed to get lost in his own trivial examples, often drawn from ancient Greece or Rome. Moreover, at certain points Jouvenel seemed to shy away from the complexity which his own inquiry unearthed. This was especially notable when he described Marxist predictions about history. He noted that Marxism employed the methodology of “systems.” He failed to explain, however, what was

168 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 173. 169 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 278. 170 James A. Robinson, The American Political Science Review, Mar., 1968, 237. 104 systematic about Marx’s ideas. A page later he termed Marx’s dialectical materialism “a model,” and he concluded with the platitude that Marx’s work predicted a revolution in

England or Germany, not Russia.171

Nowhere was the penchant to avoid the tricky aspects of his epistemological inquiry more pronounced than in the topic of planning. Early in his chapter on “long-term economic forecasting” Jouvenel, in his Socratic style, voiced a concern of his reader:

“Why have you skipped over medium-term planning (with a four-or five year span)?”172

The answer he gave was simply: “planning is not forecasting.” In the very next paragraph he caught himself and wrote: “this answer is not fully satisfactory. Indeed, a plan is a forecast: it has to be.” Jouvenel concluded that planning had a “duel nature;” a plan was

“both a forecast and a ‘project.’” And, “this fundamental ambiguity” was what “made planning so important.” Yet, instead of dealing with this ambiguity, he avoided it on the ground of a rather lame excuse: “planning is far too great a topic to be dealt with incidentally.” This was especially unconvincing since his interest in the future stemmed—in his own words—from his participation in French planning circles. Yet, strangely, the evasiveness about planning in the Art of Conjecture reveals much about

Jouvenel’s thinking.

Certainly, Jouvenel’s struggles with this topic were not new. In L’Economie

Dirigée, the book that made his name as a young man, he established a need for government direction of the economy. Yet, as we saw in the first chapter, his divided political allegiances—a vague statism fought with classical liberalism—stopped him

171 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 74-76. 172 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 214. 105 from getting concrete about this. Jouvenel wanted to see political action directed at the

“common good,” and the “direction” that he desired during the 1920s and 30s, was less a planned economy than a Rousseauian emphasis on the general will. During the 1930s this briefly led him to anti-democratic conclusions. Yet, even during this time, Jouvenel never developed a well-articulated planning philosophy. After he shed his absolutist critique of centralized power of the late 1940s, Jouvenel was directly exposed to state planning when he participated in the government workgroup on the year 1985. Crucially, however,

Jouvenel took from this experience not an interest in planning but an interest in the future. Inspired by Berger, Jouvenel argued that a rapidly changing society needed to look-ahead. This logic always hinted at some sort of relationship between a future orientation and better planning, but it never made it explicit.

By setting up Futuribles, Jouvenel found a way to discuss the direction and aim of industrial society while avoiding the topic of planning. He claimed that rigorous thought about the future was the antidote to modern industrial society adrift in a sea of violent change. But by zeroing in on the future, Jouvenel offered a kind of anti-planning; the problems of contemporary society were connected to a lack of conjectures. In essence, this came down to a choice for the future as an intellectual challenge, over the present as a realm of action. Naturally, then, the topic of planning in The Art of Conjecture, caused him more problems than he was willing to take on.

Neglecting concrete next steps in favor of an engagement with the future, sounds like a good definition of utopianism. Yet, Jouvenel did not aim for an “unattainable” future brought about by radical change or technological innovation. For him, a future 106 orientation served stability not upending change. “Conservatism expresses a fundamental human need,” he wrote. Nothing was more understandable than “a worker’s fear of automation.” It was the “duty of the social forecaster” to “combat the general feeling of uncertainty which the rapidity of change sheds indistinctly over all institutions.” If

Jouvenel can be accused of utopianism then, it was a conservative kind, something that aimed for order and stability through foresight: “The more change there is the more valuable are some fixed points; which structural certainties should be tied down and placed beyond doubt?”173

Since Jouvenel argued that rapid social and technological change could be too much for people, large portions of The Art of Conjecture displayed a kind of humanist sensibility. He noted that the effort to engage the future should not stop with economic forecasts. “If we wish to stretch our view further [sic] ahead, we must look for phenomena—in the realms of technology, politics, and psychological attitudes—that will impinge on the economic system.”174 Such forecasts, noted Jouvenel, had to be found in

“the moral sciences,” “human disciplines” that center around “human behavior and relations.” It was crucial that these disciplines engage in forecasting because “otherwise the social need in this area will be satisfied by an extension of technology; that is to say, a way of seeing developed for objects will be extended for subjects.”175

Set against his critical evaluation of various forecasting methodologies,

Jouvenel’s futurism seemed indistinguishable from a kind of humanist philosophizing at times. The closest he came to tie his futurism to the political process was a “Surmising

173 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 221. 174 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 216. 175 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 278. 107

Forum,” and this evoked, once more, the idea of an enlightened aristocracy as a buffer between the sovereign and the masses. What was needed was “a body of enlightened amateurs” that produced a “constant stream of conjectures.” This could open up before decision makers a “fan of possible futures,” and could give them the opportunity to

“shape a still flexible situation.” Jouvenel used the word “forum” because he believed that forecasts used for public decisions—governmental decisions—had to be “publically expounded.”176 He specifically argued against secret reports prepared by government agencies to which leaders but not citizens had access.

Jouvenel’s notion of “public discussion,” however, seemed anachronistic, and struggled to deal with modern politics. He believed that in advanced industrial societies the executive had gained the initiative from deliberative political bodies. Important long- term policies were formulated by those in power, and parliaments could only deal with such plans on a “’Yes' or `No' basis.” This led Jouvenel to argue that his Surmising

Forum had to be separated not only from executive power, but also from politics. Only if goals for the future were disinterestedly debated before political parties determined their positions, could there exist true public discussion about the future. “Parties are obviously not the right agencies for such discussion, which must be free from special affiliations,” he noted.177

Just how a public discussion of long-range policies could be non-political and

“free form special affiliations,” Jouvenel did not figure out. All this showed that his real objection to modern politics was not the lack of debate but the existence of fundamental

176 Jouvenel, Art of Conjecture, 277. 177 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “The Surmising Forum,” The London Spectator, 11 June, 1964, 11. 108 disagreements about plans for the future. Jouvenel’s Rousseauian impulses emerged once more. The Surmising Forum’s real job seemed to be to base long-range policies on the general will.

In The Art of Conjecture, then, Jouvenel argued that the technological and scientific prowess of advanced industrial society did not offer the tools to plot its trajectory. An older mode of enlightened and disinterested discussion was required to balance economic growth with stability and a humanistic focus. This was a task for the

“moral sciences,” or “social sciences;” Jouvenel used both terms. Yet, when he discussed these ideas at the Futuribles conference in New Haven, many American social scientists did not recognize their own field or interests in such notions.

The Futuribles Conference on “Political Forecasting” at Yale University

The first session of the Futuribles conference at Yale Law School started on the morning of Saturday, December 5, 1964. About thirty-five people attended, most were political scientists or sociologists, some economists and mathematicians, and also a handful of journalists and editors of academic journals.178 The first session specifically addressed the role of forecasting in the field of political science. A recent paper that

Jouvenel had written for a conference of the International Political Science Association had been circulated to the participants and formed the baseline for the discussion.179

In this paper Jouvenel argued that political science could only be “of practical utility” if it considered “possible futures.”180 The political scientist was a specialist in the

178 “Futuribles Conference, New Haven” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 179 The paper was published as “Political Science and Prevision”, The American Political Science Review, March 1965, 29-38. 180 Jouvenel, “Political Science and Prevision,” 29. 109 operation of politics, but also a generalist who could “rank problems” and formulate a

“here and now order of priorities.” Jouvenel gave the example of the German Chancellor who, in 1930, had prioritized a balanced budget over unemployment. He asked whether a political scientist “ignorant” of budgets and ways to fight unemployment, would still have been able to steer the Chancellor in a different direction. And: “is it not the role of the political scientists to take a view, sufficiently panoramic, to call attention to such blunders?” For Jouvenel the political scientist could be the “enlightened amateur” of a

Surmising Forum; such an academic was “competent to appreciate priorities and consistency in policies the details of which he is incompetent to judge.”181 What Jouvenel emphasized was an applied role for the political science profession; “the political scientists is a teacher of public men in the making, and an adviser of public men in activity.”182

Jouvenel’s characterization of political science did not resonate with most of the political scientists present at the conference. Yale’s Karl Deutsch questioned Jouvenel’s utilitarian characterization of the relationship between forecasting, political decision making, and political science. Albert Wohlstetter, who had spent years at RAND and only recently had accepted a position as political science professor at the University of

Chicago, was skeptical about merging politics and forecasting, especially when

“predictions…come tied with prescriptions for urgent and dramatic action.”183 A colleague of Deutsch at Yale, Robert Dahl, similarly questioned whether forecasting

181 Jouvenel, “Political Science and Prevision,” 31. 182 Jouvenel, “Political Science and Prevision,” 29. 183 John W. Chapman, “Notes on Futuribles Conference, Yale Law school,” December 4-6,” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. See also Albert Wohlstetter, “Technology, Prediction, and Disorder” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1964, 11-15. 110 would lead to better policy making, and he also noted that the role of political institutions needed to be given more consideration than Jouvenel had done.184

What Dahl objected to was Jouvenel’s rather simplistic characterization of the decision making process as consisting of statesmen and advisers. Only three years earlier

Dahl had published his influential study of politics in New Haven: Who Governs:

Democracy and Power in an American City. This book became a classic articulation— and defense—of pluralism. Dahl investigated how individual citizens, interest groups, and politicians vied for influence. The result was a highly stable democratic system even if it was one that fell short of “the conceptions of an ideal democracy.”185 Political apathy, for Dahl, was a crucial aspect of the pluralist system. People were rarely directly involved in decision making, or knowledgeable about important issues, Dahl admitted.

Yet this political “slack” was itself a major reason for the stability of the system. Only when people were suitably roused by a particularly relevant issue did “slack” become engagement. And this happened especially when the democratic creed itself was deemed to be under threat. As such, pluralism contained a valuable check against authoritarianism and political disintegration. Jouvenel, however, saw such “slack” as evidence that modern politics lacked a vision and goals beyond winning the next election.

When Dahl had reviewed Jouvenel’s Sovereignty, in the 1950s, and had described him as a Tocquevellian aristocrat who was both “attracted” to liberalism and “fearful of its consequences,” he still believed Jouvenel to be a pluralist. Yet, when Jouvenel

184 Chapman, “Notes on Futuribles Conference.”

185 Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 317. 111 introduced his concept of a Surmising Forum at the conference, it was immediately clear that such an idea did not easily fit Dahl’s understanding of pluralism. Explaining his idea,

Jouvenel stated:

I find it quite easy to picture the following model: a public body, made up of independent members, is set up by law to investigate long-range possibilities and problems. It can draw upon the resources of the civil service, it can conduct hearings, it can contract with academics and other such people for studies. In short, it operates much like a Royal Commission in Britain except that it is permanent. [….] There is a debating body, such as in the Conseil Economique et Social in France, where these products can be aired, and where the different choices possible are brought out. It is only after such ‘pre discussion’ that political parties take sides on the issues thus made apparent.186

Behind the call for disinterested “pre-discussion” of problems, lay the desire for a political process based on rational choice. Dahl, however, simply did not think that this was how democracy worked.187 Other participants were also clearly critical of Jouvenel’s conception of democracy. Stanley Hoffman, a French political scientist who taught at

Harvard, pointed out that Jouvenel’s proposed Surmising Forum dealt with “choices on possible futures of society and the political system,” and therefore proposed to do much more than just forecasting.188 Kenneth Keniston, a lecturer in Harvard’s department of social relations, agreed with Hoffman and noted that part of what the surmising forum would do was “normative.” It thus dealt with “desired” futures, and as such it was a kind of “public planning.” Keniston noted that except in matters of defense, people felt

“dominated” by such an idea of planning. He also worried about “the transference to the

186 Jouvenel, “On the Surmising Forum: Paper Delivered at Futuribles Conference Yale Law school,” December 5, 1964, Grant File 6241, reel 663, FFR. 187 Dahl, Who Governs?, 256-267. 188 Chapman, “Notes on Futuribles Conference.” 112 expert” and the “abuse of assumptions of expertise.” Hoffman, in turn, warned of

“enlightened despotism.”189

Clearly, Jouvenel’s aristocratic critique of democracy in advanced industrial societies, could not count on much respect from the social scientists gathered at Yale.

Yet, the dissonance between Jouvenel and the American social scientists was not simply caused by Jouvenel’s unease with pluralism, or his inability to explain how forecasting related to planning. An important factor at work was Jouvenel’s critique of behavioralism and accompanying ideas about social change. As Nils Gilman has noted, the Yale political science department had been “a center of behavioralism” after World War II.190

Although behavioralism was a notoriously slippery concept, it included, according to

Dahl, a “sympathy with science.” Deutsch stressed that the term behavioralism was

“politically neutral.”191 In defining the term, Gilman has noted “an emphasis on empirical and value-free methods, aimed at discovering formal laws of social and political processes, to be tested by applying quantitative sample-and survey methods…” It was this emphasis on scientific methods and empiricism that produced an interest in prediction for behavioralists in social science. After all, a successful identification of a

“political law,”—the ultimate behaviorist goal— allowed for predictions about the political system based on such a law.

For Jouvenel, however, the behaviorist paradigm in political science was an obstacle, not an aid to better forecasts. In his paper he noted that behavioralist studies often dealt with “ordinary behavior,” things that were not “uncommon,” and whatever

189 Ibid. 190 Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 115. 191 Ibid. 113

“fits into an order.”192 Yet, there were times, argued Jouvenel, when such order broke down. He termed this “moments of heating.” He argued that such moments were crucial in terms of forecasting social and political change. It was one thing to “observe people under ‘cold’ conditions when they vote this way or that, attend meetings or not, move resolutions or raise their hands,” but it was quite another to suddenly see people behave differently when the normal order seemed weakened. Thus for Jouvenel, behavioralist political science offered knowledge about the political system only if it was considered stable, but if prediction was the goal, identifying the breakdown of functioning political systems was what was needed.

Jouvenel’s critique of behavioralism foreshadowed the critiques of the late 1960s and seventies, when a new generation of social scientists charged that the work of their teachers had presupposed an unshakable consensus underneath American politics. That critique, however, was influenced by the history of the late 1960s, when students, anti- war activists, blacks, and feminists identified violence and oppression behind the existing political order. At Yale, in December of 1964, Jouvenel did not see the possibility of a breakdown of order in those terms. Instead he thought in terms of the French Revolution, and the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s. Still, Jouvenel objected to the fact that behavioralists only cared about predictability within the confines of a theoretical system.

What such an approach ignored was a more imaginative engagement with the real and unknowable future.

Another way in which behavioralist political scientists dealt with the future was tied to a fascination with models of development, especially as applied to the “new

192 Jouvenel, “Political Science and Prevision,” 33. 114 states.” As noted in the previous chapter, Futuribles board member Edward Shils was a crucial figure in what came to be known as modernization theory. The theorists operating in this field held that all nations could be ranked somewhere on a tradition-modernity scale. The central question became how this movement towards modernity (development) functioned. Cold War concerns always lay thinly veiled behind this theory, as communism was seen as a developmental shortcut, appealing to Third World nations eager to catch up to the west. Modernity, on the other hand was, often indistinguishable from American industrial democracy. Thus some of the words Shils used, during the early 1960s, to describe what was meant by “modern” were “democratic,” “scientific,”

“individuality,” and especially “economic development.”193 Along with Shils, almost all the big names associated with modernization theory were present at the Yale conference.

The previously mentioned Karl Deutsch and Robert Dahl had formulated basic ideas on which the theory of modernization was build, and the same could be said of Harold

Lasswell. Ithiel de Sola Pool and Lucian Pye, two slightly younger, but influential, modernization theorists, also attended.

Nominally the Futuribles agenda fit perfectly well with modernization theory. The original wording of the Ford Foundation grant to Futuribles, as written by Waldemar

Nielsen, had included “the strengthening of democratic institutions,” with a special emphasis on “democratic governments in the New States.” In sending out conference invitations, Eugene Rostow played up Nielsen’s original understanding of the grant. For instance, in the invitation to his brother Walt—author of the most famous text of

193 Edward A. Shils, “Political Development of the New States I,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2;3 1960, 265-67. See also Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, chapter 4. 115

Modernization Theory: The Stages of Economic Growth—Eugene Rostow wrote that the purpose of the Ford Foundation grant had been “to direct de Jouvenel’s mind to the problem of maintaining (or restoring) democracy in Europe and achieving it in the new countries of Asia and Africa.”194 Eugene Rostow also greatly exaggerated the Futuribles commitment to the developing world when he closed the letter by noting that “the movement has had a noticeable impact in Europe, in India, and in some part of Africa.”

Futuribles, in fact, had never dealt in the slightest with Africa, and only very modestly with India. Yet, the political scientists that came to the conference were thus under the imprecision that Jouvenel and his Futuribles endeavor narrowly fitted their own interest in modernization theory. But as we have seen in the first chapter, Jouvenel’s understanding of the grant differed markedly from Nielsen’s; the former cared about forecasting, while the latter emphasized the strengthening of political institutions in the developing world.

Walt Rostow did not attend the Futuribles conference at Yale because he was in

France as part of his work for the State Department. Should he have been there, he would quickly have found out that Jouvenel was not a fan of his work. In The Art of Conjecture

Jouvenel had not mentioned Rostow by name, yet obviously criticized his model of development. Rostow had listed all countries on his five-staged scheme of development, and even indicated when countries had jumped from one to the next. Jouvenel discussed this method in a chapter on problematic modes of forecasting, and under the paragraph header “the railway.” For Jouvenel such a “conception of a nation” was “like a train traveling some distance behind another down the same track. The same station may lie in

194 Eugene Victor Rostow to Walt W. Rostow, October 7, 1964. Grant file 6241, reel 663, FFR. 116 the past for the passengers in the first train, but in the future for the passengers of the second.”195 The main problem with Walt Rostow’s reasoning was, or so Jouvenel argued, that it led “to the conviction that the ‘developing nations’ will undergo the same evolution as the developed nations (hopefully at a faster rate), and will thus pass through the same stages.”196 But what exactly was this prediction based on? “When was the

American nation at the stage that is currently that of China?”197 This was an example, for

Jouvenel, of predictions lacking “the intellectual scaffolding” that supported them.

Historian Jenny Anderson has argued that Futuribles’ interest in forecasting “was a form of modernization theory.”198 Such a statement, however, ignores that Jouvenel discussed his work with a group of modernization theorists whose interest he did not share and whose methods he found limited. This claim, moreover, misses the discrepancy between the ostensible aim of Futuribles, and Jouvenel’s actual interests. Andersons’s claim is based exclusively on the names of the participants at the Yale conference, and the role of Shils and Eugene Rostow role on the Futuribles board. Yet two fundamentally different views about modernity could be discerned at the Futuribles conference. The modernization theorists took “the age of high mass consumption,”—Walt Rostow’s phrase—as the final stage of modernity; American industrial democracy was the unquestioned model. A high rate of technological change was seen as an intrinsic part of this final stage. The fact that such change never seemed to threaten the stability of the pluralist political system, owed to the behavioralist origins of Modernization Theory.

195 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 65 196 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 67. 197 Ibid. 198 Jenny Anderson, “The Great Future Debate and the Struggle for the World,” The American Historical Review, December 2012, 1417. 117

Jouvenel, however, believed that the high rate of social and technological change in modern industrial societies could, in fact, be highly unstable. Something like a Surmising

Forum was necessary to guide society safely toward a more humanist stage of modernity, one beyond “mass consumption.”

Not all the sessions of the conference were characterized by such incompatible perspectives. One crucial figure of American social science, Harold Lasswell, was unabashedly enthusiastic about Jouvenel’s idea of a Surmising Forum. His enthusiasm, however, focused less on Jouvenel’s political theory, and more on the specific tools that such a forum might employ. He believed broad participation in a potential Surmising

Forum could be achieved through the use of “data processing techniques.”199 Computer technology, in other words, could disseminate the results of various surmising studies through “shared use of data banks.” Lasswell had been interested in social change, and efforts to contemplate the long-range trajectory of industrial society, since the 1940s. The most obvious product of his fascination with the future, however, was his 1963 work The

Future of Political Science. In this book he argued for a utilitarian political science that aimed at “problem solving,” much like Jouvenel had done. Unlike the too narrowly specializing university, “centers for advanced political science” would “encourage sustained attempts to anticipate contingencies.” Such centers were necessary since it was

“only too obvious that mankind is drastically unprepared to cope with the grave new world into which we are being catapulted by science and technology.” Lasswell also imagined his own kind of “Surmising Forum” something he termed “decision seminars.”

He described the physical setting of such a seminar:

199 Chapman, “Notes on Futuribles Conference.” 118

The charts, maps, and other materials could be displayed on the four walls (even the ceiling) to refer to past and future events. One might, for example, adopt the convention of an eye-level line around the room as representing a recent year and imagine that time proceeds upward. All that had reference to past trend or conditioning factors would thus be kept below the line; projections, goal constructs, and policy alternatives would be placed above the line.200

For Lasswell, new computer technology could “vastly accelerate” the pace of the problem solving that occurred at the “decision seminars.” All sorts of information could easily be collected and used for extrapolation of various trends. Lasswell also noted that computers played important roles in new simulations of social and political change, and this held out the possibility of forecasting. In his discussion about simulation experiments in The Future of Political Science, he had cited recent work of two other participants in the conference: Ithiel De Sola Pool, and Harold Geutzkow.

During the conference in New Haven, Pool subsequently discussed his

“Simulmatrics Project.” It had been a joint effort with Yale psychology professor Robert

Abelson, and it was funded by the Democratic Party in 1959. The goal of the project was

“to estimate rapidly, during the [1960 Presidential] campaign, the probable impact upon the public, and upon small strategically important groups within the public, of different issues which might arise or which might be used by the candidates.”201 What made this project different from established ways of opinion polling, was that it used old poll- results from the 1952, 1954, 1956, and 1958 elections and used the data to construct an ambitious “voter type/issue” matrix. This matrix ranked 480 voter types (e.g. eastern, metropolitan, lower-income, white Catholic, female, Democrat) and 52 “issue clusters,”

200 Harold D. Lasswell, The Future of Political Science (New York: Prenctice-Hall, 1963), 125-126. 201 Ithiel de Sola Pool and Robert Abelson, “The Simulmatrics Project” Public Opinion Quarterly 25 (1961) 167. 119 which were specific political issues such as “McCarthyism” and “foreign aid.” The cells of the matrix had four numbers: the total number of that voter type asked about the corresponding “issue cluster,” and then three percentages of pro, anti, or undecided. The advantages of such a matrix were that it combined large amounts of poll data into a single

“data bank.” Census figures and actual voting results from the past elections were then combined with this matrix to allow computer simulations that estimated the importance of certain issues with the electorate.

Pool and Abelson had presented a preliminary report to the Democratic Party shortly before the 1960 Democratic Convention, and had hoped to run the simulations right up until the election. It seems however, that the Kennedy campaign was not immediately convinced of the merits of the program; they doubted the value of data from old elections, and demanded new opinion polls instead. The actual project was thus limited to only a handful of reports that were delivered to the Democratic Party. Yet, after the election, Pool and Abelson started to evaluate their simulations, and became convinced that the “Simulmatrics Project” was on to something. Although the project did not aim to offer one big prediction on the outcome of the election, it offered what Pool called “contingent predictions.” These were predictions “of what would happen if” one issue, captured in an “issue cluster,” became dominant in the election. One such issue was Kennedy’s Catholicism, and Pool ran simulations to predict what states were most likely to be influenced by this. His ranking of the states based on how this “religion 120 issue” influenced voters’ decisions, correlated to a remarkable degree with the state by state election results.202

In describing his project, Pool admitted that some person with great political insight and “simple slide-rule” calculations could have made a similar prediction about the impact of Kennedy’s Catholicism. But such a “lucky guess” method would be a hard sell to skeptics in need of predictions, he noted. “What the simulation did,” according to

Pool, “was to allow competent political analysts, operating without inspired guesses, to make sober, scientifically explainable estimates that they were willing to commit to paper before the facts.”203 Although there existed an obvious tension in the notion of

“scientifically explainable estimates”—a guess was usually not deemed to be very scientific—Pool’s focus was one the experiment more than the result. What he really cared about was the computer simulation. If you could precisely explain—in an equation—what the basis of the prediction was, than this allowed for simulation. Being able to simulate what would happen if 20% of Republican Catholics voted for Kennedy was more valuable than a single lucky guess. That this experiment held great promise for applied social science was the obvious conclusion. “If it is possible to reproduce, through computer simulation, much of the complexity of a whole society going through processes of change, and to do so rapidly, then the opportunities to put social science to work are greatly increased.”204

202 Pool noted that “the product-moment correlation” between the simulated state index and the actual Kennedy vote in the election was .82. 203 Ithiel de Sola Pool and Robert Abelson, “The Simulmatrics Project,”182. 204 Ithiel de Sola Pool and Robert Abelson, “The Simulmatrics Project” 185. 121

Harold Geutzkow’s talked about a different type of simulation: his “InterNation

Simulation” project. Developed at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral

Sciences at Palo Alto, this project focused on “simulated decision making in a hypothetical world.”205 It was, in other words, a foreign policy role playing game. The most serious “runs’ of the simulation occurred at the “group lab” of the departments of

Psychology and Sociology at Northwestern. Here, graduate students spend long nights playing the role of a foreign secretary, which could include “leaking” memo’s to a “world newspaper” staffed by other graduate students, or holding high level international peace conferences.206 Geutzkow and his team could observe all this through an “observation alley” equipped with one-way mirrors and audio devises.

When Guetzkow explained this at the Yale conference, he noted that gaming could simulate “the complexity” of international policy, and thus help “in the articulation of [a] theory” of international relations.207 In a book about his experiment that he had published the previous year, he had written something similar: “events […] are the usual basis for the development of theory about relations among nations. These events our theory must explain, and these events we eventually hope to predict.” The InterNation simulation was “a complementary means” for the development of theory.” Such convoluted statements were meant to convey the idea that although gaming did not lead directly to predictions, indirectly—through theory building—gaming experiments could help anticipate the way nations behaved on the international stage.

205 Micheal D. Ward “Harold S. Geutzkow” PS: Political Science and Politics, April 2009, 413. 206 Harold Guetzkow, Simulation in International Relations: Developments for Research and Teaching (Englewood Cliffs, H.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963), 30. 207 Chapman, “Notes on Futuribles Conference.” 122

Stripped of jargon and rather vague language, both Pool and Guetzkow seemed to argue that they had formalized the process of speculation. Yet, both stressed the rigorous methodology of their experiments, and as such it was not entirely clear whether they agreed with Jouvenel that forecasting was an art and not a science. The fact that computers were part of some of these experiments added another layer of mystique to all this. Certainly Jouvenel picked up on the fact that gaming relied on human intuition, and he therefore was enthusiastic; it was “simulation by human agents.” He worried, however, that “any exercise entrusted to an electronic computer…was regarded as scientific,” while gaming might not be “taken seriously.” Yet, even Jouvenel did not want to dismiss the revolution in computing. The “astonishing instruments at our disposal” made it possible to run “computer simulations” and test a large number of various hypotheses,” he wrote in The Art of Conjecture.208

The place where most of the discussions about simulation, gaming, and the role of computers, occurred was the RAND Corporation. For that reason Bell had invited a number of current and former RAND analysts to the conference, people such as Albert

Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, Daniel Elsberg, and Olaf Helmer. Bell was greatly interested in the innovations that had emerged from military planning circles, and he knew that many of the “techniques” that he had described in is paper on the post-industrial society had their origin in RAND Corporation Research. Of all the participants, no one had been more intimately involved with the development of research techniques at RAND than the mathematician Olaf Helmer. He had been at RAND almost from its inception, and he also participated, during the 1950s and 1960s, in the pioneering studies that came to define

208 Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, 289-290. 123

RAND’s systems analysis, game theory, modeling, and war gaming experiments. His research interests would eventually center on a specific method of forecasting, the

DELPHI method, something he discussed in great detail during the Futuribles conference at Yale.

Olaf Helmer, and RAND’s Engagement with the Future of War

RAND owed its existence to Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, Commander of the

Army Air Force during World War Two. During the war Arnold witnessed dramatic technological advances in air power, and he anticipated that the future of the Air Force— at that time not yet its own branch of the armed forces—would be determined more by rocketry than planes. In the winter of 1944-1945, Arnold told his top officers “we’ve got to think in terms of what we need twenty years from now.”209 He worried, moreover, that the end of the war would bring an exodus of applied scientific expertise. When, in

October 1945, Arnold found himself with a war budget surplus of $30,000,000, he quickly realized that he could use the money to keep some of the scientists within reach.

On an airbase outside San Francisco he met with a delegation of the Douglas Aircraft

Company and promised them ten million dollars over a four year period if they started a study of “V-1 and V-2 rockets… and other intercontinental air techniques of the future.”210 Now imbedded in the Douglas Aircraft Company, but enjoying a great deal of autonomy, Air Force Project Research and Development, or RAND, grew quickly. By mid-1947 the organization had around a 100 full-time researchers working from its own two-story building in Santa Monica, California.

209 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 55. 210 Bruce L.R. Smith, the RAND Corporation: a Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), 41. 124

Historian David R. Jardini has noted that, from the beginning, RAND’s research staff “committed itself to the creation of systematic and scientific methods for the analysis of warfare.”211 In order to do this, RAND was organized in two parts: sections and “interdisciplinary working groups.” The sections were akin to academic departments, nuclear physics, mathematics, electronics, etc. In the interdisciplinary working groups people from the various sections worked together to formulate a comprehensive strategy for the Air Force. What these workgroups did was sometimes simply described as “the science of war.” The ultimate focus of project RAND became “long-range problems involving analyses of anticipated scientific and technological changes and the entire war- making potential of the nation.”212 With RAND’s focus on “anticipated change” and “the long-range,” the challenges of forecasting and prediction inevitably became a topic of some interest. Olaf Helmer, more than anyone, became fascinated by the inherently futuristic aspect that lay at the heart of RAND’s mission.

Olaf Helmer was born in Berlin in 1910. His real name was Hirschberg, but his father, a Jewish theater actor, had adopted the new name after playing Torvald Helmer in a production of Ibsen’s Doll’s House.213 When Hitler came to power, Olaf Helmer was a student, working toward a doctorate in mathematics and logic at the University of Berlin.

The day after his oral defense he left for Great Britain where he would get another doctorate degree at the University of London. As a gifted young graduate student, Helmer

211 David R. Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder: The RAND Corporation’s Diversification into Social Welfare Research, 1946-1968” (PhD Diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1996), 28-29. 212 Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder,” 33. 213Olaf Helmer, interview by Kaya Tolon, June 3, 2009, Transcript as appendix in Kaya Tolon, “The American Futures Studies Movement (1965-1975); its Roots, Motivations, and Influences” (PhD Diss., Iowa State University, 2001), 190-210.

125 was instructed by some towering figures in the field of logic and math, including Hans

Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, John Von Neumann, and Bertrand Russell. Dispersed by the Nazi threat, many of the logical-positivists, in which school the young Helmer had been instructed, came to the U.S., including Rudolph Carnap who settled at the

University of Chicago.

Helmer came to the United States in 1936. He was supported by a grant for

German scientific émigrés and went to work for Carnap as an academic assistant. When this grant expired he worked as a math teacher at the University of Illinois at Urbana, and, during the mid-1940s, at the New School for Social Research in New York. He also worked as a research assistant to Paul Oppenheim in Princeton. Oppenheim was twenty- five years older than Helmer and came from a wealthy German Jewish family. He had settled in Princeton as an independent scholar after successfully channeling his substantial fortune away from Nazi clutches during the mid-1930s. Nicholas Rescher, a philosopher who worked with Helmer during the 1950s, has written about the intellectual milieu in which Helmer moved during the early 1940s. The logical positivists believed the natural sciences were “a model that all rigorous knowledge ought to emulate.”

Moreover, Oppenheim believed that the abstract language of logic and math expressed pure scientific truths, and could thus function to connect various scientific disciplines into a universal science.214

At one point, Helmer worked with Oppenheim and the philosopher of science

Carl Gustav Hempel on a central aspect of the logical positivist scheme, namely the

214 Nicholas Rescher, “H2O: Hempel-Helmer-Oppenheim, an Episode in the History of Scientific Philosophy in the 20th Century,” Philosophy of Science, June, 1997, 348. 126 confirmation of scientific theory. Carnap labeled their collaboration “H²O,” after their initials.215 Eventually, this collaboration produced a famous paper, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” in which the authors argued that, logically, explaining and prediction were parallel processes; the difference hinged merely on what came first, the hypothesis or the event under study.216 Somewhat simplified, this meant that a hypothesis that was later proven logically sound by empirical evidence, constituted successful prediction. In the field of logic that was dominated by Popper, Carnap, and Reichenbach, this theory was widely debated and scrutinized. Helmer only worked with Hempel and Oppenheim for a while and his name wasn’t on the paper when it was published in 1948.217 Yet, the nature and process of scientific prediction was a topic that greatly fascinated Helmer, and he would repeatedly come back to it.

During the war, Helmer joined the Applied Mathematics Panel (AMP), a research team put together by the National Defense Research Council. The AMP analyzed bombing strategies, and the work was driven by operational data coming in from the battlefield. For Helmer, whose mathematical training had been in the service of logical and philosophical inquiry, this was some serious number crunching. John D. Williams, chief of the AMP’s Statistical Research group, recruited Helmer to RAND. Williams was a mathematician who believed the AMP work had great scientific potential, and so did the overall head of the AMP, the Rockefeller Foundation’s director of the Natural

Science Division, Warren Weaver. These two men spent years attempting to increase the effectiveness of American military power—especially air power—by casting operational

215 Rescher, “H2O,” 340. 216 Ibid. 217 Rescher, “H²O,” 350-352. 127 problems in mathematical formulas. In 1946, the year Williams asked Helmer to join

RAND, Weaver wrote a paper titled “Comments on a General Theory of Air Warfare” in which he proposed to turn the lessons of the AMP into a comprehensive mathematical theory of warfare. Historian Martin J. Collins has noted that Weaver’s paper was exceptional for its ambition: “mathematically described, air warfare could be quantified and, thus, the numerous variables of technology, social context, and the battle itself

(given specific initial conditions and criteria for success) compared and assessed.”218

Weaver’s theorizing was referred to as the “military worth approach,” and, to an enthusiastic Helmer, this seemed a “practical extension” of the unity of science approach of Carnap and the logical positivists.219

Once at RAND, however, it was no easy task to translate Weaver’s vision of a comprehensive theory of warfare into an operational research program. By January of

1947, Williams, Helmer, and a growing team of researchers, had composed a list of twenty-five possible study subjects. The list took military concerns—weapons systems etc.—as its starting point, yet most of the RAND researchers believed that sociology, economics and psychology had a role to play in the Military Worth approach. Weaver’s paper had also specifically mentioned the social context as an important factor to be included. Helmer was certainly convinced that sociologists, or political scientists, would be more useful when they were allowed to ask their own questions. The strength of an interdisciplinary approach was that the people of the “soft sciences” were not constrained by the logic of military operations. He argued that political scientists might pick targets

218 Martin J. Collins, Cold War Laboratory: RAND, the Air Force, and the American State, 1945-1950 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 117. 219 Collins, Cold War Laboratory, 125. 128 based on “the distribution of political power,” and could therefore pick different targets than airbases, industrial centers, or railroad lines.220

In September of 1947, Williams followed Helmer’s advice and organized a conference that aimed to recruit new social scientists to RAND. During this early stage, the comprehensive focus of the Military Worth approach was more readily accepted by the Air Force than the Douglas Aircraft Company. Curtis LeMay, the deputy chief of staff for research and development—soon to head Strategic Air Command—focused on new weapons systems but believed that Military Worth operated in the spirit of Arnold’s thinking about future wars.221 Douglas head engineer Arthur Raymond was skeptical at first but soon stated that the project dealt with “systems…rather than particular instrumentalities.” “Questions of psychology, of economics, of the various social sciences…are not omitted because we all feel that they are extremely important in the conduct of warfare.”222

The conference of social scientists that RAND organized in New York City in

September of 1947 was attended by many prominent social scientists such as Hans

Speier, Herbert Goldhamer, Wiliam Ogburn, Jacob Viner, Harold Lasswell, and Franz

Neuman. Some of them, Speier and Goldhamer, did indeed join RAND shortly after.

Although the discussions ranged over a broad spectrum of topics, most of the social scientists agreed that social scientific information was useful for military planners.

Weaver argued that “weapons” were not just “pieces of hardware” or “men” or “ships” but “every piece of knowledge we have in sociology and in economics, and in political

220 Collins, Cold War Laboratory, 127. 221 Collins, Cold War Laboratory, 128. 222 Arthur E. Raymond, Quoted in Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder,” 32. 129 science, everything we know about social psychology, everything we know about propaganda, everything we know about enemy morale...”223 One panel specifically focused on the possibility of creating a “belligerency index” as a means to predict an attack. Such an index would combine “economic, political, and military variables for clues to the imminence of aggressive military action.”224

Although, the conference participants mostly agreed that social science could play a role in long-term military planning, there was still the question of how all of this should be organized by RAND. How, in other words, could social scientific expertise be translated into specific policy recommendations for the military establishment? This was a question Olaf Helmer focused on, as he chaired a panel on research methods. Helmer reminded everyone that, at RAND, they were supposed to make recommendations that concerned “the relatively distant future.”225 RAND’s social science studies thus had to be predictive. Helmer was interested in prediction as an epistemological issue, and he wanted to know if there was some optimal way to do it. For Helmer the relevant question was “whether there are any systematic methods by which one can get the most out of various guesses or various experts available.”226

At the conference, philosopher Abraham Kaplan of the University of California thought Helmer’s question important, but Weaver did not think this was something

RAND should spend money on. This greatly surprised Helmer who pointed out that

Weaver himself had emphasized the predictive element in his “Towards a General

223 “New York Conference of Social Scientists,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1948, 8. https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R106.html. 224 “New York Conference of Social Scientists,” 54. 225 “New York Conference of Social Scientists,” 312. 226 Ibid. 130

Theory of Air Warfare.” Weaver, however, likely interpreted Helmer’s focus on the method of prediction, as unscientific; he didn’t like that Helmer spoke of “guesses” by experts. Helmer’s attempt to start RAND studies on prediction and expertise was thus shot down by Weaver at the conference. This disagreement, however, about expert opinion and prediction, would come back into focus two years later when the so-called

“strategic bombing systems analysis” would result in a spectacular failure for RAND.

The term “systems analysis,” came to be closely identified with RAND, and its history is wrapped up in the goals of the “military worth” approach. Collins, in fact, has labeled RAND’s systems analysis as “the pragmatic off-shoot” of the military worth philosophy.227 The term originated with engineers at Douglas Aircraft Company, who used it for simple quantitative comparisons of planes.228 In 1946 a group of newly hired

RAND researchers completed a comparison of ten methods of aerial bombardment. This included planes but also missiles that had been cleared for production. They rated these methods—or systems in the lingo inherited from Douglas—by calculating the likely success rate of different tasks, such as target precision and penetration of enemy defenses. They then rated each system on four additional qualities that were deemed desirable: “low personnel danger, low equipment costs, low operational costs, and low maintenance costs.” The Air Force liked the study for its methodological rigor and usefulness as a planning tool.

Both RAND and the Air Force realized, however, that rating existing weapons systems was not very different from wartime operations analysis. RAND, as envisioned

227 Collins, Cold War Laboratory, 139. 228 Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder,” 41-42. 131 by men such as Arnold, Weaver, Helmer and Williams, was supposed to focus on the future, and make possible long-range military planning. As such, the term came to connote a kind of operations research that was “oriented toward the analysis of broad strategic and policy questions,” and sought to “clarify choice under conditions of great uncertainty.”229 By the early 1960s RAND’s premier nuclear strategist Albert

Wohlstetter noted that systems analysis concerned “a distant future environment” and included “many interdependent variables.”230

Initially, the task of applying operations analysis to future weapons fell to Edwin

E. Paxson, another RAND mathematician with a history in the Applied Mathematics

Panel. Paxson was abrasive, a heavy drinker, and a chain smoker, but he was an ingenious mathematician, and his enthusiasm for his new task was contagious. Since no one had ever attempted to analyze systems that did not (yet) exist, Paxson was forced to improvise and experiment. Unlike during wartime operations analysis efforts, no empirical data about bomber attrition rates, target misses, engine failures or anything else was available. Paxson thus aimed to produce his own empirical data. He built a mechanical device named “the pinball machine” that simulated bombing runs and was supposed to provide statistics on the success rate of various bombing strategies. He even used model airplanes suspended on wires to simulate the ways in which fighters might intercept them.231 He also instructed members of the Airborne Vehicles Section to capture the relationship between the size, weight, strength, and engine type of various airplanes in mathematical formulas. What this entailed, however, was a staggering

229 Bruce L.R. Smith, The RAND Corporation, 8. 230 Wohlstetter quoted in Smith, The RAND Corporation, 9. 231 Collins Cold War Laboratory, 166-168. 132 amount of variables. Everything about aerial warfare had to be mathematized, including the use of air bases, target identification, air defense, etc. The effort to capture the probabilities of successful aiming alone included the task of transforming the training and stress levels of airmen into mathematical variables.232

Two things, besides Paxson’s willpower, produced optimism about this project.

The first of these was Game Theory. After the publication, in 1944, of John von

Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Paxson, and many other people, became convinced that all sorts of situations could be understood as games in which players optimized their strategy based on incomplete information. In the years before the Soviet atom bomb, Game Theory had yet to become the fitting paradigm of a bi-polar world in the grips of mutually assured destruction. At the time of

Paxson’s aerial system’s analysis, therefore, Game Theory was understood more in terms of tactics than (nuclear) strategy. In 1946 Paxson lead the Mathematics Division at the

Naval Ordinance Test Station (NOTS) and he had corresponded with Von Neuman.

Paxson believed that many wartime operations, such as submarine chasing, and fighter and bomber duels, could fit the Game Theory model. This he called “tactics in the small.”233 Military operations that involved a whole array of different weapons systems also fitted the Game Theory model for Paxson because calculating the value, in economic terms, of different targets could still produce an optimal strategy. This he called “tactics in the large.” Combining these two different ways to apply Game Theory could thus produce a mathematical theory of warfare. He pointed out to von Neumann that

232 Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder,” 49. 233 Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder,” 51. 133 everything could be reduced to “weapons choice decisions;” many games “in the small” together made up the complex reality of warfare. In this sense the simple matrix of Game

Theory, with its two rows and two columns of variables, became the building block out of which a mathematical theory of conflict could be constructed. Such a theory seemed to require an enormous amount of calculating, but newly constructed “automated calculating machines” were believed to make everything easier.

Computers were thus the second source of optimism about the feasibility of the bombing systems analysis. In 1948 RAND acquired an early model Reeves Electronic

Analog Computer (REAC) and started to make improvements to it.234 In the years that followed RAND ordered new models of equipment as soon as they became available.

Still, the systems analysis produced an ever greater need for computing power and no machine ever seemed powerful enough. In 1949, RAND cooperated with John von

Neuman who was building his computer at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies.

This resulted, by the 1950s, in RAND’s own JOHNNIAC computer, a machine whose computing power seemed almost magical to the RAND mathematicians.235

Yet despite Game Theory and computing power, Paxson’s project ran into trouble. Producing the variables to slot into their game theory models proved time consuming and sometimes failed. Historian Fred Kaplan has recounted the story of an attempt by Paxson to test some of their assumptions. Paxson’s team supposed an optimal tactic by which fighters could approach enemy bombers, but when they looked at data from World War II in which fighter pilots had faced similar situations, they found out

234 Willis H. Ware, RAND and the Information Evolution: a History in Essays and Vignettes (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2008), 10-11. 235 Ware, RAND and the Information Revolution, 13. 134 that their figure of a 60% success rate had been only 2% in real life.236 After some soul searching, Paxon’s team concluded that real pilots feared closing in on bombers and preferred shooting some bullets before quickly veering off. This was a disheartening realization, and it reminded the team that, in dealing with weapons systems of the future, they were operating on a purely theoretical realm. Yet, the Air Force, impatient for results, wanted a report by January of 1950, and after the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb, the stakes were raised even higher.

When Paxson finally presented the results of his bombing systems analysis, the

Air Force was not pleased. He concluded that the best “bombing system” for the Air

Force was a large fleet of cheap turbo-prop bombers that could swarm Soviet defenses and inflict the most damage per dollar spent. He thus argued that newer and expensive turbo-jet bombers would not be the best option. Yet, the Air Force had other ideas; they wanted newer, faster and more expensive tools, not older and cheaper ones. Moreover,

Paxson presented his report only months before the Korean War started, and while the

Air Force was studying Paxson’s recommendations about cheaper bombers, government money for new weapons started to flow freely.

A cost-consciousness had crept into the bombing systems analysis in two ways.

First, it came from the proto-systems analysis project started in 1946. This study’s focus on a shrinking post-war military budget had never been questioned. Second, in order to produce the variables that Game Theory demanded, economic data was by far the least problematic. In fact, Morgenstein and Von Neuman’s book on Game Theory had presented it as an economic theory, something that was often forgotten in later years. It

236 Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, 88. 135 was easiest to quantify conflict with dollar figures—what a bomber costs, and what the training of airmen cost, etc. But what all this meant was that, for all the mathematical brain—and computer—power, the bombing systems analysis had taken the post-war shrinking military budgets as a given.

During the late 1940s RAND boasted about the Paxson study while it was underway and produced impressive looking charts about it. These charts emphasized the comprehensive nature of the RAND efforts at long-term planning, and they included text- balloons for “world events,” or something else beyond number crunching. A chart from

1949 that visualized how a comprehensive systems analyses could produce a general theory of air warfare, featured two boxes labeled “economics,” and “social science.”

Those boxes had arrows pointing at something that was labeled “hot and Cold War planning with respect to time.”237 Yet, this clearly represented the ideal version of such an undertaking and not the reality. At heart the bombing systems analyses was a cost analysis, and what role social scientists played in this was not at all clear. Perhaps if historians or political scientists had been involved they would have questioned whether cost efficiency deserved to be emphasized in light of growing Cold War tensions.

Olaf Helmer’s earlier focus on the way in which specific expert predictions lay behind every attempt to engage the future of warfare, now seemed discerning. Helmer soon began experiments specifically relating to the making of predictions.238 For one of these he asked the RAND procurement officer to subscribe to horse-betting magazines, so he could study betting tips and the odds on different horses. After a while, he figured

237 Jardini, “Out of the Blue Yonder,” 59. 238 Olaf Helmer-Hirschberg, “An Experiment in Estimation,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1947. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM10.html. 136 out that combining the betting advice of different predictors—in a median—was more likely to pick a winner than following the most successful individual predictor.239 He also cooperated with Abraham Kaplan in a forecasting experiment aimed to predict social and technological events.

This experiment was recounted in an article published in 1950 in Public Opinion

Quarterly, a publication that sometimes focused on questions relating to prediction because it dealt with opinion polling and the prediction of election results. Helped by

Helmer and RAND mathematician Bernice Brown, Kaplan investigated the predictions of twenty-six experts: “fifteen mathematicians and statisticians, four engineers, four economists, one office manager, one secretary, and one writer.”240 Before the experiment, the “predictors,” took two parts of the American Council on Education’s “Cooperative

General Culture Test: “Current social Problems” and “science.”241 The test had to ensure that the predictor’s level of knowledge could be correlated with the success-rate of the predictions. One prediction the experts were asked to make concerned the likelihood that physicists would succeed in accelerating particles to an energy level more than 300 million volts. Another question—asked early in 1948—concerned the likelihood of a

Republican presidential run of Robert Taft, Harold Stassen and Thomas Dewey. A number of these experts were also part of a group experiment in which some predictions were made individually after discussion, and some were made as a unanimous group

239 Olaf Helmer, interview by Kaya Tolon, June 3, 2009, Transcript in Kaya Tolon, “The American Futures Studies Movement (1965-1975); its Roots, Motivations, and Influences” (PhD Diss., Iowa State University, 2001), 194. 240 Abraham Kaplan, “The Prediction of Social and Technological Events,” Public Opinion Quarterly (Spring 1950), 96. 241 Kaplan, “The Prediction of Social and Technological Events,” 102. 137 prediction. The questions all focused on the occurrence of events within a five month time period.

Kaplan stressed that the experiment was done not to get predictions, but to get more information about the way in which predictions were made. The article’s conclusions were suitably modest. A good test score mattered in making good predictions, “but not very much.” Additionally, the groups made significantly better predictions than the individual predictors, yet this effect was easily statistically replicated by taking the mean of separate predictions. Finally, predictors who had provided justifications for their predictions, in the form of listing facts or evidence, did markedly better than those who guessed or who rationalized their choice without being specific.

Despite Kaplan’s tepid conclusions, Helmer believed the experiment had indicated some promising new avenues for investigation. In a RAND experiment conducted in 1951, he wanted experts to reach a consensus about the specific number of

Soviet atomic bombs necessary to halt American industrial output.242 As such Helmer was not after a specific prediction, but wanted to experts to systematically engage a hypothetical scenario. Helmer conducted the experiment together with Norman C.

Dalkey, another RAND mathematician. The method of the experiment, which they named DELPHI, featured seven experts who were questioned in five rounds. In between rounds the experts were interviewed and asked about their reasoning—something that the

Kaplan experiment had suggested—and were also given the opportunity to receive all sorts of statistical and scientific information. After each round the experts were asked to

242 Norman Dalkey and Olaf Helmer-Hirschberg, “An Experimental Application of the Delphi Method to the Use of Experts,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1962. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM727z1.html. 138 revise their answer. By the end of the experiment the answers had moved significantly closer together; from a difference of more than four thousands bombs to a modest 150.

What was crucial for Helmer was that this had occurred without the involvement of a group process. The experts had not discussed the material with each other and were not asked to reach some consensus. Unlike the Kaplan, experiment, however, the DELPHI experiment made it difficult to evaluate the validity of the experts’ opinions. After all, finding out how many Soviet bombs it would take to knock out U.S. industrial production was something best avoided. Yet, an effort to make short-term political predictions in this manner could have determined if Helmer’s method was successful. As we will see later in the chapter, Helmer eventually utilized the DELPHI technique as a forecasting tool, but with a decidedly long-term range.

That no other DELPHI experiments followed in the 1950s, was partly due to the fact that a majority of RAND researchers still believed such experiments to be an abstract epistemological distraction from the more technical focus on weapons systems. Yet a more important reason for a lack of enthusiasm for the DELPHI method was that a different set of experiments quickly captured the imagination at RAND. These were war games, and Helmer himself became an outspoken proponent of them.

“The Inexact Sciences:” War Gaming, Scenarios and Herman Kahn as Cold War

Futurist

In 1953, a Newsweek reporter visiting RAND witnessed two scientists, sitting back to back, playing an “odd sort of chess.”243 The players stared at boards on which they could only see their own pieces while a referee moved pieces around on a master

243 “Games of Survival,” Newsweek, May 18, 1953, 75. 139 board. Although this scene surprised the reporter, it was indicative of widespread interest in the playing of games at RAND during the 1950s. From RAND’s beginning, the focus on Game Theory had produced an interest in the relationship between games and decision-making. Game Theory had posited that many situations—especially economic ones—could be understood as a game in which two players tried to maximize their winnings. Yet, Von Neumann had not proposed that the playing of games had any specific value. He merely produced a mathematical model of decision making based on game-like situations. Or, as the science writer William Poundstone put it: “As a mathematical abstraction, Game Theory was inspired by, but not necessarily about, games.”244

RAND, however, was supposed to provide practical information for war planners, and over time the frustration with Game Theory’s limits as a mathematical abstraction became obvious. Von Neumann’s math might have been sound, but it was difficult to apply his theory to anything tangible, as Paxson’s bombing systems analysis had shown.

A bomber-fighter duel might seem like a game, but framing it as a math problem didn’t produce information useful to war planners. From the mid-1950s onward, the hope that

Game Theory could rationalize decision-making quickly diminished. In a September

1954 RAND document, statistician Alexander M. Mood noted that Game Theory could

“analyze quite simple economic and tactical problems,” but that it was “not even remotely capable of dealing with complex military problems.”245 By 1960, even Charles

244 William Poundstone, Prisoners Dilemma (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 64. 245 Alexander McFarlane Mood, “War Gaming as a Technique of Analysis,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1954. 3-4. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P899.html. 140

Hitch, RAND’s chief economist, proclaimed in Harper’s that “for their purposes” game theory had been “quite disappointing.”246

Gaming as an activity, however, was in many ways a reversal of the Game Theory approach. Instead of arguing that game like-situations lay behind the ways in which decisions were made in the real world, gamers simulated the impossibly complex real world in a game. Thus the conventional war games that were played at RAND, in which a red, blue, and “an umpire team,” played out specific war plans, were supposed to provide the players with something beyond empirical data. Seeing missiles or armored divisions represented by miniatures on a map, and move produce counter-move, was an experience, a simulation of a possible future. Such simulated warfare was deemed all the more valuable because no data, not even historical, was available for war in the age of mutually assured destruction.

During the early 1950s many tactical games were played at RAND, in which a specific theater of warfare was simulated. Yet, the continued increase in missile range, and the advent of the hydrogen bomb, which was smaller and could fit on a missile, made the nuclear threat global. Limited tactical games became less and less relevant especially after Sputnik and the ICBM. RAND’s focus, moreover was on air war, and thus automatically focused on nuclear deterrence. Thus, in order to “game” the next war, the

Cold War as a whole had to be simulated. By 1954 there was some hope that computers could help, and RAND mathematicians developed a game in which computers calculated some of the moves. The Air College Staff and the State Department were interested but insisted that, in order to be more realistic, political and economic factors had to be

246 Hitch quoted in Poundstone, Prisoners Dilemma, 168. 141 incorporated.247 RAND brought in the Social Science Division and “clumsily” quantified and computed political variables as part of the game.248 Yet, Herbert Goldhamer, of the

Social Science Division, wanted more. He hoped to “simulate as faithfully as possible” much of the complexity of the international political situation.

In order to do this, Goldhamer developed an elaborate role playing game in which governments of countries were represented by “area specialists.” There were referees and a team that played the role of “nature,” which was in charge of unpredictable events that no government had control over, such as deaths of leaders, natural disasters, but also

“non-governmental political action, and popular disturbances.”249 The players representing the various governments acted in accordance with a “predicted strategy,” which was, in essence, a prediction about the foreign policy of major countries involved.

The game lasted only a few days when it was first played, yet the third round lasted four weeks and involved about a dozen RAND members who devoted half of their time to it.250 These first games took as their point of departure the world as it was when the game began. Or as Goldhamer stated it—in a way that indicated the birth of simulationist jargon—the games “started with the historical present as a backdrop.”251 Soon, however, players became confused when their real-life morning papers described events that contradicted or entwined with game developments. The fourth time the game was played,

247 Sidney F. Giffen, The Crisis Game (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1965), 64-65. 248 Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005) 153. Also see Goldhamer and Speier “Some Observations on Political Gaming” World Politics (October, 1959), 72-73. 249 Goldhamer and Speier, “Some Observations on Political Gaming,” 73. Interestingly, Speier and Goldhamer claimed here that the relationship between national governments and popular disturbances was nonexistent. 250 Goldhamer and Speier, “Some Observations on Political Gaming,” 74. 251 Ibid. 142 which was by far the most comprehensive staging, the game was set nine months in the future.

In order to describe what the world would look like in nine months, a “scenario” was drawn up. This scenario was an extrapolation of current events, and it provided the players with a hypothetical future in which current events did not interfere. The game was specifically meant to simulate the “activities of the United States and the Soviet

Union with respect to each other and Western Europe,” and it lasted the whole month of

April. Thirteen RAND members worked on it full time, assisted by a large secretarial and advising staff. More than a hundred and fifty papers were written, some of which got the status of “game classified.” After the game was over, all material was thrown open, studied and discussed.

Goldhamer designed his game so that minimal formalization of rules occurred. In more traditional war games, determining the rules was a process derived from the tactical capabilities of planes, tanks, etc. But in a “political game” constricting the gamers freedom to act by imposing strict rules was really answering “the questions that we regarded as the proper subject of discussion within the exercise itself,” according to

Goldhamer. The purpose of the game, in his words, was to determine what kind of moves, or events, were possible.

As the Cold War games were played, requests for information and invitations to lecture started to pile up in Goldhamer’s mailbox. During the late 1950s he lectured about his experiments at the Army War College, the Social Science Research Council, and the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Informal meetings 143 took place with State Department officials, the Center for International Affairs at

Harvard, the Brookings Institution, and MIT. By 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had established the Joint War Games Group, and during the 1961 Berlin Crisis, numerous war games were played in which RAND members participated. Lucian Pye, Professor of

Political Science at MIT used a game in his course on American Diplomacy, and around the same time Harold Guetzkow devised his “interNation Simulation at Northwestern.252

In all the memoranda, papers, books, and presentations about war (or political) games, no one argued that games could predict the future. In fact, the notion that games were unable to predict anything was usually unequivocally stated. Yet, such a statement would be followed by lengthy defenses of war gaming in which “a stimulus to inventiveness” was noticed, or “a realization of possible contingencies.”253 In one RAND paper on gaming Helmer noted that the only way for someone to know just what the benefits of gaming could be was to “expose himself to some gaming activity, that is, to go through the motions of constructing a game, of playing it, and of applying the outcome to the real world.” Goldhamer and Speier, started a memorandum on gaming by saying that “the immediate stimulus” to the their gaming venture had been “the difficulty of deriving from the results of research and from general political and military knowledge a sense of the probable trend of future international affairs…”254 Or to put it differently,

RAND’s other methods were failing to produce useable information for planners, so experimental gaming techniques should be given a try. But if gaming produced results

252 see Harold Geutzkow et al. Simulation in International Relation: Developments for Research and Training (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963). 253 Goldhammer and Speier, “Some Observations on Political Gaming,” 78. 254 Goldhammer and Speier, “Some Observations on Political Gaming,” 77. 144 that were so difficult to describe, than how could its use for military planning be defended?

It was especially Olaf Helmer who addressed this question, and he emphasized that games were social scientific experiments. As he was prone to do, Helmer now started to consider the issue in epistemological terms. In “on the Epistemology of the Inexact

Sciences,” a lengthy RAND memorandum he co-wrote with Nicholas Rescher, Helmer investigated whether gaming experiments could be deemed scientific.255 Game simulations were “pseudo experiments” he argued, yet this was not meant to be taken negatively. It was merely “pseudo” because games were models in which reality was only simulated. What Helmer denied was that such methods were only part of the “softer” social sciences, and that the “exact” physical sciences could instead perform experiments in the real world. What he had in mind, specifically, where experiments in physics, also done at RAND, in which the behavior of neutrons was mathematically simulated. These experiments of statistical mathematics—named Monte Carlo because it involved random number generation sometimes visualized as a roulette wheel—thus simulated what elementary particles did inside nuclear reactors or hydrogen bombs. These experiments where just as “pseudo” as gaming, according to Helmer, because the particles weren’t really observed or experimented with; everything was done with a mathematical model.

Helmer was keen to show that gaming was as scientific as some experiments in the physical sciences because he realized that gaming brought experts and the issue of prediction together, something he had wanted to do since he joined RAND. Helmer

255 Olaf Helmer-Hirschberg and Nicholas H. Rescher, “On the Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1960. https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R353.html. 145 noted: “In operational gaming, the simulated environment is particularly effective in reminding the expert, in his role as player, to take all the factors into account in making predictions…for if he does not…an astute opponent will soon enough teach him not to make such an omission again.256 The playing of games proved for Helmer that expertise was crucial when it came to making predictions, and therefore for RAND’s mission. He noted that experts “had at their disposal a large store of (mostly unarticulated) background knowledge and a refined sensitivity to its relevance…”257 Such “background knowledge” was based, not on exact laws, but on “quasi-laws.” As an example of such a law Helmer noted that in history and political science the quasi-law existed that opposition parties often win in off-year elections. While not always true, it was a useful law in terms of making predictions. Just as he had done with pseudo-experiments,

Helmer now showed that in the supposedly exact science of physics, quasi-laws were also used. Applied physics, was often dependent on “rules of thumb,” he wrote, and aerodynamics relied especially on the insight of individual scientists who often struggled to explain why they had resolved a certain problem.

Helmer tried to give gaming, and the scenario writing that came with it, a certain respectability. He did so, however, not by laying out a definitive scientific method; the engagement with the future was inherently too speculative for such a thing. Instead he emphasized the equally speculative nature of fields and methods that were thought of as highly scientific. The “inexact sciences” then, represented for Helmer a wide field of new

256 Helmer and Rescher, “On the Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences,” 47. 257 Helmer and Rescher, “On the Epistemology of the Inexact Sciences,” 31. 146 groundbreaking research. It was work in which statistical techniques, computers, and the brain power of experts, engaged not the empirical, but the unknown and the future.

No one personified Helmer’s concept of the “inexact sciences” more than Herman

Kahn, a gregarious and heavy-set physicist who, for a brief time, became almost synonymous with the Santa Monica based research corporation. When Herman Kahn participated in the Futuribles conference, in 1964, he was something of a celebrity, but no longer with RAND. Both of these developments owed to his 1960 book, On

Thermonuclear War, a work that sparked a fierce debate about America’s strategic attitude towards a potential atomic conflict. When, on January 29, 1964, Stanley

Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, was released in theaters, Kahn gained a nickname that stuck for life. He became “the real Dr.

Strangelove,” and for good reason too. Many passages from the movie script had been lifted straight from his book, most famously the ones relating to “a doomsday devise.”

In a glowing review of the film in Commentary, the journalist and critic Midge

Decter wrote that the deliberations in the War Room fell “very naturally into the terms first presented by Herman Kahn…who is perhaps the most thoroughgoing negative utopian of our time.”258 Just as Peter Sellers’s Strangelove coldly considered acceptable levels of casualties, and repopulation in mineshafts, so did Kahn note that “a catastrophe can be pretty catastrophic without being total.” In the book he had asked “how happy or normal a life can the survivors and their descendants hope to have?” Surprisingly

“normal and happy,” was the answer he gave.259 And, if Americans were willing to think

258 Midge Decter, “The Strangely Polite ‘Dr. Strangelove,’” Commentary May 1, 1964, 38. 259 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1960), 21. 147 about fighting an actual nuclear war and prepare for one, than this could improve the prospect of life post-attack. To spur such thinking Kahn applied “the systems analysis point of view” to the task of imagining hypothetical world wars.260 In her review of Dr.

Strangelove, Decter wrote: “where Dr. Strangelove is at its best, it most resembles Kahn in the way it rubs the hypothetical up against the real…”261

Herman Kahn was born in 1922 in Bayonne, New Jersey. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Brest-Litovsk, who soon after Kahn’s birth moved the family to the

Bronx. In the mid-1920s his parents divorced, after which Kahn relocated with his mother and two brothers to Los Angeles. Money was tight at the Kahn household so during his high school years Kahn helped support the family by working in his aunt’s grocery store. After graduation in 1940, Kahn enrolled at the University of Southern

California with a scholarship in chemical engineering. He lost the scholarship, however, when he received a C grade in a non-technical course; after that he transferred quickly to

UCLA and majored in physics.262

In the spring of 1943, having not yet graduated from UCLA, Kahn was called up to the Army induction center for a mental aptitude test. His best friend, Sam Cohen, was also called up to take the test, and he was witness to Kahn’s strange behavior that day. He later told the story that a possessed-looking Kahn took the test in 30 minutes, even though it was supposed to take hours to complete. He then rested his head in his arms for a few minutes before frantically checking his answers to see if he made a mistake. In a state of

260 Kahn, On thermonuclear War, viii. 261 Decter, “The Strangely Polite ‘Dr. Strangelove,’” 38. 262 B. Bruce-Briggs, Supergenius: The Mega-Worlds of Herman Kahn (New York: North American Policy Press, 2000), 6-8. 148 total exhaustion he staggered out of the examination hall only to return shouting and wailing that he wanted to correct a “stupid mistake on question 132.”263 The Army later informed him that he had received the highest score they had ever recorded for that particular test. This particular story fits a pattern of most stories told about Herman Kahn.

They usually emphasize his brilliance while simultaneously testifying to a peculiar brand of weird and anti-social behavior.

Kahn wanted to join the Army Air Corps, but at basic training in North Texas he fell ill. Instead of military training he spent most of his time tutoring prospective airmen in math from his bed in the base hospital. The army also sent him to the University of

West Virginia to study electrical engineering, and later to Missouri for training as a

Signal Corps wireman. He would eventually serve as an electrical engineer in the pacific theater with the Signal Corps, repairing wire breaks in the Burmese Jungle.264 When his brother Irving, an Army Air Force pilot, was killed when his plane crashed during a training exercise, Kahn became a candidate for an “early out of the service.” On August

6, 1945, still waiting to be shipped home, Kahn received the news that a nuclear bomb had been used in Hiroshima, a week later he was on his way home.

Back in Los Angeles, he re-enrolled at UCLA and finished his B.A., before entering the Cal Tech Ph.D. program. When his mother unexpectedly died, Kahn had to provide for himself and his younger brother while being a graduate student. He contemplated going into real estate, but his old-friend Sam Cohen, advised him to apply for a job in Santa Monica at the newly created Project RAND.

263 Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 62. 264 Bruce-Briggs, Supergenius, 10-11. 149

Kahn first worked on a doomed Air Force project that aimed at the creation of a nuclear powered airplane. By the early fifties he was mostly working at the Livermore

Laboratory, a site affiliated with the University of California where research on the hydrogen bomb was done. Here he worked with other RAND physicists, and together they also did weapons research at Los Alamos. Still without a Ph.D., he tried to persuade universities to award him one on the basis of his recent research, but all schools insisted he first enroll as a full-time student for a year or so. Cohen later explained Kahn’s academic struggles when he said that Kahn was “incapable of writing if no one was willing to help him.”265 In 1952 Kahn finally decided he would stay at RAND and thus gave up on getting his Ph.D.

Some of the experiments Kahn had worked on, and tried to turn into a doctoral thesis, involved the Monte Carlo technique, the mathematical method that Helmer described as “pseudo-experiments” in the physical sciences. As discussed, Monte Carlo was a statistical tool, developed to simulate the random behavior of elementary particles.

Kahn’s contribution to the Monte Carlo Method related to solving problems of sample size, a crucial aspect of any statistical analysis. His work at first served to create models of particle behavior relating to specific designs of nuclear reactors and later hydrogen bombs. Kahn realized that designing the statistical model was something that allowed for significant manipulation on the part of the model builder. Since tinkering with sample size and various added biases could produce a simulation of particle behavior that was highly unnatural, Kahn started to argue that a good statistical model builder operated

265 Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 65. 150 intuitively.266 This could obviously lead to faulty—meaning unnatural or unlikely— simulations and Kahn warned about this danger in his research papers. Gradually, however, Kahn came to see the manipulative aspect of model building as an opportunity.

Although Kahn was hired as a physicist, he quickly became interested in the work that other RAND departments were doing. During the early 1950s, Kahn befriended

Andrew Marshall, originally with the Social Science division and later a RAND economist, and the two shared a curiosity about the non-physical sciences. Kahn also befriended Olaf Helmer, during this time. While he slowly became known throughout

RAND as an interdisciplinary genius, with questions and opinions for anyone he met, his fellow physicists felt that Kahn was giving up the realm of scientific rigor in favor of a speculative venture. One reason they thought this was that, Kahn started to apply his

Monte Carlo models to the systems analysis of aerial warfare.

The main problem of RAND’s early system’s analysis had been the quantification of the innumerable variables. As a solution to these problems, Kahn now offered statistical simulations. In a 1955 RAND paper he noted that many aspects of a “strategic or tactical bombing campaign” could be understood as random, and therefore simulated.

These aspects included: the “number of aircraft that abort,” “number of aircraft shot down by area defense,” “weather conditions over target,” and “the place where bombs land.”267 By simulating these variables through models of random number generations,

Kahn was able to produce impressive, and data rich, studies of various bombing

266 Herman Kahn, “Application of Monte Carlo,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1956. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM1237.html. See also Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 135. 267 Herman Kahn, “Use of Different Monte Carlo Sampling Techniques,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1955, 32. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P766.html 151 strategies. What was easily obscured, however, was that the information behind Kahn’s systems analysis came from statistical simulations and did not even attempt to describe reality. Yet, Monte Carlo as an abstruse mathematical theory, and Kahn’s background in physics often served to obscure the speculative element in Kahn’s work.

Kahn made a distinction between the early RAND systems analysis and what he was doing. The old methods were about finding “optimal systems” and this required comparing “hundreds of thousands of different systems.” Now, he noted, “we don’t do things like that anymore.” The new-style systems analysis was about “inventing” a few systems and “testing the performance of these systems under many different circumstances, many different views of the world.” The early RAND systems analysis had tried to capture in the language of mathematics the complex reality of battle. Kahn, on the other hand, used advanced statistics and probability theory to get data out of speculations. As Bruce Briggs has shown, “to Herman, systems analysis was mostly

‘considered opinion’—judgement supported by explicit calculations.” Valuing the

“judgement” part, moreover, meant that “personal qualities” of the analyst were of “vital importance.” The “leader of the study project” determined the success of a particular systems analysis. In essence, this is to say that Kahn’s methodology was defined by his own speculations. Bruce Briggs, therefore, presents a rather scathing view of “RAND’s vaunted method.” It was “largely rodomontade. Systems analysis was a flashy label to justify elaborate estimating by non-engineers.”268

Strangely, Kahn, at times, came close to agreeing with such a statement. In a briefing to the Air Force’s Science Advisory Board in 1955 he told his audience that his

268 Bruce-Briggs, Supergenius, 47. 152 models were “sort of a toy.” He continued: they were “an educational toy, but still a toy, and we don’t want anybody raising the question of realism. In fact if anybody raises this question we’ll send him home, wash his mouth out with soap, write a note to his mother…”269 Such a statement indicates that Kahn was willing, at times, to downplay the sophistication of his methods. Kahn’s quip, moreover, also points to important aspects of his unique persona, his jocular style and an over-the-top bravura in self-presentation.

After hearing Kahn speak, a writer for the Village Voice once noted that he wasted his time on “realpolitikal research” since “he would make such a great stand-up comic. Who else can make people laugh about mass-annihilation?”270 The historian

Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi has tried to understand Kahn in terms of the wider popular culture of post-war America, and has connected him to the irreverent style of Mad

Magazine, and the “sick” comedy of Lenny Bruce. There is certainly some reason to make such connections. Kahn liked to shock in his presentations. When an air force officer questioned his credentials to speak about nuclear war, he replied: “Colonel, how many nuclear wars have you fought? Our research shows that you need to fight a dozen or so to get a feel for it.”271 When the long-term effects of radioactive fallout came up he one quipped: “is it possible that parents will learn to love two-headed children twice as much?”272 Bruce-Briggs, has noted that his audience of defense experts and military men, if shocked at first, soon “ate up” Kahn’s antics. Meanwhile, Kahn himself “bit the apple of the applause and found it delicious.” His presentations became performances, he once

269 Kahn quoted in Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 338. 270 Stephanie Gervis, “Kahn vs. Etzioni: How Much Stability is There in the Balance of Terror?” Village Voice, January 7, 1963, 8. 271 Bruce-Briggs, Supergenius, 51 272 Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 43. 153 chided his long-time writing partner Anthony Wiener, for holding briefings that were

“too reasonable,” and sounding like “other people.”273

It was this aspect of Herman Kahn’s work that led Midge Decter to conclude that

Kubrick and Terry Southern had been inspired by Kahn more than they had spoofed him.

Yet, all this should not be carried too far. Dr. Strangelove ultimately pointed to the inherently surrealist aspect of nuclear war; it offered laughter because any other treatment of the topic seemed inadequate. The film’s real subject was how the supposedly rational thinking of military men led to the ultimate irrational action, namely total destruction.

This was what C. Wright Mills had termed “crackpot realism.” But Kahn, if anything, believed that thinking about nuclear war was in need of a realist approach. His main objection was that most people were not logical or rational enough about nuclear war.

Kahn came to his argument through the work of two RAND strategists: Bernard

Brodie and Albert Wohlstetter. In the early 1950s Brodie, an advisor to the Air Force and professor of international relations at Yale before he joined RAND, had been a critic of

Curtis Lemay’s Cold War strategy. The official doctrine was that, in case of a Soviet attack, the U.S. Air Force would attack the Soviet Union with all available nuclear weapons. Brodie believed, however, that holding back some bombs while using some others was a good way to hold the Soviets hostage. Albert Wohlstetter’s critique of

Strategic Air Command (SAC), focused especially on the supposed vulnerability of overseas bases. The Soviet Union, he argued could use nuclear weapons to bomb SAC’s

273 Anthony Wiener quoted in Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 82. 154 bases, leaving the U.S. with no capability to strike back. What was needed therefore, were either long-range bombers or air bases able to withstand a nuclear attack.274

When ICBMs made SAC bombers irrelevant, Wohlstetter’s arguments about

SAC’s vulnerability became less important. Yet, what Kahn took from Brodie and

Wohlstetter was that thinking about nuclear war should not stop with the first nuclear attack, but that it should consider the actual use of nuclear weapons. In On

Thermonuclear War, Kahn thus launched an argument against the theory of mutually assured destruction. Kahn argued that “a thermonuclear war is quite likely to be an unprecedented catastrophe,” yet “the limits of the magnitude of the catastrophe seem to be closely dependent on what kind of preparations have been made, and on how the war is started and fought.”275 It was crucial for Kahn that the U.S. had the capacity to strike the first blow in a potential nuclear war. In addition to this, the U.S. should also have the ability to strike the Soviets after suffering a nuclear surprise attack, and, finally, it should also have a large enough conventional fighting force so as to not make every confrontation a nuclear one.276

In order to convince his readers that fighting a nuclear war was something that had to be considered in order to be avoided, Kahn had to prove that the world would not end after the missiles hit. This he did in a provocatively titled chapter: “will the survivors envy the dead?” Here he used graphs and tables describing the genetic consequences of different levels of radiation, the relationship between strontium-90 and the likelihood of

274 Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, 45. 275 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1960), 10- 11. 276 Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 38-39. 155 bone cancer, and the effects of contaminated food on the rate of miscarriages. After presenting these he reached his conclusion that “if our nation…has made some minimum preparations, then in all probability, the survivors will not envy the dead…” Considering this, Kahn concluded that “we might want an ability actually to fight and survive a war.”277 Unsurprisingly, in light of such statements, Kahn favored a strong civil defense program.

The most famous negative review, of On Thermonuclear War came from James

R. Newman of Scientific American. Newman asked “is there really a Herman Kahn?”

Could someone really have written “a tract on mass murder: how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it?”278 This review channeled a wider moral outrage over Kahn’s book, and Scientific American received many letters praising

Newman’s review. Other publications featured critical reviews that did not go quite as far as Newman’s. Usually Kahn was not seen as immoral but merely amoral about the topic of nuclear war. Comedian Mort Sahl, joked that Kahn likely went home at night after a hard day’s work, played with his kids, and asked them: “what are you going to be if you grow up.”279 Kahn’s detached style led the National Review to complain that Kahn’s work was insufficiently anti-communist. He was “like a flashing computer” who considered east and west in terms of X and Y not freedom and tyranny. Yet, some prominent anti-nuclear war activists and pacifists, such as A.J, Muste and Bertrand

277Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 96. 278 James R. Newman, “Two Discussions on Thermonuclear War,” Scientific American, March, 1961. 279 Quoted in Louis Menand, “Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the Nuclear Age” New Yorker, June 27, 2005, 93. 156

Russell, praised the book because they believed Kahn had been willing to tackle the horrors of nuclear war head-on.

Most of the reaction against On Thermonuclear War focused on the first half of the book, Kahn’s specific argument about nuclear war. In the second half of the book, however, Kahn displayed most clearly his signature style of future-oriented quantitative analysis. Titled “World War I through VIII,” Kahn discussed “eight wars, some real and some hypothetical.”280 These chapters were a lengthy effort at extrapolation of past and present realities into possible futures. Kahn took military budgets, weapons capabilities and drew up various scenarios for future conflict. His main point was to show that increasing technological advancement produced “doctrinal lags.” In other words, military thinking focused on the weapons of the past, and this produced the failure to understand the strategic situation of the present and future. Kahn framed his discussion of possible future wars as an attempt to “anticipate, ward off, and prepare for crisis and trouble…”

He argued that what was needed were “better mechanisms for forward thinking, for imaginative research into problems of strategy and foreign policy, and for anticipating future technical and military developments...”281

The very last paragraph of On Thermonuclear War claimed that the development of these “mechanisms of forward thinking” was difficult, but possible with “determined efforts of responsible people.”282 RAND, however, was not going to be the place for such an effort. While Kahn enjoyed the popular image as the archetypal RAND strategist, the organization was troubled by Kahn’s uncompromising demeanor, and especially by his

280 Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 311. 281 Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 576 282 Ibid. 157 advocacy of civil defense. The Air Force, conscious of military allocation, saw nothing in a strong civil defense program that would sap money away from bombers, fighters, and missiles. It is unclear whether Kahn was let go or whether he left on his own, but in 1961, he founded his own New York based think tank: the Hudson Institute.283

“Forward thinking,” was what the institute did. An early brochure listed objectives: “Stimulate and stretch the imagination; design and study many alternative policy packages; improve the perspective of decision-makers and increase their ability to react appropriately to the new and unfamiliar.”284 Kahn’s method—sometimes called systems analysis, sometimes called policy analysis, but always essentially a continuation of “judgement supported by explicit calculations”—was unleashed on a variety of topics.

Studies on civil defense constituted an early source of funding, and later studies on arms control followed. Kahn, however, branched out from nuclear strategy, and accepted work on a variety of topics as long as it meant funds for the Institute. What money bought was speculation, work of doubtful utility but possessing an air of scientific innovation and whiz-kid connotations. Kahn’s “national security seminars” were special events.

Members from all sections of the national security establishment flocked to these meetings. Academics, journalists and writers also attended to witness Kahn’s famous briefings.

As “forward thinker,” scenario-writer, and systems analyst, Kahn was an obvious invite to the Futuribles conference at Yale. The invitation was easily delivered, too, as

283 Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 37. 284 The brochure is extensively quoted in Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1965), viii-ix. 158

Daniel Bell was a consultant to the Hudson institute.285 Bell was attracted to Kahn’s work because he saw him as an expert on the new rational planning techniques. In a 1962 essay, Bell described the advent of “the military intellectuals,” men like Kahn,

Wohlstetter, Brodie who could “use the tools (computer simulation, linear programming, gaming theory) of strategic planning.”286 The essay in which Bell described the new military intellectuals, aimed to explain various strands of conservative dissent in

America. An older breed of military man, someone like Curtis Lemay, who valued the

“incomputable,” felt threatened by the “technopols,” he argued. And as the traditional military men were being “dispossessed,” they withdrew in rancor and reactionary conservatism. The “technopols,” by contrast, seemed to represent to Bell the new man of post-industrial society; they were engaged with the future, imaginative, and comfortable around a computer. As we will see in the next chapter, Bell came to believe that he could rely on Kahn and the Hudson Institute to produce data-rich “scenarios” of possible futures. Such studies would be an invaluable tool to make discussions about the future more tangible.

Kahn’s visit to the Futuribles conference at Yale, however, proved to be something of a false start in this respect. Archival material suggests that Kahn was not a very active participant during the Futuribles meeting, and it is not difficult to find reasons for this. Jouvenel dominated this meeting and there were obvious incompatibilities between him and Kahn. Jouvenel took seriously the methodological and epistemological aspects of futurism, while Kahn was always ready to jump in and produce a paper on

285 Louis Menand, “Fat Man, 94. 286 Daniel Bell, “The Dispossessed” in Bell ed. The Radical Right (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 33. 159 something. Where Jouvenel warned about extrapolation, Kahn saw valuable ways to combine speculation with calculation. Futurology, or a science of the future, was impossible for Jouvenel, yet Kahn’s imprecise notion of “systems analysis” at least flirted with some sort of scientific approach to forecasting. Most importantly, Kahn’s interest in the future was an interest in technology, and technological change. Kahn’s optimism about a post-nuclear conflict world, in fact, came down to a faith in the inventiveness of human beings. Jouvenel, however, viewed technology with suspicion. The engagement with the long-term was a way to avoid being dragged along by an accelerating rate of technological change; futurism had to guide modernization. Kahn, however, seemed to delight in the unrestricted unleashing of modernity. Such different opinions had their reflection in personalities: One was a fat, short-sleeved, fast talking technophile from the

Bronx with a penchant for sick jokes, the other a handsome European aristocrat, always grave and talking of the enlightenment.

One of the central topics of the Futuribles meeting at Yale had been the

Surmising Forum, but here too Kahn’s ideas did not match those of Jouvenel. Kahn did not think in terms of “a body of enlightened amateurs” or “pre-discussion” of political issues. Instead, the RAND model and his Hudson Institute represented the way Kahn believed futurism could be made functional. Government or businesses could commission studies, and base their long-term plans on the work done by people like

Herman Kahn. But the secrecy around the classified studies that RAND did was unacceptable for Jouvenel; the art of conjecture had to be employed for the benefit of the public. It was for this reason that Jouvenel had little use for Kahn. It was instead the other 160 veteran of RAND, Olaf Helmer, whose ideas greatly enthused Jouvenel during the conference.

Helmer’s DELPHI Forecast

What Helmer presented at Yale was his RAND report on a “Long-Range

Forecasting Study.” This study, which had been concluded only months before the conference, applied the DELPHI method, Helmer’s systematic questioning of experts, to the direction of long-range trends in science and technology. Some participants at the

Yale conference, including Jouvenel, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Harold Guetzkow had functioned as the experts upon which the study relied. Other experts were RAND veterans E.W. Paxson, Bernard Brodie, Arthur Raymond, Warren W. Weaver, and John

D. Williams. Science fiction writers Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov also participated, as did Helmer’s old friend Carl Hempel. In total, eighty two people, almost all of which had a background in the physical sciences, had filled in “four sequential questionnaires, spaced approximately two months apart.”287 The methodology employed had not changed from the time of Helmer’s DELPHI experiment in the 1950s; experts answered questions and subsequently received information about the average—or usually median—answers of all experts combined. Round after round the answers would then move closer together and form a consensus of sorts.

In his paper Helmer noted that the intent of the study had been both “substantive and methodological.” As he had done many times before during his RAND career, beginning at the Conference for Social scientists in 1947, Helmer stressed that “intuitive

287 Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon, “Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study”, in Olaf Helmer, Social Technology (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 49. 161 judgment” was an important aspect of prediction. What the DELPHI method did was to

“obtain this intuitive judgement as effectively as possible from persons who are recognized experts in the area of concern.” The “areas of concern” on which this particular study focused were: “scientific breakthroughs, population control, automation, space progress, war prevention, and weapons systems.”288 The “substantive” aspect of the study was thus the predictions relating to these six topics.

A paper version of the study was distributed to the conference participants, and it featured elaborate graphs for each of the six topics. The X-axis of the graphs was a timeline that ran from 1960 to “never,” perfectly balanced in the middle by the year 2000.

On the Y-axis the questions, usually around thirty in number, were represented by a shape that indicated the statistical distribution of the answers. Therefore, an answer that represented a clear consensus on the part of the experts was indicated by a small shape on the timeline, while a question that had caused disagreement amongst the experts resulted in longer, and flattened, shape on the timeline. The graph about “space progress,” for example, featured a small shape on 1970 for question number eight: “manned lunar landing and return?” Question twenty-four, however, asked the same about Mars and this resulted in a shape that covered the whole decade of the 1980s, with a median on 1985.

Questions that scored a never—or very close to it— asked about the year in which communication with extra-terrestrials would be established, and when a “heliocentric strategic fleet” would be operational.289

288 Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon, “Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study,” 47. 289 Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon, “Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study,” 66-67. 162

As Helmer admitted, a problem in the study was the wording of questions. This was especially the case with the topics that were not strictly technological, such as population control, automation, and war prevention. A question about “the settlement of the division of Germany on terms acceptable to West Germany and compatible with

German membership in NATO” included so many variables that a consensus was always very unlikely. Other problems with the study included the fact that the confidence level of predictions had not been recorded. Therefore someone who predicted the occurrence of an event for a certain year without any conviction could negate a highly confident prediction of another expert. The dropping out of experts was also a problem. Ideally the experts would constitute a highly stable and committed group. In a next experiment,

Helmer reported, all this would have to be fixed.

Although he believed his study was as much a methodological experiment as it was a forecasting experiment, Helmer’s report nevertheless included a section on the

“state of the world” in 1984, 2000, and beyond. The overview of predictions about 1984 included a world population of 4.3 billion, common use of “artificial organs (plastic and electronic),” no world war would have occurred between then and now, and the widespread use and acceptance of “personality control drugs.”290 In the year 2000, the population would be 5.1 billion, controlled thermonuclear power would be a source of usable energy, and primitive artificial life would have been developed. The report also ventured to articulate some warnings based on these predictions. One such warning dealt with the danger of scarce resources and population growth. Although the experts had been optimistic that new energy and food sources would eventually be available to

290 Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon, “Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study,” 78. 163 provide for a more populated world, they worried that such sources might not be found in time. They also warned of the unequal distribution of these resources.

The most clearly articulated warning in the report, however, dealt with automation. That this was a real threat flowed directly from the predictions by the experts. A question that asked about “automation of office work and services, leading to displacement of 25 per cent of the current workforce” scored a median of 1975, with a narrow distribution, indicating that this was something the experts agreed on. A question about “widespread use of robots,” even as “household slaves” scored somewhere in the late eighties. In his section on warnings, Helmer indicated that automation was “likely to reshape the societies of industrialized nations, considerably, perhaps beyond recognition.” “Large portions of the population,” he continued, could find themselves

“without suitable employment within an economy of abundance.” All this would have to be dealt with through “far-sighted and profoundly revolutionary measures,” if “a democratic form of society can continue to flourish.”291

It is unsurprising that Helmer’s study focused on automation, since most of its forecast had been technological ones. A number of the influential experts who participated in the study, most notably Dennis Gabor, Arthur C. Clark, and Isaac Asimov, had published work that explored the impact of technology on society. Moreover, by the time of Helmer’s study, automation had become a hotly debated issue; only months before the Yale conference, in fact, Daniel Bell had been appointed on the National

Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress. As we will see in the next chapter, it was exactly the task of this commission to investigate the merits of claims

291 Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon, “Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study,” 81. 164 like those of Helmer in his study. During the conference, however, Helmer’s warnings about automation were not much discussed. Much more attention was given to the method of his study, and its use as a forecasting tool.

Jouvenel was very enthusiastic about Helmer’s study, and his general participation in the conference. Helmer’s old RAND papers were translated and published in the Bulletin SEDEIS, and during the summer of 1965, Helmer presented a paper at a larger Futuribles conference in Paris. It is not hard to see why Jouvenel liked

Helmer’s work. In making the case for his Surmising Forum, Jouvenel had stressed the role of experts and the fact that the forum had to operate independently from politics and government power. The DELPHI method fit this bill. Helmer, in turn, noted that a

Surmising Forum could operate as a laboratory for “pseudo-experiments” of the “inexact- sciences.”292 The “intuitive” knowledge of people was always central to Helmer’s futurist methodology, and this, more than anything, found favor with Jouvenel.

Following the conference at Yale, Jouvenel championed his idea of a Surmising

Forum in articles and various lectures. What was not entirely clear, however, was how this idea related to the mission of Futuribles. Jouvenel sometimes hinted that Futuribles could be a forerunner to an international Surmising Forum; publishing papers on potential problems facing western democracies could function as the “pre-discussion” Jouvenel had in mind. Yet, the official Ford Foundation Grant had established different goals, the study of the future of democracy in the west and in the “new states.” Bell seemed sympathetic to Jouvenel’s interpretation of the grant, but continued to complain to the

292 Chapman, “Notes on Futuribles Conference.” Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 165

Ford Foundation about the lack of organization in Futuribles. It was still essentially “a one-man show.”

In December of 1965, Eugene Rostow noticed a surge of interest in exactly the kinds of things Futuribles had focused on. In a new grant proposal for Futuribles he wrote that “today it has become intellectually respectable, even fashionable, to think about the future—to forecast it, to plan for it, even to invent it. He assured the foundation that “this wave of interest is more than a fad.” It was, instead, born out of an honest attention to

“the parameters of change,” and he believed the “general effectiveness of the Futuribles project in generating this new interest” had been “noteworthy.”293

Two months later, a Time Magazine article seemed to prove Rostow right. The article mentioned “veteran futurist” Bertrand de Jouvenel, discussed the DELPHI study at length, and listed the various efforts to engage the future, including Kahn’s Hudson

Institute. The article played up the technological predictions of the DELPHI study and generally emphasized the techno-utopian angle associated with the designer and architect

Buckminster Fuller. Still, the article made sure to note that Bell and Jouvenel were “more cautious futurists.” They aimed to “widen the spheres of moral choice,” or so Bell was quoted.294

The Ford Foundation, however, was not convinced that all this merited another five year grant. By November of 1966, they informed Jouvenel that they were not going to “take new actions concerning Futuribles,” and that the remaining funds should be used for his own work but not for new conferences or “institutional arrangements.”

293 Eugene V. Rostow and Waldemar Nielsen, “The Future of Futuribles: Draft of Grant proposal,” December, 1, 1965, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 294 “The Futurists: Looking Toward A.D. 2000." Time, February 25, 1966, 34. 166

Correspondence between Futuribles board members, Jouvenel and the Ford Foundation indicates that Shepard Stone and other foundation officials had been annoyed by

Jouvenel’s focus on the methodology of forecasting. In a letter written to Stone shortly after the conference at Yale, Rostow gave the impression that the focus on methodology—of both Jouvenel’s book and the conference—was seen as a distraction to the aim of the project as they had originally envisioned it. He wrote somewhat disparagingly that, for Jouvenel, the focus on methodology had “evidently” been “not a detour but a stage of the way.” Perhaps now that his book was “out of his system,”

Jouvenel was ready to “settle down.” But Jouvenel did not want to limit his interest in the future only to “political institutions” or a focus on the developing world. When it became clear that the Ford Foundation was not going to renew the grant, Jouvenel recounted what his focus on futurism had produced: “I shall bluntly state that we have substantially contributed to establishing thoughtful speculation about the social future as a respectable, legitimate discipline.”295 While Bell and Rostow still advised the foundation to renew the grant, the Ford Foundation felt it had done enough.

The lack of Ford Foundation support significantly jeopardized Futuribles. The organization and the journal soon ran out of money, and eventually merged with the

“Centre de Prospective,” the organization Gaston Berger had set up before his untimely death. By the mid-1970s Jouvenel’s son Hugues managed to restructure the organization and it has survived as a futurist research institute until today. Although the loss of Ford

Foundation money greatly diminished his income, Jouvenel continued his engagement with the future until his health started to fail him in the early 1970s. He taught classes on

295 Jouvenel to Joe Slater, May 31, 1967, Grant File 6241, Reel 663, FFR. 167

“social prospective” at the University of Paris, and became involved in early meetings of the Club of Rome. The concerns of this organization about population growth and limited natural resources fit well with Jouvenel’s conservative futurism. An environmental sensibility, long part of his thinking, now became even more prominent.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, Herman Kahn was an outspoken critic of the Club of

Rome. He criticized the widely discussed book by Donella Meadows that emerged from the Club: Limits to Growth. He argued that technology offered the means to overcome resource scarcity and environmental problems, and he predicted a future of spectacular economic growth. The Limits to Growth study had been based on Jay Forester’s computer simulations of population growth and resource consumption. Jouvenel’s position in this debate captures his general thinking about the future during the 1960s. It was

“unfortunate” that the opposite “poles” of the discussion were determined by the methodology of Kahn and Forrester, he noted. Both extrapolated from the present “one extrapolated hope, the other a nightmare,” but both employed a mechanistic and simplified view of the future.296 Jouvenel once again demanded more sophisticated ideas, a more respectable “art of conjecture.”

Yet, what became increasingly obvious was that Jouvenel’s future orientation was vague on normative commitments. He stressed a Surmising Forum as a vehicle for public discussions about the future, but did not say much about the values that should guide the discussions there. He opposed thinking in terms of progress, or “stages of modernization,” yet as he led Futuribles he seemed to become ever more interested in the future as an abstract concept, something disconnected from specific objectives. Thinking

296 Olivier Dard, Bertrand de Jouvenel (Paris: Perrin, 2008), 351. 168 about the future seemed to validate itself, even without any evidence that long-term perspective guided politics. Throughout the 1960s, this produced a certain amount of frustration for those who debated him, reviewed his work, and finally, funded his projects. Yet, as the Time Magazine article had noted, an interest in the future had become visible in business, the military, academia and government by the mid-1960s, and Jouvenel was seen as a trailblazer amongst “futurists.” Yet, if this was true, then the new field already faced a danger: how to make sure that an interest in the future did not become an interest in futurism?

169

CHAPTER THREE: GREAT SOCIETY FUTURISM

In the early morning of Thursday October 15, 1964, Daniel Bell trekked south from his Morningside apartment to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That day the museum did not host the normal tourists, stroking their chins in front of a de Kooning or a Pollock, but a symposium of the city’s Planning Commission. Titled “The Future by

Design” this symposium was to provide a broad debate on “the forces shaping New

York’s future,” and ways to plan “for a better functioning city.”297 That this was no ordinary discussion by the city’s Planning Commission was made obvious by the fact that

450 people came to watch the proceedings and paid $35 for admission. Two days later the New York Times reported that it had been “a good show” one that “would have made prime-time on TV for a star-studded discussion program.”298

When Bell addressed the Commission, he started by noting that the 1938 city charter had called for a master plan. Yet, twenty-five years later “we are now holding a symposium to organize support for such a master plan.”299 In a paper written for the occasion, Bell tried to determine why it was that planning was so difficult. The simple answer was that “people want different things and things which are quite often incompatible.”300 There were three ways to solve this, said Bell. The first was “the market in which you vote with the Dollar.” Yet, the problem was that individual wants fulfilled by the market mechanism did not necessarily translate to benefits for the general

297 The Future by Design: Considerations Underlying the Development of a Comprehensive Plan for the City of New York. October 14,15,16, 1964, Transcripts. 21. Part I: Box 32. Daniel P. Moynihan Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington. (hereafter cited as DPM Papers) 298 Ada Louise Huxtable, “Realistic View of City,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1964, 58. 299 The Future By Design, 24. 300 The Future By Design, 25. 170 community. Bell remembered that, in the early 1960s, a lean tower with a plaza was proposed across from Mies van der Rohe’s “open” Seagram Building. This would have created a pedestrian focal point resembling Rockefeller Center. Yet, since this was not the most prudent real estate investment, a “squat building covering the entire lot” went up instead. The proposal was impractical in terms of an “economic calculus.” But Bell asked whether it had also been impractical “in terms of space and light, [as] a haven for pedestrians, a resting place in the center, an enhancing of light and vista?”301

The second way in which incompatible goals could be settled was through the political process, meaning a pluralist system of local representation. Yet, this was less than satisfactory as well. Although Bell noted that he did not want to “deride the political process” he noted that it made planning very difficult. City planning meant “thinking in overall terms,” but trying to do this conflicted with “group” interests, given voice by ethnic or neighborhood organizations. The third option, said Bell, was “a planning matrix,” something that attempted to “measure the ancillary social costs” of plans and practices, a way to connect “ultimate effects” with “immediate costs.”302

Bell did not argue that such a planning tool was readily available, but it was a way of thinking that could be beneficial. It could get beyond narrow economic or neighborhood interest and take into account the city in a comprehensive way. To explain his idea of “social costs” Bell offered an example, “admittedly absurd,” about the way

New York dealt with snow storms:

301 Daniel Bell, The Forces Shaping a City: Advance paper for “the future By Design” a Symposium sponsored by the New York Planning Commission. 13. Robert F. Wagner Documents Collection. Subject Files I: Box 060238, Folder 17. La Guardia and Wagner Archives, Long Island, NY. 302 The Future By Design, 26. 171

Instead of hiring trucks to take the snow away from the center of town as they did many years ago, the administration, fearing that it might increase costs which would be reflected in a demand for higher taxes, adopts the expedient of having the trucks push all the snow from the middle to the sides of the street where it turns into slush and splatters the coats of everyone on the sidewalk. I would say that every winter cleaning and dyeing bills go up a million dollars a week during snow storms. This is a way of irrationally spreading the burden of cleaning a city.303

Perhaps, Bell implied, higher taxes and proper snow removal might ultimately be more beneficial and cost effective, more rational. But it could only be understood in this way if the cost of a clean city was understood as achieving a public good. Such an approach depended on the willingness of people to think beyond private or neighborhood interest.

The debate that ensued after Bell and others had delivered their talks, however, showed that such a thing was not easy.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Labor Department undersecretary in charge of the newly created Office of Policy Planning and Research, discussed the demographic and employment prospects of the city. He predicted that in five years “the largest single group in the city will be Negro.”304 Continued migration to the city, and a high birth rate made it the fastest growing ethnic group. He also noted that employment in manufacturing was going down in New York while it was rising sharply nationwide. Blacks, especially, were hurt by this as the unemployment rate amongst them was much higher than for other groups. This presentation was followed by one from the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who did not disagree with Moynihan’s figures but wanted “to profoundly inject the problem of racism into this discussion.” Rustin brought up housing and argued that

Harlem got “bigger and bigger” because “lily-white” areas such as Staten Island and

303 Ibid. 304 The Future by Design, 31. 172

Queens wanted blacks “to be kept in their own areas.”305 White middle-class organizations that aimed to delay school integration in the city, such as “Parents and

Taxpayers,” were simply racist, said Rustin.

Moynihan, however, was uncomfortable with this. He noted that calling those

“housewives in queens racist” was using “a stinking word,” something that was “not fair to those women.”306 Moynihan noted that there was a “class friction;” the middle class people were reacting against risks they were exposed to, and that this was “a common emotion in the world.” Rustin replied that “those women” had stood in front of schools and encouraged their children to call other children “black bastards;” this was “racism by any definition.” A little later Rustin noted that “anyone who doesn’t see racism in New

York and who talks about planning…will never plan anything because he’s not dealing with facts.”307 This got a big applause from the audience. But Bell pushed back to this; he noted that “negro politicians in Harlem” had objected to proposed public housing in

Staten Island because they were afraid to “lose their base.” Rustin noted that he disagreed with these politicians; “however, brother, it is not people in the negro community who ultimately have the power to determine what was done.”308

The subject of the symposium at the Museum of Modern Art had been the future of New York City, and the need to plan for it. The goal was to spur a public debate that could ultimately lead to a better functioning city. But almost immediately, the discussion had run up against the most emotive of political issues, and the difficulties of interest

305 The Future by Design, 34. 306 The Future by Design, 42. 307 The Future by Design, 43. 308 The Future by Design, 44. 173 group politics. Bell, the liberal academic, proclaimed it a difficult problem, Moynihan, the liberal undersecretary of Labor, pointed to a class dimension, and Bayard Rustin, the labor and civil rights activist, highlighted racism. What was undoubtedly obvious to most of the participants and the audience of the New York City Planning symposium was that the debate was not narrowly about New York City, but about the country as a whole.

During the fall of 1964 President Johnson was in the midst of a Presidential campaign, setting goals and making promises far beyond the realm of individual needs and wants.

This campaign was defined by a focus on the quality of life, public education, clean air, and unpolluted rivers. Such promises naturally brought public planning for the future to the forefront.

For the rest of the decade, Bell, Moynihan, and many others would be engaged with the issues that had been raised at the Museum of Modern Art. They were convinced that an orientation to the future was a necessary aspect of the Great Society. Forecasting could anticipate crises and lead to a better and more rationally functioning society. For

Bell, the first opportunity to anticipate change in service of the federal government related to a topic that Rustin had mentioned during the symposium, namely “what the technological revolution is doing” to “my community.”309 What Rustin brought up here, was that the American economy was in the midst of a structural crisis that was seriously underestimated, a crisis of automation.

The Automation Debate: Technological Change and the Future of Work

For well over a decade following the Second World War the American economy had been something of a world wonder, an awe-inspiring, job-creating, and consumer-

309 The Future by Design, 40. 174 goods-spewing behemoth. Yet, after the end of the Korean War all this slowed down. By the time Kennedy took office, twenty percent of the nation’s manufacturing capacity went unused and that number was going up. Even more problematic was the unemployment rate that rose above 6%.310 This slowdown had not gone unnoticed, and it was one of the things that led Americans to sense a kind of general torpor during the late

1950s, the very sluggishness that increased the appeal of the youthful Kennedy. One explanation for rising unemployment focused on the rate in which machines were replacing people in industrial production. By the early 1960s then, a broad debate about technological job-displacement brought ideas about a post-industrial future to the forefront.

The “old scare word automation” noted the editors of Time Magazine in a

February 1961 issue, was producing “new alarms.”311 The article did not elaborate on why automation might be an old scare word, and the editors perhaps expected their readers to know that it was especially during the Great Depression that worries about technological displacement of workers became acute. The Time article indicated, however, that, “in the past, new industries hired far more people than those they put out of business.” Yet now, “new industries have comparatively few jobs for the unskilled or semi-skilled, just the class of workers whose jobs are being eliminated by automation.”312

In addition to giving a number of specific examples that showed how industries produced more with fewer people, the article mentioned that business and labor leaders were

310 G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (New York: penguin Books, 2008), 88. 311 “The Automation Jobless” Time Magazine, February 24, 1961, 71. 312 Ibid. 175 starting to think seriously about this issue. It mentioned, for instance, that Clark Kerr, labor economist and president of the University of California, was presiding over a special discussion about automation between management and labor of Chicago’s meat packing industry.313

Many more articles like the one in Time appeared in newspapers and magazines during the early 1960s, and a slew of books and studies on automation were produced as well. The rhetoric employed in discussing the issue grew ever more dramatic. Consider, for instance, a 1963 Life Magazine description of a boardroom meeting at United States

Industries Inc., a manufacturer of complex automated production machines. The executives had gathered to watch a company film about their latest machines:

On a movie screen, two of U.S.I.’s mechanical gremlins were showing what they can do. Now and then a pair of flesh and blood hands would appear and demonstrate that almost anything that hands born of woman can do, the gremlins can do better, faster, more cheaply314.

The same issue of Life Magazine also contained a series of dramatic photographs under the title: “The Point of No Return.” The photos told the story of manpower retraining programs and the laid-off workers who now relied on them for a new job; there were worried faces over kitchen tables, adult men in school benches, and an old union firebrand yelling at a meeting.

The worker retraining programs were the result of the Kennedy administration’s

Manpower Development and Training Act, which was passed in 1962. The administration, however, realized that the problem of automation required more than a single piece of legislation. Labor secretary Willard Wirtz, for instance, expressed concern

313 Ibid. 314 Keith Wheeler, “Big Labor Hunts For the Hard Answers,” Life Magazine, July 19, 1963, 73. 176 before congress over the fact that the problem was compounded by population growth.315

What could be done about automation was thus not easily determined. Besides retraining programs, no obvious governmental action presented itself. The President’s Labor-

Management Committee, which was made up of prominent figures from industry and labor unions, produced a report on automation in January of 1962. Yet, the Committee’s vague recommendation about lessening “the impact of technological change” was accompanied by dissenting opinion from Henry Ford II who wanted to stress the danger of industrial wage increases instead.316 Meanwhile, the President had trouble moving a broad anti-unemployment program through congress. Fearing the charge of inaction,

Kennedy soon championed an idea that emerged within the Labor Department: a

Presidential Commission on Automation. Not long thereafter, on July 25, congressional supporters of the President introduced legislation for the establishment of such a commission.317 Although, Kennedy’s assassination temporarily pushed all this to the back burner, the idea for a commission was quickly championed by the new administration.

When President Johnson signed the bill creating the Commission on Technology,

Automation, and Economic Progress in August of 1964, he stated: “automation is not our enemy...automation can be the ally of our prosperity if we will just look ahead, if we will understand what is to come, and if we will set our course wisely after proper planning for

315 Wheeler, “Big Labor Hunts For the Hard Answers,” 84. 316 Jack Stieber, “The President’s Committee on Labor-Management Policy,” Industrial Relations, February 1966, 6-8. 317 Act to Establish Presidential Commission on Automation, S.J. Res. 105, 88th Cong., 1st sess., Part I Box 32. DPM Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 177 the future.”318 Such a sanguine treatment of automation by the President stood in contrast to governmental lamentations earlier in the decade. Yet the President’s view was marked by a dramatic reversal in economic fortunes between 1961 and 1964. The unemployment rate that had troubled Kennedy had steadily fallen, and production was experiencing a boom of grand proportions. Thus, strangely, when the Commission began its study of automation, the worst fears about it seemed already disproven.

Daniel Bell was one of the members of this Presidential Commission. His paper on post-industrial society—the one he had sent to the Futuribles officers upon joining— circulated in the labor department since the summer of 1962, and was widely read.319 Bell had sent it to his friend Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an undersecretary of labor who had joined the department under Kennedy. Moynihan was in charge of a newly created division: the Office of Policy Planning and Research. One of the functions of this new office was to “predict or to respond quickly to social and economic problems as they emerge.”320 Automation was such an economic problem, and Moynihan was one of the

Labor Department officials who pushed for a Presidential Commission on the subject. In the summer of 1963, he sent the Secretary a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that reviewed the effects of automation for thirty-three major industries. The study, he wrote,

“will chill your blood.”321 A year later, when Johnson had approved the Commission,

318 Lyndon B. Johnson: "Remarks Upon Signing Bill Creating the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress.," August 19, 1964. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26449. 319 Moynihan to Under Secretary of Labor, August 14, 1962, Part I: Box 32, Folder 12. DPM Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 320 Labor Department Document quoted in Douglas Schoen, Pat: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 75. 321 Moynihan to Secretary of Labor August 19, 1963, Part I: Box 32, Folder 12. DPM Papers. Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 178

Moynihan sung the praises of Daniel Bell to the President’s advisor, Ralph Dungan: “The essential point about Bell is that he is one of the smartest men in America,” and “a commission on automation, absolutely must have Dan Bell, or someone like him to make sense of the statistics.”322

Major labor leaders Albert J. Hayes of the Machinists Union, and Walter Reuther head of the United Auto Workers joined Bell on the Commission. Other members were industry executives, such as Patrick E. Haggerty of Texas Instruments, Edwin Land of

Polaroid, and John I. Snyder of U.S. Industries. During the late 1950s and early 1960s,

Snyder, whose “gremlins” Life Magazine had described so dramatically, played up the capabilities of his company’s automated machines, fueling expectations and fears about automation. He died only months after the Commission’s work began, however, and was replaced by IBM president Thomas Watson II. Besides Bell, other academics on the commission were economist Robert Solow and law professor Benjamin Aaron. The only woman on the commission was Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, a private industrial consultant and former Assistant Secretary of Defense. Whitney Young of the Urban League represented the interests of African Americans, and the position of Chairman was filled by Howard R. Bowen, president of the University of Iowa.

Reuther’s influence on the commission was significant. He had long been a dominant voice in the debate about automation, and he had appeared before congress numerous times to testify. During a 1950s senate subcommittee hearing Reuther talked about the “desirability and the inevitability of technological progress” and he noted that

322 Moynihan to Ralph Dungan, September 3, 1964, Part I: Box 32, Folder 12, DPM Papers. Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 179 the C.I.O. actually welcomed automation as a key to a shorter workweek and higher living standards.323 Yet, what he strongly objected to was the position of the National

Association of Manufacturers, and their vision for the future of the American economy:

“guided by electronics, powered by atomic energy, geared to the smooth, effortless workings of automation, the magic carpet of our free economy heads for distant and undreamed of horizons.”324 Such a treatment of automation, believed Reuther, ignored the harsh reality of technological job displacement, and the difficult task of finding jobs for the unemployed. During the 1950s, then, Reuther used fears over automation to push for progressive policies for workers, such as reduced hours, higher wages, and access to training and education programs, yet he never called on industry to halt the use of new automated production techniques.

The act that created the Commission set five tasks. Three of these were generally descriptive; they concerned the study of past effects of technological change, and the identification of “areas” (both geographical and as sectors of the economy) that were lacking in technological innovation.325 Another task was clearly predictive, namely to chart the social and economic effects of automation for the next ten years. This included saying something about the pace of technological change during this period. Finally, the commission was asked to translate its findings into “specific administrative and legislative steps” that could be taken by “federal, state, and local governments.”326 The

323 Reuther quoted in Amy Sue Bix, Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs? America’s Debate over Technological Unemployment, 1929-1981 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 247. 324 Quoted in Bix, Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs? 247. 325 Public Law 88-144, 88th Congress 11611, August 19, 1964. DPM Papers Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 326 Ibid. 180

Commission had a budget of a million dollars, and over a period of eleven months collected, studied, and discussed reports from government, labor and business. Bell later spoke of “a kaleidoscopic array of witnesses” that appeared before the commission.327

Since the first task of the Commission was to evaluate the nature and effects of automation, all, including the most alarmist of voices, were given time to make their case.

Robert Theobald was one of these voices. An India born son of a British businessman, Theobald had studied economics at Cambridge and Harvard, and, during the late 1950s, became interested in the effects of rising industrial productivity. His 1961 book, The Challenge of Abundance, dealt with themes similar to Bell’s papers on post- industrialism. Theobald discussed the growth of the service sector and the increased importance of research and education. Yet, unlike Bell, Theobald posited that the post- industrial society, or the age of abundance that was now emerging, would radically alter the entire social structure. Politics, international relations, and even people themselves would change. In Theobald’s view, automation made the age of abundance possible, but it was also a threat. He pondered the danger that “the development of computer and automation techniques could turn man into efficient robots.”328

Theobald was not alone in his worries about a combination of automation and computer technology. Only months before Johnson signed the law creating the

Automation Commission, Theobald had signed, as one of the principal authors, a memorandum by The Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution. This group, made up of prominent people from the old and New Left, including Michael Harrington, Irving

327 Daniel Bell, “Government by Commission,” The Public Interest, Spring 1966, 4. 328 Robert Theobald, The Challenge of Abundance (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1961), 14. 181

Howe, Gunner Myrdal, Robert Heilbroner, Norman Thomas, Dwight Macdonald, Todd

Gitlin and Tom Hayden, discussed the revolutionary effects of “cybernation.” This neologism was derived from Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, but where the latter abstractly denoted feedback mechanisms in communication systems, cybernation specifically addressed the “combination of the computer and the self-regulating machine.”329 The other two revolutions to which the ad-hoc committee’s name referred were the “weapons revolution” and the civil rights revolution. Yet these two were almost wholly ignored in the memorandum. Cybernation, or so the members argued, deserved immediate attention because it impacted all aspects of society, including peace and human rights.

The term cybernation was coined and popularized by Donald M. Michael, a physicist turned sociologist associated with a number of left-of-center think tanks: the

Institute for Policy Studies, the Fund for the Republic, and its offshoot the Center for the

Study of Democratic Institutions. In a 1962 report called Cybernation the Silent

Conquest, Michael explained that computers radically changed the nature of automation.

No longer did it just involve machines that could “perform sensing and motor tasks,” it meant that they could “make judgements” and were “beginning to perceive and recognize.”330 Computers, in other words, could receive feedback from machines, and make the necessary adjustments to keep things running smoothly. If automation had been an old story of machines replacing workers, cybernation meant that computers replaced the men that worked on the machines. This made possible fully automated production,

329 Statement by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (Santa Barbara, Calif.: The Committee, March 22, 1964) 5. 330 Donald N. Michael, “Cybernation: the Silent Conquest” in Morris Philipson, ed. Automation: Implications for the Future (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 78-80. 182 and one of Michael’s examples was an “automatic lathe” that recognized when its own tools needed to be replaced. Another example involved the inventory operations at

Grayson Robinson Department Stores, where sales data was captured on punch cards and fed to a computer that optimized the whole merchandising and warehousing process.331

Since these examples supposedly described “cybernated” processes already in operation, the implication was that the future would be ever more dominated by computer directed machines.

Such a notion of cybernation was reason for the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Triple

Revolution to declare reigning economic theory obsolete. Since cybernation made the

“industrial productive system” no longer “viable,” the “income-through-jobs-link” had to be abandoned.332 The Ad-Hoc committee, therefore, called for “an unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every family with an adequate income as a matter of right.”333 What the memorandum proposed was a kind of socialism for the post- industrial society; “the conscious and rational direction of economic life by planning institutions under democratic control,” which would be achieved by the “encouragement and expansion” of cybernation.334 The society that emerged from the cybernation revolution was in essence a post-economic society in which sights could be set on higher, and nobler, pursuits. All this meant that “many creative activities and interests commonly thought of as non-economic will absorb the time and the commitment of many of those

331 Michael, “Cybernation,” 85. 332 The Triple Revolution, 7. 333 The Triple Revolution, 10. 334 The Triple Revolution, 9. 183 no longer needed to produce goods and services.”335 The memorandum seemed to indicate—vaguely—that cybernation itself would usher in the kind of economic planning the committee had in mind. “The issues raised by cybernation are particularly amendable to intelligent policy making: Cybernation itself provides the resources and tools that are needed to ensure minimum hardship during the transition process.”336 This somewhat circular statement was not further explained; it was not made clear how the marriage of computers and machines would make possible economic planning for the new post- industrial age.

Bell was not impressed by the triple revolutionists. In responding to Theobald,

Michael, and the Ad-Hoc Committee, Bell and the executives on the Automation

Commission, focused on two things: their alarmist language about unemployment, and their specific examples of cybernated production. By the time Theobald appeared as a witness, his claims about the pace of technological job displacement were easily disproven. The unemployment rate in 1965 was not even half of the 10 percent that one of the Triple Revolutionists had predicted it would be.337 The cause of such faulty predictions was an exaggeration about the actual use of cybernated techniques, Bell believed. In his critique of the notion of a cybernation revolution, Bell was influenced by a series of Fortune articles on automation.338 The articles, by former Columbia University economics instructor, Charles E. Silberman, posited that “cybernation,” as it was described by writers like Theobald and Michael, did not exist. After a thorough

335 The Triple Revolution, 10. 336 The Triple Revolution, 9. 337 See W.H. Ferry, Caught on the Horn of Plenty (Santa Barbara Calif.: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1962), 6. 338 Charles E. Silberman “The Real News about Automation,” Fortune, January, 1965, 124. 184 investigation of the examples provided, Silberman concluded that computers and machines had nowhere produced fully automated production. Donald Michael’s “lathe,” was simply an automatic version of a tool that had been used for decades in handling of all sorts of materials. Crucially, no computer was in any way involved in its functioning.

Even where computers did play a role, such as at Grayson Robinson Department Stores,

Silberman found no trace of cybernation. Instead of instant sales-feedback and computer organized merchandising, Silberman discovered that the department store clerks had used a computer in drawing up a monthly sales report for management, after which they manually ordered and stocked the new merchandise.339

The conclusion Silberman reached, and Bell followed, was that automation existed and produced unemployment but not on a massive scale. Moreover, “cybernated” production processes were many decades away and therefore not likely to produce unemployment any time soon. Productivity was not drastically increasing, and the sectors that saw the greatest rise in productivity were agriculture and the service professions, not industry.

Yet, despite all this, there existed obvious similarities between the Ad-Hoc

Committee’s notion of cybernation, and Bell’s idea of a post-industrial society. The

Triple Revolutionists emphasized the increasing importance of information technology, and that this was an important force shaping the future of modern society. For this reason

Bell couldn’t simply dismiss the Triple Revolutionists based on faulty unemployment

339 Silberman, “The Real News about Automation,” 220. 185 predictions and overblown conceptions of computer use in industry. Thus, in a number of articles of the mid-1960s, Bell explicitly and implicitly responded to their ideas.340

For Theobald and the Triple Revolutionists, cybernation was a problem because it produced unemployment, but it was also the harbinger of a social and political revolution, a revolution that the Ad-Hoc committee welcomed. This adherence to the revolutionary potential of technology—cybernation, after all, was the marriage of mechanical and information technology—made the Triple Revolutionists the intellectual descendants of the utopian socialists, especially Saint-Simon and Fourier. In a critical “reappraisal” of

Thorstein Veblen that Bell wrote at the height of the cybernation craze, he tied Veblen to these utopian socialists, and also made the connection with contemporary talk about computers. The “one-sidedness” and “inadequacy” of the “Veblenian system” was his

“emphasis on technology, or so Bell wrote.”341 Although in the “advanced industrial countries” innovation in “computer technology” had an “effect on the labor force,” the crucial turning points in a society are ultimately determined not by crescive social changes,” but by the way these changes “come to a head in some political form.”342

Unlike the Triple Revolutionists, Bell did not believe that technological change led automatically to wider social and political change. For Bell it was important that the government could deal with technological job displacement through deficit spending, or monetary policy. This meant that governments were not trapped in the process of technological change, but could manage and direct it. Thus when Bell explained his

340 See Daniel Bell “The Bogey of Automation” New York Review of Books August 26, 1965. And Daniel Bell “Letter to the editors” New York Review of Books, November, 25, 1965. See also Daniel Bell “Veblen and the New Class” American Scholar Vol 32, 4 (autumn 1963). 341 Daniel Bell “Veblen and the New Class” American Scholar Vol 32, 4 (Autumn 1963) 634. 342 Bell, “Veblen and the New Class,” 634-636. 186 problem with the Ad-Hoc committee in an article in the New York Review of Books, he complained: “they do not believe that the American economic system can solve the unemployment problem by Keynesian methods.”343 He argued, moreover, that there was a hidden danger in the technological determinism of the Triple Revolutionists. “We find curious alignments among those who make ‘structuralist’ arguments” about unemployment, Bell wrote. “There are conservative writers and officials of the Federal

Reserve Board who oppose government ‘interference’ in the economy and vast public spending. They fasten on the automation issue…for if the problem of unemployment can be traced simply to a lack of manpower training, rather than a failure of demand, there is no need to engage in deficit financing…”344

Here Bell was playing the role of political realist; while the utopians dreamed of a socialist society of the future brought about by technological change, conservatives, in the here and now, refused even the smallest concessions to Keynesianism. The Triple

Revolutionists fell into the “trap of ideology,” Bell seemingly argued. Their idea of the future was not pragmatic but fixed and it suffered from a rigid teleology. Yet, how did such a critique fit with Bell’s own ideas about the post-industrial future? If the technological determinism of the Triple Revolutionists evoked Veblen, than what about

Bell himself? The idea that “new intellectual techniques” and their experts would be the crucial element of an increasingly complex society sounded a lot like Veblen’s faith in engineers. If the engineer was the expert of the industrial age was not the systems analysts the post-industrial engineer? Bell’s own theorizing on the relation between

343 Bell, “The Bogey of Automation” New York Review of Books August 26, 1965. 344 Ibid. 187 technology and politics seemed to indicate a kind of soft technocracy. By the end of the decade he settled the problem of incorporating his theory of post-industrial future in

American democracy by limiting the validity of his theory to what he came to call “the social structure.” It was, in essence, the economy, technology, and “the occupational system.”345 What lay outside the social structure was culture and the polity, the later meaning politics and government. Thus, Bell blamed the Triple Revolutionists for something he was guilty of himself, namely, ignoring politics. Although he rightly criticized the overblown examples of cybernation, and an obvious technological determinism, such critiques partly functioned to mask similar flaws in his own thinking.

The labor faction of the Automation Commission responded more favorably to

Theobald’s testimony. The labor leaders rightly believed that dismissing testimony about the threat of fully automated production would make it harder to push for new manpower retraining programs, and other policies that benefitted employed and unemployed workers. Reuther, therefore, was much more receptive than Bell to arguments about cybernation. At a December 1965 AFL-CIO conference, Reuther, Beirne, and Hayes, leaked news that they were going to issue a minority report, since the Commission as a whole was not taking the increasing rate of technological job-displacement seriously enough.346 The major problem with the “mild” view of the other Commission members was that it could undermine calls for government involvement, or so the labor leaders

345 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 12. 346 Donald T. Critchlow, “The Politics of Technology and Employment: The 1965 National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress” in Papers Commissioned by the Panel on Technology and Employment (National Academy of Sciences, 1987), 25. Also see “Automation Panel Splits on Report,” Business Week, December 1965, 66. And Bell, “Government by Commission,” The Public Interest, 5. 188 believed. Josepp A. Beirne of the Communications Workers of America told a reporter that automation was “broad enough in size and scope to require that the problem be turned over to the government—rather than left to labor and business for solutions.” The labor faction also leaked some of their suggestions for strong government action, and this list closely resembled the proposals of the Ad-Hoc Committee. It included: a permanent

National Planning Academy made up of business, labor and academics that would “keep abreast” of technological developments, “free public education up to the doctorate level for anyone who qualifies,” a minimum annual income with a negative income tax, and, finally, federal work projects to insure that the government would be the employer of last resort.347

Despite the disagreement over the true severity of automation, and the threat of a minority report by the labor faction, the Automation Commission never split up. There are two main reasons for this. First, although the labor representatives on the Automation

Commission wanted to emphasize the problems of technological change, they agreed with Bell, Solow, and the industry representatives, that the rising unemployment of the late 1950s was primarily caused by low aggregate demand.348 What this meant was that the Commission saw the conservative economic policies of the Eisenhower administration as the main culprit for the unemployment of the late 1950s. Certainly, technological job displacement could wreak havoc on certain industrial sectors, but the, fiscal, monetary, and spending policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administration had

347 “Automation Panel Splits on Report” Business Week, December 1965, 66. 348 Critchlow, “The Politics of Technology and Employment,” 22. See also: Technology and the American Economy: Report of the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, Government Printing office, February 1966, 9. 189 shown that the federal government could overcome the effects of technological change.

Ultimately, labor never bought the argument of the Triple Revolutionists that the cause of unemployment was structural.

The second reason the Commission never split up, follows logically from the first.

The labor, industry, and academic representatives on the commission all believed that the government should play an important role in steering the economy towards growth and technological progress. Moreover, there was a strong belief, based on the latest economic data, that the government could afford all sorts of liberal programs, without raising taxes.

In fact, cutting taxes was one of the ways in which the economy was to be stimulated.

The list of proposals of the labor faction was never deemed to be unreasonable by the other Commission members. This in itself is not surprising; the labor faction of the

Commission was not radical, but liberal. Before, during, and after he had a seat on the

Automation Commission, Reuther spoke with the President at least once a week, and usually more frequently than that. Johnson used Reuther to unite workers behind his

Great Society legislation, and Reuther was happy to oblige as he firmly believed in the president’s vision.

The final report of the Automation Commission, titled Technology and the

American Economy, was thus a document that argued for the Keynesian economic policies favored by Johnson. “It is the continuous obligation of economic policy to match increases in productive potential with purchasing power and demand.”349 “The toleration of unnecessary unemployment,” warned the report “is a very costly way to police inflation.” The report also prescribed far reaching education, and (re)training programs in

349 Technology and the American Economy, 9. 190 order to deal with unemployment in sectors affected by technological change. Kennedy’s

Manpower Development and Training Act was deemed experimental in scale and in need of expansion. States that obstructed workers from drawing unemployment insurance while being retrained would have to be overruled by “federal action.”350 The “hard-core” unemployed would have to be offered jobs doing useful community services, as the federal government was to be an “employer of last resort.” The report also called for large investments in education, including at least 14 years of guaranteed free public education. Discrimination needed to be addressed through “stronger civil rights enforcement provisions,” and compensatory opportunities for victims of past discrimination. There was a call to turn federal experiments with relocation grants into a permanent program, as well as implement extensive regional economic developments plans for each Federal Reserve district, to be overseen by a federal director. Finally the report called for a “floor under family income,” or in other words, a guaranteed national income.

With such far reaching proposals, the report was interpreted by the more conservative press as a radical document. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, described it as “welfarism run rampant,” and the long-time New York Times columnist Arthur

Krock noted that the proposals “outrun even those of the Great Society in moving the

American economy towards total centralization and the ideals of advanced socialism.”351

The Chicago Tribune was even more dramatic and simply exclaimed “now everybody in

350 Ibid, 48. 351 Arthur Krock “In The Nation: An Economic New Jerusalem” New York Times February 6, 1966, 10E. See also Critchlow, “The Politics of Technology and Employment,” 27. 191

Washington has gone over to the Socialists.”352 What such conservative responses to the report obscured, however, was the way it answered the claims of the Triple

Revolutionists. By denying that unemployment was structural, the report was merely articulating liberal ideas. And in refuting the prospect of a cybernated post-work society, the Commission report was countering utopian ideas about technology and social change.

Other media responses did interpret the report in its proper left-liberal context. The New

Republic, for instance, thought it “a swell report” that offered “a whole bag of ideas to a

Great Society that has been puffing badly recently.” A different New York Times piece emphasized how the report called for government sponsored growth in aggregate demand, but also stressed the commission’s orientation towards “private and public programs.”353

This article also mentioned that the Commission had made a case for permanent

“forecasting” in government, through a “Commission on National Goals or [a] similar institution.”354 This sentence summarized a whole chapter of the report that was titled

“Improving Public Decision Making.” Bell, Solow, Aaron, and Bowen were responsible for re-writing the entire report after the labor faction’s threat of dissent, but Bell wrote this specific chapter. Here he argued for forecasting as a necessary task for “future oriented” societies like the United States. Bell discussed how the “new intellectual techniques” of systems analysis and operations management, could now “be applicable to

352 Quoted in Critchlow, “The Politics of Technology and Employment,” 27. 353 David R. Jones, “Federal Panel Discounts Jobs Peril in Automation,” New York Times, December 23, 1965, 47. 354 Ibid. 192 social problems,” and thus help to forecast social change.355 Bell also argued that efforts be started to set up a “system of social accounts,” by which he meant a kind of social equivalent to economic data. Such an account could help in measuring “social ills” and

“eventually provide a balance sheet which could be useful in clarifying policy choices.”356

In articulating the need for social forecasting, and presenting the notion that new intellectual technologies could achieve this, echoes of the Futuribles discussions were unmistakable in this chapter of the Automation Commission report. Moreover, when Bell discussed the problem of separating forecasting from the political process, he channeled

Jouvenel directly: “the concentration of forecasting mechanisms entirely in the hands of government, particularly at a time when such forecasting becomes a necessary condition of public policy, risks one sided judgments—and even suppression of forecast for political ends.”357 In name of the Automation Commission, Bell now championed the idea of a “surmising forum.” We believe that “some national body of distinguished private citizens representing diverse interests and constituencies” should be “concerned with ‘monitoring’ social change, forecasting possible social trends, and suggesting policy alternatives to deal with them. Its role would not be to plan the future, but to point out what alternatives are achievable and at what costs.358

More than prescribe such a “national body of distinguished private citizens,” Bell soon argued that the Automation Commission was such a body, a “surmising forum.” In

355 Technology and the American Economy, 100-101. 356 Technology and the American Economy, 95. 357 Technology and the American Economy, 106. 358 Technology and the American Economy, 106. 193 the Commission report he noted that “the discussions” had been “a forum bringing together” the various constituencies, and, in an article he published in the spring 1966 issue of The Public Interest, he specifically used the term “surmising forum” to describe the Automation Commission.359

Titled “Government by Commission” the article discussed the work of the

Automation Commission, the conclusions it reached, and the legislation it proposed. Yet,

“what may be most important in the long run,” wrote Bell, “is not the proposals themselves, but the fact that so crucial a social problem had been turned over to a commission in the first place.”360 The bringing together of people from labor, industry and academia to focus on an important social problem, had led to “the surrender of older prejudices, and the emergence of some new, imaginative social proposals.” And crucially

“the policy recommendations were framed within a series of expectations about the future.”361 The “distinctive virtue of the Government Commission,” wrote Bell, was that it relied on “the full range of elite or organized opinion in order to see if a real consensus can be achieved.” Such a “forum” was “one of the few places where a central debate over specific policy issues can be conducted.”362

Bell mentioned how Jouvenel had asked the question: “how can the future become a matter for public opinion?” In a counter-intuitive manner Bell now argued that

Presidential Commissions answered this question. They facilitated both public discussions and were separated from “the normal play of politics.” The public function

359 Bell, “Government by Commission,” The Public Interest, Spring 1966, 8. 360 Bell, “Government by Commission,” 6. 361 Bell, “Government By Commission,” 8. 362 Bell, “Government By Commission,” 7. 194 came from the involvement of representatives of various political constituencies—Bell was no doubt thinking of people like Reuther for labor and Whitney Young for African

Americans. These representatives, combined with academics providing the data about the social problem under study, formed the elite who could reach compromises not easily reached outside the commission format, or so Bell argued in The Public Interest.

Bell had started The Public Interest with Kristol while being on the Automation

Commission and the magazine reflected the political ideas Bell developed during this time. Explaining the magazine’s raison d’être in the first issue, Bell and Kristol wrote that “the past decade of American politics is chock full of great debates that never happened.”363 What happened instead, they argued, was politics as usual with its messy disagreements, incomplete knowledge about the causes of programs, and, especially, all determining “commitments to ideologies, whether liberal, conservative or radical.”364 The problem with ideologies was that “they do not simply prescribe ends but also insistently propose prefabricated interpretations of existing social realities—interpretations that bitterly resist all sensible revision.”365 With such a negative view of politics, it is unsurprising, perhaps, that the editors named their new magazine after an idea articulated by Walter Lippmann: “The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly, and benevolently.”

The quote came from Lippmann’s 1955 Essays in the Public Philosophy a book in which he articulated anew his critique of democracy. As we have seen in the first chapter,

Walter Lippmann’s dim view of democracy had closely mirrored that of Jouvenel when

363 Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, “What is the Public Interest?” The Public Interest, Fall 1965, 3. 364 Ibid. 365 Ibid, 4. 195 the later had started wondering how planning for the future and democracy fit together. In answering this question, Lippmann, Jouvenel, and Bell, all in their own way, came up with an increased role for experts.

In the first issue of The Public Interest, the relationship between the critique of democracy, and the need to plan for the future was quite obvious. After the intro in which

Bell and Kristol had explained their aim for the magazine, an article by Daniel S.

Greenberg argued against the notion that diffusion of a new class of scientific and technological elites in government was undemocratic.366 Bell followed this up with a long article on Olaf Helmer’s expert driven prediction technique, the DELPHI experiment whose results he had shared at the Yale Futuribles conference. Most planning was based on extrapolation, wrote Bell, but “for the more distant future—ten, twenty, and fifty years ahead—one necessarily relies on more intuitive judgements about the future.”367 In the article Bell meticulously detailed the methodology of the experiment, explaining how the eighty-two experts had been questioned, and how they had reached consensus views on the year in which certain technologies or milestones would be realized.

In the early issues of The Public Interest, then, Bell made much of expert driven and future oriented projects. But while he extolled the virtues of a “government by

Commission,” the actual government completely ignored the report that the Automation

Commission had produced. While the Commission members had been told to keep their agendas free for an official White House presentation, no such thing happened. Instead the report was made public during a regular administration press conference, without any

366 Daniel S. Greenberg, “The Myth of the Scientific Elite,” The Public Interest, Fall 1965, 51-62. 367 Daniel Bell, “The Study of the Future” The Public Interest, 1 (Fall 1965), 124. 196 remarks.368 The President never spoke about the results of the study he had commissioned, and after the newspapers reviewed the report, the whole thing went quiet.

Bell offered his own explanations for why this happened. That fears over automation had been assuaged by falling unemployment figures, was the “ostensible reason” for the White House’s indifference.369 The real reason, for Bell, was that the

White House did not want to be tied to the Commission’s “controversial” proposals. Yet,

Bell did not mention more obvious reasons for the official lack of interest, such as the

President’s preoccupation with the war in Vietnam. Or, the fact that the President had championed the Automation Commission during the 1964 campaign and that, in 1966, no immediate reason existed to focus on a topic of interest to workers and unions. Yet, Bell was in no way ready to re-examine his own view about the Automation Commission.

With seemingly undeserved confidence, he wrote that there was “little doubt that the proposals put forth by the Commission will find their way into public policy in the next decade.” And, he speculated, “they may even become the planks of the Democratic Party in 1968.”370 That the Commission proposals were, at once, too controversial, and also likely to be the Democratic Party platform for the next elections, seems contradictory to say the least. Bell did not admit that the policies he believed necessary for a fair and just advanced industrial society, were politically unacceptable, even to the most liberal administration since FDR’s. Instead, Bell simply argued that the Commission’s forward thinking measures would eventually be accepted. Yet, he did not explain why; he did not give evidence to back up such a claim. Here, Bell seemed susceptible to a faith in

368 Bell, “Government by Commission,” 4. 369 Ibid. 370 Bell, “Government by Commission,” 5. 197 progress that fell outside the realm of politics. He infused liberalism with a teleology that he denied others. He warned about the “trap of ideology” when it came to the New Left, and he criticized those who believed in the revolutionary potential of cybernation. His own ideas, however, seemed to identify a liberal elite with inherent progress toward a more rational and just society.

This outlook, with its veiled adherence to an unexamined notion of progress, allowed Bell to ignore the political failure of the Automation Commission. Instead, he merely interpreted the Commission as a successful example of a “Surmising Forum.”

Bell, therefore, was ready to continue his work on social forecasting. When the work of the Automation Commission was done, Bell had his next project already underway, thanks to the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences (AAAS). In fact, some parts of his chapter on forecasting in the Automation Report found their way into letters Bell sent to prospective members of this new endeavor.

The Futurism of the American Academy: The Commission on the Year 2000

In the years before the AAAS started the Commission on the Year 2000, the organization had displayed an intellectual focus that closely resembled the general outlook of Futuribles, and Bell’s own interests. From 1961 to 1967, Daedalus, the

Academy’s journal, featured special issues with titles such as “The Future Metropolis,”

“Evolution and Man’s Progress,” “Utopia,” and “Tradition and Change.” Stephen

Graubard, the editor of Daedalus had attended the Futuribles conference at Yale, and published Bell’s review of the different “modes of prediction.” Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote an essay for the “Utopia” volume in which he argued, once more, for a future 198 orientation as a steering mechanism, one that enabled modern states to navigate toward humanistic ends. Biologist Hudson Hoagland and former AAAS director Ralph W.

Burhoe wrote in the introduction to the “evolution and human progress” issue that

“scientists and scholars” were “in a position to see some of the future consequences and costs of current social practices before they become evident to decision makers.”371 And,

Hoagland and Burhoe noted, “perhaps those who are scouting the frontiers of new knowledge can envision potential opportunities and disasters ahead of their contemporaries.”372

In March of 1965 the AAAS started an endeavor titled “Shaping the American

Future,” which was later called “project 1976.” The intellectual fathers of this project were Carl Kaysen, and Jerome B. Wiesner, both veterans of the Kennedy administration.

Wiesner had been the chair of Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee, and Kaysen had been the Deputy National Security Advisor under McGeorge Bundy. When these two men returned to academic life after their stints in Washington, they proclaimed to be

“dismayed” as they saw “intensive studies and daring action proposed” in government agencies, “only to have the final federal program call for a mere 5 percent of what needed to be done.”373 What Kaysen and Wiesner wanted to do was to “invite experts from varied fields to sketch out real needs, define what a ten year development program would be” and then ask economists to determine what it would cost.374 They consciously put

371 Hudson Hoagland and Ralph W. Burhoe, “Introduction to the Issue ‘Evolution and Man’s Progress’” Daedalus (summer 1961), 411. 372 Ibid. 373 Report of Planning Committee on Shaping the American Future, Holyoke Center Harvard University, March 12, 1965, DPM Papers, Part I, Box 135, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 374 Ibid. 199 ideals before cost analysis. One reason for this was that both initiators feared that tax- cuts, not government spending, would be the tool to deal with a federal surplus. Tax cuts, like the one Kennedy had in fact proposed, were attractive to the general public, Kaysen and Wiesner argued, because people failed to see that federal expenditures were “long- term investments in the country.” Moreover, people didn’t know “what the country would be, or could be if major national commitments were made, not on one-year ad hoc basis, but on the basis of long-term goals.” At the first meeting for “project 1976” Kaysen and

Wiesner stated their intention; what was necessary was “something between a task-force report and utopia.”375

About fifteen figures from business, government and academia attended the planning meeting for this project, among them Bell, the Harvard economist John Kenneth

Galbraith, and Robert Coldwell Wood, a political scientist who would later serve as

Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of HUD. The meeting was organized to prepare a special

Daedalus issue on the subject, but Kaysen, at least, seemed to aim higher; he noted that the material produced would be “politically significant.” What Kaysen and Weisner proposed, was a broad discussion about the feasibility of planning for a qualitatively better society. Such a discussion aligned with President Johnson’s aims for the Great

Society, and his call to focus on “the quality of goals” over the “quantity of goods.”

Galbraith noted that the National Planning Association had commissioned ten year planning studies, but that they were “fairly mechanistic and quantitative.” He hoped that this project would go beyond these studies and “rethink such problems as public and private housing, its relationship to land use and pollution, using a range of qualitative and

375 Ibid. 200 aesthetic criteria.” He brought up the “aesthetic deterioration” of the environment by such blights as “highway billboards,” a topic he had discussed in detail in his 1958 bestseller

The Affluent Society. In that work Galbraith had argued that amidst growing private wealth there existed public squalor, and to remedy this, extensive public investments were needed. When he participated in the Project 1976 meeting, he was in the midst of writing, The New Industrial State, a work that expanded upon this thesis and focused especially on planning in advanced industrial economies.

Galbraith believed that planning was now the normal activity of large corporations. People with technical and specialized knowledge, or the “technostructure,” ran these corporations in place of the stock owners and they understood that the profitability and smooth operation of their enterprises depended on planning more than the free market. Yet, reigning economic theory and public perception falsely held that the market, determined by the wants of individuals, was the driving force of industrial society. In reality, argued Galbraith, consumer demand itself was created by the great industrial corporations through advertising, and it was part of their elaborate planning process. The corporations were closely tied to the state as well. Not only did the state fund the education of the members of the technostructure, but it also was solely able to invest in projects that pushed the bounds of technology. The space race and the armaments industry provided the corporations with a rationale for innovation as well as further planning. The failure to recognize the way in which the free market and small entrepreneurs had retreated before corporate planning and the technostructure, had important consequences for Galbraith. 201

Despite the emphasis on planning, modern industrial society was plagued by

“planning lacunae:” the failure of mass transit to connect cities, ghetto forming, and suburban sprawl were major problems. Yet, because of an anachronistic adherence to the free market, these problems were understood to be caused by the whims of consumer demand, and not a lack of planning. The solution, for Galbraith was to realize a strong federal planning authority. To “make livable the modern city and its surroundings” required something that could rival the planners concerned with “the manufacture of automobiles or the colonization of the moon” it meant “the scale, financial autonomy, control over prices and the opportunity to develop a technostructure…”376

Galbraith was thus sympathetic to the aims of project 1976, namely to advocate a need for extensive government planning. Yet, Kaysen and Wiesner, had returned from

Washington frustrated not about the formation, but the execution of plans in government.

Wiesner asked not only how to “make more acceptable the notion that there be more public planning” but also how to “influence public policy.”377 The MIT nuclear physicist

Jerrold Zacharias proposed describing “an ideal city” and using that as something to work towards. Yet, Bell disagreed and noted that devising a “utopian city” was not

“influencing public policy.” Zacharias defended his proposal by noting that “it could put the study in narrow and comprehensible terms,” something that would prohibit the work from being “too broad and too vague.” Yet, Bell took a different view and pointed towards forecasting as a necessary aspect of better public planning. He suggested that

376 John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), 354. 377 Report of Planning Committee on Shaping the American Future, Holyoke Center Harvard University, March 12, 1965, 14. DPM Papers, Part I, Box 135, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

202 copies of “reflections pour 1985,” the French planning study that Jouvenel had been associated with, be circulated amongst the members of the project. He also advocated a focus on structural changes in advanced industrial society: “the size of the factory,” “the length of the workday,” and other ways in which the nature of work would be subject to change.” Zacharias, however believed that such an approach regarded people as “fluid in the engine” and he wanted to know what people as “activists” were going to do, not

“what we will do for them.”

The two Daedalus issues that eventually emerged out of Project 1976 were only loosely related to the meeting prompted by Kaysen and Wiesner. One of the published issues dealt with urban problems and another dealt with the environment. Yet, only an essay by the environmentalist Harold Gilliam related directly to the kind of public planning, that Galbraith, Kaysen and Wiesner had called for. And Gilliam too realized that there were many problems in the integration of such planning in the government:

“[i]f it is necessary to build a highway around a park rather than through it, at higher acquisition and construction cost, should the difference be charged to the highway budget or the park budget?”378 Project 1976, then, struggled to make the discussions about planning concrete.

While Project 1976 aimed to deal with a planning agenda for the next ten years, the AAAS had also secured a small amount of money from the Carnegie Corporation of

New York to host a conference on “an agenda for the year 2000.”379 This effort was to

378 Harold Gilliam “The Fallacy of Single-Purpose Planning,” Daedalus, fall 1967, 1156. 379 Progress Report on Grants to AAAS, November 18, 1964, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Grant Files III, Box 392 folder 1. Carnegie Corporation Archives, Butler Library Columbia University New York. (hereafter CCNY) 203

“examine the implications” of technological and social scientific forecasts. All this was to be done with an eye toward “the conscious control of the future.” A year later the AAAS reported to the Carnegie Corporation that they wanted to greatly broaden the scope of this new venture. They noted that Bell would chair a Commission on the year 2000, and that twenty-five men had already been selected as members. It was obvious that Bell and the

AAAS had great plans for this new enterprise. Instead of the 28.000 dollar that the

Carnegie had committed for all this, Bell now asked for 150.000, dollars to organize the

Commission.

The Carnegie Corporation proved to be an enthusiastic Maecenas for the futurist endeavors of the AAAS. Under the leadership of its long-time President John W.

Gardner, this philanthropic organization had been especially focused on the relationship between science, education and social change.380 Gardner’s views on education fitted the

Kennedy campaign’s post-Sputnik rhetoric about the need to encourage the best and brightest scientific minds. Gardner, a psychologist by training, always framed the issue of education in broad terms that included such things as “individual fulfillment,” “the mysteries of motivation,” and “social renewal.”381 One of his main intellectual preoccupations was the way in which “excellence”—by which he especially meant advanced levels of scientific and technical knowledge—clashed with the “equality” that was supposed to be a foundation of democracy.382 Gardner was thus interested not only in

380 Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 182-186. 381 See John W. Gardner, Excellence: Can we be Equal and Excellent Too? (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961). and John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal: the Individual and the Innovative Society (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964). 382 Gardner, Excellence, 109-118. 204 encouraging the nation’s level of scientific talent, but also in the way education shaped the nature of society. Such interests lined up well with Bell’s work on the post-industrial society. Right around the time the Carnegie Corporation funded the Commission on the

Year 2000, Gardner resigned in order to become President Johnson’s new Secretary of

Health, Education and Welfare.

When Bell started to select members for his commission, he first asked people who had come to the Futuribles seminar at Yale. Karl Deutsch, Ithiel de Sola Pool,

Eugene V. Rostow, Martin Shubik, and Herman Kahn all agreed to join. Other members came from liberal think tanks or government, and often moved between the two during the mid-1960s. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had just left the Labor Department for

Wesleyan’s Center for Advanced Studies, when he agreed to join. Law Professor and urban planner Charles M. Haar had been an adviser to Kennedy and also chaired

Johnson’s National Task Force on the Preservation of Natural Beauty.383 Harvey Perloff, who had taught architecture and urban planning at the University of Chicago, had advised

Kennedy on the Alliance for Progress. He was now a director at Resources for the Future, a think tank that studied natural resource scarcity and long term economic policy.384

There were especially close connections between members of the Commission on the year 2000 and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This new department was created by Johnson in 1965 and became operational in 1966, right around the time that the commission on the year 2000 held its most important meetings. Paul N.

Ylvisaker of the Ford Foundation, psychiatrist Leonard Duhl of the National Institute of

383 Kerry M. Flynn, “Charles M. Haar, Adviser to Three Presidents, Dies at 91” Harvard Crimson, February 2, 2012. 384 “RFF’s Legacy” http://www.rff.org/about/rff-s-legacy 205

Mental Health, and M.I.T. Professor Robert C. Wood were all part of a presidential task- force on cities that had advocated the new department. Wood was appointed HUD’s first undersecretary, while Duhl was the author of the Urban Condition a book that was influential in shaping HUD’s community action programs. Ylvisaker, meanwhile was a public affairs director at the Ford Foundation where he oversaw the distribution of over

200 million Dollars of grant money to states and cities to fight urban problems. Ylvisaker was also part of an informal group of liberals, put together by Johnson’s liaison to academia Eric Goldman, that brainstormed about Great Society legislation in 1964.385

In a letter to those who had accepted the invitation to join the Commission, Bell laid out the ambitious role he believed the commission should play. He wrote that he wanted to identify the problems that would be decisive for the society of the year 2000, and also to design new institutional forms to cope with these problems. What the commission could do, Bell wrote, was to “embark on the creation of a ‘new enlightenment’ congruent with the new conceptual models and concepts being formulated in the sciences and arts today.”386 The phrase “new enlightenment,” was often used during the mid-1960s to indicate the important social and political role of knowledge and the university after World War II. John Kenneth Galbraith used the term in the BBC’s

Reith Lectures that eventually became The New Industrial State. It was when he discussed the relation between government planning and investments in education that he

385 Robert C. Wood, Whatever Possessed the President? Academic Experts and Presidential Policy, 1960- 1988 (Amherst: The University of Amherst Press, 1993), 70-71. 386 Daniel Bell, letter to members of the Commission, July 19, 1965. Grant Files Series III, Box 392 folders 1 & 2, CCNY, New York. 206 spoke of a “new enlightenment.”387 The intellectual historian Howard Brick has tied the phrase most specifically to Clark Kerr and his Uses of the University; “Kerr trumpeted the promise of a new Enlightenment as he tried to square intellectual service to powerful social organizations beyond the campus gate with the doctrine of disinterested scholarship.”388 For Brick, it included “an instrumentalist” view of knowledge and an

“engineering conception of science.” Bell’s emphasis on the role of the university and new intellectual techniques in the post-industrial society, as well as his desire for an applied and problem solving role for the Commission, seems to fit well with Brick’s understanding of the phrase.

A few weeks after that first letter, Bell mailed out his Commission prospectus to the potential members. It started out by noting that society had become “future-oriented in all dimensions.”389 Corporations had to consider future technologies and markets, individuals had to consider” long-term career choices,” and government policy was increasingly formulated on the basis of “short-run and long-run position papers.”

Moreover, what was now beginning to stir was the realization that social change could be

“directed consciously,” and that there existed a need to “consider the anticipated consequences of change.” Bell mentioned the efforts of Jouvenel and Futuribles, in stimulating interest in thinking about the future, as well as the RAND focus on forecasting. Before discussing what the Commission could do, Bell noted that the idea of

387 John Kenneth Galbraith, “The New Industrial State,” BBC Reith Lectures, 1966. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-reith-lectures/transcripts/1960/ 388 Howard Brick, Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s (Cornell University Press, 2000), 24. 389 Daniel Bell, “Preliminary Statement,” Working Papers of the Commission on the Year 2000, Vol. 1 (The American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, Boston: 1965/1966), 1. (hereafter cited as WP vol. 1, COY2K) 207 a Commission on the year 2000 “might seem outré.” Yet one should consider,” he stressed, “that this millennial point is only thirty-five years away, and it will be within the life-time experience of more than three-fourths of all Americans now alive.”390

Bell proposed two “broad functions” for the commission. The first of these he had already introduced in his earlier letter: “to identify problems that will be coming to a head about that time, and to propose appropriate strategies or new institutions to cope with them.” The second function involved the identification of “structural changes in society and related shifts in values.” Politicians “today” had “little room for manoeuvre” in dealing with social policy, wrote Bell. In areas like housing, mass transit, and education the conceptual framework for responding to problems were laid down long ago; “in a sense we are trapped by the past.” Yet, the current problems in civil rights, in inadequate medical and educational facilities “were all foreseeable, and planning could have begun, ten and fifteen years ago to meet these needs.”

An unofficial first meeting of the Commission on the Year 2000 took place in early October at the Columbia University Faculty Club, and continued in Bell’s

Morningside apartment. 391 Only members of the “working party”—the Commission’s organizing committee—attended. The goal of this meeting was to make the goals of the commission more concrete, and move beyond Bell’s broad prospectus. To do this the discussion focused on determining relevant topics. A curiously eclectic list was drawn up; it included such entries as “population and the age balance,” “the state of the

International system,” “the adequacy of the existing federal-State-city structures in a

390 Bell, “Preliminary Statement,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 2. 391 Daniel Bell, Invitation to Members of planning commission, July 19, 1965. Grant Files Series III A Box 392 folders 1 & 2, CCNY, New York City. 208

‘national society,’’’ and “will the negro have been included?”392 Although Bell tried to distill four general “dimensions” out of this list—“bounded problem areas,” Underlying sociological assumptions, philosophical assumptions, and “the process of change”—the question about the “scope” of the endeavor was still very much unanswered. What was also discussed, but unresolved, was whether or not the commission should aim for the drafting of a “general document,” a statement that called for specific action to be undertaken, such as the creation of institutional “planning mechanisms.” All these questions were left for the first meeting of the commission, which took place over the weekend of 22-24 October, 1965 at the House of the Academy in Boston.

When Bell opened this first official session, he offered a warning about a peculiar pitfall in thinking about the future. He spoke about the danger of “being seduced” by the notion that “great technological breakthroughs constantly occur.”393 Such an idea, said

Bell, could be found in the work of H.G. Wells, but it was a mistaken outlook on the future. He mentioned how even “the very serious” DELPHI study by Helmer at RAND suffered from this flaw, especially their overblown notions about the impacts of automation. For Bell, an emphasis on the role of technology was wrong for two reasons.

First, a historical look at important inventions like the transistor or the laser showed that such breakthroughs were not predictable, and second, a focus on technology obscured how changes in the social structure could result from the changing scale and diffusion of old technologies. As an example for that last term, diffusion, Bell noted that in 1939 14% of the population went to college while that number had now reached 40%. Nothing in

392 Bell, “Preliminary Statement,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 2. 393 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 4. 209 this incredibly important process of social change had been the result of technological breakthroughs.

Ernst Mayer, a Harvard professor of zoology, echoed Bell’s warning about technological determinism. Mayer noted that the papers on forecasting and the future that he had received before the commission meeting, could be divided into two categories: one written by “technologists and engineers,” and the other by people “who were more interested in the movement of ideas,” and “Mankind,” “spelled with a capital ‘M.’”394

Ithiel de Sola Pool disagreed. He said that the Delphi study had looked weak on anything that was not related to technological change. Pool had been one of the “experts” upon which the Delphi study relied, and he now defended the study’s technological orientation.

The non-science panels, he said, “essentially predicted that whatever has been becoming, whatever was recently happening, was going to be a little more so.”395 The technological predictions however, were more meaningful because they offered something beyond extrapolation of trends. Pool mentioned the Delphi prediction concerning “feasibility of genetic modification,”—something the experts had put at the year 2000—as an example of a prediction that could cast “considerable doubt” on all the other non-scientific extrapolations. Genetically modified food, after all, could invalidate all sorts of extrapolations relating to population growth and the food supply. Genetic modification, moreover, could also affect aging and the general health of people. Pool thus argued that, sometimes, technology could indeed produce a breakthrough that changed the future.

394 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 8. 395 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 12. 210

The Yale economist and Game Theory expert Martin Shubik—also one of the

Delphi experts—articulated the obvious compromise in the discussion about the importance of technological change. The area most deserving of attention, he said, was the one “between the two, that is, the technological problems together with the problems of society.”396 For Shubik, technological determinism often led to a focus on the wrong problems. Yet, there were also “social critics” who were “great experts at addressing themselves to the right problems” without any knowledge about the technological roots, or the technological solutions to such problems. Harvard Economic professor Wassily

Leontief seconded all this. What was great about the Commission was that it brought together many different types of expertise; “we should profit from it to see how it all fits together.” The result of this, said Leontief, was a “kind of ecological systems approach.”397 Yet how such an approach might work in practice to produce forecasts was left up in the air.

To avoid wading deeper in such theoretical quagmires Bell hoped to start with a

“hypothetical future,” and offered a brief sketch of his familiar post-industrial future.

Another set of scenarios that could be used in the discussions had been given by Karl

Deutsch in the first session. Deutsch had speculated about five broad themes and how they related to the year 2000. He discussed technological change, psychological problems, political problems, demographics, and the international system.398 Bell hoped that by using these scenarios, and the predictions within them, the discussion would get

396 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 10. 397 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 13. 398 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 14-20. 211 more concrete. Herman Kahn agreed and he offered to produce a set of “scenarios” that could function as a baseline for later meetings of the Commission.

Deutsch’s sketch of the future, however, had been so broad that every speaker commented on some different part of his projection once the discussion started. The participants rarely challenged each other’s ideas, but instead moved on to offer up predictions about aspects that related to their own field of expertise. Finally, Harold

Orlans of the Brookings Institute intervened and said “I think that we are going to have to come round to a brief statement of our agreement about the year 2000.”399 Deutsch followed suit and wondered whether it would be possible to use the transcripts of the meetings in order to draw up a list of every single prediction that was offered. Then he said: “Ask everybody to check whether he generally agrees with the prediction made.”

Deutsch, who had seen Helmer’s presentation on the Delphi method at the Yale

Futuribles conference, now seemed to propose a rudimentary Delphi experiment. He wanted to “go back to this group in February by correspondence, asking whether there is a point of crucial evidence, or crucial research or knowledge available by then which would make a difference in the predictions.”

Orlans and Deutsch were not the only participants who intervened for the cause of procedural clarity. Psychiatrist Leonard J. Duhl, Chief Planner at the National Institute of

Mental Health found himself wondering “when the anxiety [of the participants] should break.” Punning on the subject matter, he noted that he had already “predicted that it probably would break this afternoon.” He continued in a more serious manner:

399 “Transcripts of Second Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 79. 212

Somebody would scream at Dan and say, ‘well, goddammit, where’s the leadership here, what are we going to do.’ I figure it’s about time for a certain kind of intervention if this prediction is correct. I sense in here a need for us to get really relatively concrete, concrete in the sense that maybe now we should stop all our wild speculations…But if we don’t get concrete, we are going to be overwhelmed by the anxiety of the group and say what the hell are we doing here, it’s a waste of energy and time.400

Havard law professor Charles M. Haar offered a similar critique of the proceedings, and he seemed especially troubled by the participants who aimed to get at the future through philosophical themes and abstract concepts. Haar asked: “If we are struggling with problems like the nature of man, or war and peace, depression and social forces, and the corporation, how do we get something more than interesting cocktail party conversation?” A little later he wondered about “the focus of the group and what it can do that RAND and these other projections have not done.” He finally exclaimed: “I just don’t have any sense yet of what is doable here.”401

After these comments Eugene Rostow came to Bell’s aid. In a dig directed at

Duhl he noted that it was strange to see “the psychiatrist so much more anxious than the rest of us.” He then offered “a word of comfort to the chair.” He noted that it was always going to take time to get a Commission going. Bell, appreciating Rostow’s attempted rescue, noted: “I think what you have here is the effort to of all kinds of people to wrestle with social forces, to get a coherence out of 30 different minds moving restlessly in different directions.”402 But, instead of attempting to get those minds into a shared direction, Bell sensed that the best he could do was call time out. So when the group

400 “Transcripts of Second Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 85. 401 “Transcripts of Second Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 84. 402 “Transcripts of Second Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 88. 213 disbanded for lunch that Saturday in October, the sense of chaos and dissatisfaction that hung over the proceedings had not been lifted.

Although the original transcripts of the Commission convey the chaos and confusion without editorial intervention, a second version—heavily edited—was published, alongside other Commission material, by Daedalus in the summer of 1967. In the introduction, Daedalus editor and Commission member Stephen Graubard wrote that the issue had been “organized in such a way as to lead the reader through the various stages of the Commission’s deliberations.” And, a few sentences later, he stated: “our object has been to retain the informality of the original mimeographed documents…”403

These documents were only altered, he wrote, so as to “make them more meaningful to those unacquainted with the Commission’s work.” In reality, the edits had eliminated from the transcripts the clear sense of chaos and confusion—and even acrimony—that had characterized the early sessions. Thus, Duhl’s annoyed cry of “goddammit, where’s the leadership here” was deleted, and the only evidence of his frustration that remained was a weak: “If we do not become concrete, we are going to be overwhelmed by anxiety.” Similarly, Haar’s notion that the discussions were “cocktail party talk,” became:

“It might be useful if we set down guidelines.”404

The Daedalus issue was published a year later as a hardcover book by Houghton

Mifflin, and in paperback by Beacon Press. In the forward to a 1997, M.I.T. Press re- issue, Bell and Graubard estimated that, in total, some hundred thousand copies had been

403 Daniel Bell, ed. Toward the year 2000: Work in Progress (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), v. 404 Bell, ed., Toward the year 2000, 59. 214 printed.405 These copies all included the edited “transcripts.” In light of Bell’s championing of a Surmising Forum, as he did in The Public Interest, these edits deserve some scrutiny. After all, Bell argued that disinterested discussion amongst the elite was to be preferred over the messy and overly ideological “normal play of politics.”406 Yet, by editing the disagreement and chaos out of a discussion by elite academics, Bell was creating a false notion of the nature of such discussions. Attempting to talk about a future society was not an orderly, or structured, process; De Jouvenel understood as much when he fished around for terminology and settled on the “art of conjecture.” Yet, Bell now seemed uncomfortable by the disorder of the sessions. The fact that he was directly criticized in the original transcripts undoubtedly played a role in the decision to make the edits. Bell and Graubard could, of course, have made the decision to publish only the papers—there were enough to fill a book by the time the Daedalus issue was put together. That they insisted on including “transcripts” cannot be disassociated from Bell’s emphasis on the merits of elite participation in policy-debating forums or commissions.

Forecasting, Planning & the Irrationality of the Political System

The original transcripts show that the most obvious sense of disorder and confusion ebbed away after the first two sessions. Bell seemed to acknowledge the critiques against him, and he quipped that “in most conferences you have to pull people kicking and screaming to come to a concrete problem, and here the group itself is kicking and screaming that the chair is too slow.” In response, Bell asked the participants to think about what specific themes they wanted to focus on and eventually produce papers about,

405 Daniel Bell and Stephen R. Graubard, eds. Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997), xi. 406 Bell, “Government By Commission,” 7. 215 so that the working parties could begin to take shape. Bell himself introduced what he believed should be such a theme, and this was “the political structure” of the year 2000.

Bell now returned to something he had brought up in the original Commission prospectus, namely: “a feeling that we simply have not learned how to anticipate problems.” He now asked for a discussion on planning, but also the structure of government itself, whether or not the “federal, state, city,” structure would apply to the society of the year 2000.407

Harvey Perloff started the discussion by highlighting the problems of city planning in a way that was reminiscent of the New York City Planning Symposium.

What the present governmental structure was “wonderfully well equipped to achieve,” he said, was responding to the needs of various interest groups. Yet Perloff argued that, at a metropolitan level, this had some nasty side-effects. It produced a fracturing of urban society, where whites aimed to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods, and polluting factories were clustered together in the bad part of town. Perloff’s ideal notion of urban planning would counter such fracturing; cities had to be places in which different classes and races mixed, and where concerns over the welfare of the entire urban environment trumped narrow interest group aims. One way this could be done was to break up the current hodgepodge of local governmental powers in favor of overarching metropolitan governments. Perloff admitted right away that this was unlikely to gain favor with urban citizens who kept their local politicians in power precisely because they represented the interests of their specific groups.

407 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 90. 216

If the current urban power structure was an obstacle, starting over altogether might work. Perloff talked about “the creation of quite new cities specifically geared to setting up governments which can achieve certain social ends.” Housing had to be

“across a range of incomes” so “the poor” and “non-whites” would not be excluded, and the size had to be small enough so people could “participate in the governmental process.”408 The point, for Perloff, was to make a new city “so attractive” that people

“would be willing to give up their present advantages.”

Bell asked Perloff if he was thinking of specific experiments in city planning, like the “New Town” of Reston Virginia, a project started in 1964. Harold Orlans, however, jumped in and noted that Perloff had offered a “utopian notion” to deal with realistic problems. “Somehow utopia seems a little more realizable when you move into completely fresh land, with fresh population, as if these people had no history before and no political or economic factors operating there.” Such ideas were simply “silly,” according to Orlans.409 Perloff countered that he was not thinking about the New Town idea specifically, but that he merely wanted to show that urban planning had to be directed at “social and political ends.” To counter Orlans’s critique he noted that such planning could also be realized in existing cities by “reorganizing” education, housing, and transportation. That this answer contradicted his earlier point about the intransigent urban political system was obvious. Certainly, Paul Ylvisaker was not impressed:

“Harvey Perloff, to me, shows a certain medievalistic conception of how to handle the arrangements of cities,” he said. What Perloff had indicated were to Ylvisaker merely

408 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 93-94. 409 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 95. 217

“static solutions.” The problem with such a notion of planning was that it struggled to accommodate the actual give and take of the political process.

Ylvisaker now echoed Kaysen and Wiesner in noting that the problem of the political structure in “handling changing times” was not planning but execution; “we have got groups like this, foundations, the universities, which are all quick to perceive problems in the future…” Moreover, politicians seemed receptive to the kind of thinking the commission was doing. “The Joe Clarks, the Lindsays, and so forth, they’ve got every one of us working for them in one way or another.” Yet once public problems had been identified, “the legislative sensitive, the judges sensitive, and the President leading through television, how does the job get carried out?” Ylvisaker admitted that he did not have an answer to this question, but he framed the problem as one of bureaucracy.

Specifically, it was the challenge of having large bureaucracies, intent on public problem solving be consistent with “pluralism and increasing freedom.” Bureaucracies, he noted, were not flexible enough to deal successfully with social change. “If you ever tried to recruit a bureaucracy to do a job, you know that by the time you recruited it, the job is done already…”410

In his critique of bureaucracy and top-down decision making, Ylvisaker was supported by Leonard Duhl, the psychiatrist who headed the National Institute of Mental

Health. Both Ylvisaker and Duhl argued that the antidote to bureaucracy was public participation in the planning and decision making process. Both men had been involved in setting up HUD, and championed the Community Action Programs. While at the Ford

Foundation, Ylvisaker had been involved with the Mobilization for Youth in New York,

410 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 95-99. 218 a Community Action Program that focused on the Lower East Side. He became convinced that the solution to urban problems lay in a combination of local action and federal funding. Duhl’s belief in empowering local organizations, meanwhile, was formed during the Korean War when, in the midst of his psychiatric training at the elite

Menninger Clinic in Kansas, he fulfilled his military duties for the Public Health Service in California. Failing to get the poor to undergo x-ray test for Tuberculosis in poverty stricken Richmond, Duhl started to work with a Quaker group that had organized neighborhood daycare programs and “chicken dinners.”411 Duhl quickly found that it was much easier to get people tested for TB if they were involved in this community process.

By the early 1960s, after he had accepted a position as “long-range planner” at the

Institute of Mental Health, Duhl incorporated these insights into a study on the health of cities, titled The Urban Condition. This book, in essence, articulated the ideas behind what would become the HUD’s Model Cities program. Ylvisaker’s faith in community action was also reflected by his career choices. When in 1966 he received various offers for positions in the Johnson administration, as well as the opportunity to become deputy mayor for New York under Lindsay, he chose instead to become New Jersey’s first commissioner of Community Affairs. A job that offered him the chance to be part of the community action programs in that state.

During the third session of the Commission meeting, Ylvisaker’s and Duhl’s critique of bureaucracy and centralized decision-making was challenged by Zbigniew

Brzezinski. The Columbia University political scientist and Soviet scholar doubted

411 Joe Flower, “Excerpts from a Conversation with Leonard Duhl” Healthcare Forum Journal, Vol.36, May-June 1993. Accessed online December 2015 http://www.well.com/-bbear/duhl.html. 219 whether more democracy made planning for the future any easier. Brzezinski noted that he had compared recent American literature on goals and future projection with the

Soviet Union’s 22nd Party Congress’s program and he was struck by the fact that both sets of documents were inherently conservative. All they featured were “marginal adjustments of present trends without any fundamental departures in social organization” or “political organization.”412

He noted that the Commission discussion about city planning had focused on the year 1965, not 2000. Government was “conservative” in the sense that it was always responding to change; it was only able to offer “post-crisis management institutions.” The real question, for Brzezinski, was how to have “pre-crisis-management-institutions” in a democratic society. Answering his own question, he proposed to “separate the political system from society,” which meant, in essence, limiting democracy. Earlier in the

Commission discussions Brzezinski had already indicated that the democratic political system were not well equipped to deal with the increasingly complex and technical nature of society. “The concept of representation as we presently conceive it,” said Brzezinski, was not well suited for the future. The “predominance of lawyers and generalists” will have to give way to “technological and functional specialization.” No longer could legislation be “a cancelling out and balancing of interests.” Instead it would have to be something “more abstracted” involving the “weighing of interrelationships within the society” and “within the technological processes.” This could only be done by a

“computing and planning agency outside the legislative process.”413

412 “Transcripts of Second Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 52-53. 413 “Transcripts of Second Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 54. 220

A “relevant model” was France under De Gaulle. French society was still

“libertarian, democratic, pluralistic,” yet the political system was “increasingly technical in orientation.”414 Moreover, in such a political system, said Brzezinski, “the intellectual is increasingly a functional specialist and no longer” either a “political activist” or a

“critic.” Pushed by Bell to explain how this was still a democratic society, Brzezinski admitted that it was “democratic in a libertarian, negative sense.” It was “not democratic in terms of exercising fundamental choices concerning policy making, but democratic in the sense of maintaining certain areas of autonomy for individual self-expression.”415

Brzezinski added that something like the French “Groupe 1985,”—the one that

Jouvenel had played a role in—could never operate in America. Bell said he agreed with

Brzezinski about the unfeasibility of an American version of French planning, and he believed Brzezinski’s characterization of the French form of democracy could not be

“grafted” on the American “political structure.”416

There is something strange about the fact that the chairman of the Commission on the Year 2000 casually admitted that De Jouvenel’s “groupe 1985” could never function in America. This statement, then, revealed more than Bell perhaps realized. If American democracy did not allow for a kind of expert-driven and future oriented planning, should not the ambitions of the Commission on the year 2000 be drastically lowered? After all,

Bell had stated that the Commission, by “anticipating future problems,” could “plan for these, pose alternative policies” and “strengthen the decision making process.”417 What

414 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 111-112. 415 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 113. 416 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 113. 417 Daniel Bell, “Some Common or Loosely Agreed Upon Assumptions,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 5. 221

Bell and Brzezinski were saying, perhaps without realizing it, was that the goals of the

Commission on the Year 2000 were incompatible with American democratic decision- making.

One reason why Bell and Brzezinski so easily dismissed an American version of

French forecasting and planning was that they overstated the role and influence of the

“Groupe 1985.” Instead of interpreting the French effort as a future-oriented brainstorming session of outside intellectuals—merely hosted by the state— they conflated it with French “dirigisme,” or the type of indicative planning that peaked under

De Gaulle. Such an idea presupposed that the French had actually found a way to tie futurism—forecasting, or conjecture—with five years plans for industry and social policy. Yet, as De Jouvenel had made clear in The Art of Conjecture, this was not the case; the book, in fact, was in large part written to convince people that a future orientation in government was necessary. Moreover, in the same book Jouvenel had struggled mightily to discuss how planning and forecasting related to each other.

Eugene Rostow pushed Brzezinski to explain exactly what part of the American democratic system obstructed the formation of anticipatory elements; was it the voter, or

“the bureaucracy, or the legislative or executive part?” Brzezinski answered that wherever policies were most “under domestic pressure” they were the least “innovative” and “imaginative.” In “defense and foreign policy” the government had come closest to realizing “pre-crisis management,” Brzezinski argued without giving an example.

Rostow, however, took a different view; for him the greatest impediment had been “the 222 intellectual failure of the experts to provide the ideas.”418 Rostow picked up the fact that

Brzezinski made an implicit distinction between rational planning by elites and irrational interest group politics. But, for Rostow, intellectuals could best serve a forward-looking agenda if they provided ideas about the future, not “new mechanisms,” meaning technocratic planning solutions. If the goal was an increased sensibility to the process of change, than the pressures of domestic politics should be taken seriously. There was, said

Rostow, an “over-emphasis on the importance of economics,” and the idea that politics simply meant how “to mediate and settle controversies about economic affairs” was wrong. The most important political problems were not conducive to rational problem solving at all, argued Rostow. He noted that in France the Fourth Republic had fallen over Algeria, an emotional issue, not an economic one. In the entire history of the U.S. the biggest political problem was “the negro question.” These political problems, were

“insoluble human ones,” said Rostow.419

Rostow hinted at the fact that rational planning ran up against emotive politics, but he did not, like Rustin had done at the New York City Planning Symposium, explicitly say that racism made it difficult to find rational solutions for America’s urban problems. Yet he did indicate that forecasting the future, and planning for the future, could not ignore politics in favor of value-neutral tinkering.

Both Bell and Brzezinski struggled to define the relationship between social change, forecasting, planning, and democracy. Their work often displayed an impatience with the irrationality or narrow-minded nature of politics, and they tended to reach for

418 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 117. 419 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 118. 223 technocratic solutions. During the second half of the decade, Brzezinski came up with the term “technetronic” to describe the future of America and the west. His ideas mirrored

Bell’s on the Post-industrial society, a fact that Brzezinski always mentioned in his publications. Although Bell focused less on specific technological innovations, and

Brzezinski’s focus was always international, the two ideas overlapped in many respects.

Both Bell and Brzezinski stressed the diminishing importance of manufacturing and farming to the economy, and the rapid pace of technological innovation. When

Brzezinski worked out his ideas about the “technetronic” future in a series of articles and a book, the ambiguity—or indecisiveness—about the exact relationship between social change, forecasting, planning and democracy did not diminish. In a 1968 Encounter article, for instance, Brzezinski wrote that “the rapid pace of [technological] change will put a premium on anticipating events and planning for them.”420 When he speculated about how this anticipating and planning could be achieved, Brzezinski reiterated what he had said about the French style of expert-driven planning during the Commission discussion:

The largely humanist-oriented, occasionally ideologically minded intellectual dissenter, who saw his role largely in terms of proffering social critiques, is rapidly being displaced either by experts and specialists, who become involved in special governmental undertakings…A community of organization-oriented application-minded intellectuals, relating itself more effectively to the political- system than their predecessors, serves to introduce into the political system concerns broader than those likely to be generated by that system itself and perhaps more relevant than those articulated by outside critics.421

This technocratic sounding argument was accompanied by a footnote, in which

Brzezinski warned of the danger that the university—the supposed home of the experts—

420 Zbigniew Brzezinski, “America in the Technetronic Age,” Encounter, January 1968, 21. 421 Brzezinski, “America in the Technetronic Age,” 22. 224 could become an “industry, no longer detached from power, and committed to the disinterested search for truth.”422 On the previous page, moreover, Brzezinski had offered a warning about a possible trend “toward a technocratic dictatorship,” one that left “less and less room for political procedures as we now know them.” Quite obviously then,

Brzezinski struggled to make up his mind about the desirability of the technocratic future he predicted. In Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Age, a 1970 book based on the Encounter article, Brzezinski finally resigned himself to the fact he could not solve the problem. He wrote: “How to combine social planning with personal freedom is already emerging as the key dilemma of technetronic America, replacing the industrial age’s preoccupation with balancing social needs against requirements of free enterprise.”423

In articulating his vision for a post-industrial society, Bell ran up against very similar problems. Earlier in the decade, Bell charged the Ad-Hoc Committee on the

Triple Revolution with ignoring politics in favor of a technological determinism. He had noted that “the crucial turning points in a society… ultimately…come to a head in some political form.” Yet, Bell’s own theory of postindustrial society seemed hardly compatible with the current political system. The shift from a “business civilization” to a knowledge society in which the university would be “the central institution” obviously included an important role for experts. These experts, working in “the research corporation, the industrial laboratories, the experimental stations, and the universities,”

422 Brzezinski, “America in the Technetronic Age,” 22. 423 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York: The Viking Press, 1970), 260. 225 held the promise of guiding business and government to a rational planning process.424

But if the “skeletal structure” of the post-industrial society was “already visible,” as Bell argued, then how did these experts relate to democracy?425

Bell tried to answer this question when he published his long circulating, and often revised, paper on post-industrialism in the 1967 winter and spring issues of The

Public Interest. He argued, for instance, that the technocrats could be seen as a “new constituency” of a pluralist political system; they were part of the political “brokerage system.” Therefore, argued Bell, “the technical intelligentsia becomes a claimant, like other groups, for public support.” Yet, immediately after stating this—in parentheses in fact—Bell qualified this claim by noting that the technocratic “influence” was “felt in the bureaucratic and administrative labyrinth, rather than in the electoral system and through mass pressure.” This qualifier negated the notion of technocrats becoming an interest group. After all, if they had influence through an “administrative labyrinth,” then their power was only tied to the executive realm of the political system and not fully integrated in a pluralist democratic system.

In “part two” of Bell’s Notes on Post-Industrial Society” published in the spring of 1967, Bell echoed Brzezinski’s exasperation before the problem: “the relation between the technocrat and the politician, serving as the broker for various interest groups, will become one of the problematic issues of the post-industrial society.”426

But then, in a section titled “social choices and individual values” Bell explicitly discussed the tension between rational planning and irrational politics, and revealed a

424 Daniel Bell, “Notes on the Post-Industrial Society I,” The Public Interest, winter 1967, 30. 425 Bell, “Notes on the Post-Industrial Society I,” 27. 426 Daniel Bell, “Notes on the Post-Industrial Society II,” The Public Interest, spring, 167, 102. 226 great deal about his own thinking. He noted that part of the post-industrial transformation was the emergence of a “communal society,” something that functioned parallel to the free market system. People looked toward government for “the planning of cities and the rationalization of transit, the maintenance of open spaces and the extension of recreational areas, the elimination of air pollution and the cleaning up of the rivers, the underwriting of education and the organization of adequate medical care.”427 Since these were communal functions, there was an expectation that this could be provided for in a way to satisfy the needs of the general public. But there was a problem here, argued Bell.

The free market functioned to align individual needs with private goods and services, and through the price system this process could be understood. Yet, there was no “social calculus” to manage the services of the communal society. In fact, “the effort to create social choice out of a discordance of individual preferences necessarily sharpens value conflicts.” It was ironic, argued Bell, that “the more planning there is in a society, the more there are open group conflicts.”428

Bell here was restating what he had said at the New York planning symposium: people did not agree on what kind of “communal goods” they wanted. Yet, what is remarkable here, is the way Bell made this argument. He wanted to offer proof that politics as usual could not handle public planning. To do so he relied on the mathematical theory of Kenneth Arrow’s social choice theory. With a complicated chart, he explained that if there were three voters who rated three possible polices in three different ways, then mathematical evidence existed that this could never be settled to the

427 Bell, “Notes on the Post-Industrial Society II,” 103 428 Ibid. 227 satisfaction of all three voters. This showed that “a group-welfare function” ran up against “a voting paradox.” And, Bell wrote, “to the extent that I can follow the technical literature, no solution is forthcoming.”429

All this is more informative about Bell’s desire to solve the tension between rational planning and interest-group democracy, than it is informative about modern politics, or the trajectory of industrial society. The end of this section in Bell’s Public

Interest piece captures how Bell started to question the possibility of a rationally managed society. Yet, because the potential of the “new intellectual techniques” was such an important part of his post-industrial theory, the questioning did not come easy. This crucial part of the essay, then, reads as if Bell was arguing with himself, and it deserves to be quoted at length:

This problem—of seeking to produce a single social ordering of alternative social choices which would correspond to individual orderings—is academic, in the best sense of the word. In the “real” world, the problem of social priorities, of what social utilities are to be maximized, of what communal enterprises are to be furthered, will be settled in the political arena by "political criteria"—i.e, the relative weights and pressures of different interest groups, balanced against some vague sense of the national need and the public interest. But it is precisely at this point that the problem becomes most irksome. For increasingly, one of the "issues" of a Great Society—which can be defined as a society that seeks to become conscious of its goals—is this relationship between "rationality" and "politics." The Great Society aims to rise above "mere" politics toward some kind of rational political behavior—but rigorous theoretical analysis leads us back to "mere" politics!430

Bell’s struggle over “a rational politics” occurred against the backdrop of contemporaneous debates about the so-called Program Planning Budgeting System. As editor of The Public Interest, Bell displayed a keen interest in this topic. PPBS originated

429 Bell, “Notes on the Post-Industrial Society II,” 104-105. 430 Bell, “Notes on the postindustrial society II,” 105. 228 from systems analysis, and was brought into the Department of Defense when Robert

McNamara asked RAND’s Charles Hitch for a way to challenge the annual appropriation requests from the three branches of the armed services. Essentially a tool for the centralization of power over the Department, PPBS tied specific objectives to cost analysis; it demanded that budgets include proof that the means to achieve certain ends were the most efficient. As Otis Graham Jr., described it in his study of planning: PPBS aimed for “explicitness, objectivity, and adequate data on all options.” The main purpose was to “flush choices out in the open, and bring top management some escape from incrementalism.”431

In 1965 President Johnson ordered all government departments to implement

PPBS, and he noted that “under this new system each cabinet and agency head will set up a very special staff of experts who, using the most modern methods of program analysis, will define the goals of their department for the coming year. All this, said Johnson, would “make our decision-making process as up-to-date…as our space exploring program.432

Bell’s gradually growing skepticism about the possibility of a rational politics was reflected in The Public Interest’s treatment of PPBS. In a 1966 issue, Virginia Held, a friend of Bell and a graduate student in philosophy at Columbia University at the time, wrote favorably about Johnson’s decision to implement PPBS across the federal government. She noted that “in initiating this new approach, the President is applying

431 Otis L. Graham Jr., Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 172. 432 Lyndon B. Johnson: "Statement by the President to Cabinet Members and Agency Heads on the New Government-Wide Planning and Budgeting System.," August 25, 1965. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27182. 229 throughout the government an approach toward more rational decision-making which has already swept through the Defense Department.” If this was “revolutionary,” she wrote, it was also “sensible.” Yet, despite such a favorable treatment of this “new intellectual technique,” Held did note that people questioned whether PPBS was compatible with the goals of all government departments. “Critics sometimes contend that the attempt to assign numerical values to such amorphous objectives as what an educational exchange program is aiming at, or what urban renewal is trying to accomplish, are of little use, and may be misleading.” Although PPBS was ultimately an important step toward rational governance, Held did conclude that “various unforeseeable and irrational factors will continue, sometimes rightly, to influence final decisions. And debates about just which sorts of considerations are the rational ones are bound to remain lively.”433

A year later, in the summer issue of 1967, The Public Interest abandoned this guarded optimism in favor of a much more critical view of PPBS. It was in the previous issue that Bell concluded that “the great society’s quest for rational planning lead back to normative questions and “mere politics.” Now he published three articles that emphasized especially the “limits of PPBS.” Introducing the issue Bell asked: “how does one measure

‘retraining programs,’ or ‘safety campaigns,’ or ‘cancer detection’ programs and the like?

Elizabeth Drew, a Washington correspondent painstakingly reviewed PPBS documents from the Department of Health Education and Welfare to answer such a question. She concluded that PPBS demanded an enormous amount of data that was usually not available. Moreover, thinking in terms of economic costs and benefits could produce some peculiar results. A cost effectiveness study of disease control programs concluded

433 Virginia Held, “PPBS comes to Washington,” The Public Interest, summer 1966, 102, 115. 230 that dealing with arthritis deserved priority over cervix, lung, and breast cancer prevention. Although arthritis was not deadly, “the potential of adding an additional one to five productive years to 13.000.000 arthritics” made this a strong program in cost/benefit terms. Even PPBS experts admitted that comparing programs was a tricky thing to do. In one of the other articles, William Gorham, a former RAND analyst and assistant secretary of Defense under McNamara, noted that comparing proposed programs was even harder to do. “If all cars had seat belts, would drivers use them? If all children saw pediatricians regularly, how much healthier would they be?” Answering these questions depended on “guesses and inferences,” admitted Gorham.434

These were serious but essentially practical concerns. The political scientists

Aaron Wildavsky, however, discussed the political limits of PPBS. He cast doubt first of all, on the claims of success within the Defense Department. There was no evidence that

McNamara’s men had tied specific objectives to alternative programs for their realization, and had subsequently evaluated those on the basis of cost efficiency.

Objectives were slippery things, even for the military. “Strategic retaliation" and

"continental defense" were distinct programs, yet, how could those be separated conceptually? “Simple concepts of programs evaporate upon inspection,” wrote

Wildavsky, and this failure could be “traced directly to the political reality that lies behind this seemingly academic exercise.”435

434 Daniel Bell, “Editor’s Note,” The Public Interest, summer 1967, 3; Elizabeth Drew, “HEW grapples with PPBS,” The Public Interest, summer 1967, 9-29; William Gorham, “PPBS: Its scope and limits: Notes of a Practitioner,” The Public Interest, summer 1967, 4-8. 435 Aaron Wildavsky, “PPBS: The Political Economy of Efficiency,” The Public Interest, summer 1967, 39-41. 231

There existed three different types of politics, wrote Wildavsky: policy politics, partisan politics and system politics. The first concerned itself with the kinds of policies that were adopted, partisan politics related to what party gained power, and system politics had to do with “how decisions structures” were set up. Program budgeting, according to Wildavsky, made claims on policy politics and system politics, but ignored partisan politics. There was an underlying assumption about Program Budgeting, namely that it was neutral, and that it itself existed outside politics. “How could men, otherwise so full of wisdom of the world, make so foolish a statement,” wondered Wildavsky. “It must be because they identify program budgeting with something good and beautiful and politics with something bad and ugly.”436 If the major complaint against PPBS and systems analysis was a lack of information on all factors operating in a complex system, then why reject the political bargaining system so curtly? Such complex achievements as building the interstate highway system were executed and shaped by the messy political process of bargaining and the occasional pork barrel. For Wildavsky, it was unlikely that

PPBS could have pulled of such a planning feat.

Wildavsky’s evaluation of PPBS, systems analysis, and cost analysis in The

Public Interest issue, was hardly compatible with the early spirit of the magazine. It was a Walter Lippmann quote after all that had given the magazine its name, but here was

Wildavsky celebrating the messy reality of politics against the misguided search for rationality on the part of experts. Bell never joined Wildavsky in celebrating interest group bargaining and the hodgepodge of authorities for their functionality. Yet, it is clear that starting in 1966, Bell no longer believed that the political process itself could be

436 Wildavsky, “PPBS,” 44. 232 rationalized. From this time forward, Bell always presented his theory of post- industrialism as one that did not integrate politics into its framework.

In doing so, Bell seemed to have internalized, at least partly, Wildavsky’s critique of technocratic thinking. At a 1969 symposium on “Computers, Communication and the

Public Interest” for instance, Bell responded to a paper read by the biologist George

Wald—heavy on technological determinism—by stating: “the hopes of a particular kind of rationality that says that decisions can be reduced to cost-benefit analysis must fall before politics.” The “technical intelligentsia” had to recognize the “assumptions about efficiency and rationality that underlie their techniques.” The politicians and the “political public,” meanwhile, would have to become “versed” in the technical aspects of a more complex society.437 This was the only way to bridge the gap between the dichotomous pressures that existed in post-industrial society; the technical versus the normative, and the rational versus the ideological. In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Bell included a slightly re-written version of the 1967 Public Interest essay and offered it as a concluding chapter. Under the header of “the cockpit of politics” Bell wrote:

…rationality as an end, finds itself confronted by the cantankerousness of politics, the politics of interest and the politics of passion. Faced with this double failure the adherents of rationality—in particular the planners and designers—are now in the difficult position to rethink their premises and to understand their limits. And yet, the recognition of those limits is itself the beginning of wisdom.438

Was Bell describing himself when he spoke of “adherents of rationality?” Less than two years before he considered the failures of PPBS in The Public Interest, Bell, was certainly in a “difficult position” as chairman of the Commission on the year 2000. He

437 Martin Greenberger, ed. Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 283. 438 Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 366. 233 had set goals for this enterprise that indicated a belief in the feasibility of rational planning for the future, but politics always seemed to get in the way. For Bell, rethinking premises and understanding limits, then, was an uncomfortable process, and one that produced some heated moments during the Commission discussions. In October of 1965, for instance, at the fourth general session, Bell’s inability to deliver on the Commission’s practical goals produced a major clash between the chairman and Donald Schön, the director of the Institute of Applied Technology.

When Bell had started to ask the participants to write papers about certain aspects of the society of the year 2000, Schön objected that the commission had set goals much more ambitious than the production of papers. “I have the uncomfortable feeling that what we are doing here is illustrating a problem,” Schön said. It was “the alienation of the intellectual… from the engine of society.” He said that he was not interested in “a book or a set of papers that appears in a learned journal and is read by our pears.” Instead,

Schön argued that if a “set of views on the future” was produced, than they had to be accompanied by “a process for their use,” a plan for action. If the anticipated future was positive then a plan needed to reflect ways in which this future could be realized, and if a negative future was forecast, then a program aimed to avoid it had to be drawn up.

Merely “making elegant statements” in the “annals of the academic community” was to

“abnegate the responsibility” for the future.439

Schön’s views on the role of the Commission were perfectly compatible with things Bell had said in his opening statement. Yet the chairman nevertheless dismissed

Schön’s critique snappishly: “I think Don Schön is knocking down an open door, as the

439 “Transcripts of Fourth Session: Sunday October 24, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 144-145. 234

Russian proverb says.” The Commission was not in the business of “recommending some concrete policy” for the Great Society, said Bell. Instead it was trying to do something

“fantastically different,” namely, to think about the society of the year 2000.440 Bell now argued that an important task of the commission was to “get people to think in a very imaginative way about the future” while society only accepted this in “science fiction.”

Bell said that Olaf Helmer had told him about his early efforts to study prediction and forecasting at RAND and how “everybody had hooted at him.” Trying to forecast and offer specific policy proposals was too much, Bell argued. Addressing Schön directly,

Bell continued:

I think in one way you saddle us—and you make me too depressed. I want to be a luftmensch—a luftmensch is someone who lives on air, rises high and gets his kicks in an intellectual way. This is the way Jews used to get high. This is what makes things very exciting. For many years of my life, I have been involved with the academy and teaching courses, now here is a chance to be a luftmensch, to rise high and now you tell me I have to be an anchor, a ballast to drag along. I don’t want to do that for a while. I want the members of the Commission to be luftmensch.441

There is much that is striking about these comments. Most notable is that they constituted a major departure from Bell’s prospectus, in which he had stressed the possibility to “direct change” or the formation of “a model planning agency.” But what is also remarkable is the way in which they contradicted the wording of the grant from the

Carnegie Corporation. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of a grant officer to Bell’s comments. Why would “getting kicks in an intellectual way” require 150,000 dollars?

That Bell dealt so brusquely with Schön betrays a frustration with the way the

440 “Transcripts of Fourth Session: Sunday October 24, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 145. 441 “Transcripts of Fourth Session: Sunday October 24, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 146. (emphasis in original) 235 commission discussions were playing out. Bell was confronted with the ambitions he himself had set. The Commission was to be more practical than Futuribles, had been; it had to forecast in the service of policy making. Yet, Bell and Brzezinski had casually remarked that the French Groupe 1985 would not work in the U.S. and Schön was now asking that they try to make it work.

After his “luftmensch” comment, Bell noted that Schön’s complaint should not have been addressed to this group but to “a Presidential Commission,” or “Project 1976,” since these were supposed to have a planning function. This is also revealing; none of the proposals of Bell’s own automation Commission had been taken up by the Johnson administration, and Kaysen and Weisner’s Project 1976 had not been able to figure out how to get a capitalist democracy to do more public planning. Ultimately, Bell’s embrace of impracticality, his wish to be a luftmensch, was a way to surrender before an insurmountable challenge without admitting defeat.

Bell’s refusal to tie the work of the Commission on the year 2000 to a specific policy agenda, and his struggle to specify what role planning played, meant that the only task left standing was forecasting. His involvement in Futuribles, however, had shown

Bell that methodological discussions about forecasting could become so vexing that they precluded the making of actual forecasts. To avoid this, Bell proposed taking a “simple speculative leap, with a self-consciousness of where one started from.”442 He asked

Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the Hudson Institute to facilitate this “speculative leap” with a number of “scenarios” on the year 2000.

442 “Transcripts of Fourth Session: Sunday October 24, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 153. 236

Methodology: Scenarios and Herman Kahn as “Luftmensch”

During the Commission’s second set of sessions, in February of 1966, Kahn presented some of his scenarios on the year 2000. Two of Kahn’s’ closest collaborators at the Hudson Institute, William Pfaff and Anthony Wiener, seemed to have done most of the writing. To temper Kahn’s famous penchant for “talking faster than you can hear,”

Bell had appointed two other participants as “monitors,” one on each side, instructed to tap Kahn on the shoulder and slow him down. Kahn’s rambling talk displayed his signature style, a mix of self-deprecation and supreme arrogance. Rapidly jumping from topic to topic, shifting between jokes and references to arcane RAND studies, Kahn discussed the Hudson Institute papers in a way that likely confused more than enlightened.

Kahn became specific, however, when he discussed how he based his scenarios on the extrapolation of trends. He stated that he has spent fifteen years of his life “trying get a feel for military technology 5 years ahead.” Based on this experience he was now willing to make a “flat statement”: the easiest way to extrapolate was “to do it naively” and the best way to do it” was also “to do it naively.” “You should look over the record of the last 10 years, then get yourself a ruler or a French curve, and extrapolate,”443 Kahn based his extrapolations especially on economic data, which was most easily available.

This produced a statistical picture of what he called a “standard world.” He then used this as a starting point, and simply speculated about the social and cultural effects of the economic and technological changes he had charted.

443 COY2K Second Session, February 11-12, 1966, p. 15-16 237

Kahn predicted that recent patterns of economic growth, technological innovation, the increased role of government, importance of education, population growth, urbanization, and secularization would shape the world of the year 2000. The “standard world” that Kahn came up with, fell somewhere between Bell’s post-industrial society, and the techno-optimism of the Triple Revolutionists: business firms were no longer the most important source of innovation, the service sector would dominate the economy, there would be “widespread cybernation,” a guaranteed national income would have been established, and people would enjoy vastly more leisure time. Kahn’s prediction was especially colored by a belief in increased affluence. At one point he simply noted: “with money plentiful, its subjective ‘marginal utility’ would probably tend to diminish, and there would probably be a greatly increased emphasis on things that ‘money can’t buy.’”444 Another aspect of this society was a decline in bourgeois and Puritan values about work. When work was no longer useful and necessary, substitutes for its function would have to be found, otherwise individualism selfishness and anti-social behavior could become a feature of this society.

Kahn’s work for the Commission on the Year 2000 was published in 1967 as The

Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years. Bell wrote the foreword to this thick volume and he noted that Kahn and his fellow Hudson Institute researchers had provided a “unique service for students of social trends” in assembling their data on “gross national product, literacy, military power, technological extrapolations and so on.” Yet, Bell also noted that what was “especially noteworthy”

444 Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty Three Years (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 200-201. 238 was “the variety of methodological innovations” that the authors had introduced. Kahn and Wiener had “employed a novel combination of history and statistical techniques,” according to Bell.445

Bell seemed to praise Kahn for two contradictory achievements. The work offered straightforward extrapolations and a focus on historical development, yet was also methodologically sophisticated and determined by innovative statistical techniques. This ambiguous evaluation echoed Kahn’s unique self-presentation. His reputation as a former

RAND math genius provided him with an aura of methodological sophistication, yet he used this reputation in a subtle way. Instead of openly embellishing his methods, he often played it down. He enjoyed the role of free-thinker, someone who had spent his life engaged in arcane research, but now wanted to rise above the small experiment to grander things. Yet, Kahn knew that there was an implicit assumption about his new role as “policy analyst,” namely that his scientific sophistication had carried over at least to a certain degree. To keep this assumption alive, Kahn was deliberately slippery. He often used neologisms to describe well-established methods. Possible alternatives to his predictions he called “canonical variations to the standard world.” Various related trends were a “multifold trend,” and Kahn called his extrapolations “surprise-free projections.”

To explain this last one, he noted, tautologically, that his projections did not consider unpredictable events. When not coining new terms, Kahn’s wording could be pretentious yet vague: introducing his work, he noted that he attempted to be “’heuristic’,

‘propaedeutic’, and ‘paradigmatic.’”446

445 Bell, “Introduction” in “Kahn, Herman and Anthony Wiener, The Year 2000, xxviii. 446 Kahn and Wiener, The Year 2000, xix. 239

Bell was clearly susceptible to Kahn’s embellishments, and for obvious reasons.

Kahn’s role in the intellectual revolutions that RAND had supposedly produced— systems analysis, computer simulations, gaming, and game theory—aligned with Bell’s insistence on new intellectual techniques as a vital aspect of the postindustrial society.

That Kahn took Bell’s notion of post-industrialism as the major characteristic of his projected “Standard World,” also helps to explains Bell’s uncritical attitude.

On a personal level, Bell enjoyed Kahn’s sense of humor and his million-miles- per-hour-mind, one that jumped from the particular to the total and from the technical to the philosophical; Kahn fit the “luftmensch” profile. The goal of his work was to be intellectually stimulating before practical concerns could interfere. Sometimes Bell praised Kahn into a state of mild embarrassment, as when he noted that Kahn’s papers were “the most comprehensive compilation of all kinds of trend data.” Kahn’s response was immediately to warn Bell that he had to be “careful,” since “this stuff is very preliminary.”447 At one point Kahn even told Bell: “you have probably over-emphasized the importance of game theory, formal mathematical models, computers and the like.”448

Ironically, of course, it was this very overestimation that benefitted Kahn’s career and his

Hudson Institute.

“Hudson never did any ‘systems analysis’” or so B. Bruce-Briggs, a longtime

Hudson Institute analysist, bluntly stated in his biography of Kahn. The institute did not even own a computer; “a terminal was rented, but taken out because, according to

Herman, it was only used for his son’s schoolwork.” Such a revelation instantly puts in

447 “Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday February 12, 1966,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 120. 448 B. Bruce-Brigs, Supergenius: The Mega-Worlds of Herman Kahn (New York: North American Policy Press, 2000), 288. 240 perspective Kahn’s notion that “naïve extrapolation” with a French curve was the best way to get at the society of the future. If it was, it was also the only way. Bruce-Briggs gives important insight into the way Kahn and the Hudson institute staff worked:

the method was to assemble a team of polymaths as ‘instant experts,’ perhaps add specialists consultants, and sic them at the problem. Studies were forged in a few hours of intense conversation in the Institute’s meeting room, and assignments were made to verify hypothesis and fill in gaps of information. Herman usually presided, and when he didn’t, he almost always contributed vital perceptions. Often a single phrase or anecdote would recast an issue. These sessions were intellectual banquets. Hudson’s asset was brains, not technique.449

Bruce-Brigs, also recalls the mood of the 1960s in respect to “new intellectual techniques.” There was much “fashionable hoopla about applying the supposedly new techniques to the solution of public problems.” And “the establishment/liberal press” was sympathetic, since “ideology was presumably exhausted, and there was a wide consensus on what needed to be done.”450

Bell’s overestimation of Kahn’s work was certainly tied to the fact that he associated him with the new intellectual techniques. Yet, Bell seemed perfectly aware, at times, that Kahn’s methods were not all that sophisticated. Already in 1964, he described scenarios or “alternative futures” as “the writing of fictions,” something that involved

“few sophisticated techniques (game theory, systems analysis, cost effectiveness rations).” Yet, this realization did not seem to change Bell’s opinion much. What Kahn provided, wrote Bell, was a way to make thinking about the future less abstract. Kahn’s method “provided the systematic identification of relevant factors.” Interestingly, Bell listed his own “forthcoming book” on the post-industrial society, under the same header

449 Bruce-Brigs, Supergenius, 267. 450 Bruce-Brigs, Supergenius, 268. 241 as Kahn’s work. Although it was “a different kind of experiment in conjecture” this book too aimed to create an “’as if’ about the future.”451

Some aspects of Bell’s personality should not be ignored in explaining Bell’s favorable attitude towards Kahn. C. Wright Mills, once a close friend of Bell’s, described

Bell as a “status climber,” someone who aimed to be part of the in-crowd.452 Bell knew what to say to certain people, how to flatter, how to gossip; he was aware of his environment and behaved accordingly. During the mid-1960s Kahn was the darling of a certain set of Cold War liberals. A scientist, a committed anti-communist, a veteran of the

RAND revolutions in strategic thinking, a social animal himself who charmed even his ideological enemies with his dark humor, and especially important: he was a celebrity.

Bell’s favorable attitude should not be disentangled from these realities. Bell saw in Kahn an insider—whether this is justified is another matter—and he wanted to be in in his circle.

Yet, besides ideological and personal reasons for Bell’s attitude toward Kahn, there was also a more practical one. At the start of 1966, Bell wanted the Commission on the Year 2000 to produce forecasts, and Kahn’s extrapolations were the only tangible thing he had. Having so brusquely shot down Donald Schön’s appeal for a political statement and a focus on planning, the Commission had better produce some conjectures about the year 2000. Here the work of the Hudson institute came in handy. Without

Kahn’s extrapolations the Commission would have to get at forecasting in another way.

Bell had an idea about what this alternative was, and he did not like it.

451 Daniel Bell, “Twelve Modes of Prediction: A Preliminary Sorting of Approaches in the Social Sciences,” Daedalus, summer 1964, 865. 452 C. Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People (New York: Oxford University Press 1963), 250. 242

At the Commission discussion, it was especially the economist Wassily Leontief who articulated this alternative. When Kahn presented the Hudson Institute papers,

Leontief had been his toughest critic, arguing that forecasting through the extrapolation of trends was much too simplistic. It was, said Leontief, like throwing “a handful of sand” in the air and expecting all the grains to fall without any of them touching.

Leontief, a pioneer in the creation of comprehensive and complicated input-output models of the economy, argued instead for predictions based on models of society. For

Leontief, “predictions by models are based on the belief that it is possible to see and view a world as one whole with separate parts that are in some way interrelated.”453 What models made possible was simulation, something that Leontief did all the time with his economic models. If the model was functional, then simulations could take the form of predictions (i.e. if we change this aspect of the model what would happen to the other parts). What Leontief suggested was an “ecological systems approach” in dealing with social change.454

Bell realized that Kahn was one of very few future-oriented thinkers during the mid-1960s who rejected—at least practically—this notion that society could be understood as a complex ecological system. Kahn had been asked to produce baselines for the future, which meant he actually had to produce forecasts, and there was no model of society to work with. Kahn reminded everyone that he himself pioneered simulation experiments, such as the Monte Carlo simulations of particle behavior at RAND. But this worked because the parameters of particle behavior were understood. The model, he

453 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday February 11, 1966,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 25. 454 “Transcripts of First Session: Friday October 22, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 13. 243 worked with “was restricted to narrow range phenomena of one or two variables.” But to simulate using models for the kind of problems that the commission was interested in was impossible. When dealing with “large numbers of variables, the computational difficulties, the theoretical difficulties, the analytical difficulties, are just particularly swamping,” Kahn said.

Leontief’s call for an “ecological systems approach” and forecasting through the simulation with models of society was essentially an argument for a Parsonian approach to the study of social change. As Leontief knew, Talcott Parsons had spent his professional life attempting to create a functional model of society. In many ways

Leontief’s own work with input-output models of the economy, was analogous to

Parson’s theoretical enterprise. Yet, as we saw in the first chapter, Bell wanted to avoid

Parsons’s theorizing in his future projects. In his writing for Futuribles on the state of sociological theory Bell had vaguely mentioned Parson’s contributions to Modernization

Theory but essentially ignored his grand structural-functionalist scheme. As chairman of the Commission, Bell did not overtly reject Parsons’s theory, but instead employed a veiled tactic of avoidance and evasion.

Bell’s reasons for such a tactic should again be tied to aspects of his personality.

Parsons was a central figure of American sociology and involved in many other projects of the AAAS. Picking a fight, even a professional one, was not something Bell was likely to do. Yet, a program proposal Bell submitted to the Russell Sage Foundation make his private thoughts on Parsons’s work perfectly clear. 244

Bell asked this foundation for help in starting, at Columbia University, a program on “science, technology, and social change.” It would be something that would combine graduate teaching, with research on the post-industrial society.455 “Sociology today lacks a convincing theory of social change,” Bell stated in this proposal. He noted that

Parsons’s functional theory was “powerful” but suffered from “two drawbacks.” First, it dealt with “cohesive or integrative elements” of society. It investigated stability but struggled with change. What Bell was getting at was Parsons’s theoretical emphasis on integration. In his theoretical framework, strains—political unrest, or technological revolutions—could develop in one of the many subsystems of society, yet the system as a whole always seemed to have built-in mechanisms to relieve the pressures produced by such strains. The second “drawback” to Parsons’s functional theory was its abstraction.

Parsons presented “properties of society, but not of concrete societies,” wrote Bell.

Instead of “actual relationships,” or describing how society “hung together,” Parsons provided “the logical conditions for such relationships.” Bell described Parsons’s famous

“pattern variables” as “an exhaustive set of role definitions” but he noted that they did not

“deal with specific social entities—workers, employers, intellectuals.”456

Such a critique of Parsons begins to explain why Bell preferred Kahn’s extrapolations and speculations to an ecological systems approach. Constructing theoretical models of society as a means to forecast ran the risk of sinking the

Commission on the year 2000 into abstraction. It would trap the Commission into a

455 Daniel Bell, “Proposed Program on Science technology and Social Change,” April 1967, Russell Sage Foundation Archives, Program 5, Box 61, Folder 536, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, 1. 456 Bell, “Proposed Program on Science technology and Social Change,” 3. 245 purely theoretical realm. The goal was to say something about change in the real world, yet theoretical models contained a predictive capability that applied only to the theoretical model itself. Bell wrote that Parsons’s theory, was “functional” but not

“sequential,” meaning that it was not able to be deal with change—or be predictive— outside the bounds of the theoretical model. A working model of society offered the possibility of simulating change by playing around with variables. But what such a simulation could never do was show when and how change would invalidate the structure of the model itself.

Bell’s argument against Parsons, however, possessed a certain tautological quality. The charge, in essence, was that Parsons’s theory could not forecast unforeseeable changes. But this could obviously also be said of anything that relied on extrapolations of social, economic or technological trends. It is exactly at this point that

Bell’s favorability to Kahn’s scenario method can be fully explained. Kahn’s speculative scenarios were informed by extrapolation but not determined by them. They involved what Bell had called “the writing of fictions.” Kahn extrapolated as a starting point but led his imagination do the rest. This was what being a “luftmensh” was all about. It was not being held back by “an anchor, a ballast to drag along.” The anchor in this case, was the behavioralist insistence on getting at prediction through a functional theory of society.

While an ecological systems approach necessitated a focus on the functioning of society in the here and now, Kahn allowed the imagination free range. For Bell, then, Kahn’s

“scenario method” was a way to avoid focusing on a present that seemed to resist his post-industrial future. 246

The rational decision-making that was to shape post-industrial politics seemed incompatible with an interest-group pluralism that was going nowhere. An investigation into PPBS unearthed only problems and few signs that it was the rational revolution its champions claimed it to be. Historian Howard Brick has emphasized the subtle ways in which Bell’s post-industrialism represented a desire for a “post-capitalism.”457 Central to

Bell’s argument was “the alleged tendency of contemporary social development to press beyond the logic of markets.” Although Bell never believed that scarcity would soon be overcome as a result of automation or cybernation, his post-industrial society was still

“governed by a new ‘sociologizing’ mode of decision-making that superseded an

‘economizing mode.’” Or in other terms, a society determined by “social planning.”

Brick rightly notes that despite Bell’s protestations, his vision can be called post capitalist. If the university supplanted the business corporation as—in Brick’s words—

“the center of social dynamism,” then a post capitalist label seems justified. And here too, the society of the mid 1960s gave little evidence that it was moving beyond capitalism.

Kahn’s data-rich conjectures, combined with his reputation as an expert of the new intellectual techniques, allowed Bell to cloak his utopianism in a kind of value neutral realism. It allowed Bell to present himself as a futurist in service of liberalism. It allowed for the anticipation of future problems, and long-range public planning. It allowed him, above all, to see the Great Society as a step towards his post-industrial future. It made him characterize the distance between present and future in terms of progress, and not ideological commitment.

457 Howard Brick, Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 198. 247

The next phase of futurism in service of the great society did not challenge Bell’s unstable intellectual position. Instead it focused on something that both Parsonian model builders and Kahnian scenario writers agreed on, namely the notion that better data lead to better forecasts for the future.

Social Indicators and Social Accounting

When, on March 1, 1966, President Johnson addressed Congress about the topic of health and education, he listed fourteen ways in which recent legislation promised “a dramatic enrichment of American life.”458 He spoke about the Medicare program, about the construction of clinics and mental hospitals, and he discussed his new Head Start initiative in education. The President proclaimed that it was “possible to set ambitious goals for the future,” and that the department of Health Education and Welfare should be a “department for the people.” He added:

To improve our ability to chart our progress, I have asked the Secretary to establish within his office the resources to develop the necessary social statistics and indicators to supplement those prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Council of Economic Advisers. With these yardsticks, we can better measure the distance we have come and plan for the way ahead.459

John Gardner, the HEW secretary and former Carnegie Corporation head, answered the President’s request by setting up a special Panel on Social Indicators within the Department. The panel featured around forty social scientists and a large research staff. The aim was to get information about the “social health of the nation.”460 Aside from a focus on health, this meant gathering information on such qualitative aspects as

458 Lyndon B. Johnson: "Special Message to the Congress on Domestic Health and Education," March 1, 1966. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28111 459 ibid. 460 U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare, Toward a Social Report, 1969, Washington D.C., xi. 248 the environment, public safety, the arts, participation, and alienation. Instead of charting how much money was spent on improving the quality of life, the point was to quantify whether people were healthier, better educated, and happier. Gardner picked two co- chairmen: Daniel Bell and William Gorham.

Bell had long argued for social indicators in his futurist work. Charting social change was a logical and necessary aspect of a “future oriented” society. The final report of the Automation Commission had argued for the establishment of “a system of social accounts,” a tool to measure “social costs” and “social ills.” Such information combined with traditional economic data could be “useful in clarifying policy choices.” Since

Gardner, as former head of the Carnegie Corporation, had helped fund some of the future oriented projects of the AAAS, he likely knew that Bell emphasized the need for better social data. During one session of the Commission on the Year 2000, Bell had invited the sociologist Wilbert E. Moore, to talk about the work the Russell Sage Foundation was doing on social indicators. Moore noted that forecasting social change required better data. He gave the example of “aid to dependent children;” the federal government knew exactly how much money it spent on this, but whether these children were “moving up on it, or moving back,” no one knew. The methodological questions that the Commission on the Year 2000 had confronted also pointed towards the need for social indicators. If economic data could help create “scenarios” about the future, as Kahn had done, then social data could fill in the picture of a “standard world” and perhaps make it more qualitative. 249

Bell’s co-chairman on the Social Indicator panel, William Gorham, favored social data for related but slightly different reasons. He had been an expert on PPBS and became assistant secretary of HEW when Johnson called for a government wide implementation of the new budgeting system. In testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Government Research, Gorman noted that “the problems involved in applying the

Planning Programing Budgeting System to social economic problems are intimately related to finding useful social indicators.”461 The most consistent and persistent problem that budget planners ran up against was a difficulty rating programs defined by qualitative goals. As Elizabeth Drew had shown in The Public Interest, using dollar figures to define success or failure in healthcare programs produced strange results. The

Social Indicator panel’s approach to such questions was to build on an established indicator like life expectancy and infuse it with qualitative concerns. Simply taking rising life expectancy as a sign of improving health, for instance, did not factor in that the extra years lived could be spent bed-ridden or in a hospital, and this was not health but sickness. Therefore, a concept like life expectancy had to be corrected for “bed-disability and institutional confinement.” Yet, at the same time new painkillers often meant that suffering during illness declined. Weighing such difficult issues, the panel came up with an indicator they termed “expectancy of healthy life.”

The desire for non-economic social data, however, was older than PPBS, and the

Social Indicator panel could build on the work of others. During the 1910s, for instance, the Russell Sage Foundation provided funds to a charity that attempted a comprehensive

461 William Gorham, Testimony to Senate Subcommittee on Government Research, July 26 1967. HEW Files, Box I:171, folder 9, DPM Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 250 study of living conditions in Pittsburgh. The results of this study inspired hundreds of local surveys in other cities, where citizens’ committees, churches, and chambers of commerce asked people about health, recreation, education, and crime.462 Gunnar

Myrdal’s 1944 study of racial attitudes, An American Dilemma, included a proposal to indicate and track the progress of black equality through sociological data.463 The most direct forefather of the 1960s interest in social indicators, however, was William

Ogburn’s work on social trends.

During the late 1920s President Hoover had asked the University of Chicago sociologist to produce the sociological equivalent of economic indicators. Ogburn eventually produced a 1500 page study in which he provided data on demographics, health and education. Ogburn, a strict empiricist, presented his work as value-neutral social science, offering not much interpretation of the data and no policy prescriptions. A number of Ogburn’s students, most notably Albert D. Biderman, Otis Dudley Duncan, and Eleanor Sheldon, played a prominent role in the social indicator revival of the 1960s, and all three were on the HEW panel.

The political scientists Bertram M. Gross was the most important popularizer of the new social indicator movement, and one of the most influential academics on the

Panel. In his thirties he had helped draft the Employment Act of 1946 for the Truman

Administration. He subsequently became the executive secretary for the Council of

Economic Advisers—the body that the Employment Act created. In this role he had seen

462 Clifford W. Cobb and Craig Rixford, Lessons Learned from the History of Social Indicators (San Francisco: Redefining Progress, 1998), 8. 463Irving Louis Horowitz and James Everett Katz, Social Science and Public Policy in the United States (New York: Praeger Publishing, 1975), 29. 251 firsthand the incredible flight that macroeconomics took during the post-war years and it was crucial to Gross’s later thinking about social indicators. “The power—and glory—of modern macroeconomics” allowed economists “to describe past trends, review present developments, project future possibilities, and create targets for growth.”464 Gross, linked the “power” of national economic accounting to the Cambridge School and Keynes. It made planning possible, even if some objected to it ideologically; “indeed economists who favored more national planning busied themselves in developing new accounting concepts that could be used when the opportune time came.”

After working as research director for the Democratic National Committee, and a stint as an adviser to the Israeli minister of finance, Gross gradually became disillusioned with the “pale, one-dimensional, and potentially misleading reflections” macroeconomic data offered.465 By 1965, when Gross was a professor at Syracuse University, he argued that President Johnson’s vision for a Great Society brought the country “to the threshold of important social changes.” In a new policy-oriented social-science journal, Trans- action, Gross asked: how could such changes be measured using “dollars and cents accounting of government transactions?” The cost benefit analysis so important to PPBS, was “a new Philistinism,” it was the approach to life based on the principle of using monetary units as the common denominator of all that is important in human life.” The

Great Society therefore needed an annual “social report,” something analogous to the annual State of the Union. Gross eventually discussed this idea with Douglas Cater, one of the President’s most important advisers. Sometime in 1965, Cater and Gardner

464 Bertram M, Gross, “The Social State of the Union,” Trans-action November/December, 1965, 15. 465 Ibid. 252 persuaded the President to include the call for social indicators in his speech on health and education.466

Crucial to the entire social indicator movement, was the way Gross presented two parallel ideas about macroeconomics: it allowed for national planning, yet, was also woefully one-dimensional in its inability to incorporate qualitative concerns. But how to infuse an economic accounting scheme with qualitative aspects? This, for Gross, was essentially a problem of organizing information, not producing the information. He noted that “the complexity of modern society” was well understood by social scientists. In response they had “followed the logical path of dividing the labor and concentrating upon small and more manageable aspects. The result was “a wealth” of “partial, segmental models” that contained much insight. Yet what was missing was a way to “build the bridges needed to connect it with other models, or with the ‘real world’ of political leaders and administrators.”

Gross essentially tried to realize what Leontief had proposed during one of the sessions of the Commission on the Year 2000, namely, an “ecological systems approach.” Gross held that Parsons’s systems theory offered a way to connect all sorts of information about society. In his work on social systems accounting, Gross produced what seemed like textbook summations of Parsons theory, including a detailed explanation of the “pattern variables,” many tables, schematic illustrations of the interdependency of subsystems, and arrows indicating feedback loops.467 But like

Leontief, Gross approached such a goal by way of a rather mechanistic input-output

466 Daniel Bell, “The Idea of a Social Report,” The Public Interest, spring 1969, 78-79. 467 Bertram M. Gross, “Social Systems Accounting,” in Bauer, Raymond, Social Indicators (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), 172-212. 253 concept. He ignored the difficulty of quantifying qualitative information about society, and simply thought in terms of “variables” which could be plugged into Parsons’s extensive and overlapping theory of systems. What this implied was nothing less than a working model of society, and one that relied on actual societal data; it was something that was thus descriptive and predictive. This fit with the way Gross analogized between macroeconomic models and social systems accounting. He held, after all, that macroeconomic modeling made possible economic intervention or planning. The logical conclusion was that social systems accounting made possible a kind of comprehensive social planning.

It should not be surprising, by now, that such Parsonian theorizing did not enthuse

Bell much. Bell picked up on “a curious bifurcation in Gross’s approach.” His call for qualitative data on society and his proposed “social state of the union” was “narrowly empirical.” Yet his “quasi-Parsonian” social system model was “comprehensive but abstract” and was “difficult to apply to policy purposes.”468 Gross countered that what he was doing was in reality very “modest;” he was only describing and explaining the possibilities, and he was not discussing the “inherent potentiality” of applied roles for his new accounting system. Yet, Gross’s downplaying of the planning function of his social systems accounting wan not very convincing. He claimed, for instance, to resist “the temptation to leap precipitously into premature use of the proposed accounting scheme for the purpose of prediction and control.”469 This disclaimer—the word premature—in fact indicated that Gross’s theory could eventually be used for such purposes. It would be

468 Bell, “The Idea of a Social Report,” 77. 469 Gross, “Social Systems Accounting,” 156. 254

“utopian,” claimed Gross, “to expect that any government would ever set itself the task of moving from economic to social indicators in one comprehensive operation.”470 The first

“social reports” of Presidents or Prime Ministers would be fragmentary and exploratory”

Social indicators were only the first step in something that would take “many decades.” It had taken centuries, after all, for “Quesnay’s economic tables to mature into national income accounting.” Even when Gross tried to qualify his own scheme, the promise of a form of social planning analogous to Keynesian methods in economics came through clearly.

Gross’s work directly influenced Senator Walter Mondale, who, in 1967, introduced his Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act. Mondale, on the floor of the

Senate, professed the hope that “this act might accomplish in the area of national social policy what the Employment Act of 1946 has accomplished in the field of economic policy.” Before the state possessed “the superb economic analysis and planning” tools of the “Council of Economic Advisers,” it could only “trash around in the area of economic policy,” Mondale noted. 471

Mondale’s act included 4 proposals. The government had to “promote and encourage such conditions as will give every American the opportunity to live in decency and dignity.” This included providing a “clear and precise picture of whether such conditions are promoted and encouraged in such areas as health, education and training,

470 Gross, “Social Systems Accounting,” 271. 471 U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, Seminar on the Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act, 90th Cong., 1st sess., 1967, 478. 255 rehabilitation, housing, vocational opportunities, the arts and humanities…”472 The Bill also stipulated that the President present a yearly social report in which he would chart the progress toward the stated aims. A Council of Social Advisers would be established, that mirrored the council of economic advisers. Finally, a congressional committee would be set up to study the social report. When Mondale introduced all this he mentioned

Gross, and had one of his articles included in the Congressional Record. He also mentioned how Bell’s automation Commission had called for social indicators and that

Bell and Gorham were now leading a social indicator panel at HEW.

A few months after he introduced this legislation, Mondale organized a special seminar on his bill as part of the Subcommittee on Government Research. Many of the people that were on the Social Indicator Panel came to this hearing and Bertram Gross spoke at length in favor of the proposed legislation. It soon became apparent, however, that there was confusion about what exactly this legislation advocated. All sections of the bill mixed descriptive with normative functions. The section on the yearly social report, for instance, jumbled policy review and policy formation. The social report was to review local and state policy aimed at the general welfare, set forth “current and foreseeable needs,” and present its own “programs and policies.” What was described as a “social report” seemed to be analysis, forecasting and planning all at once.

In a statement to the Subcommittee on Government Research William Gorham noted that he was sympathetic to the aim of the bill, namely to rely on social scientific expertise in order to measure qualitative aspects of society. Yet, he criticized those

472 U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, Seminar on the Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act, 126 256

“bolder advocates of social accounts who seem to assume that we can take the measure of every sparrow’s fall.”473 Gorham also noted that the bill was confusing in its aims. He indicated that it employed social scientists in “dramatizing the moral urgency of the nation’s socio economic problems.” Social scientists, however, were engaged in

“positivistic studies” and had no “professional opinion” on “normative questions.” It was better, said Gorham, to make the council of social advisers a body of elder statesmen

“clergymen” and “civil rights activists.” Many of the people engaged with social indicators agreed with Gorham. The contingent from the Russell Sage Foundation, led by

Eleanor Sheldon, believed that trying to capture qualitative data about society was tricky enough as a strictly descriptive enterprise.474 Influenced by Ogburn, they believed in a value free social science; social indicators could only aid policy making indirectly, by providing better data.

Some of the social scientists at the Mondale hearing, however, were excited about the prospect that their field could have a role beyond the empirical. Irving Louis

Horowitz, a sociologist, and founder of Trans-action, spoke in favor of the bill and stated that “the question of developing reliable social indicators is not separable in any way from determining specific national social objectives.” For Horowitz, trying to measure, indicate, or engage in “accounting” with qualitative data, naturally meant that the work was “value-laden,” it could not be any other way. In Trans-action Horowitz discussed the

Mondale and Gross proposals, and noted that some social scientists were enthused by the

473 Gorham, Testimony to Senate Subcommittee on Government Research, 5. 474 Clifford W. Cobb and Craig Rixford, Lessons Learned from the History of Social Indicators (San Francisco: Redefining Progress, 1998), 9. 257 prospect that their work could “create as well as describe society.”475 Horowitz noted that he wanted to “resolve real problems in the social world” and was not after

“pronouncements that seek to anticipate all problems of the future” for which the only solutions involved “narrow bureaucratic confines.” Dr. Preston Wilcox, an African

American professor of social work at Columbia University, shared Horowitz’s ideas. He noted that his “reaction to the proposed legislation” came from “one who has spent the major portion of his professional career operating at the neighborhood level.” He argued that “priority should be given to those social scientists who are involved in the process of change,” as opposed to “those who cherish sociological analyses more than they do effective social change.”476

Horowitz’s rejection of a value-free social science was greatly influenced by

Alvin Gouldner, his colleague at the Washington University in St. Louis with whom he had found Trans-action. In an essay titled “Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value Free

Sociology,” Gouldner criticized modern sociology for its insistence on value neutrality.

Gouldner investigated how Max Weber’s supposed insistence on such a thing, had become a dogma amongst sociologists. Value neutrality had initially made sociology able to “pursue all its own theoretical implications;” it had contributed “to the intellectual growth and emancipation of our enterprise.” Yet, what in Weber had been a way to balance the “deepest traditions of western thought,” namely “faith and reason,” had

475 Irving Louis Horowitz and Lee Rainwater, “Social Accounting for the Nation,” Trans-action, May 1967, 2. 476 U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, Seminar on the Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act, 61. 258 become a rigid exclusion of opinions, convictions, and ideological commitments.477

Gouldner’s main target in all this was Talcott Parsons.

Discussions such as those about the Mondale bill and social accounting greatly interested Gouldner. He noticed that the welfare state, and especially the Great Society, sought an applied role for sociology and that such a thing was incompatible with

Parsonian functional theory. “The demand on social science today” is to “help in practical problem solving.” “What the state apparatus now needs is a social theory that is focally, and not peripherally, concerned with how conditions can be made better, how domestic problems can be reduced…” This functionalism could not do “because certain of its central assumptions…impede its application for such practical purposes.”478 Gouldner, like Bell, was arguing that Parson’s theoretical framework was inherently about stability and equilibrium and could not deal with social change.

Now, Gouldner noticed, sociologists had rediscovered economics. The new sociological focus on problem solving in service of the welfare state was “fundamentally expressive of a sociological Keynesianism.” That all this was in service to the powers that be, however, meant that “it is thus not the spirit of C. Wright Mills that is abroad in them.” Yet, it was “also clear that neither is it the spirit of functionalism and Talcott

Parsons that manifests itself here.”479 Gouldner, sympathetic to Mills’s earlier critique of sociology in the 1950s, and sympathetic to the New Left, was of two minds about what

477 Alvin Gouldner, “Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology,” in Bennis, Warren G., Kenneth Benne, and Robert Chin, The Planning of Change: Readings in the Applied Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 609. 478 Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 346. 479 Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 351. 259 he called “a limited sort of critical sociology.”480 What Gouldner found problematic was the way this new style—in a commitment to social welfare—relied on an

“instrumentalism” of “seemingly neutral methods” including “operations research, cybernetics, and general systems theory.” This “conceptually uncommitted methodological empiricism” fitted the welfare state and liberalism precisely because its aura of “’scientific’ neutrality” provided “a basis for political consensus.” For Gouldner, the problem was that sociology, in its commitment to the quality of life, was becoming a tool of government, and not its conscience; “in effect, the methodological empiricists are increasingly becoming the market researchers of the welfare state.”481

What for Gouldner was “a conceptually uncommitted methodological empiricism” was for Bell a way towards rational public planning, the crucial ingredient in

Bell’s vision of a post-industrial society. Andrew Kopkind, in his article on “the Future

Planners” in The New Republic, made much of social indicators or social accounting efforts, and he directly tied it to Bell, the Commission on the Year 2000 and even

Futuribles. He noted that Mondale’s proposed bill was “the biggest political boost” for the future planners to date. In his article, Kopkind claimed that a “Washington economist” had offered him a satirical view of the social indicator movement, and he could not resist including it. It seems more likely, however, that Kopkind himself came up with “a scene in the Council of Social Advisers one day in the mid-1980's:”

Dan Bell is idly watching the Dow-Jones societal wire (formerly the business wire): 'Consumer Indignation Index down .04 percent. . . . Black Power Ratio steady (two percent drop in hair-straightener sales offset by two percent rise in empty seats at Miriam Makeba concerts). . . . Three youths from eastern Kentucky

480 Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 350. 481 Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 445. 260

accepted at CCNY. . . . Participatory Democracy Determinant drops slightly (collapse of an anti-fluoridation organization in West Texas). . . . Gross Social Product extrapolated to 789 by December 31.' "Suddenly Bell calls excitedly, 'Mike, Bert, come here quick. The Native Restlessness Index has hit an all-time high!' The Advisers go into special session with their staff, then report their conclusions and recommendations to the President, who the next day asks Congress for emergency legislation to install a nationwide network of plastic swimming pools. He activates the National Guard, and calls a White House Conference.482

Kopkind clearly spoofed the desire for a rationally managed society on the part of the future-planners, a desire that animated their work and thought. Kopkind also echoed

Gouldner’s idea that social indicators were a government tool employed in the service of stability and consensus. The effort to measure the qualitative elements of society, was interpreted here as something conservative, a way to forecast potential social upheaval that allowed for the timely installation of “plastic swimming pools.” Yet, Kopkind was also getting a larger truth about Bell’s thought during the second half of the 1960s. The

“Dow-Jones societal wire” had replaced “the business wire” in this satirical view of the future in which Bell had risen to the President’s chief social adviser. Kopkind understood that Bell’s post-industrialism was in conflict with capitalism. He noted that Bell’s post- industrial vision could be understood as “a backdoor to democratic socialism.” He noted that Bell was part of a group of “liberal and socialists humanists who were “more or less conscious of the values they want the indicators to indicate.” Yet, Kopkind noted, that this group felt that “no effective movement is likely to bring the kind of change they want to the U.S.” And that they “cannot figure out how to get it by more overtly political means.”483

482 Andrew Kopkind, “The Future Planners,” The New Republic, February 25, 1967, 19. 483 Kopkind, “The Future Planners,” 21. 261

Kopkind, then, realized that Bell’s futurism, and his notion of post-industrialism, were utopian. Interestingly, he tied Bell to Michael Harrington who in a 1966 Harper’s article had written enthusiastically about social indicators and social accounting.

Harrington addressed a younger generation that was increasingly critical of the Great

Society. He entreated them to be critical but fair. By noting that “the quality of our goals is to be placed over the quantity of our goods,” President Johnson had, “perhaps unwittingly, attacked the profit motive.” That the Great Society was now seemingly embedding social accounting in to its apparatus meant that “we are at that point foreseen by Keynes where the Jove of money need not be acknowledged as the arbiter of society's destiny.” Harrington now wrote enthusiastically about the fact that Bell’s Automation

Commission had advocated social indicators.484 What is striking about this is the fact that this Commission had attacked as utopian the whole notion of cybernation and a triple revolution, things that Harrington had enthusiastically supported. That Bell and

Harrington could now find common ground so easily about the potential of social indicators, indicated that Kopkind was right to group them together. Both thinkers had a utopian desire for a rationally planned future, and one that had moved beyond capitalism.

Both thinkers, however, struggled to identify a clear road to such a future.

Mondale’s Full Opportunity and Social Accounting act never became law.

Although an amended version was twice passed in the Senate, the House buried it in commission.485 The report that the Social Indicator Panel eventually produced, meanwhile, was so full of disclaimers and qualifications that it resembled a

484 Michael Harrington, “Taking the Great Society Seriously,” Harper’s, December 1966, 45. 485 Tim Booth, “Social Indicators and the Mondale Initiative,” Knowledge: Creation Diffusion Utilization, June 1992, 385. 262 methodological essay in a social science journal more than a government report. The problems of methodology had been so vexing that the report offered few actual social indicators. It was titled “Toward a Social Report” and such hesitancy reflected the outlook of the panel in general. Even the very ambitious Bertram Gross noted at the

Senate hearing on Mondale’s bill that work on the Social Indicator panel had made him and his fellow members “modest people, much more humble than when we went into the process.”486 The report dealt mostly with the lack of useful data, offered careful warnings about the difficulty of simple statistical indicators, and argued that more work needed to be done. Internal disagreement, however, was a major cause of the panel’s difficulties.

The empiricism of the Russell Sage Foundation approach, advocated by Albert

Biderman, Otis Dudley Duncan, and Eleanor Sheldon, did not mesh with Gross’ notion of social accounting.

The New Republic noted that the report was “the result of an interest in planning for the future by amassing information about where we are, what we have and what we lack.” Yet, because no actual statement on the “social health of the nation” was presented, the magazine proceeded to ridicule the report. The social information that it contained was useful only “if the reader has spent the last 20 years in a closet.”487 The review then quoted a series of fairly obvious generalizations from the report. The New

York Times was slightly more positive, noting that it was a good idea to produce at least one such a report for every four years or new administration. Since the report was released during the last week of Johnson’s presidency, the focus on a new administration

486 U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations, Seminar on the Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act, 50. 487 “Now it can be Told,” The New Republic, February 1, 1969, 11. 263 was understandable. We share the hope of the authors, read the editorial, that President- elect Nixon will “continue this type of reporting and to develop a more useful set of social indicators.”488

With Nixon moving in to the White House, the ideas of the futurists seemed more utopian than ever. During the campaign, Nixon had harangued the Democrats for promising too much. Civil rights legislation, a massive poverty campaign, it all relied on the power of the government to bring positive change. Yet, the result had been riots in the cities, continued systemic poverty, and more societal unrest than ever before. The government was sticking its nose into too many things; a focus on “law and order” was

Nixon’s alternative. In The Public Interest Bell was already dealing with the new reality.

He noted that whether Nixon would support the establishment of social indicators was “a moot point,” since research institutions could continue the work. Bell, clearly, did not expect much from the new President. Yet, only months into his administration, Nixon did something that surprised many. He announced the formation of a new executive agency, one that would not only continue the work on social indicators but seemed to incorporate into the federal government all aspects of 1960s futurism.

Nixon’s Futurism: The National Goals Research Staff

On July 12, 1969 Nixon released a statement that included the following passage:

It is time we addressed ourselves, consciously and systematically, to the question of what kind of a nation we want to be as we begin our third century. We can no longer afford to approach the longer-range future haphazardly. As the pace of change accelerates, the process of change becomes more complex. Yet at the same time, an extraordinary array of tools and techniques has been developed by which it becomes increasingly possible to project future trends--and thus to make the kind of informed choices which are necessary if we are to establish mastery

488 “Toward a Social Report,” New York Times, January 20, 1969, 46. 264

over the process of change. These tools and techniques are gaining widespread use in business, and in the social and physical sciences, but they have not been applied systematically and comprehensively to the science of government. The time is at hand when they should be used, and when they must be used.489

The new agency that this statement introduced was called The National Goals Research

Staff. Nixon laid out its functions:

—forecasting future developments and assessing the longer-range consequences of present social trends; —measuring the probable future impact of alternative courses of action, including measuring the degree to which change in one area would be likely to affect another; —estimating the actual range of social choice--that is, what alternative sets of goals might be attainable, in light of the availability of resources and possible rates of progress; —developing and monitoring social indicators that can reflect the present and future quality of American life and the direction and rate of its change.490

Leonard Garment, a fairly liberal Special Consultant to the President was to lead the new agency. A small “highly technical staff, made up of experts in the collection, correlation, and processing of data relating to social needs, and in the projection of social trends,” was to do the actual work. Important members of the staff where Anthony Wiener, from the Hudson institute, and Raymond Bauer, a Harvard Business school professor who had been a member of the Social Indicator Panel.

Yet, the most important figure associated with the agency was surely Daniel

Patrick Moynihan. That a Republican President set out to incorporate futurism into the federal government was almost solely his doing. Moynihan, a veteran of the

Kennedy/Johnson administration, a friend of Bell, a member of The Commission on the

489 Richard Nixon: "Statement on the Establishment of the National Goals Research Staff.," July 12, 1969. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2125. 490 Ibid. 265 year 2000, and the Social Indicator Panel, had convinced Nixon to start an official government futurist agency. Understanding and explaining the establishment of the

National Goals Research Staff, therefore, has to start by explaining how and why the liberal Moynihan, joined the Nixon White House.

A speech Moynihan gave at a general board meeting of Americans for

Democratic Action in September of 1967 is a good starting point. First, the fact that

Moynihan addressed the ADA board meeting as a long-time member indicates that

Moynihan was speaking as a liberal to a liberal audience. Throughout a long career in politics Moynihan never saw himself as anything other than a liberal. Yet, in the National

Review, William F. Buckley responded favorably to Moynihan’s speech, and this indicated that at least some sort of ideological realignment had taken place. Buckley had thought the ADA meeting a “reliable bore,” but Moynihan was “saying some of the most interesting things being said these days.”491

In his speech Moynihan called on liberals to choose a “politics of stability” which, above all else, came down to a sharp rejection of the New Left and black radicalism.

Moynihan painted a bleak picture of the state of the nation. Seasonal race riots, the continuing war in Vietnam, and an ever more radical anti-war movement were all signs of a dangerous instability. Liberals, argued Moynihan, needed to “seek out” alliances with “political conservatives” who “share their interest and recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as great a threat to the social order as an anarchic desire for change.” Some conservatives he had in mind were Mayor Lindsay of New York, but also Congressmen

491 William F. Buckley Quoted in “Between Issues,” The New Leader, October 9, 1967, 2. 266

Melvin R. Laird who had said that he was in favor of ‘massive” federal aid to city government but against “proliferating grant in aid programs.”492

This introduces a second major theme of Moynihan’s speech and of his thinking during the late 1960s. The federal government, especially under Johnson, had organizationally and operationally overreached. While its goals were sound and just, the tools of the Great Society could cause more problems than they solved. Nowhere was this more obvious, believed Moynihan, than in the Community Action Programs aimed at solving poverty, especially urban poverty amongst African Americans. Moynihan’s objection against community action program was that it helped a group of “professional reformers” more than the poor. As early as in the fall of 1965, Moynihan observed, in

The Public Interest, that the impetus for the fight against poverty had not emerged from political pressure exerted by the poor themselves. When Kennedy “ventured into

Appalachia searching for Protestant votes” he found people who were “desperately poor” but they were “neither radicals nor in any significant way restive.”493 The massive fight against poverty that ensued was “developed among officials whose responsibilities were to think about just such matters.” In this early issue of The Public Interest, Moynihan was essentially ambiguous about this development; he ended the essay by noting that “the professionalization of reform” carried the prospect of finally solving “the more primitive social issues of American politics.” Yet he also noted that professional reform could

492 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Politics of Stability,” The New Leader, October 9, 1967, 6-7. 493 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Professionalization of Reform,” The Public Interest, fall 1965, 8. 267 produce “a decline in the moral exhilaration of public affairs.” He feared that the passion that had produced the civil rights movement could seep out of the life of the nation.”494

During the last three years of the Johnson administration tensions between the leaders of Community Action Programs and local government were on full display.

Moreover, riots in black neighborhoods all over the country turned the national focus squarely on urban problems. Moynihan now started to write extensively on the failures of the Community Action approach. This meant that he often took aim at people like

Leonard Duhl and Paul Ylvesaker with whom he had been on the Commission on the

Year 2000.495 Moynihan did not critique the Community Action Programs because he opposed public participation in policy making. His charge, instead, was that the programs did not reach the people that were the supposed targets. In a 1967 lecture later turned into a book titled Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action and the War on

Poverty, Moynihan argued that Community Action Programs benefitted a radical minority, and a foundational and bureaucratic structure that catered to this minority.

Seemingly it comes to this. Over and again, the attempt by official and quasi- official agencies (such as the Ford Foundation) to organize poor communities led first to the radicalization of the middle class persons who began the effort; next to a certain amount of stirring among the poor, but accompanied by heightened racial antagonism on the part of the poor if they happened to be black; next to retaliation from the larger white community; whereupon it would emerge that the community action agency, which has talked so much, been so much in the headlines, promised so much in the way of change, in the fundamentals of things, was powerless. A creature of a Washington bureaucracy, subject to discontinuation without notice. Finally, much bitterness all around.496

494 Moynihan, “The Professionalization of Reform,” 16. 495 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 168. 496 Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, 134. 268

Certain parts of this analysis piqued the interest of conservatives and eventually

Nixon. A radical black minority, egged on by squishy liberals was letting everyone down, including the black masses. Such ideas seemed promising in terms of a campaign platform. Moynihan, however, was not primarily interested in placing blame for the failures of the Great Society at the feat of certain groups. He was primarily interested in ways to fight poverty. But in thinking about this, he reached some conclusions that were unacceptable to liberals. Could it be that organizing the poor by fiat was impossible? He also wondered at one point if “participation” was not “an effect” more than “a cause.”

Political organization was tied to middle class values, and a poor underclass could only be brought into the political process “at a high cost to civility.”497 Moynihan’s solution to such a problem had always been the same. The underclass had to be lifted up into a working class, and doing this meant providing jobs and money. What it did not include was sympathy and respect for the culture of poverty.

It was this combination of a moralistic attitude towards the poor, and proposed aggressive governmental intervention to help them, that resulted in the political firestorm around the so-called Moynihan Report. This report was produced when Moynihan headed the Office of Policy Planning and Research in the Department of Labor. Moynihan had been working on it when, at the New York City Planning symposium, Rustin had called out his unwillingness to see the racism of the “housewives” in Queens. When it was completed in March of 1965, the document carried he title: The Negro Family: a Case for

National Action. In it Moynihan relied on statistical information about the problems in black families and a rise in welfare dependency. The report was unambiguous about what

497 Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, 163. 269 it termed “the tangle of pathology;” matriarchal families were bad, they lead to juvenile delinquency, crime, etc. The report was also unambiguous what had caused all this:

“three centuries of injustice” in which black families were “battered by discrimination.”498 What did not emerge clearly from the report was a solution. The report advocated that “the federal government” commit itself to “the enhancing of the stability and resources of the American Negro family.”499

The controversy over this report stemmed from two reasons: the timing and manner of the report’s release to the public, and its ambiguity about the prescribed policy.

First, the report had not been released to the public after its completion but instead had found its way into the hands of Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, who dedicated their nationally syndicated Washington Post column to it. Their summation of the report was sloppy, and the column gave the impression that the problems of the black ghetto were caused by an inherent instability in black family life.500 They obscured how Moynihan saw poverty and unemployment as the cause of a breakdown in traditional African

American families. Newsweek described the report in a similar way, and did so the same week the Watts riots erupted; the report now seemed to offer a way to explain the causes of the violence. The most famous critique came from William Ryan, a member of the

Congress for Racial Equality and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. Ryan noted that the report “seduces the reader into believing that it’s not racism and discrimination, but the weaknesses and defects of the Negro himself that accounts for the present state of

498 The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington D.C.: Office of Policy Planning and Research, Department of Labor, 1965), 4. 499 The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, 47-48. 500 Rowland Evers and Robert Novak, “The Moynihan Report,” Washington Post, August 18. 1965. 270 inequality between Negro and white.” Later Ryan coined a phrase that would cling to

Moynihan for the remainder of his life: “blaming the victim.”501

The report’s ambiguity about a solution did much to invite such a reading.

Moynihan favored federally funded job programs for black unemployed men, and he also wanted a system of “family allowances,” something that would guarantee families a substantial rise on income.502 Yet, the report did not include such policy proposals, probably because Moynihan could not make them in a minor Labor Department paper.

Yet, without proposals that focused on the economic primacy of the problems, it seemed as if the black families were naturally more inclined to produce only rioters and hoodlums. Ryan’s charge had merit as well. Moynihan usually spoke of racism in the past tense; the report noted that “the present tangle of pathology is able to perpetuate itself without assistance from the white world.”503 Such a statement ignored housing and hiring discrimination, something Rustin had confronted Moynihan about.

The Johnson administration distanced itself from the report, and Moynihan’s subsequently felt unjustly vilified by those liberals and New Left organizations who disavowed his report in favor of community action approach. His attacks on “professional reformers,” the radicalized social- and welfare workers, surely carried a hint of vindictiveness. In his ADA speech Moynihan said: “liberals must somehow overcome the curious condescension that takes the form of defending and explaining away anything,

501For Ryan’s critique see: Daniel Geary, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and its Legacy (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015, 96-103. 502 Daniel Patrick Moynihan quoted in “Sick Cities: and the Search for a Cure,” Trans-action, October 1967, 37. 503 The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, 47. 271 hover outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do.”504 Such lines were sure to find favor with Nixon’s people. They explain why Nixon called Moynihan a

“thoughtful liberal” during the 1968 campaign, and they explain why one of Nixon’s more liberal confidants, Leonard Garment, persuaded the President-elect to bring him on board after he had won.505

The Moynihan Report and Moynihan’s views on community action also explain his ideas about social science as an aid to policy making. As such, a straight line can be drawn from the Moynihan report to the formation of the National Goals Research Staff,

Nixon’s futurist agency. In his book on Community Action, Moynihan made a distinction between two types of social science and their relation to policy making. “Social science is at its weakest, at its worst, when it offers theories of individual or collective behavior,” theories, he added, geared towards bringing about “mass behavioral change.” Moynihan believed this could only be achieved by direct changes in the class structure. Giving people jobs, or a family allowance, that changed behavior, not social work. For

Moynihan the lesson was that “the role of social science lies not in formulation of social policy but in the measurement of its results.”506 The way to do this was through social indicators.

Social science, for Moynihan, was to be descriptive. Social indicators could be used to evaluate policy, and see if policy goals were actually being fulfilled. Before joining the Nixon administration, Moynihan once proposed establishing an “office of legislative evaluation” in the General Accounting Office. Once he was in the White

504 Moynihan, “The Politics of Stability,” 9. 505 Douglas Schoen, Pat: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (New York: Harper & Row), 145. 506 Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, 191. 272

House, he wanted to utilize social scientific policy analyses on an ever bigger scale.

Forecasting could be incorporated in such a descriptive function. At a White House press conference introducing the new agency, Moynihan, stated that knowing “the impact of alternative courses of action” lead to better policy making. In the Presidential statement

Moynihan wrote that “all the critical national problems of today could have been anticipated well in advance of them reaching critical proportions.” Here he sounded exactly like Bell as Chairman of the Commission on the Year 2000.507

Since Moynihan’s new agency imported its objectives from the liberal futurism of the Johnson years, it also imported the unresolved tension between forecasting and planning. The Presidential statement read that there was “an urgent need to establish a more direct link between the increasingly sophisticated forecasting now being done, and the decision-making process.” At the press conference, moreover, Moynihan stated that the “information” provided by the NGRS could serve the country in giving it “a sense of what it can be, what it wants to be” and to give it “control over events.”508 This statement implied a combination of descriptive, normative and planning functions. While Moynihan held that all this could be merely a social scientific aid to the nation’s top executive, he did think it prudent to assure the reporters that the NGRS “is not to be a planning agency, and in no way to usurp or replace the political processes of decision-making.” Not everyone, however, saw it that way.

When the White House announced the formation of the NGRS, the man who was to lead the new agency, Leonard Garment, was in Moscow. He was part of a U.S.I.A.

507 Moynihan Quoted in “Goals Staff Will Work with Moynihan,” The Futurist, August 1969, 100. 508 Ibid. 273 delegation to the Moscow Film Festival where a film on Duke Ellington was to be screened. The International Herald Tribune carried Nixon’s statement about the NGRS, on the front page, and soon Garment got word that Soviet Officials wanted to talk with him about the news they had read. In his autobiography Garment remembers how he understood the function of the agency he was to lead: it had to offer “comparative arguments for a national debate on how to achieve long-range growth.” Yet, “what the

Soviets saw” he noted, “was a five year plan, with me in charge of it.”509 Garment soon faced ten Soviet officials over a conference table at the Moscow Institute for United

States studies. “Why was the world’s major anti-Communist power, with a Republican free-enterprise administration, undertaking a major project that contemplated economic and demographic central planning?” This was surely “an admission of capitalism’s internal contradictions,” the officials stated. Interestingly, Garment notes that he answered these questions not substantively but through “doubletalk” and evasion, offering “aphoristic gems like ‘all circles can be squared.”’510

Garment seemed to have realized that the tensions and contradictions inherent in

Nixon’s new undertaking could not easily be smoothed out. Portions of Moynihan’s statements did sound like planning. “Roosevelt would have found it all very congenial,” wrote Otis Graham Jr, about the NGRS in his 1976 history of planning in America.511

What was happening, in fact, was that the inherent tensions of 1960s futurism had spilled outside the seminar room, and in front of the eyes of an international audience. The

509 Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn, Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon’s White House, Watergate and Beyond (New York: Random House, 1997), 175. 510 Garment, Crazy Rhythm, 176. 511 Otis L. Graham Jr., Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 200. 274 things that vexed Bell—squaring forecasting with democracy, planning with the free market, value neutral forecasts with normative goals—were now imbedded into in a government agency, one housed in the basement of the Nixon White House. The name of the agency itself, the National Goals Research Staff, perfectly captured a fundamental delusion of 1960s futurism: the idea that goals could be researched.

Why did Nixon approve such an agency if there was a risk that it could be seen as one that engaged in central planning? Historian Melvin Small has noted that “Nixon’s most serious problem in putting together a domestic policy was simply that he did not have one when he took office.”512 The NGRS, with its broad agenda, seemed impressive and could be presented in many different lights. Garment, moreover, described the NGRS as “the kind of project modern Presidents find irresistible: it provides an aura of vision and presidential reach, an offset to the crummy, dog-eared, day-to-day, business of real politics.”513 Nixon certainly liked to think of himself as a statesmen, someone above narrow partisan squabbles. And Moynihan knew how to play to this side of the president.

When he tried to convince the president on something, Moynihan would emphasize that it was the president who was showing initiative. In memos he often referred to a “Nixon plan” for this and that, and emphasized that the President had the opportunity to make history.514 The appeal of this relationship for Moynihan was easy to see as well. For years he prescribed the need for bold government actions from lowly positions in the vast

512 Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon (Lawrence, Kansas: The Kansas University Press, 1999), 155. 513 Garment, Crazy Rhythm, 174. 514 Moynihan memorandum to Nixon, April 1, 1969, Box I: 243 Folder 2, DPM Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 275

Johnson federal apparatus, now he had the ear of the president, and one that was willing to listen.

Perhaps a more important question is why Moynihan, after his long involvement in the various futurist efforts, was so ambitious and optimistic about incorporating forecasting into the executive branch. These efforts, after all, had usually identified only problems, not practical steps forward. By 1970, Bell, certainly, had grown more and more modest about the practical possibilities of forecasting as a policy making tool. He had proclaimed “the primacy of politics” and displayed a profound distrust of forecasting through comprehensive societal models. Yet, Moynihan did not share such a perspective.

“There are an increasing number of forecasting efforts in both public and private institutions which provide a growing body of information upon which to base judgements,” read the Presidential statement about the NGRS.515

There are two main reasons for Moynihan’s optimism about yet another venture in forecasting. The first one is simple; he was never a very studious participant in Bell’s endeavors. He seemed to have internalized the promise of these attempts more than the debates they prompted. His contributions during sessions were often of a superficial nature. While most other participants in the Commission on the Year 2000 were interested in practical, political and philosophical questions raised by Bell’s ambitious goals, Moynihan seemed to have just taken those goals at face value. At times his comments displayed a shocking lack of depth, especially when the discussion turned to methodological problems. When the game theorist and Yale economist, Martin Schubik, argued that short-range economic projections were of limited use in forecasting because

515 Richard Nixon: "Statement on the Establishment of the National Goals Research Staff," July 12, 1969. 276 they failed to include “value judgments in regard to limited resources,” Moynihan seemed lost. He noted that “one of the interesting things about the year 2000” was

“whether the models, the simulations, will have worked out.”516 This came down to saying that the future was interesting because you could see if your forecasts were correct. At other times Moynihan seemed unwilling to consider anything other than a future based on dramatic economic growth, in which “there needn’t be any poor.”517

Archival material also suggests that Moynihan missed many meetings. Although he committed to membership of a working group on urban problems for the Commission on the year 2000, he seemed to have missed almost all sessions. The same can be said for the

Social Indicator Panel.

The most important reason for Moynihan’s optimism about an executive futurist agency, however, had to do with his exposure to the ideas of Bertram Gross. Moynihan often utilized Gross’s 1946 analogy, namely the idea that the Council of Economic

Advisors had made possible economic planning, and that social indicators could make possible social planning. In doing so Moynihan also adhered to what Bell had described as Gross’s “quasi-Parsonian” notion of social accounting. In his writing about the NGRS

Moynihan emphasized the need for such a systems approach. In a confusing manner

Moynihan tried to make an argument for a comprehensive systems approach to governing. He identified government “programs” with a failure to see that “everything relates to everything.” But “policy” was the term he used for an approach that “seeks to

516 Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 155. 517 Transcripts of Third Session: Saturday October 23, 1965,” WP vol.1 COY2K, 104. 277 respond to the system in its entirety.”518 The greatest benefit of systems approach, or policy over program, was that it recognized that “systems are frequently counterintuitive.” Programs aimed at some improvement had widespread effects that they did not consider, while “policy” contemplated how everything interacted. An example

Moynihan liked to use was how the national Highway act had in fact shaped the lay out of the entire nation. A “policy” approach in government, however, was not easily adopted:

Like any change in the style and substance of government, this most recent one involves problems for democracy. Tracing the complex and involute interconnections by which inputs produce outputs in a large social system is not the work of amateurs. It is not now done in any area of social policy save in economics, and there, most economics would insist, it is done imperfectly. It is not done elsewhere because no one really knows how to do it. It is just that most persons who have considered the matter fell it has to be done, and accordingly someone will have to learn how. Many someones.519

Moynihan made this statement in the introduction to an NGRS report. Yet, what remind unclear was whether the new agency was to employ such a systems approach to governance. If so, then Moynihan was sending mixed messages. The systems approach, as inspired by Bertram Gross’s social accounting, was a purely hypothetical methodology, yet the NGRS was now operational. Years later, members of the NGRS remembered that “there never was any clear notion of what we were to do. Was it social indicators? Was it long range-forecasting? Was it national planning? We were struggling to define our identity when time ran out.”520

518 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Policy vs Program in the 1970s,” the Public Interest, Summer, 1970, 91. 519 Daniel Patrick Moynihan in National Goals Research Staff, Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality (Washington D.C., July 4, 1970), 8. 520 Quoted in Graham Jr., Toward a Planned Society, 201. 278

The vague mandate and impractical methodology were not the only problems plaguing the NGRS. Nixon advisers Erlichman, Halderman, and Arthur Burns, had been ill at ease with Moynihan’s futurist agency from the moment it was announced. They had, in fact, always ben uncomfortable with the liberal Moynihan so close to the

President. That Leonard Garment had been named Director of the agency had itself been a compromise between Moynihan and Burns. The later favored Garment because he believed him harmless and lacking in expertise needed to run such a dangerous agency.

Moynihan, on the other hand, believed Garment was favorable to him and his liberal influence on Nixon. Erlichman, however, was able to convince Nixon that the NGRS should fall under his supervision. A month before the first report was to appear;

Erlichman already told the staff they would be dismissed.521

The demise of the agency, however, was ultimately not due to Nixon’s conservative advisers. Moynihan’s underserved optimism and naiveté about forecasting doomed the agency from the start. He ignored the fact that a decade’s worth of futurism had indicated an incompatibility with the democratic politics and a free enterprise system.

All this was exacerbated by the fact that Moynihan hardly focused on NGRS, once it had been set up. He immediately turned to an even more ambitious thing he wanted to sell the

President: the Family Assistance Plan (FAP). This was Moynihan’s attempt to finally realize federal action aimed at raising family income. To many people’s surprise, and conservative dismay, the President agreed to submit plans for such a program. Although bi-partisan opposition eventually sank the effort, it took up most of Moynihan’s time as

521 Gerald O’Barney, The Global 2000 Report to the President of the U.S.: Entering the 21st Century (New York: Pergamon Press 1980), 334. 279

Urban Affairs Councilor. When, by late 1970, it became clear that Nixon refused to keep pushing FAP in Congress, Moynihan decided to leave the White House, and the NGRS had no one to fight for its existence.

The first official report from the National Goals Research Staff, therefore, was also its last. It was titled “Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality.” That the staff had struggled to define its task was hard to miss. If the various reports that were the final product of futurist efforts usually abounded in disclaimers, this report seemed almost to spoof such reports. The report was not “a listing of specific goals,” or objectives or aspirations, nor was it an effort at measuring the domestic social health of the nation. It also did not “presume to say what our choices should be.” The NGRS did not have “a goal-setting function and neither did it have a planning function.” All it purported to do, instead, was to “alert us to emerging needs, to stimulate us to think more deeply, more cogently, and more analytically about the questions we face and to give us a better appreciation of the framework within which those questions must be dealt with.”522

This was indeed “struggling to define an identity.”

The report mentioned “new intellectual techniques” but did not claim to have utilized them. Although “computerized information systems,” “’futures’ research,”

“computerized modeling of complex systems,” and “social indicators” could make “the complex comprehensible” they had been “least successful in dealing with complex social and political problems.” All the report offered in terms of actual forecasts, in fact, were a few trend analysis, in the style of the Hudson Institute. In Science a reviewer noted that

522 National Goals Research Staff, Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality (Washington D.C., July 4, 1970), 21. 280

“the report shows sign of having been thrown together hurriedly.”523 A New York Times editorial called the report “a disappointing evasion of responsibilities.” That an outfit that called itself the National Goals Research Staff produced a report that did not seriously deal with goals meant that the task force was “either misnamed, misdirected or both.”524

The report offered two visions of the American future: it “could be one in which cities are clogged with immovable traffic, air is less breathable, streams polluted…seashores deteriorating…” Or it could be “a nation which will have begun to restore its environment, to have more balanced distribution of regional economic development and of population; a nation which has abolished hunger and many forms of social inequality and deprivation.”525 The second of these possible futures clearly involved planning, while the first seemed to indicate unchecked growth. The whole example seemed lifted straight out of a Great Society speech by Lyndon Johnson. But as the New York Times pointed out, the report stressed that it could not be an either or proposition: “the emerging emphasis on qualitative values in society cannot lead to a rejection of quantitative values.” The NGRS report introduced the notion of “balanced growth” as a way to focus on qualitative change and planning without jeopardizing a commitment to economic growth. Yet, in doing so it avoided answering the question that it was in essence posing: what was it, exactly, that balanced growth? Did not this balancing inherently infringe upon the free market, or personal freedom, or state, city or neighborhood interests?

523 Philip H. Abelson, “The National Goals Research Staff Report,” Science, August 7, 1970, 537. 524 “What Goals?” New York Times, July 21, 1970, 34. 525 Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality, 159. 281

The short-lived history of the NGRS magnified the problems of Great Society futurism. Although the Johnson administration talked about the quality of life, measuring change in order set goals, and even to plan for the future, such things were all subsumed in an unquestioned commitment to economic growth. Moreover, against the backdrop of the Cold War, a democratic and pluralist system of politics was questioned at the peril of losing political influence. The brief forecasting venture of the new Republican administration heightened these tensions even more. Now planning could be discussed only if it was neutered and made meaningless. Futurism became balanced growth.

In the report’s introduction Moynihan displayed once again, futurism’s awkward dance with ideological commitments. Stressing the need for sound social scientific data in the process of “choosing national goals,” Moynihan warned against the dangers of a utopian future orientation. “The difficulty with national goals,” wrote Moynihan, is that they “too quickly become standards by which to judge not the future but the present.”

Goals “institutionalize the creation of discontent” and they “drained legitimacy from the present.” Once a desired future had been imagined it became “absurd to be content with the present.” Even the most “extraordinary progress counts for little if it has brought society only to a middling point in an uncompleted journey.” The right way to deal with this problem, wrote Moynihan, was to “be realistic about what can be attained, and to use social data in such a way as to enable both the expert and the lay publics to understand that progress toward any seriously difficult goal is going to take place by increments.” 282

But discontent was not altogether bad, according to Moynihan, it could be a source of

“creativity in a person or society.” Discontent could be “a useful spur to progress.”526

What is remarkable about Moynihan’s argument here, is that he identified ideas about the future, and not the present as a source of “discontent.” That Moynihan wrote such a thing months after the Kent State shooting and against the backdrop of perhaps one of the country’s most apocalyptic moments highlights the way in which 1960s futurism struggled to deal with politics. Clearly Moynihan had it backwards. Discontent was born from a critique of the present society, and most of the “discontent” of 1970 was not characterized by a utopian future orientation at all, but by a focus on very concrete goals, namely the end of the war in Vietnam.

526 Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality, 11-14. 283

CHAPTER FOUR: WAR, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE CRITIQUE AGAINST

“ESTABLISHMENT FUTURISM.”

During the 1968 spring semester at Columba University, Bell taught a graduate class titled “Problems of Long Range Forecasting.”527 When the syllabi were handed out during the first meeting, the students learned that Bell expected them to study a specific aspect of the social structure, and draw up reports on long-term developments. Some students picked the future of resources; others went with the future of the labor force, or the future of education.528 Through March and early April tensions on the Morningside campus rose, first over military recruitment, then over the university’s involvement in the

Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA), and finally over the construction of a University gymnasium in Harlem. The election of Mark Rudd as local SDS leader helped push many students, already deeply troubled by the Vietnam War, to a more radical outlook. Bell allowed several session of his class to be devoted to discussion of the events on campus.529 Yet, when a group of students took over the university and the police were called in, all academic activities came to a halt; only five students had been able to present their reports on the future.

Bell had worried about the New Left’s potential descent into violence and authoritarianism since the start of the decade. Rudd embodied exactly Bell’s fear that alienation, dissent, and radicalism were falling into the “trap of ideology.” After

Columbia University President Grayson Kirk had characterized radical students as

527 Dov Zakheim, “Course on Future Scheduled by Bell For Next Spring,” Columbia Daily Spectator, 19 April 1967, 1. 528 Edward Cornish, The Study of the Future (Washington D.C.: World Future Society, 1977, 166. 529 ibid. 284 nihilistic earlier in the semester, Rudd responded with an open letter: “It might sound nihilistic to you,” he wrote, “since it is the opening shot in a war of liberation.” And then, quoting the radical African American poet Leroi Jones, Rudd, concluded: “Up against the wall motherfucker, this is a stick up.” Only days later radical SDS members were rummaging through Kirk’s files as they had occupied his office and other university buildings. For Bell, Rudd was Kronstadt personified.

Bell believed, however, that many of the protestors, even SDS members, were more sensible than Rudd. When students refused to leave university buildings, a five day period started in which Bell and other professors attempted mediation. It was an effort to create a “third force” that aimed to “prevent violence amongst students”—counter demonstrations had emerged by this time—“to prevent the police from coming onto the campus,” and finally to “negotiate the specific demands being made.” Bell and his “third force” group agreed on a compromise: work on the gymnasium would be stopped until community groups could speak out about it, and the occupying students would face probation, but not suspension.530

Bell and his group of mediating professors were initially able to convince most students of the plan, but the university was unwilling to suspend construction of the gymnasium. The radical faction of SDS, meanwhile, seemed to welcome the impending police confrontation. When the New York City Cops entered the building and took

530 Daniel Bell, “Columbia and the New Left,” in Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, eds. Confrontation: The Student Rebellion and the Universities (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 84-85. 285 pleasure in whacking the Ivy League students with their nightsticks, Bell returned to his apartment and cried.531

A year later Bell published an essay in which he tried to make sense of what had happened. He argued that SDS had seen in the university “a microcosm of our society,” a symbol of a failing liberalism. But for Bell their target could not have been more wrong.

The university was not a microcosm of the society but an “academic community with a historic exemption from full integration into society.”532 Although he abhorred the police brutality, Bell blamed SDS for bringing violence to campus. He explained the radical outburst as an emotive romanticism, behind which a “stilted Marxism” could be observed, all heightened by conspiratorial thinking. SDS would be destroyed by its style, predicted Bell. It was not able to “transform its chaotic impulses into a systematic responsible behavior that is necessary to effect broad societal change.”

Yet, the questions SDS raised, wrote Bell, were real ones. The student unrest rose from “structural changes in advanced industrial societies—the imposition of ‘organized harnesses’ in a technological society.” And in “the post-industrial societies of tomorrow” the “balance between technical and political decision-making and of greater participation” would be pressing problems. But in this society, wrote Bell, “the university” would be “the paramount institution.” Here a familiar tension surfaced in

Bell’s ideas about the role of the university. Could an institution with an “exemption” from society and committed only to impartial research, also become “paramount”?

Would the university have a role in shaping policy? If students objected to this emerging

531 Bell interview in Joseph Dorman, Arguing the World, 1998. 532 Bell, “Columbia and the New Left,” 95. 286 society could they not attack the university exactly because it played such an important role?

Bell was confronted by such questions in December of 1968 during a conference hosted by the Association for Cultural Freedom. This organization was an effort to re- boot the Congress for Cultural Freedom after the revelations about C.I.A. funding had essentially destroyed it. The conference focused on America’s role in the world during the 1970s. Most American participants were established liberals like Galbraith,

Brzezinski, Arthur Schlesinger, and Carl Kaysen. One younger participant, Matin Peretz, a political science instructor at Harvard—and future owner of the New Republic—took on the role of New Left representative in these proceedings. After Bell had presented a paper on post-industrial society, Peretz noted that he could have written “like Mr. Bell and Mr.

Brzezinski a paper on the future.” Yet, he noted, “you will find I haven’t done that. I think the present bad enough.”533

Peretz told the foreign participants that they might have picked up on some

“rancor and acrimony” between generations of social scientists. This stemmed from the fact, said Peretz, that “we think our elders have been working with the administration of the system without really posing the basic normative questions.” Moreover, Peretz found it “curious” that Bell elevated intellectuals to the crucial group of the future society, while also believing in the “end of ideology.” “It would seem to me, that when intellectuals make intellectuals the lynchpin of the future we might at least contemplate that this is an ideology.” It was the ideology not of the ruling group, said Peretz, but

533 François Duchêne, ed. The Endless Crisis: America in the Seventies, A seminar under the Auspices of the International Associating for Cultural Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 130. 287 merely that of the “ruling’s groups’ servants.” But the problem was that these servants were not asking the right question: it had to be “where should the future take us,” not

“where will the future take us.”534 For Peretz, at least, the answer to this question was clear: away from an aggressive anti-communism abroad, and away from Vietnam. What

Bell thought about the war in Vietnam, however, was much less clear.

Vietnam and the Role of the Intellectual

In the ten months before Bell chaired the first meeting of the Commission on the

Year 2000, Lyndon Johnson had increased the troop numbers in Vietnam from 23.000 to more than 150.000. When the group met for the second session in 1966, that number had risen to well over 200.000, and when the Daedalus special on the Commission’s work was finalized in 1967, more than 400.000 American troops fought in Vietnam.535 Not since the Korean War had so many American soldiers been sent to fight abroad. The

Commission, however, almost completely ignored the war. The members seemed unanimous in their belief that it had no major impact on the social changes that would shape the society of the year 2000. When the war did come up, it was subsumed in broader discussions about the long-term future of the Cold War.

In a paper on “trends in the international system,” written for the Commission,

Ithiel De Sola Pool predicted that the fighting in Vietnam would “peter out by 1967,” and that it would constitute a “substantial American victory.”536 Herman Kahn, in drawing up

534 Duchêne, The Endless Crisis, 131. 535 Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 182. 536 Ithiel de Sola Pool, “Trends in the International System,” Working Papers of the Commission on the Year 2000, Vol. 5 (The American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, Boston: 1966/1967), 2. (Hereafter cited as WP vol. 5, COY2K). 288 his “standard world scenario”—the one scenario he deemed most likely—noted that concerning “international aspects,” the Vietnam War would “not prove an important turning point in events.”537 In some variations on this scenario Kahn did consider ways in which the Vietnam War could affect long-term trends. He contemplated a defeat in

Vietnam and in another a withdrawal. In these scenarios Kahn did not equate an

American defeat with long-term victories for North Vietnam, China or the Soviet Union.

Yet the fact that he grouped his speculations about American weakness in Vietnam under the header “disarray worlds” indicated that Kahn equated a successful American war effort with stability in the international system. Kahn speculated that only an unpleasant sort of isolationism could cause Americans to give up on Vietnam, and his overall message seemed to be that the escalation of the war was necessary, and likely to succeed.538

Kahn’s scenarios were not the typical way in which international relations were discussed by the members of the Commission on the Year 2000. The future of the Cold

War and American power in the world was a topic more often discussed in terms of population growth, urbanization, and modernization. Yet, as we have seen, Bell was ambiguous about Modernization Theory and the make-up of the Commission reflected this. In his papers on the future of global relations Ithiel de Sola Pool argued that modernization was the best way to fight communism; saving South Vietnam, therefore, meant a commitment to economic aid and development. Pool discussed “rapid rises in the living standards of the people of Asia and Africa,” helped along by “technologies of food

537 Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 224-225. 538 Kahn and Wiener, The Year 2000, 278-293. 289 and industrial production.” Pool’s long term prediction for the world beyond the year

2000 even centered on an orderly world in which the U.N played an important role and national borders started to fade away.539 The Harvard political scientist Samuel

Huntington disagreed. Modernization, if it meant a rapid rate of technological progress and a liberal democratic political system, was likely to produce instability and upheaval for traditional societies. This instability, moreover, would more likely be a threat, not a benefit, to America’s goals in places like Asia and Africa. Huntington thus believed in a

Cold War policy for the Third World that favored stability over modernization, and even stability over democracy. He complained that “aid missions advise governments on administrative organization and economic planning, but seldom do they advise political leaders on how to create a strong party.”540 Thus, in two papers on the future of the international system, Pool and Huntington predicted different things. The later offered a pessimistic prediction of a nationalist and highly unstable Third World, in which America was losing influence, while the former believed technological progress was the key to international harmony.

As historian Nils Gilman has noted, “liberal internationalists” like Pool and Walt

Rostow, were “suffused by the New Deal ethos” and believed that “the social engineering of progress could be reconciled with democracy.”541 Third World elites were crucial in their conception of modernization. For Pool they were the “mandarins of the future”—a

539 Pool, “Trends in the International System,” WP vol., 5, COY2K, 7. 540 Samuel P. Huntington, “Political Development and the Decline of the American System of World Order,” WP Vol., 5, COY2K, 29. 541 Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 229 290 phrase Gilman used as the title of his study on Modernization Theory.542 Huntington’s perspective, however, was that “progress could only be imposed on the masses” and the dominance of the elites was not easily reconciled with democracy.543 Although Pool and

Huntington disagreed about the merits of modernization in the Third World, both believed in a forceful American response to the spread of communism. They were both committed to defeating the Vietcong and were hawks on the war.544

Bell’s thinking on America’s role in the global Cold War fitted neither outlook.

Although he identified more with Huntington’s skepticism about Modernization Theory than with Pool’s support of it, he believed both were wrong in their support for Johnson’s escalation.545 In May of 1966, Bell and a group of Columbia University Professors, including historians Richard Hofstadter and William Leuchtenberg and the sociologist

Robert K. Merton, sent a private letter to the President in which they called on him to reject further intensification of the war, and to “indicate a willingness to negotiate with the Vietcong.”546 In August of that same year they sent another, more critical, letter after it became clear that the President was, in fact, intensifying the war effort. Bell and the group did not believe that the insurgency could be defeated militarily and warned about the “political and economic costs” of the war. In his budget message of 1966 Johnson had confidently stated that the war would not impede the nation’s ability to afford the various

Great Society reform efforts, but Bell and many other liberals, most notably John

542 Thereby depriving me of a great title option for the work you’re reading. 543 Gilman 229. 544 See Samuel Huntington, “The Bases of Accommodation” Foreign Affairs, July 1968. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/vietnam/1968-07-01/bases-accomadation and Ithiel De Sola Pool, “Political Alternatives to the Vietcong” Asian Survey, Augustus, 1967, 556-566. 545 Paul Starr, “Professors urge De-Escalation,” Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume CXVII, 117, 16 May 1968, 1, 4. 546 Ibid. 291

Kenneth Galbraith, doubted this. When Johnson, during the subsequent budget message, spoke about “the claims of the commitment in Southeast Asia upon the nation’s resources,” the liberal doubters had been proven right.547

John Kenneth Galbraith’s public criticism of the President’s foreign policy, had, by mid-decade, resulted in an obvious rift between the former adviser and the White

House. In a 1966 Commentary article, “An Agenda for American Liberals,” Galbraith contrasted Johnson’s liberal domestic policy with his conservative foreign policy in

Vietnam. While he praised the President for his Great Society legislation, Galbraith unequivocally attacked Johnson on the war. Vietnam, wrote Galbraith, was “not important to us,” and not “a bastion of freedom” nor “a testing ground for democracy.”548

It is hard to imagine that Bell did not agree with Galbraith. Yet, the Columbia University

Professors had delivered their critique of the President’s actions in Vietnam in a private letter, one that they made public only in the spring of 1968. That Bell chose to criticize the president privately but not publicly, has to be associated with his work for the

Automation Commission and the Social Indicator panel. Bell was committed to the Great

Society, and firmly believed social science had a role to play in creating it. Speaking out against the war ran the risk of cutting the link between his future-oriented social science and political power. Although Bell was often vague on the specifics, his work during the mid-1960s constantly tied forecasting to planning, and the later obviously required political influence. And thus, while he chaired meetings on ways to measure the quality of life for the Great Society, the war raged on. While the President sometimes tried to

547 Johnson quoted in Schulzinger, A time for War, 243. 548 John Kenneth Galbraith “An Agenda for American Liberals” Commentary June 1, 1966. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/an-agenda-for-american-liberals/ 292 reconcile the ideology of his foreign and domestic policy—“a good TVA philosophy” for the Mekong Delta—Bell segregated to different parts of the mind the war abroad and the progressive goals at home.549

Bell’s public silence on the War made him a target for the spokesmen of the Anti-

War movement. In a 1966 talk given at Harvard, and later published in the New York

Review of Books as “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” M.I.T. linguist Noam Chomsky argued that intellectuals had to be judged in terms of “their role in the creation and analysis of ideology.” Chomsky subsequently took aim at Bell for arguing that social or political problems could no longer be dealt with by converting “ideas into social levers” for the aim of transforming “a whole way of life.” Bell, according to Chomsky allowed only “tinkering” with the welfare state by experts. But what Bell glossed over, said

Chomsky, was that all this was self-serving. “Intellectuals have lost interest in

‘transforming the whole way of life’” because “they play an increasingly prominent role in running the welfare state.”550 This was in line with Alvin Gouldner’s critique that social scientists became merely value-neutral tools of government, the “market researchers of the welfare state.”551 Chomsky, moreover, noted that this “tinkering” of the

“scholar-expert” was made possible by a social science that posited universal validity for its theories, and this explained why a modernization theorist like Rostow slapped western concepts on non-western nations. For Chomsky then, the co-opted “scholar-expert” was partly responsible for American actions in Vietnam.

549 Lyndon Johnson to David Lilienthal quoted in Patrick Joseph McGrath, Scientists, Business and the State: 1890-1960 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 200. 550 Noam Chomsky, “The responsibility of Intellectuals” in Theodore Roszak, The Dissenting Academy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968), 276. 551 Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 445. 293

Chomsky built his argument on C. Wright Mills’s earlier critique of Bell’s “end of ideology” thesis. The Vietnam War, however, added a new poignancy to this critique. For

Chomsky, the domestic emphasis on consensus and rational “tinkering,” was connected to liberal attitudes about the foreign policy of containment. He wrote that “the consensus among the responsible scholar-experts is the domestic analogue to that proposed, in the international arena, by those who justify the application of American power in Asia” Yet,

Chomsky also used Bell to establish a link between the welfare state scholar-expert and foreign policy. In doing so, he became vague on what Bell actually said.

Chomsky noted that in Bell’s “terminology” the “Welfare State technician finds justification for his special and prominent social status in his ‘science’ specifically in the claim that social science can support a technology of social tinkering on a domestic or international scale.”552 Yet, Bell was in fact privately unconvinced about “tinkering” on

“the international scale,” and publicly silent on it. Later in the essay Chomsky spoke of

“technical experts who will (or hope to) manage the post-industrial society,” also clearly identifying Bell. It is perhaps fair to wonder whether Chomsky would have returned to

Bell’s essay on the “end of ideology” had Bell joined Galbraith in publicly criticizing

Johnson on the war. Ultimately, however, it was Bell’s penchant for compartmentalization that invited a critique like Chomsky’s. Bell stubbornly segregated domestic and international affairs. In his theorizing on post-industrialism he emphasized the new techniques of “decision theory,” things that originated in military planning, and he viewed the university as the guiding force of the new society. But what about the university as a place for weapons research? And what about the price-tag of the fight

552 Chomsky, “The responsibility of Intellectuals,” 280. 294 against communism? When would it threaten to undermine domestic liberal programs whose realization would be the foundation of a post-industrial future? Chomsky was frustrated by such compartmentalization, and in absence of clear answers he identified

Bell as an intellectual tied to Johnson’s administration and the war.

Historian Theodore Roszak included Chomsky’s “the responsibility of intellectuals” in an edited volume titled “The Dissenting Academy.” Roszak, in his early thirties by the time Johnson escalated the war, had gotten his Ph.D. from Princeton and taught at California State College at Hayward. Previously, he edited Peace News, a

British Pacifist Magazine. His own critique in the Dissenting Academy also owed much to C. Wright Mills, specifically the latter’s insistence that intellectuals had been derelict in their role as social critics. “[T]hey live and work in a benumbing society,” Mills had written and Roszak quoted, and they had stopped “working in protest and in tension” with society’s moral failings.553

Roszak tried to understand why intellectuals had abandoned their distance from society. In doing so he considered and criticized the functioning of the premier modern intellectual institution: the multiversity. Roszak objected to the ties between universities and defense department research, but his critique went deeper. He focused on the ways in which academics rose to scholarly status and tenure. In order to gain prominence in academia, a specialized and self-referential focus on a clearly demarcated topic was required, and the employed methodology had to include arcane theoretical concepts understood only by colleagues. But was such intellectual work important? What was to

553 Theodore Roszak, “On Academic Delinquency” in Theodore Roszak, ed. The Dissenting Academy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968), 21. 295 be valued higher, wondered Roszak, the work of an anthropologist who organized a teach-in on Vietnam, and perhaps “even travels to Vietnam for the Inter-University

Committee and then writes on the effects the war is having on village life and the

American moral character for The Atlantic or The New Republic,” or the scholar who produced an article on the “unity and disunity in the celebration of cattle-curing rites in

North India?”554 For Roszak, the answers to these questions were clear, yet he realized that his opinions were those of a dissenting minority. The university resisted turning a descriptive into a moral orientation, and it refused to accept criticism as knowledge.

One way Roszak tried to explain the uncritical or conformist tendencies of academics was through the prism of class. He employed David Riesman’s insight that the academy could “de-class” those who entered it, washing away minority-group, or lower class origins in favor of a new “anchorage, a place to belong.” This was surely a good thing, wrote Roszak, but what Riesman did not consider was the way in which the academic underwent a process of “re-classing” once he successfully established his place in the university. The intellectual now entered “the higher levels of the national society” and since the university was “governed so ponderously by government and corporate wealth…few academics, whether scholars or technicians” could withstand the “tempting rewards:”

The American upper middle class is a comfortable place in which to find oneself, especially when one adds just the right admixture of jet-set elegance for the highly successful academic: research grants with foreign travel, visiting lectureships, prestigious conferences, and even perhaps invitations to help out in Washington. It is a marvelous institution that can offer a young man with nothing but brains such an opportunity to rise so high in the Great Society.555

554 Roszak, “On Academic Delinquency, 33-34. 555 Roszak, “On Academic Delinquency,” 26. 296

Roszak’s description of the “tempting rewards” of the academic establishment was not meant to imply that such pressures could not be resisted. In fact Roszak argued that they had to be. If the academic community ignored the nature of the society that was willing to reward it, it became “a luxuriant garden of knowledge,” but one that was forever without sunlight; for “the obscene shadows of misguided power and thermonuclear extinction brood over that garden and all the world surrounding it.”556

Although Roszak likely had more than one individual in mind when he wrote about the “re-classing” of scholars, his characterization of the process certainly fit Bell’s biography. Roszak’s idea about the role of the university, moreover, was almost the exact opposite of Bell’s. For the later it was the increasing importance of theoretical knowledge that made the university the crucial institute for the post-industrial future; the centrality of the university was derived from the practical—or applied—role it was to play.

Theoretical knowledge, for Bell, would help the university supplant the business corporation as the dominant institution because the government would come to rely on academic expertise in order to run an increasingly complex welfare state. Roszak, on the other hand, understood the role of intellectuals to be in opposition to authority, and the

Vietnam War made this all the more important. Professors who organized against the war were doing their intellectual duty, because they engaged those in power without risk of cooptation. Roszak thus reserved special scorn for “sleazy experts…who take it as their function to provide ‘service’ on the terms laid down by those who hire them.”

556 Roszak, “On Academic Delinquency,” 39. 297

An argument about the role of intellectuals naturally produced questions about the influence of intellectuals. Roszak wrote that if “the powers that be” were “made aware that the things they do and the things they say were being carefully scrutinized by a public of knowledgeable and conscientious academics” than this could produce a “public controversy” which subsequently could “be elevated to rational dialogue.”557 Yet, Roszak realized that having “a rational dialogue” about a contentious issue was not the same as solving such an issue. Or, in other words, a rational dialogue did not mean that the points of the critical intellectuals were translated into political action. In trying to explain why this was difficult, Roszak shifted the blame from coopted experts to the much larger category of “a lethargic public.” It was experts and the vested interest who shielded

“policy making” from this inactive public, or so Roszak argued at the end of his essay in

The Dissenting Academy. The circular logic Roszak now employed—intellectuals needed to speak truth to power to affect a rational dialogue which was subsequently obscured by experts and those in power—shows that Roszak struggled to make up his mind about one crucial question: was political opposition against the vested interests of an advanced industrial society possible?

A few years later Roszak answered this question in The Making of a

Counterculture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition. In this book Roszak argued that the “sleazy experts” had won out. America was best understood as “a technocracy;” it was “that social form in which an industrial society reaches the peak of its organizational integration. It is the ideal men usually have in mind

557 Roszak, “On Academic Delinquency,” 38-39. 298 when they speak of modernizing, up-dating, rationalizing, planning.”558 It was the society of the think-tank, something Roszak described as: “a multibillion dollar brainstorming industry that seeks to anticipate and integrate into the social planning quite everything on the scene.” A society like this could not be challenged using rational and technological arguments, since that mode of thinking had created the problem in the first place. The only alternative was a return to the mystical and metaphysical. We will return to

Roszak’s thinking on this, and his hope for the counterculture, later in the chapter. What is important here is how he understood the nature of the society he described as

“technocratic.” Such a society was totalitarian, but unlike the coarse Nazi or Stalinist regimes, it was a totalitarianism that employed “subliminal techniques” of oppression.

For Roszak, the ”regime of experts… prefers to charm conformity from us by exploiting our deep seated commitment to the scientific world-view and by manipulating the securities and creature comforts of the industrial affluence which science has given us.”559

Such a view of modern industrial society was most forcefully articulated by

Herbert Marcuse. In One Dimensional Man, a book that came out in 1964, Marcuse offered a new take on the Frankfurt School critique of mass culture. “The capabilities

(intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before,” he wrote. Yet, this meant that “the scope of society’s domination over the individual” was also “immeasurably greater than ever before.” He described advanced industrial society as a happy totalitarianism; “the centrifugal social forces” were

558 Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youtful Opposition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969), 5. 559 Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, 9. 299

“conquered with Technology” not “Terror.” Yet, this society was still “destructive of the free development of human needs and faculties.”560 The society “integrates all authentic opposition,” wrote Marcuse. And “the social controls” were “introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots.”561

During the Vietnam War, a curious thing happened in relation to Marcuse’s theory. Amongst the New Left and the growing anti-war movement, his critical theory of

American society found fertile soil, yet the very reality of a significant protest movement seemed to invalidate Marcuse’s own gloomy pronouncement about the impossibility of dissent or rebellion. Since Marcuse argued that people of advanced industrial society had internalized a stifling technological rationality, dissent could not emerge from within. He noted, instead, that one of the “tendencies” that could “explode the society,” was the rising opposition of “the substratum of outcasts and outsiders.” It was “the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors.” Since they did not share in the rewards of the affluent society, their opposition “hit the system from without.”562 Crucially, in the book’s last paragraph, Marcuse noted that the “spectre” of dissent, or what he called “the great refusal” was “here again, inside and outside the frontiers of the advanced societies.”

Marcuse seemed to hint here at the fact that third world revolutionaries should be counted amongst the “outcasts” and the “exploited.” He noted that “the facile historical parallel with the barbarians threatening the empire of civilization prejudges the issue: the second period of barbarism may well be the continued empire of civilization itself.” In light of

560 Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), x. 561 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 9. 562 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 257. 300 the Vietnam War, Marcuse’s “great refusal” could easily be projected onto the Vietcong.

After Johnson had taken the first steps to escalate the war in 1965, Marcuse began to make such arguments.

At a seminar dedicated to the “goals” of the Great Society, held at Syracuse

University in the fall of 1965, Marcuse more directly addressed the relationship between the war and advanced industrial society. The seminar was organized by Bertram Gross when he and Bell were making the case for social indicators. Bell presented a rudimentary version of his Public Interest piece on post-industrialism at the symposium, and he argued again for the development of an anticipatory outlook and a kind of social planning that could help realize Great Society goals. Marcuse, however, argued that it was a mistake to presume that an advanced industrial society could realize goals that were essentially humanistic.563 Marcuse noted that President Johnson had described the

Great Society as “a society of unbridled growth” with “abundance and liberty for all.” It was a society that cared about “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”564

But, for Marcuse, these were incompatible aims for an advanced industrial society. This society, after all, was not free, but characterized by an inherent domination and servitude of its citizens; abundance was the subtle tool of enslavement. Johnson’s pairing of

“abundance” and “liberty” was exactly what One Dimensional Man had aimed to criticize.

Marcuse, moreover, noted that Johnson had also described the Great Society as a place “free from the dark shadow of war and suspicion among nations.” Such a

563 Herbert Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society” in Gross, Bertram M, (ed.) A Great Society? (New York: Basic Books), 59. 564 Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” 58-59. 301 pronouncement sounded ridiculous to Marcuse, but not just because of the obvious hypocritical ring that this statement took on after the escalation of the war in Vietnam.

Relying on Freud, Marcuse argued that the one-dimensionality of advanced industrial society was responsible for the organized aggression that was the war in Vietnam. The root of the aggression was an unconscious frustration about the “unfreedom” and domination inherent in advanced industrial societies. A society that denied the humanity of its citizens—while keeping them content to the point where even the consciousness of alienation was repressed—needed an enemy. This enemy was thus born from the need to release “the aggressive energy which cannot be channeled into the normal, daily, struggle for existence.”565

The “international situation of the affluent society” therefore was “in a very specific sense an expression of its internal dynamic.” And it was important to realize, argued Marcuse, that the enemy, despite the domino theory, was not that other big advanced industrial society: “communism is most firmly and solidly constituted in the

Soviet Union, but for quite some time the U.S.A and the U.S.S.R. have not really treated each other as enemies.” Instead, “war is waged” against “backward people” and “have- nots.” What these people represented was “the danger of a subversion of the established hierarchy of master and servant.” It was “a slave revolt rather than a revolution.” It

“threatens the system as a whole,” because the rebels “have not even a potential vested interest in the established societies.”566 Here Marcuse was including the Vietcong into those who could mount the “great refusal.” This “primitive rebellion” was based on “the

565 Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” 63. 566 Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” 64. 302 awareness that their society cannot be constructed along the line of the have-nations which perpetuate servitude and domination.”567

The stated aim of the Vietcong, however, was a communist revolution, Marcuse could not deny this. Perhaps this indicated that Third World revolutionaries did want some sort of advanced industrial system. Rather crudely, Marcuse noted that “their struggle is objectively anti-communist even if they are communists.” The real fight against advanced industrial society was active “’behind the back’ of policy makers” and asserted itself “against the will of policy makers.” In his desire to see in Third World revolutionaries rebels against all forms of advanced industrial societies, Marcuse denied them their agency. In One Dimensional Man, he had done something similar. He had noted that the opposition of blacks and the unemployable in the “great refusal” could be revolutionary, “even if their consciousness is not.”568

At the Great society seminar Marcuse read headlines that he found in his morning papers. “’136 Vietcong Killed’… ‘Marines Kill at Least 156 Vietcong’ … ‘240 Reds

Slain.’” For Marcuse, “this sort of reporting, consumed daily by millions, appeals to killers and the need for killers.” Even though he had “lived through two world wars”

Marcuse could “not remember such brazen advertisements of slaughter.”569 The citizens of the affluent society “live in a universe of permanent defense and aggression,” he stated. “It manifests itself in the war against the Vietcong and in its struggle against the negroes, in the huge network of industries and services which work for the military establishment and its accessories, but it also manifest itself in the violence released and

567 Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” 65. 568 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 256. 569 Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” 66. 303 made productive by science and technology, in the terror of publicity and fun released on captive audiences.”570 Advanced industrial society was by definition an aggressive society, for Marcuse. Ever more efficient use of technology produced a more complete form of domination. And this, in turn, produced subconscious frustration and more aggression.

Yet, technology, argued Marcuse, was not inherently the root of domination. “I believe technology has an inherent telos, namely to pacify the struggle for existence, not simply the conquest of nature, but the conquest of nature for specific ends, namely to allow man to live a life without fear, and in peace.” Yet, today, noted Marcuse, “the opposite is achieved.” Advanced industrial society “suppresses the very needs that are essential in order to bring about a future that can indeed enjoy the benefits of technology.571”

This seemingly contradictory statement, points to the complicated role that technology played in Marcuse’s thinking. One the one hand, he argued that the cause of one-dimensional society was “technological rationality.” A society that had undertaken the “technological transformation of nature” made domination total, and inescapable.572

Marcuse traced the origins of this back to the very foundation of scientific thought. It was

“the quantification of nature” that ‘separated the true from the good, science from ethics.”

Marcuse argued that scientific rationality disqualified everything outside its own realm:

570 Marcuse, “The Individual in the Great Society,” 62. 571 Herbert Marcuse, "Technology and Politics, program 415, part a," audio recording in Digital Collections, Item #5754, http://digital.library.ucsb.edu/items/show/5754 (accessed November 28, 2016) 572 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 144. 304

“if the good, and the beautiful, peace and justice, cannot be derived from ontological or scientific rational conditions they cannot logically claim universal validity.”573

Yet, when Marcuse described the “changes in the character of work and the instruments of production,” he turned to the logical extreme of such trends, namely fully automated production. With a lengthy quote from Marx’s Grundrisse der Kritik der

Politischen Oekenomie, Marcuse pointed to the “explosive prospects” of automation.

Marx had written that once “man relates himself to the process of production” merely as

“watchman or regulator” he stood outside this process. Now “the idleness of the few has ceased to be the condition for the development of the universal intellectual faculties of man.”574 And thus, wrote Marcuse, “[c]omplete automation in the realm of necessity would open the dimension of free time as the one in which man’s private and societal existence would constitute itself.” Theoretically, technological change could produce “the transcendence toward a new civilization.”

In Marcuse’s thinking about advanced industrial society his Freudian ideas— domination, repression—clashed with his Marxist ones—production, technology, freedom. In One Dimensional Man Marcuse considered the revolutionary potential of technology in terms of stages of history. At one point scientific rationality had, through its all-pervading logic, demoted an older metaphysics to the plane of irrationality. But this meant that the contemporary primacy of scientific rationality was itself a stage in history, and thus a question arose: “is this stage the final one? Or does the scientific

573 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 148. 574 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 36. 305 transformation of the world contain its own metaphysical transcendence.”575 Marcuse answered in the affirmative: “the completion of the technological reality would be not only the prerequisite, but also the rationale for transcending the technological rationality.” In this stage science itself would be something altogether different: “from the quantification of secondary qualities, science would proceed to the quantification of values.”576

If this sounded optimistic, Marcuse’s dialectical theories had a way of slamming shut the very doors they opened. Critical theory could not get at the future, this Marcuse himself admitted: “the critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and the future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative.”577 And thus, the technology that could liberate man was not willed by a people comfortable in “unfreedom.” Technology (in its applied, not transcendent or metaphysical sense) was able to reward a passivity in citizens that obstructed the desire for technology’s ultimate rewards. This limited use of technology—what Marcuse called the political use of technology—produced a repressed frustration, that manifested itself in aggressiveness. This aggressiveness itself took technological form in terms of cars that were “too powerful for the little people that drive them,” rockets and missiles, and ultimately the Vietnam War.578

575 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 230. 576 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 232. 577 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 257. 578 Marcuse, "Technology and Politics,” (audio recording). 306

The Technological Society and its Future

Marcuse made these comments about the teleology of technology, during a symposium on “the technological society” hosted by the Center for the Study of

Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. This left-liberal institution was founded by former University of Chicago President and Ford Foundation head Robert M. Hutchins.

The center aimed to bring together scholars in order to focus on topics relating broadly to democratic institutions. The “terminus a quo” for this particular gathering was, La

Technique ou L’Enjeu du Siècle, a 1954 work by the French sociologist Jaques Ellul.579

When, in 1961, Hutchins wanted to focus on technology, he asked Aldous Huxley for new European works on the subject. Huxley, subsequently recommended the work of

Ellul and the Center had it translated by one of its own staff members, John Wilkinson. It was published as The Technological Society in 1964. Thirty-one scholars came to Santa

Barbara, including Roszak, Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Marshall McLuhan, and Bertrand de Jouvenel.

Jacques Ellul was born in Bordeaux in 1912. During the mid-1930s Ellul was a

Marxist, but opposed to the French Communist party.580 When the Vichy regime dismissed him from a position at the University of Strasbourg, he joined the resistance.

After the war he became a prolific scholar at the University of Bordeaux, where he wrote more than twenty books. Already before the war, Ellul had converted to Christianity and given up on a strict adherence to Marxism; what remained was a fondness for dialectic arguments but without the revolutionary conclusions. Ellul was a member of the French

579 John Wilkinson, “Introduction” in Technology and Human Values (Santa Barbara: Center for the study of Democratic Institutions, 1966), 5. 580 David C. Menninger, “Jacques Ellul: a Tempered Profile” The Review of Politics. April, 1975, 235. 307

Reformed Protestant Church and was associated with the world ecumenical movement as well as the religious Journal Foie et Vie.581 This journal was the first to introduce Karl

Barth’s theology in France, religious ideas that aligned with Ellul’s.582

In The Technological Society, Ellul set out to define, trace, and critique the prime mover of modern industrial society. “Technique did not mean technical,” and it did not naturally correspond to machines, stressed Ellul.583 The machine was external to man;

“technique,” on the other hand, “is integrated with him, and it progressively absorbs him.”584 The phenomenon of “technique” emerged in the 18th century, blossomed in the

19th, and reached its height in the 20th, or so Ellul argued. Although the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were characterized by great intellectual fervor and scientific breakthroughs, they were not characterized by technique. During this period technique

“ran up against the profound humanism…which still haunted the seventeenth century—it believed not only in knowledge and respect for the human being but in the genuine supremacy of man over means.”585 The industrial revolution brought “technique” to life, but not completely. For Ellul, the fact that in the mid-19th century workers still agitated against machines, and demanded their suppression, was evidence that technique was not yet inevitable. “The power of the state, the money of the bourgeoisie were for it; the masses were against.”586

581 Menninger, Jacques Ellul, 582 For a brief history of this journal see www.foi-et-vie.fr/us/whoweare.php?code=HISTORY 583 Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 3. 584 Ellul, The Technological Society, 6. 585 Ellul, The Technological Society, 41. 586 Ellul, The Technological Society, 54. 308

In explaining how “technique” gained its edge, Ellul relied on a crude critique of

Marxism. It was Marx who had “rehabilitated technique in the eyes of the workers” by emphasizing that “technological progress itself” would bring about the collapse of capitalism. For Ellul, Marx had convinced the workers that technological change would ultimately be in their benefit, but that in the meantime the exploitative uses of technical progress were “the fault of the masters and not technique itself.” Ellul wrote that Marx

“upheld the bourgeois order of the primacy of the economic…If economic conditions are changed, men are changed.”587 In blaming Marx for the acceptance of technique on the part of workers Ellul clearly ignored the younger Marx’s more humanistic focus.

Technique, then, was an imprecise term; it had to do with materialism and technical rationality, and its frightening end-point was always some sort of mass society. It was a

“monolithic technical world” that could not be “checked or guided.”588 Ellul’s notion of technique was similar to Jouvenel’s imprecise jeremiad about power in Du Pouvoir. Both authors combined sweeping and absolutist arguments in which a pre-modern world compared favorably to modern mass society.

Jouvenel was aware of Ellul’s work and asked him, early in the 1960s, to write a paper for Futuribles. He received one titled “Western Man in 1970.” In it, Ellul offered a set of dialectical speculations about “mass man.” People were becoming “cultured and de-cultured;” in 1970 they would watch even more television, and while this “offered a very wide variety of food for the mind,” absorbing it was a passive act. Culture, as Ellul

587 Ellul, The Technological Society, 222. 588 Ellul, The Technological Society, 428. 309 understood it, was about the active search for “the meaning and value of life.”589 Most mass culture, however, encouraged passive consumption. Similarly, the individual of the future society was “a completely passive man of action.” Although modern man was encouraged to be busy by a society that valued action for its own sake, acting as an individual became impossible. All that one could do was like driving in a city, all actions had to be “coordinated and combined with those of others.” All that the active man could do was the result “not of an individual decision but of a collective plan.”590 Active was thus really passive.

In the fall of 1962 Daniel Bell reviewed Ellul’s paper when he joined the

Futuribles board. The mass culture critique jumped out at Bell, and he quickly dismissed it. “Mr. Ellul has taken a mélange of ideas from the grab-bag of ‘mass society’ (Jaspers,

Horkheimer, Lederer, Mannheim, et al.) and dressed them up in a rhetorical chiaroscuro.”591 In the first chapter of The End of Ideology Bell had critiqued those who saw in the citizens of modern society only “mindless masses.”592 Ellul’s version of this was more of the same. “German ideology has become sociological cliché,” stated Bell.593

Although he did not want to “quarrel with Mr. Ellul’s pessimism,” and admitted that modern society had many tendencies that lead one to despair about “the possibilities of individual initiative,” Bell believed that important “counter-tendencies” existed:

589 Ellul, “Western Man in 1979,” In De Jouvenel, Bertrand, Futuribles: Studies in Conjecture, Vol. 1 (Geneva: Droz, 1963), 54-56. 590 Ellul, “Western Man in 1979,” 46. 591 Daniel Bell “Summary 14: Western man in 1970, Report to Futuribles Board,” Grant file 6241, Reel 664, FFR. 592 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press, 1960), 28. 593 Bell “Summary 14: Western Man in 1970.” 310

I can take Mr. Ellul to New York, that epitome of the ‘soul-less’ metropolis and show him, on the west side of Manhattan, within the space of half a mile, 24 or more neighborhood associations, parent-teacher associations, block groups, park committees, and fierce debates about the placement of local schools, the re- organization of parks, the routing of traffic, and dozens of other issues which are meaningful to the local citizens and which would have gladdened the heart of Jean Jacques Rousseau…594

Surely this example of engaged citizens in action, indicated that Bell did want to

“quarrel” with Elul’s pessimism. Bell did not only disagree with Ellul about the nature of mass society but also about technology. Yet, in his essay on “Work and its Discontents” of the mid-1950s, Bell had sounded much like Ellul at times. He described the scientific management theories of Frederick W. Taylor, and also the “vogue of human relations.”

The latter he believed to be symptomatic of a change from “authority to manipulation as a means of exercising dominion.”595 Even artists, those who live “time as durée,” had been “assimilated by the machine.” In such passages Bell, indeed, seemed as pessimistic as Ellul. Yet, in the version that Bell included in The End of Ideology, the conclusion of the essay pointed to a different view of technology. It is when Bell discussed the topic of automation that his pessimism about “the cult of efficiency” melted away and his ideas on post-industrialism started to come into view.

Automation meant that “the team not the individual worker will assume a new importance.” It required “workers who can think of the plant as a whole.” Workers would no longer be judged “in terms of ‘the one best way,’ not by the slide rule and stop watch.”

Instead work would be judged “on the basis of planning and organizing…”596 The increased productive capacity, moreover, would be regulated by “the government as

594 Ibid. 595 Bell, The End of Ideology, 224. 596 Bell, The End of Ideology, 261. 311 gyroscope.” From here it was a small step to the new “techniques” of rational planning that Bell described in his paper on post-industrial society: linear programming, systems analysis, and computer modeling. For Ellul, however, computers, or “electronic brains” were the ultimate dehumanizing machines, the epitome of technique.597

At the seminar on the Technological Society in Santa Barbara, Ellul’s fears were echoed by a number of participants. Anthropologist and best-selling author of books on natural science, Loren Eiseley, warned that “men, unknowingly…are making their last decision about human destiny.”598 Fred Polak, a Dutch sociologist foresaw—and warned about— a “chief executive of a nation” taking orders from a “battery of computers.”599

Gerald Sykes, a lecturer at Columbia University’s school of General Studies, proclaimed:

“[m]an rushes first to be saved by technology, and then to be saved from it. We

Americans are front-runners in both races.”600 The Israeli Philosopher Nathan

Rotenstreich tried to capture the dominant critiques of technology with a gloomy statement: “the vision of the future has become identified with the vision of technology.”

A science writer for the Milwaukee Journal who covered the symposium put it all rather dramatically: there was “a snake in the new Garden of Eden that machines could make possible.” The snake symbolized a question: “who…can or will control the machines?”601

At the symposium, Theodore Roszak argued that he agreed with much of Ellul’s thesis, especially the notion that technological rationality had a domineering drive that

597 Ellul, The Technological Society, 259 598Loren Eisely quoted in Piere-Rene Noth, “Experts debate Machines’s impact on goals,” The Milwaukee Journal, December 2, 1966, 10. 599 Fred Polak quoted in Noth, “Thinkers Clash on Machines role in Politics,” The Milwaukee Journal, January 5, 1966, 20. 600 Gerald Sykes, “A New Salvation, A New Supernatural” in Wilkinson, John (ed.) Technology and Human Values, 6. 601 Noth, “Is Man Losing Reigns to Machines?” The Milwaukee Journal, December 25, 1965, 28. 312 could not be tamed. Yet, Roszak also believed that Ellul’s notion of technological oppression was not very refined. The Frenchman seemed to equate technique with “that one efficient way of doing things” which always seemed to evoke Stalin’s brutal collectivization of Russian agriculture.602 Roszak, however, followed Marcuse’s argument that technology was a subtle tool of oppression. Roszak frame of reference seemed to be advanced industrial society in the 1950s and 60s, where Ellul seemed always to have had the 1930s and 40s in mind.

Although Roszak believed Marcuse’s notion of domination was better than

Ellul’s, he did not agree with what Marcuse was saying during the symposium, about the

“inherent telos” of technology. Even though Marcuse viewed the liberating capacity of technology in an almost metaphysical manner, as the “transcending [of] the technological rationality,” he was still a materialist; he did not want to dismiss technology all together.

For Roszak this was missing Ellul’s crucial insight. Technology could never be employed in the name of liberation, it would always lead to further oppression. In The Making of a

Counterculture, Roszak elaborated on his disagreement with Marcuse. He argued that modern “technocracy” was the result of an uncritical adherence to technology as an agent of progress. Therefore, it was only on a non-material, non-rational, or spiritual level that the technological society could successfully be confronted. This the counter-culture understood, argued Roszak. The growing interest in mysticism and eastern religions, therefore, was not an a-political escape from reality, but a noble attempt at the necessary

“great refusal” against an inhuman system. Marcuse’s “great refusal,” wrote Roszak, was

“a most depressing refusal;” his quest for “Eros” was always held back by his

602 Theodore Roszak, “Forbidden Games,” in Wilkinson, John, ed., Technology and Human Values, 32. 313 unwillingness to seek the higher stage of civilization purely in the metaphysical realm.

“For him the symbols of poetic vision can have only a horizontal, historical significance.

They guide us toward the secular future, never towards that ever-present sacramental dimension of life designated by Blake as ‘the real and eternal world of which this

Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow.’”603 Whether this critique was entirely fair can be debated: Marcuse’s notion of Eros, and his writing on the role of art, seemed not all that different from the kind of poetic vision Roszak desired. Still, Marcuse never wanted to dismiss technology’s liberating capacity.

Roszak’s Ellulian absolutism about technology meant that he could find liberation only in the complete antithesis of the rational and scientific world view. Politics had to follow where a “liberated consciousness” lead it “into the province of the dream, the myth, the visionary rapture, the sacramental sense of reality, the transcendent symbol.

“The next politics” had to strive for the formation of a “visionary commonwealth.” The commonwealth Roszak had in mind was something that aimed at the “disassembling [of] urban-industrialism.” It would be communal and closer to nature. This “disassembling” should be executed “not in grim sacrifice” but happily, since “the reality we want…lies beyond the artificial environment.” It was “the true postindustrialism: a world awakened from its sick infatuation with power, growth, efficiency, progress as if from a nightmare.”604 The people who were to bring it about were already presenting

603 Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, 119. 604 Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society (New York: Doubleday, 1972),414 314 themselves: “dissenting young technicians, dropped-out professionals, young scientists who are well away into Tantric Sadhanas…”605

Roszak was not the only one who wrote favorably about the counter culture’s rejection of the technological rationality of advanced industrial society. In The Greening of America the Yale Law professor Charles A. Reich, wrote that members of the new generation—those with a new form of consciousness—“do not go to nature as a holiday from what is real, they go to nature as a source. The salt water of the sea is the salt water of their blood.”606 Reich, moreover noted that in describing what he called

“Consciousness III,” “we are engaging in an intellectual process which Consciousness III rejects; they have a deep skepticism of both ‘linear’ and analytic thought.”607 Reich’s thinking, however, was much more optimistic than Roszak’s and it did not follow Ellul’s argument about technology. Reich saw that the new consciousness was critical of technology but did not reject it. Instead they used it to express their individuality, through music, film or even sexuality in the case of the birth control pill.

At the symposium on the technological society, Emanuel Mesthene, head of

Harvard’s IBM funded Technology and Society program, claimed to be neither pessimistic nor optimistic about technology. He was interested instead in technology as it related to “the interpenetration of scholar, scientist and politician.” His program at

Harvard considered how technological change impacted society and the decision making process. A short 1970 book that emerged from Metshene’s work at Harvard, indicates that his program ran up against the problem that had also vexed Brzezinski: finding “new

605 Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, 445. 606 Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (New York: Random House, 1970), 262. 607 Reich, The Greening of America, 224. 315 political institutions and procedures more adequate to the realities of a modern technological society will emerge as perhaps the major intellectual and political challenge of our time.”608

In Santa Barbara, Mestehne was challenged by Robert Jungk, a German journalist and peace activist. Jungk who headed the Vienna-based Institute for Researchers into the

Problems of the Future, noted that Mesthene seemed to argue that technology was a neutral force and that politicians had to find ways to utilize it in the best way possible.

But for Jungk, a critic of the war in Vietnam and the nuclear arms race, this sounded naïve. Were the scholars and scientists not the captives of the politicians? Could the former escape the bonds of the military industrial complex and imagine peaceful futures, and alternative uses of technology? Jungk argued that where technology was least humane and most destructive, namely in its military application, it did not possess some autonomous force at all. Instead, technology was quite obviously directed by people toward larger, more efficient, and more destructive tools of war. Jungk had come to believe that it was in the American “denkfrabriken,” think tanks like RAND, that the force of technology was willfully directed, and the future determined and planned. In order to combat this, his institute aimed to offer an alternative to the future orientation of the American establishment, something that offered new ideas “as concrete as a rocket, as concrete as a tank.”609

608 Emanuel Mesthene, Technological Change: Its Impact on Man and Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 80. 609 Piere-Rene Noth, “Crux of it All: Who Will Run Automated Society?” The Milwaukee Journal, January 6, 1966, 20. 316

Utopia and Futurism

Jungk was born into a Jewish family of filmmakers and actors in 1913. The day after the Reichstag fire, he was arrested while returning from classes at the University of

Berlin where he was studying psychology and philosophy. Upon being released a few days later, Jungk fled to Paris, and later, when that city was threatened, Zurich. Jungk initially worked in the French film industry but soon started to write for anti-fascist newspapers. During the early months of 1945 he became a roving reporter for various

European papers, reporting on the end of the war and its immediate aftermath from

European capitals. In 1946 he became the Washington correspondent for a combination of Central European newspapers, and while there met and married his wife Ruth. Not much later the new couple moved to Los Angeles, from where Jungk continued working as an American correspondent for European newspapers.610

In California, Jungk soon became interested in the booming California Aerospace industry. As he reported on the explosive growth of the American military industrial complex he steadily became uncomfortable in America. “Something is breaking through the façade of the new world,” he wrote. It was “the newer world: an America no longer in agreement with the guiding principles of its previous history, and presenting ever more plainly, features of a totalitarian nature.”611 Jungk investigated his discomfort with the

“new America” in a bestselling book: Die Zukunft hat Schon Begonnen: Amerikas

Allmacht und Ohnmacht. Two years later, in 1954, this work was translated and published in the U.S. as Tomorrow is Already Here. Jungk offered a series of vignettes,

610 Edward Cornish, The Study of the Future (Washington D.C.: World Future Society, 1977), 148-149. 611 Robert Jungk, Tomorrow is Already Here trans. Marguerite Waldman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 4. 317 each describing a location that captured an aspect of the new society breaking through.

He described “the great armament factories with their brand-new mass migrations, the metallic shimmer of oil refineries” and especially the “military reserves, the laboratory towns, the testing grounds.” One American reviewer described him as “a scientific Mrs.

Trollope,” an author “wandering up and down” post-war America, viewing “our blooming iniquities” with “questioning European eyes.”612

Jungk’s book was partly a critique of mass society and partly a humanistic charge against modern technology. He visited Columbus, Ohio because he had heard it was the home of “Mrs. Average,” the “test tube of American market research.”613 In such a place, he wrote, one entered a world in which “individual human existence increasingly fits itself into the uniform of standardization.” American cities of the mid and southwest were towns without a heart, where “the centers…are no longer the church, the school, or the town hall, but the centers of production and consumption, the factory and the

‘supermarket.’”614 Jungk bemoaned the loss of a life lived on a smaller scale, and although Jungk was a secular Jew, his critique often took the form of a jeremiad against the loss of spirituality. He especially aimed for a more humble attitude toward nature.

Yet, what he observed in America, was mostly blind faith in technological progress. The quest for the subjugation of “clouds and wind, plant and beast, the boundless heavens themselves” was an unforgivable hubris. Forever striving for the next technologically possible step meant that mankind was endangering itself, and nowhere was this more obvious, believed Jungk, than in America’s nuclear research.

612 Charles Poore, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, July 12, 1954, 17. 613 Jungk, Tomorrow is Already Here, 206. 614 Jungk, Tomorrow is Already Here, 4. 318

In a 1956 study on the development of the atom bomb, published in the U.S. as

Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Jungk offered a highly romantic description of early work on quantum mechanics. In ornate prose he described the slow-paced, low-tech, and leisurely academic world of Cambridge, Copenhagen and Göttingen in the 1920s. It was intellectual curiosity that drove the work of Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford, and Max

Born, and in a spirit of collegiality and international cooperation they made their discoveries. This world was then rudely shattered by historical events of the 1930s and

40s; nationalism, militarism and world war turned an intellectual pursuit into weapons research. Jungk described all this not as tragedy but as a moral failure on the part of the dozen or so scientists who were at the vanguard of nuclear research. As one reviewer noted, Jungk captured the moment as “a failure of political and moral imagination, of loyalty to the international tradition of science.”615

For Jungk, the answer to the reality of the hydrogen bomb and the nuclear arms race was international activism. During the second half of the 1950s, he became a prominent figure in the international nuclear disarmament movement. He participated in the movement’s early marches in Japan and produced another widely read book about the bombing of Hiroshima. By this time Jungk no longer lived in the U.S., but had returned to Germany. The decision to leave California not only reflected his discomfort with

America’s militarism but also a newfound appreciation for Europe. He believed Europe was not yet completely contaminated by the obsessive “quantitative striving toward ever higher prosperity.” Unlike, in the “technocratic systems of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R,”

615 Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., “Review: Brighter Than a Thousand Suns,” Isis, March 1960, 118. 319

Europeans still cared about the improvement in “the quality of life and human objectives.”616

By the early 1960s, Jungk got the idea to write a book that would function as a counterweight to his critical treatments of the scientific-military complex in the U.S.

Privately he termed this project “Europe 2000.” He hoped to “travel the old world” and talk to scientists of all kinds about their work. The focus, he hoped, would be especially on science in relation to goals for a better, more humane, world. When Jungk mentioned his idea to some friends with connections at ARD, the German public broadcasting system, he was asked to do it as a TV series. Now accompanied by a camera crew—and with all his expenses paid for—Jungk talked to engineers, scientists, and intellectuals of various fields from all over Western Europe. Jungk was especially excited about those who talked enthusiastically about cybernetics. The emphasis on the connections between man, machine and ecological systems, was attractive for Jungk because it fitted his pantheist sensibility.

One of Jungk’s first trips for his “Europe 2000” venture was to Paris, where he sat in on an early Futuribles seminar. Jungk came away deeply impressed; he realized that

Jouvenel’s call to study possible futures had its origin in a set of disparate concerns that he shared.617 First, Jouvenel hoped to chart possible futures as an alternative to narrow extrapolations of economic data. His critique of technical and economic determinism, as well as his critique of Modernization Theory, matched Jungk’s own concerns. Both thinkers also believed that technical or scientific progress occurred at the expense of

616 Robert Jungk, Trotzdem: Mein Leben für die Zukunft (München: Carl Hein Verlag, 1993), 339. 617 Jungk, Trotzdem, 342-343. 320 nature and harmony between man and his environment. This sensibility became an ever larger part of Jouvenel’s thinking during the 1960s. At the symposium in Santa Barbara

Jouvenel noted that technology had advanced on “the lines of violence and noise,” and the “intellectual climate” was one of “hubris.” He noted that “what is presently described as ecology” seemed to him the perfect moderator of this hubris.618 The final aspect that enthused Jungk about Jouvenel was the latter’s unwillingness to call his future orientation a science. Jungk appreciated this because it meant that it set itself apart from both

“Marxist predictions,” with their inflexible “inevitability,” as well as the “intellectual colonizing of the future” perpetrated by American think-tanks such as RAND.619

During the early 1960s Jungk also started writing a future oriented column for the

Hamburg weekly, Die Zeit. He used it to discuss the ideas of the people he met for his

Europe 2000 venture, and to report on various future related activities. In 1965, for instance, Jungk attended the Futuribles conference in Paris for the newspaper. Here he listened intently to the discussions about Jouvenel’s “Surmising Forum.” Jungk immediately agreed that such a future oriented institution was desirable, and like

Jouvenel, he stressed that it could not operate secretively, and could not be coopted by the state. Although he was impressed by the Futuribles conference, Jungk complained in the newspaper that its participants were too old, and lacked the intellectual flexibility of a new generation. Jungk wrote most favorably about the presentation of the social- psychologist Robert Lifton who, like himself, was active in the anti-nuclear movement, and had studied the aftermath of Hiroshima bombing. Lifton was optimistic about the role

618 Bertrand de Jouvenel, “Some Musings,” in Wilkinson, Technology and Human Values, 41. 619 Jungk, Trotzdem, 342. 321 of young people when it came to any future directed enterprises. They were willing to

“anticipate the collapse of old ideas and institutions” and “enjoy their rebirth in a communal society.”620

Not much later, Jungk traveled to Boston to meet Daniel Bell and sit in on a session of the Commission on the year 2000. Here again, he was sympathetic to the goals of the enterprise but critical about a perceived stuffy-ness. In his autobiography Jungk remembers entering an “imitation of a French Chateau in Cambridge,” and seeing “a row of men, not young, but also not very old,” who, “taking a break from their work at nearby colleges or departments in the capital,” were now busy “thinking about that better world of the year 2000.”621 Jungk juxtaposed this serene environment with the mood in the rest of the country. After landing in New York, he had already seen an animated public discussion on the war at Union Square, and he had walked into a student demonstration at

Columbia University.622 Everywhere he went he witnessed debates; young people were constantly talking about the “rights of blacks, poverty, the decline of cities and schools.”623 When he confronted Bell with his unease about the Commission’s “distanced art of examining burning questions,” Bell responded that the “critical analyses sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences had led to real improvements.”

Unconvinced, Jungk protested that in light of the crises that the country faced, the work of the commission did not seem to have a very great impact.624

620 Robert Jungk, “Wohin Steuert Die Staatsrakete?” Die Zeit, May 14, 1965, 15. 621 Jungk, Trotzdem, 364. 622 The date of Jungk’s visit is not entirely clear, but it is likely 1966, or 1967. His description of the student demonstration at Columbia does not indicate the student take-over in 1968. 623 Jungk, Trotzdem, 363 624 Jungk, Trotzdem, 364. 322

Since the original goal of the Commission on the Year 2000 had been at least partly practical—to solve problems for the great society by anticipating them—Jungk’s charge was a difficult one for Bell. He had abandoned his practical vision for the

Commission because he struggled to relate forecasting to planning, and both to a pluralist democratic system. Jungk’s charge was similar to Donald Shön’s call to connect forecasts to a political platform. This led Bell to his “Luftmesnch” comments, his embrace of “a simple speculative leap,” and ultimately to his reliance on Kahn’s scenario method.

Jungk, however, was interested in a kind of participatory planning, an activity in which forecasting was a kind of utopia formation. He wanted idealized images of the future to animate planning discussions in which the public could participate, all with a decidedly humanistic focus. Although it was easy to critique the Commission on the Year 2000, for its “distanced art,” offering an alternative would prove difficult. A major problem in this respect, was the fact that Jungk himself was influenced by two thinkers whose ideas about the future were elitist and ill-fit his notion of “participatory” planning. These thinkers were the Hungarian-British physicist Dennis Gabor, and the Dutch sociologist

Fred Polak.

During the early 1960s, Gabor’s scientific work on holography and the laser— which would win him a Nobel Prize in 1971—had inspired him to undertake a philosophical inquiry into the future. In a book titled Inventing the Future, Gabor worried about the depletion of natural resources, nuclear weapons, and many harmful technological inventions, only to conclude that “we are still the masters of our faith.”625

Ultimately, Gabor concluded, it was up to the rational elite of the world to take charge

625 Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 5. 323 and “invent the future.” Stripped of all the technical explorations and facile historical analogies, Gabor’s book was the crudest possible rendition of Plato’s argument for philosopher kings. The best and the brightest of scientists and intellectuals had to

“visualize by an act of imagination a thing or a state of things which does not yet exist and which to him appears in some way desirable.” Throughout the book, Gabor advanced the argument that technological change could be guided if only technological invention was checked by “social invention.” How this would work he described in language that was rife with vagueness: the social inventor could imagine a utopian goal and then “start rationally arguing backwards from the invention and forward from the means at his disposal until a way is found from one to the other.”626

Jungk, however, did not think Gabor was vague, or he was at least not bothered by it. When he met him in London on one of his television sponsored trips, he found out that this “trailblazing physicist” hardly wanted to talk about his scientific work, and only cared to discuss “social and political ideas about the future.” Jungk ignored Gabor’s elitism and focused only on his supposed defense of utopianism. Something similar happened when he was exposed to the ideas of Fred Polak.

During the 1930s Polak enjoyed a successful career in banking and retail. But, as a member of a prominent Jewish family, he was forced into hiding upon the German invasion and occupation. When he surfaced in 1945 he had produced a work in philosophy that would get him a PhD from Leiden University two years later. Around that same time he became chair of sociology at a college in Rotterdam, and deputy director of the new Dutch Central Planning Bureau. This agency carried a somewhat

626 Gabor, Inventing the Future, 208. 324 misleading name, as it never did much planning. Founded by one of the fathers of macroeconomic modeling, Jan Tinbergen, the agency was essentially engaged in statistical policy analysis; political parties, the cabinet, or labor unions could employ it to calculate the feasibility of their economic plans. The work produced by this agency thus carried as much ambiguity as did macroeconomic modeling in general. From 1955-1957

Polak took over from Tinbergen as agency director. Polak also spent time as a fellow at

Stanford’s center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Here he befriended the economist Kenneth Boulding and his wife Elise, who helped Polak gain an audience in the U.S.627

In the early 1960s, Elise Boulding translated Polak’s De Toekomst is Verleden

Tijd—learning Dutch to be able to do so.628 The book—severely condensed—was eventually published as the Image of the Future. In it, Polak analyzed different historical time periods and cultures for their ideas about the future. Much of the book displayed the influence of Arnold Toynbee. There was the fixation on the trajectory of civilizations, the willingness to compare different peoples and time periods, but also in style Polak’s work evoked the author of the famous six-volume a Study of History. There was the boldness of describing entire cultures and their history in a few paragraphs, and the highly authoritative voice that he brought to bear on religion, philosophy, history, science, and technology. Yet, Polak lacked Toynbee’s literary gifts, and as a result his theorizing on the importance of historical “images of the futures” was mostly convoluted, dry, and pedantic. More damning, however, was the fact that Polak’s ultimate argument was

627 Ruud van der Helm, “The Future According to Frederik Lodewijk Polak: Finding the Roots of Contemporary Futures Studies,” Futures, 37, 2005, 507-509. 628 The Dutch title can be translated as: “the future is time past.” 325 simplistic and tautological. After discussing Zoroastrianism, Jewish eschatology, or St.

Augustine, there always followed the same conclusion, slightly rephrased each time: “the positive image of the future in its classic form becomes one of the main instruments of culture, providing both a vision of civilization and the tools for realizing it.”629 This was not saying much more than: ideas about the future are influential cultural ideas.

Yet, Polak’s book was more than a comparative analysis of civilizations and their vision of the future; he used this study to make an argument about his own time. He shared the ideas of the mass culture critics, and like Ellul warned that technology endangered a culture of free thinking individuals. In Marcusian fashion Polak argued that people were too satisfied to articulate social or political goals for a better world. He lamented the contemporary climate of anti-utopianism; he lived in a society “sunken in a present tense that forever extends itself.”630 Having dismissed the coopted masses, only a cultural elite, committed to a utopian vision of cultural renewal, could offer positive images of the future.

Critics did not miss the fact that Polak never actually produced a utopian vision.

One reviewer stated the obvious: “images [of the future] cannot simply be created by fiat.”631 Another reviewer noted that Polak understood these images to be “independent of their social milieu.”632 Strangely, Kenneth Boulding’s review of Polak’s work was perhaps the most damning. He noted that “Polak’s “extraordinary work” had influenced his own thinking before it was even published “through the personal acquaintance with

629 Fred Polak, The Image of the Future trans. Elise Boulding (San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1973), 13. 630 Fred Polak, Hoe Veroveren wij de Toekomst (Amsterdam, Contact: 1964), 143. 631 Masur, Gerhard. The American Historical Review 67, no. 3 (1962): 679. 632 Harold W. Melvin, Review of Religious Research 15, no. 1 (1973): 61-62. 326 the author.”633 Yet, that this was meaningless praise, followed from the rest of the review.

The book was “overly long…tedious” and “marred by extravagances of style and rhetoric.” Polak pursued “a single idea relentlessly” but ignored structural changes in society and their relationship to ideas about the future. Boulding then, seemed to agree with one of Polak’s countrymen who described his work as “curious nonsense.”634

Robert Jungk, however, disagreed. As with Gabor, Jungk was inspired by Polak’s notion that the future had to be approached through philosophy and culture, not technology. Jungk now looked for ways to encourage the development of positive images of the future. For a book series titled “models for a new world,”—something that closely resembled the collected Futuribles papers—he asked some of the European intellectuals he had previously interviewed for their version of a desirable future. Yet, he noted that

Polak had been right to lament the anti-utopian climate, as many of the participants were hesitant to engage in “the habit of social invention.” Jungk concluded that “the field of utopia creation” had to be rejuvenated through “learning and exercise.”635 To do this

Jungk took to the streets of Vienna in order to ask “the dissatisfied and grumbling man” about “new solutions or institutions” for the future. Instead of a predisposed antipathy towards utopian thought, Junk found that people responded with only “fuzzy generalities or clichés.” To combat this, he started to offer “future creation workshops,” in which, through group brainstorming sessions, people came to articulate their ideas more clearly.

633 Boulding, K. E. Journal of Political Economy 70, no. 2 (1962): 192-93. 634 Bart van Steenbergen, “Dr. Fred Polak en de Curieuze Onzin Van zijn Fantastische Toekomst,” De NieuweLinie, February 21, 1970, 6. 635 Robert Jungk “Mankind 2000,” in Anderson, Stanford, ed. Planning for Diversity and Change (Cambridge, Mass: The M.I.T. Press, 1968), 84. 327

Jungk’s futurism, supposedly an alternative to that of RAND or the Commission on the Year 2000, rested on ideas from Jouvenel, elitist calls for a new utopianism, and a

New Left inspired notion of participatory democracy. That this was an unstable foundation became apparent during a 1966 conference titled “Inventing the Future

Environment.” Put together by MIT and the American institute of architects, the conference addressed exactly the elements Jungk wished to unite in his endeavors: planning, ideas about the future, and democratic participation. In his presentation, Jungk stated that in “shaping the future we should risk progressing from factual ‘objective’ extrapolations to the realm of values—from exploratory prognostication to normative planning.”636 He noted that “inventing the future environment must be more than the effort of a few chosen experts.” Mentioning his futurist workshops Jungk stated that it was necessary to “overcome decades of mental passivity” and that people had to be made confident “to trust their own intelligence and imagination in a democratized effort of social model building.”637

During the conference Jungk found himself allied with a dissident member of the

Commission on the year 2000, Leonard Duhl, who had clashed with Brzezinski about the need for a kind of participatory planning. When Duhl addressed the conference, he argued for “ecologically oriented planning.” He used the term ecology, in the sense of

“human ecology,” meaning “holistic.” He aimed for “long-range planning that considers the implications of the short-range (or ‘fire-fighting’) decisions,” and involved “agencies in both the public and private spheres; ‘democratic planning’ that involves the entire

636 Jungk, “Mankind 2000,” 79. 637 Ibid. 328 community.” The real planner, said, Duhl “opens up the system so that the democratic process can be applied.”638

During a question and answer session, Duhl and Jungk faced some harsh criticism. Harold J. Barnett, an economist who focused on the influence of technological change and resource availability, noted that Duhl’s passion about livable cities, Jungk’s emphasis on disarmament and peace, and their collective desire for more citizen participation, meant that they displayed “their own social motivations and values for change.” This was fine, of course, said Barnett, but it meant that they were “political activists; they are being citizens and not planners as such.”639 The economist Charles

Kindleberger, a veteran of the State Department’s Marshall Plan efforts, agreed and bluntly summarized the talks of Duhl and Jungk by stating: “you want the planners to take over the action.”640 The problem was, argued Kindeberger, that in their emphasis on normative planning, or utopian images of the future, Duhl and Jungk ignored that

“politics” was about “conflicts of particular interests.” Duhl and Jungk, he argued, held that a future orientation or “ecological planning” would improve the functioning of society and “the general welfare.” Yet, “I believe there is no general welfare.”

There are many particular welfares in conflict with each other, and appeals to the general welfare have little relevance. The hard problems come when you try to reconcile the particular welfare in a big way for a small group with the lesser welfare for the larger group. These are very difficult questions, which social science is very far from solving.641

638 Leonard J. Duhl, “The Parameters of Urban Planning” in Anderson, Planning for Diversity and Choice, 64. 639 Harold J. Barnett, “Discussion on Mankind 2000,” in Anderson, Planning for Diversity and Choice, 94. 640 Charles Kindleberger , “Discussion on The Parameters of Urban Planning,” in Anderson, Planning for Diversity and Choice, 77. 641 Charles Kindleberger, “Discussion on Mankind 2000,” in Anderson, Planning for Diversity and Choice, 96. 329

Although Duhl criticized the commission on the year 2000 during the conference, he did not realize that his own quest to tie forecasting to planning and political action, suffered from the same problems as Bell’s venture did. “Normative planning” ran up against democratic pluralism. Jungk too, despite his call for “images of the future” or

“social invention” never discussed a way to deal with conflicting visions. Jungk and

Duhl’s idea of participatory planning seemed to equate citizen participation with a harmony of aims and values. Much like the Futuribles seminars, or the sessions of the

Commission on the Year 2000, Jungk and Duhl displayed confusion about the difference between planning and forecasting. Jungk stated that “trade unions are only now beginning to realize that they will have to conceive and publish their own hypotheses of what they want in the future.”642 Such a statement captures how the use of abstract concepts like forecast, future, and planning became unintelligibly convoluted. If unions had to hypothesize about their desire for the future; did this mean that they did not know what they wanted? Did they have to engage in forecasting before they could demand higher wages and more sick days? What Duhl and Jungk struggled with—and Jouvenel before them—was that planning is normative by definition; you plan for something. Yet, forecasts are by definition value-free because they aim at what will be, not what should be. Plans, in other words, can be utopian, but forecasts can only be right or wrong.

As Kindleberger had pointed out, Jungk’s futurism was really political activism.

And Jungk certainly did not mind such a label. As a peace activist Jungk marched in demonstrations, wrote articles and books against the nuclear arms race and the cold war.

Yet, when he developed his interest in the future, and started his institute in Vienna, he

642 Jungk, “Mankind 2000,” 82. 330 always saw it as an alternative to the militaristic think tanks he believed had “colonized” the future. Like Bell, and many others, he overestimated RAND’s activities, and the work of Kahn and the Hudson institute. At the “Inventing the Future” conference Jungk stated that he hoped to form a “think factory not unlike the RAND corporation” in order to

“inspire and direct” a “peace race.”643 Instead of war games his institute would conduct

“peace games.” Jungk then, was not content to call his normative futurism merely political activism, it had to at least attempt to rival RAND’s future-oriented research techniques. But was a utopia that needed to be researched still a utopia? Such a question haunted Junk’s engagement with the future.

Jungk’s mind was split between an elitist sort of European humanism and an enthusiasm for New Left ideas about utopia and participatory democracy. The later, in fact, had changed his entire evaluation of America. It was no longer the country he had left in the 1950s; now anti-establishment and anti-war ideas flourished, and on campuses students talked in terms of social justice and humanism, not materialism and technology.

One slightly older American representative of this new generation especially impressed him. This was historian Arthur Waskow who aimed to infuse into “the movement” a specific future-orientation.

Arthur Waskow and the Search for a New Left Futurism

The New Left, however, was not all that excited about futurism. When, in 1962, the magazine Dissent hosted a symposium on “the young radicals,” and asked them about their idea for the future, the young historian and activist Staughton Lynd noted that the

“mere apparatus” of “public and economic planning,” was not of great interest to them.

643 Jungk, “Mankind 2000,” 81. 331

Moreover, “socialism no longer has much meaning to the young dissidents,” said Lynd.

One could no longer point to the need for “city planning, education or medical care” and expect to inspire the young activists. Instead the new society had to offer “a new atmosphere in human relationships, a new creativity in life.” And importantly, it had to incorporate the “hope for the future” that came from revolutionaries in the Third

World.644 Important was the radicalism that offered “the precious possibility of each individual taking some definite step in the present toward worthwhile human ends. By joining in a peace march, by risking jail in an integration struggle, one acts not as a counter in some far-flung weltanschauung, but as a human being affirming the value of human life right now.”645

Yet, Lynd also noted the downside to the radical aims of the New Left. The problem was that the new radicalism “had no long-term goals, no historical perspectives, no considered strategy for changing society.” A few years after the Dissent symposium, another young historian took up these last few points of Lynd. In the New Left journal

New University Thought, Arthur I. Waskow identified an interest in the future amongst establishment intellectuals. Yet, the question was, said Waskow, whether or not the New

Left should leave the future in the hands of such “establishment futurists,” as Daniel Bell.

Or in other words, could there be a New Left alternative to the Commission on the Year

2000? 646 Waskow hoped to build, out of the activism of the New Left, a different kind of futurism, and in so doing he shared many objectives with Robert Jungk. It was to be a

644 Staughton Lynd, “The Young Radicals,” Dissent, Spring 1962, 142. 645 Staughton Lynd, “The Young Radicals,” 141. 646 Arthur I. Waskow, “Looking Forward: 1999—who plans your Future?” New university Thought, May- June 1968, 34. 332 future-orientation that valued participation, embraced social change, and never allowed to lose sight of the human element.

Arthur Waskow was born in Baltimore in 1933. After graduating from Johns

Hopkins in 1954, he stayed at the school to get his M.A. in history. In 1963 he received a

PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin for a dissertation on the 1919 Chicago race riots. This week-long violent eruption of racial tensions had killed fifteen whites and twenty three blacks. The violence had occurred during the first Red Scare, and the backdrop for Waskow’s history was a rich one; there was the growing tension resulting from African American migration to the north, a racist white working class, and growing radicalism in the labor movement. When researching and writing all this during the early sixties, Waskow witnessed the non-violent protest of SNCC and Martin Luther King, and started to take part in protests himself. He was inspired by the strategies of non-violent direct action. Like many others in the burgeoning New Left, he believed the Civil Rights movement had found a way to challenge injustice and oppression, while abstaining from the violence that characterized the oppressor.647

At the time he was conducting research for his dissertation in Washington D.C.

Waskow started working as a legislative assistant to Robert Kastenmeier, a liberal

Congressman from Wisconsin’s 2nd district. Also working for Kastenmeier was Marcus

Raskin, a Julliard trained pianist who, after struggling to make it as a professional musician, had gone to law school at the University of Chicago. Waskow and Raskin quickly bonded over a shared desire for political change. They formed something they

647 Arthur I. Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the 1960s: a Study in the Connections Between Conflict and Violence (Garden City, NY,: Doubleday, 1966), 21. 333 called the “liberal project.” This unimaginatively titled endeavor was an attempt to build something akin to the British Fabian Society, a platform for a sustained dialogue between progressive intellectuals and liberal politicians. Waskow later noted that initially each group was “astonished” that the other paid attention to them, and that the goal was

“participatory liberalism.”648 Raskin’s old professor at the University of Chicago, David

Riesman, was involved in the project, and so were Paul Goodman and Leo Szillard; an overture made to C. Wright Mills was unsuccessful.649

When they were setting up the Liberal Project, Waskow and Raskin were asked by Kastenmeier to prepare a “staff report on the nature of American defense policy.”650 In order to do so, Raskin and Waskow made the rounds past military and civilian defense experts, and interviewed various government officials. The report they produced carefully compared ideas about deterrence, but featured a critical conclusion. Raskin and Waskow noted that defense experts “debated whether it [deterrence] should be looked at as more like chess or more like poker.” All this lost sight of the true stakes: “the physical survival of all or almost all Americans.” This critical study noted that game theory was not only callous, but misleading and ineffective. Games could in some cases feature purely rational moves, and a game like chess lend itself to “straight line predictions.” Yet, for

Waskow and Raskin the pressures of real world deterrence meant that “men and nations may not react in any rationally predictable way.” Like C. Wrights Mills, the authors feared a kind of thinking that treated the irrational as rational or “crackpot realism.”

648 Arthur I. Waskow, “Marcus Raskin” Social Policy, Winter 1999, 61. 649 Waskow, “Marcus Raskin,” 61. See also Kevin Mattson, Intellectuals in Action: the Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism 1945-1970 (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2002), 123. 650 Arthur I. Waskow, The Limits of Defense (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 4. 334

While Waskow and Raskin were working on the report, David Riesman was able to get Raskin a job working for McGeorge Bundy and the Kennedy National Security

Council.651 For Raskin, who had contemplated the relation between progressive thought and political power already with the Liberal Project, this opportunity was too good to pass up. Yet Bundy was not happy with Raskin’s study of deterrence, especially after

Doubleday showed an interest in publishing it.652 Asked to choose between his job and the book, Raskin gave in and agreed to remove his name from the report when it was published as The Limits of Defense in 1962.653

The book was now Waskow’s alone, and he added to the critique of the defense theories his plan for “a workable deterrent.” In the introduction to the book sociologist

David Riesman noted that people would more likely be convinced by “Mr. Waskow’s demolition of Defense Department theories” than by his “often ingenuous and always thoughtful affirmative proposals.” Yet, this was to be expected, according to Riesman;

“[i]t is always easier to point out prevailing contradictions and self-deceptions than to propose new roads to utopia that have a chance of being traveled by a majority.”654

Waskow’s version of deterrent could certainly be characterized as utopian. He proposed setting up a “corps of inspectors” to enforce global disarmament. As a safe-guard against a “cheating” power that secretly re-armed, Waskow came up with an alternative to civilian defense programs. Instead of building bomb-shelters and teaching the population to duck and cover, civilians had to be trained in the art of resistance, taught how to

651 Mattson, Intellectuals in Action, 123. 652 Waskow, “Marcus Raskin,” 61. 653 Ibid. 654 David Riesman in Waskow, The Limits of Defense, 8. 335 sabotage enemy plants, and use a military radio.655 The great advantage of such a program was that it would not lead to an arms race, or so Waskow argued.

Although such ideas on nuclear disarmament ill-fit the Kennedy administration’s fierce anti-communism, Waskow, like Raskin, was attracted to many aspects of

Kennedy’s liberalism, especially the Peace Corps. Waskow seemed optimistic about scientific and technical progress, and he advocated new government agencies aided by

“scholars,” advisors, and technical experts all of whom could produce a world without nuclear weapons. Waskow also argued that American military spending could be channeled into programs for Third World modernization, and while doing so he seemed to accept uncritically Rostow’s stages of modernization.

Raskin, meanwhile, was growing increasingly frustrated with his job for Bundy and the National Security Council. Kennedy’s order for the Bay of Pigs invasion cast serious doubts on his commitment to peace and disarmament.656 Raskin now started to host some of the intellectuals associated with the Liberal Project, including Waskow and

Paul Goodman, in his Washington office. After the Cuban missile crisis Raskin and

Richard J Barnet, another young official, finally quit the Kennedy administration and decided to “combat over-militarized ways of thinking in foreign and national policy.”657

Joined by Waskow, they founded the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in October 1963.

655 Waskow, The Limits of Defense, 89-97. 656 John S. Friedman, ed. First Harvest: The Institute for Policy Studies, 1963-1983 (New York: Grove Press, 1983), xi. 657 Friedman, First Harvest, xi. 336

In line with the Liberal Project, the founders wanted the new institute to blur the line between theory and action; Raskin liked to call it a center for “passionate scholarship.”658

During IPS’s early years, Waskow expanded on the ideas he had presented in The

Limits of Defense. Gradually, an interest in the future emerged out of the utopian plans for a disarmed world. In this growing future orientation he was greatly influenced by the intellectuals involved with IPS, especially Paul Goodman and David Bazelon. During the mid-1960s, Waskow also became closely involved with the antiwar movement and the moderate wing of SDS. Waskow’s New Left futurism, then, should be understood as an attempt to fuse all these different inspirations, a task more challenging than he perhaps realized.

Paul Goodman’s influence on Waskow relates especially to notions of planning and utopian thinking. By the time of his involvement with IPS, Goodman had become widely known for Growing Up Absurd, published in 1960. In that book Goodman had criticized the “organized system” of advanced industrial society for its effects on adolescent boys. Although he argued that this system made boys into “cynical bipeds” and prohibited them from becoming independent free thinking men, this did not mean that advanced industrial society was itself the problem. Instead, it was the obsessed pursuit of growth, and the resulting loss of a human-centered perspective, that made boys cynical and aimless. The rush to celebrate and apply technological change as a means, while staying silent on ends, sucked the spirit out of people. Yet Goodman was no Ellul, industrial society did not have to take such a course. What was needed was a different kind of planning, a way to “make the industrial technology humanly important for its

658 ibid. 337 workmen.” And thus, while railing against the organized system, Goodman had no qualms about calling for the “stringent master-planning of cities.”659

In the 1940s Paul Goodman had collaborated with his brother Percival—a professor of architecture at Columbia—on a book titled Communitas, a study of city planning that asked what planning was and could be. A re-written version of this book appeared in 1960. The introduction presented “inherent difficulties” of planning. One of these was wrong predictions, usually about technology; the example given was that of the

Garden City idea. The prediction that new electricity could decentralize cities and free them from coal had been invalidated by the “endless conurbations of suburbs” smothered in automobile exhaust. Such faults of prediction necessitated vigilance for the planner.

“Our guess” wrote the authors, “is that nucleonics as such will not accomplish miracles for us, nor even automation.”660

Another major problem of planning was political. Businesses opposed every plan for the general welfare if profits were at stake. Yet, the regular citizen was inherently conservative too. Planning meant exposing personal and cultural attitudes, and presented tough choices, it was therefore always easiest to oppose new plans. But, for the Goodman brothers, such avoidance never meant “no plan;” instead it meant “some inherited and frequently bad plan.” It was “a gridiron laid down for speculation a century ago” or a dilapidated downtown when the actual downtown has moved uptown.” People were not wrong in their skepticism about planning, argued Goodman, but conservative opposition

659 Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in an Organized Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 16. 660 Paul Goodman and Percival Goodman, Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. 2nd Edition. (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 57. 338 to planning was itself more complicated than it seemed. What exactly was a conservative attitude in this regard? In planning there was “the paradox that the wildest anarchists are generally affirming the most ancient values, of space, sun, and trees, and beauty, human dignity, and forthright means…whereas the so-called conservatives are generally arguing for policies and prejudices that date back to only four administrations.”661 The question of means and ends was crucial. Goodman’s aim was to do better than functionalism in architecture or city planning: “form follows function, but let us subject the function itself to a formal critique. Is the function good? Bona fide? Is it worthwhile? Is it worthy of a man to do that?”662

In an essay on “utopian thinking” Goodman offered specific examples of the sort of humanistic planning he had in mind. Noting that his son’s public school commencement ceremony was “poor,” Goodman proposed hiring “neighborhood musicians and writers” to liven it up. To solve the problem of old people “degenerating” in homes, he proposed that orphans, who were “in need of individual attention,” could keep them company, and in the process gain “grandmothers.” To create communities in large cities, neighborhoods could be given control over grade-schools, with the city only serving to enforce minimum standards. Goodman immediately explained why these proposals were deemed utopian and unpractical. First of all, they were “risky.” A neighborhood artist could easily offend parents, and this would touch the responsibility of the principal, the schoolboard and the mayor. Administrative divisions determined this responsibility, and orphans and old people, were separate bureaucratic responsibilities.

661 Paul Goodman and Percival Goodman, Communitas, 10. 662 Paul Goodman and Percival Goodman, Communitas, 19. 339

And thus, Goodman concluded that “a direct solution of social problems disturbs too many fixed arrangements.” The charge that “utopian thinking” was “impractical and an imposition” was “devastatingly important” for advanced industrial society, argued

Goodman.663

To explain why people accepted the dramatic and upending technological and organizational changes of the time, yet balked at direct problem solving, Goodman drew a distinction between “individuality” and an invaded “personality.” He pointed to the fact that “the rapid changes and impositions that have actually occurred in recent years have not directly impinged on each person’s sense of his individual ‘personality,’ his liberty of choice, his privacy, his bodily intactness, his sexual and family behavior.” The utopianism with which Goodman identified himself did impinge on the personal; that was precisely the point. Goals for the future had to be personal, because means had to serve ends, and the ultimate ends were people. The opposition to “our simple minded proposals,” said Goodman, resulted from the fact that “the organized American system” had “invaded “people’s personality.” Such plans as Goodman favored made people feel

“foolish and timid.” It undermined the false-consciousness of a people “who in fact have little control of the means of production or power, but are nicely habituated to the complicated procedures of the moment and get satisfaction by identifying with them.”664

Yet, Goodman was no Herbert Marcuse. As in other Frankfurt School thinkers

Marcuse’s dialectical reasoning often became a trap in which every escape from domination pointed to further domination. But Goodman always aimed for a way out.

663 Paul Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” in Goodman Paul, Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals (New York: Random House, 1962), 12-14. 664 Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” 9. 340

Utopians like himself, he claimed, were not content to withdraw from society like the beats or juvenile delinquents, nor were they content to find refuge only in offering critiques of the system.665 It was necessary to “prove by experiment that direct solutions are feasible.” A social science fit to solve this dilemma had to return to the spirit of pragmatic philosophy, argued Goodman.666 As America moved from “the expanding industrialism of the nineteenth century to the affluent technologism of today,” it had perverted instrumentalism. James and Dewey, wrote Goodman, had stressed that “the end and the means, the moral-practical and the instrumental, derive meaning from their intrinsic connection in process, and there is no other meaning.” Yet now science had “put human problems…pretty far out of sight,” and “truth” was interpreted as “the self- expanding and self-correcting system of scientific operations in isolation from everything else.” And thus “in this new climate, where experts plan in terms of unchangeable structure, a pragmatic expediency that still wants to take the social structure plastic and changeable comes to be thought of as utopian.”667

The utopian social science that Goodman favored—and believed was really a pragmatic social science—had to follow a few rules. Goodman listed them: the experimenter was always a participant in a situation, and he had to realize that his study altered the problem. Experiments, moreover, had to be “open,” meaning the problem solver could not start out with a fixed hypothesis. Crucially, the experimenter had to be

“engaged” and driven by “a moral need to come to a solution.” If all this sounded like it would lead to a complicated and even confused social science, then Goodman was

665 Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” 12. 666 Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” 16. 667 Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” 18. 341 satisfied. The experimenter had to risk “confusion and conflict,” he argued. Utopian ideas “fell into context” with such a pragmatic social science; they could be “practical hypotheses” or “expedients for pilot experimentation.” They had to stimulate a response, and get people to “know what they themselves mean.”668

A discussion Goodman had with sociologist Herbert Gans on community planning in Levittown, clarified things. Gans agreed with Goodman about the difficulties inherent in local planning efforts. Although social fragmentation and isolation were undesirable, “throwing people together,” did not create a community. People had different ideas about the future and different goals. Gans noted that parents in Levittown had come into conflict over a project in the community school; middleclass parents had wanted the school to emphasize college preparation, whereas the working class parents had a more practical—for Goodman “progressive”—orientation. Utopians, said Gans, would give up on the problem and say that “people were stupid.” Goodman, however, disagreed. Such a conflict, he wrote, was not an obstacle to community “but a golden opportunity” for the pragmatic/utopian social scientist. The “give-and-take” had to continue, and contact between the groups maintained. The job of the sociologist was not simply to “infer the class conflict” but to bring it out in the open, to risk intensifying it.

By confronting people with their resentments they would be presented the “ad hominem problem: are such things indeed more important to you than, as neighbors, educating your children together?” The “heat of the conflict,” argued Goodman, would lead to “mutual understanding and fraternity.”669

668 Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” 19. 669 Goodman, “Utopian Thinking,” 20-21. 342

For Goodman, planning in the “organized” system had come to be synonymous with a kind of smoothening out of operational procedures. Planning was now understood as a way to avoid conflict and societal tensions. Traffic in cities, for instance, was not a problem of too many cars, but a failure of infrastructure planning. But, for Goodman, a pragmatic emphasis on the relationship between means and ends prescribed a much more expansive understanding of planning. Goals and practical solutions were always normative, and tension and conflict was nothing but the expression of values.

Goodman’s insistence on his pragmatic/utopian form of planning was a consistent theme in his thinking throughout the decade. Almost ten years after these essays on planning, Goodman wrote in Notes from a Neolithic Conservative that “the right style of planning” meant eliminating the “intermediary.” This was “administration, overhead,” and now, increasingly, “systems analysis.” While “the pragmatists added to value,” systems analysis drained it. It was a planning tool that “refines and streamlines the intermediary” without ever touching “life.” For Goodman, it was nothing but computation for its own sake; “garbage in, garbage out.”670

Yet, in Notes on a Neolithic Conservative Goodman also realized that the people who, “a decade ago claimed that there was an end to ideology” now insisted on systems analysis as a tool for a “piecemeal, functional and pragmatic” approach to the problems of modern society.671 Clearly, Goodman understood the term “pragmatic” differently.

The “experts, administrators and engineers,” had failed to deal with society’s problems, precisely because they followed this perverted pragmatism. For Goodman, people like

670 Paul Goodman, New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative (New York: Random House, 1970), 200. 671 Goodman, New Reformation, 201. 343

Bell had been doubly wrong; the recent political polarization—a revival of “Marxist-

Leninist rhetoric” on the left, and “law and order” on the right—brought ideology back to the forefront, and, more importantly, the New Left offered a new interpretation of pragmatic, functional and piecemeal approaches. The new functionalism was

“questioning the function,” and asking whether it was “humanly worth doing.”

Piecemeal now meant fighting through direct action for political change, and it was personal not administrative. Finally pragmatic meant that “the character of the agents” was “part of the problem to be solved. It was “psychoanalytic” and it stressed

“engagement.” It was good “Jamesian pragmatism” as opposed to the perverted instrumentalism of the “experts” and administrators.” And thus Goodman concluded that the truly important new ideas about change and “complex modern societies,” came not from those who had stressed “the end of ideology” but from those who opposed the

“organized system.”

Relevant new thought has not been administrative and technological, but existentialist, ethical, and tactical. Administrators and planners write books about the universities and cities, extrapolating from trends—and asking for funds; but history does not hasten to go in their direction.672

Arthur Waskow was greatly inspired by Goodman’s attempt to merge utopianism and pragmatism into a normative and human centered style of planning. From late 1966 until the end of the decade Waskow tried to offer a New Left alternative to what he termed “establishment futurism.” In a series of lectures he gave in the spring of 1967 at

Reed College, and a long article in New University Thought, titled “looking forward:

1999,” Waskow argued that an image of the future had to be part of social activism.

672 Goodman, New Reformation, 200. 344

When Waskow explained that IPS hoped to encourage a non-technocratic orientation toward the future, he did so in language drawn from Goodman. The institute was

“committed to the idea that to develop social theory one must be involved in social action and in social experiment.”673 Thinking about the future had to bring together vision, social critique and action, and in this way it was “like the process of science at its best: hypothesis, experiment, new hypothesis—always knowing that no theory is “the truth” but only a useful and beautiful way of understanding and re-shaping the complex reality.674

Waskow claimed he was arguing for a future orientation that centered on what was possible, rather than likely. From the kind of activism he witnessed in the early

1960s he wanted to extrapolate an image of the future that would then function as an inspiration to further activism. Predictions were things that were 60% likely to occur, and visions of an ideal society had about 1% change of coming true, Waskow wrote. He therefore was not interested in prediction, but instead something he called “possidiction.”

By this he meant “the author’s projection of how certain seeds of change that exist already might be made to flourish, given certain kinds of political action.” The circular logic behind this neologism was intentional, and the result of Waskow’s attempt at a future orientation capacious enough to include activism, experiment, inspiration, and projections of social change.

Perhaps most influential for Waskow was Goodman’s insistence on tension and conflict when formulating and working towards social goals for the future. Waskow

673 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 36. 674 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 37. 345 termed this “creative disorder.” If a vision of the future did not create any tension it meant that it was “so utterly out of relation” to the present society that it could easily be ignored. Or worse, images of the future could become merely “encapsulated” by a society that was not the least threatened by them. This was the “Marcusean fear” wrote Waskow.

But if ideas about the future created strain and tension it likely meant they carried a practical component, a plan for action. Thus, like Goodman, Waskow believed that the goal of thinking about the future was not the smoothening out of conflict, but instead to highlight it so that clear choices emerged, choices based on clearly articulated values.675

When Waskow spoke of conflict and strain as part of his future orientation, he had in mind the sit-in movement of the early 1960s, and the voter registration campaigns in the Deep South. The young people who had started the sit-in movement had understood that their “desirable- achievable future” was the ability to eat in integrated restaurants. They had not petitioned the legislature, but they had said “we will simply create that future.” The conflict and strain that their actions had produced laid bare opposing paths forward; it forced a moral choice on society. The desired future of the civil rights movement could not even have been articulated without conflict. The activists had obeyed the laws of “some more or less distant future,” and their actions were

“therefore likely to be unlawful or disorderly by the standard of the present.” Waskow aimed to extend this future orientation to “the movement” more broadly.

The civil rights analogy, however, would not prove all that useful in making

Waskow’s futurism more practical. The main goal of “the movement”—an imprecise term Waskow used for a combination of New Left factions—was to end the war in

675 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 36. 346

Vietnam, but activists could not “simply create that future.” What had made the activism of the Greensboro Four, and others, so powerful was that their non-violent direct action succeeded, on a micro-level, in realizing the ultimate goal of ending segregation. A positive vision merged with activism to challenge the present. Yet, few anti-war activists could claim to have achieved such a thing. In fact, while the anti-war movement became more vocal and formidable, the war only intensified. Waskow’s peaceful futures and his scenarios for disarmament, like those of Limits to Defense, did not animate anti-war activism. What he struggled with, then, was that “the movement” was anti-war and not pro-peace, that its activism was not based on positive ideas but on negative ones, namely, stopping the war. The argument Waskow often heard from the New Left was that change came from “revulsion and anger at the present,” and not from imagining or anticipating the future.

Almost from the start, then, the bar that Waskow had set for his kind of futurism proved much too high. Not only was it difficult to follow the example of the civil rights movement in acting out a desired future, but Goodman’s notion of a pragmatic social science was problematic as well. Goodman’s examples of a kind of utopian/pragmatic planning mostly focused on small scale initiatives. Yet, his embrace of the tension between disagreeing parents on a schoolboard could hardly inspire an attitude towards the

Vietnam War. Goodman had noted that the disagreement amongst those parents in

Levittown could ultimately lead to “mutual understanding and fraternity,” but what would result from “intensifying” the acrimony between pro-and anti-war factions?

Goodman himself, of course, did not take such an approach to the war in Vietnam; he 347 viewed the war as immoral and opposed it. Doing so, however, did not involve imagining peaceful futures.

Instead of stressing the need for positive images of the future, Waskow found that it was easier to make a negative argument: ignoring the future meant leaving it in the hand of a “closed professional elite” who were already studying the future, guiding it, and controlling it. These were establishment futurists who worked for “presently powerful groups.” In such conspiratorial terms Waskow described the Commission on the year

2000, which “regarded itself as a panel on the priesthood, to whom the mysteries were revealed and who could guide the people, but would not open those mysteries to the people.”676 Bell’s commission, argued Waskow, served “those who hold power now, explaining to them how 30 years from now or 50 years from now, they will be able to continue running the society.”677 For them, the future was like astronomy, a realm for the professional or the expert, but not the people of a democratic society.678

Waskow believed that such establishment futurists needed to be challenged, and he did so by protesting a conference of the American Foreign Policy Association (FPA) held at the New York Hilton in 1968. The conference was titled “Toward the Year 2018”, and speakers included Zbigniew Brzezisnki, Dean Rusk, and Ithiel De Sola Pool; a publication that accompanied the conference featured work by Herman Kahn and Antony

J. Wiener. Summarizing the proceedings, a New York Times journalist wrote that “the speakers… forecast the growth of a community of affluent societies in which long-range

676 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 34. 677 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 39. 678 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 35. 348 decision making would be in the hands of a professional elite.”679 Waskow, meanwhile handed out flyers outside the hotel that described the American Foreign Policy

Association as an “elite-oriented organization” and “an unofficial arm of the state department.” He also described the conference publication as “a dreadful little book” that deduced “all social ‘change’—that is, no change at all—from a kind of gadgetary determinism.”680

Waskow, however, did not crash this conference; he, along with many other New

Left figures, was an invited guest. The conference planners, in fact, seemed to have been acutely aware of the need to involve young people in a conference about the future.

Roughly half of the 800 invited guests, therefore, were under 35, and many were recent

Peace Corps veterans or members of SDS.681 Yet, the younger guests were not given the opportunity to address the conference, and only through a few panel discussions did they participate. Unsurprisingly, this created resentment and tension. During one panel discussion Waskow brought up his notion of “creative disorder” as a way to engage the future. He mentioned specifically, the sit in movement, the draft resistance, and also the

Columbia University take-over. At this point Zbignew Brzezinski accused Waskow of spouting “nihilistic” and “anarchistic” ideas, those of “historically condemned European intellectuals of the 19th century.”682 When Waskow looked back on this exchange a year later he noted that the FPA “had never imagined any kind of futurist but the …elite, technologically oriented planners.” They were shocked by “the movement’s demand for

679 Paul Hofmann, “Experts Here see U.S. Soviet Links,” New York Times, May 28, 1968, 15. 680 Arthur I. Waskow, Running Riot: A Journey through the Official Disasters and Creative Disorder in American Society (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 135. 681 Ibid. 682 Hofmann, “Experts Here see U.S. Soviet Links,” 15. 349 participatory futurism. And though the movement was not yet ready to specify how to go about doing participatory futurism, it was ready to draw upon its own experience.”

In identifying what this “experience” was Waskow returned to the sit-in movement, the draft-resistance movement and some Quaker “medical aid to Vietnam” initiatives. Yet, his admission that participatory futurism was still not worked out pointed to the inherent problems in his desire for an alternative futurism. Criticizing the establishment futurist—and greatly inflating their work in the process—seemed to be the only thing that Waskow was doing. Such critiques, however, took different forms. About six months earlier, a successful hoax, the so-called “report from Iron Mountain,” had criticized exactly the type of endeavors Waskow had termed establishment futurism, namely RAND studies, the work of Herman Kahn, and the expert discussions of the

Commission on the year 2000. Although Waskow was not the author of the hoax, he had helped out and been in on the joke from the start.

Readers of the New York Times first read about this “Report from Iron Mountain” on 5, November 1967, when a front page story mentioned that a secret government study group had spent years studying the “possibility and the desirability of peace.” Other newspapers and magazines soon reported that Leonard C. Lewin, a freelance journalist based in New York, had been contacted by a “professor of social science from a large middle-western university” who claimed to be a member of the secret group tasked with

“long-range planning” for “long-range peace.”683 This professor, known only as “John

Doe” had leaked the report to Lewin, who had published it through Dial Press. The name

683 Leonard C. Lewin, Report form Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and the Desirability of Peace (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 9. 350 of the report stemmed from the fact that the fifteen experts had met secretively at Iron

Mountain, a nuclear bunker near Hudson, New York.684

US News and World Report wrote that the President was supposedly “alarmed” by the leaking of the Iron Mountain report. US embassies were instructed to “play down public discussion” of the report and “emphasize that the book has no relation whatsoever to Government policy.” All newspaper stories, however, speculated about the authenticity of the report. US News and World Report had published their story under the headline

“Hoax or Horror? The New York Times journalist who had picked up the story was also not naïve or credulous. The subtitle of the article was: “some see book as hoax—others take it seriously.” Journalists wondered who could have pulled of such a hoax, and John

Kenneth Galbraith name came up repeatedly. The Wall Street Journal noted that

Galbraith had recently published a couple of articles under the pseudonym of Mark

Epernay, articles that spoofed behavioral science and the general Washington culture of experts. These articles featured the invented character of Dr. Herschel McLandress, a psychologist who advised on anything from a technique to measure how long people could go without thinking about themselves, to a machine that made possible a fully automated foreign policy.685

Somewhat anti-climactically the hoax was perpetrated by Leonard Lewin himself.

The speculations however were not completely off; Galbraith was in on it and helped out, as did Waskow and the staff of the satirical magazine Monocle. In 1966, Monocle editor

684 John Leo, “’Report on Peace Gets Mixed Views: Some See Book as Hoax, Others Take it Seriously,” New York Times, November 5, 1967, 32. 685 Lewin, Report form Iron Mountain, 140. See also “Hoax or Horror: A Book that Shook the White House,” U.S. News and World Report, November 20, 1967. 12. 351

Victor Navasky came across a short newspaper story about a dip in the stock market that was explained as a “Peace Scare”—the prospect of negotiations in Vietnam had apparently send some arms producers stock tumbling. This story caused some immediate brainstorming at the Monocle office; “suppose the government had appointed a task force to plan the transition from a wartime economy, and the task force concluded that we couldn’t afford it because our entire economy was based on the preparation for war and without this threat it would collapse?” The editors knew that one of their own, Leonard

Lewin, was a student of the think-tank genre, and that he would be able to produce a spoof believable enough to work as hoax. According to Navasky, Lewin took his job very seriously; he asked Waskow for relevant literature on disarmament, and he asked W.H.

Ferry, the director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions about the kind of literature the fictitious experts would have on their minds. Galbraith also had plenty of tips for Lewin.686

Aided by these co-conspirators Lewin extended the spoof beyond the realm of economic theory. Parsonian social science with its emphasis on societal stability and value free methods, was incorporated into the hoax. Lewin imagined experts arguing that the function of war was not military, but social. It glued society together. With the target of this hoax established, and the literature surveyed, Lewin went to work and cranked out a report that, according to Navasky, was “a brilliant imitation of think-tankese rendered in impenetrable bureaucratic prose, replete with obfuscating footnotes…”

The cynical joke inherent in the hoax was a simple one. The report argued that peace was an existential threat to an advanced industrial society defined by war. The

686 Lewin, Report form Iron Mountain, v-xvi. 352 dangerous possibility of peace thus needed to be anticipated. Peace “may be thrust upon us in some form whether we are ready for it or not,” or so concluded the fifteen fake experts. War planning became peace planning, and instead of war games, experts now conducted “peace games.” The advent of a destabilizing peace had to be anticipated and the way to do it was through the techniques of establishment futurism.

Lewin had the experts propose “the full utilization of modern methods of mathematical modeling, analogical analysis, and other more sophisticated quantitative techniques in process of development that are compatible with computer programing.” A footnote referenced Olaf Helmer’s Delphi technique, and the agency that the experts deemed necessary to “plan for peace” resembled the “Surmising Forum” Jouvenel had proposed. The members of the agency were supposed to be “drawn from the broadest practicable spectrum of scientific disciplines [and] humanistic studies,” and the agency itself was to operate above the political process and “be responsible solely to the

President.” Its mission included the effort to “project over extended periods, the nature and quality of overt warfare which must be planned and budgeted to achieve a desired degree of contextual stability.”687

Waskow not only advised Lewin on the relevant literature to be used in the Iron

Mountain Report, but also played along when the New York Times asked him to respond to it. He noted that, as a peace activist, he disagreed with the report’s conclusion that

“the end of war would wrench and destroy the nation-state system.” He also volunteered to guess that the Bureau of the Budget or the Central Intelligence Agency was likely behind the report. Yet, Waskow’s role in the Iron Mountain hoax differed in an important

687 Lewin, Report form Iron Mountain, 111. 353 way from that of Lewin. The later lampooned the future-oriented methodologies of the foreign policy experts in order to criticize an overly militarized foreign policy establishment; he did not seem to care about a future orientation an sich. Waskow, however, cared a great deal. He opposed the supposedly technocratic and elitist style of futurism that the report had satirized, but he still aimed to offer an alternative.

In order to do this Waskow identified certain trends as harbingers for a different kind of postindustrial future. He focused on the impotence of traditional warfare, the role of technology and communication, and the emergence of a “new class” of slumbering yet potentially revolutionary “activators.” While the establishment futurists were susceptible to straight-line projections, Waskow claimed to rely on “dialectical” trends.688 One such trend was the “elephantitis” of the war system. The total domination of society by the national security apparatus contained “the bare seed of its own negation.” Military power grew, yet at the same time it was becoming less effective. Thermonuclear weapons were so powerful that they could hardly be used to achieve a specific military objective, and now Vietnam showed that Third World revolutions could not be stopped by conventional

American military power. Therefore, Waskow identified a long-term trend toward “a strategy of unarmed ways of carrying on a foreign policy.”689 Although it was only “a seed,” and the current American government did not subscribe to it, Waskow nevertheless saw “the detachment of certain elements in the American establishment” from the war system. And the clearest sign for the existence of the trend towards a non- militarized foreign policy was the Peace Corps.

688 Waskow, “looking Forward,” 40. 689 Waskow, “looking Forward,” 42. 354

Another trend that Waskow identified dealt with something he called the global

“under-class.” The rapid rate of technological change in the west, and the slow rate of development in the third world, created a growing wealth gap. Yet, the inability of the

Third World poor to climb “the mobility ladder” was mirrored in the United States by automation-induced poverty. The fact that infant mortality rates in Harlem were up during a time of great national prosperity proved for Waskow that a social economic connection existed between Indonesian farmers and poor blacks in America. However, this trend too, was dialectical. Technological change not only worked to increase the gap between the wealthy and the poor but also allowed “a shared technology of rebellion or revolution.” Advances in communication technology allowed “a Ghandi, a Mao, a King, a Nkrumah” to “get the word out to each other.” Waskow was not very optimistic about this revolution coming to fruition any time soon, yet he noted that “the possibility” existed.690

The third trend Waskow mentioned was the rise of “the new class.” He took this concept from the lawyer turned social critic David T. Bazelon who, while in his mid-40s, had spent two years at IPS on a visiting fellowship. This “new class” was not defined by

“ownership,” but by “education,” Waskow argued. Its members, moreover, displayed a

“highly intellectualized vision of what the world should be like.” This class was “the bureaucratic class par excellence” and inhabited the great government and business bureaucracies, as well as the “multiversity.” Waskow believed that from this class could emerge a dramatic new political vision:

690 Waskow, “looking Forward,” 43. 355

What I’m suggesting is that out of the new class, out of its affluence, out of its certainty of its own security because the members carry their property in their heads, comes for some of its members and some of their children a remarkable freedom, which has taken a number of political and cultural-civilizational directions. The movement comes out of people who are quite sure they can afford to risk two three four ten years in the ghetto because they know that it does not reduce their stake in the property they own, it increases it. If they ever decide they want to go back to IBM they’re more likely to be hired by IBM having spent five years in the slums…691

Bazelon had long been an inauspicious member of the New York intellectuals, occasionally writing for Politics in the 1940s, and later Dissent, Commentary, and the

New York Review of Books. In a 1963 work titled The Paper Economy, Bazelon dealt with the changing nature of the American economy in a manner reminiscent of Bell’s work on post-industrialism. While at IPS, during the mid-1960s, Bazelon wrote Power in

America: The Politics of the New Class. Here Bazelon’s arguments rested on the theory that American society had definitively left scarcity behind while entering the new age of affluence. He stressed the role of technology in driving productivity, and although he never went as far as those who adhered to ideas about the Triple Revolution and cybernation, Bazelon came close. He believed that the American economy was fully able to handle a guaranteed national income, and could afford to provide anyone with a job doing socially meaningful work. Yet, Bazelon’s most important point, the one Waskow ran with, was about education as a new form of property. Power in America stated it plain as possible: “[t]he New Class is the non-owning class; and they non-own everything important…”692 “Marx was wrong,” wrote Bazelon, “but not altogether wrong.”693 He

691 Waskow, “looking Forward,” 42. 692 David T. Bazelon, Power in America: The Politics of the New Class (New York: The New American Library, 1967), 317. 693 Bazelon, Power in America, 20. 356 was wrong about the working class as the revolutionary class, but he was right to see that

“classes make revolutions.” Owning more than their labor, and thus de-radicalized, the working class was no longer revolutionary. The “new class,” on the other hand, had

“something more important than property ownership.” Education and expertise put its members in charge of the decision making process. “It will then, as a class, operate the power mechanisms of the new world.”694

Members of the “new class,” however, were frustrated, according to Bazelon. The education “of a systems-research analyst with a PhD in sociology” or a “physicist working for the RAND Corporation” or “an economist dealing with manpower problems in the Department of Labor,” was essentially “an application to think ahead.” It was

“distinctly possible,” wrote Bazelon, “that all the education of all the members of the new class has a common denominator—namely, to plan something.” But unless they worked for the national security establishment, planning was discouraged. So it was “a serious maladjustment of power in America which keeps this planning from going forward and consequently frustrates the powers of the new class.” Eventually, predicted

Bazelon, the new class would become self-aware and out of their frustrations a kind of supercharged Great Society would emerge. It would be a society that rationally planned for social goals, and in which material concerns would be surpassed. A society “freed from the old conception of American money—the infinite perspective of unending accumulation, completely encompassing all motive.”695

694 Bazelon, Power in America, 21. 695 Bazelon, Power in America, 360. 357

Bazelon’s concept of the “new class,” resembled Bell’s vision of the postindustrial society in obvious and important ways. The emphasis on education as the dominant aspect of the future society was central in both analyses. Additionally, both viewed technological change as essentially positive; neither Bell nor Bazelon understood technology as a force that could seriously unhinge society in any fundamental way. Most importantly, in the concept of a New Class and in Bell’s postindustrial theory, the transition from property to knowledge was equated with the possibility of a more rationally planned society. Bazelon, after all, noted that what the new class wanted more than anything was to plan for a more egalitarian society, one that valued things beyond money and material gain. In describing what this would look like, Bazelon echoed the language of social indicators and social accounting: “[t]he social books must be kept on a greater variety of human values than under the old system. Eventually the computer may demand its own new unit of value, beyond dollars and birth certificates, diplomas and other certifications: a fungible unit of value (and dis-value) beyond gross status or economics.”696

In later years the “new class” became a pejorative term used especially by neo conservatives like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. It indicated an “adversary culture” of intellectuals, critical of capitalism and bourgeois values. Bell, however, objected to the term, believing it to be a “muddled concept.”697 It included too many disparate elements: an antagonistic cultural sensibility but also the rise of a highly educated class ready to manage the increasingly technical operation of postindustrial

696 Bazelon, Power in America, 378. 697 Daniel Bell, “The New Class: a Muddled Concept,” in B. Bruce-Briggs, The New Class? (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1978), 169. 358 society. The later development indicated a structural change in society that had nothing to do with culture, argued Bell. Yet, this later debate is less interesting for the context of the

1960s. What is often forgotten is that the immediate debate about the term occurred early on between liberals and New Left critics.

In the fall of 1967, for instance, historian Christopher Lasch negatively reviewed

Bazelon’s Power in America for the New York Review of Books. During much of the

1960s Lasch was sympathetic to the New Left, and while at the University of Iowa, became an enthusiastic participant in the teach-in movement against the war. During the second half of the decade, when Lasch was in his mid-thirties, his politics became complicated. He grew worried about the confrontational—and anti-democratic—style of the most radical New Left factions, but he also became an ever harsher critic of the liberal establishment. Lasch agreed with Bazelon that white collar professionals, managers, and intellectuals had ascended to position in which they controlled “the machinery of the technological society,” but he doubted that this group would radicalize liberalism. Lasch believed that Bazelon’s idea about the “new class” mirrored John

Kenneth Galbraith’s optimistic view towards “the technostructure.” Both Bazelon and

Galbraith were wrong, however, in thinking that the New Class or the technostructure could escape “the existing structures of power.”698

Lasch denied this possibility because he adhered to C. Wright Mills’s concept of the power elite. He argued that there was still such a thing as “the ruling class, an amalgam of the haute bourgeoisie and the new managerial elite that controls the great

698 Christopher Lasch, “Same Old New Class,” New York Review of Books, September 28, 1967. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1967/09/28/same-old-new-class/ 359 corporations, most of the land, and the higher reaches of government (especially the military).”699 Below that were other classes such as “a traditional working class,” now unionized and relatively affluent;” a new “lumpenprolitariat of recent migrants from rural eras affected by mechanization;” the traditional middle class, now shrinking and declining in status; and most importantly, the new middle class or white collar proletariat.”700 Lasch believed that this last class originated from “the demand for skilled and highly trained personnel,” and was made up of clerks salesmen, technicians, teachers and employees of the state.” Bazelon spoke of “managers and intellectuals” but Lasch asked about the rest of the white collar class. By ignoring the clerks, and public-school teachers, Bazelon had made his case for the new class as some type of revolutionary vanguard. Yet, for Lasch, the new class was itself a powerless proletariat.

Galbraith, Bell, Bazelon and Waskow, naively believed that “the emergence of a community of technicians and experts moving back and forth between industry, the university, and the federal government,” caused “the values of the university” to “prevail over those of the industrial system.”701 Yet, Lash believed it was the other way around:

“the social industrial complex will take over the university.” The influence of large corporations in the university meant that education became part of the corporate world.

Thus, instead of being the harbinger of a reinvigorated liberalism, and instead of being

“the wave of the future,” the New Class represented, for Lasch, the cementing of

“corporate liberalism.”

699 Christopher Lasch, “Toward a Theory of Post-Industrial Society” in M. Donald Hancock and Gideon Sjoberg Politics in the Post-Welfare State: Responses to the New Individualism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 38. 700 Ibid 701 Christopher Lasch, The Agony of the American Left (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 195. 360

This type of liberalism, argued Lasch was not socialism, despite what people like

William F. Buckley said; and it was not classical liberalism either. It differed from classical liberalism in its acceptance of the managed economy, its recognition of labor unions, and its commitment to the welfare state, and a “devotion to a Liberalized imperialism abroad.” It was not socialism, however, because it shared with “traditional liberalism a fundamental commitment to free enterprise economy—that is to the system of commodity production for private profit known as capitalism.”702 For Lash, then the members of the “new class” were merely the worker-bees of corporate liberalism.

The inability to oppose the power elite and a dominant capitalism was not the only reason why Lasch criticized sanguine ideas about the role of intellectuals in a postindustrial future. The desire for engagement and planning on the part of the intellectuals—something that excited Bazelon and Waskow—was for Lasch part of a problematic tendency amongst modern intellectuals. They displayed a proclivity for realism, hard-boiledness, and especially action; the intellectual, argued Lasch in an essay of the mid-1960s, was anti-intellectual. Echoing Mills, and in agreeance with Theodore

Roszak and Noam Chomsky, Lasch argued that intellectuals were embarrassed to be

“people who derive pleasure or profit from playing with ideas.” For Lasch it was exactly in this way that intellectuals were of value to democracy, namely by contemplating the relation of “cultural values to political action.” Instead, participation in political action

702 Lasch, “Toward a Theory of Post Industrial Society,” 39. 361 was emphasized, and Lasch traced this back to the progressives and their ill-articulated

“craving for involvement” in the First World War.703

Lasch argued that this urge for action and commitment was a kind of over- reaction to a long historical process in which intellectuals had become alienated from the masses of modern society. Yet, during the Cold War both the alienation from society and the effort to overcome it produced troubling results, or so he believed. In light of the revelations about C.I.A. involvement in the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the escalation of the War in Vietnam, Lasch revisited this anti-intellectualism of the intellectuals. The covert nature of the cultural Cold War certainly offered intellectuals the hard-nosed engagement they craved, yet this was not all. In the secrecy and technocratic spirit of the national security establishment, intellectuals could easily recognize their own alienation from mass democracy. “Intellectuals associate themselves with the American war machine not so much because it represents America as because it represents action, power, and conspiracy; and the identification is even easier because the war machine is itself ‘alienated’ from the people it claims to defend.”704

The result was that the “defense intellectuals cool and arrogant…sealed off from the difficult reality outside which does not always respond to their formulas” became a model for other intellectuals. As an example Lasch gave those who argued for “social accounting,” people who “intellectualized the processes of government,” those who

703 Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 317. 704 Lasch, The Agony of the American Left, 113. 362 believed “government is a think tank, an ivory tower, a community of scholars.” Now, wrote Lasch, “Washington belongs to the “future-planners.”705

For Lasch, then, futurism represented the anti-intellectualism of the intellectuals.

Instead of defending, criticizing, or complicating the values of society, intellectuals opted for a detached effort at anticipation, guiding, planning: things that supposedly put the intellectual in touch with the political machinery and power. Lasch’s critique is not merely relevant for Bell—whom he surely had in mind—but also for Waskow. In his writings on disarmament and his anti-war activism Waskow represented the value oriented intellectual Lasch respected—during the mid-1960s the two corresponded on the war and participatory democracy. Yet in arguing for an alternative futurism, a New Left version of RAND, and the transformative powers of the New Class, Waskow also displayed tendencies Lasch identified as anti-intellectual. This tension, moreover, was perfectly captured in Waskow’s essay on futurism in New University Thought.

The first part of this essay was based on an older series of lectures and in this part

Waskow sounded most like Goodman; he demanded a kind of future orientation that brought to the surface conflicting values in society. The second half of the essay, however, suddenly changed tone and featured his own extrapolation of trends and his argument for an applied futurism for the New Left. Now Waskow argued that simulation and role playing at places like RAND were not incompatible with his own future orientation: “As surprising as it may seem, these fairly establishmentarian techniques have much in common with the nonviolent role playing used by SNCC to train its activists.” He now wondered whether by “cross-fertilizing these approaches the

705 Lasch, The Agony of the American Left, 114. 363

Movement might be able to explore the creation of “future-gaming” centers, alongside community-organizing projects.”706

Explaining this discrepancy within the essay is not all that difficult. While the beginning of the essay stemmed from the mid-1960s, the later part was written after

Waskow had come in contact with Jungk, Polak and Gabor. Especially important was a trip to Oslo for a project Jungk had put together: Mankind 2000. This gathering was supposed to offer an alternative futurism, something that encouraged utopia formation.

Yet, what characterized it was an interest in methods, tools, and techniques. This group of futurists, then, focused on the study of the future, not the future itself.

Futurology

In September of 1967, more than seventy people, mostly sociologists, philosophers, city planners, scientists, and economists, boarded a small train in the

Norwegian capital. A train running along a steep railway took them to the majestic

Voksenåsen Hotel overlooking Oslo Fjord and the city. For three days this would be the site of the first “International Futures Research Conference.” According to one of its chief organizers, Robert Jungk, the “wide, heavenly horizon” of the locale instilled in everyone a “hopeful attitude.”707

Jungk had long wanted to organize something like this gathering. Already in

1963, he had conversations with Gerry Hunnius, a young New Left activist from Toronto, about ways to infuse a futurist perspective into the international peace movement.708

Hunnius had been a community organizer interested in theories of participatory

706 Waskow, Looking Forward, 54. 707 Jungk, Trotzdem, 379. 708 Jungk, Trotzdem, 359-60. 364 democracy, and while studying in London started to wonder why long-range planning and forecasting seemed only acceptable in military endeavors and some economic modeling.709 During their conversation at a conference for the International

Confederation for Disarmament and Peace in Vienna, Hunnius, a Quaker, proposed contacting some wealthy London Friends in order to secure funds for a conference. After some delays and additional help from a Norwegian Peace researcher named Johan

Galtung, this became the gathering in Oslo in 1967.

Jungk saw futurism as a process of “social invention,” and in his “workshops” he encouraged people to formulate utopian images of the future. Denis Gabor and Fred

Polak had long argued the need for such activities, and their invitation to Oslo was thus a logical one. Jungk had learned about Arthur Waskow’s work through his contacts at the

Institute for Democratic Institutions. He saw in Waskow someone who could connect futurism with the student and peace movements in the U.S. What was surprising, however, was the participation of members from the very “think tanks” that Jungk had always deemed part of the military industrial complex. RAND’s Olaf Helmer lectured on his DELPHI technique, and Hassan Ozbekhan of the Systems Development

Corporation—a RAND off-shoot—lectured on systems analysis. There were also those who specialized in narrow technological forecasting, and economic modeling. Emanuel

Mesthene of the Harvard program for Technology and Society also attended. Only a year before, at the seminar on Ellul in Santa Barbara, Jungk had charged that this program was coopted by American business and military influence.

709 Peter Moll, From Scarcity to Sustainability: Future Studies and the Environment (Berlin: Peter Lang, 1991), 148. See also, Gerry Hunnius, Participatory Democracy for Canada: Workers’ Control and Community Control (Montreal: Our Generation Press: 1971), 83. 365

In a preface to the publication that would emerge from the Oslo gathering, Jungk explained the reason for the inclusion of these participants. “Future research” was not

“brand new”; it had emerged in the U.S. in the 1940s to become “a large think industry.”

The work done there, however, was aimed at “military and related industrial goals.” “In calling a conference dedicated to Peace and Development in the next decades” Jungk wondered whether “the new intellectual tools of information technology, systems analysis, operational research, forecasting, anticipating, scenario writing, and ‘futures creation’ [could] be used on civilian problems?710

For years Jungk had argued that the military planners had been able to “colonize” the future because they worked towards non-utopian goals: faster planes and more destructive bombs. Taking at face value claims from people like Herman Kahn about the sophistication of the new techniques employed at places like RAND and the Hudson

Institute, Jungk now believed that such tools themselves were value-neutral, and could be used in a futurism that aimed for peace. Dazzled by the methodological questions of a field that, at the Oslo conference, was described not only as “futures research,” but also as “prognostics,” and “futurology,” Jungk lost sight of his political interest in the future.

At one point Jungk even asked, “what then, are the goals of such future shaping strategies?”711 In such a question simply everything seemed muddled; did “future shaping” not imply “goals”? And was stopping the Vietnam War no longer the most obvious goal?

710 Robert Jungk, “Preface” in Robert Jungk and Johan Galtung, Mankind 2000 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), 9-10. 711 Jungk, “Preface,” 10. 366

Jungk’s confusion was caused above all by his willingness to follow Ossip

Flechtheim and proclaim futurism a science. When Flechtheim made such a claim in the

1940s the problem of values immediately came up, and he was not able to solve it. He had noted that “an authoritative prognosis could be imagined to turn the course of events in the predicted direction, transforming itself thereby into an active force in world history.” Yet, a paragraph later he noted: “it is beyond the power of Futurology to shape the future nearer to our hearts’ desire” and that “it has to restrict itself to telling us what is in store for us.”712 The tension between an activist and a descriptive element existed in

“futurology” right from the start. At the Oslo conference, Flechtheim was treated as the founding father of a new discipline. Yet, all that Flechtheim offered was vague and jargon-heavy defense of the new “futurology.”

Futurological criticism of the present dialectically rejects untheoretical impressionism as well as supertheoretical and speculative glorification of the closed universal system. […] Fully aware of the tragic limitations of human existence, but also inspired by the hope of human progress, the futurologist, acts more critically than the utopianist, more hopefully than the counter-utopianist and more dynamically than the ideologist.713

What did it mean to act “dynamically” as a futurologist? Perhaps, the hard-nosed

RAND scientists could be of help here. Olaf Helmer participated in the conference not only by lecturing on his DELPHI technique but actually running the “forecasting experiment” with the conference goers as the experts. The participants worked on their elaborate questionnaires while listening to speakers or meeting informally over drinks or dinner. By the end of the three days, and after the feedback and revision rounds, Helmer

712 Ossop K. Flechtheim, History and Futurology (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1966), 79. 713 Ossip K. Flechtheim, “Is Futurology the Answer to the Challenge of the Future?” in Jungk and Galtung, eds. Mankind 2000, 269. 367 once again produced large-format tables and graphs in which numerical probability was attached to certain possible futures. The man who had termed his methods those of “an inexact science” was now welcomed as a great methodological innovator of “futurology.”

The promise of forecasting by computer also sparked great enthusiasm in Oslo.

Charles E. Osgood, a psychologist from the University of Illinois, and a computer-savvy student of his, Stuart Umpleby, explained their work with the PLATO computer. This

Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations computer could supposedly simulate decision making and planning for the future. Since the process revolved around the programmer, or “explorer” choosing between developments deemed likely or desirable, the outcome of the experiment was data that looked very much like that of

Helmer’s DELPHI technique. Yet, the computer they used featured an early version of the screen that would later become a standard element of the personal computer. The instantaneous visual feedback that this provided dazzled many. Osgood and Umpleby, however, noted that what they offered was nothing more than “programming.” The “real beauty of this project” was the fact that “programming forces one both to be precise and to make tentative decisions in order to get data on which to base more knowledgeable decisions.”714 The innovation offered here as a new tool for forecasting, was nothing more than the mindset of the computer programmer.

Having seen Osgood’s presentation, Arthur Waskow later noted that the PLATO experiment used “computer and teaching machine technology to make available complex sets of branching choices, leading to various futures.” Participants in the experiment

714 Charles E. Osgood and Stuart Umpleby, “A Computer-Based System for Exploration of Possible Futures for Mankind 2000” in Jungk and Galtung, eds., Mankind 2000, 347. 368

“could play through certain choices in the present to see how they might open up and close off various possible futures.”715

The Oslo conference even found its own version of Herman Kahn. This was

Hasan Ozbekhan, a Turkish-born economist and systems analyst who had also attended the symposium on Technology in Santa Monica. There he had dismissed Ellulian fears by exclaiming “I practically sleep with computers,” and they were not to be feared.716 In

Oslo Ozbekhan presented “a general theory of planning.” Through an impressive effort at flow-chart creation, Ozbekhan tried to pinpoint the exact role of predictions, objectives, and policies inherent in planning. Since he elucidated by abstraction, evaluating whether or not he succeeded is difficult and perhaps irrelevant. To place arrows between three boxes labeled “predicted situation,” “problem continuum,” and

“normative goals,” was not to say much about how to predict, or what kind of goals planning served.717 Yet, Ozbekhan’s reputation as an expert in the new field of “systems design” gave him an air of the practical minded pioneer.

Fred Polak, meanwhile was probably the most excited participant of all of those who came to Oslo. He noted that futurology as a social science had to combine

“imagination, intuition, sensitivity, inspiration, creativity…artistry…fiction, and fantasy.”

It had to strive for “dynamic progressiveness and penetrating reform-mindedness.” The techniques derived from Helmer, Ozbekhan, and even Kahn could help produce the utopian vision he believed pulled civilization into the next stage. Polak, was convinced

715 Waskow, “Looking Forward,” 53. 716 Hasan Ozbekhan, in Calder, Ritchie, 1906-1982, "Technology and Politics, program 415, part b," in Digital Collections, Item #5755, http://digital.library.ucsb.edu/items/show/5755 (accessed November 27, 2016). 717 Hasan Ozbekhan, “The Role of Goals and Planning” in Jungk and Galtung, eds., Mankind 2000, 149. 369 that the “modern prognosis techniques” could counter the “fatalism” that had reigned so long.”718

Waskow, then, returned from Oslo with a new outlook on the futurist methodologies employed by those he had previously described as the experts working for

“the small group of people that run the government.” Like Jungk, Waskow now seemed caught between two arguments. The first held that futurism had to be participatory and normative; its practitioners had to act in service to the future they wanted to create. The second argument held that there existed a first “futurological” step, scientific methodologies that could help one formulate and plan utopian futures.

The appeal of this second notion seems to have been born from an unarticulated frustration with political activism. Imagining a peaceful future and organizing to make it real was a difficult and frustrating enterprise. Waskow certainly experienced this when he was on the “steering committee” of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP), an organization that aimed to form a broad coalition of civil rights, labor, and anti-war groups. Two weeks before Waskow traveled to Oslo, this effort spectacularly collapsed in

Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel, when radical blacks called for a resolution condemning the imperialist Zionists and demanded half of the votes within the organization. Waskow had desperately tried to keep the coalition together but the black delegation walked out and started their own convention, dooming the entire effort. Set against this frustrating experience with political activism, the methodological solutions offered at the serene

Oslo Fjord was surely enticing. What political activism needed were better methods of

718 Fred Polak, “Towards the Goal of Goals” in Jungk and Galtung, eds., Mankind 2000, 319. See also Fred Polak, Prognostics: A Science in the Making Surveys and Creates the Future (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1971), 375, 380. 370 utopia formation, the science of futurology held the promise of inspiring images of the future.719

During the roughly two years following the Oslo conference Waskow tried to

“develop participatory futurism in the U.S.”720 He did this through a workgroup that formed under the aegis of the World Future Society. This new organization was founded by Edward Cornish, a former United Press correspondent, who by the early 1960s, worked as a science and technology writer for the National Geographic Society in

Washington D.C. Cornish produced a newsletter about future-oriented developments that became wildly popular amongst his circle of friends. He eventually turned the newsletter into a magazine: The Futurist.

Waskow was one of the early writers for this magazine, and his articles always focused on ways to develop his participatory, or New Left, futurism. His articles were not a natural fit for the magazine, however, as it focused more on technology than politics.

The magazine often evoked an episode of the animated series The Jetsons. Buckminster

Fuller’s futuristic designs graced many covers, and the second issue featured a story on

Walt Disney’s plans for “Tomorrowland.” Waskow stopped writing for the magazine by late 1968.

After the failure of the NCNP Waskow also started to doubt whether a “new class” of young planners, inspired by visions of a more equal and peaceful society, could by itself bring about the future he imagined. An emphasis on spirituality now started to dominate his thinking. Jewish community organizing projects and the way they

719 Walter Goodman, “Yessir, Boss, Said the White Radicals: When Black Power Runs the New Left,” New York Times, 24 September, 1967, 257. 720 Waskow, email correspondence, August 22, 2016. 371 connected “the Prophetic and Chassidic traditions with demands for the economic and political transformation of America,” now started to interest him.721 In 1969, realizing that his futurist work was unlikely to produce the participatory futurism he desired,

Waskow “dropped off,” from the World Future society group.722 That same year he hosted a “freedom Seder” in which the liberation of the Jews from slavery was tied to modern liberation struggles. In 1978 he founded a journal for “Jewish renewal,”

Menorah, and in 1995 he was ordained as a Rabbi.

Waskow’s failure to create a New Left futurism suffered from the same confusion that plagued all futurism in the 1960s: a confusion between a normative and a value-free methodology. This lay at the heart of Jouvenel’s struggle to fit planning into the “art of conjecture,” it had caused Bell to abandon his original ambitions for the Commission on the Year 2000 as a “model planning agency,” and it affected Jungk’s emphasis on futurism as Utopia formation. The most spectacular example of this problem, however, was provided by Olaf Helmer, whose entire notion of futurism as an “inexact science” constantly wavered between positivistic and normative ideas.

At the Oslo conference, Helmer noted that there was a difference between a predictive orientation toward the future and a normative one. The latter was not “the domain of social technology as an unbiased discipline” but “the arena of politics itself.”723 Yet, a year earlier Helmer had organized a large scale experiment to incorporate this normative element into his predictive “domain of social technology.”

Here, at the University of Pittsburgh, Helmer extended the scope of his DELPHI method

721 Arthur I. Waskow, Running Riot, 163. 722 Arthur Waskow, Email correspondence. August 22, 2016. 723 Helmer quoted by Polak, “Toward the Goal of Goals,” in Jungk and Galtung, eds., Mankind 2000, 316. 372 so that it could “simulate” the “values” of interest groups.724 Nicholas Rescher, Helmer’s long time writing partner, provided the epistemological framework for this effort, while

Helmer designed the simulation experiment. Rescher noted that “man’s technological and social environment will be the reflection of his future values.” Yet, the “predictive instrumentalities for the study of value change are sadly lacking at present.” In order to overcome this Helmer came up with an astonishingly complicated role playing game in which he combined “operations research techniques, simulation, and his DELPHI technique.”

Futurism’s long struggle with politics approached absurdist levels in Helmer’s experiment. Unable to incorporate forecasting into the normative realm of politics,

Helmer aimed to forecast the values that would inspire politics in the future. Thirty people participated in what was an “exhausting” endeavor.725 Six separate “evaluation committees” simulated the identity of various interest groups. One committee pretended to be senior citizens, another thought like “teenagers,” and yet another simulated the interest of “housewives.” What Helmer tried to forecast, was not just what was possible in the future but what people would want. There were more than ten separate stages to the experiment, all with as many feedback or evaluation sessions; it involved hundreds of questionnaires, endless marking on tables and graphs, and the experiment produced enough speculation on the “values of the future” to fill a book, which it did.

One journalist who observed Helmer’s “exhausting experiment” at the University of Pittsburgh was particularly inspired by the whole thing. Perhaps it could even be

724 Olaf Helmer, in Kurt Baier and Nicholas Rescher, eds., Values and the Future (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 193. 725 Alvin Toffler, in Baier and Rescher, eds., Values and the Future, 12. 373 improved if “actual teenagers” were employed to “simulate the teenagers of the future.”

Helmer’s experiment in “the prediction of future states of the value system” was “a leap that must be taken if we are not to be overwhelmed by the technological future.”726 This journalist was Alvin Toffler, who had been tasked to write the introduction for the book that emerged from Helmer’s efforts. He titled this introduction “Value Impact Forecaster: a Profession of the Future.” This prediction was at least accurate for him personally, as he soon carried futurology to the top of the best-seller lists.

Future Shock, published in 1970, reflected Toffler’s fascination with all the futurist efforts of the 1960s. He had closely followed most efforts while he was composing studies on technological change for companies like IBM, XEROX, and

AT&T. In a 1965 article in Horizon, titled, “the future as a way of life,” Toffler argued that a new “malady” presented itself: “the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future.”727 The message of the Horizon article became the central argument of Future Shock: change was swamping people. As examples, Toffler gave not only the new technological prowess, space flight, computers, and automation, but also cultural change: the new life styles of the counter culture and a loosening morality. Yet in describing all this change, the book became a catalogue of possible futures. From what was technically possible, Toffler extrapolated often dystopian social consequences. He wrote about “designer bodies,” cyborgs, “rentable children” and—gasp—“homosexual daddies.” Toffler noted that he objected to Ellul’s warning of the coming “totalitarian state run by a velvet gloved gestapo.” Science and technology did not lead to a stifling

726 Alvin Toffler, “Value Impact Forecaster: A profession of the Future” in Baier and Rescher, eds., Values and the Future, 12. 727 Alvin Toffler, “The Future as a Way of Life,” Horizon, summer 1965, 109. 374 standardization, argued Toffler but to “over choice.” This was the dilemma over “super- industrial” society; too much was fired at citizens, and they could not handle it.728

In the Horizon article, Toffler had also proposed a solution to the problem he identified. “We need to begin by creating a stronger future-consciousness on the part of the public, and not just by means of Buck Rogers comic strips and articles about the marvels of space travel.” A proper analogy for such an orientation Toffler found in the

“image of the afterlife” as “medieval man” had known it. Only now it had to become “a nonsupernatural image of what temporal life will be like, what it will sound and smell and taste and feel like in the fast-onrushing future.”729

In Future Shock Toffler expanded on this solution. He advocated that school children be taught classes on the future, and artists could work with psychologist to

“prepare creative works” about individuals in future societies. But such small scale solutions were not enough. The whole society needed to be oriented to the future. What was needed was “a strategy of social futurism.” A technocratic planning approach was a remnant of a now fading industrial mindset, and it needed to be replaced by the

“humanization of planning:” the formation of an “anticipatory democracy.”730

When at the very end of the book Toffler described the heartening steps that were already being taken in the direction toward “social futurism” he mentioned all the futurist efforts of the 1960s: Futuribles, The Commission on the Year 2000, Helmer’s DELPHI method, Mankind 2000, Bertram Gross’s social accounting, Moynihan’s National Goals

728 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970), 234. 729 Toffler, “The Future as a Way of Life,” 114. 730 Toffler, Future Shock, 405. 375

Research Staff, etc.731 Yet, “social futurism” had to “cut even deeper” than all these initiatives and figures had done. It had to deal with “the virus of elitism.” In order to

“master change” there had to be “a clarification” of “long-term social goals and a democratization of the way in which we arrive at them.”

The time has come for a dramatic reassessment of the directions of change, a reassessment made not by the politicians or the sociologists or the clergy or the elitists revolutionaries, not be technicians or college presidents, but by the people themselves. We need, quite literally, to “go to the people” with a question that is almost never asked of them: “what kind of world do you want ten, twenty, or thirty years from now?” We need to initiate, in short, a continuing plebiscite on the future.732

The problematic, often disappointing, and failing futurism of the 1960s was for

Toffler the antidote to “future shock.” But if futurism had struggled with politics, Toffler overcame the problem by simply avoiding politics altogether. To ask the people directly about the future was now made possible by technological revolutions. Satellite communication allowed “town-hall” meetings on a global scale; people could vote on plans from their living room and thus have a personal stake in shaping the future.

For Toffler, the problem of too much change could be solved by technology, just as planning could be “humanized” by it. Ultimately, then, Future Shock was not characterized by a concern about change but by an embrace of it. The many utopian and dystopian images Toffler presented merely had the effect of highlighting strange and fascinating future worlds. What fell from view after four hundred pages, were the problems of the present. All that remained was the future: fascinating, titillating, at times worrying, but ultimately reassuring. Futurism had become a fad.

731 Toffler, Future Shock, 406-430. 732 Toffler, Future Shock, 422. 376

EPILOGUE: A FUTURISM FOR TODAY?

In the late fall and winter of 1973/74, the pages of the New York Review of Books featured a heated exchange between Daniel Bell and Christopher Lasch. The subject was

Bell’s recently published The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social

Forecasting. Lasch argued that Bell’s description of post-industrial society was really an argument for a coming technocracy. Bell was “obviously” attracted to visions of “an orderly society run by men of knowledge,” wrote Lasch. Bell followed Max Weber in tracing the increasing influence of bureaucratic rationality in the development of industrial society. Yet, Bell also quite obviously “fixated on…Marxian categories.”

Lasch argued that Bell held on to the “informing power” of Marxism, “by finding contemporary equivalents for the leading terms in the Marxian equation.” Yet, at the same time, Bell rejected any utopian element, and he presented himself as a “realist,” and a “pragmatist.” What this meant was that Bell could not “take refuge either in the socialist utopia or in the technocratic fantasies that have so often replaced it.” Bell’s

“social forecast” demanded a new political system, yet he did not allow himself to follow this logic where it lead.733

Lasch, however, had no patience for Bell’s wavering and followed the logic of

Bell’s forecast for him. What Bell’s argument came down to was that of the “new class.”

During the second half of the 1960s Lasch had critiqued such arguments in the work of

David Bazelon and John Kenneth Galbraith; to think that a new class of technical men would invigorate liberalism ignored the existing power structure. Members of the “new

733 Christopher Lasch, “Take me to Your Leader,” The New York Review of Books, October 18, 1973. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/10/18/take-me-to-your-leader/ 377 class” were servants to the power elite, and therefore Bell’s book, was for Lasch, nothing more than “a bid for attention and official patronage on the part of a would-be elite of social technicians, social forecasters, and futurologists.”734

But even if one subscribed to the idea that the new class could wield power, Lasch argued, the history of the previous decade showed that the hopes of this class had failed.

The “vogue” of “’systems analysis’ in the early sixties seems to have been followed by disenchantment, the application of these techniques to war and diplomacy having produced not the brilliant successes that were promised but the disaster of Vietnam.”

Moreover, “in the highest circles of government, planning—such as it was—has given way to paranoia.” If the argument was that the experts and planners, armed with

“intellectual technology” were going to inject a rational element into government, then how to explain “such events as Watergate or secret bombing of Cambodia?” Bell’s

“curiously abstract description of American society” did not offer such explanations,

Lasch noted.

Bell offered a lengthy and fuming response to this critique. Lasch had completely misconstrued his ideas; he had not offered a new class argument at all. He never argued that the increasing importance of technological rationality would spill over into the political realm. This Lasch had willfully and mendaciously ignored by staying silent on the “theoretical structure” of his book. “I said explicitly that the concept of post- industrialism deals primarily with changes in the social structure, but that these changes

734 Ibid. 378 do not determine corresponding changes in the polity or the culture, but pose questions of various kinds.”735

His “theoretical structure” Bell explained in his book, consisted of three realms, in which “different axial principles” could be identified. The social structure—or sometimes called the technical-economic realm—was defined by “efficiency” and rationality. The axial principle in the political realm, however, was “participation,” and was defined by passion and personal or group interests. In the cultural realm “the enhancement of the self” was centrally important, and Bell argued that culture “turns increasingly antinomian and anti-institutional.” The Coming of Post Industrial Society focused mostly on changes in the social structure. In the introduction Bell announced a forthcoming book that would look at the relationship between the social structure and cultural realm, a book that became the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Dividing society into three realms was the only way, argued Bell, to be specific about change. Taking society as an organic whole could only produce the abstraction of contemporary systems theory. It made it impossible to determine what element was “most important” in driving change.736

Yet, Lasch identified something important in his review: Bell’s separation of realms was born from a frustration to tie social forecasting to politics. What Bell presented here as a “novel” theoretical construct, was in reality the result a decade long experiment in futurism that had ended in frustration. The Coming of Postindustrial

Society featured material—virtually unchanged—from the early 1960s. During that time

735 Daniel Bell, “An Exchange on Post-Industrial Society,” The New York Review of Books, January 24, 1974. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1974/01/24/an-exchange-on-post-industrial-society/ 736 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: a Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 9-13. 379

Bell had not yet concluded that a rational politics and public planning were incompatible with the “axial principles” of the political realm. The fact that Bell’s Commission on the year 2000 promised to forecast in service of better political decision making implied that

Bell had not adhered to a separation of realms during the mid-1960s. At that time he argued that the rationalizing mode of the technical-economic realm could produce a more rational system of government. Evidence of this mindset was not hard to find in his book.

In the introduction in which he stressed the separation of realms he also noted that the technical-economic realm was defined by “the centrality of theoretical knowledge as the source of innovation and of policy formulation for the society.”737

Lasch was allowed the last word in the exchange in The New York Review of

Books. He noted that Bell’s sudden denial of having made a connection between the social structure and the political realm meant that he “shows a tendency to argue that the scope of his analysis was much more limited than anyone had suspected.” But if it was the case that Bell abstained from passing “judgment on these issues, having intended merely to analyze certain changes in technique without speculating about their broader implications,” then it carried “a purely scholastic interest.” And this meant that “it tells us neither where we have been or where we are going.” Here Lasch uncovered the big problem of 1960s futurism: the wavering between a descriptive and normative approach.738

737 Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 14. 738 Lasch, “An Exchange on Post-Industrial Society.” http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1974/01/24/an- exchange-on-post-industrial-society/ 380

The futurists of the 1960s originally demanded a focus on the future as a means to plan for it. To them, advanced industrial society seemed to be at the mercy of an increasing rate of technological change. A society without a long-term focus seemed to have its goals dictated by an industrial system spewing out ever more consumer goods.

But when the futurists succeeded in giving this demand some institutional footing— through ample funding, think tanks, and commissions—they gradually started to waver.

Long-term planning always ran afoul of some established interest. A pluralist political system meant bargaining between various interest groups, but these interests usually resisted planning. “Designing the Future” was the name of the 1964 symposium on a

“comprehensive plan” for New York City. Yet, it became immediately clear that neighborhood interests, racial animosity, and class concerns complicated such

“designing.”

At times, the futurists of the 1960s saw clearly that the kind of future orientation they desired demanded a change in politics and government. Both efforts of the American

Academy of the Arts and Sciences, Project 1976, and The Commission on the Year 2000, had discussed ways in which long-term social planning meant interfering with local, state, and national power structures. To inject futurism into democracy seemed to imply at least some sort of change to the structure of the democratic system. But as Lasch observed about Bell, a fear of utopian thinking constrained such discussions. To conclude that a long-term perspective really equaled making bold political demands was not in line with a “pragmatic” futurism. As a result, the futurists were trapped by their own wavering. A practical and pragmatic futurism required some sort of political reform, yet 381 making such a claim ran the risk of sounding utopian. By the end of the decade Bell understood the tension perfectly well. The “adherents of rationality” particularly “the planners and designers” were “confronted by the cantankerousness of politics, the politics of interest and the politics of passion.”739

Yet if the tension between planning and democratic politics was debilitating, there was always the difficulty of forecasting itself: what methodology existed, besides extrapolation from available data, to describe patterns of change? In the search for forecasting tools the political resistance to futurism always played a role in the background. If forecasting tools were scientific, or looked like it, then they seemed to offer merely information. No one, after Jouvenel’s Art of Conjecture, dared to speak of

“facts” about the future, but in light of the political resistance to futurism, it was easiest to claim that long-term planning required value-neutral information.

It was simply easier to argue that futurism was only descriptive and leave the problems of the political realm dormant. Jouvenel argued that charting possible futures offered choice to policy makers, and that this, by itself, would result in better policies.

The Surmising Forum he proposed was only an advisory body; it would present alternatives but do no planning. The turn toward a descriptive futurism also explains the great enthusiasm for the often spurious methodologies of Olaf Helmer and Herman Kahn.

The fact that they offered only speculations meant that their work was value-neutral, it could be used to draw up plans later, but it made no immediate claim on the political realm.

739 Daniel Bell, “Notes on the Postindustrial Society II,” The Public Interest, Spring 1967, 105. 382

Within Nixon’s short-lived National Goals Research Staff, the confusion between descriptive, normative, and planning functions reached a new high. Nixon’s statement noted that there was “an urgent need” for “a more direct link” between forecasting and decision-making. Yet, Moynihan, responsible for the creation of the agency, noted that it would do no planning and could in no way “usurp the political process.” This binary understanding of planning as “usurping” the political process shows that an attraction to planning was offset by an entrenched fear about its incompatibility with democracy and a free market economic system. The title of the only report that Nixon’s futurist agency ever produced perfectly captures this tension: “Towards Balanced Growth.” Yet, such an understanding of futurism was only a shadow of its original ambition. Planning for the

“common good” had become “balancing” economic growth.

Ultimately, the wavering of the 1960s futurists between a value-laden and value- free approach, meant that they undermined their own cause. By demanding a long-term focus the futurists were criticizing contemporary politics. Their ideas, therefore, were political, and could not simply be applied as a descriptive tool. Futurism, as articulated by people like Bell and Jouvenel was clearly incompatible with a strong adherence to the free market. And it was also clearly incompatible with any resistance to the growth of technical expertise in government.

It would be naïve to believe that the current political climate is favorably inclined to futurism. We find ourselves in the midst of a populist moment in which anger, fear, and a prideful irrationality seem to drive politics. Futurism relies on a faith in 383 government; it is no coincidence, as we have seen, that it emerged during the early years of the Great Society. Yet, much has changed in the meantime. The Vietnam War, and the

Nixon Presidency gave rise to a deep suspicion about government. While cutting social programs and taxes Ronald Reagan declared government to be “the problem and not the solution.” In the 1990s and beyond, even Democrats became apologetic for big government. It was Bill Clinton, not Reagan, who declared the “era of big government” over. Add to all this an unprecedented skepticism toward experts of all varieties, and the establishment of forward looking institutions seems to possess no political momentum.

Yet, if futurism is seen as a political demand, then the first step is merely to make a political case for its necessity. Today this can take the form of demanding that a political party platform includes plans for a federal climate change agency, anticipatory studies on immigration and healthcare trends, or, perhaps, a new Presidential

Commission on automation. If the futurists of the 1960s were flummoxed by political intransigence, a new futurism has to expect opposition and make its case. And making it should not be that difficult; the big problems facing our society seem by themselves to demand a future orientation. Climate change is only understandable in terms of long-term trends. It requires, moreover, a focus not just on climate data but on structural changes that affect society as a whole: agriculture, population size, industry, and transportation.

Political demands to fight climate change, therefore, have to be demands for a renewed interest in the future of advanced industrial society, a new type of futurism. Similarly, the recent acceleration in automated technology invites a long-term perspective, and demands a careful look at the relationship between technological and social change. 384

Both climate change and automation are also issues that demand a policy influenced by scientific and technological expertise. Even in these days of “alternative facts” the importance of technical and theoretical knowledge, on which Bell focused so much of his attention, is irrefutable. But if all this is indeed gradually producing a new sensitivity to the future, it is important to learn the lessons of the 1960s. The ideas of people like Bell and Jouvenel should not be ignored, but neither should their flaws. What is most important is to avoid their wavering on values and politics. To argue that the future must be controlled, guided, checked, or planned, is to make a political argument.

Futurism cannot operate on politics; it has to participate in it.

The first step is to recognize that this is no easy task. A politics infused by a long- term perspective cannot chase after votes by making short-term promises. During the last year of his presidency Barack Obama noted that West-Virginia coal miners deserved

“honesty.” They needed to be told: “the economy is shifting, how we use energy is shifting.”740 Yet when Hillary Clinton, during the campaign, told a crowd that her climate and energy policies would put many coal miners out of work, she unleashed a fury of protests in the state, and Donald Trump eventually won there by an overwhelming margin.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, liberal soul-searching sometimes highlighted how the interests of average voters had been ignored, and that political success in the future would depend on being more attuned to such interests. This logic, however, carries an obvious danger. It can easily lead to a watering down of progressive

740 Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Mark Landler, and Coral Davenport, “Obama on Climate Change: the Trends are ‘Terrifying,’” New York Times, September 8, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/politics/obama-climate-change.html?_r=0 385 values; and it can also lead to a rejection of a long-term perspective. Instead, the 2016 election should not produce wavering on values, but a commitment to them. The campaign in West Virginia also presents a more optimistic story: both Clinton and

Sanders campaigned there without catering to mining interests. Both agreed with Obama that voters deserved honesty about structural changes, and in turn they argued that mining jobs could not save the state. In coveting the support of voters, the Democrats did not deny long-term trends.

Now, as Donald Trump begins his impossible mission of getting the miners back to work, liberals have a job to do; to present an alternative political vision, one that is informed by patterns of structural change, and aimed at finding a balance between current interests and those of future generations. If such a politics requires much from its adherents, it is also a politics that strives for honesty in the face of complexity.

Ultimately, such a future oriented politics pays the voters the highest respect.

386

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Unpublished Dissertations Braun, John Ronald. Une Fidélité Difficile: The Early Life and Ideas of Bertrand de Jouvenel, 1903-1945 PhD Diss., University of Waterloo, 1985. Jardini, David R. Out of the Blue Yonder. PhD Diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1996. Tolon, Kaya. The American Futures Studies Movement; Its Roots, Motivations, and Influences. PhD Diss., Iowa State University, 2001.

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