http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future
Contents
1 Introduction
2 The psychology of modern leftism
3 Feelings of inferiority
4 Oversocialization
5 The power process
6 Surrogate activities
7 Autonomy
8 Sources of social problems
9 Disruption of the power process in modern society
10 How some people adjust
11 The motives of scientists
12 The nature of freedom
13 Some principles of history
14 Industrial-technological society cannot be reformed
15 Restriction of freedom is unavoidable in industrial society
16 The 'bad' parts of technology cannot be separated from the 'good' parts
17 Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom
18 Simpler social problems have proved intractable
19 Revolution is easier than reform
20 Control of human behavior
21 Human race at a crossroads
22 Human suffering
23 The future
24 Strategy
25 Two kinds of technology
26 The danger of leftism
27 Final note
28 Notes
29 Diagram: disruption of the power process
Introduction
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering--even in "advanced" countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it may eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: there is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a political revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.
