>> How come that we want efficient
>> technicians to perform most specilized tasks of
>> everyday life - from flying aircraft, to designing our
>> homes, bridges, or automobiles, to teaching our
>> children, and to treating our illness - but then we
>> suddenly settle for bumbling idiots who can play the
>> crowds when it comes the management of the most
>> complex institution even created - the state?
Doug:
> There are things to be said for having good technocrats run the state
> - e.g., NYC under Bloomberg, as I've said here before. But politics
> isn't just about administration - it's about, in Margaret Atwood's
> words, who does what to whom and gets away with it. It's about the
> distribution and use of resources and coercion. That sort of thing
> can't be settled technocratically.
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The Webbs and other Fabians were great believers in technocracy and feared
"the mob" of both left and the right. Implicit in the concept is the idea
that the state is neutral rather than an instrument of class rule, and that
if you have enough competent administrators and they are left to do their
jobs, they will run the society efficiently and in the interests of all. I
think Woj would have fit in very well in Bloomsbury, and I mean no
disrespect.