
We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow (2006) - tete
http://frank.geekheim.de/?page_id=128
======
b1daly
Eh, I'm amazed at the ignorance of the obvious by authors like this. This is
chickenlittleism on full throttle.

The tone is vaguely ellegaic, harkening back to that time when freedom and
democracy was the law of the land. Let's see, looking at the 20th century:
totalitarianism, the industrialization of genocide, nonstop global warfare
(hot and cold), institutionalized tacism and other forms of oppression, CIA
trained death squads, pitiful consumer protection stsnfatds , union busting,
riots, high profile political assasinstions, colonialisms of all types.

It's hard to see a some kind of serious decline in the progress of
civilization ushered in by pervasive surveillance technology.

Furthermore, to the extent that the author is persuasive that technologically
advanced and ubiquitous surveillance will be used to maintain the social
order, he highlights a weakness in his thesis.

The coming challenges he enumerates, climate disasters, energy problems,
migration pressure are not the result of insecure communications. They will
come anyway.

IMO he rightly guesses that selling increased surveillance to the public will
be easy, as very few people in the developed world want society to fall apart.

Electronic communication infrastructure cannot be ignored by the power
structure. Suppose these horrible changes were stopped by our idealistic
hackers from being easily used for social control. What would take their
place? I shudder to think.

Somehow a world where power can be consolidated by unaffiliated creation of
dark networks doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

The quality of a society will be progressed through cultural means. Technology
is just part of the fabric of this human world.

~~~
el_zorro
I am sorry you were downvoted (particularly because you were called a shill
for daring to voice your reasonable opinion). There is a doom-and-gloom
mentality on this site; people seem like they _want_ the end-of-days. I noted,
as you did, that almost all of the problems listed were independent of
communications protocol.

This entire argument is one of "exaggerate the bad and completely ignore the
good". We have companies working on cheap space travel, which opens up
asteroid mining (mitigating resource crunches) and allows us to use space-
based resources to alleviate problems on Earth (solar shades to reduce
warming, etc). Asimov made a great point at the end of I, Robot, where he
notes that the intractable problems of one age are rendered moot by the
technology of the next. People feared that NYC would be uninhabitable by the
year 1950 because there wouldn't be enough place to put all the horse manure -
which became a non-issue with the advent of automobile. People feared mass
starvation in the 1970's because we couldn't produce enough food - made
irrelevant by the green revolution. People fear global warming and
totalitarianism today, and it will be made irrelevant by the tech of tomorrow.
We already see birth rates falling globally, to the point where we will soon
be shrinking in population. This will reduce stresses from unemployment, and
paired with a burgeoning space economy we will have more to share with fewer
people.

There is no reason to cower from the ills of today; they are only a call to
keep moving forward.

~~~
Liesmith
It is exciting to think that everything is collapsing and the world is
changing and now is different than the past. And in a lot of ways it is. But
there is no technological singularity that is going to make human beings
irrelevant. We need to do something about the various crises of our time, but
the guy you responded to is right. My first reaction on reading the article in
the OP was "Wow, isn't it funny how bad things looked only a couple of years
ago!" The whining 'democracy is a lie' part made me particularly nostalgic for
a kinder, simpler time, a time when I could hate George Bush with all of my
hate and could say stuff like "the system is totally broken, man" with a
straight face.

While you can't trust governments and powerful individuals to reliably act in
your interest (and never could), we need to take a step back here. There's a
lot of nonsense and science fiction dystopia going around itt, a lot of people
who think that 90% of humanity is worthless now that we don't need them for
physical labor. That's ridiculous. Things are basically fine and while there
are going to be some serious repercussions among tech people things will
remain basically fine for the vast majority of westerners.

------
Udo
_> paid manual labor will be eaten away further by technology_

As labor continues to be automated, we'll need a minimum income for
"unproductive" members of society. In reality, they're not really unproductive
as long as they can engage in consumer behavior, which is something we
absolutely need them to do. We simply can't afford an underclass without
access to our new high tech quality of life. So we'll subsidize them.

Of course, this will come with restrictions. To be eligible, you won't be
allowed to own your house, a part of that income will most likely be added to
your "debt", and you'll have to take part in certain mandatory activities.

But in essence, basic income will _have to_ be introduced.

~~~
jyvbn
> To be eligible, you won't be allowed to own your house, a part of that
> income will most likely be added to your "debt", and you'll have to take
> part in certain mandatory activities.

What? That's not basic income.

~~~
Liesmith
It's slavery. Well, indentured servitude, but that's just a slightly technical
way to say slavery, like those pedophiles who call themselves ephebophiles
like it makes a difference. It's still messed up and vile.

~~~
bsenftner
Sadly, listen to the elite GOP strategists, and they openly talk about
financial instruments that are coded phrases meaning exactly indentured
slavery. How's about the idea floated recently that students can have a
discount on their university in exchange for a life percentage of their
income? What happens when their career gets automated or outsourced? That
"debt" has got to be repaid, right?

------
bobzibub
While we, the techno intelligencia, discuss how to manage technological change
against the powerful security state, it is probably the case that the more
desperate will just start shooting oligarchs despite the vast security
apparatus designed to protect them. Once they realize they're not secure,
they'll decide to cede power. The question is who will be able to negotiate
this transition in a transparent and positive way when politicians are already
corrupted by them?

I in no way advocate violence, (except occasional lapses of thought on the
hockey rink). I just think that these events will occur: If there are millions
of people that the state believes are refuse, many will turn to crime to eat
and as the social contract is broken, some of these people will tend towards
violence against those who run (what were once democratic) countries. The
oligarchs are a natural enemy to the "refuse" of society because they do have
a large hand in their plight. Consider: They generally advocate for trade
pacts which lower the wages of low skill workers. They extract high rents for
education so many cannot better themselves. They pay as little and hire as few
as humanly possible. The only aspect of their operations that they would have
in a first world country are point where they receive customers' money. To
many of them, their ideal is that both the production and the profits are off
shore. None of this endears them to millions of the poor. So that,
unfortunately is how things change. Please prove me wrong.

~~~
virmundi
It is for this reason that I'm a fan of the masses being armed. Without
weapons, they can never revolt. True, one could manufacture weapons, but a
good side arm and long riffle go a long way.

I see violence as a sad, but necessary thing. The history of man is one of
warring between to groups. Once the rich/super rich become so powerful that
they basically enslave the rest of us, there has to be a war. There is no
society in the world that hasn't had a war of some kind.

It is true that one could, in theory, use non cooperation to dismantle the
existing apparatus of state. The difficulty lies in the fact that the "refuse"
are already disenfranchised. In the techno world of the future, they are not
needed on any level. They are not consumers, therefore no one should care.
Without a good portion of the elite siding with them, their non-conformism
won't help. Even with India, the government of England and its citizenry were
tired of empire anyway. India wasn't worth the effort to them. It is unlikely
that we'll see the same from the elite anytime soon. They are on the uptick
now.

Oddly Marx is right. There will be a class war. A new synthesis will be
struct. In the mean time, sadly, people will die or be wounded. The best thing
to do is prepare for it and try to mitigate it.

~~~
bobzibub
I don't think there needs to be war. I don't think government is the enemy--it
is the corruption within government. People fighting the state directly will
only accomplish a bloody mess.

Maybe only Lawrence Lessig can save us all now?

------
dsirijus
There's a prevailing sentiment amongst hackers here and everywhere that things
are and can be moved forward in an ethical, and positive ways in the future.

I was always interested - are there cynics or at least pessimists amongst us
that don't see all this progress (even humanity in general) anything but
highway to hell?

If so, how do you cope?

~~~
Ygg2
Anyone with a working brain can realize for all the shit we are in now,
barring a world shattering catastrophe we are better now than 50 or 100 or 500
or 2000 years ago. And same can be generally said of things 50,100,500 or 2000
years ago.

Human progress to a more empathical and overall better society has been
constant. At first empathy was reserved only for members of one family and
tribe. Then empathy expanded towards people of same nationality and religion.
As long of circle of empathy expands to encompass more and more things, we'll
be fine.

I won't say there haven't been some really dark blemishes on history, but in
spite of all that humanity as a whole moved on.

Humans make mistakes. A lot of mistakes. It comes with the turf.

As for coping, try reading some Terry Pratchet and embrace the ancient
philosophy of Discworld - Things happen, what the heck.

~~~
arethuza
"Human progress to a more empathical and overall better society has been
constant."

Part of me desperately wants to agree with that, but then I remember that the
world probably looked a pretty decent place in 1913 and look how downright
awful and risky the next ~75 years turned out to be.

There is no fundamental law of civilization that guarantees that things will
only get better. Having said that, I think that on balance things will keep
getting better - but only because a lot of people fight for those improvements
based upon observations of where our societies are going wrong and putting up
a fight to bring them back on course.

~~~
oofabz
In 1913, the US was just wrapping up fifteen years of bloody guerilla warfare
in the Phillippines after starting the Spanish-American war and the
Phillippine-American war.

First the government got the masses worked up with a propaganda campaign, and
then went to war to annex new lands and seize booty. That's what healthy,
vigorous countries did, and we had recently run out of Native Americans to
pillage. We killed millions in Cuba and the Phillippines and demolished their
industry, economy, and infrastructure - a major reason they are poor countries
today.

Our Vice President, Teddy Roosevelt, personally led men into battle, killed
people defending their homelands, and made millions off the war. So we elected
him President.

The world was a rough place 100 years ago.

~~~
arethuza
Of course, there was an implicit "from here in the UK and from a very
comfortable middle class home" in my statement there...

[NB Anyway I stole the point from the start of Niall Ferguson's _The Ascent of
Money_ ]

------
benaston
If you think there is any truth in this article, then real democracy becomes
ever more important as a check on the power afforded the elite.

I note that the European Project (i.e. the slow but relentless move towards a
United States of Europe) is a step away from democracy in that the European
Commission is not elected by universal suffrage, but appointed, and that rules
are made centrally and applied to diverse populations with different
priorities.

~~~
cstross
You missed the European Parliament, which _is_ elected (with elections taking
place right now). The balance of power between the EC and the EP needs to be
shifted towards the EP, and other reforms are essential -- but the EU is not
intrinsically anti-democratic; the real problem is that the members are all
(at least nominally, esp. in the case of Hungary) democracies, with
parliaments jealous of delegating power to a higher authority, so the regional
governments have deliberate policies of trying to keep the center weak and
unaccountable to the polity.

~~~
aaronem
No doubt you know the United States had a similar problem in their early days,
and that nothing sufficed to resolve that conflict short of a half-decade of
generally very ugly warfare. Here's hoping the "United States of Europe" so-
called don't find themselves so afflicted.

From what I hear, though, that seems unlikely; it sounds as though those
charged with its assembly are, whether or not they consider it in these terms,
attempting wholly to preëmpt the democratic phase, by not only skipping
straight to the bureaucratic sclerosis, but actually _designing_ said
bureaucracy instead of letting it simply grow in its own fashion.

It's an interesting idea, and probably the best chance they've got of avoiding
the susceptibility to dangerous enthusiasms which is a young democracy's
besetting flaw.

On the other hand, it seems at least plausible that attempting to subsume into
federalism a range of distinct polities each of which has centuries of history
as an independent state, _without_ hammering them together by main force as
was eventually done in the American case, is a project doomed to ignominious
failure.

Whether it'll actually work and how well, I haven't the slightest, but I sure
do look forward to finding out.

------
hitchhiker999
"Decentralized infrastructure is needed. "

There is absolutely nothing I can think of more important than this.

There's room for companies, there's room for restricted centralised services -
but in my humble opinion the core services should be managed and run by the
people.

We are capable of doing it, if we're not - it's time to learn.

Interesting place to start: [http://maidsafe.net/](http://maidsafe.net/)

~~~
read
"Only true peer-to-peer systems that need as little centralized elements as
possible can survive."

I'm not sure how to interpret statements like this. Decentralization seems
ideal. But some of the most successful services so far either begun or are
centralized, not decentralized. If I'm not mistaken, the electric and water
utilities, Google, and Facebook are all centralized for example. On the other
hand, other services like email and the web (excluding DNS) are decentralized.

Is the intention behind this idea that control over those services shouldn't
be centralized, while pooling resources could be ok, depending on the service
involved?.

I'm not saying it's possible to remove control in a centralized service, but I
am saying that there is a distinction. A blanket statement that "centralized
services can't survive" would seem incorrect, and the existing statement of
"as little centralized elements" implies that "as little" in the relative
sense will be equal to little in the absolute sense, which might not be true.
It could be that "little" practically equals centralization.

The reason such a misconception is dangerous is that one might put their
efforts in designing a fully decentralized service that isn't adopted. Good
design is often hard in that it challenges your assumptions in ways you hadn't
originally anticipated.

~~~
higherpurpose
Everything seems to start centralized, and become more decentralized in the
long run. That's because it's easier to build things "in-house" first, and
it's also simpler from ca technological point of view. P2P systems need to
build communities that can take advantage of the technology, too, otherwise
they won't be very effective.

~~~
Liesmith
You know how p2p systems can be more effective? By not being p2p systems, and
instead being centralized. It's not some kind of natural progression, it's an
evolutionary process. Centralization gives you control, reactivity, and all
kinds of good things. Decentralization makes you resilient during destructive
upheavals that kill centralized competitors. We're gonna end up with a lot of
both.

~~~
hitchhiker999
That's a great point, however you must take into account the crowd-innovation
aspect. Decentralisation allows for a great deal more creativity to
'eventually' bubble to the surface (in a perfect world ;))

------
hdivider
> _" Genetic engineering and other biotechnology as well as nanotechnology
> (and potentially _free energy_ technologies if they exist)..."_

Somehow this part makes me think the whole article lacks a healthy dose of
skepticism and manages to hide it well.

For what Frank seems to be talking about here is stuff like 'zero point
energy' or other such misconceptions.

(Apologies if he means things like cold fusion on a tabletop device, which is
_slightly_ less crazy.)

~~~
moreati
In the context of nanotechnology (specifically MNT/molecular manufacturing as
described by Eric Drexler in Engines of Creation) "free energy" could refer to
photovoltaic panels that cost essentially $0.

That may or may not have been the author's intent. It's what I thought of when
I read that sentance

------
spacefight
It's from 2006, but it's more relevant than ever.

------
w_t_payne
Technology is a lever that can be used to amplify power. Surveillance is the
example du jour, but there are plenty of others.

We are social beings, (vertices in the social graph) and we have relationships
with (edges that connect us to) other individuals and groups of individuals.
Some of these relationships are characterized by asymmetric power (influence &
coercion) attributes.

The aggregate effect of these relationships on us as individuals is sometimes
beneficial, sometimes deleterious; an effect characterized in terms of
personal liberty; economic utility, and perhaps other factors too.

We naturally have an interest in understanding the benefits and risks inherent
in this network of relationships; and in understanding the factors that
maximize the aggregate benefit whilst reducing the aggregate risk.

I am idly pondering what it would take to build a statistical model of the
network of power relationships between individuals and groups, and explore how
various types of technological power amplification change the distribution of
reward and risk across individuals.

I.e. does the amplification of existing power relationships through
technological change increase the risk that personal liberty will be
restricted? What about the economic impact? Is there a risk that the
distribution of "personal liberty" will become more concentrated? How big is
that risk, and what is the spread? What about economic wealth?

Of course, this is just a silly thought experiment ... but I am sure that some
of the readers here have access to both the computational resources and the
raw data (graphs of interlocutors with power/influence attributes decorating
the edges) to do this experiment ... if you haven't already done it.

I'd be interested to know if any unclassified & publicly available results
exist?

~~~
dredmorbius
Cooper's Law: All machines are amplifiers.

------
socrates1998
I think we should go back to a real democracy, not a representative republic.

Why can't all citizens vote online?

We bank online, we pay our taxes online. We could develop a system that is
more secure than the local polling stations we have now and vote on laws,
regulations and budgets all online.

We don't need congress. We would vote on laws ourselves. We would vote on the
budget ourselves. We could even vote on budget proposals line by line. Voting
out any projects that only favor local communities. We could approve or
disprove going to war. The president would answer to us directly.

Some would this is would be chaos, but it could be implemented on the local
level first and then scaled bigger.

Others say that the common person can't understand laws. I say it's imperative
that everyone be able to understand our laws. If a law is too complicated,
then it shouldn't be a law.

Anyways, just my thoughts.

------
danielrm26
Great analysis. Reminds me of an updated, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", by
Bill Joy.

------
dan_bk
> So what now?

On the political level, the meta problem causing most of other problems is
money.

Take money out of politics.

No political advertising allowed, no "donations", no lobbying. 1 official
website (or print brochure) as the only means for voters to get political
information (or brainwash) from.

~~~
Hermel
No, the meta problem is power. The more power politicians have, the higher the
incentive to influence them. The solution is decentralization, which disperses
power, thereby automagically reducing lobbyism.

~~~
nostrademons
I've often wondered what sort of effect simply passing a law that all
representatives must live full-time in their home districts would have. It
would certainly make lobbying uneconomical - instead of one lobbyist being
able to wine & dine 535 members of Congress, they would only be able to wine &
dine one member, or perhaps 2-3 in a densely-packed municipality. It might
lead to representatives considering their constituents as their "tribe" rather
than the government as a whole. It would probably slow down the pace of
regulation, and significantly raise the threshold for what level of support a
bill needs to become law.

~~~
smsm42
You mean convince the lawmakers to put themselves under house arrest? Yes,
that is going to work. But only until somebody invents some tool or device
that would allow people to communicate over large distances.

~~~
nostrademons
You could phrase it as "Spend more time with your family and out of the hustle
of the beltway! Avoid spending a fortune on private schools, private drivers,
and a second apartment in DC." There are several lawmakers who come from
modest means, actually grew up in their districts, and have family and
community ties there that they need to leave behind for Washington.

It'd probably work best after a significant changeover in Congress, when there
are a lot of freshman reps all dealing with navigating capitol hill. Such a
change would be a big power shift from people who have established
relationships to people who have fresh ideas.

And the idea is that they'd be using e-mail, videoconference, Google
Moderator, or some other electronic means to communicate with their fellow
reps. The idea is to build stronger bonds of trust between reps and their
constituents than between reps and lobbyist/other reps, so that they actually
act like representatives instead of a separate caste.

~~~
dragonwriter
> And the idea is that they'd be using e-mail, videoconference, Google
> Moderator, or some other electronic means to communicate with their fellow
> reps.

If those were as effective means of full-spectrum communication as face-to-
face meetings, then moving them out of the capital to their districts wouldn't
effect lobbyists ability to influence them -- lobbyists can use technology to
communicate with members, too.

~~~
nostrademons
The point is that they convey information without building trust. Research has
shown that face-to-face contact is essential for building trust, because there
is a lot of subconscious emotional information conveyed in body language.
E-mail and other electronic communication conveys the factual, logical
information, but not the emotional information. So if you want representatives
to collectively decide things based on what is rational and logical but not be
subconsciously influenced by lobbyists or other politickers, cut the emotional
channel out of their communications.

It's the same reason that Google makes promotion decisions by a committee
located on another continent. You want people to judge based on facts and not
impressions, so divorce the objective facts from the subjective impressions.

~~~
smsm42
Some of the decisions can not be actually made based on facts, such as
decisions about future performance of some person (there are no facts that can
guarantee it) or future effect of certain policy (the facts may be lacking or
subjective and depend on interpretation). So, unfortunately, in many aspects
in the politics "decisions based on facts only" are just not possible.

------
ciudadanox
In Spain, having all this in mind we have created a citizens network in 2013
to force in a short time a real democracy in our country. We are common
people, hackers, lawyers, engineers with our jobs but we are very well
organized, we have learnt a lot from open source development organizations, we
have no investors but we have the best people with us.

We created the party to lobby our institutions and in just 1 year we are
growing much faster than expected. This article in NYT was right after we were
born [http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/is-spains-
newes...](http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/is-spains-newest-
political-party-party-x-too-idealistic/)

We may be wrong but certainly our are proposal for a new democracy is one of
the most advanced in the world after years studying examples all around
[http://partidox.org/basic-information/](http://partidox.org/basic-
information/) (sorry but the information in English is very reduced)

On Monday 25th of May there are European elections and for the first time we
will be in the list of candidate parties.

Our fisrt candidate is a "hacker", he is Herve Falciani who since 2009 has
been collaborating with numerous European nations by providing information
relating to more than 130,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts.

We have very exciting times ahead and thanks to technology we have new ways of
organizations and new ways for pushing changes

~~~
mrobert
>Our fisrt candidate is a "hacker", he is Herve Falciani who since 2009 has
been collaborating with numerous European nations by providing information
relating to more than 130,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts.

So instead of attempting to scale back the mass surveillance state, the
candidate embraces it with open arms and knocks on its door with a vaguely-
indicative list of nonviolent alleged criminal code violations of 130,000
people whose metadata he's aggregated?

~~~
ciudadanox
Not exactly, first he was proposed and voted in a open list. His list of
evaders, which is not public includes the top bankers and politics in Europe
including some of European deputies. His personal goals are to deploy by law
in European banks a system he has developed to monitor bank transactions at
European level to elaborate a map of money movements to detect tax evaders.

Because of him, governments in Europe have been able to get back millions of
euros back

Corruption in Spain is a big problem and politics have never been trusted or
respected, he is death treated by looking for the common good which at least
is a sign he will never be involved in corruption and he will never hide his
head in the attempt to achieve our goals.

~~~
smsm42
>>> His personal goals are to deploy by law in European banks a system he has
developed to monitor bank transactions at European level to elaborate a map of
money movements

In other words, complete mass surveillance system, no financial privacy at all
for any EU citizen. A commendable goal.

>>> Corruption in Spain is a big problem and politics have never been trusted
or respected,

And yet you are building a mass surveillance system which will be controlled
by the corrupt politicians, maintained by the corrupt politicians, operated by
the corrupt politicians and the corrupt politicians would decide what to do
with it next.

>>> which at least is a sign he will never be involved in corruption

Of course, nobody involved in corruption has ever gotten death threats. But
you don't even need to corrupt him - why bother if he gives a most powerful
instrument - control over every financial transaction - to the politicians,
which as you admitted are corrupt? Without any coercion or corruption. Why
break into your house if you bring to the thieves the keys from it voluntarily
and beg them to take them and be your guest any time they like?

------
negativity
This article nails several realities dead on. The premise of a pervasive
electronic panopticon is a modern fatal charade, that we've unwittingly cast
ourselves in. There's an enourmous power differential at play now, in
everything we do. Even buying a pack of gum at the gas station with pocket
change can be readily transformed into permanent public record.

On the other hand, it's important to bear in mind that the problems
highlighted here are social. Between human beings. The manner in which we
share the world we live on, and whether we reduce it to ashes by fighting with
each other.

It's not a problem that can't be solved. It's a problem that can only be
sabotaged.

------
Shivetya
typical alarmist sensationalism, let alone dates because of its reliance on
doom and gloom global warming scenarios that amazingly don't occur and whose
model predict such dire fates cannot even be used to show how we are now
compared to forty years ago.

Will give them points on robotics, robotics will change the world so
significantly I doubt we can exaggerate it. We literally will have to find
something to do.

------
sebastianconcpt
What is painful for me about this is that while we might sensibilize a handful
of (A) talented hackers here and there that (B) are in good shape to do
anything about it, there are legions of lobbists and bureaucrats with big
budgets daily working to expand the State, some of those legions are tax
minions who's "added value" is bite yours

------
scrrr
I believe in fundamentals. Just don't post anything online, unless you're
certain you want to. Do not post pictures. Don't use social networks and cloud
services. Your life won't get THAT much harder if Google Maps cannot guess
which coffee shop you mean immediately.

------
hownottowrite
From H.G. Wells interview with Joseph Stalin, which made the charts on HN a
week or two ago:

\-----

The capitalist is riveted to profit; and no power on earth can tear him away
from it. Capitalism will be abolished, not by "organisers" of production not
by the technical intelligentsia, but by the working class, because the
aforementioned strata do not play an independent role. The engineer, the
organiser of production does not work as he would like to, but as he is
ordered, in such a way as to serve the interests of his employers. There are
exceptions of course; there are people in this stratum who have awakened from
the intoxication of capitalism. The technical intelligentsia can, under
certain conditions, perform miracles and greatly benefit mankind. But it can
also cause great harm. We Soviet people have not a little experience of the
technical intelligentsia.

After the October Revolution, a certain section of the technical
intelligentsia refused to take part in the work of constructing the new
society; they opposed this work of construction and sabotaged it.

We did all we possibly could to bring the technical intelligentsia into this
work of construction; we tried this way and that. Not a little time passed
before our technical intelligentsia agreed actively to assist the new system.
Today the best section of this technical intelligentsia are in the front rank
of the builders of socialist society. Having this experience we are far from
underestimating the good and the bad sides of the technical intelligentsia and
we know that on the one hand it can do harm, and on the other hand, it can
perform "miracles." Of course, things would be different if it were possible,
at one stroke, spiritually to tear the technical intelligentsia away from the
capitalist world. But that is utopia.

Are there many of the technical intelligentsia who would dare break away from
the bourgeois world and set to work reconstructing society? Do you think there
are many people of this kind, say, in England or in France? No, there are few
who would be willing to break away from their employers and begin
reconstructing the world.

Besides, can we lose sight of the fact that in order to transform the world it
is necessary to have political power? It seems to me, Mr. Wells, that you
greatly underestimate the question of political power, that it entirely drops
out of your conception.

What can those, even with the best intentions in the world, do if they are
unable to raise the question of seizing power, and do not possess power? At
best they can help the class which takes power, but they cannot change the
world themselves. This can only be done by a great class which will take the
place of the capitalist class and become the sovereign master as the latter
was before. This class is the working class. Of course, the assistance of the
technical intelligentsia must be accepted; and the latter in turn, must be
assisted. But it must not be thought that the technical intelligentsia can
play an independent historical role. The transformation of the world is a
great, complicated and painful process. For this task a great class is
required. Big ships go on long voyages.

~~~
pjc50
_" We did all we possibly could to bring the technical intelligentsia into
this work of construction"_

=> "We had dissenters taken out and shot / sent to Siberia"

------
thomasmarriott
'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'

