USA 1950s/60s: The New Industrial State

In the United States of America, "the Sixties" went through new, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond. In Africa the 1960s was a period of radical political change as 32 countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers.

Weber was a German and political economist. He was interested in Germany and how the state worked, he particularly looked at social research. After the Paris commune in 1871, the German states authority raised and so did social democracy.

England, France and the USA copied this modern bureaucracy idea that Germany had created, known as Keynesianism economics. And then leading onto the first world war.

After the Paris Commune Germany had become the first modern Bureaucratic state. A bureaucracy is an organisation of non-elected officials of a government or organisation who implement the rules and laws of their institution.

Weber and Marx were Kantian's, they followed the same ideas that Kant had speculated about ' the truth'. Weber would say that humans do not know the objects in themselves, there is no absolute reality, we only have a mental picture.

There is no absolute truth as a Journalist but you can be honest.

Weber was very much anti-political, he just wanted to see what people got up to in the bureaucracy.

He was interested in power and why we follow rules set out by certain people. He looked at social actions,

"an Action is 'social' if the acting individual takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course."

Whats wrong with the Bureaucratic state? - Cultural exhaustion, the rationalism of religion. Our workers ability is becoming less skilled over the years, it would be impossible to build something like Winchester cathedral now.

' In the modern world nobody lives outside of the state' 

The 1950s ‘American prosperity.’ 

Keynes the great God. 

Neo-classical economics is a museum piece, and not taken seriously especially particularly on money policy.

During Eisenhower’s era ( President of the United States from 1953 until 1961) Americans achieved a level of prosperity they had never known before. While other parts of the world struggled to rebuild from the devastation of World War II, citizens of the United States saw their standard of living surpass what previous generations had only dreamed about.

Eisenhower himself deserves a good deal of credit for this economic growth. He found the right combination of low taxes, balanced budgets, and public spending that allowed the economy to hum along at a steady clip. He also benefitted from steady growth in spending on new homes and consumer goods as citizens turned away from older notions of thrift and began to buy on credit.

But this managed society was critiqued as a new form of “soft” totalitarianism. The Keynesian agreement is attacked from both the left and the right sides. 

The Far Left / Far Right: Heidegger and Sartre, Maoism, Franz Fanon. 

American “civilization” is “bureaucratic-technological militaristic nihilism”. It is bound for disintegration, probably violent.

Left: Maoism, third world-ism, ecology, feminism, transvaluation. Anti-globalisation as anti-capitalism, green movement

Right: Racial disintegration, cultural decadence, economic parasitism, loss of national identity, Globalisation as disintegration, relative and absolute economic decline of the west for example the American journalism Mark Stein “After America.”

The Social-Democratic (‘Liberal’) left: JK Galbraith, The New Industrial State (plus existentialist-type cultural criticism in the US, the counter-culture, etc, on the vapidity of existence.

The New Industrial State

by John Galbraith 

“The Military Industrial Complex” (Eisenhower)

The Social-Democratic ‘Liberal’ left: JK Galbraith, The New Industrial State

John Galbraith wrote the new industrial state which explores the ins and outs of this new economic system sweeping through America throughout the post war period. The system itself is described as nihilistic because there is no real point to it or its survival and was also seen to be technological-bureaucracy.

Galbraith suggests that it is the ‘technostructure’ that controls everything and that they subordinate the government for their own progression and self-esteem. ‘Those who run the corporations own no share of enterprise; they are selected narcissistically by boards that have been chosen by the owner.’

What is the aim of this system? None – it is essentially nihilistic, pragmatic “technological-bureaucratic” predicted Heidegger. If you look at all the nuclear weapons and military spending you would agree it is extraordinarily violent and essentially decadent and doomed. What is Galbraith’s recommendation?- managed decline?

The prevalence of conspiracy theories, having a grain of truth in terms of there being interlocking bureaucracies. Interlocking complex relationship with newspapers and television – “false reality” and “false consciousness”

The New Industrial State describes a world Weber’s bureaucracy built. The bureaucracy, by its nature, will destroy those that oppose it. This links in with the Vietnam War and the idea of bureaucratic, economical warfare. - The idea of Vertical integration also allows prolonged loss making.   

Galbraith asserts that within the industrial sectors of modern capitalist societies, that the traditional methods of supply and demand is replaced by the planning of large corporations, using techniques such as advertising and vertical integration. Advertising and vertical integration. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are branded together through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product and the products combine to satisfy a common need. It is contrasted with selling the product in different markets- known as horizontal integration. 

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film set during the Vietnam War. (More notes to come)