Technical Alliance
= the birth of the Technical Alliance in the 1920s, the forerunner of Technocracy:
Description
1. Howard Scott:
“The Technical Alliance is simply an attempt to organize the technical workers on their jobs instead of organizing them as an academic group outside. In one sense of the word, this may be called the first genuine labor organization in America, for every technician is engaged in strategically important labor and is concerned primarily with the organization, that is, the coordination of industry.”
(https://www.technocracyinc.org/the-birth-of-the-technical-alliance/)
2.
"The name Technical Alliance refers to an early technocratic organisation formed in 1920. The members of the organisation published a pamphlet where they outlined their goals of:
1. Uncover waste in industry
2. Estimate the resources needed for a given standard believing
3. Show the workings of the present system in the graphic form
4. Work on a coordinated design for production and distribution
The organisation also aimed to offer applied Engineering Services and act as a consultancy firm. The organisation carried out a number of reports for various different companies. However, one of the main activities of the organisation was the energy surveying of North America.[2]
Howard Scott was its chief engineer and Sullivan W. Jones its secretary. The organisation's members also included scientists; the chemist Carl l. Alsberg and the physicist Richard C. Tolman, some medical doctors; Allen Carpenter and John Carol Vaughan, a few engineers; L. K. Comstock, Charles Proteus Steinmetz, Stuart Chase and Bassett Jones as well as some educators; Alice Barrows Fernandez and Thorstein Veblen. Other experts included the architects Benton MacKaye and Fredrick L. Ackerman, the housing expert Charles H. Whitaker as well as the statistician Leland Olds.
The organisation broke up after year due to financial problems and some internal conflicts with Scott. Howard Scott continued his work on the energy survey through the 1920s. The Technical Alliance was reformed in 1931/32 with the aid of M. King Hubbert and a number of former members.
The Technical Alliance became Technocracy Incorporated in 1933."
(https://technocracy.fandom.com/wiki/Technical_Alliance)
3. From the Technocracy Study Course:
"TECHNOCRACY INC. is a non-profit membership organization incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. It is a Continental Organization.
It is not a financial racket or a political party.
Technocracy Inc. operates only on the North American Continent through the structure of its own Continental Headquarters, Area Controls, Re~onal Divisions, Sections, and Organizers as a self-disciplined, self-controlled organization. It has no affiliations with any other organization, movement, or association, whether in North America or elsewhere. Technocracy points out that this Continent has the natural resources, the physical equipment, and the trained personnel to produce and distribute an abundance. , Technocracy finds that the production and distribution of an abundance of physical wealth on a Continen'tal scale for the use of all Continental citizens can only be accomplished by a Continental technological control- a governance of function- a Technate.
Technocracy declares that this Continent has a rendezvous with Destiny; that this Continent must decide between Abundance and Chaos within the next few years. Technocracy realizes that this decision must be made by a mass movement of North Americans trained and self-disciplined, capable of operating a technological mechanism of production and distribution onthe Continent when the present Price System becomes impotent to operate. Technocracy Inc. is notifying every intelligent a.nd courageous North American that his future tomorrow rests on what he does today. Technocracy offers the specifications and the blueprints of Continental physical operations for the production of abundance for every citizen."
(https://www.technocracyinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Study-Course.pdf)
Interview
.. with the founder, Howard Scott:
"“The whole problem may be stated,” he said, “as the problem of elimination of waste, but waste to an engineer has a different meaning than it does to the general public. People generally think of waste only in terms of potato peelings or of spending money for what they hanker for, instead of for what they think they ought to buy. If the elimination of that kind of waste could solve the problem, China should be the richest country on earth today; but the engineer recognizes exhaustion of any natural resource is a waste.” “If we could eliminate idleness and duplication of effort,“ he said, “we may have immediate prosperity −such prosperity as the world has never known. If we could find a way then to husband our natural resources, we may make that prosperity permanent.”
“Can the engineers and technical men do this?” I asked.
“If they can’t,“ he answered, “nobody can. Inasmuch, however, as that is only one thing they are trained to do, the problem doesn’t seem difficult. The simple fact is that they have not tackled the problem up-todate. They have been trying, with gratifying success, to eliminate idleness and duplication of effort within the various industries in which they have been employed, but so far they have not thought of American industry, which means, practically, that they haven’t thought as engineers.”
“The time has come, however, when the engineer must do exactly that. We are reaching a crisis, and the technicians are the only people who can find out what to do. They must survey the country, tabulate its resources, discover its possibilities in natural and human power, uncover the present wastes and leakages, and work out a tentative design of coordinated production and distribution.”
“And suppose you draw up a seemingly workable plan,” I asked. “What are you going to do with public opinion?”
“It is all a technical matter,” he said. “It makes not the slightest difference whether the public knows about it or not. The steam engine didn’t need a press agent. The Einstein Theory doesn’t require any special legislative enactment. If the only people who can bring order to our present industrial chaos find out exactly how to do the job, we needn’t worry about the next step.”
(https://www.technocracyinc.org/the-birth-of-the-technical-alliance/)