Social Engineering 9780773596009

Citation preview

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Edited by Adam Podg6recki

Jon Alexander Rob Shields

•

Carleton University Press

Copyright © Carleton University Press, 1996 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Social engineering

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88629-270-0

1. Social engineering. I. Podg6recki, Adam II. Alexander, Jon III. Shields, Rob

HNI7.5.S631996

361.2'5

C95-900807-1

Cover art is LongshorelDebardeurs (oil on masonite, 50.8 x 63.4 em.) by Miller Brittain (1912-1968), courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. . Interior: Xpressive Designs, Ottawa. Printed and bound in Canada. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the financi~ assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. The Press would also like to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their assistance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Social Engineering: Genealogy of a Concept Jon Alexander andJoachim K H W. Schmidt PART I: THE SOCIOTECHNICAL PARADIGM

1

PART II: HISTORICAL APPROACHES

PART III: EMPIRICAL STUDIES

81 107

113

Lessons from the Canadian Anti-smoking Campaign

Robert Philip B. Hay 6

63

Pavlik Morozov: A Soviet Case Study of "Dark" Social Engineering

Kathleen Csaba

5

59

Sociotechnics and the Imposition of Martial Law in Poland

Stephen Lawarne

4

23

Nixon's Social Engineering

Adam Podgorecki 3

21

Sociotechnics: Basic Problems and Issues

Adam Podgorecki

2

I

13 1

Sociotechnics and Values

John Cove

153

7

Can Sociotechriics Reduce Seismic Hazards?

171

Alexander M Jablonski PART IV: THEORETICAL ADVANCES

8

Social Design Methodologies versus Efficient Social Action

JerzyKubin 9

195

Sociotechnics under Authoritarianism

21 3

Andrzej Kojder 10

11

Self-alteration in Social Prediction: When does This Improve Predictive Accuracy?

Richard L. Henshel

225

An Action Basis of Social Theory: A New Paradigm for Designing Effective Organizations James C Taylor

247

PART V: ON SOCIOTECHNICAL PRACTICE

12 13

Experts and Sociotechnics Guy Benveniste

27 1 28 5

Foucaules Micro-Technics as Sociotechnics? I

Rob Shields 15

26 5

Inflogiut and the Canadian Policy Advisory System

RayJackson 14

18 9

2.95

Elite Leadership of Collective Attitudes Toward Competitiveness: The Help Wanted Campaigns

Jon Alexander and Melinda MacDonald

317

INDICES

Index of Names

34 1

Subject Index

349

INTRODUCTION

Jon Alexander, Carleton University Joachim K H W. Schmidt, SOREGA, Koin, Germany "Only he is able to follow the course of events intelligently who comprehends the structural alignment which underlies and makes possible a given situation and event." Karl Mannheim, Ideology 6- Utopia (1936: 176)

SOCIAL ENGINEERING: GENEALOGY OF A CONCEPT*

British historian and journalist Paul Johnson (1983) has argued that the twentieth century was the age of social engineering. What does that mean? Social engineering means arranging and channelling environmental and social forces to create a high probability that effective social action will occur. The word engineering suggests the designing and erecting of structures and processes in which human beings serve as raw material. Social engineering in the twentieth century has brought large scale changes in the social domain. Those changes have occurred according to preconceived ideas. They resulted from visions, social projects and plans designed on a grand scale. Such plans have often exacted terrible costs. Numerous failures have marked twentieth century social engineering. The material that social engineers use - human beings --,- is resistant. One cannot easily adjust this material to the

* The authors acknowledge a large intellectual debt to Jakub Karpinski, upon whose unpublished essay "Social Engineering" we have drawn quite freely.

2

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

designers' ends. The social engineers have often resorted to violent measures to break the will of those whom they wanted to change. Much social engineering in this century has occurred within totalitarian states. Totalitarian comes from the Latin word totus, "all-embracing." Such states strive to control the whole of societal life. Thus they fulfill their destiny. The most all-embracing social engineering projects have been utopian experiments. The twentieth century has seen massive implementation of utopias formulated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.) Social engineering blo~somed in this century first in authoritarian states. Only later did i~ seriously invade democratic societies. Social engineering is associated with the rise of the nation-state and its twentieth-century expansion into the role of a maker of social policy and a guarantor of individuals' health. The state in the form of various institutions and agencies thus embarked on major interventions in the name of not only national interest and strategy, but iri the name of social order and morality. This fascination with the governance of the population of the nation-state expanded from the mere collection of information, through checking certain social or moral trends in the name of society, up to determining specific standards of behaviour in an ever-wider area of everyday life. However, as discussed in this book, social engineering is also practised at the meso-scale of corporate advertising, the battles of indigenous peoples, community struggles, the tactics of grassroots and single-interest social movements, and the conduct of individuals pursuing specific social changes. While most think of social engineering at the macro-level of the state, it is not theoretically dependent on such powerful institutions. Social engineering is not only top-down. It often takes place from the bottom up. Waves of enthusiasm for integrated social engineering have intensified and abated. The enthusiasm intensified in France at the close of the eighteenth century. The French then made revolutionary endeavours to put into effect social plans and visions on a very large scale. Such efforts even included trying to change earlier religious beliefs and ceremonies. Thus intentions to engage in social engineering are certainly older than the twentie,th century. Marxism, social engineering's greatest inspiration, was a product of the nineteenth century. Its adherents encouraged revolutionary and universal social reconstruction. This they considered necessary and inevitable due to the law of development in history. Today, however, social engineering on a large scale arouses much less enthusiasm than before. This may result from the spreading knowledge of the results it had achieved. Does the dislike of totalitarian social changes mainly result from the undemocratic disregard for the people's will? Probably not. The twentieth

INTRODUCTION

3

century has seen social engineering with the people's assent, at least initially. Often the elite engineered even this consent by exercising control over the conditions determining it. The totalitarian opportunity arrives when citizens demand change and the elimination of evil. This energizes ideologists to pinpoint the evil. They convince many people, winning support of collaborators and silent witnesses. They form revolutionary tribunals, militant committees and strategy councils, whose task is to root out the evil. The people want to support institutions that promise better distribution of goods, social welfare and economic and social planning. Thus institutions become agents that transform societies. While individuals are active in them, such institutions often move in directions none of their members have foreseen. It is hard to provide braking mechanisms for an apparatus designed to fight evil. The institution's creators may soon want it to function differently. But as the coercive apparatus expands, such intentions are usually latent and individual. One cannot voice them in public. Its victims' abhorrence of the revolutionary apparatus of terror does not mean it originally lacked considerable public assent. The twentieth century's great social engineers changed social facts on a large scale. They were above all dictators. Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, political leaders active in the century's first half mainly in Europe, are the utopian social engineers par excellence. But changes on a large scale did not end at mid-century. They continued in Asia, mainly in China and Cambodia, but also in Mrica and the Middle East. Americans firmly taboo the term social engineering. They pretend it applies only to dictatorships and to the past. Both presumptions are wrong. Today the United States is leading us all into a new world of innovative social engineering based upon high technology and motivational psychology. Thus we see two disparate forms. One is the old utopian modernizing impulse now subsiding. The other is a subterranean force freshly ascendant, leading us into a new postmodern world. The totalitarian social engineers claimed they were striving for a better social system. They thought they understood social mechanisms, and how to achieve change. Certainly they had a vision of a future society, and ways to form it. All social engineers are moralists. They behave as if they know good from bad in the social sphere. They also claim to have the technical knowledge necessary to attain what is good and eliminate what is bad. The latter holds priority; their first task is to eradicate evil. A social engineering advocate is utopian in opposing the present which, he claims, requires repair. The intention to perfect practice has dangerous effects, especially when the following three elements combine: utopia, power and masses. When rulers carry out a utopian social project people are the material on

4

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

which they work. They· mobilize masses of people who cannot organize themselves independently. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke stressed the need for intermediate social structures that stand midway between individuals and the rulers. In their absence, individuals stand naked before the authorities. Isolated individuals lack protection against utopian social engineering. That protection comes, if at all, from intermediary institutions independent of the rulers, and of the advocates of social engineering who strive for all-embracing change. Although one can trace social engineering to the ancient past, its modern study as the social science discipline of sociotechnics 2 only began around the time of World War II. This practical social science got its firmest start in Poland. Between 1968 and 1974, Adam Podg6recki was author, co-author or editor of four books published in Polish: Sociotechnics: PracticalApplications for Sociology,· Sociotechnics: How to Act Efficient"; Sociotechnics: Styles ofAction; and

Sociotechnics: Functionality and Disfonctionality ofInstitutions. In 1966, Podg6recki established a committee in the Polish Sociological Association to study social engineering. He wanted to develop an applied and practical social science. As such it must operate independently from the academic clash between Marxism and bourgeois or liberal social science. That is, it must seek to avoid attempts to reconstruct society on ideological grounds. It should also avoid the dogma of bourgeois social science that societies work best when left to purely spontaneous invisible hands. By 1970, Podg6recki's work had generated a considerable intellectual movement. He began work to create a research committee on sociotechnics within the International Sociological Association (ISA). This led to a formative meeting in England in 1973.3 Sociotechnics emerged as a general theory of how efficient methods for inducing collective action work. As Podg6recki conceived it, a primary scholarly task was to help unmask governmental social engineering stratagems. This remains the discipline's chief function. This international research committee first organized panels for the ISA's 1974 World Congress in Toronto. The next year the Sociotechnics Research Committee convened in Warsaw, Poland. Scholars from fourteen countries met to discuss problems of social values and social engineering. From that year on, the group repeatedly leapfrogged the Iron Curtain. In 1977, this research committee began to publish a newsletter. Its first issue contained an article (Podg6recki and Schmidt 1977) that defined sociotechnics as the study of methods for engineering social action. As such, it is not value-free. Sociotechnics arose in reaction to the trend that would soon render the social sciences virtually irrelevant to collective political action or

INTRODUCTION

5

indeed to social life per se. As first conceived, sociotechnics (ibid., 24) "pro_ vides intended social aims and goals with elaborations of frames of references as well as effective ways and means for their realization, relying in its operation solely on verified or verifiable propositions that describe and explain relevant social behavior." Although sociotechnics is academically organized within the discipline of sociology, it is in practice multi-disciplinary. Since 1977, the Sociotechnics Research Committee has met yearly. By 1981, it had almost 250 "members and interested scholars" from more than forty countries (Schmidt 1981: 1-8). Sociotechnics set out to become a practical policy science, one capable of realizing useful consequences.4 It never succumbed to the generally enveloping social science distaste, bordering upon taboo, against making practical contributions to public life and its reconstruction. This group preserved some of its scholarly work in a periodical

(Newsletter ofthe lSA Sociotechnics - Sociological Practice Research Committee).5 The book in your hands is the joint effort of that committee's members. The study team has tried to reveal some immediately apparent aspects of the theoretical paradigm. Although it is accurate to describe sociotechnics as the study of social engineering, this is not a full description. To understand this field of study one needs to know something of the intellectual history from which it sprang. The problem of social engineering interested a philosophical school active in Great Britain in the early 1940s. In 1941, Stalin's Soviet Union. allied with Britain against Nazi Germany. Those conditions were not conducive to clear thinking. Many people then thought in terms of progress versus reaction. Stalin's Soviet Union appeared to be a country of progress, even if the progress was costly. Dominated by fascism, Nazi Germany appeared reactionary. However, as concerns social engineering, both countries were roughly equivalent. In both, the leaders had a vision of a desirable future. Both countries were promoting radical social change, having, in one case, a national-biological orientation, in the other a class-economic one. Early in-depth criticisms of totalitarian social engineering came from Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Popper. Von Hayek, who in 1974 won the Nobel Prize in economics, published his critique of central planning, The Road to Serfdom, in 1944. Karl Popper's The Poverty ofHistoricism is a polemic against the idea that the future is predictable. His work first appeared as a series of articles published in 1944 and 1945. George Orwell's Animal Farm too appeared in 1945, followed in 1949 by Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both books critically treat socially engineered colle~tivities. Hanna Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951. The totalitarianism she described was

6

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

multi-dimensional. It arose from a conviction that in social matters one can attain anything. Its laboratory was the concentration camp. In his Poverty of Historicism, Popper made a distinction between utopian or all-embracing social engineering, and that which took a piecemeal form. We find the piecemeal form at work when the social engineer tries to attain his goals by small steps, incessantly correcting his moves. Such a piecemeal patching stands against the political temper of many committed activists. Their social engineering programs are utopian in character. An advocate .of utopian social engineering knows in advance that total transformation of society is necessary. An advocate of piecemeal social engineering proceeds without determining in advance the scope of the reforms. According to Popper one should not necessarily condemn either the form of social engineering or its goals. The two kinds differ in their vastness of vision, projects and plans. What Paul Johnson called simply social engineering Popper called utopian social engineering. From such beginnings, students of sociotechnics have tried to advance this research field through successive approximations. They have tried to clarify the study's theoretical or practical potential, or both. Only a generation ago, to help design a future democratic society, Karl Mannheim first postulated a new comprehensive science intended to bring about just and rational social restructuring. He coined the term "socio-technique" to describe this approach. Theory develops for a time as a wholly separate enterprise. Eventually, a developing body of theory begins to feed back into practice. It helps determine the boundru-ies within which practice is thinkable. It even suggests avenues of endeavour most profitable for practitioners to pursue. At that point, the science begins to acquire its own technology, as psychology acquired psychiatry. Until now, sociotechnicians have largely refused to face the question of sociotechnics' status as a practical science. A related problem has been how to distinguish between idiosyncratic manifestations of social engineering and its essential features. This requires consideration of what is the basic unit to study. Norbert Wiener (1957:25) argued that "the theory of control in engineering, whether human or animal or mechanical, is a chapter in the theory of messages." Students oflinguistics, the social sciences and engineering conventionally distinguish between the surface structures that provide appearances available to immediate inspection, and the deep structures. Through transformational rules, deep structures cause these surface phenomena. Similarly, in studying social engineering, one can sometimes distinguish between surface and deep structures. Effective social action typically

INTRODUCTION

7

occurs when the deep structures that channel behaviour are in a configuration that permits and virtually requires the action to occur. Creative writers have often expressed intuitive recognition of this. In narrative literature, it forms the underlying basis for the literary forms we call irony and tragedy. In practical affairs, it is harder to distinguish between surface appearances and essential features. Social engineers may fashion surface appearances as a smoke screen. They may deceptively camouflage their intentions. They may mask or redirect attention away from what is essential. Historical studies of election campaigns and intelligence warfare are replete with examples of such surface disinformation. 6 Sociotechnics scholars often must try to peer beneath the surface of appearances to grasp essential underlying realities that are silently, sometimes stealthily, molding history's course. Social reality itself complicates making ~he distinction in practice between social engineering's idiosyncratic or misinformational aspects, and its essential deep structures. Social reality frequently generates social engineering potential - and sometimes its realization - through purely natural processes. Social engineering effects may arise spontaneously. This may occur without the intervention of any consciously acting human agency at all. People interacting within a society often unknowingly, unthinkingly, or perhaps even unwillingly, create a set of social engineering dynamics. These dynamics may then produce efficient social action within the society. No one may especially want this to happen, or possibly even notice what is coming to pass. One of recent history's more spectacular instances of spontaneous social engineering occurred in China in 1989. At a summit meeting, Chinese and Soviet leaders met in Beijing to normalize the two countries' relations. The event attracted some 1,200 foreign journalists who could send instantaneous satellite reports. This TV capability produced an involved and engaged global audience. A small, nonviolent civil liberties movement was under way at the time. The concentration of mass media transformed it into a mass crusade. Two days before the Soviet leader's arrival, some 1,000 students had begun a hunger strike in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Within days, this cadre swelled to over a million protesters within the capital city. The tumultuous events there - and their forthright reporting - inspired almost instantaneous sympathetic protests in at least thirty-three other cities. Protester Wang Saiwei told a Western reporter, "Our action is decided by history and by the current situation - not by some individuals" (Newsweek 1989:21). A critical mass of concentrated media had set into spontaneous motion a sustained reaction of social engineering dynamics. No one had planned it and none could control it. The whole world was watching. For

8

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

the Chinese, having an involved global audience was a new experience. Television makes spectators feel involved and participant, as Marshall McLuhan so well understood. McLuhan had earlier written in Understanding Media (1964:286): People have long supposed that bulldog opacity, backed by firm disapproval, is adequate enough protection against any new experience. It is the theme of this book that not even the most lucid understanding of the peculiar force of a medium can head off the ordinary "closure:' of the senses that causes us to conform to the pattern of experience presented.

This is the nature of all social engineering, spontaneous or not. Efficient social action always requires an effective mobilization of bias. How is this possible? Consciously designed social engineering merely turns into artifice what nature provides as the raw substance. Sociotechnical factors may help design the stage set, and social engineers may help write the script. But historical actors must still act out the human drama concretely in their own lives. This process contains its own internal dynamics. The process of social action is typically one of flux. As sound waves only become visible on the wings of a plane as it crashes through the sound barrier to leave sound behind, the pattern of social action only becomes apparent once the action has occurred. Whether participants in social engineering situations were aware of being participants, and if so how dimly or sharply aware they were, is often historically moot. Again, McLuhan (1964: 277) explains this clearly: Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior, especially in collective matters of media and technology, where the individual is almost inevitably unaware of their effect upon him.

This is especially so wherever hostile social engineering duels are taking place, as in the twentieth century's hot and cold mass warfare. Popular understanding of what social engineering means obscures this problem. Conventional definitions of social engineering only reinforce thi's simplistic popular understanding. The Harper Dictionary ofModern Thought (Bullock and Stallybrass 1977:579), for example, defines it as: The planning of social changes according to a blueprint instead of allowing social institutions to develop in a haphazard manner ... [an] approach to social reform

INTRODUCTION

9

that sees it as a technological problem of product specification and design. The approach has been criticized, notably by educationists, for applying a mechanistic analysis to an organic structure, and for failing to recognize the plurality of values involved.

This puts too much stress on the intentional and the mechanistic. It virtually denies that in the act of social engineering anything natural is occurring at all. That is frequently far from being the case. This confusion is probably inherent in the use of the term social engineering. How can something engineered be anything other than consciously, wilfully, actively devised? Yet is the engineer-designed airplane, modeled after the bird's natural flight, not subject to its own natural laws of motion? Certainly! The problem probably lies with inherent inadequacies of our language more than with the inappropriate use of metaphors. Whatever the reason, there is confusion surrounding this subject. When people think of social engineering they normally think of a conscious and willing actor exerting socially coercive manipulation. This is why the term social engineering itself has negative connotations. Manipulation occurs in all societies. It is not inevitable, or even what is most likely to happen. From one perspective, much of what goes on in every society's day-to-day operations qualifies as social engineering. One can view child rearing, schooling, military indoctrination and any other means of mobilizing bias as social engineering without doing violence to the concept. Under this condition the problem of properly limiting the range ofinquiry is a serious concern. The editors have dealt with this problem by limiting our definition of social engineering. Social engineering refers to situations in which deep structural environmental factors, or some surface structural mobilization of bias, or both, leads to a high probability that efficient social action will occur. Social engineering is typically a way to engender collective action. There is of course the .reverse problem of unrealized social engineering potential. It frequently happens that a potential for social engineering arises, but this potential fails to take form in historical social reality. The potential thus remains merely a historical "might have been." This is a point of fascination for professional historians, one they are never able to resolve in an intellectually satisfactory way. The only way one can finally prove that such potential exists is to seize the reins of history oneself One does this by steering the perceived potentiality into the historical actuality upon whose brink it hovers. To do this is not an act of scholarship, or even of reality-testing in the normal sense. It requires that one enter the political arena of power

10

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

struggle, which, as Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset says, is to live at the height of one's times. Such practice is at any historical juncture open to only a few. The rise of sociotechnics now permits scholars to play limited versions of roles traditionally reserved to leaders in religion, law, business, politics, diplomacy and war. For this volume, scholars from several countries cooperated to produce a collective book. Only in this way can we help ensure we are looking at the phenomenon of sociotechnics in pure form. We wanted to avoid attributing essential features to what might turn out to be only national, culture-bound and accidental cases. This book also provides concrete examples of social engineering. They permit the observation that different cultures typically produce discernibly different social engineering forms. For example, in a democracy, one extreme form may consist of comm un ication between political leaders and followers that closely resembles religious communion. This is far less common in undemocratic countries. The parliamentary democracies based upon the British prototype have evolved the tradition of the royal commission. The royal commission is a virtually pure form of a type of social engineering we call politically controlled discovery. Ultimately, within the limits of possibility, human values come into play in both the practice ofsocial engineering and in the discipline that studies these practices, sociotechnics. More and more, the evolution of social engineering and its study continue to bring about firm knowledge of how social engineering operates. As this occurs, one may begin to see a process of praxis in formation, like that between psychology and psychiatry. Sociotechnics increasingly informs the practice of social engineering. So too the practice of social engineering becomes increasingly codified ~ the practical social science discipline of sociotechnics. This developing praxis places a special responsibility on sociotechnics, gives it a moral imperative. This moral obligation is much like a somewhat literary translation of what Florence Nightingale formulated for nurses: the practice of nursing should do the patient no harm. Similarly, the study and translation of sociotechnical knowledge into social engineering practice must do society, especially its weaker members, no lasting damage. Thus practice of the sociotechnical discipline has frequendy taken the form of unmasking the state's Machiavellian social engineering projects. Social engineering's unsavoury connotations help keep sociotechnicians from succumbing to the temptation to become mere servants of power. They want especially to avoid lending their skills to find the most socially efficient ways to practice oppression. Like a profession, then, more than a conventional scientific discipline, sociotechnics has an inescapable moral component.

INTRODUCTION

I I

Those who are horrified by the very idea of social engineering are often almost equally horrified that people should study this phenomenon. Such people often seem to feel, like the ostrich, that what they do not know about will not hurt them. Others take it to be a sign of academic perversion for scholars to study anything having any possibly practical implications. Yet governments today are putting considerable pressures on men and women of knowledge to contribute to practical solutions to societal problems. Logically, this collective book can take no position on the inherent morality or wickedness of social engineering. Each chapter represents the views of its authors. Because social engineering is an increasingly significant aspect of life, we need to understand it far better than we now do. Sociotechnics students cannot remain wholly indifferent either to the outcomes they study or to the larger consequences ~f their work. They would like to unmask undemocratic, manipulative social engineering practices that undermine basic human values. However much they may disagree in detail, students of sociotechnics also have a positive vision. They recognize that a new society is in the process of being constructed. They see a danger that this new global society will be far less humane than the one it is replacing. Since a process of construction is occurring, sociotechnicians would like to take part in building foundations for a more just society. If society is to be artificially constructed, let it be constructed rationally and not on the basis of hidden agendas, elitist biases and unexamined ideologies. It is important that thoughtful citizens understand the often almost subliminal means through which their behavior is continually being engineered. Citizens should playa more conscious, active role in determining whether the social engineers will have their way. As a scholarly discipline, sociotechnics reveals a cardinal fact that gradually becomes more and more obvious. We are currently living within the compass of highly varied and quite often conflicting social and political strategies. Taken together, these strategies form a complex web. They compete to engage social masses into activities that are gainful for the decisionmakers. In some instances, these strategies are gainful for the masses as well. It is significant that elites use such self-made strategies both to provoke and to prevent social action. Such strategies usually operate with greater precision at the micro-level of direct interpersonal relationships. They certainly exist at the middle or meso-level of interrelationships between organized groups. Increasingly, one also finds well developed strategies at the macro-level of the operations of whole societies? Karl Popper held that the only legitimate strategies for treating social problems operate at levels below the macro or

12

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

whole-society scale. Popper took this position partly because the inhumane excesses that communist and fascist macro social engineering practices displayed disgusted him. Sociotechnical studies nonetheless refute Poppees famous thesis that all attempts to guide whole societies rationally are based on false, harmful utopian dreams. Popper would limit social engineering practices to strategies for dealing with only some small, "face-to-face" structured social groups and larger social bodies operating at the meso or intermediate level. Indeed, sociotechnics has a potential to unmask many such utopian strate. gies. Under some conditions, sociotechnicians may instead present persuasive advice on how to launch just, rational efforts =:0 reorganize a whole society's social life. Far from being an impossibly utopian dream, this is an increasingly frequent actual occurrence. There is no point in ignoring that a historically important change is taking place. That macro social engineering intervention often has unanticipated consequences is a serious problem. It is not one, however, that typically prevents the effort from being made to achieve some set of primary objectives. The problem of positive, negative, intended and unanticipated results and impacts which are the consequences of .rational social action is one of the central concerns of sociotechnics. Revealing concealed intentions and uncovering hidden impacts are primary functions of the social sciences in general and sociotechnics in particular. Thus the scope of sociotechnics is not limited merely to analyzing plans for social change. Robert Boguslaw (1965) described a new utopian renaissance of the technological ethic that social engineering has always embodied. The new utopians include system engineers, operations researchers, software designers and policy analysts. Although these specialists often apply an ergonomic perspective to civilizational design, they tend to operate at the micro-level. Modern technological prostheses permit them to reach millions of individuals, as individuals. No longer must the social engineer tear the social fabric apart to accomplish massive social change. Put the desired social change values into a popular computer progrcun, and let each person at home absorb it invisibly, imperceptibly. A wholly new and terrifying social order emerges. Idealizing rationalized efficiency, these designers avoid specifically human problems. As Kenneth·Dahlberg (1973:66) recounts, their ethic contains five main traits: rationalization, exploitative control, perfectionism, functional specialization, and the desirability of highly mobile standardized persons. Henry Kariel (I969) nicely distinguishes between the urge for change and the routinely anti-utopian effects of the new social engineering.

INTRODUCTION

13

Admitting no value commitments, the social engineering renaissance accepts current reality. It merely tries to make current social processes more rationally controlled, logical and above all automatic. The toilers in this domain deny being political actors. They present "reality" as whatever their net of concepts catches. They operate by evoking and directing what from the outside appears as a seemingly autonomous historical process. As representatives of established paramount reality, their ethic eliminates alternative realities. This ethic embraces and elaborates institutions that the social sciences and humanities properly criticize. The new technological utopians and social engineers ignore both the profound and the grotesque in social life. They discredit as foolish attempts to establish alternative realities. Thus they exert a profoundly conservative force. The new high-tech micro-social engineers treat human suffering or anxiety as reflecting merely the breaking down of particular systems. By excluding unrealized norms, this generation's social engineers produce political closure that implacably denies our still-unrealized democratic possibilities. Today's social engineers prefer more encompassing perspectives than the merely human, such as game and systems theory, or cybernetics (Berman 1986). Yet without assuming freedom in human life, one can derive no human meaning from our activities, including those of science and technology. The democratic perspective clashes with cybernetic and systems viewpoints. Democratic theory asserts human life in demanding change, incompleteness and lack of closure with respect to values and the future. This the new social engineers implicitly deny with their abstract computerbased problem definitions and programmed solutions. For Boguslaw, the most important change they "make is to value structures (ibid., 25). They routinely suppress the question of how men and women may detach themselves from their society's life-destructive structures. As the twentieth century was ending, the century's heroic social engineering projects took on a quaint historical hue. At the same time, the new piecemeal engineering in advanced democratic societies had taken on a decidedly utopian cast. In the twentieth century's last decade, the dangers that a newly technologized social engineering posed to civilization itself was increasing yearly. It is now time, therefore, to construct a paradigm within which to contain the main concepts of sociotechnics as a practical social science. A paradigm is an "ideal model." No one has yet fully succeeded in producing a sociotechnical paradigm. Several scholars have made significant contributions in this direction, but progress has been slow. This may be because scholars have defined their research problems loosely. Results all too often have been open to widely differing interpretations. People have not agreed

14

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

on whether sociotechnics should study social reality through an intellectually constructed ideal type. Some would question whether an ideal type has any place in the discipline at all. So far there has been no full scale practical test of the sociotechnical paradigm's efficacy. What is the relationship between the sociotechnician and the subject matter, social engineering? For millennia people have practiced social engineering as an esoteric craft. As modernity proceeds, one esoteric craft after another (martial arts, the courtesan's arts, wood-frame home c~nstruction, etc.) becomes available for public study. As this occurs, the relationship between theory and practice changes. Initially, theory and practice fuse. Practice is unselfconscious. Disinterested, disenchanted science breaks this bond. Based on the project designed to uncover a paradigm of effective social action, this book begins to codify knowledge students of this field have gained. Societal institutions come to take on fewer and fewer of the original primordial, spontaneous characteristics with which they were originally supplied. As this happens, they take on more and more arbitrarily constructed characteristics. H~man beings have so radically modified our environment that we must now modify ourselves to adapt to this new environment. As this adjustment progressively occurs, our adjustments come to be more and more organizationally oriented. We feel increasing pressures from several directions, the bulk of which come from institutional molochs. The editors hope this book demonstrates the enormous technical capacities that lie potentially within the social engineer's grasp. Social Engineering reveals as well some of the technical limits of that esoteric art. This it does by seeking to discover common factors that one can often view as necessary for successful, efficient social action. These include audience characteristics, the immediate or long-term situation's inherent logic, the social engineer's capabilities to achieve certain technical effects, or the inherent propensities that the activity settings display. The uniqueness of sociotechnics as a scholarly approach to the . problem of effective social action rests on two distinctive ideas. Let us call the first idea the normative or paradigmatic point of view. The normative perspective stresses that social engineering has its own methodological requirements which resemble classical logic in the manner in which subsequent steps interlock. Only a proper sequence of steps leads to the desired and expected end. The second distinctive idea points less to spontaneous human activities than to accumulated social experience. It teaches group and society representatives how to proceed effectively in a reality strewn with the social and cognitive artifacts that complexity generates in human

INTRODUCTION

15

relations. Let us call this point of view the descriptive-explanatory approach. These two viewpoints are highly interlinked. Both perspectives are necessary to a full description. The explanatory approach provides the normative approach with subsequent modification and enrichment of the paradigm within which it operates. The normative approach provides the explanatory approach with continual means to test how adequately human actors actually apply their strategies in historically concrete situations. Almost since its coining, people have regarded the term social engineering as a rationalized attempt to dehumanize and manipulate human beings by treating them as objects. We have now seen many infamous uses of the social sciences - mainly political science and social psychology such as the United States' "strategic hamlet" program during the Vietnam War, its infamous "Project Camelot" in Latin America, and, as we will see below, the Polish Communist Party's more recent imposition of martial law. These have generated many of the same criticisms against sociotechnics. After World War II, Polish scholars systematically developed sociotechnics not as a conjecture or postulate, but as an independent social science discipline. Eventually, the term sociotechnics entered the common Polish language. 8 Nonetheless, as one of the several negative consequences of communism, the term sociotechnics gained the connotation in the Polish social consciousness of a notion associated with attempts to outfox ordinary people and out-manoeuvre their established attitudes. There exists at present a bulk of sufficiently well-developed concepts and methods to permit successful social interventions on the micro and meso-levels. 9 Yet a well grounded doubt exists as to whether one can reliably use sociotechnics for the efficient change of larger social structures. Are there reliable ways informing how to influence total societies? The recent collapse of the European communist bloc suggests that arbitrary attempts to re-structure entire societies are pure utopias. Social engineering was and remains, nonetheless a strong strategy. The Polish sociotechnical movement's original aim was to unmask hidden premises and intentions of those wielding totalitarian power. This function has involved grave risks. Colleagues have suffered severe punishment for such activities. Students and schQlars around the world can reap a rich harvest through study of unique communist experiences. This book's first general aim is to record indelibly and save for posterity some of the lessons learned at such high cost. Recently in Poland, a new drive has paradoxically appeared: to replace sociotechnics by "social design," as we will illustrate below. One can easily foresee an eventual tendency to reject this term as well. In Western countries the term social design connotes a disposition to impose on

16

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

people, consciously or unconsciously, something they do not understand and would not like if they did understand. Such subtleties of language are not important here. What is essential is to assess whether a sufficiently coherent body of methods and ideas exists to sustain a practical social science discipline, and to present to students and scholars in various countries ideas that seem worthwhile to pursue. The second general aim of this book is to establish the discipline of sociotechnics as the proper venue for study of social engineering. The book's third, closely connected, general aim is to demonstrate that the existing body of methods and ideas is now ready to influence the large field of institutional consultations. Social engineering can now operate efficiently on two levels: the micro-level, inside of social reality built on face-to-face relations, and the meso-level, among and between institutions, organizations, bureaucracy and administration. Material presented in this volume demonstrates this fact. The book is divided into several parts. In Part I, Adam Podg6recki presents an ideal paradigm of instrumental social action. The "Sociotechnical Paradigm" provides a unifYing model of efficient social action, complete with professional, morally committed sociotechnicians playing a crucial role. The editors encouraged chapter authors to take the paradigm that Adam Podgorecki proposes here into account wherever the compass of their subject matter permitted. This paradigm is thus the focus for debate within which the liveliest disagreement occurs. This book, then, represents a search for a paradigm of efficient social action. Other parts present the state of the art of social engineering and the range of efforts made to analyze critically the efforts of governments, corporations and other institutions to effect social change in line with their ambitions and social programs. Each part is preceded by a synthetic introduction. We have tried to unite disparate specialized areas of investigation so that knowledge and experience are transferable from domain to domain. The sociotechnical paradigm plays a crucial role as a catalyst for a more cumulative type of knowledge about social engineering by including selfdocumenting and reflexive stages in the ideal typical model of planned social interventions. We argue that only on the basis of comparative knowledge can a critical sociotechnics be developed. We have grouped the following chapters to present different aspects and the potential of different approaches to illuminate various forms of social engineering. "Historical Approaches" conveys an understanding of proto-social engineering in the political field. There, various efforts at social

INTRODUCTION

17

engineering continue to be carried out, but are often contradictory and selfdefeating. It is significant that analyses of such social engineering usually proceed by anecdote. The alleged personal sway and political "genius" of one or two "big men" are often the focus of attention, rather than their practical manoeuvres which, we argue, constitute technics of governance and administration. "Empirical Studies" describes how broad a range of activities has now come under the rubric of social engineering. This part candidly discusses the potential for good and evil that inheres in the practices described. Here one sees social engineering practitioners at work, and vicariously experiences their basic approaches. These approaches are as diverse as earthquake planning and the subtle inculcation of a nationalistic myth. This part treats many of social engineering's specific techniques, and reasons for their successes and failures. "Theoretical Advances" presents a wide range of insights into the phenomena under study. This part opens with expositions of the concepts most important to the study and practice of social engineering. It continues with chapters that together describe the state of the Jart, both in Europe and North America. There is a historical dynamic at work such that the nature of social engineering changes over time. In the past, social engineering took on the face of human agency far more readily than it does today. When social institutions were of a natural, primordial sort, social engineering had to work through such institutions. In today's more artificially built social environment social engineering can function far more impersonally. In the last part, "On Sociotechnical Practice," the authors situate sociotechnics by putting the whole subject into a global historical context. Social engineering is placed within a broad progressive trend to institutionalize natural human activities. This makes them subject to anificial but increasingly pervasive concrol. Social engineering is not in the end a "tool" for use or a "policy option." It is our natural historical fate.

ENDNOTES

1. Authors Mikhail Geller and Aleksandr Nekrich titled their 1986 history of the Soviet Union Utopia in Power. 2. Adam Podgorecki coined this term. He adopted it after having first considered others such as social planning, social architecture, public policy, social systems design, policy processes, sociology of policy formation, etc. See Schmidt (1981:17).

18

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

3. The results of this formative meeting provided materials for Cherns, ed. (l976), and Schmidt, ed. (1975). Another significant early publication was a volume Podg6recki edited of CurrentSociology,vol. 23, no. 1 (l976). 4. See Podg6recki, ed. 1976a and 1976b. 5. See, for example, Podg6recki and Schmidt 1977:4-13. This newsletter began publication in January 1977. The title was later changed to include "Sociological Practice." 6. See, for example, Bell and Whaley (1991). 7. For a social engineering project at the global level, see Alexander and MacAulay (1990). 8. Earlier, the term "praxiology" entered the Poles' vocabulary as a more abstract and general version of sociotechnics. Praxeology is a theory of all types of effective human activities. 9. Simple examples include many corporate policies, negotiation techniques and labour union tactics. At the highest level, the most successful examples appear to be not in the area of social policy, or even political management through the use of polls and opinion surveys, but in image management and product advertising. Alexander Matejko has indicated how to use sociotechnical concepts and methods on a meso-level in numerous publications. See, for example, the concept of the sociotechnical consultation, in Matejko (1984).

REFERENCES

Alexander, Jon and James B. MacAulay. 1990. "The Patent Information Utility and the Promise of a New Encyclopaedist Movement." Jon Alexander, ed. Science, Technology and Politics Yearbook. Ottawa: Odda Tala: 121-51. Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd ed., enl. Cleveland, OH:World. Bell, J. Bowyer and Bart Whaley. 1991. Cheating: Deception in War and Magic,

Games and Sports, Sex and Religion, Business and Con Games. Politics and Espionage, Art and Science. Rutgers: Transaction Books. Berman, Morris. 1986. "The Cybernetic Dream of the Twentieth Century." A William, W. Neilson and Chad Gaffield. eds. Universities in Crisis: A Mediaeval Institution in the Twenty-first Century. Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy: 111-35. Boguslaw, Robert. 1965. The New Utopians: A Study ofSystem Design and Social Change. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bullock~ Alan and Oliver Stallyb~. 1977. Harper Dictionary ofModern Thought. New York: Harper & Row.

INTRODUCTION

19

Cherns, Albert B., ed. 1976. Sociotechnics. London: Malby Press. Dahlberg, Kenneth A. 1973. "The Technological Ethic and the Spirit of International Relations. International Studies Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 1 (March). Geller, Mikhail and Aleksandr Nekrich. 1986. Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books. Johnson, Paul. 1983. A History ofthe Modern World. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Kariel, Henry S. 1969. "Expanding the Political Present." American Political Science Review, vol. 63, no. 3 (September): 768-76. Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Matejko, A. 1984. Beyond Bureaucracy? Koln: Verlag fur Gesellschaftsarchitecrur. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions ofMan. New York: New American Library. Newsweek. 1989. "Upheaval in China." (May 29): 14-28. Orwell, George. 1946. Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt. - - - . 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt. Podg6recki, Adam. 1975. Practical Social Sciences. Routledge and Kegan Paul. - - - , ed. 1976a. Sociotechnics. The Hague: Mouton. - - - , ed. 1976b. Current Sociology, vol. 23, no. 1. Podg6recki, Adam, andJ.K.H.W. Schmidt. 1977. "Sociotechnics: The New Paradigm of Social Sciences." Newsletter ofthe lSA Sociotechnics Research Committee. vol. 1, no. 1: 4-13. Popper, Karl. 1960. Poverty ofHistoricism. New York: Basic Books. Schmidt, J .K.H.W., ed. 1975. Planvolle Steuerung gesellschaftlichen Handelns: Grundlegende Beitriige zur Gesellschaftstechnik und Gesellschaftsarchitektur. Opladen: West-deutscher Verlag. - - - . 1981. "Material on Sociotechnics." Newsletter ofthe ISA Sociotechnics Research Committee. vol. 5. no. 6 Oune}: 15-35. - - - . 1982. "History of the ISA Research Committee on Sociotechnics (26}." Newsletter ofthe ISA Sociotechnics Research Committee. vol. 6, no. 7 Oune): 2-8. von Hayek, Friedrich. 1944. Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wiener, Norbert. 1957. The Human Use ofHuman Beings: Cybernetics and Society. New York: Avon Books, 1950, 1954.

...

~ .-:---~-

~:.~.,,---

-.----.--

- ..

I

.. THE.SOCIOTECHNICAL PARADIGM

In expounding the sociotechnical paradigm, Adam Podg6recki explains what social engineering is. He shows how pervasive the practices of social engineering are becoming in modern societies. This chapter introduces the scientific field of sociotechnics that seeks to understand the social engineering craft and to unmask the operation of social engineering. The author sketches in broad outlines the conceptual development within this field. It is appropriate to trace the field of study back to Leon Petraiycki, who first published studies in the 1890s on the uses of legal policy as a rational instrument of social change. Petraiycki understood that one can bring about social change without having first obtained a complete change of attitudes. Instead, a change in behaviour may itself result in changed attitudes. His main aim was to say under what conditions and to what extent the law can and does influence (whether to support or hinder) the actual legislative intent in mandating social change. Petraiycki's work contains a rich set of intuitions, reflections and historical and legal evidence. Because his work remains largely un translated, Petraiycki's continuing influence on the study of sociotechnics has depended largely upon Podg6recki's own work. Podg6recki describes what problems sociotechnics has posed for scholars, and he situates the major conceptual tool the hook presents within this research tradition. Podg6recki describes this tool as a paradigm that helps overcome many current difficulties research scholars in the field now face. This paradigm he discusses in detail. Of particular importance are the typologies that show various possible kinds of social engineering, the terminology and models scholars can use in trying to understand it, the operationallevels at which one may practice the craft, the values this craft embodies, the forms it may take, the requirements for its success, and the steps it should follow. The other authors in this book all seek to explore some aspect of the sociotechnical paradigm that Podg6recki lays out. Here then is an authoritative description of the sociotechnical paradigm.

CHAPTER ONE

Adam Podgorecki Sociology and Anthropology Carleton University SOCIOTECHNICS: BASIC CONCEPTS AND ISSUES*

Whether we like it or not, we should be aware that we are living in the era of social engineering. Sociotechnical projects are typically devised by those in power. However, intellectuals (experts, specialists, professionals, pundits, etc.) of the twentieth century, in recognizing thi~ situation, undertook the task of unmasking the hidden assumptions of those who dominate others. In 1936, Merton turned his attention to the idea of unanticipated consequences of conscious social action. Later in his fundamental 1949 book Social Theory and Social Structure, he once again opened the door for speculations pertaining to the problem of social engineering. Consequently, several questions emerge in connection with this phenomenon. Can social engineering exist without or despite conscious intention? Does social engineering always involve the context in which social action takes place? If it does, are there not more social engineering contextual factors present and operative on some occasions than can have been consciously planned? If this is so, then why should there not be a conceptually separate class of, say, serendipitous social engineering?

*

The author thanks Jon Alexander for his criticism of an earlier draft of this chapter.

24

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Historically, social engineering has persistendy aroused negative attitudes because of associations with notions like the dehumanized treatment of human beings, manipulation, exploitation or "activities from behind." To avoid this sort of labelling, the neutral term "sociotechnics" was coined. According to the present accepted understanding, in democratic and liberal societies, sociotechnics deals with matters of just and rational social changes. The first conscientious formulation of sociotechnics - then as a theory of legal politics - was presented by L. Petrazycki: It deals with the complicated matter of changing social motivation. It concerns the gradual transformation of the human race through elimination of thousands of dissonances and disharmonies. It intends to do so by adjusting the transformation to a new rational basis. This should occur through the utilization of a scientific approach and with an understanding of causal relationships. One should employ rational human pedagogic and policy, instead of traditional adaptation processes. Existing processes of adjustment are quite naive and often unconscious [taking place on a level not translated into cognitive statements], thus being less effective, slow, painful and connected with unnecessarily used atrocities, tears, etc. (PetraZycki 1925; in 1986 edition:163 [my translation]).1 The idea of social engineering was generated in the beginning of the twentieth century, which has been especially rich in the use of many social strategies. In fact it was generated by a social situation which was ripe for it and as a sparkling multidiscovery - at the same time in various social settings. It is not the external'manifestations of an idea which are of importance to the modern world; what is relevant is the systematic, methodological and . comprehensive demonstration of its originality. K. Mannheim first introduced the concept of sociotechnics to the Western scientific community. In 1940 he wrote: I have ventured to suggest three hypotheses for diagnosing the course of events and have applied them to several different spheres. 11 Most of the symptoms of our time are due to the transition from laissez-faire to a planned society. 21 The transition from the democracy of a few to a mass society explains another set of changes. 31 The changes in social technique account for yet a third group of changes, which has profoundly modified our social life. He clearly understood what sociotechnics was: "These practices and agencies which have as their ultimate aim the moulding of human behavior and

SOCIOTECHNICS

25

of social relationships I shall describe in their entirety as social techniques." Mannheim clarified this further: And yet progress in the technique of organization is nothing but the application of technical conceptions to the forms of human cooperation ... but what we have to consider in discussing these social techniques is not social organization in the narrow sense such as taylorization and business administration .... Any deliberate rebuilding of human groups in terms of more elastic organizations represents another chapter in the development of social techniques. (1940:250, 247,244; based on Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter in des Umbaus, 1935).

In the larger Western scientific communities these ideas appeared as social engineering. They were first introduced systematically and in a methodologically self-conscious way by G. Myrdal, R. Steiner and A Rose. In 1944 they maintained (p. 1044): There is a common belief that the type of practical research which involves rational planning - what we have ventured to call "social engineering" - is likely to be emotional. This is a mistake. If the value premises are sufficiently, fully, and rationally introduced, the planning of induced social change is no more emotional by itself than the planning of a bridge or taking a census. Even prior to the state of proper social engineering, the research technique of accounting openly for one's value premises actually de-emotionalizes research. Emotion and irrationality in science, on the contrary, acquire their high potency precisely when valuations are kept suppressed or remain concealed in the so-called "facts."

They also made a prescient prediction: From the point of social sciences, this means, among other things, that social engineering will increasingly be demanded. Many things that for a long period have been predominantly a matter of individual adjustment will become more and more determined by political decision and public regulation. We are entering an era where fact-finding will be seen as instrumental in planning controlled social change (p. 1022).

Six years later, in 1950, Karl Popper proposed similar ideas: The Platonic approach ... can be described as that of "utopian engineering," as opposed to another kind of social engineering which I consider the only rational one and which may be described by the name of "piecemeal engineering" .... The piecemeal engineer will adopt accordingly the method of searching for and fight-

26

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

ing against the greatest and most urgent evils of society, ramer than searching and fighting for its greatest ultimate good (1950; introduction written in April 1944:154-5). H. Zetterberg accepts Popper's understanding of sociotechnics. In

Social Theory and Social Practice (1962), he singles out the following procedure as suitable for rational social practice. The proposed course consists of a set of five successive steps: (1) explanatory inquiry (the expert tries to specify the client's problem, mainly on the basis of an informal approach); (2) scholarly understanding (the expert translates the problem into a scientific language); (3) scholarly confrontation (the expert presents his/her interpretation of the problem to the client); (4) discovery of the solution (the expert utilizes his/her knowledge of social sciences in order to formulate a solution to the problem); and (5) scientific advice (the expert translates the solution in~o the client's language and, thereafter, presents to the client the solution and its possible unintended consequences). Although the question of who first formulated the notion of scientific social engineering may be fascinating, for it traces rules governing the invention and diffusion of ideas, a more important task is to address the problem of differentiating between various types of social engineering. These may be defined as: sociotechnics proper; self-made social engineering; quackish social engineering; and "dark" social engineering. We may define sociotechnics proper as the theory of efficient social action or, more concretely, as an applied social science. Sociotechnics provides the potential practitioner with a method to seek effective (adequate to expected goals) ways and means to achieve aims, provided there is a given accepted system of values as well as a usable set of verified propositions describing and explaining human behavior (Podg6recki and 1:.05 1979:273). This understanding of sociotechnics assumes that there is a body of scientifically verified theses which creates a sufficient basis for formulating teleological recommendations based on these theses. It assumes as well that there exist various methods indicating how to trace results triggered by activities which follow these recommendations. Additionally, sociotechnics uses a consistent methodological scheme, a paradigm of efficient social action (see page 50). As descriptive and explanatory reasoning have their own logic, so does practical reasoning. Self-made social engineering takes a different approach. It presupposes the existence of verified knowledge concerning the effectiveness of social activit~es, but it understands this knowledge as an accumulated and generalized professional experience. This may remind one of the big medieval

SOCIOTECHNICS

27

concern: experience vs. authority; in modern Japan this worry is synthesized by the concept of seniority. Although this experience in some instances may be translated into testable {and sometimes measurable} propositions, it really constitutes nothing more than a pool of directives generated by various types of social or bureaucratic agencies. What is ~haracteristic of these directives is that they become normative to any situation bearing some similarity to the original one. It is not a scientific control but rather a bureaucratic one which is employed to check whether the application process or, generally speaking, the utilization of these directives is appropriate. Criminal justice systems persistently use capital punishment without any sound evidence that this type of punishment is effective. Quackish social engineering differs from the self-made model in that it only pretends its competence in formulating practical recommendations. In fact, this sort of social engineering does not rest on a familiarity with the real, tested and relevant theoretical framework. Social practice of "scientific marxism" in countries governed by "real" socialism {socialism as it has actually existed and not as preached} evidently shows that marxism, presenting itself as a scientifically proven social philosophy, in practice is a social failure on the macro-scale. The difference between self-made social engineering and quackish social engineering is not always sharp. The former relies mainly on the experience collected through effective trial-and-error analyses of various types of social practices. The latter is based on myths or ideologies appealing to emotions {understood here as the basic psychological elements}. "Dark" social engineering could mean sociotechnics proper or selfmade social engineering which is consciously used to produce harm. It is not the techniques but rather the goals that make it deplorable. Nazi techniques which employed the "Judenrads" to destroy the solidarity of Jewish people, or "PRON" organizations created by the Jaruzelski regime in Poland to do the same against the outlawed Solidarity, are examples of the practice used by totalitarian regimes during and after World War II. Some historians go so far as to state: "Hitler appears to have approached politics in terms of visual images. Like Lenin and still more like Stalin, he was an outstanding practitioner of the century's most radical vice: social engi. neering - the notion that human beings can be shovelled around like concrete" {Johnson 1983: 130}. The category of dark sociotechnics differs from the previous categories in that it consciously evaluates the final goals of sociotechnical activity. When analyzing specifics for sociotechnics and self-made social engineering activities, one notes that they present two distinctive positions. The first rests on a consistent body of methodologically tested propositions

28

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

or hypotheses. It articulates the requirements set by sociotechnics proper. The second is represented by the traditional stance which predominantly takes into consideration the accumulated wisdom of the given profession or the certain agency. Although this distinction appears to be simple, it bears numerous far-reaching consequences. Although it is remarkable in some areas, the accumulated wisdom of medicine remains unable to solve the puzzle of AIDS and its social consequences. Thus, one may claim that self-made social engineering is associated with Mannheim's perspective on rational social change, and that the sociotechnical proper perspective is represented by Petraiycki, Popper, Myrdal et al, and Zetterberg. Although one could locate the point of view of Lazarsfeld and Reitz somewhere in between, it is indeed heavily influenced by the self-made social engineering perspective. This may be demonstrated easily by outlining the" paradigm of efficient social action elaborated by them: Lazarsfeld and Reitz singled out the following consecutive steps characteristic for this type of paradigm: (1) identifying the problem, (2) setting up staff, (3) searching for knowledge, (4) following the road to recommendations, (5) implementation, and (6) assessment (1975:48). While the model is rather simplistic, it deals properly with the crucial steps of efficient social action. Yet it injects into the logico-methodological chain of considerations pertaining to the prospective actions something methodologically foreign; that is, an element based on alien factors, personal preferences, emotional choices, etc. Thus, "setting up staff" is an organizational activity which is not necessarily regulated by the logical requirements. Blassi's statement, despite his intentions, fully reveals this point: The most powerful generalization I can offer from this experience [consultative service in Congress] is that the chemistry of personality between individuals, the cooperative style of collaboration in a group, and the degree of trust between team members, are of paramount importance in ensuring a successful consultation role once agreement is reached on the sphere or topic of influence.

He adds: Therefore the social scientist interested in public involvement considers an informal contact to a legislator more valuable than many public seminars and mailing lists. A fortuitous "in" can replace months of such leg work (Blassi, in Freeman et aL 1983:138-9, 143).

In short, when a paradigm of efficient social action rests mainly on pI:ofessional and organizational experience, it represents the model ofself-made

SOCIOTECHNICS

29

social engineering; the more a paradigm of efficient social action is based on methodologically tested empirical propositions, the more it resembles the model of sociotechnics proper. To make these distinctions clearer, one may illustrate them in the following manner:

Sociotechnics proper Self-made social engineering Quackish social engineering 'Dark' social engineering SELECTED EXAMPLES -

Professionalism high high low high or low

Expertise high low low . high or low

MACRO-SOCIOTECHNICAL DUELS

Although Popper limits the scope of reasonable sociotechnics to the micro and meso-level, as several recent inquiries show, the concept of macrosociotechnics is not so easily discarded. These studies indicate that the use of rational sociotechnics is not only possible, but may evoke, on the macrolevel, some corresponding and counteracting self-made social engineering activities. It emerges as a complicated "dialectical" process of a sociotechnical duel (strategy used by a partner involved in conflict). An illuminating study by G. Massell (1968), which is summarized below, is a good introductory example of this. His research deals with the use of law as an instrument of sociotechnical activity. In the 1920s, Soviet authorities faced the formidable task ofintroducing an alien Soviet socio-economic system to Moslem Central Asian republics. The experiment was located perfectly. Neighbouring states were unable or unwilling to intervene. Targets of activities did not present strong resistance centres; they had lost their traditional ruling elites. The sociotechnical authority held undisputed central political power. This elite was radical and rational and not bound by democratic constraints. The sociotechnical idea was that the main vehicle responsible for introducing a Soviet socio-political system and the Soviet way of life to these republics would be a mobilization of women as a "surrogate proletariat." In order to achieve that, Soviet authorities abolished in 1927 the traditional court system, thus eliminating long-lasting customs supported by the Moslem religion. They introduced new laws making illegal such well-established customs as bride-price, child-marriage, forced marriage, marriage-byabduction, rape, polygamy, levirate, mistreatment and killing of wives and, above all, the use of veils. In the beginning, these liberating measures produced only meagre responses. The traditional family structure was so strong that the population

30

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

treated these arrangements sceptically. As a rule, women were unable to enjoy these new opportunities not only under the influence of "false consciousness" (ideology not representing the interests of those who believe in it) but of intimidation as well. When the elite exerted more informative activities and administrative pressures, some women became selectively involved through official action. In various urbanized centers, these women (especially divorced wives of polygamous husbands, mistreated wives, orphans, manual workers in well-to-do households, recent child-brides) used their new rights, including the right to vote. When the administrative pressures became more penetrating, many women lacking previous experience in dealing with men, became involved in various "loose" sexual relations. Often this ended with their "liberating" experiences transforming them into harlots (inexperienced prostitutes) . The strategy of the male response was entirely different. In the beginning the men used the technique of evasion - declaring ignorance of the newly introduced laws. In the second phase, Moslem clergymen used selective accommodation as an organizational effort to make life easier for women. It was an attempt to add some flexibility to the traditional Moslem way of life and to the relations between sexes. The next stage in men's responses was limited retribution which included heavy persuasion: forcible restriction of women trying to attend schools, clubs or to vote, privately arranged beatings, or even expulsion from home. The final phase of the counter-strategy used by Moslem men was massive backlash. This strategy attacked both the women who were interested in new opportunities, and the rights of the husbands of those women who participated in liberalizing policies. Women, at this stage, were shamed, raped, lynched, killed. Sociotechnical agents, native activists and the Soviet functionaries acting behind the "cultural revolution," also faced difficulties when introducing the liberalization program. These agents became targets of escalated abuse. This vigorously launched, self-generated and successful counterstrategy compelled the central Soviet authorities in 1929 to halt abruptly the whole macro-sociotechnical experiment. In some instances, one could sociotechnically block in advance the possibility of mobilizing a civil society (a society independent from the state, yet existing within the state). For example, in December 1981, a successful social engineering action of the dark type was aimed against the Polish Independent Trade Unions, Solidarity. It involved initially an effort to discredit Solidarity by false rumours. Later, it included a very unusual operation: the army hoarded food (since all other institutions were transparent to the scrutiny of Solidarity), adding to already-existing market difficulties. Various army units were sent

SOCIOTECHNICS

3I

around the country to collect "spying" information, create an impression of the army's omnipotence, help the elderly peasants and flood victims, and keep the army ready for an immediate action. The army's historical prestige helped create an additional confusion since, according to research conducted before the imposition of martial law, even the communist army enjoyed considerable popular trust (it was ranked third after Solidarity and the Catholic Church). When the government introduced martial law in December 1981 - only a few days before Christmas, so much celebrated in Catholic Poland - all types of communication were mechanically cut. The government disconnected telephones, halted public transponation, prevented sale of gasoline, and introduced a curfew. The army surrounded important public places, factories and schools. Each institution (including universities) received a military "commissar" who supervised both the administrative work and the political atmosphere. Specially trained (including in brutality) police dealt with all strikes. The army, with its iron ring, surrounded the premises of the striking factory or institution. These measures created an overwhelming feeling of intimidation and paralysed immediate attempts at counter-activities. Using precise police records, the government arrested leading Solidarity activists before declaring martial law. The intent was to control the first echelon of the Solidarity officials and to block any attempt to establish a second Solidarity organizational line of defence. Militarized personnel conducted the 1V news programs in a dull, uncouth manner (all professional actors immediately and spontaneously refused to co-operate in other programs). To prevent mass revolt, assault on the leaders of the civil society was coupled with the reappearance of an additional threat - the "ghost" of Big Brother. A sociotechnical interpretation of these events requires an understanding of the state of Polish society before the emergence of Solidarity. Society was in a state of social "warpiness."2 In this situation, stimuli able to awaken societal responses generate unexpected results. Different hierarchies of official, traditional and church values, conflicting information (official data, and gossip coming from unofficial sources including evidence collected during travels abroad and information from outside mass-media), and contrary demands (from official and traditionally significant authorities) led to a state of information chaos and cynicism. Above all, it led to the almost complete disappearance of trust. In this situation, the response a stimulus evoked became unpredictable, whimsical, accidental. Usual social relations changed their character; relations between cause and result became haphazard. Solidarity was, to a certain degree, able to restore a social atmosphere of mutual (unofficial) trust. Sixteen months of Solidarity influence evidently was still too short a time to rebuild reliable criteria needed to select socio-

32

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

political leaders, test them, and allow them to gain social visibility. This suongly helped reinforce existing residues of the "warpiness" phenomenon. Feelings of impotence arose due to a possible Soviet invasion (the possibility of an intervention by an alien imperial force). All this helped thwart counter-sociotechnical action. A sociotechnical duel is unlikely to succeed when it faces a double-fight: a counterforce existing in the given system, and the threat of an imperial force. The macro-sociotechnical duel may be contained within the boundaries of one social system or it may overstep it. Shakeri's illuminative outline of social engineering and the Islamic revolution shows that some aspects of the Kennedy and post-Kennedy teleological reform program for Iran included, among other things, economic and political reforms initiated in 1961, activization of the role of the Shah, and American military presence in Iran. This program was defeated by the exceptional type of theological social engineering of "a relatively unknown, not quite top-ranking theologian, with limited financial means and confined to a Holy City in the grip of harsh political repression" (Shakeri 1989). This paradoxical, sociotechnical duel between an imperial power and an idea based on religious fundamental/fanatic convictions, far overstepped the original boundaries of the duel's field and, consequently, had enormous worldwide repercussions. Examples of this include the humiliation that lowered American prestige, a change of the party controlling the American presidency, the oil crisis, and the rise of Islamic insurgency. On a macro-scale, this spectacular self-made sociotechnical duel sharply contrasts with another duel concerning the problem of potentialities for societal revolution. Originally, the so-called "Project Camelot" was supposed to deal with the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela. As Horowitz explains, Project Camelot "came into being in 1964 as an offspring of the Army's [the u.s. Army's] Special Operation Research Office (SORO), with a fanfare befitting the largest single grant ever provided for a social science project" (1967:4). The official document describing this project's basic features said: Project Camelot was a study whose objective was to determine the feasibility of developing a general social system model which would make it possible to predict and influence politically significant aspects of social change in the developing nations of the world. Somewhat more specifically, its objectives were: First. to devise procedures for assessing the potential for war within national societies; second, to identify with increased degrees of confidence, those actions which a government might take to relieve conditions which were assessed as giving rise to

SOCIOTECHNICS

33

a potential for internal war; and finally, to assess the feasibility of prescribing the characteristics of a system able to obtain and use the essential information needed for doing the above two things (document of December 4, 1964).

According to Horowitz, This perspective [of the staff] was the Enlightenment Syndrome. Like the eighteenth century philosophers, many members of the "Camelot" staff shared a belief in the worth of personal persuasion .... They sought to correct the intellectual paternalism and parochialism under which the Pentagon Generals, State Department diplomats, and Defense Department planners seemed to operate (1967:7).

The whole project came to an abrupt halt when a European professor announced that he could not join the project because he did not share the values of the sponsor. He claimed that the u.s. Army was involved in promoting conflicts as well. He criticized the "imperialistic features" of the project, its lack of symmetry, and the lack of study of corresponding problems concerning the United States. Of course, it was not just the statement of this professor that stopped the project; it was cancelled mainly due to the socio-political consequences of the scandal this announcement generated. The intervention model (see page 43) has proven more successful in fighting against dark sociotechnics than in pursuing its own programs. In 1971 the Polish Ministry ofJustice promulgated a law to punish persons above eighteen who did not attend schools, did not work, depended for their livelihoods on other persons, and violated the "basic social norms." According to the ministry's official records, there were about 50,000 "social parasites," said to be responsible for some acute social and economic problems. The ministry proposed to send these social parasites, after two unsuccessful administrative warnings, to "semi-labor camps." It launched a countrywide campaign to convince the population that such a law was needed. A survey of 3,000 persons showed an overwhelming majority supported the proposal. Then, an additional survey indicated average citizens were inclined· to say decisively, "Indeed, I condemn social parasites, especially those who are seemingly neutral bureaucrats - these persons are especially dangerous!" A meeting of Polish social science experts, who were alerted by this proposed law, showed that one could break down the alleged "army" of social parasites into three categories: "black marketeers" (who already were criminalized); prostitutes (who according to Polish law may operate as they wish);

34

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

and alcoholics (who need different, mainly medical, but not penal treatment). The scholars pointed out that Poland was a signatory to an international convention prohibiting compulsory work. Finally, they argued that if such a law was to be based on Soviet experience, empirical data justifying the proposed solutions should be revealed. They prepared a memorandum based on these considerations. It was protected from leaks (especially to foreign news media), and they sent it to the Parliament (Sejm). One of the factions of the Communist Party then engaged in internal war was looking for suitable ammunition. It grabbed the memorandum and, using arguments the scholars had prepared, killed the bill. Later, after the introduction of martial law in 1981, this law was enacted. From these examples, several generalizations emerge. As a rule, macro-sociotechnical duels take place between practitioners of different types of self-made sociotechnics. Dark sociotechnics, prevalent in totalitarian societies, uses both the resources of self-made and sociotechnics proper. In present day democratic societies, sociotechnics proper is, as a rule, not officially used. It may support the underdogs or serve as an intervention tool of an unmasking character. In these societies, proper sociotechnicians have little direct access to power. They cannot, therefore, show the positive usefulness of sociotechnics proper on the macro-scale. ADDITIONAL CLARIFICATIONS

Several concepts which are already in use need clarification to help make the developing discipline of sociotechnics more methodologically mature. Although the central problem for sociotechnics is connected with the use of the sociotechnical paradigm (the basic tool of planned social change), one needs some supplementary notions to comprehend adequately the idea of programmed social change. These concepts are: sponsor, decision-maker, expert, stakeholder, client, sociotechnical agent, and the sociotechnical tool itself. The Sponsor is the person or agency that commissions the sociotechnical expertise. The sponsor may develop this "in-house," or may request or demand that others provide it. The sponsor mayor may not be the decisionmaker (person or agency deciding whether to use this expertise). The sponsor sometimes has a right to use or not use (often even not to disclose) the results of investigations it has commissioned. Sometimes the sponsor may not understand the results of such studies. Then a need for clinical sociotechnics arises, to translate and simplify findings. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada gives grants to universities, research

SOCIOTECHNICS

35

groups and individuals, but this does not mean the council is interested in the implementation of their, recommendations. The council endorses the general policy of implementing social science results, but strictly avoids backing any particular study. Usually the sponsor is also a decision-maker. Sometimes the sponsor may support certain types of study, but the direct addressee of its results is another agency. This could be the general public, a governmental institution, some pressure group, "concerned people," special groups of people (e.g., minorities), etc. The decision-maker's main task is to decide whether to implement the sociotechnicians' recommendations. The decision-maker can calion additional expertise, or invoke a meta-expert (an expert who is supposed to decide whether expert X or Y is correct), or can even modify the recommendations of the given expertise. The decision-maker is responsible for the policy concerned. The sponsor, stakeholders, clients, governmental agencies, and experts may ask or demand from the decision-maker an explanation concerning the fate of the submitted expertise. The expert operates the sociotechnical process. The expert makes the sociotechnical diagnosis (describing the situation, its genesis, developmental trends and recommended action). Although, he/she 3 makes the diagnosis, he/she is not, as in the case of an architect, accountable for the results of his/her recommendations. There exist various types of experts. In an authoritarian country the government may have labelled some compliant people as experts to have a justification for courses of action the government independently approved. In the beginning of the Polish Solidarity period, several intellectuals quickly emerged as experts, promoting themselves sponte sua to this rank. The workers later accepted some of them; others disappeared into oblivion. In short, to be a Solidarity expert one had to have not only competence, but also specific personality features and a strong conviction that one deserved political recognition. There are also experts nominated as such by the sheer acclaim of their own peers. There are experts who obtain this status by accident. Some of them did successfully pronounce something in advance; later the development of events confirmed their statements. Some experts work, more or less permanently, for sponsors generating experts (editorial boards); those can promote sciences actively, if they are open-minded enough to see new development venues. But they also can create serious obstacles. Being usually conformist concerning developmental standards, they tend to recognize mediocre standards predominantly. In effect, what they enhance becomes a perpetual dance of mediocrities. This is a very weak point of all evaluating bodies of social research centres.

36

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

A stakeholder is a person (or institution) concerned with sociotechnical activities already undertaken. This person is interested in whether his/her institution can apply the accepted sociotechnical program by itself monopolizing this program. Essentially, this person has a vested interest in supporting his/her established structure. The stakeholder is not so much concerned with the future consequences and overall consequences of implementing a given sociotechnical program, but is worried whether the program under consideration will benefit his/her institution. Generally speaking, the functions of sociotechnical organization can be autotelic or heterotelic. If they are autotelic, then the interests of this organization are treated as an independent factor taking into the consideration the benefit of the sociotechnical agency. This is a typical stakeholder point of view. If they are heterotelic, then the interests of outside clients are treated as primary. Therefore, one should distinguish precisely the notion of stakeholders from the concept of client. The client is a person or organization for whom the whole sociotechnical procedure comes into motion. If reform of Canadian university education is the aim, then the universities themselves become the clients. The clientele would include the professors (not so much administrators of these universities - as some bureaucrats would be inclined to think), students, and those institutions, organizations and communities that will employ students and graduates. Let us add here an abstract client, whatever agency fosters the development of social sciences. The progress of any society rests on the advancement of science, including the social sciences. If this remains unrecognized, or its recognition serves only as a rhetorical device (justification, rationalization), and if sociotechnicians pursue immediate, direct societal goals, then in the long run sociotechnical activities will fall into the trap of allowing stakeholders to replace clients. The sociotechnical agent is a person engaged in the sociotechnical program's realization. This agent could also be a stakeholder, if he/she tends to identify himself/herself with the "morale" of the sociotechnical agency more than with fulfilling the sociotechnical task itself Sociotechnics has its own logic, which is its axis. This axis does not develop itself automatically; its carriers transmit it. These carriers are not only abstract devices (diagnosis, means, programs, assessments, etc.) but also individuals. Although sociotechnical agents are those who are supposed to know sociotechnics proper, they sometimes contaminate the practical logic of the sociotechnical paradigm with their own peculiar idiosyncrasies. The sociotechnical paradigm is the centre of social engineering proper, and so should be labelled the main sociotechnical tool

SOCIOTECHNICS

37

In his famous attack on social engineering, Popper rejected "utopian" sociotechnics and advocated "piecemeal" social engineering. While he was correct, the present situation seems more complicated than he envisioned it half a century ago. His attack on utopian social engineering was justified by the false premises that marxism offered as the framework for s~ch an approach. Popper recognized very early the negative potential of marxist claims on behalf of social engineering. Much later, the revolution of 1989 in a spectacular way disclosed for those who still had some illusions or who were the most dogmatic pro-marxists, the inherent falsehood of marxism's strategy. LEVELS OF SOCIOTECHNICAL OPERATION

In discussing sociotechnical strategies, four basic possibilities may appear. The first is a piecemeal independent factor (PIF). In this particular case, one takes into consideration a specified factor of a limited influence. This factor, if used, causes effects that are recognizable within its scope, with confined results and well-known negative by-products. Everything remains under control. A newly enacted law, which has validity for the economy (reprivatization of industry, for example) may serve as an illustration of this possibility. The second is a global independent factor (or cluster of connected factors) (GIF). In this situation, a specific factor is used which, according to already-accumulated knowledge, is able to influence the society as a whole. In this case the effects of this factor are not fully· recognized. Nevertheless, its overall effectiveness has already been tested: a totalitarian imposition of monolithic ideology and rigid state structures on a society with democratic traditions could be an example of this possibility (an example of "dark social engineering") . The thirdis a piecemeal dependent target (PDT). In this case, a certain pre-selected social area is specified, diagnosed, and analyzed from the viewpoint of its malleability, focused as the target of a collective strategy suitable for social change, and eventually subjected to this change. Such targeting involves specifying the target society's type, character, level of development and readiness to undergo cultural and educational change. The fourth is a global dependent target (GOT). This is the most complex situation for the activity of social engineering. In this situation one does not specify a pre-selected area of the given society to serve as a target of social change. Instead, one treats the whole society as such. An attempt to change

38

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

the existing social system (for example, a democratic society conquered by a totalitarian one) serves as an illustration. At the present level of social science development, realistic types of sociotechnics include three possibilities: a piecemeal independent factor (PIF); a global independent factor (GIF); and a piecemeal dependent target (PDT). The fourth possibility, global dependent target (GDT), seems at present an example of utopian sociotechnics. In the case of independent factors, the potential for social change generated by those factors is known; the spectrum of effects is recognized. In the case of a piecemeal dependent target, social engineering specifies what changes to impose upon the given target, and what is needed - the independent factor{s), that possibly could lead to the materialization of the desired social reality. The first possibility appears when a certain piecemeal independent factor (or cluster of linked factors) may so influence the given social system as to bring about some planned and expected changes affecting the whole. As Hay shows empirically in this volume, if a cettain government introduces a new no-smoking policy, and if this policy rests consistently on self-made sociotechnics, supplied by elements of sociotechnics proper, then it can effect a drop in cigarette consumption of around 20 percent and produce changes in certain smoking habits in the whole country. This is macro-sociotechnics using a piecemeal independent factor of social change (PIF). The practical question this situation evokes is this. Let us suppose that a certain social phenomenon is negatively evaluated as "bad." A moral imperative commands us to liquidate its occurrence. What should we do to eliminate it? The difference between this independent factor model and the model of the target perspective lies merely in the initial point of view. When one accepts the viewpoint of a piecemeal independent factor (PIF), it is this independent factor that one plays upon. However,. if one pursues a piecemeal dependent target (PDT), we must find an appropriate independent factor to deal with the target (dependent social variable). Recall our earlier example of social engineering using the global independent factor (GIF). In the 1920s, Soviet decision-makers tried to introduce basic socio-political changes in the Moslem part of the USSR by using women as a "surrogate proletariat" - a tool to accomplish this. Having underestimated the Moslem social infrastructure's strength, the officials found this huge, painful macro-sociotechnical action ended in failure (Massell 1968). This would be an example of ineffective macro-sociotechnics, conceived as an independent factor to foment social change. In the Canadian case of cigarette smoking, the target was limited, but nonetheless permeated the whole social system. The main goal was to use the piecemeal independent factor (PIF) to produce a progressive elimina-

SOCIOTECHNICS

39

tion of cigarette smoking, especially in public places. Governments introduced various versio~s of the tool (independent variables) in agreement with the existing legal framework, and so the goal of sociotechnical action was partially reached. In the case of "Moslem reorientation," the planned change was geared toward a whole social system. Yet this target was much too extensive and complex. The tool available to the action agents was too complicated - a mass of frustrated, exploited women in isolated parts of the country, deprived of protection from local governments. Disciplined and trained activists brought from Moscow exposed them to manipulative, even brutal treatment. Their manipulators were ingenious activists familiar with the specificity of their regions, alienated from local culture but eager to gain privileges and rewards for effective actions. That sociotechnical operation proved much too complicated for such crude sociotechnicians as these Soviet 'apparatchiks.' . One may regard reform of Canadian education, especially the structure of Canadian university education, as a piecemeal dependent target (PDT) of an envisioned sociotechnical action. Its main goal would be to reform certain elements of social life, without changing the whole social system (of course, there is always a possibility that in order to accomplish certain limited aims it might be necessary to postulate some more general and comprehensive reforms of the social system). Such a program could be pragmatic and reasonable. It might open the door to the realization of structural changes in Canadian society. Although the number of regularities (hypotheses) to be take into consideration in preparing such a program is considerable, recent developments in the sociology of education as well as in the sociology of knowledge may provide an appropriate theoretical background for this task. First, one would prepare a detached diagnosis oflife at Canadian universities. This diagnosis, one may expect, would say that Canadian university life expresses a mixture of various incongruent ethoses. One of these ethoses concerns an artisan's approach to education and university teaching.4 Such an approach seems closely connected with the recent development of a "sly" type of scholar as a predominant model in the Canadian academic community. According to this model, a scholar is working in - not doing - science itself. This work mainly concerns his/her private career much more than scientific curiosity. The unionized scientific worker is not primarily motivated to find the truth or the essence of social reality. Therefore, he/she should use all possible means which enhance his/her professional status at the same time. The goals of scientific investigation remain distinctly secondary. . Another, somewhat connected ethos would be that of a "comedian." According to this ethos, the professor is essentially an "instructor." As such he/she has a duty to be popular among students, to know how to entertain them, to be able to convey a theoretical point with a joke. The instructor

40

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

must please them during parties organized in all possible occasions, and be nothing more than primus inter pares (first among equals). The comedian instructor does not frustrate students with inaccessible knowledge or wisdom! Paradoxically, this ethos lines up with another: an extended ethos of the high school teacher. The system presumes that the university instructor has an instructional plan that can eliminate spontaneity by encompassing everything prescribed for the next teaching hour, and the operational code requires that students should write down all essential issues presented to them. Although, in principle they can ask questions or discuss matters, in fact, they rather tend to memorize (from class notes) those answers which' seem appropriate for examinations. The professor's lectures are designed not only to illuminate certain areas cognitively; they also establish certain rules of a legal contract with students. One can only ask students to write about matters that have been "covered" in class or in assigned readings. Professors may not depart from these unwritten conventions in making up examinations. These ethoses should be kept in balance with another ethos, that of the instructor-guardian. According to this ethos, the instructor must ensure that the appropriate books are actually available in the university bookshop, and that the most needed (or expensive) books are on a "reserve list" in the library. He/she must not "overload" the minds of the overworked students. Professors should be responsive to students' limitations connected with their employment duties and respective working hours. Finally, an ethos of an administrator-careerist emerges. The professor should be an effective member of several administrative bodies. To prepare young professors for these tasks requires that the system focus all possible rewards (including financial ones) on them. In sharp contrast, experienced professors have to support their slim chances by outside applications. All these ethoses have little in common with the essential, ideal ethos of the professor as one who is supposed to profess the truth, to question all existing theories, interpretations of research data and conventional ways of thinking, and to search for more adequate and encompassing ideas concerning social reality. This ideal model, if it occurs at all, generates among students only questions. If he/she is sceptical, is his/her competence solid? Ifhe/she hesitates, is he/she well scientifically equipped? Ifhe/she admits to not knowing everything, what does he/she really know? If the professor wants to conduct an official lecture or seminar based on his/her investigations in progress (and possibly a book), this professor probably will not be allowed. To develop ideas during seminars produces a product thought not mature enough, not sufficiently tested. Ifhe/she insists in doing that, he/she should, in the spirit of a business-like self-promoting entrepreneur, check whether the appropriate books are present in the library

SOCIOTECHNICS

4I

(the university should not be asked to pay for possibly irresponsible intel-lectual extravaganzas). He/she should negotiate with heads of other departments who are usually ignorant in the given area. These worthies need to approve the introduction of the course in question if this course might draw students from their departments. But this is not the end. The professorinnovator who wishes to innovate should also prepare a self-promoting "application" addressed to his own department, faculty, and senate, in which he/she should sell and defend his/her case; all the time he/she should be aware that in case of doubt he/she will be regarded as "guilty."5 A possible international recognition of achievements of such a professor in the given area by the relevant competent "reference group" is irrelevant for the parochial perspective and successful functioning of the Canadian university. As a consequence, such recognition has little bearing on how the professor actually fares within the university. Although I have slightly exaggerated this picture of the Canadian university ethos to make the point more strongly, the problem remains. To restructure university life and make it responsive to future technical and environmental needs, the ethos of Canadian scientists should drastically change. Then, this new model of ethos would be treated as an independent variable which should influence this piecemeal dependent target (PDT). This specific though admittedly complex social problem should be treated as a target and its solutions consequently elaborated. That is, one should find some independent variables to influence this target. These variables should provide strategic leverage of sufficient power to bring about real and significant changes in the given social target. The practical question is then: given that this complex social situation is bad, what can be done to ameliorate it? What social factor can one find to affect it? Once such a strategic factor is identified, a comprehensive sociotechnical program should be formulated to introduce it into societal life. Thus, it seems to be feasible to look for a strategic PDT variable, one that can playa global role in reshaping essential parts of the given society's social structure. This also requires a strategy for the subsequent application of such a variable into the life of society. Such a program is a condition sine qua non of keeping Canada in line with the aggressive industrial competitiveness of Japan, Germany, the United States and other countries. Paradoxicallyenough, far-reaching and imaginative research oriented toward the future is decisive for keeping Canada on the present level of civilizational and cultural advancement. To conclude the discussion on various variables which can shape the whole social system, one may notice that it seems to be possible to use macro-sociotechnics in three different situations: as a piecemeal indepen-

42

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

dent factor (PIF), as a global independent factor (GIF), and as a global dependent target (PDT). One may also observe that the areas of inapplicability of sociotechnics gradually shrink. Although in 1949 Popper was largely right in maintaining that the whole area of macro-sociotechnics was beyond the realm of sociotechnics proper, it is now correct to observe that only a restricted zone remains inaccessible. To analyze closer the nature of this limitation, one must turn to the crucial element of social engineering activity, the sociotechnical tool. MODELS OF SOCIOTECHNICS

In various social settings, under pressure of different political systems and the influence of different scientific patterns, five meta-models of sociotechnics appear with distinctly different features. Meta-models are models of a higher rank than those which appear in sociopolitical reality. These are the (1) classical, (2) clinical, (3) intervention, (4) solicitant and (5) articulative models. The classical model overlaps with that of H. Zetterberg. It consists of arranging and synthesizing various general regularities discovered in the area of social sciences, and fashioning them into an integrated body of directives. A cohesive set of directives, put into a united order, constitutes a translation of relevant theoretical propositions into a pragmatic, utilitarian and normative language. Such a language of recommendations indicates certain directions for guided action. Adherents to this conception of sociotechnics submit prepared expertise to their sponsors, being professionally not interested in its later practical fate. They understand their practical role as having terminated at this point. They may of course persist in trying to resolve various issues of the methodology conceived for this particular project, or they may write up for publication a final report summarizing their work. This type of sociotechnics may flourish in two situations. In the first, scholars are eager to develop a new methodological-theoretical approach in the social sciences. They are so interested in developing a new scheme of thinking that they are not sensitive enough to the significant sociopolitical effects of their own practical activities. In the second situation, the sociopolitical setting does not allow room for involvement in observing the results of actions taken to implement one's own recommendations. Here, scholars treat themselves as mere hired servants. The clinical model was advocated originally by A. Gouldner and S. Miller (1965). This model, independent of the requested diagnosis, develops a set of normative directives designed to achieve prescribed ends. It stresses the need for cooperation between the experts and the sponsors who

SOCIOTECHNICS

43

commissioned the expertise. It is designed to gain sponsors' acceptance of proposed recommendations. Sociotechnical activity concerns the task of describing desired social changes and their fulfilment. This activity should also supply sponsors with a better comprehension of their own goals. In cases of resistance, it presses them to realize these goals. This sociotechnical model should help multiple sponsors gain an ability to overcome their own non-cooperation. . This model' appears mainly in such social settings as: first, when social cross-currents exist that represent opposite interests, and when the need for research was imposed on sponsors who initially were not interested in the implementation of any ameliorative recommendations; or second, when scholars!sociotechnicians press for changes in' the existing social structure, and when they eventually force these changes as the by-product of their own consultation and research. These pressures may also result from recognition of the sociotechnicians' "higher" degree of insight and knowledge. The intervention model of sociotechnics consists of unsolicited proposals for practical social activities, presenting them as well elaborated, coherent projects. This strategy not only exerts clinical influence on decisionmakers but also influences processes of social changes as the result of teleological activities. This model's primary task is the direct intervention in relationships existing in various social groups, organizations, institutions, etc. This is done to fulfil the urgent need ofsociotechnicians, or those whom they represent, to change the existing state of affairs. Thus, according to this model, sociotechnicians undertake the role of independent agents and promoters of a new social order or a social change. I have previously articulated this model (Podg6recki and tos 1979:280). The intervention model may come into being in two main ways. First, there may arise an independent social pressure group based on experts who are not only professional scholars, but also those who represent certain socio-political attitudes and values. They will tend to take the side of underdogs. Second, some authoritarian regime that is inclined to utilize social science findings will use them to manipulate and eventually subjugate their subjects. Such a regime may misuse the intervention model with the aid of dark sociotechnicians, acting as agents. One may also use an intervention model as an unmasking form. An unmasking sub-model ofsociotechnics consists of an attempt to show that seemingly beneficial goals stated by such powerful organizations as governments are only apparently so. Behind apparent objectives may lie hidden, latent goals. Difficult to detect, these can be quite harmful for the intended targets. In this case, a sociotechnician's role would be to reveal the true nature of proclaimed social programs, actions or policies. We find this sociotechnical unmasking

44

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

model especially in autocratic socio-political systems such as marxism that cover with persuasive ideological phraseology activities actually injurious to the population. In these situations a sociotechnician should have enough political independence and civil courage to disclose the real goals of those in power. . We also find this form in liberal social systems where power centres attempt to hide their real interests behind vague language. Here the sociotechnician has to analyze the content of this language and, above all, prove the true intentions behind this jargon. The solicitant model describes experts who change social reality for a fee. They seek sponsors to buy their expertise or support it financially. The expert (or group) has no motivation of "social service" (as may be in the case of the intervention model), but merely seeks profits based on real or proclaimed monopolistic knowledge. This expertise-for-sale model should become more common with the rise of private consultants working for governments and corporations in liberal societies. This explosive growth should result in a gradual recognition of sociotechnical potential. This model may also start to flourish in authoritarian societies when the power centres come to recognize the advantages of using competition among experts. If experts obtain direct access to these power centres, they will surely offer their eager services to help keep the citizenry under control. The articulation model combines features of the clinical model with additional elements designed to bring to the surface values vital for clients but not articulated by them. This situation may arise for several reasons. For example, the clients may not be aware of certain "deep bottom" values (Pareto's residua, see Powers 1987:96-7). Clients may lack the skill to weigh these values according to hidden interests. They may not be able to integrate values uncovered by the expert with a more or less conscious hierarchy of other values. In this model, the hired experts may easily mislead their clients. In articulating their clients' preferences, the experts may inject values alien to those of the clients. For example, the sociotechnician may, deliberately or not, infuse into the client's Weltanschauung some elements of "false consciousness." This could happen when a culture based on values of neighborly reciprocal help and cooperation clashes with a culture stressing the significance of pragmatically perceived individual, material success. Experts belonging to the latter culture are acting more and more as international sociotechnical consultants. This model operates mainly when experts attempt to articulate and defend those interests of their clients which flow in the atmosphere but are not yet fully recognized. It may also be self-imposed when experts are consciously commissioned to suppress interests of their prospective clients. This usually happens in totalitarian countries where experts are called upon to

SOCIOTECHNICS

45

develop, spread and reinforce "false consciousness" and dump citizens' legitimate demands. In addition, the model could prevail when power centres use the prestige of science to conduct research to bolster a later claim that this research substantiated already-reached policy decisions. THREE LEVELS OF SOCIOTECHNICAL OPERATIONS

Micro-level sociotechnics is the easiest to use. It seemed simple when Popper launched his devastating attack on utopian social engineering. There are many studies in this area. For example, it is relatively easy to satisfy employees concerned with the loss of time in waiting for elevators in an office building. In one case, architects proposed three solutions: install more elevators, install faster ones, or bank them - having the existing elevators stop on different floors. The building-owner rejected the first two solutions as too expensive. . After some trials, the third proved not to have reduced waiting time. Then a psychological consultant came up with the following observation: clerks wasting time in their offices were doing something that, although not productive, was pleasant for them. Only when waiting for the elevator did they become evidently frustrated. He therefore proposed to install large mirrors in the elevator lobbies. These mirrors would occupy the women while providing opportunities for men to gaze at them without appearing to do so (Lazarsfeld and Reitz 1975:56). Notwithstanding this proposal's sexism, it did change the framework of social interaction through use of culturally-based inclinations. For women, the mirrors served as looking glasses, for men it was an easy, functional and secure gain serving different purposes. Taking into consideration the present development of the social sciences, a reasonable and traditional sociotechnician would not proceed further than the meso or sectoral level. Given the task of dealing with females' frustrations due to their relative deprivation in the workforce, he/she may start with a multi-factorial analysis. He/she may recommend discouraging or even punishing men who sexually or otherwise harass women. He/she may recommend raising women's salaries to parity with men. He/she may propose starting an educational, anti-discriminatory concentrated action. He/she may alert supervisors to specific situations that typically give rise to relative deprivation among women. In sum, a conscientious sociotechnician would look for ways to use the manoeuvrable variables to influence factors not directly workable. He/she would not entangle himself/herself in the impossible task of trying to influence variables not manoeuvrable at all, such as the sex of affected individuals. Thus, if the existing pool of variables lacks a set of sufficiently manoeuvrable factors, one might switch to the meta-level of interaction to change the social frames of reference.

46

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Nonetheless, at present, a methodologically reasonable sociotechnician would be reluctant to pursue macro-sociotechnical activities. Such activities would seem to overstep the manoeuvrable framework of existing and accessible operational variables. . It is unfortunate that the intervention of state-guided marxism has historically lacked such reticence. Marxist theoretical propositions based on normative intentions tend to explain phenomena not evidenced by direct observations. Although such propositions are difficult to grasp from the standpoint of empirical analyses, they purportedly hold strategic importance for promoting desired social changes. Marxists assume that only knowledge of such variables can lead to deep and comprehensive diagnoses, and consequently to the planned transformation of existing society. Propositions thus generated "apply to societies taken as wholes. In contrast, hypotheses elaborated by "rival" social theories appear as fragmented generalizations based on dispersed data formulated by fragmented branches of the social sciences. Since they apparently lack empirically reliable frames of reference, these hypotheses provide no structurally consistent picture of a given society. Marxists hence aspire to apprehend diffused propositions in a systematically ordered whole. This allows them potentially to give recommendations for global societal change. This readiness to help introduce social change that fights social evils and injustice appeals more to sentiments than to the methodological mind. Where feelings outweigh logic, diagnostic or practical error will tend to prevail. This error, multiplied by its beholders, introduces an enormous number of negative and practical consequences in countries practising "real" socialism or dreaming of doing so. Marxism's holistic perception is misleading. It perpetuates negative economic and socio-political consequences because it reinforces the theoretical conviction that marxism has a synthetic potential. It also discourages or even blocks possible attempts to build a reliable (testable) macro-sociotechnics. In concluding his recent book, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death ofCommunism in the Twentieth Century, Z. Brzezinski (1989:258) points out: Humanity's catastrophic encounter with communism during the twentieth century has ~us provided a painful but critically important lesson: Utopian social engineering is fundamentally in conflict with the complexity of the human condition, and social creativity blossoms best when political power is restrained. That basic lesson makes it all the more likely that democracy - and not communism - will dominate the twenty-first century.

Nonetheless, macro sociotechnicswill become methodologically possible, perhaps unavoidable, once at least two conditions are fulfilled. First, a

SOCIOTECHNICS

47

sociology of humankind needs to emerge. Sociologies of different societies and their conglomerates eventually should give rise to a global comprehensive meta-sociology. This would explain social processes and movements taking place in particular social segments and in society as a whole. Second, one may study and perfect various self-made macro-sociotechnics and thus improve their adequacy. These cases may provide understanding of spontaneous strategies unique to the societies generating them. By this means, experts may gradually transform macro self-made social engineering into macro-sociotechnics proper. As far as an introduction of social engineering on the macro-scale is concerned, at the present moment, only unmasking certain macro-scale socio-political problems seems to be feaSible. Recently, the outgoing president of the Research Committee of Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, Vincenzo Ferrari (I994:2) said: The political turmoil which upset the world in the last years also seems to have accelerated a return to both dogmatism and irrationalism in the approach to law, which is precisely the opposite of our role in the scientific world. The unmasking capacity of socio-Iegal analysis is obviously at odds with the interests of the leading classes. The situation calls ... [us] to the fundamental task in the next years. To a certain extent, I think that all of us should become ambassadors of our discipline, its methods and especially its critical approach, both in our countries and abroad. Efforts should be made to give evidence of our achievements in both the theory and research, as well as of the contribution we can offer to understand legal institutions even more if these are undergoing profound changes. In this way, a new type of maturity of social sciences transforms purely descriptive and explanatory scholarly endeavour into a coherent pragmatic imperative. It changes essentially the role of those who represent social sciences. According to this new role, social engineering becomes the central social discipline, not only informing how to implement sociotechnics, but also transforming the world-view of a scientist; it changes it from that of a passive observer and one who explains it into that of a rational actor. Thus, instead of speaking of a need for social change, or of propagating an abstract concept of a social "agency," one has to analyze the potentialities of social action that are based on a well-developed paradigm of social action. Therefore, if we combine the potentialities of social engineering with the perspective of a global ethics, it should be regarded as iniquitous and immoral to observe passively through the television screens a plethora of aggressive wars that take place in front of the eyes of millions. We must do more than observe, and not limit the potentialities of social sciences to the

48

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

sheer painting of horrors; we must act efficiently against those types of sociopolitical problems. Social bodies that push toward conciliatory or reconciliatory behaviour should be presented as proper; litigation or over-litigation should be at first criticized, replaced, and eventually, if it becomes mainly autotelic, treated as harmful. Harmonious behaviour that, as a rule, dominates in small groups (or in Gemeinschafts) should be encouraged as a general pattern applicable for all human societies. This should be done by remodelling legal systems and making laws responsive. Those cases of the usage of an "ideology of harmony," which is utilized as a tool to keep people in a cocoon of false consciousness, should be unmasked. Sociotechnical action should be undertaken (including imprisonment in international prisons) against representatives of the currently widespread hypocrisy that advocates through idealistic sermons human rights and natural laws, but from another angle, sells arms everywhere they are desired. Independently from mobilizing and utilizing those measures that are already recognized as viable instruments against existing aggressive, violent, individual and massive behaviour, a large, international, well-coordinated study should be undertaken to prepare a synthesis of existing knowledge, and to launch a series of new inquiries oriented toward practical recommendations. A war against war should be regarded as having priority. VALUES VERSUS ACTION

In the practical soci~ sciences, values appear either as objects of study (data), or as values per se. One generates data when analyzing values as expressions of opinions, beliefs, evaluations or attitudes of several population segments involved in the given sociotechnical activity. One treats values not as an obligatory basis for recommendations directed toward the public, sociotechnicians or their sponsors; one regards data as indicating what courses of action the relevant population's respective segments are inclined to undertake and how strongly they do so. These data values are Durkheim's social "facts." Knowledge of them aids diagnosis of the types of forces that may motivate people to action. They indicate what forms of actions one may expect from the population. A second type of values ("operatives") concerns the sociotechnical paradigm's inherent logic (below, pp. 78f). Values adopted as basic references for this paradigm become the given elements of sociotechnical equations. They achieve validity not due to their normative character, but because one starts to treat them as necessary elements within this paradigm's internallogic. Helping to define practical logic, they are now necessities, guardians of obligatory steps to be performed as one proceeds from one stage to

SOCIOTECHNICS

49

the next. They are the paradigm's necessary assumptions of procedural order, without which a sociotechnical paradigm's machinery cannot run. If one accepts a certain immigration policy, then guiding reference principles tell immigration officials how to recruit people, screen them, on what grounds to accept or reject applicants, how to proceed with appeals, etc. The third type of values ("values proper") is directly connected with the essence of values. Here values serve as estimators of various forms of behaviour. Values constitute normative guides indicating which behaviour is proper and which is wrong. In this way, they become norms applicable to effects of sociotechnical activities and their consequences. To grasp the intrinsic complexity of the practical social sciences,6 it is necessary to distinguish between the three functions of values discussed above. Practical social sciences rest on values, utilize values and are evaluated by values. The fact that practical social sciences in general and policy research in particular enjoy relatively low respect among social scientists derives from the fact that it is far easier to denigrate new methodological problems than to solve them. THE SOCIOTECHNICAL PARADIGM

The heart of sociotechnics exists within the sociotechnical paradigm. We may view this paradigm as a matrix or a general strategy for practical social activities. Without it, sociotechnics would reduce to merely a new and interesting but untestable social science perspective, one requiring replicable measures to control an already inter-subjectively controlled activity. This paradigm tries to fill the gap that James Coleman pointed out: liThe rapid growth of policy research and its increasing importance for social policy have begun in recent years to push social scientists and social philosophers toward what both the classical and the modern theorists have neglected: the development of a theory of purposive or directed social change" (1968:700). When first formulated in 1962 (see Podg6recki 1975), this paradigm's essence was a series of sequential steps prescribing a coherent process for efficient practical action. This paradigm has two essential requirements. The first is to clarify values that might enter (or develop) into subjective intrusions. Although values are necessary elements of practical logic, one must treat them as operational data. We generally exclude, therefore, values per se in this paradigm. They appear only when one is making the decision to start the paradigmatic activities or to close the process. This paradigms second requirement is to control methodologically all possible psychological and behavioral, non-logical elements. Thus we separate the logic of practical action from all quasi-logical activities. One will accomplish

50

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

this second requirement less precisely than the first. One simply cannot eliminate all non-logical elements from the logic of practical action. They are intrinsic to it. Some action ingredients one must treat as inherent elements, as the dif ferentia specifica between cognitive and practical logic. A psychological decision to commence a certain practical activity, or perhaps to abstain from action, as implementations of the accepted program of action, must be regarded as distinguishing features separating cognitive from practical logic. The refined version of the 1962 paradigm was formulated in 1986 (Podg6recki and Shields, 1986). At present (1995) it looks like this: The Soclotechnical Paradigm Stage

Step

Process

PROBLEM RECOGNITION

1. Appreciation of social problem as perceived by social group(s)

Perception

METHODOLOGICAL BREAK PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 1. Clarify and rank values and goals 2. Describe situation 3. Concise problem statement

Analytic-Normative Processes

GLOBAL EVALUATION

Scientific Evaluation and Hypotheses

1. Assessment of situation according to values (2.1) 2. Initial diagnosis of cause(s) of problem 3. Tentative prognosis and projection of desirable futures (options) 4. Teleological decision

THEORY BASE

1. Theoretical insight and hypotheses in conjunction with (4.2)

Systematic Formulation of Plan and Action

2. Strategy 3. Examination of options 4. Search for means to achieve options 5. Selection of accessible options 6. Verification of information and procedure DESIGN

1. Formulate plan including implementation strategy

Operationalize Research and Theory Base

2. Expected results METHODOLOGICAL BREAK ACTION

1. Experiments 2. Implementation of final plan

Practical Action

EVALUATION

1. Examination of effects

Evaluation and Feedback

2. Possible corrective procedure(s) 3. Evaluation of corrective process

SOCIOTECHNICS

5I

The first methodological stage of the paradigm of efficient social action consists of an examination of the social problem. The question at hand is whether the state of affairs regarded as difficult, creating tension, close to explosion or potentially dangerous, should be sociotechnically investigated, or whether to question the initial perception as being possibly biased. Reflection on this subject should result in a decision to place this problem under investigation or reject it as spurious, exaggerated or untreatable. (For a l'IJore detailed discussion on social problems see Henshel1976, and Kubin 1979). The second methodological stage of this paradigm of purposeful social action involves fIXing the hierarchical order of social priorities and ideological values deemed appropriate to the means and ends of the sociotechnical activity. In this stage those values seemingly important to the potential activity should be assembled, clarified, set into a hierarchical order, and analyzed for possible vagueness or contradiction. One makes a diagnosis of the social situation causing the problem. The diagnosis consists of a comprehensive, systematic empirical description of the existing situation. One then examines both a broader and a narrower meaning of the diagnosis. In the narrower sense, the diagnosis must describe the situation, classify collected facts, and translate the data into scientifically operational terms. In a broader sense, the diagnosis must also try to explain the situation. It tries to specifY the causes that shape it and, if possible, present a picture of the mutual interplay of these causes. The paradigm's third methodological stage comprises an evaluation of the situation that was the subject of the diagnosis. It must answer the question of whether applying acknowledged values to the situation dictates efforts to change it, or whether the costs, including those of acquiring the necessary information, would be greater than toleration of the existing liability. If the answer is to recommend change, one then applies the proper sociotechnical procedure. If substantive change is not recommended, one might still apply sociotechnical action to help people tolerate the situation, as in the elevator example given above. Both of these situations represent univocal evaluations. An evaluation is equivocal when a given set of values leads to a negative evaluation of the given situation, but one can also reach a positive evaluation of the same situation from the viewpoint of different but also accepted values. This makes necessary a suspension of the teleological course until one reaches a final evaluation (Podg6recki 1975). When an equivocal evaluation exists, the sociotechnician must consider three basic possibilities. The first exists when a higher, complete and noncontradictory system of values is available as the result of an analytic-normative reasoning process (e.g., a social contract). The second arises when upon examination an incomplete value system turns out to be non-contradictory

52

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

and thus a merely spurious contradictory value set appears within the larger system (e.g., expansion of already-established values into a new area such as euthanasia). The third possibility is that two completely incompatible systems of values (e.g., Western civilization and values versus Islamic values) confront each other. One can apply normative-evaluative reasoning (which in the first stage clarifies priorities inside a given hierarchy of values) to the first and second possibilities, but not the last (Podg6recki 1975). Here values derive from a complete and closed value system. As a rule, such institutions as voting, referenda, arbitration or mediation serve as useful tools to find solutions in' the first and second possibilities. The whole procedure of efficient social action should stop if it proves impossible to reconcile the values involved. The paradigm of efficient social action requires that we set into motion only consistent and unified values. The fourth methodological stage makes available theoretical hypotheses resting on previous investigations or research conducted to solve a given problem. These hypotheses serve as a convenient foundation for the appropriate social-change strategy. One bases them upon a prognosis concerning different configurations of possible consequences. In the theoretical sciences (including the more developed branches of social science), the existing state of affairs is a given and thus the scholar searches for a hypotheses to explain why "X" is what it is. In the practical social sciences, an imaginary state of affairs (perceived, desired, taken-for granted, dictated by raise consciousness) provides the point of departure. One entertains various hypotheses (or combinations of them) about how to achieve this imaginary state of affairs. The analyst may treat these imagined states as independent or causative variables. This stage links the strategy of practical action with the theoretical knowledge contained in sociological theories. During World War II, the Nazis murdered approximately two million people in Auschwitz. The genocide machinery in this camp worked quite efficiently (dark social engineering). Nevertheless, death-technicians occasionally faced some inefficiency problems. Despite all possible precautionary measures (barbed and electrified wires, towers with reflectors and machine guns, ditches, guard dogs, constant vigilance, etc.) several prisoners still escaped. To counteract this, the Nazis added purely social means to the existing technical ones. They began to decimate those who occupied the same barracks as fugitives. This was a skilful use of reference-group theory. People side with members of their groups and tend to regard them as significant others. Nevertheless, escapes continued to take place. The technicians then turned to different reference groups. They began to arrest and carry to Auschwitz whole families of fugitives {Poles were among those who

SOCIOTECHNICS

53

escaped most frequently). This new sociotechnical instrument stopped the "leaks" almost completely. The practical application of reference group theory does not imply its conscious use. Nevertheless, this example illustrates that even though it may be perceived in an intuitive manner, one may efficiently utilize such a theory quite diabolically. This is because sociotechnics as a method, and as a paradigm, is neutral Like a knife, it may wound. It may also cure. Of course, the one who wields the knife is never neutral. In the fifth methodological stage, an action plan arises on the basis of the accumulated theoretical knowledge. Analysts often call this a stage of social planning. However, one can better view social planning as a means of projection, correction or prevention. From the purely theoretical standpoint, there is no difference between the projective and corrective procedures. It is almost impossible to create something absolutely novel, a transformed or new entity completely unrelated to its constituents. Thus, there is little difference between projecting and correcting - in both cases only the presentation changes. All project making is a correction or impro.vement of what already exists. All corrective action moves to change an existing state of affairs. The image is similar if we look at the projective and corrective procedures from the point of view of the objectives of the practical action. Both of these procedures aim at realizing the projected state of affairs (e.g., both pursue the objectives of the paradigm of practical action). A preventive pro-, cedure may be indicated in two types of conditions: a negative state of affairs may be present in a germinal stage; or, though not yet present, it appears destined to develop. In an above example, a continued lack of Canadian university reform should soon hamper Canadian civilization and culture. The germinal state of affairs may be negative, yet its appearance is quite likely. A germinal negative situation inherent in a positive state of affairs may ultimately lead to a negative condition. Some negative states may develop dynamically and can change actual patterns and their evaluation quite rapidly. Even when no negative state is present, chances may be high that one could arise. We should not construe too narrowly a purposive action's potential. Even if all is well for the time being, one can often reasonably predict that untoward events may occur in the absence of preventive action. The mental exploration and investigation of all possible eventual effects of the purposeful paradigm of social action constitutes an additional phase within this fifth stage. A cognitive projection of expected results occurs at this point. Thus, one should not base evaluation of the purposive procedure's overall results only on judgments derived from the initial diagnosis and evaluation phase. One must also seek supplementary judgments during

54

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

subsequent phases. The overall evaluation - negative or positive depends on the prognosis for realizing the required change. It is then necessary to decide what the limits of tolerance are for the failure of some of the intended results to appear, and what the limits of tolerance for negatively appreciated unexpected effects are, provided that other positive unexpected effects may also appear. The final calculus of possible results provides the basis for the decision. This decision does not rest on this calculus alone, but also it derives from the original hierarchy of values, earlier articulated (and organized into a consistent system). This decision's implementation occurs through practical activities and so does not belong to the methodological realm of the paradigm of efficient social action. We regard this as the second methodological break of the whole procedure. Implementation gives rise to the paradigm's sixth methodological stage. This is the investigation of all effects generated by the plan's implementation. These effects may appear more or less simultaneously or in sequence. This sequence may be quite extensive. At this phase, one evaluates whether the results are adequate from the viewpoint of the whole plan, or whether one needs to set il) motion a general corrective course of action or several more specific corrective courses of action. If the action did not produce negative results (or if the corrective procedure successfully eliminated them), the final, seventh methodological stage of the paradigm of efficient social action, with its closing decision, completes the whole procedure. Hence the circle of methodological canons of practical social sciences opens and closes with the notion of values. CONCLUSION

The preceding discussion has demonstrated that sociotechnics is not a mere possibility, but a social reality. The following conclusions are central points of the previous discussion: • The paradigm of efficient social action, which differs from the canons of logic per se, is unique for practical activity. Consequently, it should be followed if this activity is to accomplish its goals, and if one is willing to open his/her activity to intersubjective scrutiny. • Practical social sciences, including sociotechnics, have the same scientific status as theoretical sciences because they have their own intersubjectively controlled methodology. • Sociotechnics may operate as self-made social engineering, but it may also work as sociotechnics proper (based on a paradigm of efficient social action).

SOCIOTECHNICS

55

The more social engineering is supported by professional and organizational experience, the more it is based on the conception of a self-made model in operation. The more social engineering comes to rely upon a body of tested empirical propositions, the closer it comes to qualifying as sociotechnics proper. In the latter case, in Western societies based on democratic values, the tendency to support underdogs may operate to good advantage. • Sociotechnics usually operates on the micro and meso levels. Serious arguments claim the potentialities of sociotechnics exist only within these two areas. Nonetheless, macro-sociotechnics rapidly emerges as an entirely new entity. In its self-made version, it takes either the form of sociotechnical attempts or that of dark sociotechnics. • Not only lay people, but scholars also, with their tendency to follow meanings conceived by stereotypes, perceive social engineering as something bad, dirty and deserving only condemnation. They recall the primitive sentence of Stalin, when he compared writers to the engineers of "human souls." This understanding gives people an excuse not to enter into the complicated world of practical logic. It imbues them with the spurious authority to reject social engineering as something wrong. This comprehension tends as well to legitimize their haphazard rules of semi-efficient behavior. But those who stubbornly and narrow-mindedly create problems for others, build problems for themselves as well. • Finally, while we find the self-made type of sociotechnics increasingly used in social systems of all types, dark sociotechnics flourishes, as a rule, in autocratic and totalitarian states. In such states, sociotechnics proper plays at present only a limited role, mainly of an unmasking nature. In democratic, socio-political systems, sociotechnics proper is not sufficiently recognized as a useful instrument of social change. Within democratic societies, the methodology and potential of sociotechnics proper are either underestimated or confused with dark sociotechnics, with all its negative consequences.

ENDNOTES

1. These ideas PetraZycki formulated as early as in 1893. See: Die Lehre vom Einkommen, Berlin: Verlag H.W. Muller, esp. Anhang: Civilpolitik und politische Dkonomie (pp. 437-628). 2. I introduce the concept of social "warpiness" to explain that under "real socialism," well-established motivations of human behaviour like individual careers, protection of the family, professional expertise, community solidarity, patriotism,

56

3.

4.

5.

6.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

etc., do not operate in a traditional way. Typical reactions to various social causes are accidental, unpredictable, and resemble the "Pavlov's dog" reactions. In some countries, conformism to the current fashion is more important than the essence of the matter. Now, when marxism is defeated by socio-political praaice (especially after 1989 in Eastern Europe), feminism and post-modernism appear. They reflect the dominant mood in Western social sciences. Therefore it sometimes becomes more important for social science experts to respect certain rituals, than to be unconditionally oriented towards the truth. While the artist continually produces novel and imaginative work, the artisan is forever producing replicas of an original design. Canadian higher education relies upon innovations produced elsewhere, which it then adopts for Canadian useoften without modification. Canadian educators place a relatively low value on creativity. It is therefore necessary for government to subsidize the production of scholarly products. . "When the country of Su began to disintegrate," said Si-tien, "the sage Van went up to the emperor Tia-o and presented him with a plan for rescuing the kingdom. The emperor was delighted and asked him to submit his idea in writing. The sage Van did so. The emperor was again very pleased, but asked him to deliver the document in a form prescribed by the rules of the court. The sage Yan did so. The emperor was very glad indeed and, with pleasantries and compliments, asked Van to conduct a check in the capital's libraries to ensure that a comparable proposal had not been submitted in the past. The sage worked day and night but found no trace of a similar thought. The emperor, now satisfied, proceeded to nominate a distinguished council to carry the task of bridging the gap between the reality and the idea. After several months of deliberations, when the council was very close to drafting a final plan, an angry mob attacked the emperor's palace, dispersed the council and began to ransack the building in their search for the ruler. Si-tien stopped for a moment and added, 'This was how an idea was killed by ritual,'" (Podg6recki, unpublished). Such sciences not only describe and explain social reality, but also formulate teleological recommendations on how to change it.

REFERENCES

Brzezinski, Z. 1989. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death ofCommunism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Charles Scribner's. Caro; F. G., ed. 1971. Readingr in Evaluating Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Coleman, J. 1968. "Sociological Analysis and Social Policy." T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet, eds. A History ofSociological Analysis. London: Heinemann.

SOCIOTECHNICS

57

Ferrari, V. 1994, "Presidential Farewell." Sociology ofLaw Newsletter, 1994-1, Onati, Spain. Freeman, H. Dynes, R. Rossi and W. White, eds. 1983. Applied Sociology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publisher. Gouldner, Alvin W. and S. M. Miller. 1965. Applied Sociology. New York: Free Press. Henshel, R. L. 1976. Reacting to Social Problems. Don Mills: Longman. Horowitz, I. L. 1957. The Rise and Fall ofProject Camelot. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press. Johnson, P. 1983. A History ofthe Modern World. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Kubin, J. 1979. "A Methodology for Social Problems' Solving." Newsletter ofthe lSA Sociotechnics Research Committee, No.4 Ouly): 12-22. Lazarsfeld, P., and J. Reitz. 1975. An Introduction to Applied Sociology. New York: Elsevier. - - - , W. H. Sewell and H. Wilensky. 1967. The Uses ofSociology. New York: Basic Books. Mannheim, K. 1940. Man and Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Massell, G. J. 1968. "Law as an Instrument of Revolutionary Change in a Traditional Milieu." Law and Society Review, No.2. Merton, R K. 1949. Social Theory and Social Structure. NY: Free Press. Myrdal, G., R Sterner and A. Rose. 1944. An American Dilemma. NJ: Harpers Press. Petraiycki, L. 1985. 0 Nauce Prawie i Moralnosci (On Science, Law and Morality. J. Licki, A Kojder, eds.). Warsaw: PWN. Podg6recki, A 1962. Charakterystyka Nauk Praktycznych (Characteristics of Practical Sciences). Warszawa, PWN. ---.1975. Practical Social Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. - - - , and !.os , M. 1979. Multidimensional Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. - - - , and R Shields. 1986. "Research on Sociotechnics: A Guide to Understanding Planned Social Change." Ottawa: Carleton University, Sociology Department, Working Paper. . Popper, K. 1946. Open Society and its Enemies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Powers, Charles. 1987. Vi/fredo Pareto. London: Sage. Shakeri, K. 1989. "Social Engineering and the Islamic Revolution in Iran." (unpublished paper). Zetterberg, H. 1962. Social Theory and Social Practice. Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press.

...

~ .-:---~-

~:.~.,,---

-.----.--

- ..

II

. HISTORICAL. ApPROACHES

60

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

The study of historic events can contribute to the overall set of axioms contained within the sociotechnical paradigm. Adam Podg6recki shows in Chapter 2 how th~ ideal-type paradigm presented above provides a benchmark with which to compare and assess widely disparate historical developments. The Watergate case affords deep historical understanding by showing what President Nixon was trying to achieve sociotechnically. What historical project was thrust upon him by the drift of significant forces? Within this paradigm, what specific project did he deliberately pursue? Podg6recki argues that America's top political leadership was attempting to meet a rendezvous with destiny. Nixon thought this required a greatly strengthened presidency. Because of the fractious and parochial political culture that is Washington, DC, other important political actors disagreed. Through this sordid domestic squabble the United States lost its grip on what was to have been the ''American Century." Its rendezvous with destiny passed unfulfilled. The Watergate case study shows from a concrete historical situation what Adam Podg6recki previously explained in ideal and theoretical terms. A prerequisite for success in social engineering is that the ends must be clear: A unified set of actors having the required knowledge must pursue these ends consistently. Although such conditions did not apply, one can nonetheless learn many small lessons from the thoroughly instructive phenomenon of Watergate. Because of the existence of the White House tapes, the best use of sociotechnics - unmasking the schemes of the powerful - is already done. The release of those tapes provided a remarkably clear window into the workings of power, its banality and evil as well as its grandeur. Note that the term paradigm has two separate but complementary meanings. First, the paradigm is an operational code for sociotechnics conceived as an ideal-type activity. Second, one can take the measure of the operational codes of concrete historical actors. What did they set out to do within what limits? Within what constraints did they conceive, attempt and carry out their desired social actions? In Chapter 3, Steven Lewarne situates Poland's 1981 imposition of martial law within the Podg6reckian paradigm. He also specifies a separate operational paradigm within which the Jaruzelski regime had to function. How does one, after all, squelch a popular independent trade union movement containing several millions of souls? Lewarne juxtaposes the ideal-type paradigm against the Jaruzelski regime's totalitarian utopia. Often in this century such a totalitarian utopia has beckoned political leaders to pass beyond legitimacy and civilized discourse. As here, such utopias typically rely upon dirty tricks designed to heighten, exacerbate and exploit the social

HISTORICAL APPROACHES

61

divisions among regime opponents. In the end, such utopias rest as firmly as is possible upon violence and stark brute force. Large-scale collective action does not appear overnight. From what roots does the sociotechnical moment arise? What are the underlying social structures and forces? How do they confront each other? How does this conjuncture evolve? With what tactical manoeuvres does the social engineer seek to exploit or alter this conjuncture? To address such questions one may overlay the sociotechnical paradigm like a template on top of the actual historical situation. This lets one observe the degree to which the paradigm does or does not fit. To accomplish this assessment effectively requires an ability to peer beneath the smokescreen of disinformation that so often surrounds social engineering operations. One needs to see clearly the intricate interplay of contending forces. In this section on historical approaches one can reach these ideals most completely.

...

~ .-:---~-

~:.~.,,---

-.----.--

- ..

CHAPTER TWO

Adam Podgorecki Sociology and Anthropology Carleton. University NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

WHAT IS WRONG WITH WASHINGTON?

The city of Washington gradually becomes the centre of the world. But what a peculiar centre! It is inhabited by clerks who - if required - agree in advance to be potential scapegoats for their bosses. It is pestered by extreme levels of street violence. Washington embodies an ethos suggesting that if you would like to have a friend you should domesticate a rat. It is submerged into an idolatrous admiration of power. The city wholly lacks manners. Despite its world-class museums, Washington maintains only a superficial cultural veneer (and not a gourmet one). The political species of Washingtonians have X-ray devices instead of eyes. They immediately screen you to measure your proximity to power (how many telephone connections, if any, are you away from the president). They gauge what type of lobby, if any, is behind you. They avoid answering letters, not due to incivility, but to avoid producing documents that enemies might leak to the press. Although various types of centres, think tanks and other expertisegathering institutions exist in that city, it would be a foolish waste of time to search there for new ideas other than those that yield themselves to instant or manipulatory uses. No wonder the United States remains far behind in the race

64

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

with history. History moves more quickly than bureaucratic minds, spurious wisdom, predesigned "scenarios" and hired inspiration can fully comprehend. Why are the countless Washingtonian centres and think tanks unable to think unconventionally? Sometimes they proclaim semi-officially, from the State Department floor, that ideas are useless, if not altogether dead (and they pretend not to know that this is Daniel Bell's deflated idea). They ignore or misunderstand the natural obligation stemming from the distinction of being the former champion and hero of liberty and democracy. Predictably, Washington translates those hopeful glances from proud but desperate nations into its own familiar code, and myopically, grudgingly, with a visible distr~ss of an aging miser - gives, distributes and redistributes progressively smaller amounts of money. It is oblivious to the well-known maxim ofRochefoucault (No. 14) that great favours do not generate gratitude, but, hurting people's pride, only induce frustration. AMERICANS ARE PROGRESSIVE BUT REACTIVE

The global American policy is reactive. It concentrates on responding to challenges generated outside the country. Until recently, Soviet acumen contrived to change the world's political hot spots faster than Americans managed to develop appropriate counter-acting strategies. During recent years the accelerated pace of history has replaced and trampled even the cunning Russians. Yet, while Washington interprets and reinterprets these events endlessly, it has not come up with any visionary global ideas. Recent worldwide celebrity of several charismatic personalities, such as John Paul II, Havel, Mandela and Wa·h;sa, compellingly indicates a manifest and urgent craving for a new, moral ideology. It would be mad to expect a think tank to invent such an ideology, of course. Nor is it the president's obligation. Spiritus flat ubi vuld. Nonetheless it is up to Washington, if it indeed aspires to be the real centre of the world, to create an atmosphere inspiring ideas of this type. . THE NEW MORAL IDEOLOGY

The new moral ideology may encompass some broad motal imperatives as well as more specific ones. As a starting point three general postulates may be formulated. The first general imperative would oblige people from allover the world to protect the planet in its totality. Instead of focusing on individual

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

65

human beings, this global ethic would emphasize human groupings and the social and ecological systems to which they belong, together with all living creatures and their physical environment. The second imperative of this ideology may oblige all to care about those who are weaker than themselves. It obliges their protection for their own sake. The third imperative of the global ethic could prove to be more demanding than the requirements of any existing religion.' It would expect human beings to protect their planet and life on it irrespective of any punishment, reward or election prospects. This absolute imperative subordinates the value of individualism to a higher value of global survival and sanity. Some elements of this universal code of ethics were engendered by the Polish Solidarity movement and the Autumn of the Nations of 1989, and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union. They should activate various groups and nations, and especially the newly emerging stratum of international intelligentsia. Our societies need a spirited defence against dormant post- and neo-totalitarian minds, and against the still-possible nuclear disaster. This ethic should be formulated in a visionary way as a protection against the destructive trend which seems to be inherent in the development of human' civilization (especially of capitalism) and against pathological aberrations of the development of human culture (especially of totalitarian societies). If professed by a powerful authority, this new ideology has a chance to capture the globe. Traditional American reliance on individual achievements supported by the new moral ideology might also restore the United States' credibility around the world. A specific ethical imperative of immediate validity says that the United States should help those nations or states which are willing to help themselves. An encouragement, an incentive, short term material assistance or instruction of a CChow-to-do-it" character is sometimes sufficient to solve seemingly unsurpassable problems. Long-term aid develops dependency, rising demands and finally - claims. Help and enlighten those who have enough motivation to work for themselves. This can foster the development of partnership relationships. It is not necessary to humiliate aid recipients. Arrogance of power takes not only an individual but also a collective form and appearance. It is a blunder to allocate help mistakenly. Another specific imperative proclaims that societies which had successfully performed a task for the whole community of nations should be morally and materially rewarded. They had sustained others by expending their own substance. Feelings of justice demand this reimbursement. The United States historically was a champion of individual freedom and

66

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

democracy. But American individualism was also instrumental in building huge wealth and various types of social deviations. Ideas of freedom and democracy are not currently obsolete, but a larger idea is desperately needed. Is America able to face the challenge of giving birth to it? Was it not an American historical heritage to meet the most essential human aspirations? An outside observer may be astonished to find that the Washingtonian elite, being submerged into its petty interpersonal conflicts and narrowly parochial in-group concerns, behaves as if it was not mature enough to perform its global role. This observer may also find puzzling the fact that the politicians and scholars, so much concerned with the declining world image of the United States, strictly avoid dealing with world ideology. Do they not know that only a bold encounter with its problems might awaken the American inventive spirit? This is the overview of the city of Washington's ideology as it may be currently recorded. This ideology was not. too much different during Nixon's presidency and when he desperately tried to bestow on the presidency sufficient power to face America's destiny. NIXON'S NEGATIVE DECALOGUE

As already indicated, sociotechnics is a theory of efficient social activity, or to be more concrete, an applied social science whose aim it is to inform the potential practitioner how to look for effective means to accomplish planned social goals. It is assumed that a given set of values has been accepted and that there is an available set of tested theorems with which to describe and explain human behaviour. One can certainly use social engineering for unjust ends. We may view the Watergate case as a condensed social experience with moral, polit.ical, legal and social engineering implications. This experience is all the more valuable in that its basic components were communicated to the general public, bit by bit, mainly by the shallow eyes of mass media, during the course of a specific vivisection, performed on a government still in office. This vivisection did not, however, resemble natural scientific observation. On the contrary, it sprang from a dramatic and ferocious political battle. Let us leave aside the political, moral and legal aspects of Watergate, and the peculiar climate of the capital of the United States, in order to pick out those social-engineering principles that were applied in the Watergate affair. Finally, we shall attempt to answer the question of whether the social engineering involved in Watergate was social engineering sensu stricto or was it social-engineering quackery, or possibly "dark" social engineering. We shall

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

67

also analyze the ends, good or bad, to which this social engineering or socialengineering quackery was applied. Note that significant threads of the Watergate case could be traced prior to the famous events involving the break-in at the Watergate Hotel on Jq.ne 17, 1972. The dirty-tricks tactics, elaborated by the Nixon reelection committee, included several ingenious devices. The secret break-in at the Watergate building was only one element in the general strategy of this type. I By June 25, Thomas Huston's views regarding this strategy were substantially enshrined in a forty-three-page document which called for the following improvements in domestic intelligence gathering: (1) Lifting of the ban on "surreptitious entry"; (2) Increased wiretapping of domestic security suspects and foreign diplomats; (3) Relaxation of restrictions on illegal "mail coverage" [i.e., steaming open and reading people's letters]; (4) Increasing the corps of FBI informers on university campuses; (5) Monitoring of American citizens using international communications facilities; (6) New budgetary arrangements to cover the increased cost of domestic security; (7) Increased CIA coverage of students (and others) living abroad; (8) A new Interagency Group on Internal Security, with representatives from the White House, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA and the three military counterintelligence agencies, to be set up with effect from August 1, 1972, the director of the FBI to serve as chairman (see Lewis et aL 1973:41-3). Huston supplied the following justification for these methods of collecting information (he focused on the surreptitious entry in particular): Use of this technique is clearly illegal; it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed. However, it is also the most fruitful tool and can produce the type of intelligence which cannot be obtained in any other fashion (ibid., 43).

The Huston memorandum remained an accepted policy for five days before it met with the firm protest of J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI.

Even more drastic, but only partly carried into effect, were the "Gemstone" and "Target" plans of Gordon Liddy. According to these plans, information was to be procured by means of hooligan gang attacks, kidnappers, "politically aware" prostitutes and electronic devices. Hooligan gangs were to disperse demonstrations. Kidnapping teams were to kidnap radical politicians and transport them, for example, to Mexico. Specially trained prostitutes should be high-class women, "the best in the business,"

68

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

working in luxurious conditions. This plan was not fully accepted, however. John Mitchell, the chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) who was expected to approve the plan, puffed his pipe and said, "It's not quite what I had in mind" (ibid., 135-6). What was characteristic in these plans was that their purpose was to gain hard-to-come-by, strategic information, useful in political warfare. They are based on a general principle of social engineering: AXIOM 1

It is a good thing to get hold ofstrategic information concerning significant issues pertaining to the political enemy when the political enemy is unaware ofthe fact that such significant information hm been procured. Other plans, developed during the political battle for the presidency in 1972, were aimed not only at the collection of unaccessible information; they were also intended to slander various people holding high public posts or to destroy their positive public images. In this respect the Watergate affair dug deeper than it seemed. In general, the Republicans' strategy consisted in weakening the most serious representatives of the Democratic Party as potential candidates in the presidential election, i.e., dangerous countercandidates of Nixon. This would lead to the launching of the Democratic Party's weakest candidate, Senator George McGovern. That strategy reveals our next social engineering postulate: AXIOM 2

A political battle can be won when the opposing party is led to launch the weakest available candidate. The situation being as it was, the most important point in the Republican's strategy was to get rid of the strongest candidates, senators Muskie, Humphrey and Jackson. How, then, did they prepare their campaign against the leading representatives of the Democrats? Donald Segretti, called up to give evidence in front of the Senate Committee investigating Watergate, revealed secrets of the case when he admitted he had been directly responsible for producing false posters dis-informing the electorate as to the political opinions of Senator Muskie. A committee member questioned Segretti. Had he ordered the printing of posters indicating a call from Muskie to increase the busing of white children to principally black areas and vice versa? He

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

69

responded with a simple "yes." Segretti also admitted to creating the "Mothers for Muskie Committee." He further admitted to having printed a letter accusing Senator Jackson and Senator Humphrey of sexual abuse and drunkenness. He said he sent the letter to a third party, a Mr. Benz, for circulation. Segretti had also sent the press a forged letter containing false information, written on Senator Humphrey's business stationery. In one of his letters, he talked about the hospitalization for psychiatric reasons of Shirley Chisholm (a black congresswoman, and a 1972 presidential candidate). Segretti admitted that these accusations were groundless and that he had fabricated them (New 10rk Times, September 4, 1973). Another method the Republicans used against the Democrats (who faced the problem of launching their candidate for president) consisted of creating havoc among the organizers of Senator Muskie's campaign. Muskie was then the strongest Democratic candidate. For instance, phoney Muskie well-wishers would make phone calls at night to sleeping citizens from New Hampshire and, introducing themselves as members of an alleged "Harlem for Muskie" committee, explained to half-sleeping people (who were not particularly interested anyway because the percentage of black people in their state was not high) that Muskie was an advocate of full rights for black .people (Lewis et al 1973: 115). Of course it is difficult to assess the extent to which these and similar methods weakened the candidatures of senators Muskie, Humphrey and Jackson. Anyway, the following social engineering principle applied in these cases: AXIOM 3

A political battle can be won either by disorganizing the institutional home .front ofthe adversary or by undermining the public image ofthe adversary. Joint application ofboth methods will increase the effectiveness ofthis principle. Activities such as those described above introduced significant confusion within the Democratic Party and led to or reinforced various party antagonisms. Democratic candidates attacked each other and inadvertently cleared the ground for competition between their weakest candidate, McGovern, and Nixon. This was CREEP's basic strategy. Clearly it was much easier for this committee to cope with a relatively weak adversary than it would have been to cope with a counter-candidate who, according to various opinion polls, had strong public support. Nixon had his spectacular triumph, the greatest

70

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

in the history of the United States, and was overwhelmingly re-elected at the end of 1972. He was quite oblivious of how soon the bad seed sown by his CREEP supporters would begin to sprout. Shortly after 2 a.m. on June 17, 1972, five people (including James McCord, the CREEP security advisor) were arrested at the National Democratic Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel. About $1,500 was found on the arrested people, and thirty-two one hundred-dollar bills were found in their hotel rooms. The bills had consecutive numbers. Also found were photographic and electronic equipment enabling the reproduction of documents, bugging, etc. A search of the hotel rooms in which the arrested people had been temporarily staying also revealed notes containing phone numbers of White House employees, including one for E. Howard Hunt, and a cheque he had signed. Further investigations revealed that the money came from CREEP by means of a complex financial operation through the Bank of Mexico. The immediate cover-up that ensued displayed another principle of social engineering. AXIOM 4

In case ofsudden danger, the person accused ofcriminal behaviour which is difficult to check on should deny any connections with the behaviour ofwhich he is accused. The higher the status ofthe person denying the accusation, the greater is the probability that the denial will be accepted. OnJune 19, 1972, a White House press spokesman declared that the White House refused to be involved with "third-rate burglaries." After a while, when the case began to gain publicity, a persistent question appeared: "What did President Nixon know about the case?" In accordance with the above social-engineering principle, the presidential office announced, consistently and categorically, that the president was involved neither in the preparation of the strategy manifest in the Watergate case nor in the cover-up that followed. Actually, the truth was different. On March 21, 1973 presidential advisor John Dean told Nixon that there was a cancer growing within the presidency that could destroy the Nixon Administration. The president later denied that Dean had told him about the Watergate cover-up. A most dramatic irony was that the March 21 conversation (between 10: 12 and 11: 5 5 a.m.) surfaced verbatim. When Dean gave testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee he did not know the president had bugged his own office. Further legal pressure forced Nixon to give up first the typescripts of

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

7I

the conversation. As was established afterwards, the White House had edited them. Later, Nixon was forced to give up the original tapes to Congress, and thereby to the press. One significant fragment of Dean's conversation with the president went as follows: Nixon: "In other words, this is your point of view on how things are now and where we go from here." Dean: "In my opinion there should now be no doubt as to the issue we have here. We have a tumor nearby, near the presidency; a tumor which is growing, growing every day. It is expanding, growing geometrically, it is reproducing itself. Oh, this will be clear, I'll explain this in a minute. You know, you know some details, oh, but why is that, I'll tell you in a minute. That's it, because: first, we are being blackmailed; second, oh, people will be committing perjury very soon in order to protect other people, etc. That's just it. And there's no protection against it." (Nixon Tapes)

The same day, Nixon confided the day's main events to his dictaphone. This tape also became public due to later legal decisions. He said: As far as today is concerned, nothing particular has occurred except, oh, the conversation with Dean. Dean eventually brought everything to the surface when he said that a dangerous cancerous growth has appeared and that it will continue to grow and that we should rather operate now than let it grow and destroy us later. He is really depressed and does not, in fact, see anything else, any other ways of action except the quick revealing of facts. I asked him and it seems clear that he feels guilty of some, oh, criminal ac ... oh, responsibility connected with the fact that he participated in the activities dealing with looking after the accused when they were, oh, on trial. (Nixon Tapes).

The cover-up strategy was ~ery complicated. It had several phases and levels of involvement. In its final phase the coverup was a repetition of the strategy applied earlier. At first, everything possible was done to prevent the leaking out of the fact that CREEP was involved in the Watergate case. Later, when this was no longer feasible, attention turned to clearing the White House. The government officials' efforts to veil the facts, and their simultaneous unveiling by the press and the courts, were replete with dramatic tension. At one phase CREEP's deputy chairman, Jeb Stuart Magruder made an offer to the cover-up team; he would commit perjury and take all the

72

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

blame on himself This relatively young and intelligent man was nicknamed the "striped Machiavelli" (because of his trousers). Before he was imprisoned he was already signing his newly published book. In the book he later wrote, he presented his own point of view on the Watergate case and on his own part in White House affairs. He summarized his practical philosophy thus: When things began to leak out I was aware that they were illegal and I am sure others were aware of that too. However, we had become hardened and accustomed to taking action which would enable us to accomplish our goal [Le., reelection of the president]. For us, this goal was the ultimate justification.

Magruder later concluded that this philosophy had been wrong and that "two bad things do not lead to one good one." Another of Nixon's advisors, Charles F. Colson, gave the following description of the atmosphere accompanying the Watergate cover-up: At the White House we had the feeling that Congress can't get at us, because there was an atmosphere of constant tug-of-war between Congress and the presidency. We felt safe because the Justice Department was working for us. So, as long as we knew we hadn't done anything stupid nobody could inquisitively watch our hands.

Colson was generally known as a tough guy. He said once that he could "kill his grandmother" to get president Nixon re-elected. He was thought to be one of the main strategists in preparing dirty tricks during the election campaign and during the later efforts to cover up the Watergate case. At his interrogation by the Senate Watergate Committee, Colson revealed the assumptions of the "philosophy" underlying the strategy for pragmatically winning the election. He said, "One tends to become ethically immune when the goals (I don't want to use an old cliche whereby the ends justify the means) - when the goals become very important.... [T]he most important thing for this country was the re-election of President Nixon." He maintained that he wouldn't "kill my grandmother" because of it - this had come to be a funny slogan. There were, in fact, few things he would not do to reach this end. He was aware that this was not a healthy attitude, but claimed that one is above the law in such cases. Later, he remained convinced that he had not thought he was breaking the law when he did this or that. On the other hand, he also thought nobody was going to be checking up on these actions (New York Times, July 7, 1974). These comments illustrate yet another social engineering principle:

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

73

AXIOM 5

The extent to which a cover-up is efficient is limited by the law and its reach. One can restrict the laws influence by instructing those to whom legal authorities are subordinate. In case ofdoubt, higher-order rationalizations should be developed to justifJ interference by the authorities with the law. The cover-up led to many, sometimes dramatic, tensions between its initiators. President Nixon had nominated L. Patrick Gray III to head the FBI. The Senate Watergate Committee later interrogated Gray. Gray had told Nixon as early as July 6, 1972 during a half-hour conversation that, in his opinion, some people from presidential circles were attempting to injure him mortally by using various public offices to cover up the Watergate case. Nixon answered by instructing Gray to go ahead and continue the investigation. Gray was so seriously involved that John Ehrlichman, a close presidential advisor, and Dean once gave him two envelopes, whose contents they called "political dynamite." The envelopes contained forged telegrams pointing to the involvement of former President Kennedy in the assassination of South Vietnam's President Diem. They also contained material on the case of Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked for the Pentagon and brought to light the so-called Pentagon Papers, documents revealing the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. There was also material on the Chappaquiddick case. The latter had been collected as evidence to use against Senator Edward Kennedy, were he to try to launch a presidential campaign. Gray admitted later that when Dean gave him the documents he said they should never see daylight again. Gray took the two envelopes home and hid them beneath a pile of shirts. Several weeks later he took them out and transported them to his office where he deposited them in his safe. Later, he again took them home, but this time not to his Washington apartment but to his Connecticut home, where he put them in the wardrobe. He said later that he never read the documents because he did not have the natural curiosity of cats or women. After Christmas, he took them into the garden and buried them along with other Christmas garbage. Here is a fragment of a conversation (reproduced thanks to existing tapes) between Ehrlichman and Dean about Gray: Ehrlichman: "Hey, I've just had a phone call from your precious witness." Dean: "Who's that?" Ehrlichman: "Patrick}. Gray." Dean: "Really?"

74

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Ehrlichman: "He says we must make sure that old J. Dean sticks to his tale, that it was Dean who gave all the documents to the FBI and that he didn't make any fancy differences between office workers and directors." Dean: "Yes, he's really beginning to hang loose. You should read the manuscript. He's making a twister out of me." Ehrlichman: "Let him hang there .... [L]et him curl up slowly, shrink, and curl up in the wind." Ehrlichman's last comment is an example of the next social engineering postulate: AXIOM 6

For the whole cover-up to be successful a disclosed accomplice should be sacrificed in such a way as not to drag down anyone else but himself Some people believe, apparently without sufficient grounds, that one of the final stages in President Nixon's career - the case against Vice-President Agnew - was used by the president's strategists to deal with the Watergate cause by treating Agnew as a scapegoat. According to this idea, had Agnew lost his job, public opinion, the press and the congressional committees would have forgotten about Watergate .. Since the presidential office was held in such high esteem in the United States, it would then be treated with extra care. It was believed that if the presidential office were to be considerably weakened by eliminating the vice-president, then a powerful tendency to defend and fortify the presidential office would follow. A complicated, criminal financial case was made against the Vice President. There followed several phases of defense of the Vice President against attacks from the press, including financial and legal actions. Finally, Vice President Agnew resigned on October 16, 1973. In doing so, he said something that indicates an intuitive recognition of sociotechnica1 power: In the present age of advanced technology the image a person has is most important. Imagination runs before reality. The belief that someone has done something wrong, whether true or false, is essentially noxious for everyone. But, what is more important, is that such beliefs are· mortal for the person who must be prepared to take over the presidency any minute. It would be an act of egoism and lack of patriotism for anyone to put this country in a state of uncertainty and internal conflict, even at the best of times. Now, at this critical moment, when there is a dangerous war in the Near East, and at the time when this nation is

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

75

continuously being torn apart by tugging experiences of the last year, such behavior would be intolerable (New York Times. October 16, 1973). This declaration is an example of the defensive social engineering postulate: AXIOM 7

When ones case is lost. instead offighting on hopelessly it is better to resign andfortify one's resignation with the rationalization of 'ultimate reasons"for resigning. This dramatic strategy, if it was indeed introduced on purpose, was a catch from the arsenal of so-called dark engineering, an attempt to draw attention away from the Watergate case and redirect it at illegal financial schemings of the Vice-President. It was unsuccessful. Public opinion was not diverted from Watergate, but we do have an example of another social engineering strategy. AXIOM 8

When doing something risky, it is good to have at hand a potential scapegoat" who, at the proper time (when things are going wrong or heading for disaster) may be used to divert attention or provide the rationalization that the activities ofthe "scapegoat" impeded or precluded efficient accomplishment ofthe basic activity. In his dramatic and desperate announcement of August 6, 1974, President Nixon probably gave away his final cover-up. He announced in public that he had given instructions and discussed politically the aspects of the Watergate cover-up, that he was aware of the benefits of such behaviour in that it limited public insight into the case. He also revealed that such a cover-up was beneficial for the people from CREEP. Nixon declared, moreover, that he did not reveal all the information to those who cooperated with him directly in the legal defense of his case. Hence the president admitted not only that he was one of the main strategists of the cover-up, but he also gave away his second-order cover-up strategy. AXIOM 9

When the situation is very risky and very difficult the cover-up should have various stages and levelr ofinitiation. At some stages it is good to have people

76

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

working in goodfaith on the basis ofincomplete information. Badfaith or foil information may have negative effects on peopleS motivation. The House Judiciary Committee voted on the impeachment case against President Nixon. He stood accused of a breach of the Constitution, and of basic values he ought to have respected. The three basic impeachment accusations formulated by the committee were as follows: On June 17, 1972 and before, people working on the Presidential Re-Election Committee illegally broke into the headquarters of the National Democratic Committee in Washington, DC, in order to acquire political information. Next, R. M. Nixon, taking advantage of the attributes of his high office, became involved personally, and through his subordinates, in activities aimed at delaying, hindering, and impeding, the investigation into the illegal 'break-in'; at covering up the existence and extent of other illegal activities.

The Congressional Committee voted 27 to 11 for this accusation (Woodward and Bernstein 1976:293). In a second ballot, by a vote of28 to 10 (ibid., 304), the House Judiciary Committee declared that: President Nixon repeatedly took actions which ran counter to the constitutional rights of the citizens, straining the proper functioning of the jurisdiction in its activities aimed at stating the true state of affairs, according to the law, and he was also engaged in illegal activities concerned with executive agencies.

The Committee, with 21 votes against 17 (ibid., 309), announced that President Nixon: who was obliged to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America with all his might ... refrained from presenting, without legal justification or excuse, documents and objects which he should have given over to the Congressional Committee for Legal Affairs in accordance with its decisions.

The first resignation of a president in the history of the United States, and the whole Watergate case, will be an object of continuing studies for historians, political scientists and the sociologists of the practice of power. At least one aspect of the whole case seems to be specific and unique. Due to the almost accidental revealing of the fact that President Nixon tape-recorded all significant official conversations, it was

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

77

possible, almost completely, to determine the actual facts, a unique case in history. Now, from our short but retrospective perspective, we can try to reconstruct this case. In a sense the strategy was extremely rational as far as the ends were concerned. It was though a risky and dangerous strategy, involving as it did so much competing for power, so many activities aimed at acquiring and maintaining power, and so many forms of cover-up. It would be quite insufficient to limit our explanation of Watergate to psychoanalytic analyses of Nixon's mental make-up (as some authors do), or to the analysis of those characteristics of subcultures which spring up spontaneously and those which were deliberately forged by the president's team. It seems that, prior to Nixon's dramatic failure, he was not so egotistic and self-centred as many would have it. It is quite probable that in the difficult battle of forces between three formal centres of power in the United States, Congress, the presidential office and courts of justice, Nixon represented ideas, ambitions, and ultimate interests transcending these centers of power. Realistically speaking, there are two other centres of power in the United States, "pundits" - experts - and the mass media. However, the latter two power centers are relatively beyond the influence of formal power. In his ambition to fortify the presidential office, Nixon wanted to install a new balance between the formal and actual political forces. He intended to limit the actual power of the mass media and the pundits and the formal power of Congress. This he saw as necessary to fortify the presidency and thus enable the United States to play the part to which it was being pushed by external forces on the one hand, and on the other by its own dynamic vitality. If we view Nixon's "cause" and his perception of problems and people from this perspective, then it becomes clear that he represented forces pressing toward a new systematic synthesis in the United States. This synthesis would occur, if at all, as a reconciliation coming about between the formal and the actual centres of power in that country. Such a synthesis would have permitted the accomplishment of tasks that Americas own history, and world history were attempting to enforce on that country. We may conjecture that Nixon turned to extraordinary means because he lacked social backing in the way of social or financial connections, or political charisma. The victory of justice over Nixon's illegal tactics (under the catch phrase "law and order") was a signal victory of American democracy over American destiny. Watergate can therefore be viewed as a symptom of the need for formal-systemic changes that Nixon noticed, misunderstood, and lacked the ability to redress.

78

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

SUMMARY

In an attempt to summarize the social engineering tactics used in the Watergate case, we must say that Nixon's social engineering tactics have two distinct levels. At the first level we have social engineering applied to bad ends. Here the tactics were effective, efficient, based on considerable professional experience, and relied on various elements drawn from the social sciences. These include the so-called dirty-trick strategy and the cover-up strategy. It was Nixon's lack of charisma that led his team to develop "social engineering.quackery" based on dirty tricks. Nonetheless the scandal and constraints that resulted from the revealing of the Watergate Hotel break-in led to successive development and improvement of cover-up strategies. We can distinguish cover-ups for specific events, cover-ups of the cover-ups, cover-ups at lower, intermediate and higher levels of power, and the final cover-up of the internal government circles. In developing the dirty trick and cover-up strategies, Nixon violated the following social engineering principle: AXIOM 10

Often two parallel ethics coexist in a given society, a dominant private (individualistic) ethic, and a public ethic. Sometimes the general public learns that the norms ofprivate ethics have been violated. Ifthat violation has to do directly with the institutions ofpublic ethics, then the violation win constitute a threat, in the last resort, to the violator. In such a society, when public embezzlement has been committed, everything should be done to avoid a connection being drawn between the public sphere and the sphere evaluated according to private ethical norms. The second level of Nixon's social engineering tactics consisted, we believe, in his tendency to accomplish very general goals. The means by which he intended to accomplish these goals were inappropriate. He tried to obtain and maintain power for the presidency legally or illegally so that, through that power, he could enforce important constitutional and social reforms. These tactics appeared to be wrong. He chose inappropriate means. His goals were controversial and very widely misunderstood, mainly because he had not adequately articulated them. This failure was possibly expedient, since the goals were quite possibly as incomprehensible for the public as they were threatening for the pundits. Under these conditions, the ends did not sufficiently justify the means. The negative evaluation of the means was thus transferred to the basic goals.

NIXON'S SOCIAL ENGINEERING

79

To conclude, the first level and successive chain of Nixon's social ·engineering tactics were successful, but this success was transient. It brought about many side effects, which violated the healthy, individualistic legal and moral fOl;lndations of the country. The effort eventually backfired. Hence, this was actually not social engineering proper but social engineering quackery used toward negative ends. The second level of Nixon's social engineering tactics is more difficult to evaluate because of its complexity. The ultimate ends of these tactics . are very controversial for the public as well as pundits, and the means applied were quite inadequate. All in all, then, this level of Nixon's social engineering was self-made social engineering ofindefinite evaluation. We shall never know what the results of this type of social engineering would have been, had they actually accomplished their purposes and goals.

ENDNOTE

1. In contrast, one study (Colodny and Gettlin, 1991) suggests that the break-in was motivated by a different reason, and that the world's oldest profession was responsible for toppling an American president.

REFERENCES

Note: Where no source for a quotation is given, it is taken from the second and third sources below. Colodny, 1., and R. Gettlin. 1991. Silent Coup. London: Victor Gollancz. The Impeachment Report. 1974. Canada, The World Almanac. Lewis, Chester. 1973. Watergate: The Full Inside Story. New York: Ballantine. McCrystal, C., S. Axis and W. Shawcross. 1973. Watergate: The Full Inside Story. London: Andre Deutsch. New York Times, ed. 1973. The Watergate Hearings. New York: Bantam. Washington Post, ed. 1974. The Presidential Transcripts. New York: Dell. Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. 1976. The Final Days. New York: Simon & Schuster.

...

~ .-:---~-

~:.~.,,---

-.----.--

- ..

CHAPTER THREE

Stephen Lewame Economics Department University ofIndiana SOCIOTECHNICS AND THE IMPOSITION OF MARTIAL LAW IN POLAND

On December 13, 1981 General WojciechJaruzelski established the Military Council of National Salvation which, in violation of the Polish Constitution, declared martial law in Poland. This declaration put an end to the "Warsaw Spring." The communist world's first independent trade union, Solidarity, was effectively oudawed. All hopes of political, cultural, and economic pluralism vanished for nearly a decade. How did Poland's ruling elite quell what seemed, to be the largest ground-swell opposition movement ever seen in the Eastern bloc? How did Solidarity go from a position of negotiation, which culminated in the August Agreements of 1980 that set Poland on a road of political pluralism, to a position of internment, atomization and despondency? There are many ways to answer these questions, and analyze and explain the events leading up to the imposition of martial law in Poland. Certainly they can be studied through the methodology of economics or political science, and researchers in these two disciplines have done so quite credibly in other places. This chapter tries to answer these questions through the sociological methodology of sociotechnics. The sociotechnical approach taken here is not meant as a substitute for or an implicit criticism

82

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

of economic or political studies on this era. Rather, it is meant as a complement and as a means to broaden our understanding when juxtaposed with economic and political studies of the era. SOCIOTECHNICS AND METHODOLOGY

The subjugation of such a large (nine and a half million members) and socially diversified body could not have been achieved through random and blind measures. At the centre of every governing organization is some body or school of thought, explicitly or implicitly formed, which attempts to assimilate and synthesize societal divisions and fluctuations through the ruling elite's ideological and value-oriented paradigms. This elite will have certain teleological models upon which to draw, and in doing so will choose a series of "sociotechniques" (the implements of social engineering) so as to bring about a pre-determined transformation of social life. Adam Podg6recki (n.d.: 1) gives a broad definition of social engineering: We may take social engineering to mean a set of recommended procedures for bringing about conscious social changes in order to af;hieve specific goals. This, then, is a set of recommended procedures which is specified as to a methodology and scope of application and based on certain axioms which are known .... [O]ne can also interpret social engineering in a ... broader way ... [as] a set of recommended procedures related to the achievement of specific social goals regardless of whether these procedures have been formulated intuitively on the basis of experience, historical analysis, or social and political events.

The intention is to realise "effective ways and means to [obtain] intended social aims" (ibid.). The national "transformation of social life ... is a series of derivatives ... to bring about purposeful, intended social transformations on the basis of ... opinions and accepted social values" (Podg6recki 1969: 167). This phraseology, such as "basis of opinions" or "accepted social values," would denote benevolent objectivity on the part of the sociotechnician(s) adducing the relevant course of action. Indeed, Joachim Schmidt (1981:22-3) goes as far as to state: "[Potentially] sociotechnics renews the political dimension in allowing every citizen to participate in the decision-making process." Sociotechnics in this sense then offers citizens a means of input to the actions its rulers will take upon them. Schmidt refers to the fact that today "non-economic interests of the citizens stay more or less unrepresented, although these non-economic interests of the citizens make them human beings." Schmidt adds:

MARTIAL LAW IN POLAND

83

Sociotechnical expertise restores the balance of economic and non-economic interests; it is not a dictate since it is always based on a direct assessment of the political will of the population. The program designed by sociotechniques is similar to a draft of a bill. This view, however, is utopian, and certainly when applied to the governing of a communist regime holds little validity. Sociotechnics is by definition the practical application of the social sciences, and in so being moves from the academic world to reality and is thus given to more normative rather than positive analysis. The science is, therefore, coloured with the objectives of the ruling elite who will implement such techniques to achieve predetermined goals. Perhaps the best defmition for our purposes is one that suggests strict manipulation and, monitoring of social groups. A definition of this type will permit us the malleability to inject the rulers' values into the subsequent methodology. Once again therefore, we turn to Adam Podg6recki (1975:9) to give this definition: Applied sociology could be defined as a general theory of effective methods of social action ... [this] is understood as the transmission of formulated and tested propositions to given types of social situations. However, applied sociology ... is not simply the direct translation of descriptive sociological propositions into various teleological directives.... [I]n this special and restricted sense of applied sociology the starting point for a teleological procedure would be different. It would be the image of desired goals or ends which being treated as desired states of affairs - would also provide a different and a new perspective from which to assemble the extant hypothesis and to test all possible hypotheses.... [T]he appropriate regularities are used instrumenfal1y, in order to furnish advice on how to translate the goal from plan to reality. The objective, therefore, is to implement a sociotechnical plan of action that will meet certain criteria as set out by the ruling elite. The plan of action will not be formulated by those it is to act upon - especially when these observations take place in a non-democratic society. The individual common originator uses the principle of stirring up a social group, and acting on their social system to achieve. intentional aims (Podg6recki 1972:9-10). This leads us to a discussion of the methodology of plan formation in social control. There are four steps to formulating a sociotechnical plan of action (ibid., 23-4): first, the clarification of those values which

84

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

are expected to be related to the anticipated action; second, a diagnosis of the existing situation, that is the situation which is supposed to be changed; third, the collection and methodological elaboration of all possible regularities, which in turn should be oriented toward the desired goals with the means of achieving the goals also being considered as part of the package of dependent variables; and fourth, an evaluation of the balance of costs and gains based on a consideration of the action taken as a whole. This methodology is relatively neutral and could stand as a plan for optimal social planning and/or the maintenance of illegitimate power. JARUZELSKI'S SOCIOTECHNICAL PLAN

It is my intention to show that indeed the Polish leaders employed sociotechnics through a methodology probably very similar to the one cited above, but of key importance is the idea of value influence. Jaruzelski's regime could not hope to be benevolent in its actions, the "surgeon's knife" Podg6recki (ibid, 23) often refers to was yielded by people whose values did influence the knife's sharpness and the area in which it was to cut. The Jaruzelski government came to realize through the example of Solidarity that it had no legitimacy as the embodiment of the proletariat as Marx would denote. The regime, in fact, falls into the category of the Asiatic Mode of Production (Staniszkis 1982-83:89). That is: The ruling group has as its goal the realisation of a certain utopia ... a "totalitarian utopia." The criteria of rationality employed follow from this goal. Specifically it is the stabilisation and reproduction of the subjugation of the individual to the community.... [The techniques employed are violent since] the ruling group seems to realise that violence is the only means of production it fully controls. Placing the Jaruzelski regime into this category imposes a definite socioeconomic-political constraint on the actions it may take, thus forming the paradigm. Hence the regime avoids reforms and negotiations, and applies harsh, blatant and seemingly final sociotechnics to maintain power. Legitimacy is not a criterion by which the ruling elite measures itself, and that in itself makes it distinct from pluralistic democracies. The paradigm of the Jaruzelski government was then identified first and foremost by lack oflegitimacy. Second, it was impacted, as were all East-bloc nations, by the presence of Soviet power. This was particularly acute in Poland's case since the geopolitical factor of the Polish

MARTIAL LAW IN POLAND

85

frontier had been of strategic importance to the then-Soviet Union since the end of World War II. I Third, Jaruzelski had to be conscious of the impact events in Poland would have on other East European countries. The memory of Czechoslovakia in 1968 could not be disregarded. Fourthly, the Communist Party itself was in flux. The relaxation of Stalinist tactics in the 1970s, Le., the relatively reformist voice of the weekly Polityka, and the belief by many party members that Soviet intervention was no longer a reasonable fear since the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975 (Bromke 1982:265). The formation of KOR, a group composed mainly of intellectuals, also pointed to reform (see pages 87-88). Party apparatchiks who were not particularly enthusiastic about strict adherence to the Moscow brand of socialism managed to gain a voice in power. Fifth, the paradigm was characterized by the methods of socialist pricing policy. 2 This characteristic is perhaps the most difficult gap to mitigate in Poland's case, since economic reality dictates that prices on virtually all consumption goods must be raised to absorb the excess zlotys floating in the economy and to provide an adequate remuneration to the farmers producing food stuffs. Political reality dictated that excess demand, i.e. keeping prices artificially low, was the key to central control of the economy. Sixth was the presence of the Roman Catholic Church and, in specific regard to Jaruzelski, the presence of a Polish pope. This characteristic is two-fold. First, the Church is difficult to gauge in Poland, but throughout the Solidarity era the Church more often came to the aid of the authorities, in calling for calm and non-violence, than to Solidarity. Moreover, the presence of a Polish Pope, John-Paul II, heightened the international communities' monitoring of the events in Poland. This added pressure not only to Jaruzelski but also to the Soviet Union, which was traditionally conscious of international opinion toward its satellites. Seventh and finally, the interrelationship between society and the army was a chief characteristic of the paradigm. To what degree could Jaruzelski rely on the army to subjugate Solidarity? Could he use it directly for repression or would he have to employ paramilitary groups such as ZOMO (see page 101), and count on the army to observe passively? Understanding this paradigm is essential to an analysis of the events which led to the declaration of martial law. If we keep these constraints in mind, it becomes clear that a pattern of techniques develops. In fact Jaruzelski employed definite and identifiable sociotechnics that performed within the above stated paradigm.

86

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

POLAND IN THE 1970s: THE PRELUDE TO MARTIAL LAW It is first necessary to discuss briefly the events of the 1970s to gain an understanding of how the turmoil of 1980-81 came about. The analysis below involves a discussion of developments within the communist Polish United Workers Party (puwp) and the immediate events which led to the August Agreements of 1980. Following this, we look at the military preparations in the political arena and events that culminated in Jaruzelski's ascension to the post of the PuwP's first secretary. This in turn allows an exposition of the final techniques Jaruzelski used directly against Solidarity. This final stage shoW's the government's coincidentally easy abandonment of negotiations with Solidarity, and the role the army and paramilitary groups played in the imposition of martial law. December 1970 saw the fall ofWladyslaw Gomu+ka due to workers' unrest. This brought about great promises from the new regime of Edward Gierek. For the first three years the country's stagnating economy entered a period of rapid growth (Korbonski 1979:43), largely stimulated by large Western loans and technology transfer. Simultaneously, Polish peasants, fmally relieved of the heavy burden of compulsory deliveries, responded by sharply expanding their output. The new leadership also belatedly embarked· on a drive to overhaul the economic system by appointing a blue-ribbon party-government commission to prepare a ~lueprint for reforms. Gierek brought with him a new and open style into Polish politics (ibid., 61). Upon succeeding GomuH