The Prospects of Industrial Civilisation

by Bertrand Russell

The Prospects of Industrial Civilization provides a rare glimpse into areas of Russell's political thought which are often ignored. Written with Dora Black (who became Russell's second wife) on a trip to China in 1920, it is revealing both as a period piece and as a book for our times. Russell criticises his own age, and demonstrates how humanity perpetually struggles against the centralising forces of industrialism and nationalism.
He views industrialism as a threat to human freedom, as it creates large populations which have to be subject to controls and he likens Bolshevik Russia to Cromwell's England, asserting that both were dictatorships designed to force an essentially feudal society to adopt industrialism. He sees industrialism and nationalism as fundamentally linked and proposes one government for the whole world as a solution.
Russell is not blind to the positive side of industrialism; without machines an economy of subsistence would be the best for which society could hope, but argues that the global village and prevailing political democracy should be its eventual results.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

258 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, was a Welsh philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist, and prominent rationalist. Although he was usually regarded as English, as he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."

Reviews

[Xander · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923) Bertrand Russell and his wife-to-be Dora write about the dangers of industrialism and nationalism, two powers shaping the world and promising a not too bright future for humanity as a whole.

In Part I they analyze industrialism - the mechanistic outlook erasing human individuality and the mental life - and nationalism - base herd instinct applied to peoples as a whole - and their interaction. According to Russell, the natural outcome of these processes is either a dystopian future of burned down civilizations and a return to primitive life (after which we, humanity, can try again) or a global, social-democratic paradise run by the State.

Part II then touches on moral questions: What makes a State or society good or bad? What about the distribution of the different forms of power? Etc.

Normally I'd write a longer review, sketching the main lines of thought and then offering my own view. But my own view is not much unlike Russell and he offers, in Chapter 13, a very sharp and concise summary of the whole book. Thus, I will quote him at length for the rest of this review:

"In the first part of this book, we saw that machinery, which is physically capable of conferring great benefits upon mankind, is instead inflicting untold evil, of which the worst may be still to come. We traced this evil to three sources: private property, nationalism, and the mechanistic outlook. We found that if mechanism is to become a boon to mankind, private property, at least as regards land and all natural and legal monopolies, must be replaced by some form of public ownership and control; nationalism must give place to internationalism, both as regards sentiment and as regards certain governmental functions, notably war, movements of population, and the distribution of raw materials; while the mechanistic outlook must give place to one which values mechanism for its extra mechanical uses, but no longer worships it as a good in itself. We found that there is not, as Marxians contend, something fatal about sociological development, but that, on the contrary, it can be controlled and completely changed by public opinion and the operation of human desires and beliefs. This becomes more and more true as men advance in intelligence and in control over nature. We are at this moment the victims, not of natural forces outside ourselves, but of our own folly and our own evil passions. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." It is popular philosophy that is at fault ; if that were changed, all the evils in the world would melt away.

In this final chapter, I wish first to set forth the distinction between the mechanistic outlook and the humanistic outlook which is its opposite ; then to show how, if the evil effects of the mechanistic outlook were overcome, it would be possible to use machinery for the liberation of life, not for its enslavement to a dance of death.

The distinction between the mechanistic and the humanistic conceptions of excellence is the most fundamental of all distinctions between rival sets of ideals. The mechanistic conception regards the good as something outside the individual, as something which is realized through a society as a whole whether voluntarily co-operating or not. The humanistic conception, on the other hand, regards the good as something existing in the lives of individuals, and conceives social co-operation as only valuable in so far as it ministers to the welfare of the several citizens. The mechanistic conception is not interested in the individual as such, but only in the part that he can
play as a cog in the machinery. It will endeavor so to train and alter his nature as to make him submissive when the Plan of the Whole thwarts his individual desires. He must be taught to say to the State: "Thy will be done." On the other hand the humanistic conception regards a child as a gardener regards a young tree, i.e. as something with a certain intrinsic nature, which will develop into an admirable form given proper soil and air and light. The extreme of the mechanistic view is Calvinism; the extreme of the humanistic view is Taoism.

The Calvinist conceives human beings as existing, not for their own sakes, but for the glory of God; those who are saved minister to His glory, since they afford occasion for the Divine mercy; those who are damned minister equally to His glory, since they afford occasion for the Divine justice. It does not signify, therefore, whether many are saved and few damned, or many damned and few saved: either result is equally admirable. Calvinists held that few were saved, though it usually happened - by a pure accident - that they themselves were among the elect. Men were saved by predestination, not by merit ; their salvation or damnation was quite independent of whether they led virtuous or sinful lives. Taking account of the fact that the immense majority of mankind were damned eternally, human life, here and hereafter, afforded an immense balance of misery and wickedness (for the damned remain always wicked); yet that was no ground for regretting the creation of human beings; since they contributed to the glory of God, which alone was important.

The Calvinist outlook is supposed to be nearly extinct, and people think that they see its absurdities. But to my mind the present mechanistic outlook, particularly as it exists among the great capitalists, is almost indistinguishable from Calvinism. Put the machine in place of God, the efficiency of the machine in place of the glory of God, the rich and the poor in place of the saved and the damned, inheritance in place of predestination; you will then find that every tenet of Calvinism has its counterpart in the modern religion of industrialism. According to this religion men exist, not in order that they may be happy, but in order that machines may be prolific. I have heard men engaged in the development of Africa complain that the great obstacle was the happiness of the natives, who were able to live without work; to cure this, governments of white men impose a hut-tax, which cannot be paid unless the native agrees to work for a white exploiter.

The white men who act in this way are not actuated by mere self-interest; they are actuated by religion, just as truly as the medieval inquisitor. Again, our system produces a few rich and many poor, but is not to be condemned on that account, if it could not be changed without detracting from the glory of the machine. Who is to be rich is settled, in most cases, by inheritance, not by merit, just as God's unmotived free choice predestined certain people to be among the elect and the rest to be among the reprobate. Both religions agree in placing the purpose of human life outside human life itself, and from this source flows the cruelty which both have in common.

Human nature has many curious perversities, and one of the most curious is this: that we tend to worship whatever is useful to us, and by worshiping it, to deprive it of its utility. Men worshiped agriculture, and propitiated the god of vegetation by human sacrifice; what this meant in cruelty and horror may be seen, for instance, in Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" interpreted in the light of Frazer's "Golden Bough." Men worshiped sex, and became sunk in phallic orgies; by reaction, they worshiped chastity, and condemned themselves to life-long celibacy. The Australian aborigines, who are free from war and most of the evils that afflict other men, impose upon themselves exquisitely painful surgical operations, which greatly diminish their fertility ; they do this from a superstitious reverence for sex. In like manner the white races, having discovered machinery and realized its immense power, have allowed themselves to worship it, and have thereby made jt maleficent. Until they cease to view it with awe, they will not be able to make it subserve the true ends of life.

In objecting to the mechanistic outlook, I am not objecting to machinery; it is the worship of machinery, not the use of it, that does the harm. Agriculture still survives, though we have abandoned the worship of the corn spirit, with all its attendant horrors. Similarly the use of machines will survive, even if we cease to worship the god from the machine.

The extreme antithesis to the mechanistic outlook is the outlook of Taoism, which originated in China in the sixth century B.C. Taoism considers that everything, animate and inanimate, has a certain intrinsic nature, and that what is good is that everything should function according to its nature. This will happen if there is no outside interference. Chuang Tze, the St. Paul of Taoism, objects to every attempt to divert people or things from their natural course. He objects, of course, to government, since it consists in controlling people; he objects to the Confucian maxim that we ought to love our neighbors, because we cannot do them any good and our whole duty to them is to let them alone. He objects to roads and boats, to the domestication of horses, even to the
arts of the potter and the carpenter, because all these are interferences with nature. [..]

Chuang Tze's point of view involves an error correlative to that of the mechanistic outlook. The mechanistic outlook holds that what is to be used is to be worshiped; Taoism holds that what is not to be worshiped is not to be used. And of course the problem of government is not to be so easily disposed of. One of men's natural instincts is to interfere with each other; therefore where there is no government only the strong are free. A world where every man's nature is freely developed is impossible, because it is some men's nature to interfere with the free development of other men. But although we cannot achieve Chuang Tze's ideal by merely abolishing government and the arts, that is no reason for disagreeing with his estimate of what is desirable.

The greatest possible amount of free development of individuals is, to my mind, the goal at which a social system ought to aim. To secure this end, we need a compromise between justice and freedom: justice to secure opportunity and the necessaries of life for all; freedom as to the use made of opportunity, so long as that use does not infringe justice.

Justice and freedom have different spheres: the sphere of justice is the external conditions of a good life, the sphere of freedom is the personal pursuit of happiness or whatever constitutes the individual's conception of well-being. The sphere of justice may be appropriately given over to mechanism, but the sphere of freedom must be reserved for humanism. Justice has some value on its own account, but its chief value is as the only preventive of strife; it affords a simple economic principle, which everybody can understand, and which a majority are pretty sure to support when once it is established. But the value of freedom is more positive.

Justice is needed primarily as regards the necessaries of life. Rations and compulsory labour are its pleasant and unpleasant sides. In a just world, no one will inherit money, no one will own more land than he can cultivate himself, no one will be supported in voluntary idleness if he is physically fit for work. Per contra, no one will be allowed to starve; men whose work at their usual trade is not wanted will be supported until they find work, and if necessary will be taught a new trade. This part of what is wanted is no distant ideal; it is already half realized. It is not so difficult to combat poverty as to combat wealth. The wealth at present in private hands is harmful, not so much because it causes poverty (its effect in this direction is perhaps not very great), as because it enslaves the mental life of those who are employed by its possessors. This applies to the professional classes as much as, if not more than, to the wage-earners. The cynicism of many intellectuals (especially journalists) is largely due to the fact that they have to sell their brains to men whom they despise and whose opinions they believe to be pernicious. For them, quite as much
as for wage-earners, a different social system would bring greater freedom, though it would probably not bring an increase in their material comforts.

The true function of industrialism, in a well-ordered community, is the provision of the necessaries of life, and of such comforts as can become widespread without entailing too much labour. If the labour of the community were directed by those who do the work, they would strike a balance between goods and leisure, which is now wholly lacking. The nation might decide to work an extra hour and enjoy more superfluities, or to work an hour less and have fewer goods with more spare time. There would be a strong incentive to the avoidance of useless labour. Under socialism, there would not be the spur of competition and profit to speed up industry. We should be saved the waste involved in advertisement, excessive plant, and marketing. If internationalism also were established, we should save the waste involved in armaments, international competition,
diplomacy and customs. The result would be that the part of a man's life to be given to the community in the shape of necessary work would be very much less than at present, and the part in which he could follow his own devices would be much greater.

All this would require immense organization and the utilization of the best mechanical contrivances. It is not to be supposed that the compulsory work which a man would have to do for his living could, as a rule, be other than tedious and monotonous. Machine-minding cannot easily be humanized. But it would be possible to reduce compulsory work to a rather small amount. Probably with our present technique it could be reduced to four hours a day, and with every technical advance the amount could be diminished. [..]

Assuming such an organized framework for the material side of life, would it be possible to preserve mental freedom? Or would those who controlled the economic organization use their power to persecute any set of people whose opinions or behavior they happened to dislike? I think it must be taken as perfectly certain that the officials in charge of rationing would wish to use their power to crush out all originality and all mental or moral progress. They would have an outlook not unlike that of employers of labor at present. If their power were unchecked, I do not doubt that they would kill art and science and every kind of free speculation about life and the world.

Let us take a few concrete illustrations. What would be done with a female school teacher convicted of unchastity? Or with a literary man convicted of writing in favor of a return to capitalism? Or with a man who spent his leisure preaching Mormonism? It is said -I do not vouch for the assertion - that the Bolsheviks prohibited the teaching of Einstein's doctrines on the ground that they undermined men's faith in the reality of matter. Even if this incident never occurred, similar interferences with science would certainly be attempted under State socialism. [..]

If the State has control of the land and of the food supply, the use of its economic power will have
all the force at present belonging to the criminal law. A person whom the State is not willing to accept as a tenant, or to whom it refuses food tickets, will suffer as much as a convicted felon suffers at present: therefore unless there is to be an intolerable tyranny, the State's economic power will have to be hedged about by the same kind of safeguards that apply at present to police power. [..]

From these considerations it is clear that the preservation of mental freedom under any form of socialism will require certain conditions. There must be an overwhelming public opinion against allowing the State, qua employer, to take account of anything done outside working-hours, unless it has relevance to work [..] To diminish the uniformity of the official spirit, there must be as much self-government in industry as possible [..] The internal organization and administration of an industry should be left in its hands, and not interfered with by the State, except on rare occasions when some crying scandal demanded attention.

What are the advantages to be hoped from such a system?

In the first place, there would be an end of economic competition, bringing with it an almost total cessation of the motives for war. With the ending of competition there would no longer be any motive for the ruinous and spendthrift exploitation of natural resources which now goes on; there would not be the vast development of advertisement and degraded cunning in marketing; there would not be the present morality of success, with its ruthlessness and hypnotic propaganda.
Gradually men's characters would change as they ceased to be obliged to stand on each other's shoulders. [..]

There would cease also to be that all-pervading snobbery that makes everyone except the
very poorest waste money on ostentation to impress neighbors - for instance, in a fine funeral. And there would no longer be the ever-present fear of destitution, which now haunts millions and makes them without scruple in the struggle for life.

With these changes there would come a quieter manner of life - less fever and hustle, fewer material changes, more leisure for meditation, less cleverness and more wisdom. At present, respect is secured by wealth; in a society where wealth was unobtainable and poverty not to be feared, less material standards would prevail. A man would be respected for being a good fellow, kindly, genial, or witty.

Intellect and artistic ability would no longer be overshadowed by business skill, and would not have to sell themselves to gross millionaires. In such an atmosphere, art might revive and science might cease to be prostituted to commerce and war. The human spirit, freed at last from its immemorial bondage to material cares, might display fully for the first time all the splendor of which it is capable. Life might be happy for all, and intoxicatingly glorious for the best.

What stands in the way? Greed, the lust of power, and the tyranny of custom. Perhaps, in the horrors of the coming years, something of this dross may be purged from our nature, and we may learn to hope as the only alternative to despair. If so, the dark time through which the world is passing will not have been endured in vain."

There is a lot to be said about all of Russell's claims, but in general I think he is absolutely right: the inherent tension between individuality and collectivism in modern industrial societies can only be reduced by securing material and spiritual freedoms for all.

[John Jacobi · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book, certainly not an excellent one.

Bad

Someone who reads a lot of sociology or stuff on cultural evolution will find large portions of the book inane and very base-level analysis. The assessments often slide into a kind of worrying-grandma tone, which makes it difficult to take seriously. I didn't finish the last 3 chapters because of this.

Good

It was interesting to see the explicitness with which the Russell's affirmed the Marxist idea of capitalism destroying itself and preparing the way for world socialism. The main thesis, which attracted me to the book in the first place, is also interesting:

"We concluded, as some writers in Germany and Czecho- Slovakia have also concluded, that the important fact of the present time is not the struggle between capitalism and socialism, but the struggle between industrial civilization and humanity. A new economic mode of existence brings with it new views of life which must be analysed and subdued if they are not to dominate to the exclusion of human values. Thus in the past, it has been necessary to destroy a superstitious reverence for agriculture, which dominated before it was made to serve the needs of human beings. Many prejudices still held by modern people are nothing but remnants of the agricultural, or even of the hunting, stage of man’s development. We came to believe that the important differences in the modern world are those which divide nations living by industrialism from those which still live by the more primitive methods, though these are being rapidly abandoned, and industrialism is spreading all over the globe."

But others have better dealt with this thesis. Russell's book is a broad-brush, nanny-picking one, like Lorenz' "Civilized Man's 8 Deadly Sins" or Heilbroner's "Inquiry into the Human Prospect." I have preferred more exact and unique analyses, such as Kaczynski in "Technological Slavery" or some writings by bioethicists. A better and more recent book in a similar vein as Russell and Heilbroner is Martin Rees "Our Final Hour."

[Ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first impression when researching this book is finding out that even admitted Bertrand Russell “fans” don’t hold this book in very high esteem. Although better and more thorough analyses of this book exist, I still have to argue that there’s a lot to learn in the Prospects of Industrial Civilization. I do agree with critics that this probably should have been a longer book as Russell spends too little time on these topics and maybe jumps the gun in his arguments.

The Prospects of Industrial Civilization is Russell’s attempt to discuss the forces shaping the world which also seem to cause to its core struggles. In other words, back when this book was completed (the 1920s) there were forces at play which brought culture and industry into a clash. It’s fair to argue that with a drive for industrialization and efficiency there is less room for culture and personal development and self-determination and Russell here merely argues that a balance between the two would be required for a happy society. Of course he’s going to look at the Soviet Union and what we can learn from their “scientific” approach to nation-building which is purportedly “anti-capitalistic,” and it’s interesting to note that at this time in history Russell was still somewhat hopeful with what it would accomplish. Russell here also briefly weighs in on systems of education, justice, health, and power structures and compares and contrasts between America, Europe and Russia and approaches that benefit the society as a whole or the individual.

Again, the argument that this should have been a longer book is completely understandable, as Russell is often dealing with such broad subjects that it would have been really helpful if he really expanded on his thought processes, instead of how scattered and fragmented it is. However, this doesn’t stop Prospects of Industrial Civilization from being a thoroughly enjoyable and thoughtful book.

[Enrique Gato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro de casi 100 años (1923). Idealista, buen augurador, y humano, con la incertidumbre de un futuro impredecible. Las relaciones que escribe entre el industrialismo y el nacionalismo/imperialismo del periodo de entreguerras está muy bien explicado y es muy esclarecedor. El pronóstico del probable triunfo del socialismo no tanto, y menos aún del aumento de la calidad de vida no por el dinero que ganáramos si no por las horas de tiempo libre que tendríamos. Aunque guarda muchas perlas, como la de que la ciencia en una ideología como la Bolchevique tendría negaciones de determinados preceptos que no encajarían bien con esta. Bueno, como todo lo de Russell.

[John Badger · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Some penetrating insights into the future powerful countries, but otherwise very out of date and not very critically thought out especially compared to his other works

[Mark Gowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in a used bookstore while travelling. It is one of Russell's early works written together with his wife Dora Russell. Published first in 1923, there is no doubt that the book is dated, but as the preface of the 1st edition states, the concepts and problems written about can certainly be applied today.

I think that it is safe to say that many people wonder about the influence of modern technology and extreme social changes. In this time of economic upheaval with banks etc... Russell's book seems to, again, play out. I enjoy Russell's writings (warts and all) because of his seeming prophetic ability in regard to society and even humanity as a whole. Dated, yes, but not antiquated.