https://journals.openedition.org/tp/520#

7 | 2017
Annali VII

Le illusioni dei maghi. Tecnocrazia e populismo

Abstract

The article reflects on the current forms adopted by technocratic power «marktconform», which confiscates democracy in the name of economic and financial imperatives disguised as natural laws. After revisiting a dialogue from Renan of 1871 in which a post-democratic society is imagined as governed by an oligarchy of knowledge, ultimately based on the threat of the use of force, the author focuses on some technocratic theories, that derive from the second industrial revolution: Thorstein Veblen’s proposition of a «soviet of the technicians», and Alvin Gouldner’s «Hegelian left-wing utopia» which entrusts the new «universal class» formed by technicians and intellectuals to replace the old money oligarchies. In the heart of the technocratic ideology there are some assumptions that should be proved: the idea that the development of science and technology makes politics superfluous; the hypothesis that the rationality of the experts is not limited as is that of the ordinary citizens; the supposed moral superiority of the technocrat who would be immune to corruption and the ambition of personal power; an objectivistic conception of common good, exempt from doubt and public debate. In this sense, technocracy is the antithesis of democracy, which does not advance claims of truth or justice, but relies on respect for the dignity and freedom of every individual. Technocracy, on the other hand, is compatible with populist forms of power administration, in which politicians (at the service of technocrats) appear in the leading front, offering citizens the illusion of popular sovereignty.