lewis mumford and institutional economics

Lewis Mumford and Institutional EconomicsAuthor(s): Stewart LongSource: Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 2002), pp. 167-182Published by: Association for Evolutionary EconomicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4227753 .

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J eI JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES Vol. XXXVI No. 1 March 2002

Lewis Mumford and Institutional Economics

Stewart Long

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) was one of twentieth century America's most important heterodox scholars of technology, but his work is virtually unknown to most institutional economists today.1 This is surprising, since Mumford's intellectual worldview owed much to Thorstein Veblen, and he has been referred to as "Veblen's greatest scholarly disciple" (Diggins 1978, 71). I believe this neglect stems from the fact that Mumford was neither an economist nor primarily a university professor. He was instead what Russell Jacoby, in The Last Intellectuals, described as an exemplar of "public intellectuals" who

lived their lives by way of books, reviews and journalism; they never or rarely taught in universities. They were superb essayists and graceful writers, easily writing for a larger public. They were also something more: iconoclasts, critics, polemicists, who deferred to no one. (1987, 17)

It is a sad irony that Mumford, who once complained that "the chief reason for Thorstein Veblen's neglect among (orthodox) economists was the fact that he was so much more than an economic theorist" (1931, 314), has suffered the same fate among modern institutional economists.

Mumford wrote twenty-eight books and more than a thousand articles, book chap- ters, book reviews, and miscellaneous other pieces.2 From the 1920s to the 1970s, he was a major intellectual influence on the American public through his writings for a wide general audience. Despite not graduating from college, he wrote a regular column for The New Yorker magazine, won a National Book Award for nonfiction, received hon- orary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Rome, and served as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. While never accept-

The author is Professor of Economics at California State University, Fullerton. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Thought, April 2000. The author wishes to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments.

167



168 Stewart Long

ing a permanent academic appointment, he taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, M.I.T., Columbia, Stanford, Pennsylvania, and other universities.

Mumford is remembered today primarily as an urban planner, historian, and archi- tectural critic whose major ideas can be found in books such as The Culture of Cities (1938), The City in History (1961), and The Highway and the City (1963). But his books that dealt more generally with issues of technology and culture defy easy compartmentalization and tend to have been forgotten. It is these latter writings that are most relevant to institutional economics.

Mumford's intellectual development, like that of C. E. Ayres, involved an elabora- tion and extension of ideas originating with Veblen. But unlike Ayres, Mumford rejected John Dewey's instrumental valuation and instead adopted an organic value theory inspired by pioneer ecologist Patrick Geddes (Marx 1990, Casillo 1992). Modern Veblenian institutionalism, despite calls for pluralism (e.g., Dugger 1995), is dominated by the ideas of Ayres. As Rick Tilman noted, "It is well established that Ayres systemati- cally integrated Dewey's value theory and Veblen's economics . .. [and] to recapitulate the Ayresian fusion of the two is to substantially restate the intellectual history of evolutionary economics as well as the personal relationship of the two men after World War I" (1990, 963).

Mumford's attempt to integrate Veblen's theory of technological and institutional change with Geddes's organicism provides an interesting alternative to the Ayresian synthesis. Initially the Mumford synthesis (1934) was almost as optimistic as that of Ayres (1961, 1962) about the impact of technological advance. But the organic aspect of the Mumford synthesis led to his criticism of much post-World War II technological change as non-progressive and ecologically damaging (Mumford 1967, 1970). His explanation of the cultural impetus to non-progressive technological change is quite similar to the modern institutional concept of ceremonial encapsulation (Bush 1987, Waller 1987).

Although Mumford's analysis is not as well developed as Ayres', it may be more relevant to institutional analyses of problems associated with recent technological development.3 Mumford not only emphasized ecological concerns but also explicitly incorporated market, political, and media power into his analysis of technological change. Whereas Ayres concentrated on the technological change necessary for economic development and industrialization, Mumford explored the effects and implica- tions of post-industrial technological change. His critique of electronic communication and computers (Mumford 1970), for example, is a prescient anticipation of problems inherent in today's "e-culture."

Intellectual Background

Mumford's primary intellectual mentor was Patrick Geddes, an eccentric Scottish biologist, sociologist, and town planner. Geddes is considered by many to be the



Lewis Mumford and Institutional Economics 169

founder of the urban planning movement and was a pioneer in applying ecological concepts to the study of human society. Although Geddes was not as well known in Amer- ica as in Britain, he had visited the United States in 1899 and "developed lasting friendships and an intellectual rapport with a small group of academics that included Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey" (Stalley 1972, 35). Mumford discovered Geddes' writings while a student at City College of New York and in 1917 began a correspon- dence with him that continued until Geddes' death in 1932 (Miller 1992, 57).

The second most important intellectual influence on Mumford was Thorstein Veblen. Fresh out of the Navy after World War I, Mumford took several classes at the New School for Social Research, including a course on modern economic development taught by Veblen. He noted in his autobiography:

Before meeting Veblen, I had read all his books and had been stirred by them in much the same fashion as I had been by those of Geddes-and for the same reason. Veblen's original studies, from the 'Theory of the Leisure Class' on, left an even clearer impression than Geddes' scattered papers and reports. Both men refused to recognize the no-trespass signs that smaller minds erected around their chosen fields of specialization; except for Max Weber and Werner Sombart, no other contemporary economist or historian had anything like Veblen's cultural range. No wonder his work attracted me! (1982, 220)

Later Mumford was to join the staff of The Dial, a small radical magazine where Veblen and John Dewey were contributing editors. He claimed:

Not the least of the attraction of my new post on "The Dial" as I first envisioned it, was the opportunity it would give me to get nearer to Veblen-if indeed any human being could ever get near to Veblen. (219)

Yet he concluded:

Our coming together on "The Dial" gave me some further claim to Veblen's attention, but as with Patrick Geddes, his influence on my thinking had been greatest before we met. (221)

In the fall of 1919 the ownership of The Dial changed hands. Veblen, Dewey, and Mumford were fired as the magazine's emphasis shifted from politics and society to art and literature (Miller 1992, 112). Mumford then spent several months in London serv- ing as acting editor of The Sociological Review, the journal of the British Sociological Soci- ety co-founded by Geddes.

But by the end of 1920 he was back in New York, and he supported himself throughout the 1920s as a freelance writer contributing to periodicals such as The Free- man, The Nation, and The New Republic. His reputation increased with a series of well-received books-The Story of Utopias (1922), Sticks and Stones (1924), and The Golden Day (1926).



170 Stewart Long

The Critique of Pragmatism

Mumford is considered by many to have been part of the leftist (but non-Marxist) intellectual circle in New York between the world wars that included John Dewey and Wesley Mitchell among others (Lawson 1971). But this generalization obscures the fact that Mumford was one of an anti-Dewey group of social and literary critics who referred to themselves as the "Young Americans" (Ryan 1995, Blake 1990).4 Originally consider- ing themselves followers of Dewey, they claimed to have been disillusioned by his belated support for the US entry into World War I. The initial manifesto of this break with Dewey had been Randolf Bourne's essay, "The Twilight of the Idols," published in 1917 (Blake 1990, 157-64). But the publication of The Golden Day (1926), with its critique of "The Pragmatic Acquiescence," set the stage for a decades-long intellectual con- frontation between Mumford and Dewey.

"The Pragmatic Acquiescence" criticized the philosophy, literary style, and value theory of William James, John Dewey, and their followers. It charged pragmatic philoso- phers, but particularly Dewey, with accepting the utilitarian and commercial aspects of America's post-Civil War culture. What is most relevant to institutional economics is Mumford's criticism of Dewey's concept of instrumental valuation (see Sheehan and Tilman 1992, 202-3). Mumford praised Dewey's instrumentalism for eliminating, as ("a leisure class superstition," the idea that action was "undignified and foreign to the life of the mind." He also claimed that instrumentalism is "a more complete kind of activity, in which facts and values, actualities and desires, achieve an active and organic unity" (Mumford 1926, 260). But he went on to agree with Bourne's criticism of "that unhappy ambiguity in his [Dewey's] doctrine as to just how values were created," resulting in the development of "technique" at the expense of "vision." Mumford concluded, "Without these superimposed values, the values that arise out of vision, instrumentalism becomes the mere apotheosis of actualities: it is all dressed up with no place to go" (1926, 266).5

Mumford's critique drew a response from Dewey (1927) in which he ignored Mumford's positive comments on instrumentalism and attacked the unrealistic ideal- ism of Mumford's views. He claimed that "the values by which Mumford sets such store" are the very ends to which technology and industry contribute. Mumford's answer (1927) re-iterated his view that "ends or ideals" can not created by technological means. As John Westbrook (1990) has emphasized, Mumford was misreading Dewey's views and Dewey was unwilling to see anything but criticism in Mumford's views. Com- menting on the wasteful nature of the estrangement that followed, Westbrook (1990, 309-10) speculated that readers of their books in the 1930s, if unaware of The Golden Day controversy, "might well imagine the two men to be intellectual brothers-in-arms."

The Mumford-Dewey rift developed and widened during the same period that C. E. Ayres's personal and intellectual relationship with Dewey was solidifying (Tilman 1990). In the early 1920s Ayres wrote admiringly of Dewey's pragmatism and the concept of instrumental valuation (e.g., Ayres 1922). In contrast he wrote that Mumford




"dislikes machinery acutely," and his recommendations for alleviating social problems "all take the form of escapes from the consequences of modern life" (Ayres 1924, 8).

Thus it should come as no surprise that after the "pragmatic acquiesce" episode Ayres, in a letter (1927-28) to Dewey discussing the importance to philosophy of not confusing "commercialism" with the "industrial order," should note:

Mumford is floundering in the same confusion ... Preconceiving industrial society as wholly bad, he can't see how one can intellectually assimilate the industrial order in a philosophy in which means are understood instrumentally in relation to never-ceasing ends. (Quoted in Tilman 1990, 964)

What is surprising is that Mumford would soon begin writing a technological history that would strongly emphasize the distinction between pecuniary and industrial activity and would offer an optimistic view of the potential influence of modern machines.

Technology and Culture I

A few of Mumford's articles and books during the 1920s had dealt, at least indi- rectly, with technology. But the publication of "The Drama of the Machines" in Scribner's magazine in 1930 set Mumford firmly on the road to an extensive study and analysis of the subject. In the article, he presented what would become the essence of his critical yet optimistic attitude toward technology in the 1930. He pointed out that despite the "technical triumphs" and "practical success" of machines, "there are wastes, losses, perversions of energy which the ordinary economist blandly concealed." But at the same time, he found "there are human values in machinery that we did not suspect" (1972, 227).

The article greatly impressed Robert Maclver of Columbia University, who invited Mumford to offer a course on the history of technology in the university's extension division (Williams 1990, 49). To prepare for the course, Mumford read everything he could that had been written in the area of technological studies. Realizing he had gath- ered almost enough material to write a book on the subject, he supplemented this sec- ondary research with a trip to the great technical museums of Europe funded by a Guggenheim grant in 1932 (Miller 1992, 303).

The resulting book, Technics and Civilization, is a thousand-year history of technology that Mumford divided into three "overlapping and interpenetrating phases" (Mumford 1934, 109). This framework was based on an earlier two-phase periodization developed by Geddes in his Cities in Evolution (1968, 60-83) that Mumford extended and elaborated with Veblenian concepts.

Mumford designated the period from about 1000 to 1750 AD as the eotechnic phase of technological development. Dominated by water as a power source and wood as a raw material, this phase was marked by "great mechanical achievements" that would lay the groundwork for the succeeding paleotechnic phase. Mumford admired



172 Stewart Long

eotechnic culture "as one of the most brilliant periods in history," but he made clear that the breakup of its institutions was essential for "the tempo of invention" to increase and for the "multiplication of machines" to take place (Mumford 1934, 111-112).

From the perspective of economic historians today, the first part of Technics and Civ- ilization presents a well,known and accepted story. But in 1934 the hypotheses that the "Industrial Revolution" could be traced to origins in the twelfth century and that the mechanical clock was as key an invention to the development of industrial capitalism as the steam engine were relatively new ideas (especially to an English-speaking audience). Mumford's explanation of how medieval monasteries initiated the spread of "clock" time and then found their authority undermined by the commercial class's use of the new technology has become what historian David Landes (1983, 407) called the "classic and most eloquent statement of the link."

Mumford designated the period from 1750 to 1830 as the paleotechnic phase of technology, dominated by coal as a power source and iron as a raw material. He emphasized that the technological changes of this period, traditionally referred to as the industrial revolution, "multiplied, vulgarized, and spread the methods and goods" first produced in the eotechnic period. He believed the transition between the two periods was an evolutionary process rather than the "supposedly sudden and inexplicable out- burst of invention" and that the paleotechnic period had often "received credit for many of the advances that were made in the centuries that preceded it" (Mumford 1934, 15 1).

The institutional framework that developed in the paleotechnic period plays a key role in Mumford's explanation of the evolution to the neotechnic phase of technology. Echoing Veblen, he noted that paleotechnic industry involved "a sharp shift in interest from life values to pecuniary values" and "the system of interests which had only been latent and which had been restricted in great measure to the merchant and the leisure classes now pervaded every walk of life." In this new pecuniary culture, he observed, "It was no longer sufficient for industry to provide a livelihood: it must create an independent fortune: work was no longer a necessary part of living: it became an all-important end." Industrial workers found that factory operations "were repetitive and monoto- nous; the environment was sordid; the life... was empty and barbarous to the last degree" (Mumford 1934, 153-4).

But Mumford optimistically believed that the significance of the paleotechnic phase of technology was "not in what it produced but in what it led to." He described it as a period of transition, "a busy, congested, rubbish-strewn avenue between the eotechnic and neotechnic economies ... [that] helped by its very disorder to intensify the search for order" (1934, 211). This search for order created the scientific method that became a crucial aspect of the transition to the neotechnic phase of technology.

Electricity as a power source and alloys as raw materials dominate the neotechnic phase, from 1830 to the present. Mumford explained that in this period the capitalist production process depends increasingly on theories of pure science. The main impetus for technological development comes "not from the ingenious inventor, but from the




scientist who establishes the general law." Thus he claimed, "It was Henry who in essen- tials invented the telegraph not Morse," just as it was "Clerk-Maxwell and Hertz who invented the radio telegraph, not Marconi and DeForest" (1934, 217-18). Since the dis- coveries of "liberated scientific curiosity" are valuable to the economy, but pure scien- tists are not motivated to seek "pragmatic results," the engineering profession rises to prominence "in the interpretation and application of science" (218-19).

As engineering "methods of exact analysis and controlled observation began to pen- etrate every department of activity," the neotechnic economy would increasingly be run by "technicians." But unlike Veblen, Mumford did not see this as a progressive development.6 He felt that technicians are limited by the "specialized, one-sided, factual educa- tion" of engineers, which lacks "humanistic interests" (1934, 220). Combining the capitalist's pecuniary motive with the engineer's goal of turning scientific theories into the creation of commodities by advanced machines creates what Mumford calls "purposeless materialism":

a disproportionate emphasis on the physical means of living: people sacrifice time and present enjoyments in order that they acquire a greater abundance of physical means; for there is supposed to be a close relation between well-being and the number of bathtubs, motor cars, and similar machine-made products that one may possess. . . . Its particular defect is that it casts a shadow of reproach upon all the non-material interests and occupations of mankind: in particular it condemns liberal esthetic and intellectual interests because 'they serve no useful purpose.' . . . The habit of producing goods whether they are needed or not, of utilizing inventions whether they are useful or not, of applying power whether it is effective or not pervades almost every department of our present civilization.... And to the extent that this materialism is purposeless, it becomes final: the means are presently converted into an end. (Mumford 1934, 273-4)

While this critique is reminiscent of his earlier attack on "the pragmatic acquiescence," Mumford was confident that this institutional structure carried over from the paleotechnic period is destined to change. He was particularly optimistic about the role that neotechnic technology and machines will play in the change.

His interpretation of the changing design of machines (the book includes many photographs to illustrate this point) led him to conclude that neotechnic technology is becoming increasingly organic in nature (Mumford 1934, 367).

The biological sciences appropriate to this new organicism will help neotechnic society and culture evolve away from the exploitative capitalism that resulted from the physical sciences (physics and chemistry) of the paleotechnic phase. The economy will evolve into what he called "basic communism," loosely based on the system in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward.7 The key aspects of this system would involve the limitation and planning of production and consumption by the entire community, the obligation



174 Stewart Long

of all to share in work necessary to produce the "basic" needs of goods and services, and the complete equality of income (Mumford 1934, 403).

But for Mumford the details of this economic system are less important than the major feedback effect that an organic culture will have on the technology that fostered it. He envisioned a new tendency to "think and act in terms of an organic whole, rather than in terms of abstractions" and a new society "concerned with life in its full manifes- tation," rather than with "purely mechanical systems." Mumford predicted, " The old machines will in part die out, as the great saurians died out, to be replaced by smaller, faster, brainier, and more adaptable organisms, adapted not to the mine, the battlefield and the factory, but to the positive environment of life" (1934, 428).

Mumford's view that the paleotechnic period created the conditions for the even- tual triumph of the neotechnic organic culture was often lost on readers and reviewers of Technics and Civilization. Some concentrated on the periodization schema of the first half of the book and saw it as a Whiggish history of the progress of western civilization. Others concentrated on the dismal description of paleotechnic culture, working conditions, and environmental effects and saw it as a telling criticism of industrial capitalism. Some felt the book glorified machine technology, while others felt it denigrated machines (Hughes and Hughes 1990, 5-6). But the book established Mumford's reputation as a leading critic and interpreter of machine technology, and it is considered one of the classic works that helped create a new academic field in the history of technology (Miller 1992, 328).

The reaction of C. E. Ayres to Technics and Civilization and Mumford's views on technology and culture can be gleaned from his lengthy review (Ayres 1938-39, 227 -34) of Mumford's subsequent book, The Culture of Cities (1938). In it Ayres referred to Mumford as "a perfectionist" and "a dreamer of utopias" but went on to say, "in addi- tion he is a social theorist ... who is also, most recently, the author of Technics and Civili- zation" (229). These varied aspects of Mumford's thinking were attributed by Ayres to "Mumford's early and long admiration for Patrick Geddes; but this is most notably the case with the technological framework of his analysis" (230). Ayres then explained Mumford's three-phase theory of technology which had been applied in the new book to the development of cities. He appeared sympathetic to Mumford's call for a shift from a pecuniary economy to a life economy in modern garden cities but is critical of the fact that, "(what he (Mumford) hated in the early industrial towns is the din and smut without which technological progress would have been impossible" (233). He lamented the fact that Mumford "is no less an idealist in politics and economics than in architec- ture," but he admired Mumford's "never missing a chance to point out the brutalities of power politics and power economics . .. Land] speaking at every turn for cooperation, socialization, [and] collectivization" (232). The review is fascinating for its vacillation between obvious admiration for Mumford as technological historian, social critic, and writer, and regret for Mumford's apostasy on the issue of instrumentalism.

While Ayres made only footnote references to Technics and Civilization in The Theory of Economic Progress (1962, 144, 232), the idea that he continued to be a grudging




admirer of Mumford in later years is suggested in The Industrial Economy (1952). In the latter book, Ayres (1952, 422) recommended Technics and Civilization "for a vivid appre- ciation of the significance of technology," and he also noted that a "clear, . . . concise, but unsympathetic, sketch of the classical conception (of the economy) is to be found in Lewis Mumford's remarkable foreword to Planned Society (1937), edited by Findlay MacKenzie."

Technology and Culture 11

Thirty years after Technics and Civilization appeared, Mumford returned to the major themes of technology and culture in a two-volume work he called The Myth of the Machine. In the first volume-Technics and Human Development (1967)-Mumford claimed his purpose was to question the commitment to the "present forms of technical and scientific progress" (3).

Abandoning the phase schema of Technics and Civilization, Mumford now retreated to pre-historic times to begin his treatment of technology. He believed, as did Ayres (1961, 87-102), that the creation of language was a key factor that separated humans from other animals. But unlike Ayres, Mumford claimed the evolution of language was far more important to early human development than the evolution of physical tools (which he disdainfully referred to as "the chipping of a mountain of hand-axes"). He believed the time and effort that early humans devoted to language must have been much greater "since the ultimate collective product, spoken language, was infinitely more complex at the dawn of civilization than the Egyptian or Mesopotamian kit of tools" (Mumford 1967, 8-9). What of tools then? They served well as subsidiary instru- ments but not as the main operative agent in human development.

Mumford believed the development of technology should be seen as an inseparable part of human cultural development. Early technics was part of the larger culture and was "broadly life-centered, not work-centered or power-centered" (1967, 9). But he also felt the tendency "to mix fantasies and projections, desires and designs, abstractions and ideologies, with the commonplaces of daily experience" was an important source of human creativity. This is a source of misunderstanding about the nature of technology. Since there is "no clear dividing line between the irrational and the super-rational," the impact of "these ambivalent gifts" on technology has always been a major human prob- lem. Mumford felt that the "current utilitarian interpretations of technics and science have been shallow . .. (because) they ignore this aspect of human culture" (1967, 11).

Mumford argued that these irrational factors were important when elements of Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures united around the fourth millenium BC in what is usually called "the rise of civilization." What was remarkable about this transformation was that it was the result, not of mechanical inventions, but of "a radically new type of social organization: a product of myth, magic, religion, and . .. nascent science." Find- ing a parallel between the first authoritarian civilizations in the Near East and our own,



176 Stewart Long

he claimed "the Machine Age or the Power Age, had its origin, not in the so-called Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century, but at the very outset in the organization of an archetypal machine composed of human parts" (1967, 11).

Mumford argued that the organization of huge populations of enslaved workers to build the pyramids and massive waterworks marks the first appearance of what he calls the "megamachine" that exists today in a more familiar industrial, mechanized format. The characteristics of all megamachines include exactitude in measurement, an abstract mechanical system based upon science, concentrated political and economic power reinforced by ideology, and enormous physical productivity. What Mumford called the "myth of the machine" is the widespread perception that the benefits of what the megamachine produces are greater than the human costs it inflicts (1967, 12).

While the first volume of The Myth of the Machine concentrates on the development of capitalist culture from its medieval roots and ends with the sixteenth century, the second volume, entitled The Pentagon of Power (1970), presents the twentieth century as the ultimate example of the "myth of the machine." While modern social and technological transformation was rationalized as a massive practical effort to fulfill human needs and increase material wealth, Mumford believed it was based on a deeply subjective and more obsessive drive toward the "conquest" of nature and the control of life. The result was the modern megamachine, replete with repetitive motions, depersonalized pro- cesses, and abstract quantitative goals. The later technological advances through elec- tronics only increased the scope and coercive absolutism of the system (Mumford 1970, 164).

This modern megamachine consists of a power complex whose components include the modern energy forms-electric, oil, and nuclear; political power that creates and protects property; machine productivity; and pecuniary profit. An integral part of the power system is publicity, through which "the merely human directors of the power complex-the military, bureaucratic, industrial, and scientific elite-are inflated to more than human dimensions in order to better maintain authority" (1970, 166).

Mumford explained that certain components of the power complex originally were part of, and performed indispensable functions in, an ecosystem which included human culture. But the modern power complex has wrenched these separate components from their organic matrix and enclosed them in an isolated subsystem centered not on the support and intensification of life but on the expansion of power and personal aggrandizement. Every component is reducible to pecuniary terms, and "money itself in turn can be translated equally into power or property or publicity or public (television) personalities" (1970, 167).

The economic goal of the modern megamachine is not primarily to satisfy the essential human needs with a minimal productive effort but to multiply the number of needs and accommodate them to the maximum mechanical capacity to produce profits. He argued that there are two conditions for keeping the megamachine running smoothly. First, every member of the community "must acquire, use, devour, waste, and finally destroy a sufficient quantity of goods to keep its productive mechanism in opera-



Lewis Mumford and Institutional Economics 1 77

tion." Since the productivity of the system is immense, this requires that members of the family take on extra jobs. The second requirement is for the majority of the population to forego all modes of activity except those that call for the unremitting use of the machines or their products. This includes "the abandonment of manual work and craft skill, even on the simplest domestic and personal scale.... (and) as a minimum of bodily activity is necessary for health, it must be acquired by purchasing such exercising machines as stationary bicycles." (1970, 328-29).

Society becomes subject to what Mumford called "technological compulsiveness," where it "meekly submits to every new technological demand and utilizes without question every new product, whether it is an actual improvement or not." A product's being the result of a new scientific discovery or a new technological process, or offering new opportunities for investment, "constitutes the sole proof required of its value" (1970, 186).

It is important to note that Mumford did not deny the many benefits that do flow from the goods that are produced by the modern megamachine. He admitted that many of the goods that "megatechnics" provides are of high quality, produced with mechanical efficiency and embodying the best scientific knowledge. He agreed that "none of megatechnics efficient modes of organization, none of its labor-saving devices, none of its new products, however daring in their departures from old forms, should be arbi- trarily disparaged or neglected, still less rejected out of hand" (1970, 333). For it is "not the mechanical or electronic products as such that intelligent minds question," but the "great social losses" that accompany their production (1970, 334).

Modern Devices of Communication and Computation

One area of technology Mumford examined and critiqued in depth is modern devices of communication and computation. In Technics and Civilization he noted how the invention of the telegraph and then the telephone, radio, and eventually television has shortened the time span between communication and potential response. He con- ceded that this development has led to a geographically wider range of communication and a great increase in the number of messages exchanged. But Mumford did not believe the spread of this type of rapid worldwide communication would produce "a less trivial or a less parochial personality." For he feared that "writing, reading, and drawing, the media of reflective thought and deliberate action, will be weakened." He concluded that there is "certainly nothing to indicate, as the earlier exponents of instantaneous communication seem pretty uniformly to have thought, that the results will be automat- ically favorable to the community" (Mumford 1934, 240-41).

Revisiting electronic communications in The Pentagon of Power (1970) after having witnessed their explosion over the preceding thirty-five years, Mumford was unrepen- tant. He dismissed as "humbug" Marshall McLuhan's claim that these media are creat-



178 Stewart Long

ing a new "global village" (Mumford 1970, 297). He felt that instead of empowering the whole world, the mass media, especially television,

magnify and vulgarize the dominant components of the power system in the very act of seeming to revolt against its regimentation.... [T]reating the planet as a "tribal village" by instant electronic communication . .. [makes] the world an easy prey to . . . the historic mischief of "civilization": the subjugation of a large population for the exclusive benefit of a ruling minority. So far from there being any spontaneous communication under this regime, these electronic media are carefully controlled to make sure that "dangerous," that is, unortho- dox views do not slip through. Such a system permits neither colloquy nor dia- logue, as in genuine oral intercourse: what takes place is for the greater part a meticulously arranged monologue, even if more than one person is present on the screen. A population entirely dependent upon such controlled oral communication, even though it reached every human soul on the planet, would not merely be at the mercy of the Dominant Minority but would become increasingly illiterate. (1970, 298)

Mumford attributed even more debilitating effects to the spread of the electronic computer. He believed that extending the operations of the computer into areas previ- ously under the direct control of humans is an attempt to exercise control, not only of the mechanical process itself, but of the human being who once directed it. The productive worker is replaced by "a bureaucratic substitute, capable of feeding and nursing the vast cybernetic pseudo-organism that is coming into existence.... The most sterile kind of work possible, 'paper work,' . . . has increased by leaps and bounds: and the resulting degeneration of responsive and responsible intelligence is patent here" (1970, 191).

Equally disturbing to Mumford were some of the consequences of the computer intrusion into the pursuit of knowledge in universities. His remarkably prophetic view was that:

Without pausing to weigh the consequences many administrators are now play- ing with the desperate notion of abandoning the preservation of books entirely, as an obsolete form of the permanent record, and transferring the contents at once to ... computers. Unfortunately, "information retrieving," however swift, is no substitute for discovering by direct personal inspection knowledge whose very existence one had possibly never been aware of, and following it at one's own pace through the further ramifications of relevant literature.... As the mechanical facilities of our educational institutions expand, with their heavy investment in ... their computers, . . . TV sets, ... machine-marked "yes-or-no" examination papers, the human contents necessarily shrink in significance. (1970, 182,184)

Mumford felt that the widespread acceptance of the technological model for modern society has resulted in the acceptance of those who control computers as society's




ultimate decision makers. Since the general public forgets that it is the human brain that invented "this quasi-divine instrument" (the computer), feeds it the data, and poses the problems to be solved, it "may be excused for worshipping this deity." On the other hand, he abhorred the fact that those who create and control computers "are subject to the opposite kind of hallucination-that they are in fact God, or at least co-partners in omnipotence" (1970, 273, emphasis in original).

Conclusions

The picture of society that Mumford painted in The Myth of the Machine is more dismal than that portrayed earlier in Technics and Civilization. While the earlier book was written during the Great Depression, in it Mumford had seen machines as having an internal organic component that would contribute to eliminating the adverse cultural institutions that had carried over from the paleotechnic phase of technology. He believed a new society based upon the biological sciences and a planned economy would lead to a lifestyle that was more truly human and less dominated by expanding material wants.

But by the 1960s, after having lost his son in World War II and having witnessed the destructive potential of nuclear power, he was much less optimistic. His earlier trust in the inherent organicism of machines had all but disappeared. He now emphasized that the origins of technological change have always included significant irrational elements. Modern technology itself, encapsulated within an irrational culture, is now part of what oppresses humanity.

But Mumford did not abandon all hope. He felt the megamachine can be defeated. But the overthrow of the "myth of the machine" will require a rejuvenation of the organic, and truly human, aspects of human culture. In an epilogue entitled "The Advancement of Life" Mumford (1970, 414-435) claimed that the key element in this rejuvenation is already underway-a re-discovery of life values which are able to survive technological and cultural change in history.8

He cited as evidence both the resistance to centralized power exhibited in the anti-Vietnam War movement and the increased interest in the 1960s in simpler, decen- tralized, planned communities.

Institutional economics has always welcomed the insights and analyses of heterodox thinkers. While Lewis Mumford was not an economist as narrowly defined by neo- classical standards, he thought and wrote about issues that are important to the institutional perspective. His intellectual synthesis of the ideas of Veblen and Geddes is an interesting alternative to the standard Ayresian framework. While Mumford explicitly rejected Dewey's concept of instrumental valuation, his transcendental "life values" are conceptually similar to the "generic ends of life" values that Sheehan and Tilman (1992, 202-5) attribute to Veblen.



180 Stewart Long

But more importantly, Mumford's historical analysis applied Veblenian concepts to specific technological developments ranging from twelfth century Europe to late twentieth century America. His ideas about the impact of electronic communications and computers still seem relevant thirty years later. 'While Mumford's views on technology and culture differ significantly from those of Ayres and his followers, they can provide useful insights for institutional economists analyzing technology and culture today. I feel we would do well to heed the opinion of Ayres (1938-39, 229) himself on the value of reading Mumford:

The perusal of his books is in effect a series of intimate conversations with one of the liveliest, most sensitive, and broadly cultivated minds of our genera- tion-somewhat one-sided to be sure, but by no means altogether so.... [W]e find ourselves . . . confirming his brilliant observations with our own limited experience, countering his crotchets with notions of our own, always wanting to interrupt his monologue but hesitating to do so for fear of missing something else to come.

Notes

1. In contrast, Mumford was well known to earlier institutional economists such as Wesley C. Mitchell, C. E. Ayres, and K. William Kapp.

2. For a complete record of Mumford's publications through 1970 see Newman 1971. 3. Although I agree with Anne Mayhew's (1981) view that Ayresian institutionalists can shift

their emphasis to one of caution concerning new technologies and awareness of environmental limits, I also feel that becoming familiar with Mumford's writings may accelerate that shift.

4. This is further support for Rick Tilman's (1984, 747) point "that specific individuals often claimed to be part of the Progressive intellectual movement were very different kinds of thinkers."

5. That this attack troubled instrumentalists deeply can be seen in the fact that Ayres would complain (thirty-five years later!) that "today it is the intellectual fashion to regard industrial man as all dressed up with nowhere to go" (Ayres 1961, 13).

6. Mumford earlier had written an unsympathetic review of Veblen's The Engineers and the Price System entitled "If Engineers Were Kings" (Mumford 1921).

7. He also referred to his "communism" as "post-Marxian" because it was not based on paleotechnic "facts and values" (Mumford 1934, 403).

8. While Mumford always claimed that organic "life values" transcended any instrumental valuation process, his description of their re-discovery sounds remarkably like Ayres's description of instrumental valuation as deciding whether "the thing or act in question will, or will not, advance the life process" (Ayres 1961, 113).

References

Ayres, C.E. "Review of Human Nature and Conduct byJohn Dewey," Journal of Philosophy 19 (1922): 469-75. -. "A People's Houses." The New Republic 41 (Dec. 10, 1924): 7-8.

- "Talking of Cities." The Southern Review 4 (1938-39): 227-34. . The Theory of Economic Progress. 2d ed. [19441 Reprint, New York: Schocken Books, 1962.




The Industrial Economy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952. . Toward a Reasonable Society. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.

Blake, Casey. Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Bush, Paul D. "The Theory of Institutional Change." Journal of Economic Issues 21 (September 1987): 1075-1116.

Casillo, Robert. "Lewis Mumford and the Organicist Concept in Social Thought." Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (Jan.-March 1992): 91-116.

Dewey, John. "The Pragmatic Acquiescence." The New Republic 49 (January 19, 1927): 187-89. Diggins, John P. The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modem Social Theory. NewYork: Seabury Press, 1978. Dugger, William M. "Veblenian Institutionalism: The Changing Concepts of Inquiry." Journal of Economic Is-

sues 29 (Dec. 1995): 1013-28. Geddes, Patrick. Cities in Evolution. [19151 Reprint, London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1968. Hughes, Thomas P., and Agatha C. Hughes, eds. Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual. New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1990. Jacoby, Russell. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Landes, David S. Revolution in Time. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1983. Lawson, R. Alan. The Failure of Independent Liberalism. New York: Capricorn Books, 1972. Marx, Leo. "Lewis Mumford: Prophet of Organicism." In Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual, edited by Thomas

p. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1990, 164-80. Mayhew, Anne. "Ayresian Technology, Technological Reasoning, and Doomsday," Journal of Economic Issues 15

(June 1981): 513-20. Miller, Donald L. Lewis Mumford: A Life. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. Mumford, Lewis. "If Engineers Were Kings." The Freeman 4 (November 23, 1921): 261-2. -. The Golden Day. New York: Horace Liveright, 1926.

The Pragmatic Acquiescence: A Reply." The New Republic 49 (January 19, 1927): 250-51. The Drama of the Machines." Scribner's Magazine 88 (August 1930). Reprinted in Mumford 1972,

227-40. Thorstein Veblen." The New Republic 67 (August 5, 1931): 314-16.

. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934. The Myth of the Machine. Vol. 1, Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967. The Myth of the Machine. Vol. II, The Pentagon of Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.

. Interpretations and Forecasts: 1922-1972. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. Sketches from Life. New York: Dial Press, 1982.

Newman, Elmer S. Lewis Mumford: A Bibliography, 1914-1970. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971. Ryan, Alan. John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism. NewYork: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995. Sheehan, Michael F., and Rick Tilman. "A Clarification of the Concept of 'Instrumental Valuation' in Institu-

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sity Press, 1972. Tilman, Rick. "Dewey's Liberalism versus Veblen's Radicalism: A Reappraisal of the Unity of Progressive So-

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Waller, William T. "Ceremonial Encapsulation and Corporate Cultural Hegemony." Journal of Economic Issues 21 (March 1987): 321-8.

Westbrook, John. "Lewis Mumford, John Dewey, and the 'Pragmatic Acquiescence."' In Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual, edited by Thomas P. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, 301-322.



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Williams, Rosalind. "Lewis Mumford as a Historian of Technology in Technics and Civilization." In Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual, edited by Thomas P. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes. New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1990, 43-65.



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