ARGUMENTS
stand the significance of the past, who are
in the stream of cur–
rent ideas,
and who can
make use of them,
and who have the
quality of imagination that is capable of
foreseeing and wel–
coming the future.
...
The educational authorities, with the full
support of the government, should institute
a course of training
which would be specifically aimed at
creating ,a new breed of
administrator.
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Sir Leon wants his "mix" to contain more than science and tech–
nology. Humanities must have an important place in that "training,"
and even the arts. "You cannot have these arts in a state of vigor and
health without the participation of a large cultured public," Sir Leon
argues:
. . . And if you create this public by arousing the interests of
young people in the arts, the satisfying of these
intuitive desires
would lead
to
a considerable development in the creative arts
themselves. They only flourish when the market is there for
them.
It
is
the duty of government to see that the market
is
available and well provided with funds.
This, then,
is
the utopian vision. Only unhealthy pessimism stands
in the way of total realization. The abundant society, the happy society,
the new-values society: "given the technical means now at our disposal,
we must get rid of the out-of-date concept that only those who work
have a right to eat." Sir Leon does not
go
as far as those who argue
for a guaranteed annual income, but he moves toward it by suggesting
"those who are the least able to contribute, the young, women who do
not want to work in paid productive employment, the aged and the
infIrm . . . will no longer
be
forced by economic pressures to remain in
the work stream." The class struggle is over; the Protestant ethic is dis–
missed for all time; "Most of the thought patterns of a hundred years
ago are obviously obsolete, but those of twenty or thirty years ago . . .
are much less easy to recognize as being totally obsolete." In the automa–
tion utopia the obsolete must be phased out, and quickly.
But man
is
an unstable input: and those who are "trained"
are not fixed and error-proof. Once or twice in his happy forward–
looking book Sir Leon allows for psychological consequences not in
keeping with the up-and-doing urgency of its tone: "the fact that not
all
workers can accept the kind of responsibility which automation would
place upon them should not be passed over"; to safeguard men and
the system there must be "careful selection of workers, to prevent nervous
fatigue and possible breakdown."
