Veblen and the Political Economy of the Engineer

Abstract

A bstract . Thorstein Veblen's case for a Technocracy, “The Engineers and the Price System,” has long posed an enigma: Why would a thinker as radical as Veblen align himself with a group as conservative as engineers? But engineers themselves had developed a political economy with important points in common with Veblen's analysis. Starting from their positions as technological experts in corporations , engineers came to believe that business methods were not efficient for production; this belief led them to develop systems of scientific management as an antidote to old‐style management. Later, they expanded these ideas into a system of social management called Technocracy. This system of Technocracy represented an engineering effort at formulating an industrial democracy , with the cooperation of labor. Veblen was able to write a more systematic version of these ideas, because they fit in well with his own theoretical analysis.