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The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They
have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but
they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to
indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical
suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued
development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to
greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater
social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even
in “advanced” countries.
The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it may
eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing
through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing
human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social
machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no
way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and
autonomy.
If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system
grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best
break down sooner rather than later.
We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may
not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a
few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures
that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution
against that form of society. This is not to be a political revolution. Its object will be to overthrow
not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out
of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or
ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as
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unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received
insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there
are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about
environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be
highly important.
What will the name of this young man be?
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