A dystopia of control

David Reisman

Chapter 5 in Economy and Utopia, 2026, pp 54-74 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Some authors were optimistic about the symbiosis of wise leadership and beneficent nature that was replacing the outdated alternatives of tyranny and commerce. Others showed an awareness that power-hungry cliques and conditioned reflexes could weed out the creativity and spontaneity of the authentically human experience. The more that science could achieve, the greater the danger that dictators like Stalin and Hitler could reverse Newtonian optimism into a Nietzschean darkness where individual autonomy is the first casualty of economic and technological efficacy. The Enlightenment had run its course. Nowadays, it is vivisection, mind-altering pharmaceuticals, names replaced by numbers and socially engineered cultural patterning that are leaving free men and women exposed to the machinations of Big Brother unless they act to reverse the encroachment of control.

Keywords: H.G. Wells; Zamyatin; Huxley; Orwell; Skinner (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035368600
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