"If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery"
About this Quote
A warning disguised as a tidy conditional, Harrington’s line punctures the feel-good myth that new machines naturally pull societies upward. The phrasing is doing stealthy work: “technological advance” sounds neutral, even benevolent, while “social advance” is left deliberately undefined, forcing the reader to supply the missing content - stronger labor rights, racial justice, public health, democratic power. That gap is the subtext. Harrington is arguing that progress is not a single track; if the moral and political infrastructure doesn’t keep pace, innovation becomes an accelerant for old inequalities.
“Almost automatically” is the dagger. Misery doesn’t require villains twirling mustaches; it emerges from default settings. New technology reorganizes work, information, and daily life faster than laws and norms can respond. Without counterweights, efficiency turns into displacement, abundance into deprivation, connectivity into surveillance. Harrington’s intent isn’t to scold inventors but to indict a system that treats social policy as an afterthought and calls it inevitability.
The context matters: Harrington, a democratic socialist and author of The Other America, wrote amid postwar prosperity that still left massive poverty intact. In that era, the U.S. could put a man on the moon while failing to guarantee dignified housing, healthcare, or decent wages. The quote echoes that contradiction and anticipates our own: from automation to algorithmic management, we keep upgrading tools while underinvesting in the social bargain. Harrington’s point lands because it reframes “innovation” as a political choice about who gets protected when the future arrives.
“Almost automatically” is the dagger. Misery doesn’t require villains twirling mustaches; it emerges from default settings. New technology reorganizes work, information, and daily life faster than laws and norms can respond. Without counterweights, efficiency turns into displacement, abundance into deprivation, connectivity into surveillance. Harrington’s intent isn’t to scold inventors but to indict a system that treats social policy as an afterthought and calls it inevitability.
The context matters: Harrington, a democratic socialist and author of The Other America, wrote amid postwar prosperity that still left massive poverty intact. In that era, the U.S. could put a man on the moon while failing to guarantee dignified housing, healthcare, or decent wages. The quote echoes that contradiction and anticipates our own: from automation to algorithmic management, we keep upgrading tools while underinvesting in the social bargain. Harrington’s point lands because it reframes “innovation” as a political choice about who gets protected when the future arrives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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