"That the way to achieve higher standards of living for all is through science and technology, taking advantage of better tools, methods and organization"
About this Quote
A businessman of Wilson's era doesn’t praise science and technology to marvel at human ingenuity; he praises them to justify an entire social contract. The line is pitched as benevolent uplift, but its real target is legitimacy: if rising living standards come from “better tools, methods and organization,” then the people steering those tools and methods - executives, engineers, planners - become the quiet heroes of democracy. Labor unrest, inequality, and political conflict get reframed as technical problems with technical fixes.
The phrasing is doing careful work. “For all” gestures toward shared prosperity, a postwar promise that industrial growth can be broadly distributed. Yet the mechanism isn’t wages, bargaining power, or redistribution; it’s productivity. That’s an argument with teeth in mid-century America, when the wartime mobilization had proved that coordination at scale could transform output, and when companies like GM (where Wilson built his influence) embodied the idea that organization itself was an innovation.
There’s also an implicit moral hierarchy: “higher standards of living” are treated as the primary measure of social success, and science and technology are framed as the cleanest route there, compared with messier political struggles. It’s optimistic, but disciplined optimism - the kind that reassures shareholders and voters alike that progress is not only possible, but manageable.
In the Cold War backdrop, this reads as ideology in work boots: American capitalism as an engine of abundance, competing less on theory than on refrigerators, highways, and the credible claim that modern life can be engineered.
The phrasing is doing careful work. “For all” gestures toward shared prosperity, a postwar promise that industrial growth can be broadly distributed. Yet the mechanism isn’t wages, bargaining power, or redistribution; it’s productivity. That’s an argument with teeth in mid-century America, when the wartime mobilization had proved that coordination at scale could transform output, and when companies like GM (where Wilson built his influence) embodied the idea that organization itself was an innovation.
There’s also an implicit moral hierarchy: “higher standards of living” are treated as the primary measure of social success, and science and technology are framed as the cleanest route there, compared with messier political struggles. It’s optimistic, but disciplined optimism - the kind that reassures shareholders and voters alike that progress is not only possible, but manageable.
In the Cold War backdrop, this reads as ideology in work boots: American capitalism as an engine of abundance, competing less on theory than on refrigerators, highways, and the credible claim that modern life can be engineered.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Charles
Add to List
