The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Eric Foner, Radical Individualism In America: Revolution to Civil War
• I: Methodology
• Scientific Paradigms and History
• Kuhn's Paradigm
• Paradigm Choice, Art, and Reason
• Do Concepts Mold Percepts?
• Paradigms Vs. Research Programmes
• Kuhn and Historical Truth
• Paradigms and Determinism
• A Historian Between Paradigms
• Survival of the Fittest Paradigms?
• Fumbling Toward Truth
• Necessary Truths and Reality
• Economic Laws
• “pure” Vs. “grubby” Knowledge
• Paradigms and Social Change
• II: Consensus, Obedience, and Dissent
• State and Society
• Consensus and Authority
• Civil Disobedience
• Dissent and Virtue
• Underdevelopment Vs. Consensus
• Democracy Vs. Elitism
• Majority Tyranny
• Majority Frustration
• Consensus Vs. Politics
• Consensus and Rights
• Consensus Vs. Majority Rule
• III: Consent and Coercion
• The Right Against Coercion
• Private Property and Coercion
• Consent, Coercion, and Property
• Threats Vs. Offers
• A Clockwork Orange, Freedom, and Coercion
• Weak Will Vs. Compulsion
• Freedom and Using Others
• Equality and Social Coercion
• Human Action Vs. Behavior
• IV: Regulation
• The Regulating Class
• Regulation and Revolution
• Land Expropriation
• State Planning
• Hoover As Regulator
• State Science Research
• The Costs of Research
• Anti-trust
• Sec Regulation
• Sunset Laws
• V: Social Control
• Power and Servility
• State Vs. Education
• Public Vs. Private Education
• Public Schools Vs. Privacy
• Truant Officers As Scapegoats
• Were Professionals Technocrats?
• The Courts and Social Control
• The Army and Social Control
• Land Use and Control
• VI: The Liberal Tradition
• The History of Liberalism
• Freedom and Progress
• Reason and Progress
• Individualism, Property, and Revolt
• Liberal Class Analysis
• Nature and Liberty
• Free Trade and Development
• Liberalism In Transition
• “positive” Liberalism
• Utilitarian Illiberalism
• Spencer and Laissez-faire
• Mill: Liberal Or Socialist?
• Research Fields
• Economics
• Education
• History
• Law
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Political Philosophy
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code)

Were Professionals Technocrats?

Wayne K. Hobson

• California State University, Fullerton

“Professionals, Progressives and Bureaucratization: A Reassessment.” Historian 39 (August 1977): 639–658.

The “organizational synthesis” model —advanced by Samuel Hays and Robert Wiebe as well as by Jerry Israel's Building the Organizational Society (1972)—seeks to explain the motivations behind the middle class political reforms of the Progressive era. The Hays-Wiebe approach views professionals in the progressive period as “elitist technocrats” who automatically identified with their occupational, professional role rather than with nonoccupational affiliations (status, ethnic, or political roles). Supposedly, this professional orientation in the rise of middle class experts led to emphasizing efficiency and bureaucratization. In fact, however, professionals were more selective and less determined in judging between bureaucratic or nonbureaucratic solutions.

The weakness of this organizational synthesis (and its equation of professionalism with bureaucratic reforms) is its technological determinism. It also ignores such factors as various cultural backgrounds and social roles. Professions differed from one another in the extent to which “the power of businessmen or bureaucrats impinged on the autonomous exercise of the professional role.” For analysis, it is better to break up the motivating ideologies of professionals in the Progressive era into three orientations: a purely professional, a bureaucratic, and a business orientation.

To begin with the business orientation, debates within the business community over progressive political reforms divided big business from small businessmen. But besides the corporate or business divisions over reform, the influences of the bureaucratic ideal and the professional ideal fragmented the unity within “professional” ranks. Bureaucrats generally desired centralization, while professionals tended toward individual autonomy. Among professionals, some had more leverage to press for autonomy (e.g., doctors, service-professionals), while engineers and lawyers often became mouthpieces for the businessmen they represented.

These degrees of autonomy create different-sounding responses from “professionals.” Engineers will stress efficiency, while social workers will speak out for their clients. At other times, professionals from different fields may incidentally converge in their political goals and interests to form shifting coalitions.

A key question is provoked by those professionals who supported Progressive era bureaucratic and social reforms. Did professionals support these political policies because of class consciousness (as espoused by Kolko, Weinstein, and Domhoff) or because of their technocratic infatuation with bureaucratic means in themselves (as urged by proponents of the organizational synthesis). This question of motivation cannot be simply answered because the professionals responded to different motives. However, most early twentieth century professionals, enjoying its taste, allied themselves with political power for their share in social control.