An attempt to make comprehensible the dramatic structural shifts brought about by the mechanisation of production and provide a vision for societal organisation in an economy where work becomes increasingly obsolete. The move towards a society of machines, of “technocracy”, is understood to undermine the entire economic system, bringing into question interpretations of value, currency, and the role of man himself.
Particular highlights include discussions on energy as a unit of currency and the ramifications of the secularly diminishing purchasing power of workers. To the former point, Laing aligned himself with the technocracy school who proposed a system of so-called Energy Determinants, an innovative new theory of value where the total amount of energy would be calculated and commodities would be valued according to the amount of energy used in their production.
Laing’s utopian vision of a technocratic society is here attractively presented, with a handsomely illustrated dust jacket and fourteen pages of industrial photographs towards the rear.
Interior clean, dust jacket with light wear to edges, minor chipping at head of spine, small paper loss at foot of rear panel, otherwise a very good copy indeed.
