Industrial Psychology: The Evolution of a Global Control System

The systems of large-group behavioral manipulation and control utilized by authoritarian structures are fundamentally anti-human in intent, practice and effect. "Industrial Psychology" developed alongside modern "correctional" (1) theory during the Industrial Revolution. Industrial psychologist Frederick Winslow Taylor developed a system of applied behavioral psychology for the express purpose (in his own words) of making each worker "a mere automaton, a wooden man."(2)

Since Taylor's time, these systematic assaults on the humanity and individuality of the worker have increased in intensity and sophistication, resulting in a relatively helpless and easily controlled human "herd," which in spite of its superior numbers remains subservient to the global elite. Business needs efficient and effective systems of behavioral control.

Brute force and physical forms of coercion are expensive and generally ineffective:

With the industrial revolution came labor unions and labor unrest. Faced with appalling working conditions, long hours, and sub-subsistence wages, workers felt they had little to lose and often were willing to endure much in the way of deprivation and brutality. Primitive and sometimes deadly attacks on the strikers would usually just increase the workers' resolve to struggle.

"By the turn of the century, the dramatic increase in factory mechanization, deplorable working conditions, and pressures to boost productivity (and thereby profit) resulted in a labor force in militant conflict with business. Initial attempts to control this situation through force (using Pinkerton police, imported strikebreakers, State militia, etc.) were generally unsuccessful and employers felt the need for more effective ways to control workers and their productivity; strategies that would come to form the specialty of 'industrial psychology' (to be distinguished from the later 'Psychology Industry') (Dr. Tana Dineen, "Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People"1995:113)

Michel Foucault defined the management's goal -controllable workers- with the term 'docile bodies.' Even in positions requiring formal education or advanced training, the docility of the worker is considered essential. ("Discipline and Punish," pp. 135-170)

Industrial Psychology makes workers interchangeable and therefore expendable, as a problematic worker may easily be replaced with a more docile one:

"Taylorism" broke various tasks down into their smallest individual components, simple motions that could be learned in a very short period of time.
Under Taylorism, management divided skilled work into its elementary component parts and redistributed it among a number of less skilled workers, each of whom performed only limited tasks in ways rigidly defined by management (or indirectly defined by the controls built into the machines they operate). This is perhaps most evident in the assembly line technology developed by Henry Ford. (Dineen, 1995:114)

It's possible to see this principle at work in wide variety of low-paying jobs and work places. Fast food, janitiorial and retail businesses usually require that a new hire learn as many of the lower level functions of the business as possible. At the same time, few of these individual tasks take more than a day or two to master, so that an employee may be replaced from within the company or from the outside job market.

The Global Elite is pro-actively involved in Industrial Psychology and also "The Psychology Industry" :

Mainstream psychotherapeutic doctrines, especially those that are behavioral, or cognitive-behavioral in focus generally define dissatifaction with living conditions and social norms as pathological conditions to be treated. The individual in treatment is encouraged to adjust to exisiting conditions, and desire for fairness or even self-gratification is said to be rooted in "irrational beliefs," or a biochemical imbalance. Medications and new definitions of what it is "rational" to think and feel at any given time are provided. Obedience and conformity are the desired results.

It makes perfect sense for businesses, quasi-governmental groups, governments of nations and the global elite to financially support these practices:

The World Bank now has a "Mental Health Division" to support corporate psychiatry globally!" (Martha Russell and Jean Stewart, Disablement, Prison, and Historical Segregation [Monthly Review 3, Volume 53, July/August 2001])

"Mind Manipulation" and "Psychological Fascism"

David Icke, a controversial conspiracy researcher, refers to the elite's utilization of industrial psychology and other systems of large -group behavioral control as "Mind Manipulation," and "Psychological Fascism,"(3)also acknowledging the superior efficiency of psychological control systems, particularly those that create an illusion of choice.

"...You cannot control billions of people with tanks in the streets and soldiers at the door. You can only do it by divide and rule-and by programming the mass consciousness (public opinion) into believing what you want them to do is a good idea or the only option."(Icke, 1995:383)

Icke uses the following example as a metaphor for the de facto One Party States, or "phoney democracies," that have resulted from global corporatism:

"I saw a television programme[sic] a few years ago that about research into animal behaviour[sic] and it featured a rather unpleasant experiment in which a mouse was placed in a network of glass tubes. Every few seconds it came to a junction and had a choice of going left or right. the mouse thought it was free to go wherever it wished, but in fact the choices were strictly controlled. Its freedom was an illusion...The human race today has allowed itself to be like that mouse in the tubes." (1995:332)

Conclusion: A Prison Planet?

The concept of an emerging global totalitarianism is no longer regarded as a fantasy from the far left and right fringes of the "conspiracy scene." The passionate anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle, Genoa, Mexico City, and elsewhere show that a diverse coalition of labor, political, and environmental groups are aware of this imminent threat to human freedom. The means by which the global elite moves towards absolute global hegemony continue to be predominantly psychological in nature. A "Prison Planet" appears to be the elite's objective.

References/Bibliography

Dineen, Dr. Tana Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People
Westmount, Quebec,
Canada -Robert Davies

Icke, David ...and the truth shall set you free...[Title on book cover is in lower case letters as shown.]
New Ollerton, Newark, UK,
Bridge of Love, 1998

Russell, Martha and
Stewart, Jean
From "Monthly Review" magazine,
Paul M. Sweezy, John Harry Magdoff, Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, Leo Huberman (1903-1968) Eds.
122 W. 27^th St. New York, New York

NOTES

Page (1) The parallel development of industrial and prison ("correctional") psychologies is well documented by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison New York, NY, Random House 1995. The book is lengthy and complex, but the following quote stands out in relation to the subject of Industrial Psychology:

"...The public execution was the logical culmination of a procedure governed by the inquisition. The practice of placing individuals under 'observation' is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures. Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should
have become the modern instrument of penalty? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?" (pages 227,228 italics mine)

(2)The quotation of Taylor is from Work and Madness: The Rise of Community Psychiatry , Diana, Ralph, Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1983, p.63 quoted by Dr. Tana Dineen, on page 144 of Manufacturing Victims (see above references)

Page (3)These terms are discussed at length by Icke in the chapter titled "Psychological Fascism" pages 383 to 410 of ...and the truth shall set you free..