TECHNOKRÁCIA VAGY IPARI UNIONIZMUS

[Cleveland]: [Printed by B. & R. Printing Co. for] Bérmunkás, [1932]. First Separate Edition. 16 pp. Pictorial wrappers, saddle-stapled. Later inscriptions in Agnes Inglis's hand (see below) on p. [1] noting pamphlet as gift from John Zara to the Labadie Collection. Lower-outer corner bumped, wrappers lightly worn. Very good.

A talk, "Technocracy or Industrial Unionism," delivered on Cleveland's West Side for the local Hungarian arm of the I.W.W. by one of its members. The author, Andor Wiener (printed in the pamphlet in the Hungarian style, with surname first), presents the new Technocracy movement of Howard Scott et al., which advocated the replacement of price system-based forms of economy and government with industrial systems designed and maintained by scientists and engineers. Wiener supports the general theories of the Technocrats and belief that their proposed system could successfully replace capitalism in the industrial world but argues that the ideas will remain merely academic if they infused with Marxist theory and fought for by revolutionary workers. Cleveland hosted the largest Hungarian population outside Hungary (some claimed outside Budapest alone) for the greater part of the 20th century, and this pamphlet was intended to be distributed from Cleveland to the larger Hungarian diaspora in the U.S. An inscriptions shows it to have been a gift to the Labadie Collection, a major collection at the University of Michigan built principally by the Detroit-based anarchists Joseph Labadie (1850-1933) and Anna Inglis (1870-1952).The cover shows workers and businessmen fleeing from a factory being overtaken by a giant robot. OCLC records five copies.