In Section V of Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals, John McDermott offers the idea that Laissez innover is the “premier ideology of the technological impulse in American Society”(McDermott 90).  By saying this he can infer all of his arguments from the “positive opportunities and negative “externalities”” that Mesthene makes in his essay (90).  These positive and negative aspects of Laissez innover come directly from the managers rather than from the societies that they represent (90).  McDermott raises the point that because of the organizational hierarchy, the neutrality of social rationality today is virtually non-existent (90).  “This analysis lends some weight” “to a number of wide-ranging and unorthodox conclusions about American society today and the directions in which it is tending” (90).
 

     The first argument is that “technology should be considered as an institutional system” (90).  This is probably the most important argument.  McDermott argues that Mesthene’s argument is inadequate because “it obscures the systematic and decisive social changes” (90).  Technology is less than a social system although it has all the elements of a social system such as: “a group of linked institutions, an ethos, and so forth” (91).  McDermott makes an analogy for the understanding of technology and society.  “Today’s technology stands in relation to today’s capitalism as, a century ago, the latter stood to the free market capitalism of the time” (91).

     The next argument that he brings up is that “the most important dimension of advanced technological institutions is the social one” (91).  This is to say that all institutions are under social control.  He goes on to say that “technology conquers nature…but to do so it must first conquer man”(91).  This lends the idea that to have a strong technological society you must have the personnel who are smart enough to run the highly technical equipment and so on (91).  Therefore the society would have to offer training for the people to get them prepared to join the work force and it “must motivate this training” (91).  He says next, that due to this we would be making a mistake to argue “that we are in a post-industrial age” (91).  Technology is still spreading to all aspects of life and business, which would mean that we are possibly only starting a “more intensive phase of the industrial revolution” (91).

    The third hypothesis argues that there “social antagonisms and contradictions” that are not very different from the ones that Karl Marx introduced “to the development of nineteenth-century industrial society” (91).  A society that is characterized by advanced technology would require an even more disciplined society that would want to learn to survive in that type of society (91).

    All three of these hypotheses seem to all be bearing down on the “technological underclass of American society” (92).  This would lead to a final hypothesis.  One that states simply that since only certain people are capable of keeping up with technology, the technology creates its own “working and managing classes” (92).

     The final hypothesis says “that Laissez innover should be frankly recognized as a conservative or right-wing ideology” (92).  This hypothesis is supposed to summarize the all of the forces that act on American society.  “Merely to grasp this is already to take the first step toward a politics of radical reconstruction and against the malaise, irrationality, powerlessness, and official violence that characterize American life today” (92).

McDermott, John.  "Technology:  The Opiate of the Intellectuals."  Ed.  Albert H.  Teich.           New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.