gat

under the direction of the Rockefeller Foundation, a vision in which scientific interventions could
and should be used deliberately, by the best people, to control biological and social evolution.
With Rockefeller as a principal engine, the shared social view of corporate thinkers was
comprehensively imposed, bit by bit, on academic science. Elite universities, with Caltech as
leader, became sites for implementation of the Rockefeller project. It was, in the words of Lily
Kay in (The Molecular Vision of Life), "a potent convergence of social agendas and scientists’
ambitions."
Eugenic goals played a significant role in conception and design of the new Rockefeller biology,
to such a point that open discussion of purposes had eventually to be kept under wraps as a
political liability, particularly when the great dictators of Europe appeared to be taking some of
their cues from America. Molecular biology promised a politically safer, and even a more certain
path to an eventual utopia of social planning by elites, and one now properly "scientific,"
completely free of the embarrassing candor of eugenic selection.
The experience of these times gave reformers a grand taste for blood. Government intervention
everywhere was proclaimed the antidote for dissent. Intervention took many unexpected shapes.
For instance, the "Athlete’s Americanization League" agitated intensely to provide free sports
equipment for every public school with its battle cry: "Sports are the logical antidote for unrest."
By the time national passion cooled, in every nook and cranny of American life new social
organizations with powerful government or private sponsorship flourished. All fed on intervention
into families for their nourishment, all clamored to grow larger, all schemed to produce political
testimony of their value. A new republic was here at last, just as Herbert Croly 10 had announced,
and government school was to be its church.
10 The new republic we were driving toward, according to Croly, bore little resemblance to either a republic or a
democracy. It was to be an apolitical universe, a new utopia of engineers and skilled administrators, hinted at by
Bellamy, spun out further by Veblen in The Engineers and the Price System, and The Theory of Business
Enterprise. A federal union of worldwide scope was the target, a peculiar kind of union of the sort specified in Cecil
Rhodes’ last wills, which established the Rhodes Scholarships as a means to that end. Politics was outdated as a
governing device. Whatever appearances of an earlier democratic republic were allowed to survive, administrators
would actually rule. A mechanism would have to be created whereby administrators could be taught the new reality
discreetly so that continuity and progress could be assured. De Tocqueville’s nightmare of an endlessly articulating,
self-perpetuating bureaucracy had finally come to life. It was still in its infancy, but every sign pointed to a lusty
future.
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