Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (With a New Introduction by Daniel Bell), New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
“In his The Engineers and the Price System, originally published in 1921, Veblen observes that World War One demanded industrial innovations, and he was among the first to predict the need for changes in managerial structure. Veblen saw that industrial output was more dependent upon technocrats-managers and capital innovators-than financiers. In The Engineers and the Price System, Veblen applies economic theory to modern industrial society. He demonstrates that revolutionary change can be advanced by managers and engineers upon whose “brains and skills” the state of industrial arts depends.During the “red scare” when federal agents arrested radical suspects and deported anarchists, Veblen wrote: “Men, who make up the general staff of the industrial system have not drawn together into anything like a self-directed working force.” He denied the possibility of a Bolshevik revolution in the United States, predicting that, given the means, the managerial class would invigorate American economic growth. In his uniquely comprehensive introduction, Daniel Bell discusses the associations and attitudes that mark Veblen as the prophetic outsider he remained most of his life”.
The First Edition of The Engineers and the Price System is available online: https://archive.org/details/engineersandpri01veblgoog
Hélène Verin, La Gloire des Ingénieurs: l’Intelligence Technique du XVIe au XVIIe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, 1993