Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, … - Lewis Mumford

"Bellamy leaves no doubt about the totalitarian nature of his utopia. "If a man refuses to accept the authority of the state and the inevitability of industrial service, he loses all his rights as a human being." All his rights as a human being? Did this tender-minded reformer realize what these words would mean? If not, our better-seasoned generation can tell him: for we have had before us the case of the Soviet Russian poet who was sentenced to jail as a "work-resister" because he devoted his days to translating, and to writing poetry-the 'wrong' sort of poetry of course. In tracing the grim, monolithic outlines of his perfect commonwealth, Bellamy, in his innocence, was more realistic than the anti-utopian Karl Marx, who, once socialism was installed, foresaw the State withering away."

Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.