Theodore John Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” died in prison of suicide in June 2023.

Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others. His bombings were the extreme but necessary action in attracting attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require mass organization.

In 1995, he sent a letter to The New York Times promising to desist from terrorism if The Times, The Washington Post or some other widely read, nationally distributed periodical published his essay “Industrial Society and Its Future” (the “Unabomber Manifesto”).

We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don’t see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system.

(…)

We have a long article, between 29,000 and 37,000 words, that we want to have published. If you can get it published according to our requirements we will permanently desist from terrorist activities. It must be published in the New York Times, Time or Newsweek, or in some other widely read, nationally distributed periodical.

BOMBING IN SACRAMENTO: THE LETTER; Excerpts From Letter by ‘Terrorist Group,’ FC, Which Says It Sent Bombs

Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh recommended its publication in the hope that a reader could identify the author. It appeared in The Washington Post in September 1995. The tone of the writing was recognized by his brother David, who reported to the FBI. When he was arrested in his cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, on April 3, 1996, the Unabomber had been the target of the most expensive investigation in FBI history at the time.

On January 21, 1998, Kaczynski was declared competent to stand trial by federal prison psychiatrist Johnson, despite the psychiatric diagnoses. He pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

Whether he was insane, psychotic, had a schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder was an intense matter of debate and politics! The reason is relevant:

If it is the work of a madman, then the writings of many political philosophers—Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx—are scarcely more sane.

James Q. Wilson, in a 1998 New York Times op-ed, The Unabomber Returns

He had something important to say. He wanted to be read, and I would say his bombings were, in fact, the way he chose to be read.

If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted.

Kaczynski has been portrayed in and inspired multiple artistic works in popular culture. He is quoted by quite respectable authors in the present intellectual debate about (the present of) the industrial society and its future. In the long foreword Daniel Bell added to his seminal “The Coming of Post Industrial Society” in 1999, he presents the challenge with a positive view:

“We are managing a difficult transition to becoming post-industrial societies with aging populations.”

There is no necessary, determinate single path for the use of the new technologies. The ways in which technologies can be organized vary widely, and these are social decisions that can be made in a conscious way.

Daniel Bell

Kaczynski could not see the social conscious way:

A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.

This is a consequence of the complexity of human societies. Furthermore, technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom.

The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government.

According to the bourgeois conception, a “free” man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of the individual.

How shall we do it?

Today, with the exception of the militia fringes, nobody wants any longer “to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences”

The Economist, The Last Outsider

I am no apologist for Kaczynski…

I am no apologist for Kaczynski. His bombs killed three people during a 17-year terror campaign and wounded many others. One of his bombs gravely injured my friend David Gelernter, one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time. Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber’s next target. Kaczynski’s actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge…

Bill Joy

However, the Unabomber Manifesto is a must read today, 30 years later (and counting).

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Featured Image: Unabomber sketch, 1994