单选题 In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and "human-relations" experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-collar and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.
The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.
Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the tight mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on they are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one"s fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.
Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth- century "free enterprise" capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of love and of reason—are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 细节推理题。根据题干关键词a well-oiled cog in the machinery定位到原文首段首句。原文以人是社会大机器中的齿轮(well-oiled cog)这个比喻开头，但原文首段第二句分号的yet点明了作者的意图，人是powerless，是毫无自主权的傀儡(puppets)。这就说明了人的工作生活条件虽然不错(functioning smoothly)，但他们在社会中是无足轻重的。故答案为C。