Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

79

the situation is one of gradually lowering skill level for most workers

(along, of course, with increased economic opportunities for a few

specialists) and continued absorption into a system in which skill as

well as labor is a commodity, perceived status uncertain, and aliena-

tion widespread.

The most charitable verdict that can be passed on the claim that ser-

vices, and therefore skill and knowledge, are becoming more impor-

tant is the Scottish "Not Proven," even leaving aside the question,

"So what?"

There is a further theoretical objection that could be made even if

the evidence for post-industrialism adduced by its theorists were much

stronger than it in fact is which requires mention. We have argued

(some might say quibbled) over the words "post" and "industrial."

But what about "society"? Discussions of a post-industrial society

almost universally focus on the nation state as the social unit. This

may be valid in terms of political power or even social status for the

most part. But it confuses the issue with reference to technological and

economic factors. Is the United States a post-industrial "society" in

these terms? Perhaps. It can certainly be held that parts of the United

States are post-industrial as defined by Bell, just as other regions are

industrial or even pre-industrial." Most Americans are aware of

places such as Los Alamos, Route 128 around Boston, or "silicone

valley" south of San Francisco. But their existence does not make the

United States 

as a whole 

a post-industrial society.

50. Brzezinski speaks of three coexisting Americas, concentrated in different cities

and regions, "industrial America," "pre-industrial America," and the "emerging new

America—Technetronic America...," 

Between Two Ages, op. cit., 

P. 200.

51. Ira Sharkansky says that it is "more accurate to speak of pockets of post-

industrial society within the United States than about a post-industrial United

States...," 

The United States: A Study of A Developing Country 

(New York: David

McKay, 1975), P. 27, and holds "Daniel Bell's image of the post-industrial society is no

more suitable for the United States of the 1970's than was his earlier vision of an 'end of

ideology....' Only limited sectors of the United States are post-industrial, most typically

those university towns where post-industrial writers dwell." P. 164.

Another commentator notes that while it is "tempting" to describe California as a post-

industrial society following Bell's usage, this "can lead to misinterpretations," as

"there is no evidence that California's economy has changed so much that industrialism

has become peripheral rather than central, the way agriculture became peripheral after

the industrial revolution." Many of the increased number of workers in the service in-

dustries provide "support services.... for the modern industrial system." Furthermore,

knowledge is not central, "the major thrust of knowledge development in California

seems to be to devise new ways for the industrial system to advance." Ted K. Bradshaw,

"New Issues for California, the World's Most Advanced Industrial Society," 

Public

Affairs Report 

(Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley)

17 No. 4 (August 1979) P. 1.

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80

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

But neither would their economic predominance if that were to

become the case. Nations are not closed systems economically as much

as they may be politically or socially. Much—perhaps—most of the

dirty work of American society has not been conjured out of existence

by advanced technology, it has simply been exported. Stoop

agricultural labor is increasingly performed in Mexico and the

tomatoes and strawberries imported. The drudge work of electronics

assembly is done in South Korea or Taiwan. Even such high

technology primary industry products as steel are imported to the

discomfiture of American industrialists and labor unions alike. To the

extent that post-industrial society exists in the United States, it exists

because large parts of industrial society have in essence been exported.

The same thing is true—mutatus mutandis—of Sweden, Japan and

other technologically evolved nations. Would one say that a village

which had grown rich due to the discovery of a communal oil well had

evolved a new post-labor society because it consisted of all retired

owners and no more active workers or farmers? Hardly. Similar cau-

tions must be kept in mind when speaking of the United States, where

an island—however large it may be estimated to be—of post-industrial

society exists in an artificial context within the present international

economic order. Actually the continued existence of post-industrial

society in the United States may well be dependent upon an interna-

tional economic domination-subordination relationship, the stability

of which is not written in the stars."

The Politics of Post-Industrial Society

If post-industrial society is not really coming into existence in the

sphere of economics and society, what of its political aspects? Even if

the service industries are not dominant and theoretical knowledge not

that important, perhaps at least post-industrial politics is emerging

mysteriously even without its postulated preconditions. Bell is ex-

tremely hard to pin down on what his theory postulates will happen in

52. The relationship between "post-industrial society" and America's economic

position in the world is hinted at but not developed in Harry T. Targ, "Global

Dominance and Dependence, Post-Industrialism, and International Relations Theory,"

International Studies Quarterly, 

26 (1976): Pp. 461-482. 

Bell 

is aware of what is happen-

ing, though his theory fails to take it into account, for he speaks of "the emerging new

international division of labor" and says "the traditional and routinized manufacturing

activities which were the basis of the old Western industrial societies will be pulled out

of the West by market and political forces...." 

DuPont Context, 

No. 3 (1978), P. 8.

53. Thus early on, waxing theoretical, Bell says "in sum, the emergence of a new

kind of society brings into question the distributions of wealth, power, and status that

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