Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

83

Rome had its military and fiscal "experts" as much as any contem-

porary nation does. But while members of such elites have been

rewarded with varying degrees of economic wealth and social status

and have often, as individuals or as groups, been members of the rul-

ing political elites of society, they have never, as a distinctive group,

been the wielders of ultimate decision-making power. The experts

have always been kept on tap rather than being allowed to get on top

by kings and parliaments. Ancient history provides the most striking

example: in the case of the Roman Empire, where the "knowledge

elite" consisted largely of Greeks, who were not only not rulers but

were actually slaves." Throughout medieval and early modern history

there have been inventors such as Da Vinci, financial wizards such as

Condorcet, military/technological geniuses such as Vauban, but,

however they may have been rewarded or honored, it was the kings

and princes who ruled. In the nineteenth century the rise of liberalism

and capitalism meant the gradual transfer of the locus of ruling power

from landed wealth and hereditary social status to financial and in-

dustrial wealth. The James Wattses and the Edisons and the Siemanns

and the Whitneys have changed history, but they did so in accordance

with the options permitted by the general logic of capitalist develop-

ment and national aspirations. Scientific work was supported and ex-

ploited, technologies were introduced and developed in accordance

with the needs of the business civilization. St. Simon may have

dreamed otherwise for the future but it was only a dream and still is in

its echoes in the theory of post-industrial society."

There is absolutely no reason to believe that either new and

glamorous technologies or scientific-technological options such as

atomic power, the computer, or the new biology has changed this

situation. New scientific and technological development takes place in

accordance with the needs of a society based on the (hopefully pro-

fitable) exchange of commodities. We still live in what Andrew

56. The relevance of this to contemporary theories of technocracy is discussed in

S.M. Miller, "Notes on Neo-Capitalism," 

Theory and Society 

2 (1975): 

P. 

1-35.

57. The centrality of St. Simon as the originator of the concept of post-industrial

society is discussed in Kumar, 

op. cit., 

especially Pp. 27-44. As critics have noted 

(cf.

Giddens, 

op. cit., 

P. 255) Bell is aware of this and references to St. Simon are frequent,

especially in 

Coming, 

but Bell fails to draw the obvious conclusion that a theory ex-

plaining an historical phenomenon prior to its alleged observance suggests that the

theory is based primarily on aspiration rather than observation.

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84

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

Hacker has called "a country called corporate America."" It is true

that non-profit enterprises have been playing a growing economic role

in American society, but this is somewhat misleading, most of these

are involved in military research or are "stalking horses" for profit

making firms." Medicine is big business and so is higher education in

58. "A Country Called Corporate America," 

New York Times Magazine 

July 3,

1966, P. 8-9. The literature on the extent of the domination of the politics of the United

States and other Western industrial nations by large economic interests is of course

overwhelming in volume, though Bell tends to deprecate it, on one occasion referring to

a critic citing such evidence as follows: "Mr. Peretz has discovered something called

economic power like a political virgin who has seen the primal scene for the first

time...." Francois Duchesne (ed.), 

The Endless Crisis. America in the Seventies 

(New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1970) Pp. 133-134. Representative discussions of class struc-

ture and political power in modern industrial society include T.H. Bottomore, 

Classes

in Modern Society 

(New York: Pantheon, 1966), and 

Elites in Modern Society 

(New

York: Basic Books, 1964), G. William Domhoff, 

Who Rules America? 

(Englewood

Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967), 

The Higher Circles 

(New York: Vintage Books, 1971)

and 

The Powers That Be 

(New York: Vintage Books, 1978), Gabriel Kolko, 

Wealth and

Power in America 

(New York: Bantam Books, 1968), Ralph Miliband, 

The State in

Capitalist Society 

(London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969), C. Wright Mills, 

The

Power Elite 

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), Anthony Sampson, 

The

Anatomy of Europe 

(New York: Harper and Row, 1968), M. Scotsford-Archer and S.

Giner (eds.), 

Contemporary Europe: Class, Status and Power 

(London: Weidenfeld

and Nicholson, 1971), J. Westergard and H. Resler, 

Class in a Capitalist Society: A

Study of Contemporary Britain 

(London: Heinemann, 1965), and Alan Wolfe, 

The

Limits of Legitimacy 

(New York: The Free Press, 1977). See also Peter Hall, (ed.),

Europe 2000 

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) Pp. 205-225 and Andrew

Hacker, "Who Rules America?" 

New York Review of Books, May 

1,1975. The validi-

ty of the argument that post-industrial society has changed the bourgeois structure of

class domination is explicitly challenged in Ferkiss, 

op. cit., 

Pp. 121-124, Sinai, 

op. cit.,

Norman Birnbaum, 

The Crisis of Industrial Society 

(New York: Oxford University

Press, 1969) Pp. 82-83, Bottomore, 

Elites in Modern Society, op. cit., 

P. 89, Giddens,

op. cit., passim, 

Kleinberg, 

op. cit., passim, 

Kenneth Dolbeare 

Political Change in the

United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) Pp. 22-35 and Janowitz, op. cit., 

P. 235.

Heilbroner insists that post-industrial society to whatever extent it may exist is still

capitalist in its structures of economic control. 

Business Civilization, op. cit., 

Pp. 63-78.

Christopher Lasch argues that "The post-industrial order, far from transcending the

contradictions inherent in capitalism, embodies them in an acute form." "Toward a

Theory of Post-Industrial Society," 

op. cit., 

P. 47. Daniel Greenberg notes "scientists,

rather than being the new men of power in American politics, comprise a very much

misunderstood and politically fragile group whose proximity to power is easily confused

with the real stuff of power." "The Myth of the Scientific Elite," 

The Public Interest,

No. 1 (Fall 1965) 53. See also Victor Ferkiss, "The Spectre of the Scientific Elite," in

Daniel McCracken 

et. al., Public Policy and the Expert 

(New York: Council on

Religion in International Affairs, 1971) Pp. 99-113, On technocracy generally see also

Putnam, 

op. cit.

59. Kleinberg, 

op. cit., 

P. 356.

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