Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

87

issues in a political system with a divided bureaucracy, a virtually un-

manageable Congress, and a weak chief executive. Experts abound,

but coordination of policy is a chimera.

Other western democracies present hardly more inspiring pictures,

with leading statesmen making pessimistic pronouncements about the

future of democracy," while other analysts question whether the

historic social democratic compromise between productivity and

equality of distribution will continue to be viable or whether its

breakdown will lead to the breakdown of capitalist democracy entire-

ly."

More and more political issues have technical aspects—or at least

such aspects are perceived more than in the past—and expert opinions

fill the air, but the opinions conflict and the decision-making process

seems not much less incremental and irrational than ever. Indeed Bell

himself seems to voice a pessimism verging on despair regarding the

ability of our society to make the kind of rational decisions his theory

predicts as he perceives a rising tide of irrationalism in the larger

culture of capitalist society.

67

 The coming of post-industrial society

65. The report of a study group of the influential Trilateral Commission quotes

former German chancellor Willy Brandt as saying Western Europe has "only 20 or 30

more years of democracy left in it." C.L. Sulzberger, "Danger for Democracies,"

Washington Star 

June 13, 1975.

66. Alan Wolfe, "Has Social Democracy a Future?" 

Comparative Politics 

11 (1978)

Pp. 100-125.

67. "In both doctrine and life-style, the anti-bourgeois won out. This triumph meant

that in the culture antinomianism and anti-institutionalism ruled"....and the traditional

bourgeois organization of life—its rationalism and sobriety—now has few defenders in

the culture.... To assume, as some social critics do, that the technocratic mentality

dominates the cultural order is to fly in the face of every bit of evidence at hand."

Cultural Contradictions, op. cit., 

P. 53. The relation of this theme to that of the 

Com-

ing is 

not apparent at first, though Bell is clear in stating that he believes the social and

cultural order can operate according to different norms and that indeed the clash he

postulates between them may be the basis for revolutionary potential. Whether his

discussion of culture is adequate or not theoretically is not at issue here, though see

Roger D. Abrahams, "Contradicting Bell" in Review Symposium: The Cultural Con-

tradictions of Capitalism, 

American Journal of Sociology 

83 (1977): Pp. 463-369. But

from an historical point of view it can be argued that Bell oversimplifies in identifying

capitalism with the Puritan ethic as he does in the section "From the Protestant Ethic to

the Psychedelic Bazaar" in 

Cultural Contradictions, op. cit., 

Pp. 54-80 since capitalism

originated in luxury if not indeed in vice. See Werner Sombart, 

Luxury and Capitalism

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967). In any event, as a self-styled

"friend" notes, Bell may be mistaken about the present state of American culture as the

result of living in a highly unrepresentative milieu. See Andrew Greeley, 

No Bigger

Than Necessary 

(New York: New American Library) Pp. 153-163.

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THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

was supposed to mean the end of ideological bedevilment but, the

house having been swept clean, seven and more new devils of ideology

seem to have entered in.

Some writers on the politics of post-industrial society, indeed, ac-

tually embrace the concept of what might be called neo-

ideologization. Following Bell's premise—extrapolated by

Kahn—that post-industrial society is one in which the old problems of

economic scarcity have been put behind us, and therefore, implicitly

the problem of traditional economic class conflict and ideologies

based on such conflict, they postulate that post-industrial society will

see the rise of new conflicts which will be more difficult to resolve

since they will stem from questions of taste and values." Illustrations

are not far to seek. Striking workers can agree with employers over

wage demands and even questions about the incidence of taxation can

be compromised in principle. But what kind of viable compromise can

be created between proponents of abortion and "right-to-life" en-

thusiasts, or between supporters and opponents of "gay rights." If

post-industrial society is by definition post-scarcity and post-

economic society, its politics will be a politics of "life style" issues im-

herently less amenable to rationalization than older political issues.

Many of those who speak of post-industrial society therefore predict

an increasingly conflict-ridden and politically unmanageable society

as these new issues come to dominate politics." Above all, there will

be struggles between the new technocratic elites and the increasingly

frustrated masses." Even Bell himself sometimes seems to lean in this

68. Inglehardt, 

op. cit., 

Tsurani, 

op. cit.

69. Bell's colleague Huntington, after noting that "To a considerable degree, the

post-industrial society is not at all political..." goes on to argue that it will be highly

conflict ridden and "could be extraordinarily difficult to govern." "Post-industrial

Politics: How Benign...," 

op. cit., 

Pp. 164, 177, and suggests elsewhere that "it would

be argued that political parties are the political form peculiarly suited to the needs of in-

dustrial society and that the movement of the United States into a 'post-industrial'

phase means the end of the party system as we have known it." "The Democratic

Distemper," 

The Public Interest 

No. 41 (Fall, 1975) P. 23. Todd La Porte and C.J.

Abrams suggest that a major cause of the instability in post-industrial society will be a

perceived discrepancy between the supposed ability of society to solve its problems

through technocratic means and its actual ability to do so. "Alternative Patterns of

Post-Industria: The California Experience," in Lindberg, 

op. cit., 

Pp. 19-56.

70. See, for example, Duchene, 

op. cit., 

P. 24 who writes that "Early industrialism

produced anarchism and fascism.... The post-industrial society might have to accept

them as endemic, and face recurrent outbreaks, much as traditional society sufferred

the plague." Bell himself sees conflicts of and within the meritocracy, 

ibid., 

Pp.

129-130, including "a conflict between elites and masses who want their own form of

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