Theory, myth, and ideology
Yüklə 292,97 Kb. Pdf görüntüsü
|
POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 97 tacular advances in technology as have their Western counterparts and have concluded that, where there is the smoke of new technology, there must be the fire of revolutionary social change. It is, of course, difficult to sustain this position within the framework of traditional Marxist ideology and, as a result, they have developed a theory which is even more vague and difficult to deal with than the capitalist version of post-industrial society which they reject. In current Soviet discussions the place of the concept of post- industrial society is taken by something called the Scientific- Technological Revolution, a concept which enjoys patronage at the highest political levels." Its characteristics have been described in the following terms: Basically, the scientific and technological revolution is a sweeping qualitative transformation of productive forces as a result of science being made the princi- ple factor in the development of social production." The immediate consequence will be the "supplanting" of "man's direct participation in production by the operation of applied knowledge...radically changing the whole structure and composition of productive forces.... ' '" This is "above all a socio-economic phenomenon," creating a "new material and technical base for the next social and economic system...." 89 How, if at all, does this Scientific-Technological Revolution (STR, or VTR in Russian) differ from post-industrialism? Not really in any basic respect. There is, ironically, considerable convergence between the two theories or ideologies. In both theories science and technology will increasingly provide the basis for political choice and ultimately for political power. What Soviet theorists have cleverly done is finesse the most objectionable (to Marxist eyes) aspect of post-industrial Futurism,"
IV (1970) 216 and Igo V. Bestuzhev-Lada, "Utopias of Bourgeois Futurology,"
Pp. 216-217. On Soviet futurology see P. Apostol, "Marxism and the Structure of the Future,"
4 (1972): Pp. 201-210 and Murad Saifulin (ed.),
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973). 86. Thus at the 1971 party Congress Prime Minister Brezhnev spoke of the need "organically to fuse the achievements of the Scientific and Technological Revolution with the advantages of the socialist economic system," Quoted in Arab-Ogly, op.
P. 231.
87. P.N. Fedoseev, "The social significance of the scientific and technological revolution," International Social Science Journal, XXVII (1975) P. 152. 88. Ibid. 89. Kosolapov, op. cit., Pp. 21, 13. 98 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER theory, the assumption that the class war has been superceded by a new system of social power based on knowledge rather than property. For, after all, the Soviet Union is already a socialist state in which, given the abolition of private property, the class system has come to an end. Therefore the benefits of the STR are now available to all in a society in which knowledge will determine social goals and mankind will be freed of all the unpleasant aspects of industrial society. Where Bell and post-industrial theorists are wrong, STR theory asserts by im- plication, is in claiming that the post-industrial society can really come into existence under capitalism. Only under socialism can the new wonders which the STR makes possible come to pass." Thus while rejecting—or transcending—the aspect of the theory of post-industrialism which is anti-Marxist, the theorists of the STR are able to whole-heartedly embrace its fundamental premise: economic growth through technology leading to a society run by possessors of knowledge acting according to purely rational norms (within the overall context of Marxist ideology, of course). Whereas theorists of post-industrialism refuse to consider that, if the essence of industrial society is making labor a commodity (and eventually making all of life a process of the exchange of commodities), post-industrial society does not differ essentially from industrial society but is merely an ex- trapolation of it, Soviet theorists of the STR assume by definition that under socialism labor is already no longer a commodity and industrial society has already entered a new phase. In so assuming—contrary to the facts of economic and social life in socialist societies—they parallel 90. The concept of the scientific and technological revolution essentially stems from work first done in Czechoslovakia. See Radovan Richta
(White Plains, N.Y.: International arts and Humanities Press, 1969). On the concept of the STR see Arab-Ogly,
Pp. 225-231; Kosolapov, op. cit., Pp.
10-44; Fedoseev, op. cit., and
passim; Jan F. Triska and Paul M. Cocks, Political Development in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1977) Pp. 54-62; Hoffmann, op. cit., and "The Scientific Management of Society," Problems of Communism XXVI
(May-June 1977): Pp. 59-67; Julian M. Cooper, "The Scientific and Technological Revolution in Soviet Theory," in Frederick L. Fleron, Jr. (ed.), Technology and Com- munist Culture. The Socio-Cultural Impact of Technology Under Socialism (New York: Praeger, 1977) Pp. 146-179; Robin Laud, "Post-Industrial Society: East and West,"
21 (1975): P. 1-17; and Kerstin Nystrom, "Soviet Sociology and The Scientific- Technological Revolution,"
17 (1974): Pp. 55-77. See also Gernot Bohme, "Models for the Development of Science," in Spiegel-Rosing and Price,
Pp. 338-342. Bell discusses the concept in its early stages of development in Com- ing, op. cit., Pp. 105-112 and "The Post-Industrial Society: The Evolution of a Con- cept,"
Pp. 152-158. POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 99 the errors of western post-industrial theorists in overstating the extent to which recent technological and social changes have altered the fun- damental nature of industrial society. Soviet theorists go even further, however. They speculate or assert that the new technologies of the STR will finally make possible the transition from socialism to true communism, a long-awaited event which has tended to recede into the future throughout Soviet history. Thus the purported benefits of the STR serve the ideological function of giving hope that the new day may yet be at hand and, thanks to the STR, the socialist segment of mankind at least can finally enter into the realm of freedom." Thus the theory of the STR has the same basic ideological function in socialist societies as the theory of post-industrial society has in capitalist societies—defense of the increasingly technocratic, ra- tionalistic social order and culture created by the industrial revolution. Both are ideologies which mask and uphold the triumphant evolution of industrial society into its fuller maturity as "super-industrial" society, to borrow Alvin Toffler's phrase.' Both describe as a basic transformation what is in reality an extrapolation and consolidation and in so doing they rationalize the increased power of the economic and political elites on both sides of the largely meaningless ideological struggle between socialist and capitalist society. Both the theory of post-industrialism and that of the STR are defenses of bureaucratic technocracy, and both have the same enemies (though, ironically, Soviet theorists seem more concerned with prob- lems of bureaucratization and other undesirable side effects of new technological systems than Bell and others in the "liberal" Western camp are, at least on paper)." Branded as irrational are any upsurges of intellectual or popular resistance to the total rationalization and quantification of social life and culture. What is antinomianism for Bell, represented above all by the horrors of the "counter culture" becomes superstition and reaction for socialist leaders, and is 91. Thus, according to one writer, the STR will mean the end of "commodity pro- duction." Kosolapov, op. cit., P. 33. One the realm of freedom in Marx see Capital, Vol. III. 92.Future Shock, (New York: Bantam Books, 1971) P. 491. 93. On Soviet fears of technocracy and bureaucratization see Hoffmann, "Soviet Views,"
op. cit., P. 626 and Fedoseev, op. cit., see Cooper, op. cit., P. 194, Kosolapov, op. cit., P. 167. Elsewhere Hoffmann argues that the information revolution of which STR theorists make so much (see Kosolapov,
Pp. 196-202) will not have any important effects on the political system. "Technology, Values, and Political Power in the Soviet Union: Do Computers Really Matter?" in Fleron, op. cit., Pp. 471-485. 100 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER represented by religion, nationalism, and simple aspirations for in- dividual freedom.
But to say that post-industrialism and the STR are essentially con- vergent ideologies implies that the real function of post-industrial theorizing cannot be primarily, or at least exclusively, the defense of mature capitalist industrialism against Marxist ideology, as some of Bell's Marxist critics have claimed. If there is in essence an ideology of post-industrial society which transcends quarrels between liberal capitalism and socialism, against what is it directed? The interests of what social forces are furthered by the belief that industrialism has been superceded by something new rather than simply being more powerful than ever? Obviously there can be only one answer to that question. The theory of post-industrial society is a defense of in- dustrialism itself and of those bureaucratic, technocratic social elements which have increased their power as industrialism has entered its advanced stage. It is a defense not simply of a managerial elite based on property and wielding power accordingly, but of managerialism itself, whatever the particular basis of its access to political and social power at any given time and place. Post-industrial theory as enunciated by Bell, Kahn, and the STR theorists is a defense of industrial society against any attempt to supercede it. It is a defense, ironically, against any real post-industrialism. A truly post-industrial society would be one in which the major characteristics of industrial society would be replaced by radically dif- ferent characteristics. It would be one in which labor was no longer a commodity but an aspect of living. It would be a society in which pro- perty ownership was sufficiently widespread so that any power derived from it was similarly diffused, and one in which scientific and technical knowledge was sufficiently widespread so that any power derived from it was also diffused. A real post-industrial society would be a society which was decentralized rather than centralized, which was populist rather than elitist, and which recognized that reason and rationalism are not synonymous. It would be a society which was democratic rather than technocratic. Various social theorists have postulated the desirability and possibility of such a society and a vast literature exists about what a
POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 101
truly post-industrial society would be like." The theory of post- industrial society as enunciated by Bell and similar thinkers is a counter ideology which has the function of denying the possibility that such a real post-industrial society can exist. It does this in several ways: by postulating inevitable social changes in the same direction in which industrial society has hitherto evolved, by confusing the issue by claiming that industrial society has hitherto evolved, by confusing the issue by claiming that industrial society has essentially changed its nature, and even by appropriating the term post-industrial itself. For, ironically, Bell admits that the term is not his own invention but was first used by the English social theorist Arthur Penty in the early decades of the century." He implicitly recognizes but fails to stress that Penty was an opponent of industrialism, a Guild socialist in- fluenced by William Cobbett and William Morris who would have re- jected with horror the brave new world of technocratic planning envi- sioned by Bell and his followers. 96 Bell credits Penty with the term by referring to a book which Penty published in 1917. 9 ' But the term was first used slightly earlier, in the title of a book by Penty and art critic Ananda Coomaswarmy, Essays on Post-Industrialism, which, though advertised, apparently was never published. The advertisement ap- peared as an endpaper in an early edition of one of the most prescient essays in social theory written in our century, The Servile State by British Distributist writer and litterateur Hilaire Belloc, which argued 94. On "alternative" post-industrial concepts of value see Victor Ferkiss,
(New York: George Braziller, 1974); Theodore Roszak, Person-Planet. The Cultural Disintegration of Industrial Society (New York: Double- day, 1978) and
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972); E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York; Harper and Row, 1977) Manfred Stanley, The Technological Conscience (New York: The Free Press, 1978) and William Erwin Thompson,
(New York: Harpers, 1976). See also Hall, op. cit., Pp. 226-238. On economic and social aspects of "alternative" post-industrialism see Ferkiss,
Greeley, op. cit., passim, Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations (New York: Dutton, 1978); William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman, 1977); E.F. Schumacher,
(New York: Harper and Row, 1976) and E.V. Stavrianos,
(San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1976).
P. 37.
96. See his Post-Industrialism. With a Preface by G.K. Chesterton. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1922).
(London, Allen and Unwin, 1917).
102 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER that the struggle between capitalism and socialism would not result in the triumph of the latter but simply the creation of a new society in which government dominated the individual in the name of never-to- be-accomplished social goals of equality and harmony, a new society which had no ideology and claimed no name.98 Lenin is often loosely quoted as saying communism was socialism plus electricity. 99 Add recent technological advances to the system described by Belloc and you get the post-industrial society posited by Bell and STR theorists as well. The concept of post-industrial society is the ideology of the Servile State.
VICTOR FERKISS 98. Marien, "Two Varieties," op. cit., P. 417. Belloc's book has been recently republished in the . United States with an introduction by the distinguished neo- conservative sociologist Robert A. Nisbet. (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1977). 99. What he actually said was that "Communism is Soviet Power plus the elec- trification of the whole country," Report of the Eighth Party Congress, 1920, excerpted in Robert C. Tucker (ed.) The Lenin Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), P. 494. Yüklə 292,97 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|