Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

65

The Coming of Post-Industrial Society 

constitutes an attempt to

describe a newly emerging social reality which while not determining

political and cultural life (a point which Bell stresses but which is often

implicitly ignored by others, including political scientists who have

taken over his ideas) does at least strongly condition them. Its focus is

on the changing nature of work and work relationships, on the in-

creasing role of scientists and technicians in the social order, and on

the allegedly central role increasingly played by theoretical knowledge

in social change and the making of societal decisions, a role epito-

mized by the rise of social and economic planning as a tool of public

policy. All these changes taken together—and the book is replete with

empirical and statistical data (some of dubious cogency) attempting to

illustrate them—constitute what Bell denominates the emergence of a

new society which he calls post-industrial. 

The Cultural Contradic-

tions of Capitalism 

is a series of loosely related essays which seek

primarily to defend post-industrial society—based as it is on ra-

tionalism and technical efficiency—against what Bell sees as a growing

menace from irrational and hedonistic forces spawned by the very suc-

cesses of advanced capitalism in creating affluence and opportunities

for individual self-expression.

Unfortunately, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, the term "post-

industrial" as used by Bell and others who have adopted his usage has

done more to obscure than to illuminate the phenomena of contem-

porary social life. But because of the extent to which human percep-

tion conditions social life the very use of the term creates a kind of

quasi-existence for what it purports to describe. In this sense the

"theorists" of post-industrial society are inevitably ideologists work-

ing to create—if not a new society as such—a new way of looking at

the social world which has important consequences for actual social

relations.

5. Bell redefines and alludes to the concept in 

Cultural Contradictions 

but it is hard-

ly central to his argument. He uses the term in an interview, "Big Challenge: 'Creation

of a Genuine National Society,' " 

U.S. News and World Report, 

July 5, 1976 and men-

tions it in passing in an article, "Teletext and Technology: New Networks of Knowledge

and Information in Post-Industrial Society," 

Encounter 

XLVII (June 1977): Pp. 9-29,

but does happily without it in such recent pieces as "The End of American Excep-

tionalism," 

The Public Interest, 

No. 41 (Fall 1975): Pp. 193-224; "Mediating Growth

Tensions," 

Society, 

15 (Jan-Fed 1978); Pp. 34-38; and "A Report on England I. The

Future That Never Was," 

The Public Interest, 

No. 51 (Spring 1978): Pp. 35-73,

although the term is used in a footnote, p. 63. Note also its absence in "Technology,

Nature and Society: The Vicissitudes of Three World Views and the Confusion of

Realms," 

American Scholar, 

42 (1973): Pp. 385-404.

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66

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

Origins of the Concept of "Post-Industrialism"

What does the term "post-industrial society" mean? In order to

answer that question properly we have to ask a prior question, What

are its intellectual origins? Even to ask the question is to plunge

oneself immediately into a polemical context. Speaking loosely—as

one must, given the many and multifaceted usages of the word by Bell

himself—a post-industrial society has several major characteristics of

which the most significant are (1) the increasing importance of "ser-

vice" industries (as opposed to primary production) in the economic

order; (2) the increasing substitution of "knowledge"—especially

"theoretical" knowledge—for property as the basis of the social

order; (3) a resulting increasing reliance in the political order on

technical expertise for the definition of, if not the actual resolution of,

social and political problems; and (4) a consequent increase in the ra-

tionalization of social and political life, embodied most clearly in

social planning of various kinds.' We will be taking a closer look at

the conceptual problems inherent in the idea of post-industrial society

later, but first, it is useful to examine the genesis of the theory. Bell

writes as a post-Marxist; as he himself argues, most subsequent social

science has been a commentary on Marx.' In his youth Bell was in-

volved in circles where Marxism was the major subject of debate and

6. Bell's 

definitions and descriptions of the term appear in manifold overlapping

form in several works. He himself has said that the "concept" is neither a "definition"

nor a "forecast" but a "scenario." "Dialogue: The Next Stage of History" by Timothy

A. Tilton and Daniel Bell, 

Social Research 

40 (1973): P. 747, although it is not always

easy to square his usage of the term scenario with the standard usage among futurists.

On scenarios, see Ian H. Wilson, "Scenarios," in Jib Fowles (ed.), 

Handbook of

Futures Research 

(New York: Greenwood Press, 1978) Pp. 225-248. On Bell's

methodology see also Thomas E. Jones, "Daniel Bell's Evolving Vision of the Post-

Industrial Society," 

World Future Society Bulletin XIII 

(Jan-Feb 1978): Pp. 7-24. Bell

began using the term in 

The Reforming of General Education 

(New York: Columbia

University Press, 1967) P. 87 ca. and first presented his ideas at length in "Notes on the

Post-Industrial Society" in 

The Public Interest, 

No. 6 (Winter 1967): Pp. 24-35 and No.

7 (Spring 1967): Pp. 102-118 and developed them at length in 

The Coming, op. cit. 

He

explicates his ideas and defends them against criticism leveled at their early presenta-

tions in "The Post-Industrial Society: The Evolution of An Idea," 

Survey 

17 (1971):

Pp. 102-168. See also "Post-Industrial Society: A Symposium," 

ibid. 

and Peter M.

Stearns and Daniel Bell "Controversy: Is There a Post-Industrial Society?" 

Society 

11

(May-June 1974): Pp. 10-25.

7. "We Have All Become 'Post-Marxist.' " 

Coming, op. cit., P. 55.

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