Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

67

where Trotskyism was a major intellectual force.

8

 While Bell bitterly

denies any connection between the genesis of his ideas and other

theories of social change originating in these circles, such as James

Burnham's concept of the "managerial revolution,'" the circumstan-

tial evidence would seem to suggest otherwise. Bell's concept of post-

industrial society is obviously an answer to the problem which

Stalinism posed to all Marxists at that time, and since—a problem

which was answered by Trotsky in a way which seems to have

significantly influenced Bell.

What was this problem? Essentially, it was the problem of how to

account for the continued existence of relationships of class domina-

tion and subordination within Soviet society 

after 

private proper-

ty—according to classical Marxism the source of all such domina-

tion—had been legally abolished. Obviously some factor other than

property was now the basis of political, economic, and social power in

the Soviet Union. What was it? Trotsky's theories of state capitalism,

in which classes (based by definition on property) are replaced by

"strata" (based on just what is unclear).

10

 Burnham's "managerial

revolution" and Djilas' "new class""— and a whole host of theories

about "bureaucracy" are attempts to answer this question. Bell's con-

cept of post-industrial society belongs to this family of theories. It

postulates that property has been succeeded by knowledge as the

primary basis of social power. Though Bell focuses on the United

States in his exposition of his theory, it is, of course, a solution to the

problem posed by Soviet society as well.

But, if property is no longer the basis of power in society, important

consequences follow. The central revolutionary role of the industrial

proletariat disappears; indeed, it does so together with the whole class

structure of industrial society. As this class structure disappears, so

does ideology as well, since it is based on conflict over property and

privileges (at least as construed and dealt with by Marx and by the

8. The relationship of Trotskyism, Bell's intellectual background, and the concept

of "post-industrial society" is alluded to in Lewis Feuer, "Ideology and No End," 

En-

counter, 

XL (April 1973): Pp. 84-87. Bell's own account in found in 

Coming, op. cit.,

Pp. 87-99.

9. The Managerial Revolution 

(New York: John Day, 1941). Bell attacks Burnham

and others in 

Coming, op. cit., 

Pp. 90-92. See also "The Post-Industrial Society: Evolu-

tion...," 

op. cit.: 

Pp. 140-142.

10. Trotsky's ideas are elaborated in 

The Revolution Betrayed 

(New York:

Pathfinder Press, 1972).

11. Milovan Djilas, 

The New Class 

(New York: Praeger, 1957).

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68

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

defenders of capitalism both) and it is thus now meaningless. Bell is,

in this implicit definition of the substance of ideological conflict, be-

ing far more of a Marxist than he perhaps realizes. To say that the end

of the class struggle means the end of ideology ignores—as does his

more or less repudiated master, Marx—such possible ideological fac-

tors as nationalism, religion, and race, to name only a few which Bell

seems implicitly to regard as overshadowed by class and economic

concerns just as Marx explicitly does. Thus the theory of post-

industrial society converges with—if it does not in some sense directly

derive from—the concept of the "end of ideology" which Bell had

enunciated earlier.

12

 The existence of post-industrial society provides

the theoretical underpinning for the end of ideology while the end of

ideology becomes one of the characteristics of post-industrial society,

as knowledge-based rationality comes to dominate politics.

This outcome is made possible by another repudiation of orthodox

Marxism on Bell's part. Industrial capitalism has—contrary to Marx's

predictions of the increasing immiseration of the masses and the

ultimate necessary economic collapse of capitalism in a gotterdam-

merung of unemployment and depression—made possible a new era

of abundance for all.' 

3 

Indeed, from a purely structural point of view,

the growth of the service industries and proliferation of higher educa-

tion—important elements of post-industrial society—can be regarded

as evidence of this. This abundance itself renders old ideologies ob-

solete.

In this connection, however, some curious anomalies arise. One of

Bell's most fervent followers in spreading the gospel of the coming of

post-industrial society is his colleague in futurism, Herman Kahn.

Kahn and his followers use the term more loosely than Bell to mean

primarily an era of material abundance, a usage Bell seems—with un-

characteristic intellectual tolerance—to find unobjectionable." But

Kahn at least does not assume that this post-industrial society of abun-

12. The End of Ideology 

(Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959). The relationship of

the theory of post-industrial society to that of the "end of ideology" is discussed at

length in Kleinberg, 

op. cit., 

Pp. 1-23.

13. Abundance is assumed through Bell's writings and the scarcity theories of the

Club of Rome and similar groups are explicitly rejected in 

Coming, op. cit., 

Pp. 456-479

and Bell's "The End of Scarcity," 

Saturday Review of Society, 

1 (May 1973): Pp.

49-52.

14. Kahn began pushing the concept of post-industrialism as early as 1967. Kahn

and Anthony J. Weiner, "The Next Thirty-Three Years: A Framework for

Speculation," in Bell (ed.), "Toward the Year 2000: Work In Progress," 

Daedalus 

96

(Summer 1967) P. 726, at the same time giving it their own meaning of a society of

abundance. This usage is followed and expanded in their book 

The Year 2000: A

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