Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

73

tories, workers on assembly lines a la Charlie Chaplin in "Modern

Times." Hence, when we perceive the growth of suburbs, the substitu-

tion of clean electronic plants for steel mills (more precisely the addi-

tion of the former to the latter), and the assembly line in the factory

replaced (or supplemented) by that of the typing pool in the office or

the service counter at MacDonald's, a little light blinks on in our

brains as in an old-fashioned cartoon, and we say, "Aha! A post-

industrial society." But this is not social theory.

In order to have a falsifiable, or even a logically interesting, theory

about the coming into existence of post-industrial society it would first

be necessary to define industrial society in terms of a single—or a

small related group of—historically unique characteristics identified

in such a way as to be operationalizable and empirically observable.

Then, having established the existence of industrial society during the

period in which it allegedly was the norm, one would, in order to posit

the existence of post-industrial society, have to demonstrate on the

basis of empirically observable data that the central characteristics or

characteristics of industrialism no longer were dominant but had been

superceded by other characteristics. Note that we are talking about

societies—systems of social relations among human beings—not

technical systems of production per se." It is easily conceivable that

two agricultural societies could be growing rice in exactly the same

way, although one consisted of free, land-owning farmers and the

other of slaves. They would not be the same kind of society, however;

when I.G. Farben used "slave-labor" drawn from captive nations

during World War II, the asssembly lines looked little different from

the way they had looked like before Hitler's accession to power in

1933.

Though they are obviously not entirely inconsequential for each

other, changes in techniques do not determine political forms or

cultural norms and vice versa, as Bell himself has been at pains to

point out. But neither do they determine or define all social and

economic relationships.

As will be discussed below, the theory of post-industrial society as

enunciated by Bell and taken up by others does not yield propositions

31. The British sociologist Anthony Giddens makes a useful distinction between

what he calls "paratechnical relations" and such primarily social relations as class

structure. See 

The Class Structure of Advanced Industrial Societies 

(New York: Harper

Torchbooks, 1975) P. 85 and 

passim.

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74

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

about changes from industrial to post-industrial society which are em-

pirically verifiable, even given its own intrinsically loose criteria. But,

even more basically, it fails theoretically because it offers no way of

defining industrial society per se, substituting instead an almost com-

pletely implicit and unexamined congeries of technological or other

physical characteristics. A potentially useful definition of industrial

society does exist, of course, in the work of Marx and one need not

even be a quasi-Marxist such as Bell to recognize its utility.

Marx (not without justification given the historical context) equated

modern capitalist and industrial society. He argued that the central

characteristic of this society was the rationalization of all of the means

of production and the domination of the worker by the system to such

an extent that labor replaced life—and labor had become a commodi-

ty.

32

 Labor in industrial society was a commodity, uniquely so as com-

pared to traditional, slave or peasant societies. It was not the machines

it used to do work but its status as a commodity which defined labor's

place in the new industrial society. Labor is still a commodity in so-

called post-industrial societies, whether capitalist or socialist, which is

why there is so little difference between them." The rationalization

Marx speaks of now extends from the economic market place into all

aspects of life, though its victory is far from complete, thanks in part

to the irrationalism Bell and like-minded theorists rail against.

Does Post-Industrial Society Exist?

Theorists of post-industrial society fail at the outset, we have seen,

to provide a useful definition of the concept per se. But they in essence

allege that some new whole must be coming into existence because

there are all these parts around which must somehow add up to

something. In fact, do these phenomena really exist, are they related,

and do they mean anything in terms of change from one form of socie-

ty to another?

The first problem encountered in looking for post-industrial society

lies in knowing where to look. Most—indeed virtually all-

L

-of Bell's

evidence for the coming of post-industrial society is drawn from the

32. Karl Marx, 

Wage Labor and Capital 

(1847) and 

Capital 

Vol. I (1848).

33. Harry Braverman, 

Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in

the Twentieth Century 

(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974) P. 12 discusses how

Lenin's fascination with Taylorism set in motion a process which has made the situation

of Soviet and Western workers akin.

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