Theory, myth, and ideology

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

75

United States." Whether this fact has any deeper roots or significance

than inclination, time, or the availability of data is difficult to judge.

Bell makes no case for American exceptionalism in this context and,

indeed, is forced to implicitly renounce such a position in order to de-

fend himself against critics, especially Europeans, who hold that much

of what evidence he adduces for the importance of science and

technology in the American economy is a reflection of military spen-

ding, based on American mobilization for global war." Yet at the

same time Bell—at the very least paradoxically—denies that what is

happening in the United States will necessarily happen elsewhere, thus

explicitly rejecting Marx's method of discussing British capitalism and

telling other nations they could see their future history written in it."

(He also concurrently avoids Marx's blunder of basing his economic

analysis of capitalism on Britain and looking to France—a radically

different country economically—for illustration of the working-out of

class conflict in politics, sowing confusion for generations of

followers.) For good or ill, however, Bell's analysis of post-industrial

economics, politics, and even culture" is essentially American in pro-

venance.

But Bell does talk, as we have seen, about the possibility of both

capitalist and socialist post-industrial societies coming into existence,

and the general tenor of his writings seems to imply that, as economic

growth continues in various countries, they too will become post-

industrial. Herman Kahn in equating post-industrial status with

economic development and affluence explicitly universalizes this con-

cept, and Bell has apparently never seriously objected to this inter-

pretation publicly." Other commentators using the concept have ex-

34. This point has often been made by Bell's critics. See Marvin E. Olson in

"Review Symposium: The Coming of Post-Industrial Society," 

American Journal of

Sociology 

80 (1974) P. 238 and Tilton in Tilton and Bell, 

op. cit., 

P. 730.

35. Thus the French scholar Jean Floud holds "Post-industrial society turns out to

be another name for the American Wehrwirtshaft." Bell, Floud, 

et. al., 

Technocracy

and Politics," 

Survey 

17 (1971) 35.

36. Bell and Tilton, 

op. cit. 

P. 748.

37. In 

Coming, 

P. 13, Bell writes of a projected volume to deal with culture in post-

industrial society. 

The Cultural Contradictions 

is apparently designed to fulfill that

function as well as fleshing out the discussion of the political realm which the 

Coming

downplays, and its discussion centers more exclusively on American than even the 

Com-

ing 

does.

38. On pages 460-461 of 

Coming, 

Bell reproduces without cavil certain listings

from the work of Kahn as part of a larger discussion which draws heavily on Kahn. In

this context, it is anticipated that the year 2000 the United States, Japan, Canada, Scan-

danavia, Switzerland, France, West Germany and the Benelux countries will be

"visably post-industrial" and'the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Italy, East Ger-

many, Czechoslavakia, Israel, and Australia, and New Zealand will be "early post-

industrial."

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76

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

tended it to western Europe and especially to Sweden" and, as noted,

the Japanese are particularly eager to embrace the idea of post-

industrial status. 4°

Let us focus on a few of the postulated characteristics of post-

industrial society which are empirically observable in order to deter-

mine whether any such societies do in fact exist. Perhaps the most im-

portant characteristic of post-industrial society is the postulated

growth of the service industries. Post-industrial theory insists that ser-

vice industries are growing at the expense of the blue-collar industries

and that this change correlates with a rise in skill levels of workers and

an expansion of the role of theoretical knowledge in society. The

literature on the subject is vast and murky, flawed at the outset by its

own problems of definition.°' Both corporation lawyers and Dallas

39. See, as examples, Hancock, 

Sweden, op. cit., 

and "The United States,

Europe..." 

op. cit. 

and his "Elite Images and System Change in Sweden," in Leon N.

Lindberg, 

Politics and the Future of Industrial Society 

(New York: David McKay, 1976)

Pp. 167-190. See also in the Lindberg volume Robert Inglehart, "The Nature of Value

Change in Post-Industrial Societies," Pp. 57-99. Inglehart, however, uses the terms

"post-industrial" and "advanced industrial" synonymously in an earlier article, "The

Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational. Change in Post-Industrial Societies,"

American Political Science Review 

65 (1971): Pp. 991-1017, and abandons the use of the

term post-industrial in one published slightly later "Political Dissatisfaction and Mass

Support for Social Change in Advanced Industrial Society," 

Comparative Political

Studies 

10 (1977): Pp. 455-472. Whether this represents on his part a theoretical conver-

sion, shift with prevailing fashions, or sheer whim is impossible to guess. Usages such as

post-industrial or even "advanced industrial" when applied to European politics are

almost always those of American observers rather than of Europeans themselves. For

an attempt to speculate on the relevance of the new ideas about the impact of

technology on politics (including those of Bell (in Britain see Robert Williams "The

Technological Society and British Politics," 

Government and Opposition, 7 

(1972): Pp.

56-84.

40. See, for example, Taketsugu Tsuratani, "Japan as a Post-Industrial Society,"

in Lindberg, 

op. cit., 

Pp. 100-125.

41. A preview of the post-industrial theorists' argument about the importances of

services is provided by Victor Fuchs, "The First Service Economy," 

The Public Interest

No. 2 (Winter 1966): Pp. 7-17. Bell has frequently been attacked 

(cf. 

Tilton in Tilton

and Bell, 

op. cit., 

731) for his use of "services" as, in his own words, a "research,

education, and government." 

Coming, op. cit., 

P. 15. His position is directly attacked

in Gershuny, 

op. cit., 

Pp. 56-69 and Richard B. Halley and Harold G. Vatler,

"Technology and the Future as History: A Critical Review of Futurism," 

Technology

and Culture 

19 (1978): Pp. 70-78. Gary Geppert, "Post-Affluence: The Turbulant

Transition to a Post-Industrial Society," 

The Futurist, 

VIII (1974): Pp. 212-215 accepts

the notion of a coming service economy but in a context of scarcity. See also Victor

Ferkiss, 

Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality 

(New York: Braziller, 1969) Pp.

109-110, and Kumar, 

op. cit., 

Pp. 200-205, 258. For background see Joachim

Singlemann, "The Sectoral Transformation of the Labor Force in Seven Industrialized

Countries 1920-1970," 

American Journal of Sociology 

83 (1978): Pp. 1224-1234. Gid-

dens, commenting on the effort of Ralf Dahrendorf and others to claim that the "ser-

vice class" provides "a bridge between rulers and ruled" argued congently for the im-

portance of distinguishing adequately "between class and the division of labor," 

op.

cit., 

P. 187, pointing up the fact that much of Bell's argument would be irrelevant even

if it were true.

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