POST-INDUSTRIAL
SOCIETY
83
Rome had its military and fiscal "experts" as much as any contem-
porary nation does. But while members of such elites have been
rewarded with varying degrees of economic wealth and social status
and have often, as individuals or as groups, been members of the rul-
ing political elites of society, they have never, as a distinctive group,
been the wielders of ultimate decision-making power. The experts
have always been kept on tap rather than being allowed to get on top
by kings and parliaments. Ancient history provides the most striking
example: in the case of the Roman Empire, where the "knowledge
elite" consisted largely of Greeks, who were not only not rulers but
were actually slaves." Throughout medieval and early modern history
there have been inventors such as Da Vinci, financial wizards such as
Condorcet, military/technological geniuses such as Vauban, but,
however they may have been rewarded or honored, it was the kings
and princes who ruled. In the nineteenth century the rise of liberalism
and capitalism meant the gradual transfer of the locus of ruling power
from landed wealth and hereditary social status to financial and in-
dustrial wealth. The James Wattses and the Edisons and the Siemanns
and the Whitneys have changed history, but they did so in accordance
with the options permitted by the general logic of capitalist develop-
ment and national aspirations. Scientific work was supported and ex-
ploited, technologies were introduced and developed in accordance
with the needs of the business civilization. St. Simon may have
dreamed otherwise for the future but it was only a dream and still is in
its echoes in the theory of post-industrial society."
There is absolutely no reason to believe that either new and
glamorous technologies or scientific-technological options such as
atomic power, the computer, or the new biology has changed this
situation. New scientific and technological development takes place in
accordance with the needs of a society based on the (hopefully pro-
fitable) exchange of commodities. We still live in what Andrew
56. The relevance of this to contemporary theories of technocracy is discussed in
S.M. Miller, "Notes on Neo-Capitalism,"
Theory and Society
2 (1975):
P.
1-35.
57. The centrality of St. Simon as the originator of the
concept of post-industrial
society is discussed in Kumar,
op. cit.,
especially Pp. 27-44. As critics have noted
(cf.
Giddens,
op. cit.,
P. 255) Bell is aware of this and references to St. Simon are frequent,
especially in
Coming,
but Bell fails to draw the obvious conclusion that a theory ex-
plaining an historical phenomenon prior to its alleged observance suggests that the
theory is based primarily on aspiration rather than observation.
84
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
Hacker has called "a country called corporate America."" It is true
that non-profit enterprises have been playing a growing economic role
in American society, but this is somewhat misleading, most of these
are involved in military research or are "stalking horses" for profit
making firms." Medicine is big business and so is higher education in
58. "A Country Called Corporate America,"
New York Times Magazine
July 3,
1966, P. 8-9. The literature on the extent of the domination of the politics of the United
States and other Western industrial nations by large economic interests is of course
overwhelming in volume, though Bell tends to deprecate it, on one occasion referring to
a critic citing such evidence as follows: "Mr. Peretz has discovered something called
economic power like a political virgin who has seen the primal scene for the first
time...." Francois Duchesne (ed.),
The Endless Crisis. America in the Seventies
(New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1970) Pp. 133-134. Representative discussions of class struc-
ture and political power in modern industrial society include T.H. Bottomore,
Classes
in Modern Society
(New York: Pantheon, 1966), and
Elites in Modern Society
(New
York: Basic Books, 1964), G. William Domhoff,
Who Rules America?
(Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967),
The Higher Circles
(New York: Vintage Books, 1971)
and
The Powers That Be
(New York: Vintage Books, 1978), Gabriel Kolko,
Wealth and
Power in America
(New York: Bantam Books, 1968), Ralph Miliband,
The State in
Capitalist Society
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969), C. Wright Mills,
The
Power Elite
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), Anthony Sampson,
The
Anatomy of Europe
(New York: Harper and Row, 1968), M. Scotsford-Archer and S.
Giner (eds.),
Contemporary Europe: Class, Status and Power
(London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson, 1971), J. Westergard and H. Resler,
Class in a Capitalist Society: A
Study of Contemporary Britain
(London: Heinemann, 1965), and Alan Wolfe,
The
Limits of Legitimacy
(New York: The Free Press, 1977). See also Peter Hall, (ed.),
Europe 2000
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) Pp. 205-225 and Andrew
Hacker, "Who Rules America?"
New York Review of Books, May
1,1975. The validi-
ty of the argument that post-industrial society has changed the bourgeois structure of
class domination is explicitly challenged in Ferkiss,
op. cit.,
Pp. 121-124, Sinai,
op. cit.,
Norman Birnbaum,
The Crisis of Industrial Society
(New York: Oxford University
Press, 1969) Pp. 82-83, Bottomore,
Elites in Modern Society, op. cit.,
P. 89, Giddens,
op. cit., passim,
Kleinberg,
op. cit., passim,
Kenneth Dolbeare
Political Change in the
United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) Pp. 22-35 and Janowitz, op. cit.,
P. 235.
Heilbroner insists that post-industrial society to whatever extent it may exist is still
capitalist in its structures of economic control.
Business Civilization, op. cit.,
Pp. 63-78.
Christopher Lasch argues that "The post-industrial order, far from transcending the
contradictions inherent in capitalism, embodies them in an acute form." "Toward a
Theory of Post-Industrial Society,"
op. cit.,
P. 47. Daniel Greenberg notes "scientists,
rather than being the new men of power in American politics, comprise a very much
misunderstood and politically fragile group whose proximity to power is easily confused
with the real stuff of power." "The Myth of the Scientific Elite,"
The Public Interest,
No. 1 (Fall 1965) 53. See also Victor Ferkiss, "The Spectre of the Scientific Elite," in
Daniel McCracken
et. al., Public Policy and the Expert
(New York: Council on
Religion in International Affairs, 1971) Pp. 99-113, On technocracy generally see also
Putnam,
op. cit.
59. Kleinberg,
op. cit.,
P. 356.