DANIEL BELL'S CONCEPT OF POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY: THEORY, MYTH ...

DANIEL BELL'S CONCEPT OF POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY:
THEORY, MYTH, AND IDEOLOGY
The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. A Venture in Social
Forecasting, by Daniel Bell. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Pp.
xiii, 507. $16.00.
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, by Daniel Bell. New
York: Basic Books, 1976. Pp. xvi, 301. $14.95.
ne of the signs of weakness in contemporary American political
O science is its susceptability to invasion from other disciplines.
To say this is not to argue that any academic field should ignore
developments in other fields . and not be subject to cross fertilization
with them, any more than any nation should seek to hermetically seal
itself off from outside cultural influences. But just as national identity
and ultimately national power can be threatened by cultural conquest
from the outside, so can academic disciplines lose their bearings and
integrity by adopting paradigms from other fields which may not do
justice to the nature of their own data or help to answer the questions
they seek to resolve.
A case in point in contemporary political science is research and
teaching in the area of the politics of "developing" nations. In the
post World War II period, discussion of comparative politics was
overwhelmed by the belief, adopted from economics, that there were
such things as "underdeveloped" (actually a euphemism for poor or
backward) countries with special characteristics as defined by the
discipline of economics. Faced with the problem of enlarging their
focus from the nation states of Europe and North America in order to
deal with a horde of "new nations," students of comparative politics
allowed themselves to assume that there must be common political
characteristics of these "underdeveloped" nations which correlated
with their economic characteristics and a new subfield was born of this
seduction. Moreover, in the circumstances it was also natural to fur-
ther assume that—since economic criteria defined the new field of
study—in these nations economics was the dominant, independent
variable and politics the subordinate dependent factor. Needless to

---

62
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
say, the fruits of this mesallaince have been sickly and deformed, and
only in the past few years have political scientists begun to integrate
the study of these countries into paradigms of primarily political
significance.'
But if political science has been reasserting its integrity in resisting
the imposition of an often misleading economic paradigm on the
study of the less developed—i.e., less industrialized—nations of the
world, it has been increasingly subject to a new invasion from
without. This time the new paradigm originates in sociology and seeks
to reorient our study of the developed, advanced industrial nations.
This new frame of reference coalesces around the concept of "post-
industrial society," as developed by Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell
and a number of major and minor epigoni. 2 The very thinness and
vagueness of the theoretical basis of "post-industrial" theorizing
paradoxically adds to rather than detracts from its influence. Thus we
find books and papers which use the term "post-industrial" in their
titles or refer to the term in their introductions, only to define or use
the term in various ways or not at all in the actual analysis of data or
exposition of material.' Yet increasing numbers of political scientists
seem to act on the maxim that where there is so much smoke (or haze)
there must be fire, and the term gains in currency.
1. For an evaluation of the current state of the study of the politics of developing
societies see Robert T. Holt and John E. Turner, "Crises and Sequences in Collective
Theory Development," American Political Science Review LXIX (1975) Pp. 979-994.
Pioneer attempts to assert the autonomy of political variables in that study include
Robert T. Holt and John E. Turner, The Political Basis of Economic Development.
(Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1966) and Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing
Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
2. One of the earliest contemporary usages is in Bertram Gross, "Space-Time and
Post-Industrial Society," CAG Occasional Papers, Comparative Administration
Group, American Society for Public Administration, May 1966. This antedates Bell's
usage but is not followed up by later systematic work on Gross' part.
3. The term is used, without explanation or elucidation in, for example, Warren
Moxley. "Post—Industrial Politics: A Guide to 1976." Congressional Quarterly Week-
ly Report, November 15, 1975, Pp. 2475-2478; Talcott Parsons, "Religion in Post-
Industrial America: The Problem of Secularization," Social Research 41 (1974): Pp.
193-225; Richard L. Simpson, "Beyond Rational Bureaucracy: Changing Values and
Social Implications in Post-Industrial Society," Social Forces 51 (1972): 1-6; Stanley
Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, "Power, Politics, and Personality in Post-Industrial
Society," Journal of Politics, 40 (1978): Pp. 675-717; Erazim V. Kohak, "Being Young
in a Post-Industrial Society," Dissent XVIII (February 1971): Pp. 30-40; Magorah
Murayama, "The Post-Industrial Logic," in Andrew A. Spekke (ed.), The Next 25
Years: Crisis and Opportunity (Washington: World Futures Society, 1975), Pp. 43-50;
Edward T. Mason, "The Corporation in the Post-Industrial State," California
Management Review, XII (Summer 1970): PP. 5-25. Political scientist Martin 0.

---

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
63
As a result, there is growing up within political science an implicit
new paradigm for the study of advanced industrial societies which
assumes that as the result of various postulated social, economic, and
technological changes there now exists a number of what can be called
Heisler entitles a collection of readings Politics in Europe. Structures and Processes in
Some Post-Industrial Democracies (New York: David McKay, 1974) but never tells us
what the word means, implying it has something to do with being "advanced" and "af-
fluent." Other political scientists tell us that their book grows out of "increasing in-
terest in the concept of post-industrial society," Lawrence Mayer and John C. Burnett,
Politics in Industrial Societies. A Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley,
1977), P. vii but then go on to say "the term post-industrial has become something of a
catchword and often implies a difference in kind rather than degree, we prefer to use the
concept of a mature industrial society," Ibid. They then go on to use the terms post-and
advanced-industrial interchangeably, saying the difference is a "matter of degree." Pp.
362-373. M. Donald Hancock says that "A minimum definition of post-industrial socie-
ty, as it is presently emerging in the United States and parts of Western Europe, is that it
is a socioeconomic system in which, white-collar or service or service strata have dis-
placed blue-collar workers as the dominant labor force," and beyond that there is little
agreement. "The United States, Europe, and Post-Industrial Society," Comparative
Politics 4 (1971): P. 132. One of the few political scientists to try to use the term
systematically is Bell's associate Samuel Huntington, "Post-Industrial Politics: How
Benign Will It Be?" in James William Morley (ed.), Prologue to the Future. The United
States and Japan in the Post-Industrial Age (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1973, Pp.
89-127.) A systematic critique of Bell is found in the work of sociologist Benjamin S.
Kleinberg, American Society in the Post-Industrial Age. Technocracy, Power and the
End of Ideology (Columbus: Charles E. Merrill, 1973). A substantially different use of
the term is found in M. Donald Hancock, Sweden. The Politics of Post-Industrial
Change (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden Press, 1972). Hancock says a post-industrial society
"can be defined as one in which the primacy of capital accumulation and industrial ac-
cumulation yields to the potential primacy of redistribution...." (P. 7), and speaks of
societies "attaining post-industrial complexity, affluence, and redistributive poten-
tialities...." (P. 269). Hancock's usage is nearer to those of Alain Touraine and Herman
Kahn than that of Bell (see below). Victor Basiuk accepts and uses the term but is skep-
tical of alleged shifts in political power and believes applied knowledge is of more in-
creasing importance than theoretical. See Technology, World Politics and American
Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), Pp. 259-274. In the voluminous 8
volume Handbook of Political Science edited by Nelson Polsby and Fred I. Greenstein
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975) the term appears in only three articles, being
mentioned in passing by Bell's associates Kahn (Vol. VII, P. 411) and Huntington (Vol.
III, P. 95) and several times in another article, "Science Policy" by Harvey M.
Sapolsky, Vol. VI, Pp. 79-110. In the massive international survey Science, Technology
and Society. A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective edited by Ina Speigel-Rosing and Derek
de Solla Price (London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977) the term is not indexed, though it
appears twice in an essay by American political scientist Sanford Lakoff. Despite this
mixed scholarly usage and reception, numerous college courses are now being given
with post-industrial in their titles.

---

64
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
post-industrial societies, so different socially from previously existing
industrial societies that they must (in a reductionist assumption) con-
stitute a different class of political entities, with their own special
characteristics and dynamics. The United States and Canada, Japan,
Australia, the wealthier nations of Western Europe, and even in some
treatments Eastern Europe and the USSR are considered to fit into
this new category of post-industrial. Given these intellectual
developments it would appear both salutary and necessary that
political scientists take a close look at the concept of post-
industrialism in order to ascertain its logical coherence, its empirical
validity, and its implications—whether it be valid or not for political
science both descriptive and normative.
Treatments of and reference to the concept of post-industrialism
now abound, but the central figure in its introduction and populariza-
tion has been Professor Bell, and primary reference will be to his work
and ideas. Though he introduced and used the concept in a number of
papers both before and after the publication of his major work on the
subject, his most extensive and relatively systematic exposition is
found in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, published in 1973.4
A subsequent major book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
published in 1976, deals with some of the same themes. Apparently it
stands, in the corpus of Bell's work, as a substitute for originally pro-
jected volumes on the politics and culture of post-industrial society
which were to have supplemented the primarily socio-economic focus
of the original exposition, and its nature and conclusions in
themselves are significant for the light they shed on the validity and
usefulness of Bell's central thesis. Somewhat ironically, Bell himself
rarely uses the concept of post-industrial society in his later
writings—which is rather as though Marx were to have coined the con-
cepts of surplus value and the class struggle and then gone on to com-
ment on economic and political development without making use of
them.'
4. Critical reaction was mixed with much of it hostile. Christopher Lasch argued
that "the case for the transition to post-industrial society cannot easily be refuted,
because it was never stated with any precision to begin with," New York Review of
Books, October 18, 1973, leading to an angry polemical exchange. Norman Birnbaum
wrote that it "lacks theoretical drive, and its argument is repetitive—not all of it consis-
tent." New York Times Book Review, July I, 1973. Joseph Featherstone was more
mildly critical in a review essay "A Failure of Political Imagination," New Republic,
September 15, 1973 and September 22, 1973. Despite such reactions the term caught on
widely among social scientists.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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).

---

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

---

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
69
dance will put an end to ideology and what technocrats regard as
political irrationalism." Nor do writers such as Samuel Huntington,
who use the term post-industrial in a way that combines the usages of
Bell and Kahn." In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism Bell
ironically evidences fear bordering on panic that political and cultural
irrationality, often taking ideological form, will not only continue to
exist in post-industrial society but may threaten its very existence.
What Is "Post-Industrial Society" All About?
Having loosely described post-industrial society and indicated its
historical origins in post-Marxist theorizing and in the ideology of the
end of ideology, we must now ask what the term really means. Bell,
unfortunately for our present purposes, does not share Hobbes' ad-
miration for Euclid, and it is difficult to pin down central propositions.
from which others flow in his various expositions of the concept: 7 On
Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years (New York: Macmillan,
1967) esp. pages 25 and 186. Yet Bell contributes a preface in which he reiterates his own
definition (p. xxvii) but does not take issue with theirs. See also Kahn and B. Bruce-
Briggs, Things to Come. Thinking About the 70's and 80's (New York: Macmillan,
1972), esp. P. 220 and Kahn and Leon Martel, The Next 200 Years (New York: William
Morrow, 1976) P. 1. This notion of post-industrial society as one combining affluence
plus technological development is similar to those of Hancock cited above and that used
by Christopher Lasch, despite the pseudo-Marxist spin he gives it, in "Toward a Theory
of Post-Industrial Society," in M. Donald Hancock and Gideon Sjoberg (eds.), Politics
in the Post-Welfare State. Responses to the New Individualism (New York: Comumbia
University Press, 1972), Pp. 36-50. This usage has crept into the secondary literature as
well. See Edward C. Pytlik, Donald P. Lauda, and David L. Johnson, Technology,
Change, and Society (Worcester: Davis, 1978), Pp. 91-106.
15. Discussions of various forms of possible future political, religious, and cultural
irrationality abound in the many possible "scenarios" profferred in Kahn's works, see
especially The Year 200 (op. cit.) and Things To Come (op. cit.).
16. "Post-Industrial Politics. How Benign...," op. cit., Pp. 187-188.
17. Thus in his rambling The Coming, Bell variously speaks of this new society as
having "five dimensions, or components" (P. 14), says that its significance consists in
four different features (P. 43), presents a table of its "structures and problems" using
eight "axial" principles (P. 119), discusses the role of science and technology as an
"underpinning" (P. 197), says it "is a knowledge society" (P. 212) yet tells us "the
business corporation remains, for the whole, the heart of the society" (P. 269), despite
the fact that "today ownership is simply a legal fiction" (P. 294), presents a table on
"stratification and power" with six elements (P. 359), later reduced to three variables
(base of power, mode of access, and social unit) (P. 361), and in the "Coda" of the
book presents still another elaborate scheme on "The societal Structure of Post-
Industrial Society," (P. 375). As one commentator has noted, "Professor Bell's com-
plex thought is sometimes difficult to master," Jonathan Gershuny, After Industrial
Society. The Emerging Self-Service Economy (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1978), P. 158.

---

70
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
some points he is quite clear, however: post-industrialism does not
constitute a factor (independent variable) from which other aspects of
society flow in a causal fashion from cause to effect. Indeed, Bell is
careful to argue, against Marx and much of the modern sociological
tradition, that societies (civilizations?) are not organic wholes and that
the political and cultural forms and characteristics of a society vary in-
dependently of its social form. Post-industrial society is a theory
"primarily" about the economic-social-technological aspect of socie-
ty." There can therefore be capitalist and socialist post-industrial
societies." (Capitalism and socialism in Bell's usage are apparently
thought of as political rather than social structures). Post-industrial
society is not logically equivalent to bourgeois society," despite a long
standing tendency of social historians to speak of bourgeois society
and industrial society almost interchangeably, despite later socialist
ventures into industrialization.
Bell's methodology turns on what he calls "axial" principles . 2 ' As
an analog, he offers Tocqueville's use of "equality" as a tool to ex-
plain early 19th century American society. Equality is not a causal fac-
tor like the introduction of the factory system, but it provides a basis
for explaining a variety of social phenomena. Leaving aside any ques-
tions about the validity of Tocqueville's observations, the concept of
axial principles presents certain problems. Equality—albeit a complex
and subtle concept, as even Aristotle knew and discussed at length—is
at least a single principle. It is relatively easy to visualize the metaphor
and to think of societies revolving around an axis of equality or
whatever, but how societies or other bodies can turn on more than one
axis at a time is difficult to conceive. Post-industrial society is
described by Bell in terms of many characteristics: how many, and
which, varies from work to work, and sometimes from page to page.
It is difficult to discover which, if any, are more important and how, if
at all, they are related to one another. For instance, is there really any
connection, necessary or otherwise, between an increasing number of
workers in "service" occupations, the importance of theoretical
knowledge, and universities replacing corporations as centers of
power?
18.Coming, op. cit., P. 13.
19.Ibid., P. 114. Also, "Both the United States and the Soviet Union could become
post-industrial societies," Cultural Contradictions, op. cit., P. 14.
20. Coming, op. cit., Pp. 12-13.
21.Ibid., P. 10.

---