Postindustrial Politics: How Benign Will It Be?

Abstract

I. Postindustrial Society and Its Darker (?) Politics The concept of postindustrial society was advanced in the early 1960s by Daniel Bell as a model of society comparable to, but significantly different from, models of industrial and agrarian society. In the following decade, the concept was elaborated by Bell, reformulated by others, and relabeled by some.l While individual postindustrial society theorists stress different aspects of the concept, they would generally agree on the following as central elements distinguishing postindustrial from industrial and agrarian society: a. the economic predominance of the service sector in contrast to the industrial and agricultural sectors; b. the predominance in the labor force of white-collar rather than blue-collar workers and, particularly, the widespread and critical role in the economy of professional, technical, and managerial workers; c. a central role in the economy and society of theoretical knowledge, technology, research and development as opposed to physical capital and, consequently, the predominance not of factories but of institutions, such as universities, think tanks, and media devoted to the creation and transmission of information; d. high and widespread levels of economic well-being and affluence, leading to increased leisure for the bulk of the population, with a few isolated pockets of poverty, in contrast to a small prosperous elite and widespread poverty; e. higher levels of education for the bulk of the population, with a college education becoming general, in contrast to a norm of primary education;