Sociological theories of post-industrial society. History of the formation of post-industrial society

Note that the term “post-industrialism” arose at the beginning of the century in the works of English scientists A. Coomaraswamy and A. Penty, and the term “post-industrial society” was first used in 1958 by D. Riesman. At the same time, the founder of post-industrialism will be the American sociologist Daniel Bell (born in 1919), who developed a holistic theory of post-industrial society.
It is worth noting that D. Bell’s main work is called “The Coming Post-Industrial Society. It is appropriate to note that the experience of social forecasting" (1973)

Both from the title and from the contents of the book it clearly follows prognostic orientation of the theory proposed by D. Bell: “The concept of post-industrial society will be an analytical construct, and not a picture of a specific or concrete society. It is worth noting that it is a certain paradigm, a social scheme that reveals new axes of social organization and stratification in developed Western society,” and further: “Post-industrial society... will be an “ideal type,” a construction compiled by a social analyst on the basis of various changes in society."

D. Bell systematically examines the changes occurring in three main, relatively autonomous spheres of society: social structure, political system and cultural sphere (while Bell somewhat unconventionally refers to the social structure as economics, technology and the employment system)

The concept of post-industrial society, according to Bell, includes five main components:

in the economic sector - the transition from the production of goods to the expansion of services;
in the employment structure - the dominance of the professional and technical classes, the creation of a new “merigocracy”;
the axial principle of society is the central place of theoretical knowledge;
future orientation - the special role of technology and technological assessments;
making decisions based on new “intelligent technology”.

The characteristics of post-industrial society in comparison with previous types of societies are presented in Table. 1.

The post-industrial direction in sociology includes the fundamental work of Manuel Castells (born in 1942) “The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture" (1996-1998, original - three-volume edition) M. Castells is a true "citizen of the world." It is worth noting that he was born and raised in Spain, studied in Paris with A. Touraine and worked in France for 12 years. Since 1979, Castells has been a professor at the University of California, while for several years he simultaneously worked at the University of Madrid, and also lectured and conducted research in many countries, incl. in the USSR, Russia.

Table 1. Types of societies

Characteristics	Pre-industrial	Industrial	Post-industrial
Main production resource			Information
Basic type of production activity		Manufacturing	Treatment
Nature of the underlying technologies	Labor intensive	Capital intensive	Knowledge-intensive
a brief description of	Playing with nature	Game with transformed nature	Game between people

The subject of Castells' research will be an understanding of the latest trends in the development of society associated with the information technology revolution, globalization, and environmental movements. Castells records a new method of social development - informational, defining it as follows: “In the new, informational method of development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of generating knowledge, processing information and symbolic communication. Of course, knowledge and information will be critical elements in all modes of development... Moreover, specific to the information mode of development will be the impact of knowledge on knowledge itself as the main source of productivity.”

Castells' information theory is not limited to technological and economic analysis (otherwise it would not be sociological), but extends to the consideration of cultural, historical, organizational, and purely social spheres. Developing the ideas of D. Bell, Castells notes that in the information society a special social organization arises, in which operations with information become the basic sources of productivity and power. Another key feature of the information society will be its network structure, replacing previous hierarchies: “Not all social dimensions and institutions follow the logic of the network society, just as industrial societies have long included numerous pre-industrial forms of human existence. But all information age societies are indeed permeated—with varying intensities—by the ubiquitous logic of the network society, whose dynamic expansion gradually absorbs and subjugates pre-existing social forms.”

The body of research in the field of post-industrial theory is very extensive, and its boundaries are quite vague. It is worth saying that you can get a more detailed idea of the work in this area with the help of the anthology edited by V. Inozemtsev “The New Post-Industrial Wave in the West” (M., 1999)

Note that the theory of post-industrial society

Note that the theory of post-industrial society (or the theory of three stages) appeared in the 50-60s. XX century This period is called the era of total industrialization, when the main driving force behind the transition of civilization to a qualitatively new state was the scientific and technological revolution. The creator of this theory is considered a prominent American sociologist Daniela Bella(b. 1919)
It is worth noting that his main works: “The End of Ideologies”, “The Coming Post-Industrial Society”. He divided world history into three stages: pre-industrial (traditional), industrial And post-industrial. When one stage replaces another, technology, mode of production, form of ownership, social institutions, political regime, culture, lifestyle, population, and social structure of society change. Thus, a traditional society is characterized by an agrarian way of life, inactivity, stability and reproducibility of the internal structure. And industrial society is based on large-scale machine production and has a developed communications system, where the interests and interests of the individual are combined with generally accepted sociocultural norms.

The transition from traditional to industrial society in modern sociology is called modernization, distinguishing two types of it: "primary" And "secondary". And although the theory of modernization was developed by Western sociologists (P. Berger, D. Bell, A. Touraine, etc.) in relation to developing countries, nevertheless, it largely explains the process of reforming any society, its transformation according to the model of the advanced countries of the world. Today, modernization covers almost all spheres of society - the economy, social and political spheres, spiritual life.

In this case, the guidelines for the development of an industrial society should be:

in the sphere of human activity - the growth of material production;
in the sphere of production organization - private entrepreneurship;
in the sphere of political relations - the rule of law and civil society:
in the sphere of the state - provision by the state of the rules of public life (with the help of law and order) without interference in its spheres;
in the sphere of social structures - the priority of the technical and economic structures of society (professional, stratification) over class-antagonistic ones;
in the sphere of organization of circulation - market economy;
in the sphere of relations between peoples and cultures - mutual exchange as a movement towards mutual understanding based on compromises.

Other scientists proposed variants of the triad that differed from D. Bell’s theory, in particular the concepts of the premodern, modernist and postmodern state (S. Crook and S. Lash), pre-economic. economic and post-economic societies (V.L. Inozemtsev), as well as the “first”, “second” and “third” waves of civilization (O. Toffler)

The idea of a post-industrial society was formulated at the beginning of the 20th century. A. Penty and introduced into scientific circulation after the Second World War by D. Riesman, but it received wide recognition only in the early 70s. last century thanks to the fundamental works of R. Aron and D. Bell.

The determining factors of post-industrial society, according to Bell, will be: a) theoretical knowledge (and not capital) as an organizing principle; b) the “cybernetic revolution”, which led to technological growth in the production of goods. It is worth noting that he formulated five main components of the model of the future:

economic sphere - transition from the production of goods to the production of services;
sphere of employment - the predominance of the class of professional specialists and technicians;
axial principle - the leading role of theoretical knowledge as a source of innovation and policy determination in society;
upcoming orientation - control over technology and technological assessments of activities;
the decision-making process is the creation of a new “intelligent technology” associated with electronic computing technology.

Today the theories of post-industrial capitalism, post-industrial socialism, ecological and conventional post-industrialism are known. Later, post-industrial society was also called postmodern.

The concept of a post-industrial society was first proposed in the 1973 book by American sociologist Daniel Bell, The Coming Post-Industrial Society.

Daniel Bell (born 1919) is an American journalist and sociologist, professor at Columbia and Harvard Universities. Lived and worked in Chicago, New York, and since 1969 in Cambridge. D. Bell is one of the authors of the concepts of de-ideologization and post-industrial society; was among the first to express the idea that since the middle of the 21st century, the initiative for changes in society is moving from economics to culture.

The work “The Coming Post-Industrial Society” received wide public and scientific resonance. In post-war society, according to Daniel Bell, there is a transition from a “share civilization” to a post-industrial society, which is characterized by the development of computer technology. Computers, as the most important form of capital, are distinguished by theoretical knowledge, and society by research institutes and universities. Possession of knowledge and technology is the main condition for social advancement, and not the possession of property.

Bell writes that the concept of post-industrial society is an analytical construct and not a picture of a specific or specific society. It is a kind of paradigm, a social scheme that reveals new axes of social organization and stratification in developed Western society.

Post-industrial society is an “ideal type”, which is composed on the basis of various changes in society, combined into one whole.

However, here Daniel Bell notes that post-industrial society represents a certain reality that actually exists, even if it cannot be put on a par with certain types of societies existing today. Social structures do not change overnight, and often a revolution takes a century to complete. Absolutely any society is a combination of many social forms, such as economic structures, various political structures, etc. That is why we need an approach through which we are able to view society from different points of view.

As a social system, post-industrial society does not “replace” capitalism or socialism, but, like bureaucratization, permeates both of these social types.

Based on this, obviously, emphasizing the post-industrial character can be considered from the theory of Daniel Bell as a means of indicating the unpreparedness of the real process of formation of a new social order and thereby getting ahead of possible criticisms, which, in turn, would arise if post-industrial society were considered either as a kind of society that is replacing one of two social systems, or as a result of their convergence.

Daniel Bella distinguishes three main stages in the development of human society:

Pre-industrial society is a social order that is based on primitive production forms, developing primarily in industries that provide the extraction and primary processing of resources most suitable for meeting the most urgent needs. Labor in this case is actually unskilled, the development of human abilities is determined primarily by established traditions, and people remain inextricably linked with the past. Thus, the author describes a traditional society, which is distinguished by a very weak degree of dynamism.

The industrial system marks a radical break with such tradition and becomes the most important condition for the formation of a post-industrial system. Within its framework, the extraction of natural resources is replaced by the production of predetermined products; the employee’s increasing qualifications are stated; energy becomes the main production resource; a person turns out to be able to make certain local technological and economic forecasts.

And finally, the author contrasts post-industrial society with industrial society as one where manufacturing as a discrete and constantly renewed process is replaced by a continuous impact on the environment (processing), where each sphere of human activity is closely connected with all others.

According to Daniel Bell, the main and important thing in a post-industrial society is the transformation of such areas of economic activity as the service economy and information production. The social structure of post-industrial society is dominated by those layers that are employed precisely in these exact areas.

The pre-industrial era is characterized by a low level of industrial development. That is, in countries at this stage, the volume of GNP is small.

The transition from the pre-industrial era to the industrial era Daniel Bell considers two technological revolutions. The first is characterized by the discovery of the power of steam, and the second - after the beginning of the use of electricity and chemistry. There was an increase in labor productivity and wealth of the population, and the level of well-being of society increased.

The post-industrial era is characterized by a reduction in working hours, the widespread introduction of knowledge-intensive industries, a decrease in the birth rate and a cessation of population growth, as well as an increase in the quality of life. The main features in the political sphere are the separation of management from ownership, pluralistic democracy and meritocracy.

Daniel Bell formulates eleven fundamental features of a post-industrial society:

· the central role of theoretical knowledge;

· creation of new intellectual technology;

· growth of the class of knowledge carriers;

· transition from the production of goods to the production of services;

· changes in the nature of labor (if previously labor acted as an interaction between man and nature, then in a post-industrial society it becomes an interaction between people);

· the role of women (women for the first time receive a reliable basis for economic independence);

· science reaches its mature state; situses as political units (previously there were classes and strata, i.e. horizontal units of society, however, for post-industrial sectors, “situs” (from the Latin word “situ” - “position”, “position”) may turn out to be more important nodes of political connections) or vertically located social units);

· meritocracy (power of the worthy);

· end of limited benefits; economic theory of information.

The growth of the class of knowledge bearers.

D. Bell examines the formation of post-industrial society through the prism of progressively developing processes, which can equally be interpreted as a modification of society itself and as an improvement of theoretical principles about it. Thus, he focuses primarily on such features of the technocratic era as rationality, planning and foresight, noting that one of the most important signs of a post-industrial society is “a dramatic change in the moral attitude - a new “orientation towards the future”, which has spread in all countries and social systems.

Based on this, Daniel Bell defines the process of development of post-industrial society not only through the study of economic processes, but also through the formation of new trends in various fields. He also points out that new trends do not imply the destruction of previous economic and social forms as their immediate result.

In the preface to the 1976 edition, he writes: “Post-industrial society... does not replace industrial society, just as industrial society does not eliminate the agricultural sector of the economy. Just as new and new images are applied to ancient frescoes in subsequent eras, later social phenomena are superimposed on previous layers, erasing some features and increasing the fabric of society as a whole.”

Also in his book “The Formation of Post-Industrial Society,” Daniel Bell argued for the forecast of the transformation of capitalism under the influence of scientific and technological revolution into a new system that is free from competition and class struggle. From Bell's point of view, society consists of three spheres independent from each other: culture, political system and social structure.

D. Bell formulated the main features of a post-industrial society: the creation of a service economy, the dominance of a layer of scientific and technical specialists, the central role of theoretical knowledge as a source of innovation and political decisions in society, the possibility of self-sustaining technological growth, the creation of new “intelligent” technology. Analyzing new features in the economy, D. Bell concluded that society has seen a transition from the industrial era of development to the post-industrial era, with a predominance in the economy of the non-manufacturing sector and the service sector.

According to Bell, pre-industrial society was predominantly extractive, industrial - producing, post-industrial society is processing. Post-industrial society is characterized in these theories by three main features:

1. The source of productivity and growth of the new stage of social development is knowledge and information processed and distributed to all areas of economic activity with the help of information technology. N. N. Moiseev noted that in modern society more than 80% of the costs in time and cost are spent on working with information.

2. The center of gravity of economic activity is shifting from the production of goods to the production of services. In the mid-1990s. The share of service industries in the structure of produced GDP was 73.7% in the USA, 66.8% in France, 64.3% in Italy, 62.6% in England.

3. In the new economy, the leading role is played by professions associated with a high saturation of knowledge and information. According to Alberts and Cerwinski, the contribution of the “knowledge sector” to the US economy is close to 60%4. The core of the new social structure consists of professionals and technicians (white collar workers, middle class).

I would also like to note that D. Bell predicted the emergence of a new society, and did not study a ready-made “post-industrial society.” The concept of post-industrial society describes countries with developed economies - the USA, Western countries and Japan, or to be more precise, only the USA. D. Bell identified three main aspects of post-industrial society: 1) the transition from an industrial to a service society; 2) the decisive role of scientific knowledge for the implementation of technological innovations; 3) transformation of "smart technology" into a key element of decision-making.

Thus, the concept of post-industrial society was first proposed by the American sociologist Daniel Bell. He distinguishes three main stages of development of human society: pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial. He also identified eleven main features, among which the author links directly with scientific progress; three features occupy the first positions. Among them are the following:

The central role of theoretical knowledge;

Creation of new intellectual technology;

The growth of the class of knowledge bearers.

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY THEORIES

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY THEORY - sociological, explaining the main developments of human society based on the analysis of its technological basis. Representatives of these theories explore scientific, technological and social progress, offering an original historical periodization that allows us to consider the prospects of civilization as characterized by a shift in the center of economic activity from the production of material goods to the creation of services and information, the increasing role of theoretical knowledge, the increasing importance of the political factor in the development of society and replacing human interaction with elements of the natural environment with interpersonal communication. Over the past decades, this has been the universal methodological basis for most studies conducted within the framework of the liberal direction of Western sociological science.

The first version of the theory of post-industrial society was formed as a development of the main current of European positivism. The periodization of history based on the development of the technological basis of society and the increasing role of theoretical knowledge in a very explicit form forms the core of the work of J. A. de Condorcet “Sketch of a historical picture of the progress of the human mind” (1794) and the majority of educators and materialists in all European countries.

Obviously, the premises of this theory are formed in the 1st half. 19th century, when French researchers, primarily A. de Saint-Simon and O. Comte, introduced the “industrial class” (les industriels), which they considered as the dominant force in the society of the future. This approach made it possible to define the emerging bourgeoisie as the era of “industrialism” and contrast it with all previous history. In the works of J. St. Mill for the first time began to be viewed as a complex organism with its own contradictions and internal driving forces.

Con. The 19th and 1st half of the 20th century can be considered the period of completion of the formation of the prerequisites for the theory of post-industrial society. On the one hand, economists and sociologists who belonged to the so-called. The “historical” school in political economy, and above all F. List, K. Bücher, W. Sombart and B. Hildebrand, proposed a number of principles for the periodization of history based on the analysis of technological progress. At the same time, they identified such periods in the development of society (for example, the era of the household, urban and national economy (K. Bucher), natural, monetary and credit economy [B. Hildebrand], individual, transitional and social economy [W. Sombart] ), which could be used as universal tools of sociological theory. On the other hand, the works of T. Veblen laid the foundation for the institutional approach in economic theory,

As we see, in the middle of the 20th century, pessimistic views on the future of European civilization prevailed rather than optimistic ones. The Second World War, which showed all of humanity what totalitarian regimes and the search for “living space” can lead to, did not clearly add optimism. It seemed that the entire Western world was inevitably moving towards the abyss.

It was at this time that the concept of post-industrial society appeared, as a concept pointing to an alternative path of human development. post-industrial society civilizational philosophy

Industrialism, as a special method of production, social organization and culture, was fully established in Europe by the middle of the 20th century. But before he had time to celebrate his formation, they started talking about a new post-industrial society, which, in turn, will represent a completely different way of production, social organization and culture.

One of the first philosophers to talk about post-industrial society was D. Bell. The concept of post-industrialism is presented in expanded form in his book “The Coming Post-Industrial Society. The Experience of Social Forecasting,” published in 1973.

Dividing the history of human society into three stages - agricultural, industrial and post-industrial, D. Bell sought to outline the contours of a post-industrial society, largely based on the characteristics of the industrial stage. Like other industrial theorists, he conceives of industrial society as organized around the production of things and machines for producing things. The concept of industrial society, he emphasizes, covers the past and present of various countries that may belong to opposing political systems, including such antagonists as the USA and the USSR. It is the industrial character of society, according to Bell, that determines its social structure, including the system of professions and social strata. The social structure is thus separated from the political and cultural components of society. According to D. Bell, changes in the social structure occurring in the middle of the 20th century indicate that industrial society is evolving to post-industrial society, which should become the defining social form of the 21st century, primarily in the USA, Japan, the Soviet Union and Western Europe.

Bell identifies the following as the main features of post-industrial society:

1. Replacement of mechanical, electrical and electromechanical means with electronic ones. Telephony, television, printing and much more - all this is done using electronic devices.
2. Miniaturization has occurred. Computers have greatly decreased in size, while at the same time greatly improving in quality.
3. Digital conversions. Here it is appropriate to mention the work of J. Lyotard “The Postmodern Condition”, in which the philosopher declares that the dream of Russell and the early Wittgenstein, who were looking for a universal language, has finally come true. Such a language has been found. This is the language that is currently used by the entire scientific and non-scientific community - the language of the binary number system.
4. Creation of software that adapts the computer to the needs of the consumer.

The post-industrial stage is characterized by a transition from the production of things to the production of services. “In a post-industrial society, new types of services are becoming widespread. Liberal arts education, health care, social services, and professional services: analysis and planning, design, programming, etc.” This feature of post-industrial society is closely related to changes in the distribution of occupations: there is a growth of the intelligentsia, professionals and the “technical class” (this trend is already revealed in the changes in the structure of employment that occur in the late period of the industrial era). If industrial society is an organization of machines and people to produce things, then the central place in post-industrial society, according to D. Bell, is knowledge, and theoretical knowledge at that. In his work “The Coming Post-Industrial Society” he writes the following: “... of course, knowledge is necessary for the functioning of any society. But a distinctive feature of post-industrial society is the special nature of knowledge. The central role of theoretical knowledge assumes the primacy of theory over empiricism and the codification of knowledge in abstract symbol systems that can be used to interpret various changing spheres of experience. Any modern society lives through innovation and social control of change, it tries to anticipate the future and plan. It is the change in awareness of the nature of innovation that makes theoretical knowledge decisive."

D. Bell saw the most important component of the process of transforming theoretical knowledge into a source of innovation in the emergence of knowledge-intensive industries - such as the chemical industry, computer technology, electronics, and optics. The American scientist was greatly impressed by the theoretical justification for the possibility of government intervention in the economy taken by Keynes and the practical measures taken by Roosevelt to overcome the Great Depression. These phenomena, Bell argues, serve as an indication that economic concepts (i.e., theoretical constructs in the field of economic science) can play a decisive role in government and economic practice, but “it would be technocratic to believe,” he writes, that economic management "is a direct application of an economic model. In this case, we would lose attention to the political considerations that establish decision-making structures. Economic models, on the other hand, define the boundaries within which action can be taken and can determine the consequences of alternative political choices."

The concept of post-industrialism, at least in its original version presented in the works of D. Bell, turned out to be quite deep in theoretical terms, interesting in terms of the questions posed and opening up broad research prospects. It is not surprising that it provoked many different interpretations of post-industrial society, sometimes significantly different from the original. The expression “post-industrial society” is widely used in modern literature, and almost every author gives it its own special meaning. This situation is not least connected with the fact that the word “post-industrial” itself indicates only the position of a given type of society in the temporal sequence of stages of development - “after industrial” - and not its own characteristics.

Bell's expression “information society” is a new name for post-industrial society, emphasizing not its position in the sequence of stages of social development - after industrial society - but the basis for determining its social structure - information. Information for Bell is associated primarily with scientific, theoretical knowledge. The information society in Bell's interpretation has all the main characteristics of a post-industrial society (service economy, the central role of theoretical knowledge, orientation to the future and the resulting technology management, development of new intellectual technology).

In the coming century, says D. Bell, the emergence of a new social order based on telecommunications will be of decisive importance for economic and social life, for the methods of knowledge production, as well as for the nature of human labor activity. This will lead to the emergence of a single space, including an economic one: “The borders between countries have almost completely disappeared. Capital is directed to where (subject to political stability) there is the greatest return on investment or added value."

In the original version of the concept of post-industrialism, the emphasis was placed on the fact that the development of electronic computing technology makes it possible for government structures to process huge amounts of information for decision-making. Bell's concept of the information society emphasizes the importance of ensuring access to necessary information for individuals and groups; the author sees the problem of the threat of police and political surveillance of individuals and groups using sophisticated information technologies. Bell considers knowledge and information not only an “agent of transformation of a post-industrial society,” but also a “strategic resource” of such a society. In this context, he formulates the problem of the information theory of value. When knowledge in its systematic form is involved in the practical processing of resources (in the form of an invention or organizational improvement), we can say that it is knowledge, and not labor, that is the source of value.

Post-industrial society is not limited to the development of the economy and production, it changes all traditional spheres of social life: “The most important characteristic of new technology is that it affects not a separate area (which is implied by the term “high technology”), but very different aspects of the life of society and transforms all old relationships."

The American sociologist and philosopher E. Toffler takes a slightly different position. Toffler is the author of an entire trilogy devoted to the study of post-industrial society: “Future Shock” (1970), “The Third Wave” (1980) and “Metamorphoses of Power” (1990)

In his very first book, Future Shock, Toffler shows the enormity of the changes that the future post-industrial society brings with it. The development of computer and telecommunication technologies leads to the fact that the flow of information falling on a person increases every day, with a simultaneous tendency towards greater differentiation. A person does not have time to join one thing before dozens, or even hundreds of innovations appear. The old order in the field of technology, culture, and social relations is collapsing. Under such conditions of exponential growth of any type of innovation, a person gets lost in the world. His priorities are crumbling, and new ones have not yet had time to form. A person feels lost and develops syndromes of psychological and even physical ailments. This, according to Toffler, is a disease that he called "future shock."

It is extremely difficult to resist this disease. Complete abstraction from the outside world can lead to much more serious consequences for a person. At the same time, it is impossible to live at the crossroads of eras and not be exposed to increasing flows of information from all sides. The only way in which the negative impact of this shock can be mitigated is by introducing a “future” subject in schools and universities, in which a person will gradually become familiar with the innovations of our time, before he has to face them in practice.

If during the agricultural civilization the impact of man on nature was minimal, man interacted with nature, adapting to its geographical, climatic and natural conditions, then during industrial civilization man subjugated nature. Having subjugated it, man began a ferocious attack on the world around him, ruthlessly subjugating and changing it. Declaring himself the master of nature, the crown of evolution, man, often unaware of the consequences of his actions, turned picturesque landscapes into industrial areas, consuming millions of tons of natural resources daily and emitting huge amounts of harmful substances and gases into the atmosphere.

This use of non-renewable energy sources cannot continue forever. Environmental pollution cannot continue without consequences. This is precisely the main pathos of Toffler’s work. Like environmental critics of industrialism, he devotes the most significant space to this problem.

A post-industrial society, the main resource of which is knowledge, and the main energy base is renewable energy sources, is the only possible path for the development of humanity. The introduction of the latest advances in computer science and technology into production makes it possible to increase productivity several times while simultaneously increasing the quality and quantity of products produced.

This need for a transition to a new society is the main principle of difference between Toffler and Bell, for whom the process of becoming an information society is a process of systematic evolution. For Toffler, the key moment is the moment of crisis of civilization, its complete extinction, as a result of which civilization can no longer develop on the old basis. It has already reached the peak of its development and, like Spengelere’s Europe, has entered a stage of decline: “the crisis is manifested in the social security system. The postal system is in crisis. The crisis has gripped the school education system. Crisis in health systems. Crisis in urban economic systems. Crisis in the international financial system. Crisis in the national question. The entire system of the second wave as a whole is in crisis.”1

The crisis of the second wave leaves humanity no alternative other than a complete change of all old ideas and values. The crisis of personality and depersonalization, which Marcuse spoke so much about in “One-Dimensional Man,” interests Toffler to a lesser extent than the ecological and energy crisis. When human existence is at stake, a threat to which we actually see from environmental statistics and forecasts, all other problems become less important. The transition to a post-industrial society is the only alternative to the destruction of humanity. Therefore, along with computer and telecommunication technologies, as the fundamental foundations of a post-industrial society, no less important, according to Toffler, is the transition to environmentally friendly technologies based on renewable energy sources: “... it is extremely important to understand that industrialization is completed, its forces are exhausted, the second the tide has ebbed everywhere as the next wave of change looms. Two important circumstances make the continued existence of industrial civilization impossible. First: the “fight against nature” has reached a critical point. The biosphere simply cannot tolerate further industrial advances. Secondly, we cannot continue to spend unlimited amounts of non-renewable energy resources, which until now have represented the main part of the subsidy for industrial development.” We cannot call society post-industrial until these two key conditions are met: total computerization and a complete transition to renewable energy sources. If civilized countries have achieved significant success with the first, then in the second no noticeable changes are expected in the near future. Therefore, according to Toffler, we do not have the right to call post-industrial society in the West anything other than one that is becoming.

In his third book, Metamorphoses of Power, the final book of the trilogy, Toffler shows how new trends in civilized society affect the processes of governance and even violence. Knowledge is also becoming a key factor in this change. Strength, wealth, knowledge - these are the levers of any power. In a post-industrial society, the main lever that influences and optimizes all others is knowledge: “Weapons can get you money or snatch secret information from the lips of the victim. Money can buy you information or weapons. The information can be used to both increase the amount of money available to you and strengthen your troops." Knowledge becomes the basis of power in post-industrial society. It can punish, reward, persuade and change. Having knowledge, you can skillfully circumvent undesirable situations, as well as avoid unnecessary waste of effort and money; it serves to increase wealth and strength. Knowledge for Toffler is, first of all, information, data, ideas and images, as well as approaches, values and other symbolic products of society, regardless of whether they are “true”, “approximate” or “false”.

Violence, Toffler argues, in the 21st century will be deprived of its traditional qualities that have developed over millennia. It will move from the physical sphere to the intellectual sphere. Big corporate bosses will stop physically punishing their erring subordinates. They will stop fighting the same methods with other corporations. Violence will move into the realm of law. And the strength of a corporation in such a society will no longer be measured in the number of “security service” employees, but in the corporation’s ability to influence the minds of judges and politicians by all legal and illegal means. “Violence, which is mainly used for punishment, is the least versatile means of power. Wealth, which can be used for reward and punishment, as well as transformed into many other means, serves as a much more flexible instrument of power. However, knowledge is most versatile and thorough, since with its help a person is able to solve problems that might require the use of violence or wealth. Often, knowledge can be used in such a way that other people are forced to act in a way that you want, rather than in your own interests. Knowledge gives power of the highest quality."

Humanity is already living in the third information age, the beginning of which was given birth to by the American, or better yet, Californian revolution. The creation of the microprocessor and the subsequent creation of the personal computer changed the face of modern civilized humanity, making enormous changes in such areas as economics and culture: “Computer communication is increasingly becoming critical in shaping the future culture.”

Seeing information technologies developing rapidly and understanding their increasing importance, Castells develops an information paradigm. The main characteristics of this paradigm can be divided into five parts:

1. Information. What we have here is technology to influence information, not information intended to influence technology.
2. Comprehensiveness of the effects of information and new technologies. All processes of our individual and collective existence are directly formed (but not determined) in a new technological way.
3. Network logic. The network is highly adapted to rapidly changing conditions and unpredictable development patterns.
4. Flexibility. Information is capable of rapid reconfiguration.
5. The integration of advanced technologies (computer technologies with physics and chemistry, genetics with medicine and biology, etc.) is growing.

The development of information technology opens people up to unprecedented means of communication, which has a huge impact on both the cultural, social, and economic components of society.

Castells devotes much of his work to exploring the changing economy. He calls the current stage of the economic structure of civilized Western countries “information capitalism.” The economy is increasingly becoming global due to the fact that modern technologies make possible the consumption, production and circulation of goods on a global scale. “...in new historical conditions, achieving a certain level of productivity and the existence of competition is possible only within a global interconnected network,” where the global network is a product of developing information technologies. It should be noted that “network” is one of Castells’ key concepts. In his opinion, modern society is completely immersed in global networks that permeate all countries and have no borders. The main unit of such a society becomes a network project, be it economic, production or cultural, created by network participants, and not by an individual company. And as a result of this, space ceases to play a dominant role in the creation of projects. The main role is played by information circulating at enormous speed. Thanks to the high-speed circulation of information provided by modern information technologies, flexible adaptation to the situation and flexible coordination of decisions are carried out at the center of the system and at all its links. The logic of space in the information age is replaced by the logic of flows, by which he means “purposeful, repeating, programmed sequences of exchanges and interactions between physically separated positions occupied by social actors in the economic, political and symbolic structures of society.” . The space of flows consists of flows of information, capital, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds, symbols. The most important layer and material support of the flow space is the chain of electronic impulses: microelectronics, telecommunications, computer processing, broadcasting systems and information technology-based high-speed transport. This chain becomes the material support of simultaneous spatial actions. In earlier societies, such as agricultural and industrial ones, such a support was the region or city. Of course, cities and places do not disappear, but their logic and meaning are absorbed into networks and flows.

The information age is characterized not only by a changed attitude to space, but also to time. Castells characterizes these changes in terms of “timelessness” and “simultaneity.” Computer networks and means of communication synchronize time, any information becomes available instantly, in “real time”. The space of flows dissolves time, making events simultaneous. Such effects are caused by information and its instant circulation in all-encompassing information networks.

The information age is bringing enormous changes to social life. Here, like Toffler and Bell, Castells notices increasing trends towards diversification in the sphere of public life, in particular in the field of the media. Beginning back in the 1970s with the advent of the video recorder, monotony was almost completely destroyed by the emerging global Internet network, which gave people unique opportunities for global communication in real time. It is the Internet, as a global network, that underlies globalization, a process that erases the usual barriers and boundaries between nations and states. The Internet is extremely difficult to control. This is a kind of global unity, consisting of hundreds of millions of “atoms”, where everyone can directly connect with whoever they want. Essentially, in such a network, everyone, occupying their own niche, email address, is the master. But such absolute freedom reigning in this network, allowing almost unimpeded communication on any topic, has led to the effect of “marginalization” of the Internet, when certain social groups who, for one reason or another, cannot or do not have the right to express their point of view in the real world , move to the virtual world, in which, firstly, nothing prevents them, and secondly, they gain access to millions, or even billions, of users.

The development of information technology opens up unprecedented opportunities for people, which carry both positive and negative qualities. The Internet gives people new opportunities for free communication, at the same time, it destroys a certain unified cultural and spiritual basis, what we usually call mentality, forcing people to identify themselves, which leads to an obstacle in communication, and sometimes even to a whole gulf between different groups of people. This can result in conflicts and clashes. The global economy, despite all the advantages that a single world market has, has a number of its own significant drawbacks, the main one of which is constant instability in the world market due to an immediate response to events around the world.

The Russian concept of post-industrial society is presented by V.L. Inozemtsev. The most famous books of this researcher are “Modern post-industrial society: nature, contradictions, prospects” and “Fractured Civilization”.

If Bell and Toffler called post-industrial society coming, then Inozemtsev, like Castells, believes that post-industrial society has already arrived. It is unlikely that the reason for this difference is only those 30 years that separate the main works of Bell and Toffler from the works of Inozemtsev.

Inozemtsev notes that in 1940 D. Clark identified a three-stage model of economic development, which was characteristic of an industrial society:

1. Mining industries and agriculture.
2. Extractive industries and construction
3. Industrial and personal services.

In the post-war era, two more stages began to be added to them:

5. Trade, financial services, insurance and real estate transactions.
6. Healthcare, education, research, recreation and government.

According to Inozemtsev, these last two steps, which characterize the service sector, lie at the basis of modern post-industrial society. If for a pre-industrial society the main thing was the interaction of man with nature, for an industrial society - interaction with nature transformed by man, then for a post-industrial society - interaction between people. This interaction is expressed, first of all, in the development of the service sector, which is no longer aimed at cultivation, construction, production, etc., but at the person himself. Real estate, capital and production terminals in this society lose their former value, and self-improvement comes first: “the main point of his [a person’s] activity becomes the improvement of his personal potential.” The “information sector” comes first. A modern production worker no longer looks the same as a worker looked a hundred years ago. What is required from him is not thoughtless obedience and endurance, but education and initiative. Knowledge represents the greatest wealth for man. Like Toffler in “Metamorphoses of Power,” Inozemtsev argues that knowledge underlies the entire modern post-industrial society, creating new spheres of both material and spiritual production, as well as modifying old ones. The rate of industrial growth is not decreasing, but, on the contrary, increasing. But production costs are decreasing every day. Such a seemingly paradoxical fact becomes possible only through optimization of production and transfer of some functions to machines.

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY THEORIES– a sociological concept that explains the main patterns of development of human society based on an analysis of its technological basis. Representatives of these theories explore the interdependence of scientific, technological and social progress, proposing an original model of historical periodization that allows us to consider the prospects of civilization as a post-industrial society, characterized by a shift in the center of economic activity from the production of material goods to the creation of services and information, the increasing role of theoretical knowledge, and the increasing importance of the political factor in the development of society and the replacement of human interaction with elements of the natural environment by interpersonal communication. Over the past decades, this theory has been the universal methodological basis for most studies conducted within the framework of the liberal direction of Western sociological science.

The first version of the theory of post-industrial society was formed as a result of the development of the main current of European positivism. The periodization of history based on the development of the technological basis of society and the increasing role of theoretical knowledge in a very explicit form forms the core of the work of Zh.A. de Condorcet's "Sketch of a historical picture of the progress of the human mind" (1794) and the majority of educators and materialists in all European countries.

Obviously, the premises of this theory are formed in the 1st half. 19th century, when a number of French researchers, primarily A. de Saint-Simon and O. Comte, introduced the concept of the “industrial class” (les industriels), which they considered as the dominant force in the society of the future. This approach made it possible to define the emerging bourgeois society as the era of “industrialism” and contrast it with all previous history. In the works of J. St. Mill, for the first time, industrial society began to be viewed as a complex social organism with its own contradictions and internal driving forces.

Con. 19th and 1st half. 20th century can be considered the period of completion of the formation of the prerequisites for the theory of post-industrial society. On the one hand, economists and sociologists who belonged to the so-called. The “historical” school in political economy, and above all F. List, K. Bücher, W. Sombart and B. Hildebrand, proposed a number of principles for the periodization of history based on the analysis of technological progress. At the same time, they identified such periods in the development of society (for example, the era of the household, urban and national economy [K. Bücher], natural, monetary and credit economy [B. Hildebrand], individual, transitional and social economy [W. Sombart]) , which could be used as universal tools of sociological theory. On the other hand, the works of T. Veblen laid the foundation for the institutional approach in economic theory, and the development of the approaches he proposed in the works of K. Clark and J. Fourastier fully prepared the emergence of the theory of post-industrial society.

The term “post-industrial society” was first used in 1917 in the title of one of the books by A. Penty, a theorist of English liberal socialism; at the same time, A. Penty himself recognized the priority in the use of this concept for A. Kumaraswamy. Both used this term to designate such an ideal society, where the principles of autonomous and even semi-handicraft production were revived, which, in their opinion, could constitute a socialist alternative to industrialism. In 1958, this concept appeared in an article by the American sociologist D. Risman, “Leisure and Work in a Post-Industrial Society.”

The spread of theories of post-industrial society was also due to the fact that among liberal-minded sociologists and economists the concept of a unified industrial society has received fairly wide recognition ( R.Aron . 28 Lectures on Industrial Society, 1959, J. C. G. Galbraith. New industrial society, 1967, etc.). Therefore, this idea turned out to be adequate for studying the historical perspectives of various social systems.

60s became a period of rapid development of theories of post-industrial society, becoming a methodological paradigm for social science research. Representatives of virtually all ideological movements contributed to the development of the new concept - from the American conservative W. Rostow and the moderate Japanese liberal K. Tominaga to the Frenchman A. Touraine, who clearly adhered to a socialist orientation, and the Czech Marxist R. Richta.

The work that illuminates all the main elements of this theory was D. Bell’s book “The Coming Post-Industrial Society” (1973) and later “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism” (1978).

The book “The Coming Post-Industrial Society” is devoted to a theoretical understanding of the most important trends in Western society in the two post-war decades. For D. Bell, industrial society is a theoretical abstraction that allows one to comprehend the most important trends in developed countries (the development of science and education, the structure of the workforce, trends in management). In the book “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” D. Bell contrasts industrial and post-industrial societies and analyzes the main changes that occur in the process of transition from the first to the second. Industrial society is contrasted with agrarian society as a predecessor and post-industrial society as a successor.

Industrial society is contrasted with pre-industrial society in a number of parameters (agricultural economy uses raw materials as the main resource, rather than extracting products from natural materials; intensive use of labor, rather than capital, in production). In essence, the agrarian system appears as a system that has neither a specific method of production nor modern production. In a post-industrial society, information becomes the main production resource, services become the main product of production, and knowledge takes the place of capital. At the same time, the special role of science and education is noted, the importance of political institutions of society and the emergence of a new class, whose representatives are able to transform information into knowledge and, because of this, occupy dominant positions in the society of the future.

“A post-industrial society,” writes Bell, “is a society in which the economy has moved from primarily producing goods to producing services, conducting research, organizing an educational system and improving the quality of life: in which the class of technical specialists has become the main professional group and, most importantly, important, in which the introduction of innovations... has increasingly become dependent on the achievements of theoretical knowledge... Post-industrial society... presupposes the emergence of a new class, whose representatives at the political level act as experts or technocrats" ( Bell D. Notes on the Post-Industrial Society. – The Public Interest, 1967, N 7, p. 102).

Researchers could not ignore the question of how and by whom management decisions would be made within the framework of the new social order. At the same time, a number of authors have explored the possibility of a new social conflict, which would be associated with the division of society along intellectual and professional lines.

The proposed periodization of historical development does not represent some kind of rigid scheme that claims to isolate stages that differ sharply from each other. Even R. Aron noted that “it is easy to give an abstract definition of each form of society, but it is difficult to discover its specific limits and find out whether a particular society is, for example, archaic or industrial” ( Aaron R. The Industrial Society. Three Lectures on Ideology and Development. N. Y.–Wash., 1967, p. 97). Therefore, it is noted that “post-industrial trends do not replace previous social forms as “stages” of social evolution. They often coexist, deepening the complexity of society v-the nature of social structure" ( Bell D. The Third Technological Revolution and Its Possible Socio-Economie Consequences, Dissent, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, Spring 1989, p. 167). Comparing the pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial states as predominantly natural, technological and social forms of human communities, supporters of the theory of post-industrial society appeal to systems of interpersonal relationships (in pre-industrial societies to direct imitation of the actions of other people, in industrial - to the assimilation of knowledge, in post-industrial - to complexity interpersonal interactions).

The chronological framework of the new society remains unclear. So, sometimes the serpentine is considered a kind of critical point. 50s, when in the United States the number of workers in the service sector exceeded the number of people employed in material production. Most often it is emphasized that the real changes that make it possible to talk about modern developed societies as post-industrial, belong to the middle. and con. 70s and include a radical acceleration of technological progress, a rapid change in the structure of employment, the formation of a new mentality among a significant part of the population, and the growing role of the state in managing economic processes. The identification of three global eras in the history of mankind is complemented by an analysis of the transitions between them and the movement towards a qualitatively new state of the entire society (see: Kahn H., Brown W., Martell L. The Next 200 Years. A Scenario for America and the World. N.Y., 1971, p. 22).

While proponents of viewing knowledge as the main resource ensuring social progress, D. Bell and his followers are not adherents of the idea of a free market economy. They note that the emerging society puts the interests of man as an integral subject at the forefront, often subordinating them to the requirements of immediate economic feasibility. At the same time, they point out that in conditions of expanding information production, the costs of reproduction of information goods, taken into account in the labor theory of value, become incalculable; at the same time, the scarcity factor is eliminated, on which many postulates of modern macroeconomic analysis are based.

The creation of the theory of post-industrial society caused a critical reaction among economists and sociologists. On the one hand, it was noted that the very concept of “post-industrial society” does not carry a positive definition of the emerging social state. In this regard, a number of authors tried to identify one of the features of the new society, which would be considered as defining. The most famous of these attempts is associated with the introduction by F. Machlup (USA) and T. Umesao (Japan) of the concept of “information society”, which laid the foundation for the theory developed by such famous authors as M. Porat, Y. Masuda, T. Stoner, R. .Katz et al. The concept of the information society was considered by many researchers as a development of the theory of post-industrial society, as evidenced by the titles of a number of works, such as, for example, the book by Y. Masuda “The Information Society as a Post-Industrial Society” (1980). Zb. Brzezinski, in his work “Between Two Epochs” (1970), proposed the concept of a technetronic (technetronic - from the Greek techne) society. In the 70–80s. such studies of modern society as “knowledgeable society”, “knowledge society” or “knowledge-value society”) have developed, i.e. appealing to the role that theoretical knowledge and its applied forms occupy in the new social structure.

Along with this, other attempts were made to define the new society, appealing to its individual features. Thus, ideas arose about the future state as an “organized” (S. Crook and others), “conventional” (J. Pakulski, M. Waters) or “programmed” (A. Touraine) society. These approaches are inadequate because their definitions are extremely general; Thus, they talk about an “active” (A. Etzioni) and even a “fair” (good) society (A. Etzioni, J. K. Galbraith). It is characteristic that O. Toffler was forced to note that all the previously proposed positive definitions of the future society, incl. and the data given by him are not successful.

On the other hand, theories of post-industrial society have been criticized by postmodernists for technological determinism. They drew attention to a number of factors that could not be discarded when analyzing the new social reality - the alienation of man in modern society, the growing pluralism of society, the multivariate nature of modern progress, the departure from mass social action, the changed motives and incentives of man, his new value orientations and norms behavior, etc. At the same time, excessive attention was paid to the processes of demassification and destandardization, overcoming the principles of Fordism and moving away from forms of industrial production. As a result, the society of the future is opposed to traditional capitalism - either as “disorganized” (S. Lash) or as “late” (F. Jameson) capitalism.

Today, after thirty years of development of this theory, its fundamental principles have not undergone significant modification, and its main enrichment occurs thanks to new factual material provided by the economic and social progress of the 90s.

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V.L.Inozemtsev