18. Theory of pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial (information) society p. Arona, u. Rostow, d. Bella, a. Toffler
Pre-industrial society
This stage corresponds to the primitive communal and slaveholding formations of Marx. It is also commonly called traditional or agricultural. Extractive types of economic activity predominate here - farming, fishing, mining. The vast majority of the population (approximately 90%) is employed in agriculture. The main task of an agrarian society was to produce food to simply feed the population. This is the longest of the three stages, and its history goes back thousands of years. Nowadays, most countries in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia are still at this stage of development. These countries provide food to the United States, Europe and other industrial and post-industrial countries, thereby allowing them to be at a higher stage of development.
In pre-industrial society, the main producer is not man, but nature.
Industrial society
The concept of industrial society became widespread in the 50s and 60s. 20th century in the USA (R. Aron, W. Rostow, D. Bell and others), when even applied problems were solved with its help - organization in enterprises and resolution of labor conflicts.
In an industrial society, all efforts are directed toward industrial production in order to produce the goods society needs. The formation of an industrial society is associated with the spread of large-scale machine production, urbanization (the outflow of population from villages to cities), the establishment of a market economy and the emergence of social groups of entrepreneurs (bourgeoisie) and hired workers (proletariat). Capitalism in the theories of industrial society is considered by some researchers as its early stage (European countries in the 19th - early 20th centuries). The timing and pace of industrialization in different countries are not the same (for example, Great Britain became an industrial country by the mid-19th century, and France - in the early 20th century). x years of the 20th century). In Russia, industrialization developed successfully from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, and after the October Revolution (from the late 20s), industrialization was carried out at an accelerated pace.
At the end of the 20th century, industrial society transitioned to post-industrial society.
Post-industrial society
The founder of the concept of post-industrial society was the outstanding American sociologist Daniel Bell. Book “The Coming Post-Industrial Society”
However, the term “post-industrial society” itself appeared in the United States back in the 50s, when it became clear that mid-century American capitalism differed in many ways from the industrial capitalism that existed before the Great Crisis of 1929 - 1933.
Capitalism of the 50s - urban society could no longer be strictly divided into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, a middle class consisting of people began to emerge. At the same time, the increase in production caused the expansion of corporations. In the second half of the century, they took over even those sectors of the economy that were traditionally occupied by private owners or small firms. The technology used in production became increasingly complex, which created a need for qualified personnel and increased the value of scientific knowledge.
Since the late 60s, the term “post-industrial society” has been filled with new content - the prestige of education has increased, a whole layer of qualified specialists, managers, and people of mental work have appeared.
The transition to a new type of society - post-industrial - occurs in the last third of the 20th century. Various services, mainly related to the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, come to the fore. And as a result of the scientific and technological revolution, science was transformed into a direct productive force.
R. Aron's theory
The books “18 Lectures on Industrial Society” (1962) and “Three Essays on the Industrial Age” (1966).
Aron identifies the following five typical features of an industrial economy: 1) the enterprise is completely separated from the family; 2) an industrial enterprise introduces a unique method of division of labor; 3) an industrial enterprise involves the accumulation of capital; 4) every industrial society is built on strict economic calculations; 5) in any industrial society, whatever the status of ownership of the instruments of production, there is a concentration of workers.
The next link in Aron's concept is the identification, within the framework of the general concept of "industrial society", of its two types, or different regimes - capitalist and socialist.
Theory of W. Rostow
Book “Stages of Economic Growth”, 60s.
The author's intention is to contrast his own concept with the Marxist teaching on the historical process of development of society. The division of society into five stages of economic growth: 1) traditional society; 2) preparing prerequisites for takeoff or ascent; 3) takeoff or rise; 4) movement towards maturity; 5) era of high mass consumption.
Traditional society, according to Rostow, is characterized by primitive manual technology, small production per capita, a high share of agriculture in production, a hierarchical social structure and the presence of political power in the hands of landowners. To this stage he refers the entire history of mankind until the end of the 17th century.
The second stage - transitional society - is characterized by the penetration of scientific discoveries into production, the expansion of national and world markets, the accumulation of capital, the emergence of a new type of enterprising people, the creation of a unified national government, etc. However, these innovations occupy a small place in society.
The third stage is ascent. characterized by the fact that the technological level of industry and agriculture sharply increases, capital for general economic purposes is formed (transport, communications, roads, etc.), the number of factories increases, cities and a new industrial class grow.
The fifth stage is the age of high mass consumption. Here Rostow shows the economics of modern capitalism. A revolution in consumption. A new middle class is emerging: specialists, technicians, skilled workers, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, etc.
Rostow believes that at this stage capitalism loses its aggressiveness, and capitalist states focus their attention on meeting the needs of their own population and abandon external expansion.
D. Bell's theory
Early 70s work “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society”. Socio-economic changes, according to D. Bell, occur simultaneously with changes in the production and use of scientific and technical knowledge. The scientist identifies three components of society: social structure, government structure and culture. Society moves from pre-industrial to industrial and then to post-industrial society. Pre-industrial society is characterized by undeveloped productive forces and the need to directly turn to nature as a source of livelihood. Industrial society is organized on the basis of machine-industrial production. In the first two stages, D. Bell has no fundamental differences with W. Rostow. However, D. Bell identifies another stage, which he calls post-industrial society and which is characterized by the following features: 1) the center of gravity moves from the production of goods to the production of services; 2) scientific knowledge and innovation play an important role in the ecosystem; 3) the main place in the professional structure belongs to specialists.
A. Toffler's theory
80s book "The Third Wave"
According to Toffler, the development of science and technology occurs in spurts, or in his terminology, in waves.
At first there was first wave , which he calls "agricultural civilization."
From China and India to Mexico, from Greece and Rome, civilizations rose and fell that, despite their superficial differences, had fundamental commonalities. Everywhere the land was the basis of the economy, life, culture, family organization, a simple division of labor, and there were several clearly defined castes and classes: nobles, clergy, warriors, slaves or serfs. The government was strictly authoritarian. A person's social background determined his place in life. The economy was decentralized, with each community producing most of what was needed.
Industrial Revolution - second wave. By the middle of the twentieth century. "industrial civilization" reigned.
Steel and automobile plants, textile factories, food processing plants, and railroads were created. All second wave societies began to extract the energy they needed from coal, gas and oil. For the first time, civilization began to destroy the main capital of nature. Large industrial cities emerged. A mass production system was established. The form of the family changed, special training of people for machine labor arose, giant corporations appeared, the role of trade unions, the state, and political parties increased, communications developed, mass circulation of newspapers, magazines, books, etc.
Each civilization has its own hidden code - a system of rules or principles that manifest themselves in all areas of its activity like some kind of unified plan. These principles are: standardization, specialization, synchronization, concentration, maximization, centralization.
Third wave - In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) stopped supplying crude oil to the world.
In many areas, the variety of types of equipment, types of goods, and types of services has increased. The specialization of labor is becoming increasingly fragmented. Organizational forms of management are becoming more diverse. The number of publications is increasing.
Diversity is shaking the traditional structures of the industrial age, as they were built on the mass production of standardized, unified, uniform products.
Toffler seeks to describe the future society as a return to pre-industrial civilization on a new technological basis. Electronics and computers, outer space, the use of the ocean depths and the bioindustry are becoming the economic backbone of the newly emerging world. This is the third wave, which completes the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
References:
Toffler E. The Third Wave AST Publishing House, Moscow, 1999
P. S. Gurevich And the waves of history splash...
Bell D. The Coming Post-Industrial Society Publishing House “Academia”, Moscow, 1999
V. L. Inozemtsev Post-industrial world of D. Bell
Illustrated encyclopedic dictionary Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1998
V. L. Inozemtsev Concept of post-economic society www. nir. ru
A. Dugin The paradigm of the end Journal “Elements”, elem2000. virtualave. net
T. Voronina Prospects for education in the information society Compulog Magazine, www. compulog. ru/compulozhka
N. A. Aitov On the driving forces of the development of society Vestnik KazGU. Economic series. Almaty, 1998, No. 7
History of sociology: textbook Minsk “Higher School” 1997
POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY THEORY is 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 prerequisites for this theory were formed in the 1st half of the 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.
The end of the 19th and the first 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 the following 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. Riesman, “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 single industrial society received fairly wide recognition (R. Aron. 28 lectures on industrial society, 1959, J. K. G. Galbraith. New industrial society, 1967 and etc.). Therefore, this idea turned out to be adequate for studying the historical perspectives of various social systems.
The 60s became a period of rapid development of theories of post-industrial society, becoming the methodological paradigm of 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... involves 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. R. Aron also 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” (Aron 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 and the nature of the 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. Thus, the mid-50s are sometimes considered a kind of critical point, 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 real changes that allow us to talk about modern developed societies as post-industrial, date back to the mid and late 70s and include a radical acceleration of technological progress, a rapid change in the employment structure, the formation of a new mentality among a significant part of the population, and the growing role of the state in managing business 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”) 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.
V.L. Inozemtsev
New philosophical encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Guseinov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Mysl, 2010, vol.III, N – S, p. 293-295.
Literature:
Bell D. The Coming Post-Industrial Society, vol. 1–2. M., 1998;
New post-industrial wave in the West, ed. V.L. Inozemtseva. M., 1998;
Aron R. The Industrial Society. Three Lectures on Ideology and Development. N.Y., Wash., 1967;
Baudrillard J. Selected Writings. Cambr., 1996;
Bell D. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. A Venture in Social Forecasting. N.Y., 1976;
Idem. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. N.Y., 1978;
Idem. Sociological Journeys. Essays 1960–80. L., 1980;
Brzezinski Zb. Between Two Ages. N.Y., 1970;
Castells M. The Information Age: Economy. Society and Culture, vol. 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Oxf., 1996; vol. 2: The Power of Identity. Oxf„ 1997; vol. 3: End of Millennium. Oxf., 1998;
Comte A. Cours de philosophie positive, vol. 1–4. P., 1864–69;
Condorcet J.-A. de. Esquisse d"un tableau historique des progrès de l"esprit humain. P., 1794;
Dahrendorf R. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford, 1959;
Drucker P.F. Post-Capitalist Society. N.Y., 1993;
Etzioni A. The Active Society. N.Y., 1968;
Idem. The Spirit of Community. The Reinvention of American Society. N.Y., 1993;
Fourastier J. Le grand espoir du XXe siècle. P., 1949;
Galbraith J.K. The New Industrial State. L., 1991;
Idem. The Good Society: The Human Agends. Boston, N.Y., 1996;
Kahn H., Wiener A. The Year 2000. A Framework for Speculation on the Next 33 Years. L., 1967;
Kumar K. From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society. New Theories of the Contemporary World. Oxf., Cambr., 1995;
Lash S. Sociology of Postmodernism. L., N.Y., 1990;
Lash S., Urry J. Economies of Signs and Space. L., 1994;
Idem. The End of Organized Capitalism. Cambr., 1996;
Machlup F. The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Princeton, 1962;
Machlup F., Mansfield U. (Eds.). The Study of Information. N.Y., 1983;
Masuda Y. The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society. Wash., 1981;
Mill J.St. Chapters in Socialism. - Idem. On Liberty and Other Writings. Cambr., 1995;
Pakulski J., Waters M. The Death of Class. Thousand Oaks. L., 1996;
Penty A. Post-Industrialism. L., 1922;
Porat M., Rubin M. The Information Economy: Development and Measurement. Wash., 1978;
Richta R. (Ed.). Civilization at the Cross-Roads. Sydney, 1967;
Riesman D. Leisure and Work in Post-Industrial Society. – Larrabee E., Meyersohn R. (Eds.). Mass Leisure, Glencoe (III.), 1958;
Saint-Simon Cl.H. de. Cathechisme des industrials. P., 1832;
Idem. Du systèm industrial. P., 1821;
Sakaiya T. The Knowledge-Value Revolution or A History of the Future. Tokyo, N.Y., 1991;
Servan-Schreiber J.J. Le défi mondiale. P., 1980;
Smart V. Postmodernity. L., N. Y., 1996;
Sombart W. Der moderne Kapitalismus. Münch.–Lpz., 1924;
Stonier T. The Wealth of Information. A Profile of the Post-Industrial Economy. L., 1983;
Thurow L. The Future of Capitalism. How Today's Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow's World. L., 1996;
Toffler A. Future Shock. N.Y., 1971;
Idem. The Third Wave. N.Y., 1980;
Touraine A. Critique de la modernité., 1992;
Idem. La societé postindustrielle. P., 1969;
Young M. The Rise of Meritocracy. L., 1958.
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Federal Agency for Education
State educational institution
Higher professional education.
Irkutsk State Technical University.
Faculty of PS and Media
Department of Sociology and Social Work
Test
discipline: General sociology
on the topic of: " Theory of post-industrial society "
Completed:
Student of group SOC-09-1
Zaborskikh Ruslan Alexandrovich
Checked:
k.i. n, associate professor Gavrilova Natalya Igorevna
Irkutsk 2010
Information civilization
History of the formation of post-industrial society
The ideas of post-industrialism were formed in parallel with the concept of industrial society; As it develops, the question of what social order will replace the industrial system becomes increasingly relevant. And if in the 19th century, when through the efforts of the positivists - from J. - A. de Condorcet and A. de Saint-Simon to O. Comte and J. St. Mill - the approach to their modern society of “industrialists” has become generally accepted, most sociologists have not yet asked the question about its prospects, but in the 20th century the problem of determining the future system became very relevant. However, all approaches to the periodization of history proposed at the turn of the century only stated the increasing complexity of society, but did not make it possible to trace potential changes in its structure. Thus, historians and economists have attempted to distinguish the pastoral, agricultural, land-manufacturing and land-manufacturing-commercial stages, the closed domestic, urban and national economy, or the eras of the individual, transitional and social economy. All these classifications, although they were based on the periodization of history on the principle of studying the technological aspects of the organization of social production, could not yet serve as effective tools for social forecasting.
The transformation of developing commodity production into a mature market economy, which lasted for centuries, eliminated all non-economic features of the economy and led to the absolute dominance of the principles of economic society. In turn, the erosion of the laws of the market economy and the reconstruction at a new level of the system of relations of commodity production as a tool for the redistribution of use values is the most important feature of post-economic transformation. It follows that overcoming the market economy does not mean eliminating commodity production. As is known, the main production resource of a post-industrial society is information and knowledge, the true value of which is manifested only and exclusively in conditions of the most intensive exchange. At the same time, however, due to both the unlimited possibilities of access to information and its ambiguous impact on creative individuals, over the exchange; its equivalent value character ceases to prevail; in new conditions, people strive to maximize use value, the usefulness of the information they receive, which, however, remains entirely subjective. Thus, the formation of a post-industrial society involves a transition from a market economy to a new form of commodity production, from objective value to subjective utility.
The economic era as such began with the division of labor and the emergence of commodity production. The economic type of society acquired its completed forms when the principles of a market economy permeated all socially significant ones; processes. However, having become universal, the market economy itself turned out to be the environment in which new system-forming elements began to emerge, and at the end of the 20th century, phenomena that go beyond market relations are playing an increasingly important role in social life. The sphere of their dominance is narrowing, and the possibilities of applying previous principles and laws to the emerging economic reality are becoming more and more vague and foggy.
The term “post-industrialism” was first introduced into scientific circulation by A. Kumaraswamy, the author of a number of works on the pre-industrial development of Asian countries. Subsequently, from 1916 or 1917, it was quite widely used by A. Penty, the theorist of English liberal socialism, who even included it in the titles of his books, thus denoting an ideal society where the principles of autonomous and even semi-handicraft production are revived in order to overcome the inherent industrial system conflicts.
The most well-known definitions of this type include “post-bourgeois society”, “post-capitalist system”, “post-entrepreneurial” or “post-market” society and more general concepts built around the recognition of the modern social state as having a post-traditional, post-civilizational or even post-historical nature. Some of these terms are widely used today, and the concepts based on them have wide scientific recognition; meanwhile, only two concepts from this series, marked by the greatest degree of abstraction - “posthistory” and “postmodernity” - have become core for truly serious conceptual paradigms.
In this regard, it should be noted that the concept of post-industrial society turns out to be the most perfect compared to all other definitions. It focuses on the fundamental feature that is being overcome in the emerging new society, namely the industrial nature of the previous mode of production; at the same time, it is quite rightly assumed that individual features of the new system cannot be clearly named and described until its formation is at least basically completed.
The theory of post-industrial society was formed as a result of a comprehensive analysis of the qualitatively new situation that developed in the 60s and 70s in developed industrial countries. It was precisely to discover the characteristic features of the emerging new society that the efforts of the founders of the theory were directed.
The overwhelming majority of researchers named as its main features the radical acceleration of technical progress, the reduction in the role of material production, expressed, in particular, in the reduction of its share in the total social product, the development of the service and information sector, changes in the motives and nature of human activity, the emergence of a new type of people involved. into the production of resources, a significant modification of the entire social structure. One of the most comprehensive definitions of post-industrial society is given by D. Bell: “A post-industrial society, he writes, is a society in which the economy has shifted priority from the primary production of goods to the production of services, conducting research, organizing the education system and improving the quality of life; in which the technical class became the main professional group and, most importantly, in which innovation was introduced. increasingly depends on the achievements of theoretical knowledge. Post-industrial society. presupposes the emergence of an intellectual class whose representatives at the political level act as consultants, experts or technocrats.”
The understanding that modern society can and should be considered precisely as post-industrial is strengthened as we analyze the logic of the development of civilization, as it is presented within the framework of post-industrial theory. According to its supporters, three large eras can be quite strictly traced in history, forming the triad “pre-industrial - industrial post-industrial society.” This periodization of social progress is based on several criteria, and post-industrial society is contrasted with industrial and pre-industrial society in three important parameters:
the main production resource (in a post-industrial society it is information, in an industrial society it is energy, in a pre-industrial society it is the primary conditions of production, raw materials);
the type of production activity (it is considered in post-industrial society as sequential processing, as opposed to manufacturing and extraction at earlier stages of development);
the nature of basic technologies (defined in a post-industrial society as knowledge-intensive, in the era of industrialism - as capital-intensive and in the pre-industrial period - as labor-intensive).
It is this scheme that allows us to formulate the well-known position about three societies, according to which pre-industrial society is based on the interaction of man with nature, industrial society on interaction with nature transformed by him, and post-industrial society on interaction between people.
Noting that within the indicated three eras, communities of people that are predominantly natural, technological and social in form form and function, post-industrialists also pay attention to the nature of personal relationships typical for each of these periods. Thus, in pre-industrial societies, the most important aspect of social communication was the imitation of the actions of other people; in industrial societies, the assimilation of the knowledge and capabilities of past generations; in post-industrial societies, interpersonal interactions become truly complex, which determines the new properties of all elements of the social structure.
The perfection of post-industrial theory is also evidenced by the fact that its proponents do not give a clear definition of individual types of society and do not indicate their chronological boundaries. Moreover, they consistently emphasize the evolutionary nature of the transition from one type of society to another and the continuity of all three stages of social evolution. The new type of society does not replace previous forms, but mainly coexists with them, increasing the complexity of society, complicating the social structure and introducing new elements into its very nature. Therefore, transitions from one social state to another cannot be of a revolutionary nature and have a clear chronology.
Nevertheless, it is believed that the emergence of a new society took place from the early 70s to the late 80s, although certain trends (for example, employment dynamics that ensured the dominance of the service sector over material production) began to take shape immediately after the Second World War. Overcoming the industrial social structure is considered as a global transformation that cannot be reduced to technological innovations alone. Without denying the presence of class contradictions, post-industrial theory focuses on the processes that affect society as a whole.
The formation of the concept of post-industrial society began with an assessment of real phenomena that are radically changing the face of the Western world. From the moment of its inception to this day, post-industrial theory has maintained a consistently materialistic character, drawing new sources of its development from specific facts and trends. Within the framework of this concept, empirical material has always been and remains primary in relation to theoretical postulates and general methodological constructs, which distinguishes it favorably from social science theories common among modern Marxists.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that the doctrine of post-industrialism appears in a number of aspects as overly objectivist, since it does not provide the researcher with a tool for analyzing the causes of the development that led to the formation of an industrial, and later post-industrial society. The transition from one form of society to another is seen more as a given, rather than as a process with internal logic and contradictions.
In fact, without offering a comprehensive assessment of the processes of transition from a pre-industrial society to an industrial one, without comparing it with the process of formation of a post-industrial society, the concept of post-industrialism captures and explains only modern social transformations, without trying to apply the results obtained to build a global sociological theory, which makes many of its provisions and the conclusions are somewhat superficial.
However, concluding the assessment of the concept of post-industrialism, we note that all the successes during the 60s - 90s leave no reason to doubt that new theoretical generalizations will be made on the basis of the laid foundations in the near future.
Liberal concepts of post-industrial development
In theoretical sociology, various future scenarios began to be developed. In the context of the struggle between two alternative world systems, liberal versions of the concept of post-industrial development are aimed at the rehabilitation and improvement of the industrial (technological) model of progress linked to the capitalist economic system. These concepts are represented by the names of D. Bell, already mentioned above, as well as the names of Z. Brzezinski, J. Galbraith and other authors.
One of the founders of the theory of “post-industrial society” is D. Bell. Briefly, his views boil down to the following:
· Theoretical knowledge (not capital) is the organizing principle of the social system;
· Technological growth in the production of goods is determined by the information and cybernetic revolution
Bell formulated five main initial specific dimensions and components of a predictive model of a future society.
1. Economic sphere: transition from the production of goods to the production of services.
2. Sphere of employment: predominance of the class of professional specialists and technicians.
3. Axial principle: the leading role of theoretical knowledge as a source of innovation and policy determination in society.
4. Forthcoming orientation: control over technology and technological assessments of activities.
5. Decision-making process: creation of a new “intelligent technology” associated with a computer.
The functioning of these components changes the relationship between economics and social policy, subordinating the former to the latter.
J. Galbraith in this regard assigns significant importance to the so-called “technostructures”, which are engaged in organizing all types of social activities and property management.
Representatives of the concept under consideration substantiated the priority of integration processes in the modern world. It is dominated by pluralistic democracy, property management, human rights, individual initiative, free enterprise, and technological relations of division of labor.
Within the framework of the liberal concept, the upcoming convergence meant the collapse of Soviet industrialization, which underlies the socialist (anti-market) economic system based on the principles of a “closed society.”
Perestroika and subsequent events in the former USSR confirmed the essence of this concept of convergence. This allowed one of its main authors, Z. Brzezinski, to draw the following conclusion: “Thus, the meeting of humanity in the 20th century with communism, which turned into a disaster, gave a painful but extremely important lesson: utopian social engineering is in fundamental contradiction with the complexity of human existence, and social creativity is better everything flourishes when political power is limited. „
D. Bell's theory is by no means just another speculative concept of the future of humanity, of which many have appeared recently. “The idea of a post-industrial society is not a specific forecast of the future, but a theoretical construction based on the emerging signs of a new society, a hypothesis with which sociological reality could be correlated for decades and which would allow, by comparing theory and practice, to determine the factors influencing the changes occurring in society " In contrast to the mentioned concepts, Bell's theory is not just a hypothesis of the future, no matter how attractive it may be, but the maximum possible realistic description of the involvement of human society in a new system of socio-economic, scientific, technical and cultural-ethical relations.
D. Bell proceeds from the indispensable fact that the more economically developed a country is, the less and less in the second half of the 20th century and especially at the turn of the 21st century people’s labor activity is concentrated in industry, and in the future its share is unlikely to exceed 10-20 percent. It should be noted here that the reason for the emergence of the very concept of “post-industrial society” was partly a very real phenomenon: decades after the Second World War, a tendency was revealed to reduce employment not only in agriculture, but also in industry and, accordingly, to an increase in the number of people employed in service sector. Many Western sociologists saw this as the long-awaited beginning of an end to the proletarianization of society, while some Marxists began to unduly expand the concept of the working class to include mass layers of representatives of the middle strata. And only a few, and first of all D. Bell, perceived this as a process that went far beyond the boundaries of capitalism and socialism, as a clear sign of the emergence of a new social system.
Since that time, the overwhelming majority of the population of developed countries has been employed in the so-called service sector (“tertiary sector” according to K. Clark), which is characterized not by the attitude of society to nature, but by the attitude of people among themselves. Man for the most part (in developed countries) lives not so much in the natural as in the artificial environment, not in the “first” nature, but in the “second” nature created by man himself. This became possible thanks to a sharp increase in labor productivity based on the information revolution. The information theory of value captures the unimaginably rapidly growing role of theoretical knowledge in society. Thanks to the ever-increasing share of knowledge in each object of the production process, the extraction, manufacture and movement of all kinds of goods and services require ever-decreasing costs of energy, materials, capital and labor every year.
As you know, the manufacture of any product requires raw materials, means of production, labor, energy, capital in its various forms. In different historical eras, these terms are used in different proportions and in different forms. Initially practically undifferentiated, they then become a specific sphere of economic activity, standing out among the rest as a completely independent industry: for example, the production of means of production or manufacturing. As society develops, the relationship between these means of production also changes. The direct production process requires more and more preliminary funds. This is how an industrial society arises, when capital in its physical and intellectual form acquires a decisive role in the economy. Modern production is distinguished by the fact that the main costs in it fall primarily on capital investments, and, the further, the more - on human capital, on knowledge, the bearer of which is both the people themselves and their instruments of production. According to Bell, this process will be gradual. Economic activity will require an increasing use of human intelligence and systematized knowledge.
At the same time, Bell objects to replacing the concept of “knowledge” with the concept of “information”, since information in its content does not exhaust all the complex problems of theoretical knowledge and science. He attaches particular importance to the codification of knowledge, that is, its reduction into a single fundamental theoretical body. Theoretical knowledge becomes the basis for the creation and application of new technology, innovation technology. Moreover, the main element of the new intellectual technology is the general computerization of production, scientific activity and communication between people in all spheres of their lives.
In each technological era, economic activity is distinguished by its typical characteristics and the nature of the costs of means of production to produce the necessary products. Initially, in the archaic era, costs were reduced to the expenditure of simple labor to acquire the finished product of nature. Then, as labor was divided, animal husbandry and agriculture became special branches of production that preceded direct labor. From a pre-industrial society, it turned into an industrial one, already producing its own tools, more and more advanced means of production began to appear, and they became the leading branch of production, multiplying labor productivity and increasing social wealth. Industry created the main wealth of society and employed an ever-increasing proportion of workers. The process of mass production, thanks to scientific discoveries and technical inventions, involved increasingly more efficient and productive machines that had the ability to transfer the increasing cost of labor into mass production. This transfer of value reduced the cost of human labor for the manufacture of one product, making the product cheaper and making it mass-produced. The resulting depreciation of the means of production was immeasurably lower than the labor costs for the manufacture of handmade products. At the same time, with technological progress, not only physical, but also moral wear and tear of the means of production occurred, due to their obsolescence.
In a post-industrial society, in contrast to an industrial society, the transfer of initially expended labor in the production process to manufactured products is of a completely different nature. The scientific and technical knowledge required in production is spent equally in the production of one product (car, television, etc.) and millions of similar units. It follows that in a post-industrial society, knowledge is not consumed quantitatively, does not need physical depreciation (replenishment) and requires its technical improvement and renewal only as the volume of knowledge as a whole increases. Technical improvement of production does not depend on its scale. Moreover, the larger the scale of production, the cheaper the costs of society for science and technology as a whole.
Scientific and technological progress is aimed at reducing the material intensity, labor intensity, energy intensity and capital intensity of the economic process by justifying the costs of science and technology on a societal scale. In other words, the higher the dose of knowledge in a product, the correspondingly lower the dose (costs) of labor, materials, energy, and capital investments in each product, which makes them profitable and accessible to the general public.
Consequently, the main principle of economic activity in a post-industrial society is a rapid increase in funds for the development of science, which allows, on the one hand, to save other resources, and on the other, to make the production and consumption of goods and services as widespread as possible, making them as cheap as possible, creating conditions for abundance and well-being of society.
A logical question arises: in which modern countries, according to Bell, do the features of emerging post-industrialism appear most visibly? In the preface to the Russian edition, he writes: “The post-industrial, or information, era comes as a result of a long chain of technological changes. Not all countries - and at the moment only a few - are ready to join it. If we define a post-industrial society as one where there has been a shift from industrial production to services, then the UK, almost all of Western Europe, the United States and Japan have entered the post-industrial age. But if we define the information society as one in which there is scientific potential and the ability to transform scientific knowledge into the final product, usually called “high technology,” then we can say that only the United States and Japan meet this condition.” But this does not mean that other societies will not be able to become post-industrial over time. The closest to this, besides the countries of Western Europe, are the countries of the Pacific Rim, which have made a sharp industrial and technological leap forward in recent decades.
As for Russia, speaking hypothetically, Bell writes: “Russia today has enormous natural resources (its oil and gas reserves are the largest in the world and even exceed those of the Middle East, but their development is expensive due to the low level of technology used ), a huge number of educated engineers and technicians. If it had achieved internal stability and avoided devastating ethnic conflicts and civil wars, it would have been poised to enter the post-industrial age earlier than its Western neighbors.
Post-industrial society: analytical review of concepts
The social ideal expressed by the concept of post-industrial society is seen by many as a universal means of consolidating various social forces, a direction for the purposeful actions of people in the struggle for their viability. The new social system is non-ideological in the modern understanding of the term “ideology”. In the context of the transition of society to post-industrial development, class ideology is replaced by a new technocratic (non-political) - “post-ideology” with elements of scientificity under the influence of science and technology. This situation is characterized by the fact that the spiritual world of a depoliticized public is permeated with technocratic knowledge, drowning out social antagonisms. This approach transforms into a search for a global, planetary, pan-ideology focused on universal human values, a supra-class and non-violent world, a humane and democratic alternative.
The concept of planetary civilization is based on a common historical destiny, the interdependence of states and peoples. The trading system constantly strives to organize a single universal form on a global scale. On this basis, in the life of humanity as a global community, a special type of social consciousness is emerging - a universal consciousness that perceives reality in its geopolitical, kind of universal, planetary aspect.
This approach demonstrates the actual de-ideologization of society, that is, not the rejection of ideology in general, but the rejection of outdated ideological postulates that developed in conditions of confrontation, the confrontation of “bipolar” ideologies, and the transition to paradigms, non-traditional solutions taking into account integration, universalist social processes. Indeed, the course of modern world development determines the urgent need for partnership of all participants in the world community in the struggle for universal human survival: the desire to save civilization from the threat of weapons of mass destruction, eliminate dangerous diseases, preserve the nature of the planet, rationally manage its finite and limited natural resources, and create decent conditions for the development of all people and nations of the earth. If people do not win in this direction, then attempts to ensure the fundamental interests of people, the human right to control their own destiny, loses its meaning. In accordance with this, various concepts of post-industrial society were formed.
Radical concept of post-industrial development
A different approach to assessing industrial civilization and searching for the contours of a “new civilization” (a variant of the “third way”) took place in the radical futurological concepts of M. McLuhan, A. Touraine, E. Schumacher and others. In particular, A. Toffler was critical in his works assessed “industrial civilization.”
In his work “The Third Wave,” Toffler figuratively painted a picture of the transition to a “post-industrial” society, where the waves are waves of history that give birth to civilizations through which humanity passes in its development. Rolling one after another, these “waves” form the background against which the drama of history unfolds in three acts - three civilizational waves.
1. Pre-industrial - agricultural civilization before 1650-1750, based on a simple division of labor, a caste structure of society, authoritarian power, and a decentralized economy. The technological basis of agrarian civilization is the plow.
2. Industrial - industrial civilization to this day. Its technological basis is the machine.
3. Post-industrial (post-capitalist and post-socialist) - computer and information civilization.
Contours of Toffler's new civilization:
1. Information (flexible) technologies that qualitatively transform the infrastructure of society and the way of life of people.
2. Demassified (configural) society, in which classes lose their significance, and thousands of minorities, with a temporary nature of existence, form various transitional forms.
3. Anticipatory (anticipatory) democracy, ensuring the “participation of citizens” in the formation of models of their own future.
4. Transnational institutions that resolve global issues: a move away from national-state isolation and self-importance towards common markets with the free movement of goods, people, ideas, and culture.
Predicting the future, Toffler formulated the following positions:
Regionalism.
Industrial society gravitated towards the nation state.
Post-industrial society gravitates towards a regional state.
· Race issues and urbanization.
· Unemployment
· Military strategy
· Industrial Development Policy
· Power of the media
· Policy
· Ecology
Guidelines for post-industrial development
The innovations of radical planetary restructuring are the following:
1. Stimulating the introduction of microprocessors;
2. The emergence of new forms of organization of human relations corresponding to sophisticated technology;
3. Changing lifestyle towards quality of life values.
Post-industrial society is a strategic adaptation to a new postmodern culture and civilization, which are formed as a result of a profound transformation of the social world.
Information civilization
G. McLuhan presented a three-stage model of world history:
1st era: The listening person is the era of the tribal individual with the predominance of oral speech as communication in the acoustic world.
2nd era: The beholder is the era of the typographic or industrial individual with the predominance of the printed word over oral speech in communication.
3rd era: A person who listens and looks - the era of the information individual in the conditions of the victory of electronic communication, which increases the intellectual abilities and creative character of the individual.
McLuhan believed that the electronic revolution had created a new stage of social communication, in which the distortions and imbalances caused by geography and economics were leveled out, promoting the growth of mutual understanding between different sectors of society and peoples. At higher stages, the revolution acted as the root cause of major social changes. Information technology, combined with audio-visual media, creates a whole world of behavioral models that constantly surround a person and program his activities on an ever-increasing scale.
The second stage of the communications revolution is associated with three great innovations: satellite communications, the creation of fiber optic cables and cable networks, digital electronic devices using microprocessors and integrated circuits for high-speed reception and transmission of information. Such intellectual and technological systems lead to a fundamentally new state of civilization and culture - to global hyperintelligence. Computerization creates the technological basis for the informatization of society, in which computer science and computer skills are the second literacy, increasing a person’s intellectual and creative abilities.
Information technologization of social life has given rise to a new concept of democracy - “computer democracy”, in which information represents power. Civil society is a society of “public opinion”: its formation and expression is a means of gaining and maintaining power. Thus, the information of society replaces the social revolution.
“Mass media” - independent media - act as an intermediary between the government and society.
Another social institution associated with the development of the media is the public relations system (institute of public relations). In a rule-of-law state and civil society, the need for cooperation and the formation of a favorable relationship between social organizations and the public is the basis for pursuing a strong and confident social policy with adequate social responsibility.
Post-industrial concept of social development by R. Cohen
R. Cohen is one of those who set out to understand the concept of post-industrial development of society. He believes that among the problems associated with the impact of scientific technology on society, one of the most difficult is the question of whether current and expected impacts should be considered, whether positive or negative, whether the impact of a single technical innovation or the impact of an accumulation of similar innovations , as something completely different from the one-time or cumulative impacts exerted by scientific and technological development in its initial stages.
Cohen believes that we must ask the question: is it not the emergence of mass society that is to blame for the fact that the impact of technological development, despite its continuity, is felt in such sharp leaps in each generation, appears so unexpected that such an observer, unfortunately, cannot take advantage of lessons from the past?
Total war has become a new technical and political phenomenon, new, because in such a war the battle no longer covers only those who participate in it, following patriotic duty or military service, but also the unarmed civilian population, which, however, is considered as factor of the economic and military potential of the warring parties.
post-industrial society radical liberal
Bibliography
1. Bell D. The Coming Post-Industrial Society. Experience in social forecasting / D. Bell; translated from English; edited by V.L. Inozemtseva. - M., 1999.
2. Inozemtsev V.L. Modern post-industrial society: nature, contradictions, prospects: textbook. manual for university students. / V.L. Inozemtsev. - M.: Logos, 2000. - 304 p.
3. Kravchenko A.I. Sociology: textbook. for universities/A.I. Kravchenko. - M.: Prospekt, 2006. - 533 p.
4. Kurbatov V.I. Modern Western sociology: analytical review of concepts: textbook. allowance / V.I. Kurbatov. - Rostov-n/D.: Phoenix, 2001. - 416 p.
5. Melyukhin I.S. Information society: origins, problems, development trends. / I.S. Melyukhin. - M.: Publishing house Mosk. University, 1999. - 208 p.
6. Toffler E. The Third Wave: trans. from English / E. Toffler. - M.: AST, 2002.
7. Toffler E. Futuroshock: trans. from English / E. Toffler. - St. Petersburg: Lan, 1997. - 464 p.
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” (Moscow, 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.
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Federal Agency for Education
State educational institution
Higher professional education.
Irkutsk State Technical University.
Faculty of PS and Media
Department of Sociology and Social Work
Test
discipline: General sociology
on the topic of: " Theory of post-industrial society"
Completed:
Student of group SOC-09-1
Zaborskikh Ruslan Alexandrovich
Checked:
k.i. n, associate professor Gavrilova Natalya Igorevna
Irkutsk 2010
History of the formation of post-industrial society
The ideas of post-industrialism were formed in parallel with the concept of industrial society; As it develops, the question of what social order will replace the industrial system becomes increasingly relevant. And if in the 19th century, when through the efforts of positivists - from J. - A. de Condorcet and A. de Saint-Simon to O. Comte and J. St. Mill - the approach to their modern society of “industrialists” has become generally accepted, most sociologists have not yet asked the question of its prospects, but in the 20th century the problem of determining the future system became very relevant. However, all approaches to the periodization of history proposed at the turn of the century only stated the increasing complexity of society, but did not make it possible to trace potential changes in its structure. Thus, historians and economists have attempted to distinguish the pastoral, agricultural, land-manufacturing and land-manufacturing-commercial stages, the closed domestic, urban and national economy, or the eras of the individual, transitional and social economy. All these classifications, although they were based on the periodization of history on the principle of studying the technological aspects of the organization of social production, could not yet serve as effective tools for social forecasting.
The transformation of developing commodity production into a mature market economy, which lasted for centuries, eliminated all non-economic features of the economy and led to the absolute dominance of the principles of economic society. In turn, the erosion of the laws of the market economy and the reconstruction at a new level of the system of relations of commodity production as a tool for the redistribution of use values is the most important feature of post-economic transformation. It follows that overcoming the market economy does not mean eliminating commodity production. As is known, the main production resource of a post-industrial society is information and knowledge, the true value of which is manifested only and exclusively in conditions of the most intensive exchange. At the same time, however, due to both the unlimited possibilities of access to information and its ambiguous impact on creative individuals, over the exchange; its equivalent value character ceases to prevail; in new conditions, people strive to maximize use value, the usefulness of the information they receive, which, however, remains entirely subjective. Thus, the formation of a post-industrial society involves a transition from a market economy to a new form of commodity production, from objective value to subjective utility.
The economic era as such began with the division of labor and the emergence of commodity production. The economic type of society acquired its completed forms when the principles of a market economy permeated all socially significant ones; processes. However, having become universal, the market economy itself turned out to be the environment in which new system-forming elements began to emerge, and at the end of the 20th century, phenomena that go beyond market relations are playing an increasingly important role in social life. The sphere of their dominance is narrowing, and the possibilities of applying previous principles and laws to the emerging economic reality are becoming more and more vague and foggy.
The term “post-industrialism” was first introduced into scientific circulation by A. Kumaraswamy, the author of a number of works on the pre-industrial development of Asian countries. Subsequently, from 1916 or 1917, it was quite widely used by A. Penty, the theorist of English liberal socialism, who even included it in the titles of his books, thus denoting an ideal society where the principles of autonomous and even semi-handicraft production are revived in order to overcome the inherent industrial system conflicts.
The most well-known definitions of this type include “post-bourgeois society”, “post-capitalist system”, “post-entrepreneurial” or “post-market” society and more general concepts built around the recognition of the modern social state as having a post-traditional, post-civilizational or even post-historical nature. Some of these terms are widely used today, and the concepts based on them have wide scientific recognition; meanwhile, only two concepts from this series, marked by the greatest degree of abstraction - “posthistory” and “postmodernity” - have become core for truly serious conceptual paradigms.
In this regard, it should be noted that the concept of post-industrial society turns out to be the most perfect compared to all other definitions. It focuses on the fundamental feature that is being overcome in the emerging new society, namely the industrial nature of the previous mode of production; at the same time, it is quite rightly assumed that individual features of the new system cannot be clearly named and described until its formation is at least basically completed.
The theory of post-industrial society was formed as a result of a comprehensive analysis of the qualitatively new situation that developed in the 60s and 70s in developed industrial countries. It was precisely to discover the characteristic features of the emerging new society that the efforts of the founders of the theory were directed.
The overwhelming majority of researchers named as its main features the radical acceleration of technical progress, the reduction in the role of material production, expressed, in particular, in the reduction of its share in the total social product, the development of the service and information sector, changes in the motives and nature of human activity, the emergence of a new type of people involved. into the production of resources, a significant modification of the entire social structure. One of the most extensive definitions of post-industrial society is given by D. Bell: “A post-industrial society, he writes, is a society in which the economy has moved from the primary production of goods to the production of services, conducting research, organizing the education system and improving the quality of life; in which the class "technical specialists have become the main professional group and, most importantly, in which the introduction of innovations increasingly depends on the achievements of theoretical knowledge. Post-industrial society involves the emergence of an intellectual class, whose representatives at the political level act as consultants, experts or technocrats."
The understanding that modern society can and should be considered precisely as post-industrial is strengthened as we analyze the logic of the development of civilization, as it is presented within the framework of post-industrial theory. According to its supporters, three large eras can be quite strictly traced in history, forming the triad “pre-industrial - industrial post-industrial society.” This periodization of social progress is based on several criteria, and post-industrial society is contrasted with industrial and pre-industrial society in three important parameters:
the main production resource (in a post-industrial society it is information, in an industrial society it is energy, in a pre-industrial society it is the primary conditions of production, raw materials);
the type of production activity (it is considered in post-industrial society as sequential processing, as opposed to manufacturing and extraction at earlier stages of development);
the nature of basic technologies (defined in a post-industrial society as knowledge-intensive, in the era of industrialism - as capital-intensive and in the pre-industrial period - as labor-intensive).
It is this scheme that allows us to formulate the well-known position about three societies, according to which pre-industrial society is based on the interaction of man with nature, industrial society on interaction with nature transformed by him, and post-industrial society on interaction between people.
Noting that within the indicated three eras, communities of people that are predominantly natural, technological and social in form form and function, post-industrialists also pay attention to the nature of personal relationships typical for each of these periods. Thus, in pre-industrial societies, the most important aspect of social communication was the imitation of the actions of other people; in industrial societies, the assimilation of the knowledge and capabilities of past generations; in post-industrial societies, interpersonal interactions become truly complex, which determines the new properties of all elements of the social structure.
The perfection of post-industrial theory is also evidenced by the fact that its proponents do not give a clear definition of individual types of society and do not indicate their chronological boundaries. Moreover, they consistently emphasize the evolutionary nature of the transition from one type of society to another and the continuity of all three stages of social evolution. The new type of society does not replace previous forms, but mainly coexists with them, increasing the complexity of society, complicating the social structure and introducing new elements into its very nature. Therefore, transitions from one social state to another cannot be of a revolutionary nature and have a clear chronology.
Nevertheless, it is believed that the emergence of a new society took place from the early 70s to the late 80s, although certain trends (for example, employment dynamics that ensured the dominance of the service sector over material production) began to take shape immediately after the Second World War. Overcoming the industrial social structure is considered as a global transformation that cannot be reduced to technological innovations alone. Without denying the presence of class contradictions, post-industrial theory focuses on the processes that affect society as a whole.
The formation of the concept of post-industrial society began with an assessment of real phenomena that are radically changing the face of the Western world. From the moment of its inception to this day, post-industrial theory has maintained a consistently materialistic character, drawing new sources of its development from specific facts and trends. Within the framework of this concept, empirical material has always been and remains primary in relation to theoretical postulates and general methodological constructs, which distinguishes it favorably from social science theories common among modern Marxists.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that the doctrine of post-industrialism appears in a number of aspects as overly objectivist, since it does not provide the researcher with a tool for analyzing the causes of the development that led to the formation of an industrial, and later post-industrial society. The transition from one form of society to another is seen more as a given, rather than as a process with internal logic and contradictions.
In fact, without offering a comprehensive assessment of the processes of transition from a pre-industrial society to an industrial one, without comparing it with the process of formation of a post-industrial society, the concept of post-industrialism captures and explains only modern social transformations, without trying to apply the results obtained to build a global sociological theory, which makes many of its provisions and the conclusions are somewhat superficial.
However, concluding the assessment of the concept of post-industrialism, we note that all the successes during the 60s - 90s leave no reason to doubt that new theoretical generalizations will be made on the basis of the laid foundations in the near future.
Liberal concepts of post-industrial development
In theoretical sociology, various future scenarios began to be developed. In the context of the struggle between two alternative world systems, liberal versions of the concept of post-industrial development are aimed at the rehabilitation and improvement of the industrial (technological) model of progress linked to the capitalist economic system. These concepts are represented by the names of D. Bell, already mentioned above, as well as the names of Z. Brzezinski, J. Galbraith and other authors.
One of the founders of the theory of “post-industrial society” is D. Bell. Briefly, his views boil down to the following:
· Theoretical knowledge (not capital) is the organizing principle of the social system;
· Technological growth in the production of goods is determined by the information and cybernetic revolution
Bell formulated five main initial specific dimensions and components of a predictive model of a future society.
1. Economic sphere: transition from the production of goods to the production of services.
2. Sphere of employment: predominance of the class of professional specialists and technicians.
3. Axial principle: the leading role of theoretical knowledge as a source of innovation and policy determination in society.
4. Forthcoming orientation: control over technology and technological assessments of activities.
5. Decision-making process: creation of a new “intelligent technology” associated with a computer.
The functioning of these components changes the relationship between economics and social policy, subordinating the former to the latter.
J. Galbraith in this regard assigns significant importance to the so-called “technostructures”, which are engaged in organizing all types of social activities and property management.
Representatives of the concept under consideration substantiated the priority of integration processes in the modern world. It is dominated by pluralistic democracy, property management, human rights, individual initiative, free enterprise, and technological relations of division of labor.
Within the framework of the liberal concept, the upcoming convergence meant the collapse of Soviet industrialization, which underlies the socialist (anti-market) economic system, based on the principles of a “closed society.”
Perestroika and subsequent events in the former USSR confirmed the essence of this concept of convergence. This allowed one of its main authors, Z. Brzezinski, to draw the following conclusion: “Thus, the catastrophic meeting of humanity in the 20th century with communism gave a painful but extremely important lesson: utopian social engineering is in fundamental contradiction with the complexity of human existence, and social creativity thrives best when political power is limited."
D. Bell's theory is by no means just another speculative concept of the future of humanity, of which many have appeared recently. “The idea of a post-industrial society is not a specific forecast of the future, but a theoretical construction based on the emerging signs of a new society, a hypothesis with which sociological reality could be correlated for decades and which would allow, by comparing theory and practice, to determine the factors influencing the changes occurring in society ". In contrast to the mentioned concepts, Bell's theory is not just a hypothesis of the future, no matter how attractive it may be, but the maximum possible realistic description of the involvement of human society in a new system of socio-economic, scientific, technical and cultural-ethical relations.
D. Bell proceeds from the indispensable fact that the more economically developed a country is, the less and less in the second half of the 20th century and especially at the turn of the 21st century people’s labor activity is concentrated in industry, and in the future its share is unlikely to exceed 10-20 percent. It should be noted here that the reason for the emergence of the very concept of “post-industrial society” was partly a very real phenomenon: decades after the Second World War, a tendency was revealed to reduce employment not only in agriculture, but also in industry and, accordingly, to an increase in the number of people employed in service sector. Many Western sociologists saw this as the long-awaited beginning of an end to the proletarianization of society, while some Marxists began to unduly expand the concept of the working class to include mass layers of representatives of the middle strata. And only a few, and first of all D. Bell, perceived this as a process that went far beyond the boundaries of capitalism and socialism, as a clear sign of the emergence of a new social system.
Since that time, the overwhelming majority of the population of developed countries has been employed in the so-called service sector (the “tertiary sector” according to C. Clark), which is characterized not by the attitude of society to nature, but by the attitude of people among themselves. Man for the most part (in developed countries) lives not so much in the natural as in the artificial environment, not in the “first” nature, but in the “second” nature created by man himself. This became possible thanks to a sharp increase in labor productivity based on the information revolution. The information theory of value captures the unimaginably rapidly growing role of theoretical knowledge in society. Thanks to the ever-increasing share of knowledge in each object of the production process, the extraction, manufacture and movement of all kinds of goods and services require ever-decreasing costs of energy, materials, capital and labor every year.
As you know, the manufacture of any product requires raw materials, means of production, labor, energy, capital in its various forms. In different historical eras, these terms are used in different proportions and in different forms. Initially practically undifferentiated, they then become a specific sphere of economic activity, standing out among the rest as a completely independent industry: for example, the production of means of production or manufacturing. As society develops, the relationship between these means of production also changes. The direct production process requires more and more preliminary funds. This is how an industrial society arises, when capital in its physical and intellectual form acquires a decisive role in the economy. Modern production is distinguished by the fact that the main costs in it fall primarily on capital investments, and, the further, the more - on human capital, on knowledge, the bearer of which is both the people themselves and their instruments of production. According to Bell, this process will be gradual. Economic activity will require an increasing use of human intelligence and systematized knowledge.
At the same time, Bell objects to replacing the concept of “knowledge” with the concept of “information”, since information in its content does not exhaust all the complex problems of theoretical knowledge and science. He attaches particular importance to the codification of knowledge, that is, its reduction into a single fundamental theoretical body. Theoretical knowledge becomes the basis for the creation and application of new technology, innovation technology. Moreover, the main element of the new intellectual technology is the general computerization of production, scientific activity and communication between people in all spheres of their lives.
In each technological era, economic activity is distinguished by its typical characteristics and the nature of the costs of means of production to produce the necessary products. Initially, in the archaic era, costs were reduced to the expenditure of simple labor to acquire the finished product of nature. Then, as labor was divided, animal husbandry and agriculture became special branches of production that preceded direct labor. From a pre-industrial society, it turned into an industrial one, already producing its own tools, more and more advanced means of production began to appear, and they became the leading branch of production, multiplying labor productivity and increasing social wealth. Industry created the main wealth of society and employed an ever-increasing proportion of workers. The process of mass production, thanks to scientific discoveries and technical inventions, involved increasingly more efficient and productive machines that had the ability to transfer the increasing cost of labor into mass production. This transfer of value reduced the cost of human labor for the manufacture of one product, making the product cheaper and making it mass-produced. The resulting depreciation of the means of production was immeasurably lower than the labor costs for the manufacture of handmade products. At the same time, with technological progress, not only physical, but also moral wear and tear of the means of production occurred, due to their obsolescence.
In a post-industrial society, in contrast to an industrial society, the transfer of initially expended labor in the production process to manufactured products is of a completely different nature. The scientific and technical knowledge required in production is spent equally in the production of one product (car, television, etc.) and millions of similar units. It follows that in a post-industrial society, knowledge is not consumed quantitatively, does not need physical depreciation (replenishment) and requires its technical improvement and renewal only as the volume of knowledge as a whole increases. Technical improvement of production does not depend on its scale. Moreover, the larger the scale of production, the cheaper the costs of society for science and technology as a whole.
Scientific and technological progress is aimed at reducing the material intensity, labor intensity, energy intensity and capital intensity of the economic process by justifying the costs of science and technology on a societal scale. In other words, the higher the dose of knowledge in a product, the correspondingly lower the dose (costs) of labor, materials, energy, and capital investments in each product, which makes them profitable and accessible to the general public.
Consequently, the main principle of economic activity in a post-industrial society is a rapid increase in funds for the development of science, which allows, on the one hand, to save other resources, and on the other, to make the production and consumption of goods and services as widespread as possible, making them as cheap as possible, creating conditions for abundance and well-being of society.
A logical question arises: in which modern countries, according to Bell, do the features of emerging post-industrialism appear most visibly? In the preface to the Russian edition, he writes: “The post-industrial, or information, era comes as a result of a long chain of technological changes. Not all countries - and at the moment only a few - are ready to enter into it. If we define a post-industrial society as one where shift from industrial production to services, then the UK, almost all of Western Europe, the United States and Japan have entered the post-industrial age.But if we define the information society as one in which there is scientific capacity and the ability to transform scientific knowledge into a final product , usually called “high technology,” then we can say that only the United States and Japan meet this condition.” But this does not mean that other societies cannot become post-industrial over time. The closest to this, besides the countries of Western Europe, are the countries of the Pacific Rim, which have made a sharp industrial and technological leap forward in recent decades.
Post-industrial society: analytical review of concepts
The social ideal expressed by the concept of post-industrial society is seen by many as a universal means of consolidating various social forces, a direction for the purposeful actions of people in the struggle for their viability. The new social system is non-ideological in the modern understanding of the term “ideology”. In the context of society's transition to post-industrial development, class ideology is being replaced by a new technocratic (non-political) - “post-ideology” with scientific elements under the influence of science and technology. This situation is characterized by the fact that the spiritual world of a depoliticized public is permeated with technocratic knowledge, drowning out social antagonisms. This approach is being transformed into a search for a global, planetary, pan-ideology focused on universal human values, a supra-class and non-violent world, a humane and democratic alternative.
The concept of planetary civilization is based on a common historical destiny, the interdependence of states and peoples. The trading system constantly strives to organize a single universal form on a global scale. On this basis, in the life of humanity as a global community, a special type of social consciousness is emerging - a universal consciousness that perceives reality in its geopolitical, kind of universal, planetary aspect.
This approach demonstrates the actual de-ideologization of society, that is, not the rejection of ideology in general, but the rejection of outdated ideological postulates that developed in conditions of confrontation, the confrontation of “bipolar” ideologies, and the transition to paradigms, non-traditional solutions taking into account integration, universalist social processes. Indeed, the course of modern world development determines the urgent need for partnership of all participants in the world community in the struggle for universal human survival: the desire to save civilization from the threat of weapons of mass destruction, eliminate dangerous diseases, preserve the nature of the planet, rationally manage its finite and limited natural resources, and create decent conditions for the development of all people and nations of the earth. If people do not win in this direction, then attempts to ensure the fundamental interests of people, the human right to control their own destiny, loses its meaning. In accordance with this, various concepts of post-industrial society were formed.
Radical concept of post-industrial development
A different approach to assessing industrial civilization and searching for the contours of a “new civilization” (a variant of the “third way”) took place in the radical futurological concepts of M. McLuhan, A. Touraine, E. Schumacher and others. In particular, A. Toffler was critical in his works assessed "industrial civilization".
In his work “The Third Wave,” Toffler figuratively painted a picture of the transition to a “post-industrial” society, where the waves are waves of history that give birth to civilizations through which humanity passes in its development. Rolling one after another, these “waves” form the background against which the drama of history unfolds in three acts - three civilizational waves.
1. Pre-industrial - agricultural civilization before 1650-1750, based on a simple division of labor, a caste structure of society, authoritarian power, and a decentralized economy. The technological basis of agrarian civilization is the plow.
2. Industrial - industrial civilization to this day. Its technological basis is the machine.
3. Post-industrial (post-capitalist and post-socialist) - computer and information civilization.
Contours of Toffler's new civilization:
1. Information (flexible) technologies that qualitatively transform the infrastructure of society and the way of life of people.
2. Demassified (configural) society, in which classes lose their significance, and thousands of minorities, with a temporary nature of existence, form various transitional forms.
3. Anticipatory (anticipatory) democracy, ensuring the “participation of citizens” in the formation of models of their own future.
4. Transnational institutions that resolve global issues: a move away from national-state isolation and self-importance towards common markets with the free movement of goods, people, ideas, and culture.
Predicting the future, Toffler formulated the following positions:
Regionalism.
Industrial society gravitated towards the nation state.
Post-industrial society gravitates towards a regional state.
· Race issues and urbanization.
· Unemployment
· Military strategy
· Industrial Development Policy
· Power of the media
· Policy
·
Ecology
Guidelines for post-industrial development
The innovations of radical planetary restructuring are the following:
1. Stimulating the introduction of microprocessors;
2. The emergence of new forms of organization of human relations corresponding to sophisticated technology;
3. Changing lifestyle towards quality of life values.
Post-industrial society is a strategic adaptation to a new postmodern culture and civilization, which are formed as a result of a profound transformation of the social world.
Information civilization
G. McLuhan presented a three-stage model of world history:
1st era: The listening person is the era of the tribal individual with the predominance of oral speech as communication in the acoustic world.
2nd era: The beholder is the era of the typographic or industrial individual with the predominance of the printed word over oral speech in communication.
3rd era: A person who listens and looks - the era of the information individual in the conditions of the victory of electronic communication, which increases the intellectual abilities and creative character of the individual.
McLuhan believed that the electronic revolution had created a new stage of social communication, in which the distortions and imbalances caused by geography and economics were leveled out, promoting the growth of mutual understanding between different sectors of society and peoples. At higher stages, the revolution acted as the root cause of major social changes. Information technology, combined with audio-visual media, creates a whole world of behavioral models that constantly surround a person and program his activities on an ever-increasing scale.
The second stage of the communications revolution is associated with three great innovations: satellite communications, the creation of fiber optic cables and cable networks, digital electronic devices using microprocessors and integrated circuits for high-speed reception and transmission of information. Such intellectual and technological systems lead to a fundamentally new state of civilization and culture - to global hyperintelligence. Computerization creates the technological basis for the informatization of society, in which computer science and computer skills are the second literacy, increasing a person’s intellectual and creative abilities.
Information technologization of social life has given rise to a new concept of democracy - “computer democracy”, in which information represents power. Civil society is a society of “public opinion”: its formation and expression is a means of gaining and maintaining power. Thus, the information of society replaces the social revolution.
The "mass media" - independent media - act as an intermediary between the authorities and society.
Another social institution associated with the development of the media is the public relations system (institute of public relations). In a rule-of-law state and civil society, the need for cooperation and the formation of a favorable relationship between social organizations and the public is the basis for pursuing a strong and confident social policy with adequate social responsibility.
Post-industrial concept of social development by R. Cohen
R. Cohen is one of those who set out to understand the concept of post-industrial development of society. He believes that among the problems associated with the impact of scientific technology on society, one of the most difficult is the question of whether current and expected impacts should be considered, whether positive or negative, whether the impact of a single technical innovation or the impact of an accumulation of similar innovations , as something completely different from the one-time or cumulative impacts exerted by scientific and technological development in its initial stages.
Cohen believes that we must ask the question: is it not the emergence of mass society that is to blame for the fact that the impact of technological development, despite its continuity, is felt in such sharp leaps in each generation, appears so unexpected that such an observer, unfortunately, cannot take advantage of lessons from the past?
Total war has become a new technical and political phenomenon, new, because in such a war the battle no longer covers only those who participate in it, following patriotic duty or military service, but also the unarmed civilian population, which, however, is considered as factor of the economic and military potential of the warring parties.
post-industrial society radical liberal
Bibliography
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7. Toffler E. Futuroshock: trans. from English / E. Toffler. - St. Petersburg: Lan, 1997. - 464 p.