The Emerging Technocracy: Bell

Bell asserts that we are now in the first stages in what he terms a post-industrial society. What distinguishes this social form from an industrial one is not simply, as countless other writers have noted, that knowledge workers increasingly outnumber those in manufacturing. More significant is the change in the character of knowledge: "what has now become decisive for society is the new centrality of theoretical knowledge, the primacy of theory over empiricism, and the codification of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that can be translated into many different and varied circumstances" (343-4).

Whereas the dominant institutions of the industrial age were firms and the dominant figures business people, the foremost entities of the post-industrial age will be the university and scientists, engineers, technicians, and intellectuals. The economy will increasingly be directed from without the business world by government acting on the basis on models developed within government subsidized research and development communities. Cost effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis will rule the day. Weber saw social prestige as a fairly autonomous base of power often in competition with the economic and governmental realms. In the post-industrial social status will be increasingly rooted, one could argue supplanted, by scientific/intellectual proficiency. Another key aspect of this new order will be increasingly deliberate attempts to anticipate, measure the impact of, and ultimately control social change.

Having outlined the key features of the post-industrial landscape, Bell proceeds to chart the history of its emergence, the evolution of what he terms the "technocratic mind view" with its fundamental themes of rationality, planning and foresight, and its focus on means to the utter exclusion of ends. In fact in the technocratic weltanschauung the ends have become means. Efficiency and output have become the only ends. It is an approach to living and working which elides the fundamental question of the value of the output, the implications of such outputs for the quality of life. B. identifies several key milestones along the road to such an outlook and corresponding social order. These include the development of the atom bomb and the emergence of the digital computer. Other watershed moments included the "scientific management" of Taylor and the development of Leninism, the supreme rationalization of Marxian thought.

Though early social theorists like Comte, Saint-Simon, Spencer drew a sharp distinction between industrial society, with its emphasis on production and rationality, and militaristic, portrayed by these authors rife with display and waste, Bell notes that "war rather than peace has been in large part responsible for the acceptance of planning and technocratic modes in government" (355). He points to the McNamara "revolution" of 1965, marked by "engulfing technology" but more significantly a shift in the modes of decision making. There was for the first time within the military community and government generally a emphasis on cost effectiveness but also an attempt to assess the value of weapons systems in different kinds of programs and objectives. The technocratic mind view flourished within the military sphere because there was widespread agreement as to the importance of such programs. But Bell notes that things get quite a bit trickier in realms in which there is less agreement, such as science, social, and welfare policy. Bell ends this section on a Weberian note: "When men have different valuations how does one choose? For this the technocratic view has no answer" (358).

What are the implications of the emergence and increasing dominance of the technocratic world view for society? The attached diagram schematizes the post-industrialist order. Knowledge supplants land (in pre-industrial society) and machinery (in industrial society) as the primary social resource. Knowledge is not the only base of power. On page 361, Bell provides an adaptation of the Weberian conception of three co-existing, overlapping, and interpenetrating systems at work within any modern Western society. Note that social status, per se, has dropped out of the equation. Property, political position, and skill become the three bases of power. The spread of education, research and administration has created a new group of elites-scientists, engineers-that are integrally involved in the formulation and analysis of decisions on which major political determinations must be made.

This said, Bell concludes the section by stressing that though the technocratic mind view may increasingly permeate, politics will ultimately reign supreme in that it is only once the ends are determined (a political process) that the assessment of the appropriate, most efficient means--the purview of the technocrat--can occur. The character of the political process defies the technocratic mind view. It is infused with sentiment, rather than calculation, haggling, rather than deliberation. The enlightenment ideal of social perfectibility, that rationality can supply us with social policy that can satisfy every constituency has been exposed as wishful thinking. Though much of life as assumed a decidedly rational character, the political process remains a bastion of irrationality. But science and policy will become increasingly intertwined and thus it will be incumbent upon citizens and leaders to become increasingly versed in "the technical character of policy, aware of the ramified impact of decision as systems become extended", more complex (365). And, in turn, the technical intelligentsia must learn to question the often unanalyzed assumptions which underlie their techniques.