The news of Daniel Bell's death this past week sent me back to his books, two of which – The Coming of Post-Industrial Society and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism – I re-read recently for my own forthcoming book, The Economics of Enough.

Previously on this blog I've noted the prescience of Bell's argument, in Post-Industrial Society, that the main political faultline of modern times would be the tensions between the technocratic management of a complex economy and the ever-growing pressures for populist democracy.

In The Economics of Enough, it's the Cultural Contradictions that plays a larger role. Bell, usually thought of as a right-wing commentator, writes in a 1978 foreword:

“….I am a socialist in economics. For me, socialism is not statism, or the collective ownership of the means of production. It is a judgment on the priorities of economic policy. It is for this reason that in this realm the community takes precedence over the individual in the values that legitimate economic policy.”

He goes on to argue for a minimum income, adequate health care and security of employment. As the Guardian's obituary put it: “He is best remembered as the author of The End of Ideology (1960), and
as one of the last of the New York intellectuals who travelled the
distance from the leftism of the 1930s to the neoconservatism of the
1970s-80s and the uncertain middle ground beyond.”

The thread I pulled out of the book this time concerns the tensions between three different sets of values or priorities in capitalism: individualism and self-realisation; equality or fairness; and efficiency and growth. There are trade-offs and in fact only two of the three can be policy targets at any one time. Bell suggests the focus in modern economies on growth and individualism means a sacrifice on the equality front, a lack which was formerly addressed by the Protestant work ethic. Without an external moral imperative containing behaviour, he suggests, the growing inequality in society would at some stage become intolerable. Again, how prescient that looks now. This 'trilemma' is a source of constant dynamics in a capitalist economy.

For more about how I link this to our current situation and policy prescriptions, you'll have to read the Overview and Chapter 7 of my book – it can now be pre-ordered from Amazon UK or other retailers!

Back to Bell – there's no shortage of obits. I like his self-description in this one from the Boston Globe: “I specialize in generalizations.” Excellent ones also in Slate and The New York Times.