Chatting to a philosopher friend yesterday about the state of the world in general and capitalism in particular, we concluded that a lot of the heavy analytical lifting on the changing structure of post-industrial economies had been done long ago by Daniel Bell and Peter Drucker. Bell’s [amazon_link id=”0465097138″ target=”_blank” ]The Coming of Post-Industrial Society[/amazon_link] was published in 1973 and [amazon_link id=”0465014992″ target=”_blank” ]The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism[/amazon_link] in 1976, while Drucker’s key books were published even earlier – [amazon_link id=”0434903965″ target=”_blank” ]Technology, Management and Society[/amazon_link] came out in 1970, a year after [amazon_link id=”1560006188″ target=”_blank” ]The Age of Discontinuity[/amazon_link], with its coinage of the term ‘the knowledge economy’.
[amazon_image id=”0465014992″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism[/amazon_image]
I have on the shelf a 1970 collection of essays edited by Bell and Irving Kristol, [amazon_link id=”0465008690″ target=”_blank” ]Capitalism Today[/amazon_link], in which Bell and Drucker again stand out for their prescience. Drucker writes about the development of mass global markets in capital and professional careers, alongside the mass market in products and services, and calls for economic theory to integrate the three in order to understand the global economy. Bell’s essay discusses the break between the dynamics of the economy and the cultural and moral foundations that had always made capitalism work until then; and the disjunction between the rational, technocratic decision-making of the economy and the “anti-cognitive and anti-intellectual currents” of modern culture.
Is it cheering or depressing that today’s deep problems are at least a generation old? It does feel like a return to the 1970s in so many ways, from maxi dresses in fashion and a punk revival, to exchange rate crises and the back-to-the-future macro debate of Keynesians versus monetarists.
Is it 1978 again?
Diane: if punk’s coming back, good. that’s a leading indicator of economic revival. i’d say that the wave of entrepreneurialism and willingness to disrupt established industries that marked punk in the 1970s was the true precursor of the (limited, to be sure, but real…) wave of innovation and risk-taking that marked what i once dubbed “the street-cred economy” – marketing, advertising, media, film and broadcasting, fashion, style, music etc – in the 1980s. And the UK – and people from the UK – remain very good at those industries.
of course, not all of those who are good at them remain in the UK – but when there is a single north atlantic labor market for many elements of the service sector (as there is) emigration is only to be expected.
anyway, i’d argue that punk never got the credit from economists it deserved.
hope all well. m
On that note, great news that Patti Smith has a new album out soon…
http://www.pattismith.net/intro.html
Can I have a second comment? If just a few more people who have never read it now read “The Cultural Contradictions…” with its brilliant analysis of how the sumptuary/hedonistic aspects of capitalism became disconnected from its protestant/accumulationist roots, then you’ve done a great service!
Pingback: Apocalypse tomorrow? | The Enlightened Economist