A Postmortem on Daniel Bell's Postindustrialism: Blog Report

Laurence Veysey was a professor. He received his education at the University of California-Berkley and wrote several other pieces of work, including The Emergence of the American University. Veysey received many awards and nominations. Among the most notable was his Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities award, and his nomination for the National Book Award for Philosophy and Religion.

Laurence Veysey wrote this article to criticize the various ideas proposed by Daniel Bell regarding postindustrialism. Throughout the reading, Veysey has a consistently negative viewpoint on the claims made by Bell in his two books, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

In A Postmortem on Daniel Bell’s Postindustrialism, postindustrialism is defined as the stage in a society that is already economically developed. This society then experiences its most drastic increase of industrial growth yet. One of the first criticisms Veysey had about Bell’s books was the timing. In Bell’s books (written in the 1970’s), he claimed that our society was just then heading towards postindustrialism. However, Veysey does not agree with this one bit. According to Veysey, other writers in the 1950’s described a period of postindustrialism. Even before that, some writings in the 1920’s included the existence of a “New Era”, exemplifying a postindustrial society as well.

Bell talked about postindustrialism in a way that demanded a yes or no answer as far as whether or not the future was seen correctly. Veysey goes into detail about his opinions regarding how the future was envisioned. He brought up a good point; it doesn’t necessarily matter whether or not the visions for the future during a time of postindustrialism were correct. What really matters is the presence of optimism in these predictions. A postindustrial society is aiming to continuously grow and prosper. There are many ways for a society to grow, and unlike Bell suggests, it is not a bad thing if visions of how society will become prosperous are incorrect.

The second half of the reading is focused on the idea of an “age of affluence”. Veysey mentions this time period of being from the 1920’s-1970’s. He brings up a good point- it is hard to pinpoint exactly when this affluence took place. For the wealthy, this was usually seen in the earlier years. It wasn’t until several years later that the middle class started feeling the effects, and it took even longer to reach the lower class.

Veysey goes on to suggest that instead of affluence, this time period could also be called “the age of the fulfillment of progress”. I found this an interesting way to put it because depending on how you look at it, we could still be considered in this age because we are still making progress as a society. I wonder what other people think about this. Are we still in this age? Is there a way that we can compare our progress from 50+ years ago to the progress we are currently making? It’s hard to put in perspective because like the varying opinions of Veysey and Bell, there are varying definitions for what exactly defines a postindustrial society.