"Contrary to these conceptions, what has been happening in the West, I believe, is a widening disjunction between the social structure (the economy, technology, and occupational system) and the culture (the symbolic expression of meanings), each of which is ruled by a different axial principle. The social structure is rooted in functional rationality and efficiency, the culture in the antinomian justification of the enhancement of the self.
The sources of each impulse are quite different. The life-style of the social structure was shaped by the principle of calculation, the rationalization of work and of time, and a linear sense of progress. All of this derived, fundamentally, from the effort to master nature and technics, to substitute wholly new rhythms of life for those bound to the regularities of the season and the diminishing returns of the soil. Technical mastery was in turn fused with a character structure which accepted the idea of delayed gratification, of compulsive dedication to work, of frugality and sobriety, and which was sanctified by the morality of service to God and the proof of self-worth through the idea of respectability. To this extent, bourgeoisie society of the nineteenth century was an integrated whole (?) in which culture, character structure, and economy were infused by a single value system. This was the civilisation of capitalism at its apogee.
Ironically, all these was undermined by capitalism itself. Through mass production and mass consumption, it destroyed the Protestant ethic by zealously promoting a hedonistic way of life. By the middle of the twentieth century capitalism sought to justify (?) itself not by work or property but by the status badges of material possession and the promotion of pleasure. The rising standard of living and the relaxation of morals became ends in themselves as the definition of personal freedom.
The result has been a disjunction within the social structure itself.In the organization of production and work, the system demands provident behaviour, industriousness and self-control, dedication to a career and success. In the realm of consumption, it fosters the attitude of carpe diem, prodigality and display, and the compulsive search for play. But in both realms the system is completely mundane, for any transcendent ethic has vanished.
If the modern social structure - based as it is on technics and metrics - is a distinctively new kind of social organization in human history, then contemporary culture, in its concern with the self, combines the deepest wellsprings of human impulse with the modern antipathy to bourgeoisie society.
The antinomian dimension of culture has been a recurrent feature of human society, in which the dialectic of restraint and release was played out originally in religion and then in the secular moral order itself. The antinomian attitude, in fact, is the repeated effort of the self to reach out beyond: the attain some form of ecstasy (ex-stasis, the leaving of the body), to become self-infinitizing or idolatrous; to assert immortality or omnipotence. It source is the finitude of creaturehood and the denial by the self of the reality of death. It is the radical "I" asserting its imperishable survival against imperious fate...What in the nineteenth century was private and hermetic has become, in the 20th century effulgence of modernism, public and ideological. Contemporary culture, with the victory of modernism, has become anti-institutional and antinomian. Few writers "defend" society or institutions against the "imperial self". The older artistic imagination, however wild, was constrained by the shaping discipline of art. The new sensibility breaks down all genres and denies that there is any distinction between art and life. Art was formerly an experience; now all experience is to be turned into art."
Daniel Bell
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Quotes 7
"The difficulty with the nineteenth-century conception of scarcity, which has carried over to the twentieth, is its definition of scarcity in physical terms; it was for this reason that abundance was counterposed to scarcity. But scarcity is not a zero-sum term of have or have-not. It is a measure of relative differences of preference at relative cost. In this sense the postulate of scarcity as an analytical concept underlies all of contemporary social science. It states axiomatically that all values are scarce relative to desires, that all resources are scare relative to wants. Economics deals with the allocation of scarce goods, political sociology with the regulation of competition among men for scarce values. To economize is to make the best use of limited resources among competing ends: the specification of the best mix of factors of production (at relative costs) with the most productive techniques (highest utilization) within the most effective scheduling (programming) of the flow of items; the outcome is the largest output at the least cost. For this reason the axial principle of economics is functional rationality. Political sociology is the study of the rules that regulate competition among men for wealth, power and esteem. But men have to accept these rules as fair and right if this competition is to proceed; men seek just authority. For this reason, the axial principle of political life is legitimacy."
***
"Politics, in contemporary society, is the management of social structure. It becomes the regulative mechanism of change. But any political decision necessarily involves some conception of justice, traditional, implicit, and now increasingly explicit. Men accept different principles of justice, or different hierarchies of value, and seek to embody them in social arrangements. Ultimately the differences between social systems lie not in their social structures (the arrangements of reward and privilege around the organization of the economy) but in their ethos. Capitalism was not just a system for the production of commodities, or a new set of occupations, or a new principle of calculation (though it was all of these), but a justification of the primacy of the individual and his self-interest, and of the strategic role of economic freedom in realizing those values through the free market. This is why the economic function became detached from other functions of Western society and was given free rein.
The political ethos of an emerging post-industrial society is communal, insofar as social goals and priorities are defined by, and national policy is directed to, the realization of those goals. It is socializing rather than economic, insofar as the criteria of individual utility and profit maximisation becomes subjected to broader considerations of social welfare and community interest."
Daniel Bell
***
"Politics, in contemporary society, is the management of social structure. It becomes the regulative mechanism of change. But any political decision necessarily involves some conception of justice, traditional, implicit, and now increasingly explicit. Men accept different principles of justice, or different hierarchies of value, and seek to embody them in social arrangements. Ultimately the differences between social systems lie not in their social structures (the arrangements of reward and privilege around the organization of the economy) but in their ethos. Capitalism was not just a system for the production of commodities, or a new set of occupations, or a new principle of calculation (though it was all of these), but a justification of the primacy of the individual and his self-interest, and of the strategic role of economic freedom in realizing those values through the free market. This is why the economic function became detached from other functions of Western society and was given free rein.
The political ethos of an emerging post-industrial society is communal, insofar as social goals and priorities are defined by, and national policy is directed to, the realization of those goals. It is socializing rather than economic, insofar as the criteria of individual utility and profit maximisation becomes subjected to broader considerations of social welfare and community interest."
Daniel Bell
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Quotes 6
"If equality of result is to be the main object of social policy - and it is the heart of the populist reaction against meritocracy - it will demand an entirely new political agenda for the social systems of advanced industrial countries. But no such political demand can ultimately succeed - unless it imposed itself by brute force - without being rooted in some powerful ethical system, and for this reason the concept of equality of result has become the Archimedean point of a major new effort to provide a philosophical foundation - a conception of justice as fairness - for a communal society.
In the nature of human consciousness, a scheme of moral equity is the necessary basis for any social order; for legitimacy to exist, power must be justified. In the end, it is moral ideas - the conception of what is desirable - that shapes history through human aspirations. Western liberal society was "designed" by Locke, Smith, and Bentham on the premise of individual freedoms and the satisfaction of private utilities; these were the axioms whose consequences were to be realized through the market and later through the democratic political system. But that doctrine is crumbling, and the political system is now being geared to the realization not of individual ends but of group and communal needs. Socialism has had political appeal for a century now not so much because of its moral depiction of what the future society would be like, but because of material disparities within disadvantaged classes, the hatred of bourgeoisie society by many intellectuals, and the eschatological vision of a "cunning" of history. But the normative ethic was only implicit; it was never spelt out and justified. The claim for equality of result is a socialist ethic (as equality of opportunity is the liberal ethic), and as a moral basis for society it can finally succeed in obtaining men's allegiance not by material reward but by philosophical justification."
Daniel Bell (1974)
In the nature of human consciousness, a scheme of moral equity is the necessary basis for any social order; for legitimacy to exist, power must be justified. In the end, it is moral ideas - the conception of what is desirable - that shapes history through human aspirations. Western liberal society was "designed" by Locke, Smith, and Bentham on the premise of individual freedoms and the satisfaction of private utilities; these were the axioms whose consequences were to be realized through the market and later through the democratic political system. But that doctrine is crumbling, and the political system is now being geared to the realization not of individual ends but of group and communal needs. Socialism has had political appeal for a century now not so much because of its moral depiction of what the future society would be like, but because of material disparities within disadvantaged classes, the hatred of bourgeoisie society by many intellectuals, and the eschatological vision of a "cunning" of history. But the normative ethic was only implicit; it was never spelt out and justified. The claim for equality of result is a socialist ethic (as equality of opportunity is the liberal ethic), and as a moral basis for society it can finally succeed in obtaining men's allegiance not by material reward but by philosophical justification."
Daniel Bell (1974)
Quotes 5
"The difficulty with the exoteric argument of Illyich - as with so much of modernism - is that it confuses experience, in all its diversities, with knowledge. Experience has to be made conscious, and this is done, as Dewey remarked, "by means of that fusion of old meanings and new knowledge that transfigures both." 'Knowledge' is the selective ordering, and reordering of experience through relevant concepts. (Situational) Reality is not a bounded world, "out there", to be imprinted on the mind as from a mirror, or a flux of experience to be sampled for its novelties according to one's inclination (or its relevance for "me"), but a set of meanings organized by the mind, in terms of categories, which establishes the relations between facts and infers conclusions.
Nor need there be, in principle, a contradiction between a cognitive and an aesthetic mode in which, as alleged, the technocratic orientation is concerned only with the functional and the adversary culture with sensibility - much as this may be true in sociological fact. In the very nature of knowledge, as Dewey observed, there has to be an interplay between the two: the cognitive makes the variety of experience more intelligible by its reduction to conceptual form; the aesthetic makes experience more vivid by its presentation in an expressive mode. The two reinforce each other in a singular way.
What has to be common to both is a reliance on judgement - the making of neccessary distinctions and the creation of standards which allow one to sort out the meretricious from the good, the pretentious from the enduring. Knowledge is a product of the self-conscious and renewable comparison and judging of cultural objects and ideas in order to say that something is better than something else (or more complex, or more beautiful, or whatever the standard one seeks to apply), and that something is truer. Inevitably, therefore, knowledge is a form of authority, and education is the process of refining the nature of authoritative judgements. This is the classic, and enduring, rationale of education.
But to this is added a special burden of the post-industrial society. One need not defend the technocratic dimensions of education - its emphasis on specialization and vocationalism - to argue that schooling becomes more necessary than before. By the very fact that there are now many more differentiated ways in which people gain information and have experiences, there is a need for the self-conscious understanding of the processes of conceptualization as the means of organizing one's information in order to gain coherent perspectives on one's experience. A conceptual scheme is a set of consistent terms which groups together diverse attributes of experience or properties of an object, in a higher order of abstraction, in order to relate them to, or distinguish them from, other attributes and properties. To see what is common and what is different about modes of experience, is the function of education. And just as the resolution of identity crisis for individuals is the amalgamation of discordant aspects of growing up into a coherent whole, so is 'knowledge' an organization of experiences, tested against other patterns of experience, in order to create consistent standards of judgement.
The function of the university, in these circumstances, is to relate to each other the modes of conscious inquiry: historical consciousness, which is the encounter with a tradition that can be tested against the present; methodological consciousness, which makes explicit the conceptual grounds of inquiry and its philosophical presuppositions; and individual self-consciousness, which makes one aware of the sources of one's prejudgements and allows one to re-create one's values through the disciplined study of the society. Education is the "reworking" of the materials of the past, without ever wholly surrendering its truths or bending to its pieties. It is a continuing tension, the tension between past and future, mind and sensibility, tradition and experience, which for all its strains and discomforts, is the only source of maintaining the independence of inquiry itself. It is the affirmation of the principle of intellectual and artistic order through the search for relatedness of discordant knowledge."
Daniel Bell
Nor need there be, in principle, a contradiction between a cognitive and an aesthetic mode in which, as alleged, the technocratic orientation is concerned only with the functional and the adversary culture with sensibility - much as this may be true in sociological fact. In the very nature of knowledge, as Dewey observed, there has to be an interplay between the two: the cognitive makes the variety of experience more intelligible by its reduction to conceptual form; the aesthetic makes experience more vivid by its presentation in an expressive mode. The two reinforce each other in a singular way.
What has to be common to both is a reliance on judgement - the making of neccessary distinctions and the creation of standards which allow one to sort out the meretricious from the good, the pretentious from the enduring. Knowledge is a product of the self-conscious and renewable comparison and judging of cultural objects and ideas in order to say that something is better than something else (or more complex, or more beautiful, or whatever the standard one seeks to apply), and that something is truer. Inevitably, therefore, knowledge is a form of authority, and education is the process of refining the nature of authoritative judgements. This is the classic, and enduring, rationale of education.
But to this is added a special burden of the post-industrial society. One need not defend the technocratic dimensions of education - its emphasis on specialization and vocationalism - to argue that schooling becomes more necessary than before. By the very fact that there are now many more differentiated ways in which people gain information and have experiences, there is a need for the self-conscious understanding of the processes of conceptualization as the means of organizing one's information in order to gain coherent perspectives on one's experience. A conceptual scheme is a set of consistent terms which groups together diverse attributes of experience or properties of an object, in a higher order of abstraction, in order to relate them to, or distinguish them from, other attributes and properties. To see what is common and what is different about modes of experience, is the function of education. And just as the resolution of identity crisis for individuals is the amalgamation of discordant aspects of growing up into a coherent whole, so is 'knowledge' an organization of experiences, tested against other patterns of experience, in order to create consistent standards of judgement.
The function of the university, in these circumstances, is to relate to each other the modes of conscious inquiry: historical consciousness, which is the encounter with a tradition that can be tested against the present; methodological consciousness, which makes explicit the conceptual grounds of inquiry and its philosophical presuppositions; and individual self-consciousness, which makes one aware of the sources of one's prejudgements and allows one to re-create one's values through the disciplined study of the society. Education is the "reworking" of the materials of the past, without ever wholly surrendering its truths or bending to its pieties. It is a continuing tension, the tension between past and future, mind and sensibility, tradition and experience, which for all its strains and discomforts, is the only source of maintaining the independence of inquiry itself. It is the affirmation of the principle of intellectual and artistic order through the search for relatedness of discordant knowledge."
Daniel Bell
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