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."

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"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