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p The ideology of industrialism, which regards the industrial method of production as an absolute, rests to a considerable extent on the specific nature of the bourgeois revolution which, unlike preceding changes of socio- economic formations, means not only the establishment of the rule of a new class and the corresponding type of ownership, but also a radical change in the nature of labour, the way of life of the individual, a change in the type of community within which production takes place.

p The industrialisation of capitalist society is organically linked with the introduction of industrial forms of labour which in themselves work profound changes in the social, economic, and cultural order. It destroys the traditional way of life of the individual based on the patriarchal relations, helps to evolve fundamentally new standards of productive activity and life and turns the town into a centre of orienting social and cultural values. All these changes are closely intertwined in the process of socio-economic differentiation which is conditioned by the new production structure of society and reveals a socio-disintegrative, anti-humanist character within the framework of private ownership.

p Before capitalist social relations were sufficiently developed, many bourgeois thinkers, even progressive ones, were inclined to link the basic defects of bourgeois society with the new technology of production, i.e., with 146 industrialisation. Having equated the bourgeois social revolution with revolution in the means of production, the bourgeois consciousness essentially reduced the essence of the capitalist socio-economic formation to the industrial technology of production. What is more, the institutions and values of bourgeois society began to be regarded as something basically inherent in machine division of labour. This approach gave rise to a peculiar re-orientation of historical consciousness—and the whole history of the development of human society was to a considerable extent shifted to the sphere of the history of production technology, to contrasting the pre-iiiduslrial and industrial stages in the development of mankind, i.e., to contrasting “traditional” society and bourgeois society.

p This thesis can be clearly demonstrated by reference to the numerous works of bourgeois specialists in the sphere of industrial sociology, in particular to the six-volume study by one of the founders of industrial sociology, the French engineer Frederic Le Play.  [146•1  Le Play attempted to deduce the disintegrative character of bourgeois society not by analysing the contradictions between the social institutions of the bourgeoisie and industrial production, but from the specific nature of the industrial-urbanised model of society, seen as the direct opposite of the traditi0 nalrural unit. As a result he reached the conclusion that the degradation of the collective spirit in bourgeois society, the isolation of the individual members, the loss of an effective bond between them and various social groups, was explained mainly by the distinctive features of the “industrial community”. Emile Durkheim reached similar conclusions with the aid of identical methodological premises in his works De la Division du Travail Social and Le suicide, etude de sociologie.

p The new level of socio-economic differentiation produced by the industrialisation of production demanded the creation of a new, higher type of social community. Machine industry created the material base for bringing together individuals in associations of unprecedented size. Bourgeois society, however, proved incapable of creating 147 compensatory social institutions capable of ensuring the inner, organic integration of society.  [147•1 

p In accordance with the distinctive features of the formation of bourgeois community, which is accompanied by an increase in the authoritarian character of social institutions, the ideology of industrialism presents an apology for the industrial-urbanised model of society, in which bureaucracy acts as the main link in “collectivisation” and is seen as a specific equivalent of the industrial division of labour in the sphere of social relations.

p A characteristic feature of industrialism is its complete ignoring of the social contradictions arising from the class division of society, its attempt to formulate principles of a conformist attitude in the individual, based on the “a-social” essence of technocratic precepts. A considerable role in this connection is played by the ideologisation of the phenomenon of “mass comfort”, the turning of “mass comfort”, a product of industrial-technological civilisation, into a means of incorporating the individual into the pseudo-collective life of bourgeois society.

p In the ideological system of industrialisation “mass affluence" is elevated to the level of a metaphysical postulate, called upon to set up the consciousness of a “comfortable existence" against a consciousness of values and culture. In other words, we are dealing with the transference of the meaning of human existence to a purely peripheral sphere of existence. As a “consumer of comfort" the individual is an essential element of “industrial society" with its artificially stimulated dynamic of social production by means of the principles of “fashion” and artificial “ obsolescence”. This leads to an attempt to change the social role of the individual’s requirements which are becoming increasingly manipulated and turning into a means of suppressing the individual by society. The fabrication of requirements, many of which are extremely remote from the true interests of the individual, is becoming an important aspect of the functioning of the “industrial society" and serving 148 to distort the social consciousness and substitute the “ consumer" consciousness of a philistine for the class consciousness of the individual. These requirements which are artificially injected into the individual turn into a factor of compulsory integration, increase his dependence on society, and strengthen the power of those who control the resources for satisfying them.

p It is quite unimportant whether the given requirements are regarded by the individual as his own or as alien ones. If the worker and his boss obtain pleasure, say, from the same types of social standards of entertainment and prefer the same forms of amusement, this is primarily an indication of the degree to which these requirements serve to preserve the prevailing social structure. Clever manipulation of these imposed requirements and the means of satisfying them distorts the true meaning of social values. According to the theoreticians of industrialism, the possibility of choosing, an act in which the creative nature of the individual reveals itself, is an important aspect of the value of freedom. However, when the individual reproduces as his own requirements those which are alien to him, imposed upon him from without, for the sake of preserving the entire social structure, the act of choice takes the shape of the illusion of choice, the illusion of freedom. Freedom of choice of a variety of goods and services does not mean true freedom, because it serves to intensify social control over the individual and helps to promote the social alienation of the individual. If the individuarreproduces in the act of “choice” requirements imposed upon him from without, by the exploiters, as his own requirements, the act of “choice” merely indicates the effectiveness of the control over him.

p By offering in exchange for spontaneous existence “ industrial comfort" which entails conformist behaviour, industrialism turns the existence of the individual into that of a thing, regarding man as a moment in which (by means of “requirements”) the “technological Logos”, the absolute of “industrial society”, reveals itself. In this aspect “ preindustrial civilisation" with its orientation towards cultural values is contrasted with “industrial civilisation”, the civilisation of the “technological Logos" with its tendency towards utilitarian values.

149

p Disraeli’s ironical words come to mind here: “...the European talks of progress, because by an ingenious application of some scientific acquirements he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation."  [149•1  From now on “comfort”, to the extent that it turns into a “mass product”, becomes an important element in the formation of the bourgeois psychology, turning into a kind of prism of the new “historical” vision. Here, in the field of the acquisition of “comfort”, acute social collisions are to find appeasement, labour and capital are to conclude a “contract” because the preservation of the socio-political structure of society is proclaimed as a basis for the “ technological integrity" of production.

p Orientated towards the “technological community”, industrialism turns to bureaucratic administration as the supreme institution of “collectivisation” and examines the social integration of individuals on the basis of the bureaucratic principle of functional-impersonal relations as the expression of the “rationalisation” of social relations. As a result the process of social transformation is reduced to the institutionalisation of certain formal-rational standards of behaviour of individuals, dictated by the “interests” of production technology. This view was given theoretical substantiation in Max Weber’s conception of “formal rationality”. In his works the ideology of industrialism found its fullest conceptual expression. Essentially “formal rationality" (or “formal rationalisation”) is the transference of the principle of “profit estimate" to the sphere of social relations, the turning of the structure of relations of capitalist business into an absolute principle (on the scale of society).

p “Formal rationalisation" became an important theoretical postulate for the philosophico-historical aspect of the ideology of industrialism, and was developed in the so-called concept of social modernisation. This conception regards the progression of society within the framework of the “traditional industrial" society as a process of social modernisation. It reduces historical development to a peculiar splashes of “reason” by thrusting peoples out of the centuries of backwardness of “traditional society" into the industrial “modern age" which marks the beginning of the period of 150 “supra-historical" existence. In the final analysis history is represented as a process of the “self-liberation” of mankind from the “limited” past and its entrance into the “universal” modern age. The latter appears in the form of industrialurbanised civilisation and is contrasted with the past represented by “popular-rural” traditional culture. As a result the basic social collisions in world social development are transferred to the level of the “developed versus developing countries”, “the industrial West versus the agrarian East”, “the great town versus the great village”.

p The bourgeois-apologetic nature of the theory of social modernisation finds its logical culmination in the conception of the “industrial revolution" which liberates mankind from the “mysterious enchantment" of “traditional relations"  [150•1  and introduces it to the rational system of the collaboration of “cheerful robots”. The theory of modernisation presents us with the conception of the industrial revolution as the conception of a “single revolution”, the initial positions of which are usually formulated as follows: “For no country has had more than one revolution, or at any rate, no country has had two revolutions which can usefully be described as bourgeois and proletarian."  [150•2  The “single revolution" precedes the supra-historical “industrial” model of society, which a priori embraces all possibilities of change and is the only “revolutionary” concession made by the ideology of industrialism to the revolutionary past of the bourgeoisie.

p Having exhausted its historism in the approach to the “past”, the ideology of industrialism attempts to give theoretical substantiation to the supra-historical nature of “modern” society, in which the idea of the “industrial-urban community"—the “rationalised” community of individuals corresponding to the demands of the “technical Logos"—is set up against the aspect of class relations. Thus society ceases to be an “aim-in-itself” and becomes merely a means of realising abstract rationalisation.

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p From the standpoint of this “rationalisation” the bourgeois consciousness attempts to depict the process of the all-embracing unification of the activity of the “industrial society" as the main trend in the development of the modern age, as a trend aimed at overcoming existing social heterogeneity, ideological and political differences, since the flatter are liable to become a source of dangerous tension and threaten the source of “universal prosperity"—“social integrity”. The institutional expression of this “integrity” is generally held to be the state, which is proclaimed as the most important condition for “social” well-being and safety. Any attack on the intensifying authoritarianism of modern state monopoly power against this background is seen as a “criminal” encroachment upon social “integrity”, the vital basis of the people’s, the nation’s, existence.

p From being an instrument of class rule, the rule of the “part over the whole”, the state turns into the instrument of the “industrial imperative”, the “rationalisation”, “ harmonisation" of reality in the interests of the “whole”.

p As a result the ideology of industrialism attempts to ’depict ownership in the “industrial society" as being symbolic, by arguing that it has ceased to constitute the “right” of the strong and testifies to the high material possibilities of the technology of modern production. “We are living in what is probably the first period in history when people are rich, not because of power, but because of labour productivity."  [151•1 

p Having lost its socio-constitutive nature within the framework of industrialism, the form of ownership and the social collisions related to it cease to be regarded as a vital element in social evolution, as the economic basis of the legitimisation of power. “...Ownership today is not socially constitutive. The form in which property is owned does no longer decide who wields the power."  [151•2 

p The theoreticians of the “industrial society" shift the main accent of power onto the control which, in a situation where social and political institutions are becoming increasingly bureaucratic, creates the illusion of the self-sufficiency of the function of management. “All that matters is control, 152 which today is divorced from and independent of property rights.... For the future this means that the basic political issues will center on control and not, as in the past, on property."  [152•1 

p This false division of control and ownership lies at the basis of the distinction between society in the form of a “homogeneous” mass of individuals and the rational function of management which, having “lost” its class implication, becomes the supreme expression of the process of the “rationalisation of industrial society”.

p Faced with the pseudo-alternative of chaos or collapse, “abstract rationalisation" demands recognition of the unconditional value of the existing order of things and rejects any attempt to find a new system of historical measurement which goes beyond the limits of the “rationality” in question. This rationality is expressed in the curious principle of “ economy”, from which standpoint the historical alternative to existing reality is seen as something irrational, uneconomic, and the process of social transformation is reduced to a purely quantitative aspect and subordinated to the task of the permanent reproduction of the features of one and the same social structure—capitalism. Using the principle of “economy”, the ideology of industrialism strives to give a Unitarian interpretation of the diverse phenomena of socio-economic and cultural reality, to subordinate them to the expression of the trend towards “universal rationalisation" which, in the final analysis, appears as a means of masking the interests of the ruling class.

p Having refused to recognise the future as something different from the existing social order, the ideology of industrialism tries to drive the past out of the bourgeois consciousness, to distort historical memory which could become a source of dangerous analogy for the “industrial society" that lays claim to “universal modernity”, to “ universal" removal of social contradictions. In this connection industrialism proceeds from the methodological premises of modern positivist philosophy with its emphasis on “empirical data" and the therapeutic nature of the task of philosophy: philosophy should not concern itself with problems outside the sphere of “direct experience”, outside the 153 sphere of the direct “real”, but should rid the consciousness of “pseudo-reality” which exceeds the bounds of apprehension through the senses.

p For all their striving to “exhaust” the basic social problems of the “industrial society”, the ideologists of industrialism are nevertheless compelled to touch upon the future; and it is precisely in this connection that the anti-historism of the industrial doctrine reveals itself with particular clarity.

p It is characteristic that even a writer who claims to have produced the bourgeois “Manifesto”, Walt Rostow, confines himself to the following banal statement: “Beyond (the stage of high consumption),  [153•1  it is impossible to predict, except perhaps to observe that Americans, at least, have behaved in the past decade as if diminishing relative marginal utility sets in, after a point, for durable consumers’ goods; and they have chosen, at the margin, larger families...."  [153•2  Having reached the “peak” of material prosperity (the stage of “high consumption”), mankind, according to this type of conception, stopped to think, trying to decide to which sphere it should apply its creative energy. Rostow is quite happy here with the analogy between the process of social development and the evolution of the Buddenbrooks, the family in Thomas Mann’s novel of the same name. The three generations of Buddenbrooks go through three corresponding stages of evolution: the first sets out to make money; the second, born wealthy, strives for social prestige; the third, which is born with wealth and prestige, cannot find a worthy social sphere to which to apply its energies and devotes itself to the satisfaction of mere whims. According to the theory of the “stages of economic growth”, at the stage of the developed “industrial society" mankind, like the third generation of Buddenbrooks, exhausts its interest in the sphere of social progress; having attained “wealth” and “prestige”, it withdraws from the arena of historical action and loses the meaning of its social being. Essentially this curious scheme expresses the rejection by history of the “economic man”. Being a model of the 154 bourgeois type of personality, the “economic man" exhausts the meaningfulness of his existence as soon as his actions exceed the economically conditioned limits and enter the sphere of actual human motivations: Refusing to enter into any serious discussion of the future of “developed” society, which is examined a priori as a social standard of “progress achieved”, the ideologists of industrialism are more than ready to predict the fate of other societies which do not come under the definition of a “modern industrial society" and try to impose on them the capitalist mode of development as the only possible path to progress.

p In this connection a special position is held by the conception that the historical experience of the bourgeois states is a model for the future “evolution” of the developing countries. To a considerable extent this type of methodological premise lies at the basis of Rostow’s theory of the stages of economic growth.  [154•1  Proceeding from the specific features of the formation of capitalist society in the United States and Western Europe, Rostow develops a five-stage scheme of development of “modern society”. The first stage (the initial stage of development) is the “traditional society”. This is “one whose structure is developed within limited production functions, based on pre-Newtonian science and technology, and on pre-Newtonian attitudes towards the physical world".  [154•2  The second stage is the “pre-conditions for take-off" (the transitional stage of society) in which “new types of enterprising men come forward—in the private economy, in government, or both—willing to mobilise savings and to take risks in pursuit of profit or modernisation".  [154•3  The third stage is “take-off”—“the new class of entrepreneurs expands; and it directs the enlarging flows of investment in the private sector".  [154•4  The fourth stage—the “drive to maturity": “some sixty years after take-off begins... what may be called maturity is generally attained".  [154•5  And finally the fifth stage, the “age of high mass-consumption ... a phase 155 from which Americans are beginning to emerge; whose not unequivocal joys Western Europe and Japan are beginning energetically to probe.... It is in this post-maturity stage, for example, that, ’through the political process, Western societies have chosen to allocate increased resources to social welfare and security. The emergence of the welfare state is one manifestation of a society’s moving beyond technical maturity."  [155•1 

p Having limited social progress by bourgeois “modernity”, the ideologists of “modernisation” went into an analysis of their past with the aim of edifying, in the hope that “masses of men in other parts of the world are now re-enacting that past".  [155•2  All the authors of this theory had to do was wait for the embraces of their “backward fellows”.

p In recommending bourgeois institutions as the only possible institutions for industrialisation, the conception of modernisation comes up against a serious difficulty presented by the success of the socialist form of industrialisation. The industrial progress of the socialist countries has proved that bourgeois society is only one of the possible forms of industrialisation, that the “imperative of industrialism" does not necessarily have to be realised in the activity of the “entrepreneurial class”. The ideologists of industrialism devote considerable attention to the attempt to show that socialist industrial society is “inferior” and try to present it as the “preceding stage" of bourgeois society. Thus, for example, Rostow states: “...but certainly it ( communism) can drive a society from take-off to industrial maturity.... But in its essence communism is likely to wither in the age of high mass-consumption."  [155•3  Reserving for bourgeois society the monopoly of completing the construction of the “industrial society”, Rostow turns capitalism not only into a “model of the future" of the developing countries, but also into a “model of the future" to which the socialist countries will “inevitably” come, following the behest of the “imperative of industrialism”.

p The idea of the “transformation” of socialism into capitalism is also developed in T. Parsons’ theory of “ 156 evolutionary universals".  [156•1  In spite of his attempt to sketch a multistaged scheme of social evolution, Parsons does not in fact go beyond the ideological bounds of the dichotomy of industrialism, in accordance with which the “industrial modernity" of bourgeois society is the meaning and aim of the process of historical ascent. To a certain extent Parsons’ evolutionary scheme is a variation of Weber’s idea of formal rationalisation, in which the “evolutionary universals" are stages in the realisation of “Western intellect" which has found “adequate embodiment" in bourgeois social institutions. The ideological creed of the “ evolutionary universals" is seen most clearly in the evaluation of the prospects for the “future” of the socialist mode of social development. Parsons is most categorical on this point: socialism is not a special “universal” and therefore the future of the socialist countries will be one of the following: either they will show the “instability” of their organisation (i.e., simply collapse) or they will “undergo a transformation" in the direction of the bourgeois structure of society.

p The conception of “evolutionary universals" is the introjection of bourgeois consciousness into the sphere of history— an attempt to adapt social development to the logic of modern bourgeois reality. Moreover, it is easy to see that the principle of “effective adaptation”, which is taken as the decisive factor in historical development, is very close to the pragmatic premises of the bourgeois consciousness, to the ideology of adapting bourgeois activity to the scientific and technological revolution.

p Alongside the concept of the “transformation of socialism" the ideology of industrialism also developed the theory of “convergence”, according to which socialism and capitalism are simply variations of the same kind of society. Thus, Galbraith writes: “Such reflection on the future would also emphasise the convergent tendencies of industrial societies, however different their popular or ideological billing; the convergence being to a roughly similar design for organisation and planning.... Convergence begins with modern large-scale production, with heavy requirements of 157 capital, sophisticated technology and, as a prime consequence, elaborate organisation."  [157•1 

p This thesis serves as the basic methodological premise for the ideologists of industrialism in “designing” a model of the future unitarian society, which is regarded either as a society of “democratic socialism"  [157•2  (on the grounds of joining the mechanism of the capitalist market with that of socialist planning) or as a “post-industrial society".  [157•3  In such a society the principles of “rational management" find their most adequate institutional expression: the businessman and the administrator are replaced as central figures by the mathematician and sociologist, and the sectarian-minded ideologist is ousted by the “general integrator" who ensures the overall intellectual unity of the various social groups.

p In conditioning social developments exclusively by the specific features of the industrial mode of production, the ideologists of industrialism are actually preaching industrial determinism, predicting the inevitable development of a society of the unitarian type. In such a case all that is left for the sociologist to do is to record the “ harmonisation" of reality which is an expression of the “universal essence" of the machine. This is why not only Marxist sociology is declared to be obsolete, but also the sociology of such bourgeois thinkers as Auguste Comte and Alexis de Tocqueville. The dialectic of social differentiation and social conflicts is challenged by sociology as the science of the development of “universal affluence”, the science of “social harmony": “For Tocqueville the prime factor was effacing social distinctions, for Marx the conflict between the proletariat and the entrepreneurs. But I am inclined to think that, for us, the prime factor, which we find just as much in industrial societies of the Soviet type as in the so-called Western industrial societies, is the growth of productivity or the increase in the value produced by the whole of the collective and by each individual within the 158 latter,"  [158•1  writes Raymond Aron, one of the most well-known exponents of industrialism. In a stream of abstractly interpreted categories such as “universal affluence”, “high productivity" and “industrial production" the ideologists of industrialism try to dissolve the social features of various types of industrially developed societies.

p In close connection with the given principle Aron, for example, defines his methodology as follows: “...to avoid opposing socialism and capitalism and to see socialism and capitalism as two modalities of the same genre, the industrial society."  [158•2  It goes without saying that it is possible to avoid opposing fundamentally different social systems only thanks to the extreme degree of abstraction in which the specific features which give concrete historical meaning to productive activity are reduced to nothing. The authors of “convergence” analyse “the industrial society as such”, in which production is turned into a self-sufficient abstract characterised by the following features: a) the shift of labour from agriculture to industry; b) intensive urbanisation based on expanding industrial production; and c) an increase in gross production and the growth of production per head of the population. As the “ideal type”, the “industrial society”, constructed on the level of the phenomenological similarity between fundamentally differing social models, ignores the differences resulting from the fundamental principles of social development. As a result the “ convergence" which is postulated on the basis of the “industrial society" is not the product of historical development, but first and foremost an extremely abstract, speculative scheme.

p The theory of “pluralistic industrialism" is a type of “watered-down convergence" which recognises a certain variety of types of “industrial society”,  [158•3  while emphasising at the same time that the differences between them lose their social nature in the process of evolution.

p Thus, according to the ideologists of the single industrial society, the world is in the grip of an irresistible historical 159 force—“industrialism”. The development of peoples and societies has assumed a “visible” trend. Instead of being an indefinite transcendence the future has become reality measurable in tons of steel, numbers of cars and yards of fabric.

p This idea of “visible reality”, which developed out of industrialism and is interpreted in relation to the consumer society, has become very popular with forecasters. By making this model of study an absolute and turning it into the only scientific blueprint for the future, the ideologists of industrialism have essentially rejected the definitive parameter for measuring the future—the historical one. A clear illustration of this is the work The Year 2000  [159•1  which examines the coming period of historical development as the filming of a script with the government as producer and director. The specific nature of historical development is replaced by that of technological change. The book quotes many impressive figures and discusses “various scenarios for war and peace”, but, as Erich Fromm has pointed out, in this grandiose description of the future the main thing is left out of account—the “human dimension".  [159•2 

p Turning the laws linked with the development of industrial production into an absolute, the ideologists of industrialism generally examine social development exclusively in terms of adaptation, of the passive adjustment of social institutions and values to the “supra-social” and “universal” demands of the “industrial imperative”. This type of hypertrophic approach to industry ignores the most important aspect of material-technological development, the analysis of which is an essential prerequisite for predicting the future: we are referring to the study of the forms, ways and nature of material-technological progress. In itself this progress is far from being identical with social progress; the solution of problems connected with industrial development is only a prerequisite for the solution of social problems, not the solution itself. Orientated towards the selfish interests of the ruling social groups, material- 160 technological progress can become a source of great danger for the destiny of mankind as a whole.^When it is not linked with true social progress, material-technological progress merely widens the gulf between man’s technical possibilities and the social conditions of his existence, between the dynamic nature of changes in the sphere of material reality and the conservatism of social aims. The more materialtechnical progress transcends the bounds of bourgeois socialisation, the more one hears bourgeois thinkers warning about the dangers of blind submission of “social development" to the demands of the “industrial imperative”. In this connection the following remark by the American sociologist I. Horowitz is of interest: “It may be that continued development is essentially incompatible with social stability."  [160•1  The author sees a way out of this, however, in placing “sharp limits on industrial productivity and technological expansion in hopes of maintaining social order".  [160•2 

p With regard to predicting the future, the problem of the place of the machine in the system of human relationships, the system of social values, is becoming increasingly pressing. The ideologists of industrialism naively assume that the path to human freedom lies in the total enslavement of man by the machine, by industrial production technology. “The new slavery and the new freedom go hand in hand,"  [160•3  state the authors of industrialism’s “Manifesto”.

In fact, of course, the future of human society is certainly not in the “hands” of machines, the use of which depends entirely on the social conditions of the scientific and technological revolution. Social progress, understood primarily as the progress of the institution of social relations, is able to direct technological development along truly humanistic lines. This has been proved by modern development which, on the one hand, shows the full inconsistency of the ideology of industrialism and, on the other, reveals its social and epistemological roots.