Cultural contradiction - Daniel Bell

 Daniel Bell's 1976 "Cultural Contradictions"

Bell begins with a description of consensus between economic, political and cultural forces which are unraveling. The bourgeois economic values of functional and technocratic roles are opposed by cultural values of art and religion, which Bell calls demonic, have resulted in a battleground between the hedonistic middle classes, by which he means conspicuous mass consumers and the working classes armed with concepts of equality and participation have turned adversarial. This situation resonates with Marcuse's economic writings on waste production and waste consumption of useless mass-produced goods and the production of new needs for these markets. Roger Mudd stated in 'The Selling of the Pentagon," 1971, that the middle classes avoided the draft by either going to college or applying for a psychiatric disqualification! 

Bell does not address the nature of the polity. He does not compare different governmental agencies nor depict them in a contest. There is no sense of a conflict between military personnel and bureaucrats; the divided nature of political parties does not implicate the displacement of military veterans by politicians, nor of bureaucrats by military veterans. Bell's unraveled consensus between the economic, the political or parties, and culture has caused the emergence of modernity, or a preoccupation with self-fulfillment, individuality and anti-rationality. The latter referring to instrumental success oriented purposiveness, not apparently to substantive rationality! But, this recourse to modernity does not address the more radical concerns of postmodernity, the sociology of science or technocratic consciousness. Comparing Bell's unraveled consensus to more radical models of social change, namely, ideology, discipline and leadership, indicates that issues of social class discipline, of the relation of party ideology to military and police operations and to the integrity of leaders implies the the problem of cultural contradictions (note not economic contradictions or contradictions in decision-making) is not solved by a new public philosophy.  Bell wants to turns the 'cultural' around to dovetail with political and economic priorities and responsibilities. Thus he is conservative. He does not want to take up the problem of death by government, of government terror. Instead, he has offered a roundabout argument for setting household arrangements and budgets straight, preferably by restricting credit!

"The characteristic style of an industrial society is based on the principles of economics and economizing: least cost, maximization, optimization, and functional rationality. Yet, it is at this point that it comes into sharpest conflict with the cultural trends of the day, for the culture emphasizes anticognitive and anti-intellectual currents which are rooted in a return to instinctual modes. The one emphasizes functional rationality, technocratic decision-making, and meritocratic rewards. The other, apocalyptic moods and anti-rational modes of behavior. It is this disjunction which is the historic crisis of Western society. This cultural contradiction, in the long run, is the deepest challenge to the society." Bell, D. "The Cultural Contradictions of Capital," 1972. The 1976 text is a series of articles emanating from this one.

The basic contradiction is between the social system and the culture. Another way of saying something similar is that there is a contradiction between the Constitution and the the beliefs of the people, e.g. hate and evil. And another way of saying this is that there is a contradiction, an opposition between positivist rationality and substantive rationality, as well as within substantive rationality.