Economic Problems of a “Postindustrial” Society

I think I should begin by expressing a certain caution with respect to the premise of my paper, a caution indicated by the quotation marks I have placed around the critical word postindustrial in my title. The premise is that we are moving rapidly into a new framework of socioeconomic relationships, a framework sufficiently different from that of the recent past to warrant designation as a new “stage” of our historical development. As this paper will make clear, I do not quarrel with the argument that deepseated changes in structure, institutions, and behavior are indeed surfacing within the economic sphere, whence they spread out to affect social and political life,’ but unfortunately a certain voguish quality...