On Post-Human Society

The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Forecasting, by Daniel Bell. New York: Basic Books. 507 pp.

It is the thesis of this book that the R&D revolution brings forth a new type of society, which can no longer be called capitalistic in any previously accepted sense. Its decisionmakers are not the wealthy owners of the means of production but those whose training and function enables them to use, plan, and augment society’s equipment. The motive of their actions is not profit but Zweckrationalitat—the abstract drive of all scientific-technological potentialities to realize themselves. A society built on these premises may include economic features of corporate or state capitalism, of the we...