Laurence Veysey's "A Postmortem on Daniel Bell’s Post Industrialization"

           Laurence Veysey was a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz who taught History.  He had a fascination with utopias of past and present times (Beecher).  One of his colleagues and friends Jonathan Beecher said that he was a complex and intelligent individual that never failed to speak his mind.  Veysey did not fail to do this in his writing that was published in the academic journal, American Quarterly, A Postmortem on Daniel Bell’s Post Industrialization (1982).  The American Quarterly is the official journal of the American Studies Association (ASA), the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history (Yoshihara). His essay discussed two main things, his critiques on Daniel Bell’s ideals about Post Industrialization and his own ideas on a better explanation of this time period.  Daniel Bell coined the term “Post-Industrial Society” in his writings The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976).  This term can be defined as a stage of society’s development when the service sector generates more wealth than the manufacturing sector of an economy.  Vesey began this essay by defining this time period in a different manner, “it was a time period with widespread affluence and leisure, dependence on technology, and an emphasis on the role as a consumer rather than a worker” (Vesey, 49).  He then continues to criticize and analyze Daniel Bell’s books, where Bell relates Post Industrialization to futurology and neoconsumeratism.  Throughout Bell’s books, Vesey explains how he shows many confusing shifts in tone and is unable to achieve a sense of proportion as he views any particular subject.  Veysey describes Bell’s writing throughout the two books as follows, “the first book he writes as a prophet, the first half of the second book as a composer of fiery seremaids, and the second half of the second book on a level with the rest of society, trying to make sense of the complex problems thrown at him” (Veysey).  Throughout Bell’s writing, he describes himself as a socialist in economics, liberal in politics, and conservative in culture.  Veysey sees this as him being all over the place and epitomizing the loss of will among most American intellectuals of their own decade (Veysey).  One main criticism Veysey has is that Bell doesn’t extend to the larger society beyond the elites, showing how his writings cannot be generalized towards the American or Western society as a whole.  Now, Veysey shifts from his ideas on Bell’s writing, to his own analysis of this time period.  Bell was writing to help describe what will happen in the future, however, Veysey feels that Post Industrialization has merit that relates it to the 20^th century American past, not future (Veysey).  Veysey chooses to use the term “age of affluence” rather than Post Industrial society.  He describes the time period as an era of brief human utopia, “the middle 20^th century, a period unlike any other because a majority of the population could enjoy a reasonably comfortable life” (Veysey).  The key indicators of this time period, which he feels stretched from around the 1920’s to the 1970’s, as a shortening of the work week and growing emphasis on leisure time, arrival of hedonistic morality, the spread of new mass media, dependence on the automobile, movement to the suburbs, and a shift from the manufacturing sector to the service sector.  He continues to explain why he feels these are key factors and when they arise and decrease in American society.  Comparing Daniel Bell and Laurence Veysey’s ideas on the same time period, you can see how the Post Modern Society was viewed from two vastly different perspectives.

Works Cited

Beecher, Jonathan. "Remembering Laurence Veysey (1933-2004)." History of Education Quarterly. No. 3 (Fall, 2005) ed. Vol. Vol. 45. History of Education Society. Pp. 407-411. Print.

Laurence Veysey, "A postmortem on Daniel Bell's postindustrialism," American Quarterly 34:1 (1982).

Yoshihara, Mari. "American Quarterly." American Quarterly: The Official Publication of the American Studies Association. Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 24 Sept. 2014. <http://www.americanquarterly.org/index.html>.