Abstract

"“Daniel Bell, Anti-Monopoly, and the Coming of Post-Industrial Society”"

Richard John, Columbia University (rrjohn@columbia.edu)

Social theorists have for over half a century posited that the United States evolved at some point in the mid-twentieth century from an industrial to a post-industrial stage. Perhaps the most influential theorist of “post-industrial society” was the sociologist Daniel Bell. Bell famously posited in Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) that in recent decades the United States had shifted from an industrial society (in which economic activity had been organized around games against fabricated nature) into a post-industrial society (in which economic activity took the form of games between people).

This much is well known. What is less well known (and which was first documented by Howard Brick in his monograph by Bell) is that Bell had in the 1940s written a 250-page manuscript on the “monopoly state” in which he prefigured several of the arguments that he would later advance in Post-Industrial Society. Bell’s manuscript grew out of his editorship at New Leader—a socialist newspaper in which he wrote extensively on anti-monopoly themes during the Second World War (abetted in part by U. S. government officials eager to fight corruption). Among the many intriguing features of this manuscript is its historical analysis of the evolution of anti-monopoly thought.

My paper uses Bell’s manuscript (and his New Leader editorials) as a springboard to consider the shifting meaning of anti-monopoly in 20th century U. S social thought; it is derived from my forthcoming book on U. S. anti-monopoly thought and practice, tentatively entitled “Exclusive: How Monopoly Imperiled America from the Boston Tea Party to Big Tech.”