Bell, Daniel. The Cultural Contradictions

Bell, Daniel. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books: 1997.

Daniel Bell's the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism was originally published during the mid-1970s to critique the dominant American assumption that capitalism promoted individualism. Instead, Bell believed that capitalism had come to promote standardization and homogenization, and had created corporate bureaucracies as powerful as church or state bureaucracies of the past. However, Bell also believed that the countercultural reaction to capitalism was also misguided, as capitalism had begun with the Protestant work ethic, and its spirit of individualistic austerity, Puritanism, and yes, freedom from Church institutional authority. However, this sense of Protestant freedom and independence had slowly been eradicated, and this value was taken over by the Modernists, then ineffectually by 'counterculture' as the anti-capitalist youth movement was still called when Bell wrote his work.

Over the course of his text, Bell gives an overview of the establishment of the modern capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, followed by his dark vision of a future where citizens would become more and more dependant upon the large institutions to fulfill their basic needs, rather than upon their own initiative. Although some of his predictions have not come to pass, as a social critique, his discussion of the need to provide a different vision than the standardization characteristic of modern capitalism is worth considering, in light of the issues that preoccupy Americans today.

According to Bell, individualized culture should promote creativity, diversity -- the things that make us human. In contrast, the social structure that capitalism eventually fostered came to measure human worth in terms of rationality, measured efficiency, and pure productivity. The allocation of resources came to be based upon the need to meet certain standards and benchmarks of production, not innovation. Capitalism, in contrast to the "prodigal, promiscuous," and "antirational, anti-intellectual" temperament created by stressing the value of the arts, demanded data not belief (37). Originally, standards created by culture and faith grew organically, rather were generated by forces mechanically imposed from without by organizations like corporations.

The cultural contradiction of capitalism is that capitalism began as a kind of radical, austere Protestantism, with a heavy emphasis on rejecting the collective Catholic dogma of the past. Protestantism developed a new attitude towards wealth. It stressed pursuing excellence and perfect standards with relentless individualism and drive. But this rigidity made the originally radical notion of capitalism eventually become conservative in terms its morality. This evolved to create the uniform, imposed standards of large corporations and state bureaucracies, including, ironically, the Soviet bureaucracy. In response to what came to be seen as bourgeois values, the cultural beliefs of Modernism began to react against capitalist values and celebrate the function of culture as a kind of misrule, not capitalist order. Capitalistic Protestantism came to deny its original individualistic ethos, and this value of individualism was taken over by artists and anti-capitalism

Although this dichotomy of culture vs. capitalism may initially seem like an overly schematic view of history, it is worth pondering in light of many issues dominating the headlines today. What about the current capitalist system that denies the need for affordable healthcare for all Americans and health insurance companies that put profits ahead of fairness and human needs? What of the problems created when it is more profitable for companies to do harm to the environment, even though such an immediately efficient use of economic resources may hurt the health of human beings and the planet later on? Capitalism eradicates such questions about the whole and human picture, and dismisses emotions and more far-reaching concerns not based on immediate corporate self-interest and pre-determined standards. In dismissing such concerns, the corporation has subsumed the interests of the individuals who make up the corporation. Capitalism has become a bureaucracy as powerful and complex and anti-individualistic as the dogmatic institutions the early Protestants were reacting against.

The earliest capitalist ethos of Puritanism values "self-discipline, delayed gratification, restraint" (37). Few budding capitalists today would say that the impulse to make money is a godly calling because hard work and obedience to rules is good for the soul. Paradoxically as the capitalist system has continued to evolve, even the rejection of Puritan values by the young becomes used by the system to sell goods and to create more profit for the bureaucracies generated by the capitalistic system (37). The capitalist system has essentially discarded the individual values that gave birth to its standards to sell commodities. The fascination with the new and the disposable has worked in favor of capitalism's emphasis on profit, as it has become a marketing technique for consumers. Mass production and mass advertising "by the creation of new wants and new means of gratifying those wants" renders individuals complacent and dependent upon 'the system' of production and they are made to feel that their purchase of the next new prefabricated product is a radical act of individualism (34).

The "official, ceaseless searching for a new sensibility" that is at the heart of the restless spirit of modernism, commercials counsel us, can now be treated by buying the latest device (34). Bell envisions a future where inflation, bigger government, and a sense of entitlement produced by the capitalist emphasis on gratification, will only lead to more and more unhappiness and more and more consumption and more dependence upon faceless entities.

It is hard to read Bell's words and not wonder how modern, global capitalism relates to his thesis. The Internet has been a boon to marketers, and seems on its surface sublimely anti-rational in spirit and creative. It is based upon the hypertext, the hyperlink, movement outside of space, it allows people to individually 'blog' their lives and for users to create their own individual webpages. Yet even though it might seem to be anti-rational and democratic to use the Internet requires the purchase of material goods and ties the user to a materialist system.

The counterculture of the 1960s that condemned capitalism has been effectively manufactured in our own era into a commodity, sold in the form of tie-dye shirts and Ben & Jerry's flavored ice cream.

This is what Bell means when he says that "There exists only a desire for the new -- or boredom with the old and the new" and that this spells a dangerous end to any real critique from the elements Bell calls 'culture' (53). Teens can buy a lava lamp today, to embrace the supposed counter-cultural 1960s, a lamp just like every other lava lamp. This highlights the weakness of the previous countercultural critique, which Bell felt really never provided an alternative to capitalism that was spiritually meaningful.

Technology, which seems like the most innovative aspect of capitalism, in its ability to shrink the world and provide goods to people living all over the world, has generated system of mass production and today technology is itself disposable. Unlike the inventors of the past, today, writes Bell, "the nature of change in the techno-economic order" is "linear" because it must be based upon the principles of utility, efficiency, and profit generation (165). Corporations provide clear rules for innovation, for the technological commodity must encourage displacement, and substitution of the old. Thus even technological creativity must hold to a certain prefabricated standard (165). The new iPhone displaces older phones, and once everyone has an iPod, a new form of 'must have' technology must be created, so people will want to buy it to keep connected to all of their friends.