DANIEL BELL
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purposes of reinvestment. But this singular new mode of operation was
fused with a distinctive cui ture and character structure. In culture, this
was the idea of self-realization, the release of the individual from
traditional restraints and ascriptive ties (family and birth) so that he
could "make" of himself what he willed. In character structure, this
was the norm of self-control and delayed gratification, of purposeful
behavior in the pursuit of well-defined goals. It is the interrelationship
of this economic system, culture, and character structure which com–
prised bourgeois civilization.
It
is the unravelling of this unity and its
consequence, which are the threads of my argument.
I read the contradictions through two prisms: the first, a synthetic
construct, is an "ideal type." It is "ahistorical" and treats the phe–
nomena as a closed system. Thus it can be "hypothetical deductive"
and specify the limits of the phenomena. Its virtue as an ideal type is
the possibility of identifying the essential lineaments-what I call the
axial principles and axial structures-of the circumscribed social
rea lms which the flux of historical change sometimes obscures. Being
static, however, the ideal type does not account for origins or future
directions. For that, one needs the second prism of history and the
detailed empirica l complexity which is its content.
Using the ideal type, I see the contradictions of capitalism in the
antagonistic principles that underlie the technical-economic, political
and cultural structures of the society. The technical-economic realm,
which became central in the beginning of capitalism, is, like all
industrial society today, based on the axial principle of economizing:
the effort to achieve efficiency through the breakdown of all activities
into the smallest components of unit cost, as defined by the systems of
financial accounting. The axial structure, based on specialization and
hierarchy, is one of bureaucratic coordination. Necessarily, individuals
are treated not as persons but as "things" (in the sociological jargon
their behavior regu lated by the role requirements), as instruments
to
maximize profil. In short, individuals are dissolved into their function.
The political realm, which regulates conflict, is governed by the
axial principle of equality: equality before the law, equal civil rights,
and, most recently, the claims of equal social and economic rights.
Because these claims become translated into entitlements, the political
order increasingly intervenes in the economic and social realms (in the
affairs of corporations, universities, and hospitals), in order to redress
the positions and rewards generated in the society by the economic
system. The axial structure of the polity is representation, and, more
recently, participation. And the demands for participation, as a princi–
ple, now are carried over into all other realms of the society. The
