Daniel Bell, who died on January 25th, was one of the great sociologists of capitalism
ASKED what he specialised in, Daniel Bell replied: “generalisations”. Mr Bell lived a varied life. He grew up in New York City, so poor that he sometimes had to scavenge for food. Yet he ended his days in bourgeois comfort in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent 20 years as a journalist, mostly as Fortune’s labour editor, before decamping to academia. His boss, Henry Luce, desperate to keep his star writer, asked him why he was leaving. He gave four reasons: June, July, August and September.
His taste for generalisations grew with the eating. He produced three of the great works of post-war sociology: “The End of Ideology” (1960), “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society” (1973) and “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism” (1978). On the Times Literary Supplement’s list of the 100 most influential books since the second world war, two were by Mr Bell. …
