The question of Professor Budil’s distinction between productive and speculative capitalism—or, alternatively, between latent and manifest capitalism—comes up from time to time, particularly regarding how I see the matter and where my own concept of the new aristocracy fits into that framework.
Although Budil’s approach is an illuminating one, I more often work with the concept of the industrial society, which, in my view, reveals far more. It is a society organized to make large-scale industrial production both possible and efficient. An industrial society is not merely one variety of productive capitalism. It is a phenomenon that extends beyond capitalism itself. In the end, it matters less whether the system is formally capitalist or socialist.
If factories are to function, they impose unavoidable requirements on the organization of society, housing, transportation, education, and countless other areas. Those requirements must be respected alike by capitalists and by the central committees of communist parties.
People living in an industrial society were typically characterized by:
- an extraordinarily high level of education across virtually every field, especially when compared with earlier eras;
- a strong willingness to continue learning throughout their lives;
- a culture centered on performance and achievement;
- broad respect for the authority of science, understood simply as the systematic application of trial and error;
- the widely accepted belief that every problem could be solved—or at least substantially mitigated—through technological innovation;
- the assumption that people, meaning society as a whole, could actively shape their own future;
- the expectation of continuous improvement in living conditions. Ernest Gellner expressed this even more forcefully, arguing that in an industrial society, once a regime ceases to generate growth, it loses its legitimacy. This applies not only to the broader population but even to its own narrow circle of supporters.
In this sense, industrial society has disappeared in the West. There are still pockets where technical expertise continues to flourish. There are pockets where technological optimism remains alive. But the overall character of society has fundamentally changed.