ABSTRACT
W. W. Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth, was one of the first of the post-Second World War books to alert the world to the possibility of some sort of post-industrial transition. The real break between industrial and post-industrial society would surely come if or when processes in the service sector as well as the manufacturing sector of the economy, became so automated that they too required, maybe as little as 10 or 15 per cent of the labour force. Industrial society is the coordination of machines and men for the production of goods. Post-industrial society is organized around knowledge, for the purpose of social control and the directing of innovation and change; and this in turn gives rise to new social relationships and new structures which have to be managed politically. The whole idea of a post-industrial society or economy is not without its critics.
