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Post-Capitalist Society By Peter Drucker, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, 1993, 232 pp., $25.00.
Management guru Peter Drucker's lifetime of observing corporations plus his opinions on a wide range of topics are combined in this book about "the big picture." He has a global vision of society and where it is headed. According to the author, "Every few hundred years in western history there occurs a sharp transformation." Each change brings about a complete rearrangement of society. Values, political structure, arts, culture, everything is reshaped by this transformation. In Drucker's vision, we are currently in the midst of a worldwide transformation from a capitalist to a "post-capitalist" society.
The book's thesis is based on a Marxist-like definition of capitalism. A capitalist society, according to the book, is dominated by two classes: a small group of capitalists who own and control the means of production, and the workers who own little. All of the rest of society is organized around this fact. In this view, the age of capitalism peaked around the turn of the century. The reason, according to Drucker, is that "no one has matched in power or visibility the likes of Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie or Ford." Apparently, highly visible capitalists are a necessary condition; without them we no longer have a capitalist economy.
Drucker concedes that there are still rich people, but "economically, they...