TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION 51 theoretical foundation and apparently convincing empirical evidences. One of the latter is the increasing pragmatism in the use of state power in the socialist bloc over the decades after the second world war. The case seemingly stands much more strengthened after the retracing of steps in the East European states and the rethinking about the strategies of socialist reconstruction in the Soviet Union. A lot is still left unexamined in the area of the relation between technology and social organisation. The present work has been done on the conviction that a clear view of the relation between technology and ideology is a need of the hour. One has to know where modem technology with all its social ramifications, factual and probable, stands amid the warfare between liberal economists and socialist ideologues. The second world war acted as a catalyst in the history of social evolution. It unleashed, through an unprecedented spate of research and inventions, great forces of science and technology for satisfying civic and military purposes. The decades after the war saw the industrial countries of the world trying fervidly to mend their economies. In this attempt they reclined heavily on a highly utilitarian use of scientific research and inventions. The technological innovations had been heightening their pace and were sought to be rapidly absorbed into the economy of the advanced countries. The corporate sector, amid the race for higher productivity and competitive price was decidedly taken over by big capital.4 The megacorporations started acting as the motor of change in the industrial scene while the governments of the respective countries ostensibly encouraged and often aided the process. The effect of the innovations in both material and social technology acted throughout the broader social milieu. The nature of the social strata and the relations between them were correspondingly changed into conformity with the rising techno-economic conditions. Amid great exultation it was declared by quite a few western sociologists that the multifarious changes all around constituted nothing less than a 'technological revolution*. As early as in 1941, in his pathbreaking work The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham uttered his prognosis on the dialectical battle between capitalism and socialism. It was, according to him, already in the process of being dissolved while major reshuffles in the power structure in the corporate sector had been unleashing a silent 'revolution* in the society at large. • The idea of a 'revolution* initiated by innovations in industrial technology and associated areas which would soon permeate the class relationships had gripped a good number of western sociologists. They debated over the possible results of the techno-economic change. It was an animated debate concerning the politico-ideological meaning of the