Then, there's more. With the crushing of their society by the outside world they are now reduced to poverty, and must work or beg full time. This is perhaps natural. Of course there are. This last, I'm sad to say, is Reischauer's quip, not mine.
History starts up again, after an interlude of friction and madness.
The business side is obviously important, just as important as metallurgy, education, diet, or literacy, but there is nothing special about the economicses of Smith or Marx. Smith's demolition of mercantilism in a time and a place was a middling big deal, comparable to the reshaping of the corporation as reported by Gardiner and Means. The Toffler enterprise is their historiographic entry, and I think they simply have it wrong, much as I admire Al and Heidi's writing skill and witty and tasteful use of detail. That lets you put chemistry, physics, and electronics into perspective, and you see that there wasn't any sudden revolution, just a steady cranking up of, or turning the potentiometer of, the intensity of information use. This is the multi-millenium struggle to actually carry through the information revolution.