The New-Class Game

The production of “New Class” studies promises to become a significant intellectual industry. Gouldner’s little book has the considerable virtue of offering a succinct summary of the principal theory: that a New Class based on education is challenging the old class based on property, and has adopted ideologies consistent with its class interest: The New Class is elitist and self-seeking and uses its special knowledge to advance its own interests and power, and to control its own work situation. . . .

The New Class … is egalitarian so far as the privileges of the old class are concerned . . . it is prepared to remove or restrict the special incomes of the old class: profits, rents, interest. [It] is anti-egalitarian, however, in that it seeks special guild advantages—political powers and incomes—on the basis of its possession of cultural capital (education).

BB

About the Author

B. Bruce-Briggs

The production of “New Class” studies promises to become a significant intellectual industry. Gouldner’s little book has the considerable virtue of offering a succinct summary of the principal theory: that a New Class based on education is challenging the old class based on property, and has adopted ideologies consistent with its class interest: The New Class is elitist and self-seeking and uses its special knowledge to advance its own interests and power, and to control its own work situation. . . .

The New Class … is egalitarian so far as the privileges of the old class are concerned . . . it is prepared to remove or restrict the special incomes of the old class: profits, rents, interest. [It] is anti-egalitarian, however, in that it seeks special guild advantages—political powers and incomes—on the basis of its possession of cultural capital (education).