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not through economic deprivation but through
political
suffering.
They overcome alienation by doing political work, subverting conser–
vative ideology, and mediating the radical poli tical practices of the
New Class.
In
sweeping Hegelian fashion , Gouldner proceeds to show how
the New Class in advanced industrial societies, where production
increasingly depends on technical skills, at times is politically revolu–
tionary yet constantly helps improve the mode of production (this
enhances their importance); how it simultaneously accepts and resists
subordination to the old moneyed class; how it pursues its own
aggrandizement; and how it progressively arrogates more and more
decisional, legal, and administrative competence to itself. Gouldner
illustrates-in broad strokes-how some members of the New Class
harass the old class, periodically ally themselves with the working
masses or peasants, or use the "welfare" or "socialist" state strategically
for their own ends. Arenas of controversy include issues of academic
freedom, consumer rights, scientific management, unionization of civil
service emp loyees, honesty in government, ecology, nuclear energy,
and many more. But this class does not seek struggle for its own sake : it
is concerned with securing more of its own ideal and material interests
with a minimum of effort.
Trained either in the enterprises controlled by the old class, or,
increasingly, through specialized systems of public education, the New
Class values autonomy and professionalism; its power and privilege
are grounded in the individual control of special cultures, language,
and techniques; and the New Class's fundamental objective is to
increase its own share of the national product, so that it can afford to be
egalitarian about o ld class capital (rent, stocks, profits, etc.), but
antiegalitarian in its wish for special guild advantages based on the
possession of cultural capital. Gouldner defines such capital as pro–
duced by the New Class, as knowledge rather than as "natural" raw
material or even inborn talent; it is a "product of both human labor
and culture whose income claims are socially enforceable and cultu–
rally recognized."
Inserted in many spheres of activities, Gouldner 's New Class is
linked through its speech, through its culture of careful and critical
discourse (CCD) which suspects all authority, questions even its own
methods, and provides a common ideology based on the importance of
modes of justification, of expression, of impersonal speech. This
discourse a lso serves as a bond between humanistic intellectuals and
the technical intelligentsia. Versed in all the "two culture" arguments,
Gouldner refutes opposing views: Shils, for instance, by postulating
