BOOKS
635
several cultural sources for modern intellectuals as foundation is said
to neglect the impress of their own status group, that is, of contempo–
rary intellectual ideology; Parsons is alleged to revitalize the founder–
ing of the old class by uniting it with the New Class and professionaliz–
ing it. And Chomsky, who, unlike Shils, is said to overemphasize the
alienating disposition of intellectuals, overstresses their subservience to
power. By perceiving even opposition to the system as an integrative
mechanism, Gouldner questions whether this renders Chomsky's
politics useless , or places him at the very Vanguard of the New Class.
It
is impossible even to name all the issues Gouldner touches-on
education and the reproduction and subversion of the New Class
through education, on old line bureaucrats and new staff intelligentsia,
on elitism, Maoism, Cuba, revolutionary intellectuals, Cambodia,
Marx and Engels. Nor is it feasible to show how carefully he argues the
cultural contradictions of both capitalism and communism. Since the
capital of Gouldner's New Class is expertise-the most important
commodity to improve economic production and political organiza–
tion-in both capitalist and communist systems, all those who possess
it can be thought, ultimately, to share power. And this, I believe, is
precisely where definitions of the New Class, and of its location, and its
potential for action, impinge on politics.
If
the neoconservatives alone
are defined as the New Class, this would not only point to the fact that
they
are the intellectuals who wield political power, but would also
disenfranchise critical or revolutionary thought.
If,
however, the New
Class , as Gou ldner maintains, encompasses all those who share a
common language and culture, then the current neoconservatives'
closeness
to
power would be incidental, a passing phenomenon. For
the real issue underlying
all
the New Class theories is power.
Even though most of these theories now reject "traditional"
Marxism, they accept the notion of the revolutionary Vanguard or at
least the idea that intellectuals influence politics. Thus Daniel Bell's
perception , for example, of the New Class as a new cultural stratum
and attitude that lacks class unity, reaffirms his conservative biases and
politics. And Andrew Hacker's focus on salaried managers who are
part of a growing upper middle class of bit players rather than
potential rulers, or Irving Louis Horowitz's rejection of class analysis
in favor of a theory of privi lege also play down the New Class's
potential to induce radical change. Yet Gouldner might consider
Michael Harrington's call to the New Class
to
participate in a new
democratic Left as too ideological, though helpful to New Class
radicalization. Grounded in the belief in the power of the words of
Vanguard intellectuals, he is critical of all dogmatism.
