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for most families will be to increase rather than decrease inequality.
And finally there will most likely be cutbacks in government employ–
ment, disproportionately affecting women and minorities in the
middle class. In other words, the eighties and the nineties are very
likely to be decades of growing inequality and perhaps even absolute
drops in the standard of living for the lower sixty percent of the
American population .
What does all of this have to do with neoconservatism? They have
described today 's situation as one of a "new class " battling with the
business class for leadership in our country. But I think we are seeing,
instead, a revolt of the nobles, a reassertion of business leadership in an
attempt to bulldoze its way out of the veto society. This effort will have
a political component, and we've seen the vast expansion of political
action committees and direct electoral activity by corporate leadership.
It will also have an ideological component sounding certain themes.
One will naturally be a steady disparagement of government which,
after all, is the main source of transfer payments and equalizing jobs.
Another will be the effort
to
honor the market as the only guide to
efficient and legitimate distribution. A third will be a distinction
between the "productive" and the "unproductive" as a justification for
increasingly unequal distribution, with the understanding, of course,
that the "productive" are those with sufficient income to save and to
invest. It is difficult to get figures on exactly how much is being
invested in this ideological effort. One figure is a minute per working
day. In short, in order to legitimate continuing and, in all likelihood,
increasing inequality, business leadership is beginning
to
launch an
all-out political and ideological offensive that, in my opinion, threat–
ens
to
eviscerate our democracy.
In this effort, neoconservatism, to my disappointment, has almost
entirely linked itself to business leadership. I could cite someone like
Michael Novak, who in an Exxon-funded publication for the Ameri–
can Enterprise Institute provides an appendix advising corporations
on ways in which business can hire intellectuals to carryon ideological
warfare. Though Novak is perhaps an exaggerated instance, what
neoconservatism does , it seems
to
me, is first, habitually ignore the
capitalist and economic sources of our problems, including those
cultural problems it has had the good sense
to
focus attention on. I
hasten to add that Daniel Bell is an exception. Second, neoconserva–
tism has proclaimed egalitarianism and redistribution to be dangerous
and unjustified goals of public policy at a time when growing
inequality is apt
to
be the problem. Third, neoconservatism has
