The ‘new class’

✍ Scribed by Adam Westoby

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 387 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0018-1560
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00139567

✦ Synopsis

As social ideas go that of the "new class" has always made less claim than most to be apolitical. Yet it is possible -and useful -to distinguish a core sociological notion from the variety of political implications drawn from it: the growing class (at least in industrially developed nations) is that of the higher-educated middle layers, enjoying privilege not from property ownership but from the well-paid jobs that education gives entry to, and transmitting these advantages on to their children, whose family background prepares them to be high educational achievers, the next generation of"intelligentry".

From this descriptive stem a rich variety of more speculative ideas may sprout. The "new class" engages in economic exploitation through its possession of educational "capital". It concentrates in its hands control over knowledge, "de-skilting" the rest of society. Its interests require the expansion of social control via the state and its agencies, and it therefore provides the spokespersons for dirigisme, state employment, and liberal