Welcome to the new class
Barry, James T.
THE CLERISY CONFRONTS THE AVANT-GARDE Welcome to the new...
...The avant-garde was trans- does threaten further the life circumstances of the non-elite formed into an employed adversary culture...
...Educating so many 16 February 1979: 73 people and infusing them with great expectations about their Examples might be useful here...
...During the 1960s and early 1970s, which are not materially affected by the new class furor over the adversary culture enjoyed the momentum...
...Regulatory agencies aggressively monitor were as equally inaccessible to the majority as is owning a the minutiae of personal conduct and economic activity...
...So, too, is the entire future and to prepare reports outlining options for presidential neoconservative movement...
...This group of ing that family background and luck are the determinants...
...action...
...Public-we have added a new actor...
...Skill, family background, societal resources are stretched by this demographic aberraand luck may well separate successful from unsuccessful new tion...
...One side maintains that education dropped off tremendously, while the size of each year's increases one's skills: The more highly educated have greater graduating class remained at the previous high levels...
...Security Adviser and then Secretary of State, James' But this does not mean the neoconservatives are right...
...these producers of organizational decisions are the consumers The baby boom population is now from 20 to 32 years old...
...wanted, liberalism became the predominant political ideology With the inauguration of Richard Nixon, the new class of the idea people...
...claimed the allegiance of most intellectuals...
...Do knowledge workers belong to According to Galbraith, "When power is exercised by a a class, their own class, which is separate from the owning or group, not only does it pass into the organization, but it passes working classes' irrevocably...
...For example, the new class is all of the people who received advanced degrees over the past comprised partly of those bureaucrats and legislative assistants ten years...
...Henry Kissinger is the new class celebrity...
...Being educated is an alienable quality, which means that a Giant corporations and government bureaucracies exercise an person can market it...
...As reported in Census Bureau data on employment, document comes in many forms: it might be no longer than a professional, managerial, and technical occupations grew at one-page briefing for a boss about to make a public appearan enormous rate after the war...
...the 30 years following the close of World War II, an average of References to the new class are as frequent as they are seven million people were enrolled in college annually...
...They are ITT, General Electric and Westinghouse, Lockheed and Boemanagers for federal agencies or for a market division of ing, the Departments of Energy, Health, Education and WelGeneral Motors...
...As long as both factions deny universities and protected civil service jobs in government...
...people, who were born in huge numbers in each year from This controversy is important only indirectly to understand- 1946 to 1957, can be likened to a massive bulge passing ing the relationship between the new class and higher educa- through a long hose...
...However, the affirmative action: they are these same communities which are neoconservatives have regained the initiative quite decisively...
...One purpose serves the struggle for leadership and position The earlier avant-garde was bohemian and individualistic in within the new class...
...Some neocon- honesty...
...The more important the deciLegal Assistance Program, or doctors with the Massachusetts sion is in terms of dollars invested, people affected, or opposiGeneral Hospital...
...The historian the new class...
...Harris was once a law professor...
...The or talking-a lot...
...They appear everywhere from the scholarly journals just about ten times the average annual enrollment rate for the and literary quarterlies to Mobil Oil advertisements...
...With insurgents to win presidential primaries, the appearance of two dominant factions actively pursuing power and position, new regulatory agencies, the increased funds available to discrediting the other side becomes an obvious strategy...
...The new the original company...
...A degree in dimension of organizational dominance is sheer...
...Memos and reports are tainment networks disseminate ideas...
...And most 40 years preceding the war...
...Economic realities do...
...public interest foundations and lobbyists, the passage of far- The new class enlarges the elite strata 'of American society reaching environmental protection legislation, and the mass and in no immediate way threatens the wealthy upper class or election of independent congressmen in 1974 all opened up the political or corporate baronies...
...The other However, the more important cause of the oversupply probside argues that education has little impact on earnings, believ- lem was demographic: the postwar baby boom...
...beyond this point they have taken on an and Vance...
...new technology...
...In 1972 Congress established a Congresnewspaper reporter are examples of the new class...
...we are niew Brzezinski, carries on the work in the same manner, if something new...
...Obviously, much of the increase in of the references are negative...
...ligentsia...
...This uniqueness defines new class member- without the personal panache...
...The Public Interest, Social Policy, and , commitment to a managed economy and full employment, Foreign Affairs are smaller-circulation journals exclusively followed by the discovery of poverty and decaying cities, devoted to communication with the new class...
...Carter's security adviser, Zbignot traditional white-collar or blue-collar employees...
...written every day by millions of gainfully employed people Large corporations control the production and imposition of who have been hired for no other reason...
...Yet the JAMES T. BARRY is on the staff of the National Commission on Neigh- postwar revolution in higher education will have an impact as borhoods in Washington, D.C...
...sachusetts, Clark AN Associates bills in the neighborhood of $15 million a year for policy research for the federal governTHE NEW class is salaried brainworkers...
...The and more people secured college degrees, the more compelling largest campuses control most higher education...
...These reports, regardless of differences in length or state agencies, and the judiciary, regulate the provision of literacy, all boil down to the following statement: "In view of educational services...
...ogy...
...Their size alone involves them in a seemingly endless number of encounters with consumers, clients, competitors, and regulatory agencies...
...The nearly 25 years from the end of World War II through Throughout the remainder of this century, the new class also the inauguration of Richard Nixon were the second period of will contend with internal ideological conflict...
...with hurdles put there by this conflict between the left and the Even more importantly, the avant-garde was allowed to be- right...
...These the productive process...
...higher education to increase the number of scientists and Kristol does not lament in solitude...
...fact that both sides are factions of a single economic class...
...productivity and therefore command larger salaries...
...Once again we have the situation...
...What are the reasons for lumping them decision...
...left behind by those few who do benefit from affirmative The truest measure of their rising fortunes is money, which action...
...16 February 1979: 75 There isia debWte about how much higher education contri- years...
...The first he identified as "the dramatically...
...Recessionary or slow-growth economies In summary, organizational position and academic creden- never will be able to satisfactorily provide new class jobs for tials define an arena of power...
...Second, by virtue of the work they perform, the stances, the only enduring opponent of an organization dominew class enhances the power of organizations almost invari- nated by the new class is another organization dominated by ably...
...The national government's postwar posts of the new class...
...people accumulate them to invest in the production of income...
...The knowledge gained from an unenthral- ington firm specializing in research related to investigations of led look at ourselves might be painfully unflattering...
...A bank The White House under Nixon created the Office of Maneconomist, a magazine or book editor, an MBA with the agement and Budget, which was to have a staff that could federal government, an engineer with private industry, a col- control through its expertise the growth and performance of the lege professor, an elementary or secondary teacher, and a federal bureaucracy...
...In a led in college...
...In Cambridge, Masbe liberating as well...
...A good about our common class interests and our internal rivalries...
...The number of people graduating from college each stitutionality of affirmative action are another response to the year grew slowly, and generally the supply kept pace with the problem of oversupply...
...ready the steady accumulation of college graduates has economists...
...Minority recruitment programs appear job openings requiring advanced degrees...
...Government funded the new class also business class...
...polemics...
...These two camps make up with a shared of scarce economic and ideological resources...
...It is catching cial...
...They are black and third-world populations come the new class clerisy...
...Biochemical roundings...
...Atomic revaluable commodity, developed in highly competitive sur- search and space exploration redefined the globe...
...As Nixon's My disagreement is more fundamental...
...The Committee on Political Education, House Speaker Tip O'Neill arms race and the competition in space exploration led to ever chided labor leaders for their refusal to recognize that the larger commitments for research and development...
...To The future efficacy of politics in America might well depend make matters worse, Jerry Brown and his California Zen- upon the candor of the new class-in effect, upon our personal Jesuit troupe lie waiting in the wings for 1980...
...1. The dominance of the organizational sector is irrefutable...
...Al- of Jimmy Carter's Cabinet or top advisers are not Ph.D...
...One doors than a degree from West Texas State...
...ity of educational opportunity" (the so-called Coleman ReCommonweal: 74 port...
...THE CLERISY CONFRONTS THE AVANT-GARDE Welcome to the new class and Tom Bethel...
...The DeFumis and Bakke challenges to the conthe war...
...Specialized knowledge and group decisionThere are three occupational characteristisc which set the making define the new class...
...The labor market's demand for college-trained workers butes to lifetimo:ear{yngs...
...At the same time, a belief took hold that producing appeal to different political camps within the new class...
...cars was too complicated to leave to boards of directors and One might ask, "But what do these idea people do that is unions, and government no longer could be entrusted only to analogous to laying a brick, selling a car, or cutting hair...
...By attacking the avant-garde element within the new class on...
...These were the years during which managers gained the Therefore, where the second new class period was expanascendancy in large corporations...
...National Security Adviser, he employed a staff of highly However, it is far larger and more heterogeneous than the educated young men and women who were required to think "kristolized" version maintains...
...These techniques are created within and aderty...
...The New York increased the scope and complexity of decisions made by Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post elected officials...
...During the 1970s that figure reached and exseries of articles, many of which have been collected in his ceeded 50 percent...
...They are engineers with the Depart- like Harvard and massive state systems like California's...
...One is dependent...
...New class liberalism polarization...
...Public power and adversarial intent aggran- pursued the goal of universal higher education...
...Bill...
...The new class exists...
...As long as the demands made by the baby boom were for class members, just as these same factors might make or break education, a generally expansionary economy was able to a small businessman...
...The editorial offices of Commentary, The was mobilized for war led companies to duplicate departments New York Review of Books, Atlantic, and Harper's are outof corporate planning...
...momentous as the introduction of the car...
...2023 before those "babies" have passed through the labor the other has power...
...More and more their editorial intent is to history...
...The liberal new class believed that American voted to the belief that the "otherisidn"i`ebnstitutes a legal and political institutions were democratic enough to pernicious class...
...For example, we simply need fewer teachers today who determine social security regulations...
...try...
...Increasingly After the war America appeared to itself larger, more re- these journals and newspapers present serious analysis of sponsible, and more purposeful than at any other time in its major policy issues...
...to create competitive disadvantages for white males...
...This adver- higher education what we had done with the automobile...
...After a fashion, those who feel it represents a threat...
...Quite distinct from than we did in 1970...
...adjust successfully...
...size...
...Events of the past 10 to 15 years have burst asunder the In reality, each side wishes to write itself out of its class liberal consensus of the new class...
...The adversary culture has tenured positions in the stake in defending the status quo...
...They create, dis- ment...
...When Marx spoke of the alienation of labor, break-up of the Standard Oil Trust in 1911 is bigger now than he was describing how the worker was exploited...
...This staff reviewed masses of data, thought about Values alone do not create a class...
...expansion of government arid the emergence of the new class In much the same spirit of consumer egalitarianism, we go hand in hand...
...We now live in an unintended automobile culents, choose with whom one's child goes to school...
...We did with position to middle class and business class values...
...Not so long ago, higher Very little of consequence to modern society is produced education had little relationship to finding a job...
...They sought to be practical, to be reformist rather than T HE NEOCONSERVATIVES and the adversary culture are derevolutionary...
...But more emergence of what is seen as a kind of mass-produced intel- young people are not the only explanation for this explosion...
...Publishing houses and enterthe suggested best courses of action...
...So, too, is Labor, Government (alias Washington), Minorities, The their dedication to besting it politically...
...2. Which organizations are most characteristic of this dominance...
...As the its massive pursuit of research and development in arms and new class grew, giving intellectuals a sense of being useful and space, and through the increase in its regulatory functions...
...And, the age groups imstages of development...
...The new class is hired to manage this complexity...
...Discussion about the new class has only begun...
...The Schlesinger at CIA and Defense, George Schultz at Treasury, idea of the new class has a utility beyond their purposes and and Daniel Patrick Moynihan as chief domestic adviser...
...In today's circumnate our lives...
...Opposed to the clerisy is the "avanttion of industries based upon new technologies, through a garde," those intellectuals who are alienated from those same proliferation of internal administrative functions, and through values...
...force...
...they ,now have 'in abundance...
...Writing there had to be an increase in the brainpower of these enter- memos and reports is the major new class activity...
...Large school systems provide few went to college, usually as a luxury...
...Third, the new class controls education and has made the the new class...
...To start at the top, only five futures unleashed uncontrollable forces of social change...
...yet only three of the successor com- class celebrates its alienability...
...entered a third historical era, which may continue through the To be liberal was to steer a course between the avant-garde's first quarter of the 21st Century...
...Irving Kristol and friends are constructing the first nation, the avaht-garde evades the possibility that many of its seriously sophisticated conservative political philosophy since favored causes may be more self-serving than widely benefiAlexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers...
...The major increase in expenditures retion...
...Government was not yet a sionary and optimistic, the third period will be notable for its major new class employer...
...This is vague...
...The mood of the obfuscates our self-interests...
...Charles E. Simon and Company is a Washour full complexity...
...as "adversarial," elitist and neglectful of the needs of most And yet, the neoconservative agenda is far from ac- Americans, the clbrisy forecloses questions about its own complished...
...The supply of and Marcus Cunliffe once identified two contrary ideologies the demand for a college-educated work force increased among American intellectuals...
...Irving Kristol already has proffered advice scious, on the part of the clerisy, on the part of the avant-garde, to G.O.P...
...We-readers and author- about how foreign affairs issues might unfold well into the are all members...
...A privileged outside of large organizations...
...A partial list would include the major oil companies, IDEA PEOPLE work for a variety of employers...
...recent Two Cheers for Capitalism (Basic Books, 1978), Kris- In these last 30 years we redefined higher education, changtol characterizes the new class as a major political, cultural ing a bastion of privilege (and, oftentimes, of serious intellecgrouping which,plready shares a common ideology: rigid op- tual ambition) into a machine of mass production...
...They also show how the new new class apart., First, the major new class employers domi- class enhances the power of organizations...
...Graduating from Harvard opens more overwhelming influence over the conduct of our lives...
...The unionization of War II led the federal government to hire the more highly teachers and other white-collar workers is the premier example trained, but never in the numbers which were to be true after of this trend...
...We should understand ourselves...
...They themselves, of course, are free of such legislate morality, safe in the expectation that the American entanglements...
...Private industry funded the new class through clerisy," which meant intellectuals who defend the dominant expenditures for research and development, through the crea- values of their society...
...represent the significant new class newspapers...
...medicine, for example) increased the value of scientists to Serious journals of opinion have come to reflect the presence private industry...
...However, liberals also wished ply...
...at OMB...
...The non-elite sector includes established centers of power...
...They are scientists working on cancer re- fare, Defense, and Labor, NBC, CBS, ABC and the Public search for the National Institute of Health, on weapons re- Broadcasting System, the major newspaper chains, 50 state search for.the Defense Department, or on product develop- governments, New York City, prestigious private universities ment for Dow Chemical...
...Over the past 78 years, it has undergone three enced by older new class workers...
...neo-populism what they lack in shared liberal orthodoxy...
...So, too, is Irving Kristol...
...The latter must adapt their lifestyles Assuming a retirement age of 65, we must wait until the year to regulations promulgated by the former...
...Called "neoconservatives," they are the JAMES T. BARRY intellectual arm of what is a widespread anti-liberal mood...
...Richard Nixon unexpected social charac4er...
...We are serious intellectual enterprise...
...Their size also increases to almost incomprehensible levels the steps which must be taken, every day, to insure internal control...
...Big business has caught the To define the new class exclusively in terms of values or "hire our own intellectuals" fever and, of course, can out- political allegiances, rather than shared economic conditions, spend everyone'when the spirit moves them...
...No amount of acrimony should obscure the people were decent enough to follow this lead eventually...
...Their presence in the labor market in THE NEW class came ipto existence primarily in the 20th such huge numbers has intensified the competition experiCentury...
...The crea- typical House member had become "younger, more widely tion of entirely new technologies (in communications and educated, and independent...
...AN Associates' principal staff is all Ph.D.'s...
...acquisition of academic credentials the primary rite de passage 3. Academic credentials have become like capital: some into its midst...
...The balancing act between an avant-garde conscience and Each side may have portrayed accurately the faults of the practical necessity proved too fragile to be a permanent ideol- other-but that would not dissolve their common class bonds...
...I do not intend to debate in detail with Kristol et al...
...politician, Kemp nonetheless is a Reagan Republican...
...The targets of Education accounted for the major increase in the public- their antagonisms were many, but chief among them was the sector new class...
...They are teachers and nurses and medical tion expected, the more the decision-maker is forced to rely technicians...
...Speaking at an annual meeting of the AFL-CIO's The demand for idea people grew for many reasons...
...their common new class roots, both need not question their The McGovern and Carter forces have spread throughout the successes, their careerism, their scramble for an appropriation Democratic party...
...In this period, the new class rigid demands for independence from power and the clerisy's will contend with an economic problem and an ideological pedestrian defenses of the status quo...
...The immediate cause was the recession of the Nixon to be effective and therefore needed to engage themselves with Commonweal: 76 power...
...of social security benefits...
...The group produces the teristics in common...
...together in a single category...
...To the Among the many points on their agenda, opposition to educast of characters who already populate the mystery cated, ambitious liberals stands paramount...
...However, the new class numerous career opportunities...
...In the world of the new class, knowledge is a automobile and television changed family life...
...avant-garde and the clerisy...
...How- fices, and business or government consultantships are as comever, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the avant-garde fortable as they are lucrative...
...These enterprises share one common operating dilemma: complexity...
...Economic recovery and World stress on the protection of job security...
...The civil rights move- considerable power to set, independently, the agenda of ideas ment, the growth of legal public service careers, the ability of and issues to which the bosses and money-bags respond...
...sarial ideology is expressed and imposed mainly through gov- Consider how different our social life would be if having a car ernmental action...
...The state of the economy requires re- resentative of society's underdogs and as conscience of the trenchment...
...Government, foundations, and corporathe following facts, which have been analyzed, X or Y or Z are tions fund scientific research...
...In the first period, which ran from mediately behind the baby boom also will be caught up in the 1900 to 1945, knowledge workers appeared in private indus- problems of an oversupply...
...located itself to the left of the political spectrum, keeping the The economic problem of the new class is one of oversup- avant-garde as its conscience...
...16 February 1979: 77...
...In "new class...
...Over the sional Budget Office and Budget Committees in both houses...
...This is a recent phenomenon...
...They have become a self- once had four Ph.D.'s in his Cabinet: Kissinger as National contained economic and political entity...
...It could the Security and Exchange Commission...
...The information must be ment of Transportation, lawyers with the California Rural gathered by pooling knowledge...
...The servatives apparently have ceded the Democratic party to the first step should be to rule out subterfuge, conscious or unconadversary culture...
...They never intended to finance the sea-change in the social order we can now observe...
...The surprising ease with which the economy of the new class...
...much more, or less, of the secret record the other knows...
...While they are in it, they will experience intense competition for new class jobs...
...through the expansion of its role in managing the economy, During the period of the new class ascendancy, the conflict through its large-scale entry into social programming, through between the clerisy and the avant-garde was muted...
...The knowledge and planning needs of an organization are 1 not met by one or two employees...
...Either the courts or educational bureaucrats, not par- of courtship...
...The ture...
...Fed- yacht...
...Many people evidently rue the student bodies results from population increases...
...In 1940, only 14.5 percent of the 18-24-year-olds were enrolOne of the more important dissenters is Irving Kristol...
...This was the new class in ance, or it might be a 300-or-mores-page report on the "equalformation...
...Others toiling in this professionals in the work force, to give a son or daughter a vineyard include Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman better chance to move upward in the world, or just because Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, Andrew Greeley, Michael Novak, education was good for us...
...By assuming an intellectual sources to withstand an upper middle class invasion of their defense of the business class, the neoconservatives have be- neighborhoods...
...As often happens, this As to the existence of the new class, there is no question in somewhat shadowy figure has been defined and named by my mind that the neoconservatives are right...
...A MOTHER SPECTER is haunting American politics...
...This kind of prises...
...Idea people communicate with each other to find out how ministered by corporations...
...unionized and non-unionized manufacturing workers whose The adversary culture's successes within universities and jobs are affected by the new class's persistent restructuring of government jolted the established new class liberals...
...Academic credentials are the gatekeepers to the new quired to educate the baby boom is a telling example of how class, not the arbiters of success...
...Congressman Jack Kemp's presidential bid...
...seminate, or apply knowledge for an employer...
...Opposition to the sectors of society-those who are dependent upon the largesse business class continued, but it was now waged from within of an institutionalized society...
...Their animus and morality plays of public events-Big Business, against the new class as they conceive it is intense...
...issues of great complexity, and used sophisticated techniques We new class members work inall large organizations, in the of analysis...
...ship, irrespective of left or right political sentiments...
...panies are major oil producers by today's standards...
...These were the boom years...
...All technological advances change the sociWhen knowledge workers are not writing, they are reading ety that existed the day before the innovation appeared...
...By viewing itself simply as repcountry is cautious...
...They are the elderly and the poor living liberals executed a retreat to the right as a strategy for regroup- in older sections of central cities, lacking the economic reing: they are the neoconservatives...
...From the Civil War to World War II, the avant-garde the continued expansion of the managerial cadre...
...Behind Kissinger's bon vivant public image lay a private corporate order as well as in the public sector...
...last 30 years, a huge number of these brainworkers were they were to have experts who rivaled and could control those employed...
...They must be separated before the corrosive foundations, and parents paid for the dramatic growth in effect of their union becomes irreversible...
...The times required experts: brief, they read, write, and talk-as much as possible...
...In the era of the new class, intellectuals have some come an employed adversary culture...
...Government, dize each other...
...In politicians and special interests...
...in far less notoriety...
...Do these various occupations have any charac- upon information gathered by groups...
...Because it was made available to the many rather than to eral bureaucracies impose affirmative action plans upon pri- the few, the automobile almost single-handedly fashioned the vate corporations, including universities, which spend federal organization of cities, the conduct of family life, and the rituals money...
...University professorships, editorial ofits opposition to American society: it was disengaged...
...Of these five, three are lawyers (Harris, Califano, reached a critical mass...
...Federal and became the economic necessity of education...
...Some reports are officially or unofficially secret, and genetic research might impose the most revolutionary since, once published, knowledge becomes everyone's prop- changes of all...
...Peter engineering provides more employment prospects than a deDrucker has pointed out that every company created by the gree in fine arts...
...However, as more the elementary and secondary education of most children...
...We defy There are innumerable other examples which have received simplification as a class...
...The paths to these elite positions, became a mass movement which engaged in organized politi- and to the followings these positions command, are strewn cal expressign of its opposition, primarily to the Vietnam war...
...They have called it the one might say that the new class was born with the G.1...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 3
