Definitions of a New Class

Alvin Gouldner’s interests transcended the boundaries of academic sociology. Throughout his career he was interested in developing a critique of social theory as well as an understanding of the place of scholars and intellectuals in society. These concerns are brilliantly presented in The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class, the middle volume of his trilogy “The Dark Side of the Dialectic.” The final volume was published in 1980, the year of his death.

The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class takes the form of 16 theses. The virtue of a thesis, Gouldner informs us, is its contribution to “organizing discussion in an intellectual community by its pointed implications for certain intellectual traditions.” Gouldner situates his own work in a left neo-Hegelian sociology. His work is left Hegelian in that it holds that knowledge is important in influencing social outcomes, but this knowledge also is...