The New Class: Does it Exist?: Skeptical Thoughts About a Fashionable Theory

I want to argue three propositions about the social phenomenon called the “new class”: (1) it may be a class, but it is not new; (2) it may be new, but it is not a class; (3) it may be both new and a class, but its appearance on the scene explains little about the political and cultural changes that modern societies are undergoing.

Put so bluntly, these propositions are reminiscent of the Jewish joke Freud told to illustrate the psychic mechanism of rationalization. Asked b...