Book Reviews

Marx never intended to apply his theory to backward agrarian socie ties anyway. He elaborated it for the industrial countries of the West. So what happened? Instead of coming to a revolutionary confrontation of grasping capitalists and maddened workers, the ((struggle" took an en tirely different turn. As Eduard 756 Bernstein predicted in Germany, workers became rich enough to con stitute a lower middle class. To use John F. Kennedy's figure, the rising tide of affluence lifted all the boats. The whole western society became bourgeois; Labor Day became the great middle class holiday, and May Day was more or less forgotten. Now, to fill the gap caused by the fail ure of the Marxian idea of the ((final conflict" between factory own ers and workers, we have the theory of the so-called New Class. In our rush to build what Daniel Bell calls ((post-industrial society" we have ex alted a whole new tribe of symbol manipulators-foundation employ ees, research associates, teachers, government regulatory bureau crats, social workers, publicists, communications experts and ((public interest" lawyers. The symbol-ma nipulators have status and make good salaries. Their productive ((property," as distinguished from a farm, a set of tools or a shop, conTHE NEW CLASS? 757 sists of their. brains. In many ways they certainly affect our culture and our politics.

But taken as a group, do the sym bol-manipulators manifest the co herence of a class? B. Bruce-Briggs, a former city planner and founda tion executive, has addressed him self to this question by inviting twelve theorists, some of whom would describe themselves as neo conservatives, to provide tentative answers to the question. The book he has edited is called The New Class? (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 229 pp., $16.95), and the presence of the in terrogation mark in the title is quite calculated. Going to the census figures, Mr. Bruce-Briggs discovers plenty of ev idence that proprietorship has been in decay and the role of salaried managers and professionals has been increasing. Meanwhile we have had the growth of the health industry and the swelling of unumber work ers" (scientists, engineers and com puter programmers). If we add the ((ballooning of academia, teachers and college students" and ((the ap pearance of well-paid federal offi cials" to the managers, number workers and health industry em ployees, we have a sizable group.

Mr. Bruce-Briggs says that uone deviant in a community is a trouble maker, ten are a clique, a hundred a club, a thousand a pressure group." But what does it take to make a ((critical mass"? Twelve Contributors The twelve contributors to the book are sufficiently unified to indi cate there can be small explosions of ((critical mass" size, but none of them seems willing to consider that we are in danger of a New Class take over. Sociologist Daniel Bell thinks the New Class is a ((muddled con.,. cept." Historian Andrew Hacker says of the new symbol-manipulators that they have larger vocabularies and greater verbal facility than their fa thers, but ((when all is said and done they remain workers beholden to the organizations employing them." As ((upper-level employees" they ((do not constitute a class by themselves." They are ((bit players who do not even choose their own lines." Nathan Glazer, considering the legal profession, makes a good case for the class consciousness of the public service lawyer. And twenty thousand lawyers work for the fed eral government. But when you con sider that there are two sides to every legal case, you are compelled to admit that lawyers live by fight ing each other, which means there can't be much lawyer class solidar ity, either unew" or old.

For a moment in the Nineteen Sixties, when the campuses were erupting, Seymour Martin Lipset thought there might be some Marx758 THE FREEMAN December ist class consciousness developing among the professoriate. But he notes that, despite their distaste for the existing order, Uthe leaders of the American intelligentsia do not know what they want for a new so ciety." Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a resi dent scholar at the American Enter prise Institute, thinks the New Class of symbol-pushers has ((second-level stratum" importance in govern ment. But they have not often achieved u apex" positions, and she is glad of it. (l\.s surely as a monopoly of power or wealth is dangerous to the rest of us," she says, ((a new-class monopoly on meaning and purpose is incompatible with the common weal." Michael Harrington, a self-pro claimed democratic socialist, thinks Irving Kristol's hope for a ((neo-con servative" response from the New Class in favor of a free market is deluded. He worries lest the New Class should succumb to Fascism.

Kevin Phillips likes the New Class tendency toward a ((neo-populist in surgency," but he fears it will pro voke a reaction of ((nationalistic, majoritarian, work-and-productiv ity-minded" people toward a ((strongman." The ((modernism" of the New Class, deriving from secular up bringings that have de-emphasized religious values, bothers Peter Ber ger, who considers that disillusion with ((repressive secularism" could lead to ((fanatical retrenchments." Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., acting direc tor of the Roper Public Opinion Re search Center, is Olympian, as be fits a pollster. He doesn't claim any proof of a class conflict between the intelligentsia and the ((embour geoised working class," but he sees some differences emerging ((at the level of activism." This, he says, is to be expected. Adversary Cultures The best papers in Bruce-Briggs' book are by authors who have lim ited their aims. Aaron Wildavsky, former dean of the Graduate School of Public Policy at Berkeley, ex plores the interest the New Class has in preserving a no-or-little growth status quo for their own elite cadres. Norman Podhoretz, the edi tor of Commentary, describes the de veloping battle between the ((adver sary culture" and the neo conservatives who have revolted against the New Politics liberalism of the McGovern years. Since both the (~adversaries" and the neo-con servatives are, roughly speaking, ~(new class" in their symbol-manip ulating capacities, what Mr. Pod horetz has to say points to a serious schism in New Class ranks. It would be relevant to conclude from this that the fight for America's soul transcends class limits.

Finally, Robert Bartley, editor of The Wall Street Journal, investi1980 THE NEW CLASS? 759 gates the sources of the anti-busi ness clamor of recent years. Bartley is specificity itself as he explores the ramifications of the so-called public interest groups that owe their exis tence to ((Mr. Public Citizen-Ralph Nader, Inc." Nader has been ((the prime mover behind some thirty-five books and reports," and is credited with the passage of much anti-busi ness legislation. ((Predictably," says Mr. Bartley, ((Nader has inspired a host ofimita tors, founding not only his conglom erate but an entire industry." So we have the New Class isolated and personified in one towering figure. Mr. Bartley does not challenge Nader's sincerity, but he thinks that ((Ralph Nader and Friends are some times wrong" and that the upublic interest" might often be better served by umore careful attention to a balance between benefits and costs." Amen. , MAN IS MORAL CHOICE by Albert H. Hobbs (Arlington House, Westport, Connecticut 06880) 445 pages. $12.95 Reviewed by Tommy w: Rogers IT IS the mystique of the contempo rary social and behavioral sciences that man does not have a nature; he is infinitely malleable under envi ronmental pressures ideologically manipulated. Scant attention is paid to the self-determining quali~ies of human beings, the demonstrated capacity of men and women to choose, and by an act of will sur mount environmental handicaps.

Human beings are material for the planner, as the matter is viewed by the ideology known today as liber alism. Dr. Hobbs, a university pro fessor of sociology and a historian of ideas, traces liberal thought back to its unsubstantiated assumptions and prejudices. He has an expert knowl edge of the relevant literature and uses a devastating logic to expose the fallacies. Hobbs, acknowledging an intel lectual debt to Edmund Burke's re action to the French Revolution, posits ((philosophical conservativ ism" as an alternative ·to rationalis tic-scientism/romanticism. The un derlying motif in Hobbs' philosophy is his belief in capacity for moral choice, which is rooted in theneo cortex-,-that part of our brain which has no analogue in animals. Since stimuli-whether of external or in... ternal initiation-can be facilitated or inhibited on the neocortical lev els of the· brain, human beings are able to exert self-determining choice over their attitudes and behavior.

((When we realize that the initiating factor cannot be incorporated into what we know to be right, we can and should inhibit it so that it does not become a cause of our behavior.

760 THE FREEMAN To refuse to choose is also choice. If we do not actively inhibit impulses which conflict with what we know to be right, our refusal to do so consti tutes immorality." Morality, Hobbs asserts, entails a set of circumstances which requires judgment .. Those sheltered by their environment or their estate or oth erwise insulated from temptation do not earn moral credit for abstention which would require sacrifice on the part of others. Advocates of the ~~new morality" would lead us to believe that when we have fully adopted their socio-political programs of eco nomic redistribution, socialized medicine, subsidized housing, and universal education, the ills to which the spirit is heir-alcoholism, so called ~~mental" illnesses, family dis ruption, and other indices of disor ganization-will be resolved. Their socio-political programs allegedly will elicit the innate goodness of man by eliminating the things which cause badness-social and economic competition and guilt due to outmoded notions of personal morality perpetuated by bigots. Conserva tives, by contrast, convinced that the formulas of ~~social science" pro vide an escape from personal re sponsibility but not a solution to our problems and that the socio-politi cal programs which constitute the ~~new morality" are no substitute for morality, insist that morality in volves men, not measures; persons, not programs.

Hobbs recognizes that people will find it difficult to reject the seeming certitude of science and the super ficial clarity of rationalism which offers them Utopia Tomorrow for their society and Painless Panaceas for their conscience today. The con servative conception of man may lack the sentimental appeal of ro manticism and seems prosaic com pared to the visionary utopian promises of rationalism. But the choice is ours, and when the choice is a hard one there is often an ex traordinary strength in ordinary people to respond. I Keep your 1980 Freeman in an attractive blue leatherlex FREEMAN BINDER. Price: $3.00 Order from: The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533 Index THE FREEMAN-Volume 30, January-December1980 Prepared by BETTINA BIEN GREAVES of the Foundation staff NOTE: In page references, the number preceding the colon designates the month, those following refer to pages.