Gouldner's theory of intellectuals as a flawed universal class

Abstract

This paper critically examines Alvin W. Gouldner's contribution to the theory of the New Class, focusing on two major propositions from The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class1: first, the emergence of a New Class comprised of humanistic intellectuals and technical intelligentsia, which takes the role Marxist theory assigned to the proletariat, but whose universalism is badly flawed; and, second, the growing dominance of this class under both state socialism and Western capitalism, as a cultural bourgeoisie whose power is rooted in a monopoly over cultural capital and professionalism. Not only are these propositions central to Gouldner's life work as a synthesis of his long-standing interest in the sociology of knowledge, sociolinguistics, and revolutionary intellectuals, but they are also a new contribution to earlier theories of the New Class. The first proposition, part of Gouldner's dark dialectic, is an exciting contribution to contemporary sociology. Based on a Hegelian critique of Marx and a Marxist critique of Hegel, this concept attempts to lay the foundation of a left neo-Hegelian sociology. With it Gouldner demystifies the Marxist scenario of socialism and returns to the Hegelian search for the historical agent that will act as a universal class. The second proposition is more problematic. First, the concept of the "flawed universal class" is probably most relevant to the analysis of intellectuals under state socialism, but those intellectuals cannot be regarded as members of a cultural bourgeoisie. They are dependent on the action of other classes to make changes in the economic system on which the intellectuals' new dominance rests. In contrast to this situation, under Western capitalism intellectuals do appear as a privileged cultural bourgeoisie, but it is difficult to see in what sense they are becoming a "flawed universal class." Although their cultural capital may create a "positively privileged position in the labor market," it cannot overrule the logic of reproduction and accumulation as governed by money capital. Thus the new