The New Class of Neoconservatism and the De/legitimization of American Capitalism

The essay presents the U.S. debate on new class as a political category that pivoted to the rise of neoconservatism, the public writing of the neoconservative discourse – particularly Daniel P. Moynihan and Irving Kristol – and their strategy aimed at attacking the scientific and political foundations of the liberal order of American capitalism, which between the 1960s and 1970s no longer found in the middle class the public word that had laid to rest the social and political conflict of the 1930s fueling the post-World War II consensus. In the neoconservative discourse, also in dialogue with neoliberalism, new class identified an "ideological enemy" that had to be disciplined in favor of capitalism, that is, educated in respect to the authority – of society and its moral foundation, the market and its hierarchies – that social movements were challenging.