classOfTheNew.txt

The Class of the New Richard Barbrook
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Contents
1. Introduction .................................................................................................... p.007
2. Defining the New Class ...................................................................... p.011
3. The Makers of the Future ................................................................ p.015
4. The Classes of the New ...................................................................... p.051
5. References ........................................................................................................... p.107
004
005
Acknowledgments
Big Shout: Ricardo Ruiz, Tatiana Wells and Paulo Lara for finding and
translating Décio Piganatari’s definition of the Produsumers.
Respect due: CREAM/University of Westminster; Anthony Iles; Benedict
Seymour; Demetra Kotouza; Doug Henwood; John Barker; Ilze Black;
Kaveh Nouri; Laura Oldenbourg; Martin Housden; Pauline van Mourik
Broekman; Simon Worthington; Sookie Choi; Sonya Williams; Tom
Campbell; and the Cybersalon crew.
Soundtrack: Phuture Frequency Radio <www.pfradio.com>.
006
In this short book, Richard Barbrook presents a collection of quotations
from authors who in different ways attempt to identify an innovative
element within society – what Barbrook calls ‘the class of the new’. This
model workforce announces a new economic and social paradigm,
constituting a ‘social prophecy’ of the shape of work to come. Their
mode of being and, in particular, of producing, is set to become hegemonic. No matter how numerically limited at present, the way they live
and work today is the way everyone else will live and work tomorrow.
From Adam Smith’s ‘Philosophers’ of the late-eighteenth century,
down to the ‘Creative Class’ celebrated by sociologist Richard Florida
today, the class of the new represents the future of production within and,
for the author, beyond capitalism. In his essay introducing the textual
montage, Barbrook offers his own interpretation of the mutations in the
form and content of the class of the new, giving technological development a revelatory role: making new things in new ways constitutes the
new class. Marginal at present, it is nonetheless potentially universal.
Focusing on the convergence among ostensibly disparate writers
around the notion that contemporary ‘immaterial labour’ or ‘cognitive
007
1.
Introduction
by Anthony Iles & Ben Seymour
capitalism’ is both exemplary and potentially emancipatory,
Barbrook considers the claims made for the latest embodiment of
the ‘class of the new’. If the rhetoric of liberation through new
kinds of work is never less than problematic, we should remain
optimistic about the tendency of networked, cooperative and ‘livework’ forms of production to overturn hierarchies and reduce
inequalities in labour and in life. Like the highest stage in the previous orders of technologically-centred development, the class of
the new in its current ‘creative’ and informatic form poses a radical
challenge to capitalism’s regime of intellectual property and division of labour which could go far beyond what creative class ideologues currently claim for it. 
Wagering that this latest incarnation of the class of the new
need not remain an exclusive club, Barbrook enjoins the technocrats who oversee the smooth accumulation of capital in ‘world
cities’ like London to consider the economic benefits of including
and supporting the ‘mass creativity’ of those whose work does not
yet enjoy the privileged status of ‘creative’. 
008
The Class of the New
Is creativity really becoming the common and decisive feature of
all labour? Will securing the increased participation of workers in the
‘General Intellect’ ensure a smooth transition to communism?
Whatever one thinks of Barbrook’s own version of the ‘social prophecy’, he offers penetrating criticisms of the feel good rhetoric of
‘Creative Class’ boosters such as Florida.
In reality, the numbers may not bear out the great claims made for
the Creative Class, whether from the point of view of ‘radicals’like Negri
and Hardt (who give them a leadership role in the transition beyond
Empire) or of those who brandish economic arguments for their supremacy such as Florida. Although both believe that what is good for creatives
is now good for capitalism, it is by no means certain that the economic
argument for the Creative Class is as strong as its proponents claim.
Focusing on the problems and potential of the latest class of the
new in early-twenty-first century London, an environment where the
conditions for its triumph are purportedly most promising, this book
gives much needed historical and social context to current debates around
‘cognitive capitalism’ and the transformation of work it is said to entail.
Introduction
009
010
011
2.
Defining the New
Class
The Philosophers – Adam Smith (1776) ... p.051
The Industrials – Henri Saint-Simon (1819) ... p.052
The Civil Servants – Georg Hegel (1821) ... p.053
The Bohemians – Adolphe d’Ennery and Grangé (1843) ... p.053
The Bourgeoisie – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848) ... p.054
The General Intellect – Karl Marx (1857) ... p.054
The Self-Made Man – Samuel Smiles (1859) ... p.055
The Labour Movement – Karl Marx (1867) ... p.055
The Educated Working Man – Thomas Wright (1868) ... p.056
The Superman – Friedrich Nietzsche (1883) ... p.057
The Aristocracy of the Working Class – 
Friedrich Engels (1885) ... p.058
The New Middle Class – William Morris (1885) ... p.058
The Intellectual Proletariat – William Morris (1888) ... p.059
The Vanguard Party – V.I. Lenin (1902) ... p.059
The Samurai – H.G. Wells (1905) ... p.060
The Bureaucrats – Max Weber (1910) ... p.060
The Scientific Managers – Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911) ... p.060
The Labour Aristocracy – V.I. Lenin (1916) ... p.061
The Labour Bureaucracy – Gregory Zinoviev (1916) ... p.061
The Blackshirts – Mario Piazzesi (1921) ... p.062
The Engineers – Thorstein Veblen (1921) ... p.062
The Fordist Worker – Henry Ford (1922) ... p.063
The Open Conspiracy – H.G. Wells (1928) ... p.064
The Intellectuals – Antonio Gramsci (1934) ... p.065
The Managerial Class – James Burnham (1941) ... p.065
The Entrepreneurs – Joseph Schumpeter (1942) ... p.066
The Inner Party – George Orwell (1948) ... p.066
The New Middle Class – C. Wright Mills (1951) ... p.067
The Power Elite – C. Wright Mills (1956) ... p.067
The Organisation Man – William Whyte (1956) ... p.068
The New Class – Milovan Djilas (1957) ... p.069
The Specialists – Ralf Dahrendorf (1957) ... p.069
The New Class – J.K. Galbraith (1958) ... p.070
The Industrial Managers – Clark Kerr (1960) ... p.070
The Order-Givers – Cornelius Castoriadis (1961) ... p.071
The New Working Class – Serge Mallet (1963) ... p.072
The Knowledge Workers – Peter Drucker (1966) ... p.072
The Educational and Scientific Estate – J.K. Galbraith (1967) ... p.073
The Technocrats – Alain Touraine (1969) ... p.074
The Hippies – Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (1969) ... p.074
The Produsumers – Décio Piganatari (1969) ... p.075
The Scientific Intellectual Labourers – Ernest Mandel (1972) ... p.076
The Knowledge Class – Daniel Bell (1973) ... p.077
The Intermediate Layers – Harry Braverman (1974) ... p.078
The New Petty-Bourgeoisie – Nicos Poulantzas (1974) ... p.079
The Professional-Managerial Class – Barbara &
John Ehrenreich (1975) ... p.079
The Proletarianised Professionals – 
Stanley Aronowitz (1975) ... p.080
012
The Class of the New
The Post-Modernists – Jean-François Lyotard (1979) ... p.081
The Socialised Workers – Antonio Negri (1980) ... p.082
The White-Collar Proletarians – Michael Kelly (1980) ... p.083
The Nomads – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980) ... p.083
The Prosumers – Alvin & Heidi Toffler (1980) ... p.084
The Post-Industrial Proletarians – André Gorz (1980) ... p.085
The Entrepreneurs – George Gilder (1981) ... p.086
The Venture Capitalists – John Naisbitt (1982) ... p.087
The Hackers – Steven Levy (1984) ... p.088
The Cyborgs – Donna Haraway (1985) ... p.088
The Symbolic Analysts – Robert Reich (1991) ... p.089
The Virtual Class – Arthur Kroker and 
Michael Weinstein (1994) ... p.090
The Netizens – Michael & Ronda Hauben (1995) ... p.090
The Digerati – John Brockman (1996) ... p.091
The Multipreneurs – Tom Gorman (1996) ... p.091
The Immaterial Labourers – Maurizio Lazzarato (1996) ... p.092
The Digital Artisans – Richard Barbrook and 
Pit Schultz (1997) ... p.093
The Digital Citizen – Jon Katz (1997) ... p.094
The Swarm Capitalists – Kevin Kelly (1998) ... p.094
The New Independents – Charlie Leadbeater and 
Kate Oakley (1999) ... p.095
The Elancers – Helen Wilkinson (1999) ... p.096
The Multitude – Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2000) ... p.096
The New Barbarians – Ian Angell (2000) ... p.097
The Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians) – David Brooks (2000) ... p.097
The Cognitariat – Franco Bifo Berardi (2001) ... p.098
The Free Agents – Daniel Pink (2001) ... p.099
The Cybertariat – Ursula Huws (2001) ... p.100
The Netocracy – Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist (2002) ... p.100
The Precariat – Frassanito Network (2002) ... p.101
The Creative Class – Richard Florida (2002) ... p.102
The Pro-Ams – Charlie Leadbeater and Paul Miller (2004) ... p.103
Defining the New Class
013
014
015
3.
The Makers of the
Future
If the previous decades have been the years of the management consultants, the next decades may be the years of the designers, publishers, artists and a variety of other [creative] skills.1
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London.
The economy of England’s capital city is once again undergoing a
dramatic transformation. In 2002, the GLA(Greater London Authority)
published a report which identified the creative industries as – after
business services – the locality’s fastest growing sector of wealth production and employment opportunities. Its authors explained that –
just like their forebears who moved from the artisan’s workshop to
the Fordist factory – the present generation of Londoners are learning
how to make new things in new ways with new technologies. If the
city was to prosper over the next few decades, the Mayor’s economic
strategy must be focused on providing support and encouragement
1 GLA Economics, Creativity, page 3.
for the businesses of the future: ‘advertising; architecture; the art and
antiques market; crafts; design; designer fashion; film and video; interactive leisure software; music; the performing arts; publishing; software
and computer services; and television and radio.’2
For Ken Livingstone, fostering the creative industries is also
electorally advantageous. His victory as the Labour candidate in the
2004 Mayoral contest demonstrated that the growth of this sector was
widening the voting base for progressive politics in London. Richard
Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class has provided the GLA with
a theoretical explanation of this shift in party loyalties. According to
the findings of his research, the new employers of the information age
require a new type of employee: highly educated, culturally aware
and technologically adept. As the experience of American cities has
proved, tolerance, diversity and eccentricity are the preconditions for
attracting the members of the Creative Class whose skills and inventiveness are vital for economic prosperity. In an ironic twist, conservative attitudes are now seen as bad for business.3
For those of a more sceptical disposition, Florida’s analysis is
far too one-sided. When applied to London, his celebration of the
creative industries minimises – and excuses – the downsides of the
restructuring of the city’s economy: the dominance of international
finance, the casualisation of employment and the gentrification of
working class neighbourhoods.4 Some observers have even questioned whether the growth of the knowledge economy has changed
the exploitative structures of capitalism in any significant way. In the
2000s, an oligopoly of large corporations and big banks still rules the
world.5 Despite the cogency of their criticisms, these dissenters have
remained a minority voice. Far from rejecting Florida’s approach, the
most influential thinkers on both the Right and the Left are promoting their own versions of the Creative Class. Just like him, they’re
also convinced that the new economic paradigm will vindicate their
016
The Class of the New
2 GLA Economics, Creativity, page 5.
3 See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, pages 215-314.
4 See David Panos, ‘Create Creative Clusters’; and Benedict Seymour, ‘Shoreditch
and the Creative Destruction of the Inner City’.
5 See Aufheben, ‘Keep on Smiling’.
own political stance. According to taste, the growth in the number of
information workers can be interpreted as the imminent triumph of
either dotcom capitalism or cybernetic communism. Although often
bitterly divided in their politics, these gurus still share a common theoretical position. Whether on the Right or the Left, all of them champion
the same social prophecy: the new class is prefiguring today how
everyone else will work and live tomorrow.
Their theoretical analyses have a venerable pedigree. Long before
the Creative Class became a fashionable phrase, the members of this
new social group were being described as the Prosumers, the Venture
Capitalists, the Cyborgs and the Symbolic Analysts. Back in the early1970s, Daniel Bell formulated the theoretical template for this social
prophecy. Inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s technological reveries, he
claimed that the rapid convergence of media, telecommunications and
computing was sweeping away the economic, political and cultural
certainties of the industrial age. Anticipating universal access to the
Net, Bell predicted that the advent of the information society would
inevitably lead to the hegemony of the creators of information: the
Knowledge Class.6Over three decades have passed since this prophecy
was first made. The terminology may have changed many times and
its political meaning taken different forms, but the theory has remained
the same. The rapid spread and increasing sophistication of the Net is
bringing about the rise to power of the Knowledge Class. The future
is what it used to be.7
In the early-twenty-first century, analysts and intellectuals are
still entranced by this McLuhanist vision of the new class. Across the
political spectrum, the Net is praised as the demiurge of the hegemony
of the producers of information. Yet, for all its futurist rhetoric, the
theoretical antecedents of this prophecy can be traced back even further
than Bell’s speculations in the early-1970s. At the dawn of modernity in the late-eighteenth century, Adam Smith was the first person to
put forward the argument that the economic growth was creating a
specific group of modernisers. By deepening the division of labour,
The Makers of the Future
017
6 See Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society.
7 For a more detailed analysis of the historical origins of the information society
prophecy, see Richard Barbrook, Imaginary Futures.
the market and the factory were increasing the efficiency of the workforce and raising the quality of their products.8 Within an economy
diversified into different specialist trades, the Philosophers who
improved and invented machinery had acquired a distinctive social
role: designing the future. 
In the more than two centuries which have passed between Adam
Smith’s time and our own, many different thinkers have proposed their
own versions of the theory of the new class. Following the examples
of Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project and Humphrey Jennings’
Pandaemonium, the next section of this book uses a montage of quotations to tell the story of this social prophecy. In the same way that
music samples can be mixed together to make a new tune, Benjamin
discovered that his collection of research notes was turning into a book
in its own right. Just like splicing different shots together to produce a
film, Jennings constructed a historical narrative out of quotations from
many different authors. What intrigued Benjamin was that this approach
was able to reveal the contemporary ‘after-life’ of writings from the
past. Creating a montage of quotations could achieve what he believed
to be the primary purpose of historical research: understanding what
was happening in the present. For Jennings, this technique allowed his
readers to experience the cultural and political complexity of the past.
By presenting the divergent views of our forebears, he could show that
there was nothing preordained about the social structures of the present.
Collecting quotations was his poetic antidote to the positivist certainties of academic historians.9
Inspired by Benjamin and Jennings’ methodology, this book
brings together 86 definitions of the new class from the past 230 years.
The well-known passages by famous authors are included along with
obscure pieces by long-forgotten writers. The seekers after wisdom
are found side-by-side with the promoters of confusion. Of course,
the quotations which have been chosen are only short excerpts from
long books. Because the passages were selected for their relevance to
the overall argument of this book, the more nuanced positions of their
018
The Class of the New
8 See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Volume 1, pages 7-25.
9 See Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, page 456-476; and Humphrey
Jennings, Pandaemonium, pages xxxv-xxxix.
authors are often lost. There is no substitute for reading the original
texts. Yet, as Benjamin and Jennings demonstrated, a montage of quotations will create its own meanings. Reading through these different
concepts of the class of the new reveals both continuities and discontinuities in the definition of this icon of modernity over the last two
centuries. By analysing what has changed and what has remained the
same, we can come closer to comprehending the political and economic
significance of this social prophecy in the present. 
The process of selecting quotations for this book highlights
what thinkers with very different ideological positions have in
common. Whatever their political loyalties, their definitions of the
new class all start from the same fundamental theoretical insight:
human history is an evolutionary process. In agrarian societies, time
was seen as cyclical and immutable. Both Aristotle and Muhammad
Ibn Khaldûn analysed history as the repetitive rise and fall of the
same contending classes.10 But, with the advent of modernity, time
became the linear movement of progress. In The Wealth of Nations,
Adam Smith explained that humanity had evolved through a succession of economic stages: hunting, herding, agriculture and, finally,
commerce.11 Crucially, it was this materialist conception of history
which inspired his characterisation of the Philosophers as the class
of the new. If agriculture had evolved into commerce, then capitalism itself must also be a dynamic social system. The inventors of
machinery were the makers of the future. 
From Adam Smith’s first iteration, all subsequent definitions of
the new class have derived their theoretical foundation: historical evolution. Like Benjamin and Jennings, many of the promoters of this
concept on the Left have also been sceptical about the benefits of capitalist progress. However, this rejection of Adam Smith’s economic
liberalism didn’t lead them into sociological Creationism. On the
contrary, they saw the new class as the promise of a new – and better
– society. Just as importantly, the intellectuals of the Right never used
The Makers of the Future
019
10 See Aristotle, The Politics, pages 101-234; and Muhammad Ibn Khaldûn, The
Mugaddimah, pages 91-261.
11 See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Volume 1, pages 401-445; Volume 2,
pages 213-253. Also see Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society.
this theory to advocate a return to the agrarian past. When Friedrich
Nietzsche proclaimed the advent of the Superman in the 1880s, his
aristocratic fantasy was presented as a modernist alternative to the
equalitarian path of social evolution. According to Mario Piazzesi, the
chronicler of the fascist counter-revolution in 1920s Italy, the
Blackshirts were hi-tech warriors and businessmen. In more recent
times, Ian Angell has promoted the concept of the New Barbarians
while Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist have looked forward to the
ascendancy of the Netocracy. Echoing Nietzsche, these conservatives
argued that – far from being retrogressive – their elitist dreams described
the inevitable consequences of historical progress. The only way of
restoring feudal privileges is moving forwards into the future. 
For each and every one of the authors in this book, defining the
new class was a way of describing their own experience of the evolution of capitalism. Over the past two centuries, the restructuring of
working methods and the development of better machinery have been
the driving forces of this economic system.12 Each wave of organisational and technological changes has required another reordering of
the hierarchical relationship between capital and labour.13 In successive generations, the concept of the new class has been used to analyse
the impact of this process upon the social structures of modernity. The
majority of the definitions in this book were attempts to understand
how the latest surge of progress was going to impact upon the opposing
poles of the capitalist economy. Depending upon the political motivations of their authors, the concepts of the class of the new have taken
two distinct forms: the new ruling class and the new working class.
Sometimes the same definition has been used to identify the latest
iteration of both capital and labour. In other cases, different concepts
have described the new forms of a specific class. By assigning them
to one or both of these variants, the definitions of the new class form
two distinctive lines of historical succession: 
020
The Class of the New
12 See Karl Marx, Grundrisse, pages 690-743; Capital Volume 1, pages 492-639,
1034-1065.
13 See the analyses of the changing social composition of the twentieth century
European and American class systems in Sergio Bologna, ‘The Tribe of Moles’; and
Antonio Negri, ‘Keynes and the Capitalist Theories of the State Post-1929’.
The New Ruling Class 
the Philosophers ⇒the Industrials ⇒the Civil Servants ⇒the Bourgeoisie
⇒ the Self-Made Man ⇒ the Superman ⇒ the Vanguard Party ⇒ the
Samurai ⇒the Bureaucrats ⇒the Scientific Managers ⇒the Blackshirts
⇒ the Open Conspiracy ⇒ the Intellectuals ⇒ the Managerial Class ⇒
the Entrepreneurs ⇒the Inner Party ⇒the Power Elite ⇒the New Class
⇒ the Industrial Managers ⇒ the Order-Givers ⇒ the Technocrats ⇒
the Knowledge Class ⇒ the Post-Modernists ⇒ the ProfessionalManagerial Class ⇒the Entrepreneurs ⇒the Venture Capitalists ⇒the
Symbolic Analysts ⇒ the Virtual Class ⇒ the Digerati ⇒ the Digital
Citizen ⇒ the Swarm Capitalists ⇒ the New Barbarians ⇒ the Bobos
⇒ the Netocracy ⇒ the Creative Class. 
The New Working Class 
the Industrials ⇒ the Bohemians ⇒ the General Intellect ⇒ the Labour
Movement ⇒ the Educated Working Man ⇒ the Aristocracy of the
Working Class ⇒ the Intellectual Proletariat ⇒ the Vanguard Party ⇒
the Labour Aristocracy ⇒ the Engineers ⇒ the Fordist Worker ⇒ the
Intellectuals ⇒ the New Working Class ⇒ the Knowledge Workers ⇒
the Educational and Scientific Estate ⇒the Hippies ⇒the Produsumers
⇒ the Scientific Intellectual Labourers ⇒ the Proletarianised
Professionals ⇒ the Post-Modernists ⇒ the Socialised Workers ⇒ the
White-Collar Proletarians ⇒the Nomads ⇒the Prosumers ⇒the PostIndustrial Proletarians ⇒ the Hackers ⇒ the Cyborgs ⇒ the Symbolic
Analysts ⇒ the Virtual Class ⇒ the Netizens ⇒ the Multipreneurs ⇒
the Immaterial Labourers ⇒the Digital Artisans ⇒the New Independents
⇒ the Elancers ⇒ the Multitude ⇒ the Cognitariat ⇒ the Free Agents
⇒the Cybertariat ⇒the Precariat ⇒the Creative Class ⇒the Pro-Ams. 
These two parallel histories demonstrate how – as Benjamin and
Jennings pointed out – a montage of quotations can reveal its own
meanings. By following the two lines of succession, it becomes clear
that the originators of these different versions of the new class were
responding to the evolution of the capitalist economy. In its early liberal
form, the leaders of the emerging industrial system were lauded as
heroic and innovative individuals: the Philosophers, the Industrials,
the Self-Made Man and the Superman. Even the socialist critics of capitalism could admire the dynamism of the new class of the Bourgeoisie
The Makers of the Future
021
which ‘… has created more massive and colossal productive forces
than have all preceding generations together.’14 Facing this formidable enemy, the Left argued that the proletariat was also one of the
primary driving forces of modernity: the Industrials, the Bohemians,
the General Intellect, the Labour Movement, the Educated Working
Man and the Aristocracy of the Working Class. 
As liberalism gave way to Fordism, the dominant archetype of
the new class changed almost beyond recognition.15 For the analysts
of the elite, their most pressing task was to name the bosses who ran
the rapidly expanding bureaucracies of big business and big government. Already, in the early-nineteenth century, Georg Hegel had anticipated this new form of the new ruling class in his concept of the Civil
Servants. Inspired by this example, twentieth century thinkers produced
a plethora of definitions for the rulers of Fordism: the Samurai, the
Bureaucrats, the Scientific Managers, the Blackshirts, the Open
Conspiracy, the Managerial Class, the Power Elite, the Industrial
Managers, the Order-Givers, the Technocrats and the ProfessionalManagerial Class. Instead of opposing the rise of this administrative
elite, some groups on the Left seized this opportunity to turn themselves
into the masters of the bureaucratic system. Inspired by the Fabians’
statist redefinition of socialism, H.G. Wells argued that the Samurai had
replaced the Labour Movement as the pioneer of the post-capitalist
future. The tragedy of the 1917 Russian revolution – when the leadership of the oppressed became their oppressors – can be followed through
the different definitions of this specific type of the new ruling class: the
Vanguard Party, the Labour Bureaucracy, the Intellectuals, the Inner
Party and Milovan Djilas’ version of the New Class. 
According to Henry Ford himself, the Fordist Worker – the employees of the factories which epitomised the bureaucratisation of capitalism – was the sort of person who ‘… wants a job in which he does not
have to think.’16 Ironically, although he gave his name to this economic
paradigm, this captain of industry’s definition ignored one of the most
022
The Class of the New
14 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, page 20.
15 For an explanation of this transformation of capitalism, see Michel Aglietta, A
Theory of Capitalist Regulation.
16 Henry Ford, My Life and Work, page 103.
distinctive features of corporate capitalism: the proletarianisation of
scientific, technical, administrative and intellectual labour. From the
late-nineteenth century onwards, influential social theorists have emphasised the prefigurative role of this group of educated and cultured
employees. Far from producing a population of mindless drones,
Fordism was creating its own bureaucratic versions of the new working
class: the Intellectual Proletariat, the Vanguard Party, the Labour
Aristocracy, the Engineers, the Intellectuals, the New Working Class,
the Knowledge Workers, the Educational and Scientific Estate, the
Scientific Intellectual Labourers, the Proletarianised Professionals and
the White-Collar Proletarians. 
When Fordism was superseded, there was another dramatic shift
in the dominant archetype of this social prophecy. The evolution of the
economy required a rethinking of fundamental ideas. In the mid-twentieth century, Joseph Schumpeter was already arguing for a new vision
of the new ruling class: the Entrepreneurs. Dismissed at the time as nostalgia for the liberal icon of the Self-Made Man, his concept provided
the inspiration four decades later for a new generation of conservative
thinkers in America and Europe who had lost faith in the infallibility of
big business and big government. Throughout the 1980s, they proclaimed the imminent triumph of a heroic elite of innovators, fortune
hunters and speculators: George Gilder’s definition of the Entrepreneurs
and the Venture Capitalists. Above all, like Adam Smith, these theorists
argued that the transformative power of new technology was behind
the rise of this new ruling class. From the early-1990s onwards, as media,
telecommunications and computing converged into the Net, the charismatic leaders of hi-tech businesses were praised as the makers of the
future: the Symbolic Analysts, the Virtual Class, the Digerati, the Digital
Citizen, the Swarm Capitalists, the New Barbarians, the Bobos, the
Netocracy and the Creative Class. 
The faltering of Fordism also tarnished the modernist image
of the new working class of salaried intellectuals employed by the
large corporations and government departments. At first, the young
people radicalised in the 1960s sought a replacement for this social
group among their peers who – like the Bohemians in the early-nineteenth century – were looking for a way of living outside the confines
of the bureaucratic system: the Hippies, the Produsumers, the PostModernists and the Nomads. But, as the crisis of Fordism deepened,
The Makers of the Future
023
the economic consequences of the restructuring of capitalism could
no longer be ignored. Crucially, it was the refusal of many young
workers to conform to the disciplines of the factory and the office
which had discredited bureaucratic methods of organisation. In the
late-1970s and early-1980s, some theorists argued that economic
changes were building the political base of the New Left revolution.
The growth in self-employment and short-term contracts was creating
a new – and fiercely independent – working class: the Socialised
Workers and the Post-Industrial Proletarians. 
During the 1990s, this radical prophecy became a mainstream
orthodoxy. What was once denounced as New Left subversion was
now praised as neo-liberal modernisation. In the fashionable business
manuals of the dotcom boom, top-down bureaucracy was castigated
as an expensive and inefficient method of controlling the labour force
of the information economy.
17 Three decades earlier, Peter Drucker
– the founding father of management theory – had pointed out that:
‘The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail …
he must direct himself.’18 Building upon this analysis, his admirers
explained that the new post-Fordist working class was quite capable
of managing its own exploitation by capital: the Multipreneurs, the
New Independents, the Elancers, the Free Agents and the Pro-Ams.
From the early-1980s onwards, the growth of this self-directed form
of employment was closely associated with the accelerating convergence of media, telecommunications and computing. In their definitions, some intellectuals have emphasised the benefits that this new
entrepreneurial working class derives from the knowledge economy:
the Prosumers, the Hackers, the Symbolic Analysts, the Virtual Class,
the Digital Citizen and the Creative Class. Others have celebrated
the subversive potential of the networked proletariat: the Cyborgs,
the Netizens, the Immaterial Labourers, the Digital Artisans, the
Multitude, the Cognitariat, the Cybertariat and the Precariat. Above
all, whether they were on the Right or the Left, these analysts insisted
that the new working class of this cognitive stage of capitalism should
024
The Class of the New
17 See Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger, The
Cluetrain Manifesto; and Jonas Ridderstråle and Kjell Nordström, Funky Business.
18 Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, page 4.
be admired for its intellectual accomplishments, cultural sophistication and technological savvy.19
This contemporary fascination with the educated and entrepreneurial members of the proletariat has deep historical roots. For
over two centuries, creativity has been at the centre of the struggle
between capital and labour. As the industrial system has evolved,
the contending classes have fought not only over the division of the
fruits of production, but also over the control of the workplace. In
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith showed how the increasing
division of labour allowed capitalists to replace self-governing skilled
artisans with more submissive unskilled employees.20 In Capital,
Karl Marx explained how the introduction of more advanced machinery enabled factory managers to determine the pace and intensity of
work.21 During the first half of the twentieth century, this separation of conception and action reached its apogee. Frederick Winslow
Taylor believed that the Scientific Managers could monopolise all
decision-making within the economy. Henry Ford offered higher
wages in return for the Fordist Worker submitting unquestioningly
to the disciplines of the assembly line. In the early-twentieth century,
even prominent anti-capitalist intellectuals were convinced that this
division between thinking and doing was not only inevitable, but also
desirable. Just like the Scientific Managers within the factories, V.I.
Lenin argued that the Vanguard Party should become the absolute
master of the political organisations of the Left. In the same way that
the Bureaucrats dominated their offices, H.G. Wells believed that the
Open Conspiracy could impose order and discipline upon unstable
market economies. For the followers of all of these sages, the rise of
big business and big government during the mid-twentieth century
seemed like the fulfilment of their authoritarian prophecies of a new
ruling class which decided everything lording over a new working
class which decided nothing. At the high-point of Fordism, Cornelius
Castoriadis summarised the essence of this economic paradigm: ‘The
The Makers of the Future
025
19 For an analysis of this transition, see Carlo Vercellone, ‘Sens et Enjeux de la
Transition vers le Capitalisme Cognitif’.
20 See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Volume 1, pages 7-25.
21 See Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, pages 553-564.
increasing bureaucratisation of all social activities … [means] the
division of society into order-givers and order-takers.’22
The catalyst of the next evolutionary leap of capitalism was the
late-1960s New Left rebellion against this absolute separation between
conception and action. By proletarianising intellectual labour, Fordism
had created a dissident minority within the workforce who were no
longer willing to abdicate their right to think in return for the rewards
of consumer society.23 For the past forty years, the advocates of new
definitions of the new ruling class and the new working class have been
trying to describe the implications of this momentous shift in attitudes.
On the Right, thinkers have claimed that the decline of Fordism has
opened up the opportunity for everyone to become a member of the
elite. Around the same time that Schumpeter was elaborating his thesis,
Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises – the gurus of neo-liberalism
– were stressing that the most important activity of the Entrepreneurs
was ‘discovery’: making better use of scarce resources to improve the
choice, quality and affordability of products within the marketplace.24
Inspired by this analysis, conservative thinkers in the 1980s and 1990s
argued that the rigid divisions between employers and employees were
disappearing in the post-Fordist economy. From San Francisco to
London, the same nostrums were promulgated.25With a good idea and
a bit of luck, any worker could found a thriving dotcom business and
become a successful member of the Digerati. Whether they were
Symbolic Analysts or Free Agents, individuals were now responsible
for their own destinies in the unregulated global marketplace. Freed
from bureaucratic diktats, both the Bobos and the Digital Citizens were
able to express their own opinions and experiment with new ideas.
Above all, in the age of the Net, economic dynamism depended upon
lavishly rewarding the hi-tech Entrepreneurs. According to Gilder, the
lessons of history were clear: ‘Material progress is ineluctably elitist …
026
The Class of the New
22 Paul Cardan [Cornelius Castoriadis], Modern Capitalism and Revolution, page 3.
23 See Alain Lipietz, Towards a New Economic Order, pages 14-23; and Antonio
Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project’.
24 See Friedrich Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order, pages 33-56, 77-118;
and Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pages 251-256, 327-350.
25 See Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’.
exalting the few extraordinary men who can produce wealth over the
democratic masses who consume it.’26
For all its post-Fordist rhetoric, this neo-liberal celebration of
the Entrepreneurs perpetuated the Fordist assumption that the new
ruling class monopolised the making of the future. In a tautological
argument, whenever workers demonstrated any autonomy, inventiveness or initiative, they were deemed to be behaving just like
members of the elite: the Symbolic Analysts, the Virtual Class, the
Multipreneurs, the New Independents, the Elancers, the Free Agents
and the Creative Class. This confusion about the social status of
these self-directed and self-motivated employees was partially a
form of ideological mystification which rebranded market disciplines and job insecurity as individual freedom and career opportunities. Yet, at the same time, these definitions of the new working
class were also genuine attempts to grasp the implications of the
waning of Fordism. In contrast to the rigid hierarchies of this midtwentieth century form of capitalism, the educational and cultural
dividing lines between employers and employees in the knowledge
economy have become much less distinct. The self-exploiting Digital
Artisans had the same tastes, obsessions and lifestyles as the Swarm
Capitalists who exploited them. As Ursula Huws pointed out, the
corporate bosses who were reliant upon the technological expertise
of the Cybertariat to operate their own computers couldn’t pretend
to be the fount of all wisdom. David Brooks was amused that the
rise of the Bobos – bourgeois bohemians – proved that the 1960s
New Left might have lost the economic argument, but the Hippies
had won the cultural war. When there was no longer an unbridgeable gulf between the order-givers and the order-takers, the same
definition of the new class could easily be used to describe both the
new ruling class and the new working class. Crucially, by covering
both opposing poles of the capitalist economy, these thinkers were
able to revive another potent form of this social prophecy: the class
of the new as the new intermediate class. As with its two other forms,
this third variant can also be tracked as the historical succession of
different definitions:
The Makers of the Future
027
26 George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty, page 273.
The New Intermediate Class 
the Industrials ⇒ the Bohemians ⇒ the New Middle Class ⇒ the
Bureaucrats ⇒ the Labour Aristocracy ⇒ the Labour Bureaucracy ⇒
the Engineers ⇒ the Intellectuals ⇒ the New Middle Class ⇒ the
Organisation Man ⇒ the Specialists ⇒ the New Class ⇒ the
Educational and Scientific Estate ⇒the Produsumers ⇒the Scientific
Intellectual Labourers ⇒ the Knowledge Class ⇒ the Intermediate
Layers ⇒ the New Petty-Bourgeoisie ⇒ the Post-Modernists ⇒ the
Nomads ⇒ the Prosumers ⇒ the Hackers ⇒ the Symbolic Analysts
⇒the Virtual Class ⇒the Netizens ⇒the Multipreneurs ⇒the Digital
Artisans ⇒the Digital Citizen ⇒the New Independents ⇒the Elancers
⇒ the Multitude ⇒ the Bobos ⇒ the Free Agents ⇒ the Creative
Class ⇒ the Pro-Ams. 
In the first phase of capitalist development, Henri Saint-Simon had pioneered this interpretation of the new class by including both employers
and employees within his definition of the Industrials. Whatever divided
them inside the factory, these two groups had a common interest in displacing the parasitic aristocracy and clergy which had dominated the
agrarian economy. But, within a generation, his socialist followers had
become convinced that Saint-Simon’s concept of an all-embracing class
of the new was an anachronism. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels predicted that economic modernisation would not
only sweep away the old feudal order, but also deepen the social divisions within capitalism. As competition intensified, artisans would be
driven out of business, self-employed professionals would be forced to
work for wages and peasants would lose their land.27 Far from resisting
this path of progress, the primary task of the new class of the Labour
Movement was campaigning for reforms like the Factory Acts which –
by raising wages and improving conditions – accelerated the polarisation of society into the ever-diminishing minority who owned the hi-tech
factories and the ever-expanding majority who worked in them. At the
end of this evolutionary process, when almost the entire population had
been proletarianised, the working class would be reborn as the new directing force of modernity: the General Intellect. 
028
The Class of the New
27 See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, pages 21-35.
During the late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century,
this Marxist analysis provided a distinctive ideological identity for the
increasingly powerful parliamentary socialist parties and industrial trade
unions in Europe. Their day-to-day struggles for reforms within capitalism were inevitably leading to the revolutionary moment of communist
emancipation.28 As liberalism evolved into Fordism, social democrats
argued that Marx’s predictions were being realised as the number of
wage-earners grew and the corporatisation of the economy gathered pace.
Not surprisingly, their opponents across the political spectrum – including some who described themselves as Marxists – were anxious to provide
their own alternative explanations of the evolutionary direction of capitalism. Rejecting Marx’s thesis that modernity was the progressive polarisation of society into two distinct classes, these thinkers focused upon
the intermediate groups within the economy which couldn’t be classified as either part of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. They were delighted to discover that – even in the mid-twentieth century economies dominated by big business and big government – a substantial proportion of
the population still made their living as artisans, self-employed professionals and peasants.29
More importantly, since these sectors were undergoing a long-term
decline, the critics of Marx were also able to identify a more modern
form of the intermediate class. Ironically, the proletarianisation of intellectual labour had created the conditions for the emergence of this group
positioned between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Unlike the Fordist
Workers on the assembly-line, this new intermediate class hadn’t surrendered all of its autonomy to the Scientific Managers and their machinery. Although these wage-earners might not have owned capital, members
of this privileged group did possess other potent sources of economic
power: educational qualifications and cultural knowledge. Across the
political spectrum, thinkers championed their different versions of the
new intermediate class. For moderates, the robustness of capitalism had
been proved. Instead of social polarisation, economic modernisation was
creating the living embodiment of consensus and compromise: C. Wright
The Makers of the Future
029
28 See Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle.
29 See Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society, pages 136-
141; and Nicos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, pages 285-286, 328-331.
Mill’s New Middle Class, the Organisation Man, the Specialists and
J.K. Galbraith’s New Class. For revolutionaries, the growth of the new
intermediate class confirmed the political indispensability of the
Vanguard Party. Far from uniting the population into the General
Intellect, the evolution of capitalism was spawning privileged minorities which perpetuated the divisions within the exploited masses:
William Morris’New Middle Class, the Labour Aristocracy, the Labour
Bureaucracy, the Intellectuals, the Educational and Scientific Estate,
the Scientific Intellectual Labourers, the Intermediate Layers and the
New Petty-Bourgeoisie. Whatever their political motivations, all of
these intellectuals were convinced that the only variant of the new class
which explained the unique social structure of industrial capitalism
was the new intermediate class. 
As Fordism evolved into post-Fordism, this strand of the social
prophecy also had to abandon its bureaucratic archetype. Looking for
a replacement, intellectuals turned to the canonical texts of McLuhanism.
If the convergence of media, telecommunications and computing was
the demiurge of social change, then the builders of the Net must be the
cutting-edge of modernity. In the knowledge economy, all definitions
of the new intermediate class have to be an updated version of the
Knowledge Class. During the 1990s, the third variant of the social
prophecy flourished among the analysts of the rapid and chaotic expansion of the dotcom sector. In the new paradigm of the new economy,
the educated and entrepreneurial employees of the new media companies were praised as pioneers of a new version of the new intermediate class. Looking at their working patterns and cultural attitudes, they
couldn’t be easily identified as either strictly bourgeois or proletarian.
The New Independents and the Free Agents moved from short-term
contract jobs to running up their own companies and back again. The
Netizens and the Bobos dressed in the same clothes, drank in the same
bars, listened to the same music and shared a common obsession with
cutting-edge technology. Above all, both the Digital Artisans and the
Digital Citizens believed that the measure of success wasn’t just making
lots of money, but also creating something cool.
Since the early-1990s, the various definitions of new intermediate class have reflected the social fluidity and cultural distinctiveness
of the employees of cognitive capitalism. Some neologisms can also
be used as a description of the new ruling class: the Digital Citizen and
030
The Class of the New
the Bobos. Other definitions can also be applied to new working class:
the Netizens, the Multipreneurs, the Digital Artisans, the New
Independents, the Elancers, the Multitude, the Free Agents and the
Pro-Ams. Most potent of all are those concepts which cover all three
historic strands of the social prophecy: the Symbolic Analysts, the
Virtual Class and the Creative Class. Avoiding the economic conflicts of the present, the promoters of these definitions emphasise the
divide between those who cling to the past and those who are building
the future. The Digital Citizens have more in common with the Digital
Artisans than either of them do with their late-adopter class brethren
who are off-line and out of touch. By excluding the providers of traditional – and essential – goods and services who make up the majority
of the population, the differences between employers and employees within the hi-tech sectors can be made to disappear. Everyone
within the creative industries is part of the futurist elite. Making new
things in new ways with new technologies is the only prerequisite
for membership of the class of the new.
Under Fordism, prominent theorists had defined this intermediate group by very different criteria. In the early-1970s, Nicos Poulantzas
had characterised the New Petty-Bourgeoisie as the employees of the
managerial hierarchy. Even office secretaries and bank clerks weren’t
worthy of inclusion within the heroic ranks of the exploited proletariat.30 Although an extreme case, Poulantzas’ suspicion of white-collar
workers was shared by many on the Left. As the manual labourers
below them knew all too well, these salaried bureaucrats were ordergivers as well as order-takers. Just as importantly, as Poulantzas kept
reminding his readers, many members of the New Petty-Bourgeoisie
aped the conservative politics and mores of their superiors. Twenty
years earlier, William Whyte had berated the Organisation Man not
only for his ‘cheerful acceptance of the status quo’, but also for his
‘disinterest in the arts.’31 The path to a successful career within the
Educational and Scientific Estate was internalising the routines and
procedures of the corporate monolith. In its Fordist form, the educated
conformist was epitome of the new intermediate class. 
The Makers of the Future
031
30 See Nicos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, pages 211-212, 268-269.
31 William Whyte, The Organisation Man, page 183.
According to the 1990s gurus of the information economy, the
attitudes of the Organisation Man were exactly what were not required.
Controlling the workplace with a top-down bureaucracy was not only
too expensive, but also, more importantly, too inflexible. Employees
were now expected to manage themselves and set their own priorities. Released from the disciplines of Fordism, the Symbolic Analysts
organised their own exploitation, the Multipreneurs ran their work
lives as small businesses and the Free Agents were their own bosses.
Above all, the members of the Creative Class had to be creative. Instead
of repeating routines and following procedures, intellectuals, artists
and techies were supposed to move beyond the curve and think outside
of the box. Innovation not conformity was now the path to promotion. Aestheticism not philistinism had become the leitmotif of the
new intermediate class. On her company’s website, Helen Wilkinson
praised the virtues of these pioneers of the dotcom future: ‘[the]
Elancers are change agents, challenging traditional ways of working
with their unique energy and spirit.’32
In his canonical text, Florida divided the class of the new into two
distinct groups: the new ruling class and the new intermediate class. At
the top of the social hierarchy were the visionaries of the Super-Creative
Core who are responsible for ‘the highest order of creative work’: developing hardware, building software, making films, writing books, designing buildings and composing music. But, as Florida admitted, these
innovators were only a small minority of the class of the new. Instead,
the overwhelming majority of this group consisted of creative professionals ‘… who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and healthcare professions, and business management.’33 According to Florida,
the continual expansion of the information economy was recruiting
more and more people into the ranks of this intermediate layer. Because
the boundaries of his new class were drawn so widely, he was convinced
that - in the early-2000s - its members already made up as much as a
third of the American workforce. Above all, Florida believed that the
Super-Creative Core and the creative professionals were together pro032
The Class of the New
32 Elancentric, ‘Project Description’.
33 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, page 69.
ducing half of the nation’s wealth.34The descendents of the Bohemians
had become the producers of economic abundance. 
In the 2002 GLA report, the Mayor’s statisticians were equally
enthusiastic about the importance of London’s Creative Class. According
to the official figures for the late-1990s, the media, cultural and computing sectors had grown much faster than the rest of the local economy.
After the sellers of business services, the creative industries had been the
largest source of new jobs for Londoners in this period. By 2000, around
10% of the city’s inhabitants were earning their living as artists, designers, programmers, technicians, writers, musicians, architects, actors,
directors, copywriters and tailors – or by providing support for these professions.35 Extrapolating from this evidence, the GLA report concluded that the expansion of the Creative Class would accelerate over the
next few decades. Like Florida, its authors believed that they had identified the all important group which was prefiguring the future of the
whole of society. In the post-Fordist economy, people increasingly expect
goods and services that are tailored to their own needs and tastes. Whatever
their line of business, if they wanted to meet this demand by making
short-runs of specialised products, companies would have to imitate the
flattened hierarchies and cooperative ethos of media, cultural and computing firms. Above all, they would also have to employ highly educated
and self-motivated workers. In the epoch of cognitive capitalism, the
Creative Class was the trailblazer for the entire city’s economy.36
At the beginning of the GLAreport, its authors reluctantly admitted
that ‘… using official statistics is problematic.’37 Crucially, the British
government’s employment surveys lumped together people with very
different jobs under the same category because they happened to be
working in the same industry. When they were on the payroll of a film
company, security guards were transformed into members of the Creative
Class. Yet, far from compensating for this inaccuracy, the authors of the
GLA report engaged in their own inflation of the employment figures.
When they were selling artworks and antiques, old-fashioned shopkeepThe Makers of the Future
033
34 See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, page xiv.
3 5 See GLA Economics, Creativity, pages 4-11, 55-56.
3 6 See GLA Economics, Creativity, page 6.
3 7 GLA Economics, Creativity, page 3.
ers were counted as part of the new class. This statistical massaging found
its theoretical justification in Florida’s book. Under his schema, the definition of the Creative Class covered almost all of the professions which
didn’t involve heavy manual labour or menial services. The new elite
was open to everyone with taste, learning and imagination. 
By exaggerating the size of the Creative Class, the Mayor’s
statisticians had tried to counter the sceptics who doubted that capitalism was undergoing another evolutionary mutation. Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the dotcom bubble, the credibility of
the McLuhanist prophecies of the digital utopia had been badly
dented. If, even at the boom’s peak, there had been more lorry
drivers than computer programmers employed in the American
economy, the rise of the Creative Class might be nothing more than
another piece of Net hype.38 Ironically, like the GLA report, this
dissenting analysis was also fixated on the numbers game. The size
of the Virtual Class was the measure of its economic importance.
Depending upon how the figures were calculated, both boosters
and critics could produce statistics which confirmed their own
political positions.
In his introduction to the GLA report, Ken Livingstone
welcomed the ascendancy of the Knowledge Workers as the harbinger of the next stage of modernity. However sophisticated, quantitative measures could never grasp the qualitative potential of this social
group. Back in the mid-nineteenth century, the factory proletariat had
also been only a minority of the English working class. The overwhelming majority of wage-earners were employed as unskilled
labourers, shop assistants and household servants.39 Yet, within a
hundred years, the whole of society had been remodelled in the image
of the Fordist factory. Market competition had systematically redistributed wealth from the labour-intensive to the capital-intensive
branches of the economy.
40 Small businesses had fused into massive
corporations. Politics had been rationalised. Everyday life had been
034
The Class of the New
38 See Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, pages 71-78, 184-185; and
Aufheben, ‘Keep on Smiling’.
39 See Raphael Samuel, ‘The Workshop of the World’. 
40 See Karl Marx, Capital Volume 3, pages 241-313.
taken over by consumer culture.41 In their definitions of the new
class, thinkers of both the Right and the Left had anticipated this evolutionary path of capitalism. The Philosophers invented the machinery which was transforming the economy. The Labour Movement
was forcing companies to adopt more sophisticated methods of production. The Bureaucrats and the Scientific Managers were building
the political and economic hierarchies which would supplant liberalism. The Vanguard Party and the Samurai were precursors of the
conspiratorial elite which would control these centralised power structures. Long before the triumph of Fordism, the theorists of the new
class had described in detail the peculiarities of this particular stage
of capitalist civilisation. The shape of the future could be discerned
by analysing the makers of the future.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the high point of the bureaucratisation of
society inspired a plethora of definitions: the Power Elite, the
Organisation Man, Djilas’New Class, the Specialists, Galbraith’s New
Class, the Industrial Managers, the Order-Givers and the Technocrats.
Yet, in the 1940s, Schumpeter’s concept of the Entrepreneurs had already
foreseen the transcendence of Fordism. By the time that this economic
prophecy was fulfilled, thinkers from across the political spectrum had
abandoned the bureaucratic archetype of the new class. Instead, their
definitions emphasised the autonomy and independence of the youthful
makers of the post-Fordist future. On the Right, the gurus of neo-liberal
globalisation celebrated the ascendancy of the Gilder-style Entrepreneurs,
the Venture Capitalists and the Symbolic Analysts. On the Left, the
sages of community activism eulogised the emergence of the Hippies,
the Produsumers, the Socialised Workers, the Nomads and the PostIndustrial Proletarians. Despite their deep political differences, all of
these theorists were in agreement that capitalism was undergoing a fundamental transformation. Defining the new class was the most effective method of describing the emerging economic paradigm.
During the late-1990s dotcom boom, this post-Fordist vision of
entrepreneurial employers and self-managing employees was promoted
The Makers of the Future
035
41 See Michel Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, pages 151-272; Alain
Lipietz, Towards a New Economic Order, pages 1-13; and Henri Lefebvre, Everyday
Life in the Modern World, pages 68-109.
as the up-to-date business strategy of the information age. But, as Ken
Livingstone pointed out in his introduction to the GLAreport, management consultants have determinedly resisted this path of economic development for over two decades. McKinsey’s experts argued that – instead
of undermining corporate hierarchies – the convergence of the media,
telecommunications and computing technologies was strengthening the
power of the order-givers over the order-takers.42When production was
outsourced to small businesses, the Post-Industrial Proletarians weren’t
liberated from the disciplines of the factory. On the contrary, thanks to
the ‘information Panopticon’, the Scientific Managers were now able
to monitor, audit and control the Knowledge Workers in much greater
detail than the Fordist Workers had been subjected to in the past.43Best
of all, by blocking the emergence of the self-directing Cognitariat, the
McKinsey consultants could force the majority of the hi-tech labour
force into the ranks of the exploited Precariat. The authoritarian definitions of the new class from the Fordist stage of capitalism had been
updated and successfully imposed upon its post-Fordist iteration. Big
was still beautiful in the age of the Net. But, when the dotcom bubble
burst, the credibility of this analysis was undermined. One of the crash’s
most prominent casualties was the McKinsey consultancy’s star pupil:
Enron. Instead of building the hi-tech future, the tightening of top-down
management had led to a litany of corporate failures: out-of-control
executives, irrational investments, dodgy accounting and, finally, catastrophic bankruptcy.
44 Within the network economy, making new
things with new technologies apparently implied new ways of working.
In contrast with the McKinsey experts, the neo-liberal proponents
of the Digerati, the Digital Citizen, the Swarm Capitalists and the Bobos
did realise that the hierarchies of Fordism weren’t eternal. The centralisation of corporate and financial power at a global level – paradoxically – required the loosening of managerial controls within the most
advanced sectors of production. Although confused by its technologi036
The Class of the New
42 For the McKinsey credo, see Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of
Excellence.
43 See Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, pages 315-361.
44 For an account of the rise and fall of Enron, see Bethany McLean and Peter
Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room.
The Makers of the Future
037
cal determinist assumptions, the McLuhanist prophecy had alerted the
dotcom gurus to the economic consequences of the convergence of the
media, telecommunications and computing. For the thinkers of the Right,
their definitions of the new class explained how cutting-edge businesses were able to profit from this transformation. Similarly, for their rivals
on the Left, concepts such as the Cyborgs, the Digital Artisans, the
Immaterial Labourers, the Multitude, the Cognitariat, the Cybertariat
and the Precariat described both the upsides and downsides of the
knowledge economy for its workers. Whatever their political startingpoint, these contemporary theorists of the new class have tried to anticipate the future of all of society by identifying its most developed
sections in the present. They are convinced that – like the factory in
earlier times – the network is more than just an economic phenomenon. All aspects of society are in the process of being restructured in
its image.45 More than any other group, the new class is at the forefront of the transition to cognitive capitalism. What they are doing
today, everyone else will be doing tomorrow.
Over the past two centuries, successive definitions of the new
class have provided inspiration for policy-makers. Since their predecessors had successfully predicted the advent of Fordism, the modern
proponents of this social prophecy have an aura of credibility when they
describe the advent of the knowledge economy. Following their path
towards the future must be the route to success. Not surprisingly, the
London Development Agency (LDA) – the GLA’s economic arm – has
prioritised its strategy for supporting the creative industries. As in other
branches of production, the local state can help employers and employees in this sector by providing business advice, cheap premises, financial aid and educational opportunities.46 In addition, the LDAset up an
initiative to meet the specific needs of the knowledge economy: Creative
London. Above all, its officials have had to develop policies which are
suitable for the new conditions of cognitive capitalism. Back in the
Fordist epoch, big business and big government were the two dominant
methods of organising collective labour. But, as the contemporary definitions of the new class emphasise, these top-down structures are inca45 See Benjamin Coriat, L’Atelier et le Robot, pages 25-31.
46 See Creative London, Believe.
pable of realising the full potential of the network economy. Responding
to this new paradigm, the LDA has decided to foster the development
of ‘clusters’of creative firms. By congregating in particular areas of the
city, the Swarm Capitalists are able to cooperate as well as compete
with each other. By hanging out in these urban villages, the Cybertariat
can help each other to find new jobs, learn new skills and discover new
ideas.47 Alongside the traditional duo of the market and the factory,
the network has become the third – and most modern – method for
organising collective labour.
As the LDA has realised, London has all the necessary ingredients for construction of thriving creative clusters. From medieval times
onwards, particular trades have been associated with specific areas of
the city. As the capital of the dominant imperial power of early modernity, London is home to the most ethnically diverse population on the
planet. Since the 1950s, its youth subcultures have been renowned across
the world. In the LDA’s strategy, the creative cluster is the meeting place
for these three sources of innovation. Brought together in a specific
locality, the multi-ethnic and culturally sophisticated inhabitants of
London are able to discover how to combine their individual talents for
their mutual benefit. Like silk-weavers and cabinet-makers in the earlynineteenth century, the Digerati and the Digital Artisans of the 1990s
were concentrated in Shoreditch. Speaking 300 different languages, the
city’s New Independents and Free Agents are its ‘greatest competitive
asset’in the global media marketplace.48 Just like their youthful mod,
punk and raver predecessors, the grown-up members of the Netocracy
and the Cognitariat can be identified by their distinctive fashions and
tastes in music. By fostering creative clusters, Ken Livingstone’s administration – as the elected representative of the Labour Movement – is
fulfilling its historical mission: accelerating the evolution of capitalism.
The origins of this economic development strategy can be traced
back to the early-1980s. Two decades ago, Livingstone first became a
national figure as the charismatic leader of the forerunner of the GLA:
the Greater London Council (GLC). For five years, his administration’s
reforming programme was demonised in the media and frustrated by the
038
The Class of the New
47 See GLA Economics, Creativity, pages 31-50; and Creative London, Believe.
4 8 GLA Economics, Creativity, page 33.
Thatcher government. When the GLC was eventually abolished in 1986,
this progressive experiment appeared to have failed. But, by the time that
Livingstone was elected Mayor of London in 2000, almost all of its radical
ideas had become common sense: improving public transport; celebrating ethnic diversity; defending gay rights; making peace in Ireland and
tackling police racism. However, these retrospective victories couldn’t
compensate for the GLC’s economic defeat. During the first half of the
1980s, Livingstone’s administration had tried - and failed - to halt the deindustrialisation of the local economy. Under the Thatcher government,
finance and property were confirmed as the masters of London.49 Twenty
years ago, the GLC was a pioneer of economic policies which were specifically focused upon the creative industries. As well as encouraging cultural
pluralism, these initiatives were also designed to increase employment
opportunities and foster technological innovation. Although it was an
important part of their overall strategy, the GLC’s planners never believed
that aiding this sector was a replacement for helping more traditional
industries.50 Two decades later, a different approach was needed. By the
2000s, the process of de-industrialisation in London had advanced much
further. While other European counties are still major manufacturers,
Britain has long forgotten that it was once the ‘workshop of the world’.
London’s prosperity now depends upon its role as a global financial centre. 
Like their GLC predecessors, the LDA’s planners are also committed to reversing the decline of manufacturing. Even after two decades
of neo-liberalism, this traditional sector is still an important provider of
jobs. But, with financial institutions now dominating the local economy,
providing support for the creative industries has become a higher priority.
Both directly and indirectly, these businesses have benefited from the
neo-liberal restructuring of London over the past twenty years. As the
profits have flowed in from abroad, the financial sector has redistributed
some of its wealth to the owners of advertising agencies, art galleries,
entertainment venues and a host of other cultural enterprises. By ‘pumppriming’ these ventures, the ‘trickle-down’ of this money has underpinned two decades of growth in London’s creative industries. 
The Makers of the Future
039
49 For the story of the GLC, see Ken Livingstone, If Voting Changed Anything,
They’d Abolish It; and Maureen Mackintosh and Hilary Wainwright, A Taste of Power.
50 See GLC, The London Industrial Strategy; The State of the Art or the Art of the State?
According to Florida, this phenomenon has wider economic
benefits. From his research, he has concluded that cities like London
with a thriving music scene and a large gay population are now the prime
locations for hi-tech businesses. Even if they never go clubbing or are
completely straight, members of the Creative Class want to live in hip
and tolerant communities. Where the Digital Artisans congregate, the
Swarm Capitalists who want to employ them must follow.51 For the
enlightened planners of the LDA, Florida’s analysis gives political succour.
Fostering creative clusters will not only create more jobs within this
specific sector, but also could potentially reverse the decline of manufacturing in London. The prime location for software firms will attract
hardware companies as well. When Silicon Valley was the icon of computerised modernity, its combination of lucrative military contracts and
enthusiastic venture capitalists was almost impossible to replicate in a
European setting. But, with Florida now anointing Austin as the prototype of the future, London has in abundance his prerequisites for becoming
a flourishing digital city: bohemian ambience and cultural tolerance. All
the LDA has to do is build upon what is already there.
Underneath its feel-good rhetoric, Florida’s book also contains
a more troubling message for the Mayor’s planners: creative clusters
are fragile structures. From the American experience, this theorist has
concluded that gentrification doesn’t just have negative consequences
for the original inhabitants of inner-city areas.52 If unchecked, this phenomenon will also seriously damage the local economy. Property speculators destroy the street life and community feeling which attract hitech firms to these locations in the first place. Rather than helping
businesses, building shopping malls, yuppie flats and sports stadiums
lowers a city’s growth rate.53 In London, the redevelopment of the East
040
The Class of the New
51 See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, pages 235-260, 283-302.
52 For an account of a local community’s struggle against social cleansing in East
London, see Hari Kunzru, ‘A Dispatch from Tony’s Café’. Anthony Iles and Ben
Seymour’s article, ‘The (Re)Occupation’, stresses that the Broadway Market campaign
was primarily a battle to reinstate long-standing amenities of use to the (still) predominantly working class population of the area. For more info see: <34broadwaymarket.omweb.org>.
53 See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, pages 302-314.
End for the 2012 Olympics could be a repeat of this mistake. The disappearance of local retailers, low-cost housing, trendy clubs and art
galleries would weaken rather than benefit the local economy. In the
late-1990s, rising property prices led to an exodus of media and advertising companies from Soho to more hospitable boroughs.54 As East
London now also succumbs to the corporate monoculture, its vibrant
creative cluster is similarly being broken up and dispersed across the
city.55 The financial institutions are not only a friend, but also an
enemy of the new class. Their hunger for short-term speculative profits
is a constant threat to the spatial and cultural foundations of London’s
long-term prosperity.
In a concluding flourish, Florida ended his book with a call to
arms: the Creative Class must acquire ‘class consciousness’. As the
dominant group of the knowledge economy, its members have the
awesome responsibility of leading the whole of society into the networked future.56 By stressing this common purpose, Florida downplayed the divide between employers and employees within the Creative
Class. The LDA’s cluster strategy makes exactly the same assumption.
The growth of the creative industries can deliver not only increasing
profits, but also more jobs and rising wages. As the definitions of the
Swarm Capitalists and the Multipreneurs have highlighted, it is becoming
increasing difficult to distinguish the small business owners from the
self-employed workers in this sector. In the defence of their hip neighbourhoods, the Bobos and the Multitude are united against the predations of property speculators and management consultants. These makers
of the future – sometimes – do have consciousness of their common
identity as the class of the new.
As part of its Creative London initiative, the LDA offers a free
copyright advice service that: ‘clues you up on how to protect and market
your ideas.’57 Like other aspects of the cluster strategy, the legal framework of intellectual property is assumed to be in the interest of both
employers and employees. Over the last few decades, national governThe Makers of the Future
041
54 See Gautam Malkani, ‘Look Beyond the Media Heartlands for the Full Story’.
55 See Benedict Seymour, ‘Shoreditch and the Creative Destruction of the Inner City’.
56 See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, pages 315-326.
57 See Creative London, Believe, page 9.
ments and international agencies have been systematically tightening
the copyright laws in response to lobbying from the creative industries.
As with other commodities, information will only be produced if it can
be sold for a profit in the marketplace. By copying intellectual property
without payment, piracy disrupts the smooth functioning of the knowledge economy. In 2004, Estelle Morris – the British Arts Minister –
declared that: ‘Intellectual Property Rights have always been at the heart
of our Creative Industries – by encouraging and rewarding creativity.’58
According to the Blair government, the strict enforcement of the copyright laws was essential for transforming information into a commodity. If intellectual property wasn’t protected, leading British companies
would go bankrupt and large numbers of workers would lose their jobs.
Copyright is the legal foundation for the economic well-being of all
sections of the Creative Class. 
During the late-1990s, neo-liberal politicians and pundits championed the Net as the pioneer of the global information marketplace.
As shown by Amazon, e-Bay and other e-commerce sites, this new
means of communications is an excellent tool for selling material goods
and services. Ironically, what has been much more problematic is making
money out of the iconic commodity of the neo-liberal knowledge
economy: information. For over a decade, the music industry has been
struggling to prevent people swapping tunes for free over the Net. Napster
was closed down. Teenagers were taken to court. iTunes made it easy
to pay for downloads. Yet, despite all these initiatives, a generation has
grown up who think that paying for music is a choice not the rule. As
connection speeds have increased, other creative industries are also
having to face the same problem. If you know where to look, you can
download your movies, software and games for free. Instead of providing the overarching legal structure for the information economy, the
restrictions of copyright are only observed in the more legitimate areas
of the Net. Even with advice from the LDA, London’s creative cluster
can’t rely on the law to protect its ideas.
The prophets of neo-liberal McLuhanism were betrayed by their
own favourite technology: the Net. In their visions of the imaginary
042
The Class of the New
58 Estelle Morris in Department of Culture, Media and Sports, ‘Creative Industries
Forum On Intellectual Property Launched’.
future, computer-mediated-communications was primarily a tool for
buying and selling information commodities. Unfortunately for them,
the Net was invented for a very different purpose: scientific research.
Instead of organising their collective labour by trading information, academics work together by sharing knowledge with each other. Scientists
advance up the career ladder by presenting papers at conferences, contributing articles to journals and distributing their findings for peer
review. Not surprisingly, the pioneers of the Net built its architecture in
their own image. By the time that business discovered the wonders of
this technology, the social and cultural mores of the academic gift
economy had been hardwired into its infrastructure. The Net is primarily a tool for sharing knowledge not selling information.59 Repeatedly
over the past decade, experts have confidently asserted that the days of
the hi-tech gift economy are over. But, at each moment when big business
appeared to have triumphed, the next iteration of cultural collectivism
has swept across the network society: home made websites, virtual communities, open source software, P2P systems, blogging and locative
media. In the late-2000s, the information Panopticon is an anachronism.
Ubiquitous copyright isn’t only unenforceable, but also undesirable.60
Within the academy, the scope of intellectual property is strictly
limited. The peer review of scientific findings is founded upon sharing
information. The critical analysis of different theories and empirical
research depends upon the ‘fair use’of material from copyrighted publications. This book itself is an example of how the academic gift
economy advances understanding. Constructing a montage of quotations is a potent technique for telling the history of the theorists of the
new class. Selecting particular passages – and leaving out others –
imposes a specific theoretical interpretation on this collection of definitions. When included in this book, a thinker’s analysis could be
serving a very different purpose from that which was intended. Within
the academic gift economy, knowledge must be shared not only among
close colleagues, but also with bitter rivals. Under the rubric of ‘fair
use’, the readers of this book are also encouraged to appropriate this
The Makers of the Future
043
59 See Richard Barbrook, ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’; and Mark Geise, ‘From
ARPAnet to the Internet’.
60 See Richard Barbrook, ‘The Regulation of Liberty’.
text for their own ends. This section can be cited and criticised. The
quotations can be quoted. A different interpretation can be drawn
from the same material. When downloaded in its digital form from
the OpenMute website, this book can be easily sampled, reassembled and combined with other texts. In the information age, every
reader can be an author. 
This democratisation of creativity exposes a growing rift inside
the Creative Class. In Florida’s book, the same broad definition covered
all three variants of the social prophecy: the new ruling class, the new
intermediate class and the new working class. In its generosity, this
concept encompassed both employers and employees. Despite the two
sides of industry having some common interests, their attitudes towards
copyright highlighted the differences between them. At the beginning of
the dotcom boom, Netscape based its business strategy upon a paradoxical insight: software was ‘free, but not free’.61Although this corporation is long gone, the creative industries are still coming to terms with
this economic conundrum. For the Digerati who own intellectual property,
the hi-tech gift economy is clearly a threat to their wealth and position.
But, for the Immaterial Labourers, the position is much more ambiguous. On the one hand, the Multipreneurs want to be able to sell their work
to others. On the other hand, the Cognitariat know how to get their software,
music and films for free. When most members of the Creative Class don’t
respect the copyright laws, prosecuting teenagers for swapping tunes
seems absurd. As Gilberto Gil – the Brazilian Minister of Culture and
tropicalismo superstar – has urged, a rethink of the concept of intellectual property is now long overdue.62The smart Swarm Capitalists can find
ways of making money within a post-Fordist paradigm where the boundaries between commodities and gifts are fuzzy: ‘Those who obey the logic
of the net … will have a keen advantage in the new economy.’63
For many on the Left, the withering away of intellectual property
is a symbol of hope in pessimistic times. While most sectors of the
economy are suffering from the tyranny of management consultants,
044
The Class of the New
61 For the story of Netscape, see Michael Cusumano and David Yoffie, Competing
on Internet Time.
62 See the interview with Gil in Julian Dibbell, ‘We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin’.
6 3 Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, page 160.
the creative industries are pioneering more participatory and fulfilling
ways of working. During the past two decades, prominent thinkers on
the Left have identified the employees of the knowledge economy as
the new working class: the Cyborgs, the Digital Artisans, the Immaterial
Labourers, the Multitude, the Cognitariat and the Cybertariat. Ironically,
even these radical celebrations of post-Fordism are still caught up in
the hierarchies of Fordism. As in the dotcom definitions of the Right,
creativity is still a privilege of the few. Within the division of labour, a
minority can make their living in this way only because the overwhelming majority of the population are doing other things. It was under
Fordism that the separation of conception and action was pushed the
furthest. The top-down rule of the Scientific Managers over the factory
and the office rewarded obedience and punished initiative. Yet, even at
the high point of this authoritarian system, the creativity of the Fordist
Workers couldn’t be completely suppressed. If they weren’t allowed to
express themselves at work, they seized the opportunities offered in
their leisure time. The boredom of the assembly-lines was requited in
the pleasures of hobbies.64 
As the GLA report recognised, Londoners from all walks of life
have helped to transform the city over the past fifty years from a drab
imperial capital into a thriving creative centre. Ever since the 1950s, the
trendsetters of its youth subcultures have played a key role in shaping its
image as a cool and happening place. As both discerning consumers and
innovative producers, they have defined the new styles in music, fashion,
arts and design which London’s creative industries have then successively sold to their admirers across the world. What has made these movements so attractive over the years to people from very different cultures
and backgrounds is their celebration of self-expression. Frustrated at work,
creativity reappears on the dance floor and in the streets. Being a clubber
or a fashionista is much more exciting – and glamorous – than being a
labourer or a bureaucrat. London’s subcultures have always been much
more than consumer cults. All of them have started as participatory movements. The new thing emerges within the community before it’s repackaged as a commodity. In particular, this Do-It-Yourself attitude has shaped
The Makers of the Future
045
64 For an analysis of the differences between these two forms of working, see
Miklós Haraszti, Worker in a Worker’s State, pages 138-146.
the city’s music scene. London is a home of DJ culture: bootlegs, versions,
remixes and mash-ups. Confounding the copyright purists, there are plenty
of Londoners who don’t just listen to music, but also make music with
music. For a few, their extra-curricular activities can become a lucrative
career, but, in most cases, making music remains a hobby. Long before
the Net escaped from the universities, the bedroom DJs were working
within a hi-tech gift economy.
Looking at London’s recent cultural history, the limitations of
Florida’s thesis are exposed. Ironically, this theorist draws the boundaries of the Creative Class not only too widely, but also too narrowly.
On the one hand, he includes people doing routine tasks which require
little or no imagination within this sector. On the other hand, this
theorist ignores the extent to which contemporary culture is a participatory phenomenon. Creativity isn’t a monopoly of the Creative
Class. The majority of the population who earn their living outside
this sector can also be cultural producers. When Florida praises cities
with hip music scenes, he misses that some of the coolest people in
their clubs and bars aren’t members of his new class. For them, creativity is what happens when they’re playing outside work. In the
past decade, the social impact of this DIY culture has been amplified
by the spread of the Net. Amateurs are still responsible for the overwhelming majority of its content. In the mid-2000s, the most celebrated on-line businesses – like Flickr and MySpace – are services
for self-publishing and community networking. The knowledge
economy isn’t just a new phase of capitalism, but also an evolutionary stage beyond capitalism. Alongside orders and commodities, gifts
are now one of the principle methods of organising collective labour.65
Back in the nineteenth century, some perceptive radicals anticipated
this path of modernity in their concepts of the new class: the
Bohemians, the General Intellect, the Educated Working Man and
the Aristocracy of the Working Class. Since the 1960s, this vision of
mass creativity has re-emerged as an influential archetype of the
social prophecy: the Hippies, the Produsumers, the Prosumers, the
Hackers, the Netizens, the Multitude and the Pro-Ams. In the infor046
The Class of the New
65 For an ironic take on this historical moment, see Richard Barbrook, ‘CyberCommunism’.
mation society, making information is no longer solely the economic
activity of a few professionals. As Joseph Beuys emphasised: ‘The
whole idea of creativity is a question of everyone’s individual identity,
a question of the identity of everyone on the Earth.’66
In this vision of mass participation, the prerequisite for the democratisation of culture is the breaking down of the division between mental
labour and manual labour. For over two centuries, specialisation has been
the path to prosperity. From Adam Smith onwards, thinkers in successive generations have identified the new class as the small group whose
profession was inventing the future. As in other areas of the economy,
experts were required to carry out this vital task efficiently. The few not
the many were the builders of what was to come. In this book, the montage
of quotations tracks the history of the different incarnations of this class
of the new. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the
dominant archetypes of this social prophecy – more or less successfully – anticipated the evolutionary path of capitalism from liberalism into
Fordism. During the past four decades, the theory of the new class has
become identified with the advent of the knowledge economy. Like the
factory in earlier times, the network will provide the model for the restructuring of the whole of society. But, as this collection of quotations demonstrates, the concept of the new class has never been a dispassionate method
for analysing the human condition. On the contrary, the proponents of
this social prophecy have always had a political agenda. Just like the predictions of technological determinists, their prophecies of the future were
primarily prescriptions for the present. Knowing what will happen is a
claim to control what is happening.
In the early-twenty-first century, identifying the class of the new
has lost none of its political potency. On both the Right and the Left,
thinkers are still promoting their ideological programmes in the guise of
sociological analyses. Living in a country where cultural conformity is
increasingly obligatory, Florida’s definition of the Creative Class provides
a convincing business rationale for opposing homophobia, racism and
puritanism. Conservative Kansas is the Fordist past.67Bohemian Austin
The Makers of the Future
047
66 Joseph Beuys in Lucrezia de Domizio Durini, The Felt Hat, page 67.
67 For a description of this antithesis of the creative city, see Thomas Frank,
What’s The Matter With Kansas?.
is the networked future. For the Mayor of London, the thesis of the
Creative Class is also welcome. The hegemony of the management
consultants – the ideologues of his political opponents inside and
outside of the Labour party – will soon be over. The LDA’s Creative
London initiative is not only economically beneficial, but also politically rewarding. But, as Benjamin reminded his readers, the critical
understanding of the present begins with the analysis of the past. For
evaluating visions of the new class, this methodology is particularly essential. These prophecies of the future always look forward not
backwards. However, like most influential concepts, this theory has
a past. Florida’s optimistic thesis of the Creative Class is a remix of
an old tune. For a critical understanding of this social prophecy, examining its long history is essential. Because its nineteenth century proponents did foresee the rise of Fordism, does this necessarily mean
that their twenty-first century successors’prophecies about cognitive
capitalism are also correct? Above all, even if we agree with this
prognosis, the question of which version of this post-Fordist paradigm
will prevail is still open.
During the past thirty years, thinkers have repeatedly promoted
their iterations of the Knowledge Class as the makers of the future.
Compared to McKinsey’s authoritarian credo, the neo-liberal Right’s
versions of this prophecy can appear progressive. This theory explains
why property speculation and cultural authoritarianism are not only
socially regressive, but also economically harmful. But, even in the
Left’s definitions, the elitism inherent in the Adam Smith’s first iteration of the new class hasn’t disappeared. However leftfield and
wacky, the Cyborgs, the Digital Artisans, the Immaterial Labourers,
the Multitude, the Cognitariat and the Cybertariat are still a privileged minority. If it wants to live up to its name, the LDA’s Creative
London initiative must be committed to supporting the mass creativity of all Londoners. Political democracy requires cultural democracy. If everyone is a voter, then everyone is also a creator. When
mapping out the route to the future of libertarian social democracy,
the vision of the new class must become inclusive. When everyone
can participate within the General Intellect, creativity will no longer
be a privilege. The class of the new will then be superseded by the
civilisation of humanity. 
048
The Class of the New
049
050
The Philosophers – Adam Smith (1776)
‘Many improvements [in machinery] have been made by the ingenuity of … those who are called philosophers or men of speculation,
whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing; and
who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the
powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects. In the progress of
society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class
of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a
great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision
of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business,
improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more
expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole,
and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it.’
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations, page 14.
051
4.
The Classes of the
New
The Industrials – Henri Saint-Simon (1819)
‘The national [industrial] party consists of:
Those whose work is of direct use to society.
Those who direct this work or whose capital is invested in industrial enterprises.
Those who contribute to production through work which is useful to
the producers.’
Henri Saint-Simon, ‘Comparison Between the National (Industrial)
Party and the Anti-National Party’, page 187.
‘Let us suppose that all of a sudden France loses fifty each of its best
physicists, chemists, physiologists, mathematicians, poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, authors, mechanics, civil and military engineers, artillerymen, architects, doctors, surgeons, pharmacists, sailors, clockmakers,
bankers; its two hundred best merchants and six hundred best farmers;
fifty each of its best iron-masters, arms manufacturers, tanners, dyers,
miners, manufacturers of cloth, cotton, silk, linen, ironmongery, earthenware and porcelain, crystal-[ware] and glassware; shipowners, carriers,
printers, engravers, goldsmiths, and other metalworkers; masons, carpenters, joiners, blacksmiths, locksmiths, cutlers, foundrymen, and one
hundred other persons in other unspecified posts, eminent in the sciences,
fine arts, and arts and crafts, making in all the best scientists, artists, and
artisans in France.*
As these Frenchmen are the most essential producers, those who
provide the most important products, who direct the work which is
most useful to the nation, and who are responsible for its productivity
in the sciences, fine arts, and arts and crafts, they are really the flower
of French society. Of all Frenchmen they are the most useful to their
country, bringing it the most glory and doing most to promote civilisation and prosperity. The nation would become a lifeless corpse as
soon as it lost them.
*Usually the term ‘artisan’is only used to refer to ordinary workmen.
In order to avoid circumlocution, we shall take this expression to mean
everyone involved in material production, i.e. farmers, manufacturers,
merchants, bankers, and all the clerks and workmen employed by them.’
Henri Saint-Simon, ‘A Political Parable’, page 194.
052
The Class of the New
The Civil Servants – Georg Hegel (1821)
‘The universal class [of civil servants] has for its task the universal interests of the community.’
Georg Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, page 132.
‘The maintenance of the state’s universal interest, and of legality, in …
[the economic] sphere of particular rights, and the work of bringing these
[self-interested] rights back to the universal, require to be superintended by … (a) the executive civil servants, and (b) the higher advisory officials (who are organised in committees). These converge in their supreme
heads who are in direct contact with the monarch.’
Georg Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, page 189.
‘Between an individual [civil servant] and his office there is no immediate natural link. Hence individuals are not appointed to office on
account of their birth or native personal gifts. The objective factor in
their appointment is knowledge and proof of ability. Such proof guarantees that the state will get what it requires; and since it is the sole condition of appointment, it also guarantees to every citizen the chance of
joining the class of civil servants.’
Georg Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, page 190.
‘Civil servants and the members of the executive constitute the greater
part of the middle class, the class in which the consciousness of right
and the developed intelligence of the mass of the people is found.’
Georg Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, page 193.
The Bohemians – Adolphe d’Ennery and Grangé (1843)
‘By “bohemians”, I mean that class of individuals for whom existence
is a problem, circumstances a myth, and fortune an enigma; who have
no sort of fixed abode, no place of refuge; who belong nowhere and are
met with everywhere; who have no particular calling in life but follow
fifty professions; who, for the most part, arise in the morning without
The Classes of the New
053
knowing where they are to dine in the evening; who are rich today, impoverished tomorrow; who are ready to live honestly if they can, and otherwise if they cannot.’
Adolphe d’Ennery and Grangé, ‘Les Bohémiens de Paris’.
The Bourgeoisie – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)
‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of society. … Constant revolutionising of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. … All that is solid melts into air …’
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, page 17.
‘The bourgeoisie … has created more massive and colossal productive
forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole
continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations
conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?’
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, page 20.
The General Intellect – Karl Marx (1857)
‘To the degree that … direct labour and its quantity disappear as the
determinant principle of production – of the creation of use values –
and is reduced both quantitatively … and qualitatively … compared to
general scientific labour, technological application of natural sciences,
on one side, and to the general productive force arising from social combination in total production on the other side … Capital thus works
towards its own dissolution dominating production.’
Karl Marx, Grundrisse, page 700.
054
The Class of the New
The Classes of the New
055
‘Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric
telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. … They are organs of the human
brain, created by human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified.
The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general
social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what
degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have
come under the control of the general intellect and have been transformed in accordance with it.’
Karl Marx, Grundrisse, page 706.
The Self-Made Man – Samuel Smiles (1859)
‘It is the diligent head and hand alone that maketh rich – in self-culture,
growth in wisdom, and in business. Even when men are born to wealth
and high social position, any solid reputation which they may individually achieve can only be attained by energetic application; for though
an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. … Indeed, so far from poverty being a misfortune, it may, by vigorous self-help, be converted even into a blessing;
rousing a man to that struggle with the world in which … the rightminded and true-hearted find strength, confidence, and triumph.’
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, pages 11-12.
The Labour Movement – Karl Marx (1867)
‘… in the history of capitalist production, the establishment of a norm
for the working day presents itself as … a struggle between collective capital, i.e. the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e. the
working class.’
Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, page 344.
‘[The] … highly detailed specifications [of the Factory Acts], which
regulate, with military uniformity, the times, the limits and the pauses
of work by the stroke of the clock, were by no means a product of
the fantasy of Members of Parliament. … Their formulation, official
recognition and proclamation by the state were the result of a long
class struggle.’
Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, pages 394-395.
‘Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical reaction
of society against the spontaneously developed form of its production process, is … just as much the necessary product of largescale industry as cotton yarn, self-actors and the electric telegraph.’
Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, page 610.
‘If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades for the
purpose of protecting the working class both in mind and body has
become inevitable, … that extension [also] hastens on the general
conversion of numerous isolated small industries into a few
combined industries carried on upon a large scale; it therefore accelerates the concentration of capital and the exclusive predominance
of the factory system. … While in each individual workshop it
enforces uniformity, regularity, order and economy, the result of
this immense impetus given to the technical improvement by the
limitation and regulation of the working day is to increase the
anarchy and the proneness to catastrophe of capitalist production
as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the competition of machinery with the worker. … By maturing the material conditions and
the social combinations of the process of production, it matures the
contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of that process,
and thereby ripens both the elements for forming a new society and
the forces tending towards the overthrow of the old one.’
Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, page 635.
The Educated Working Man – Thomas Wright (1868)
‘The educated working man is the stock intelligent artisan improved
and tempered by education. … [He] … is a well-read, well-informed
member of society who has kept pace and is keeping pace with the
progress of the age; a man who, having class interests, is yet capable
056
The Class of the New
of taking a broad and tolerant view of questions affecting those
interests, and of clearly expressing and giving reasons for his own
sentiments upon such questions; a man who can find his greatest
gratification in intellectual pursuits and pleasures, and in his daily
life displays in some greater or lesser degree that refinement which
education gives.’
Thomas Wright, The Great Unwashed, pages 7-8. 
The Superman – Friedrich Nietzsche (1883)
‘You solitaries of today, you who have seceded from society, you
shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosen out yourselves, shall a chosen people spring – and from this chosen people,
the Superman.’
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, page 103.
‘Artists, if they are any good, are (physically as well) strong, full
of surplus energy, powerful animals, sensual; without a certain
overheating of the sexual system a Raphael is unthinkable.’
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, page 421.
‘… as the consumption of … mankind becomes more and more
economical and the “machinery” of interests and services is integrated ever more intricately, a counter-movement is inevitable. …
[This will be] the production of a synthetic, summarising, justifying man for whose existence this transformation of mankind into
a machine is a precondition, as a base on which he can invent his
higher form of being.
He needs the opposition of the masses, of the “levelled”, a
feeling of distance from them! he stands on them, he lives off them.
This higher form of aristocracy is that of the future.’
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pages 463-464.
The Classes of the New
057
The Aristocracy of the Working Class – Friedrich
Engels (1885)
‘… the great Trades’Unions … are the organisations of those trades
in which the labour of grown-up men predominates, or is alone
applicable. Here the competition neither of women and children
nor of machinery has so far weakened their organised strength. The
engineers, the carpenters and joiners, the bricklayers, are each of
them a power, to that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers
and bricklayers’ labourers, they can even successfully resist the
introduction of machinery. That their condition has remarkably
improved since 1848 there can be no doubt, and the best proof of
this is in the fact that for more than fifteen years not only have their
employers been with them, but they with their employers, upon
exceedingly good terms. They form an aristocracy among the
working class; they have succeeded in enforcing for themselves a
relatively comfortable position, and they accept it as final. They are
the model working-men of Messrs. Leone Levi & Giffen, and they
are very nice people indeed nowadays to deal with, for any sensible
capitalist in particular and for the whole capitalist class in general.’
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in
England, page 368.
The New Middle Class – William Morris (1885)
‘I should like our friend to understand whither the whole system of
palliation [through the Factory Acts] tends – namely, toward the
creation of a new middle class to act as a buffer between the proletariat and their direct and obvious masters; the only hope of the bourgeoisie for retarding the advance of Socialism lies in this device. Let
our friend think of a society thus held together. Let him consider how
sheepishly the well-to-do workers today offer themselves to the
shearer; and are we to help our masters to keep on creating fresh and
fresh flocks of such sheep? What a society that would be, the main
support of which would be capitalists masquerading as working men!’
William Morris, ‘Socialism and Politics (An Answer to ‘Another
View’)’, pages 99-100.
058
The Class of the New
The Intellectual Proletariat – William Morris (1888)
‘The lower ranks of art and literature are crowded with persons
drawn to these professions by the pleasantness of these pursuits in
themselves, who soon find out the very low market value of the
ordinary educated intellect. These, together with the commercial
clerks, in whose occupation no special talent is required, form an
intellectual proletariat whose labour is “rewarded” on about the
same scale as the lower portion of manual labour, as long as they
are employed, but whose position is more precarious, and far less
satisfactory.’
William Morris, ‘Socialism From the Root Up’, page 603.
The Vanguard Party – V.I. Lenin (1902)
‘The active and widespread participation of the masses [in antimonarchical politics] will … benefit by the fact that a “dozen” experienced revolutionaries, trained professionally no less than the police,
will centralise all the secret aspects of the work – drawing up leaflets,
working out approximate plans and appointing bodies of leaders
for each urban district, each factory and for each educational institution, etc. ...’
V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, pages 154-155.
‘It is … our duty to assist every capable worker to become a professional agitator, organiser, propagandist, literature distributor, etc.
etc. … A worker agitator who is at all talented and “promising”
must not be left to work eleven hours a day in a factory. We must
arrange that he be maintained by the Party, that he may go underground at any time, that he change the place of his activity … When
we have detachments of specially trained worker-revolutionaries
who have gone through extensive preparation … no political police
in the world will then be able to contend against them, for these
detachments of men absolutely devoted to the revolution will themselves enjoy the absolute confidence of the masses of the workers.’
V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, pages 162-164.
The Classes of the New
059
The Samurai – H.G. Wells (1905)
‘Typically, the samurai are engaged in administrative work. Practically
the whole of the responsible rule of the world is in their hands; all our
head teachers and disciplinary heads of colleges, our judges, barristers, employers of labour beyond a certain limit, practising medical
men, legislators, must be samurai, and all the executive committees
… that play so large a part in our affairs are drawn by lot exclusively
from them. The order is not hereditary … The samurai are, in fact, volunteers … our Founders … made a noble and privileged order … open
to the whole world.’
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, pages 222-223.
The Bureaucrats – Max Weber (1910)
‘Office holding is a ‘vocation’. This is shown … in the requirement of a
firmly prescribed course of training … and in the … special examinations which are prerequisites of employment. Furthermore, the position
of an official is in the nature of a duty. … Entrance into an office [job],
including one in the private economy, is considered an acceptance of a
specific obligation of faithful management in return for a secure existence. … Modern loyalty is devoted to impersonal and functional purposes.
…
Whether he is in a private office or a public bureau, the modern
official always strives and usually enjoys a distinct social esteem as
compared with the governed. His social position is guaranteed by the prescriptive rules of rank order …’
Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, pages 198-199.
The Scientific Managers – Frederick Winslow Taylor
(1911)
‘[No] … one workmen [has] the authority to make other men cooperate
with him to do faster work. It is only through enforced standardisation of
methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And
the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and of enforcing this coop060
The Class of the New
eration rests with the management alone. The management must supply
continually one or more teachers to show each new man the new and
simpler motions, and the slower men must be constantly watched and
helped until they have risen to their proper speed. All of those who, after
proper teaching, either will not or cannot work in accordance with the
new methods and at the higher speed must be discharged ... The management must also recognise the broad fact that workmen will not submit to
this more rigid standardisation and will not work extra hard, unless they
receive extra pay for doing it.’
Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management,
page 83.
The Labour Aristocracy – V.I. Lenin (1916)
‘The upper layers [of the British working class] furnish the main body of
co-operators, of trade unionists, of members of sporting bodies, and of
numerous religious sects. … Imperialism has … a tendency to create privileged sections amongst the workers … and to detach them from the main
proletarian masses … to encourage opportunism amongst them, and to
give rise to a temporary organic decay in the working class movement …’
V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, pages 124-125.
The Labour Bureaucracy – Gregory Zinoviev (1916)
‘The great, overwhelming majority of the [labour movement’s] functionaries are workers. … But the concept “worker”, in and of itself,
must be applied with the greatest of care in this case. It would be
better perhaps not to say “worker”, but “worker in his origin.” … In
reality, … these people are no longer workers and have not been for
decades. They have incomes bigger than the average bourgeois and
have long ago given up their trades. … They are workers in name
only. In reality they are bureaucrats with a standard of living quite
distinct from the average worker.
The worker-functionaries very often hail from the circles of the
labour aristocracy. The labour bureaucracy and the labour aristocracy are blood brothers. The group interests of the one and the other
The Classes of the New
061
very often coincide. Nevertheless, labour bureaucracy and labour
aristocracy are two different categories.’
Gregory Zinoviev, ‘The Social Roots of Opportunism’, page 108
The Blackshirts – Mario Piazzesi (1921)
‘For some time … a new Italy has been forming, an Italy born of professionals, petty bourgeois artisans, peasants, common people, of all
those who fought in the … [First World War] … It feels that the spirit
of Victory is an idea which can nourish even simple souls.
New classes are forming who are leap-frogging the political
and economic generations of before the war, most of them belonging to the small and middling bourgeoisie and artisan class. These
have held military rank and have no intention of being absorbed back
into the anonymous masses, but want to create new types of business,
new companies, new trades in which to project the sense of leadership and organisation they learnt and applied in the war.’
Mario Piazzesi, ‘The Squadristi as the Revolutionaries of the New
Italy’, page 39.
The Engineers – Thorstein Veblen (1921) 
‘In the beginning … of the Industrial Revolution, there was no marked
division between the industrial experts and the business managers.
… But from an early point in the development [of capitalism] there
set in a progressive differentiation, such as to divide those who
designed and administered the industrial processes from those others
who designed and managed the commercial transactions and took
care of the financial end. …
This division between business management and industrial management has continued to go forward, at a continually accelerating
rate, because the special training and experience required for any
passably efficient organisation and direction of these industrial
processes has continually grown more exacting, calling for specialised
knowledge and abilities on the part of those who have this work to
do and requiring their undivided interest and their undivided atten062
The Class of the New
tion to the work at hand. But these specialists in technological knowledge, abilities, interest, and experience … - inventors, designers,
chemists, mineralogists, soil experts, crop specialists, production
managers and engineers of many kinds and denominations – have
continued to be employees of … the captains of finance, whose work
it has been to commercialise the knowledge and abilities of the industrial experts and turn them to account for their own gain.’
Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System, pages 76-77.
‘These expert men, technologists, engineers … make up the indispensable General Staff of the industrial system; and without their immediate and unremitting guidance and correction the industrial system would
not work. It is a mechanically organised structure of technical processes designed, installed, and conducted by these production engineers.
Without them and their constant attention the industrial equipment, the
mechanical appliances of industry, will foot up to just so much junk.’
Thorstein Veblen,The Engineers and the Price System, pages 82-83.
The Fordist Worker – Henry Ford (1922)
‘I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that the ideas we have
put into practice [at the Ford Motor Company] are capable of the largest
application – that they have nothing peculiarly to do with motor cars
… but form something in the nature of a universal code.’
Henry Ford, My Life and Work, page 3.
‘The net result of the application of … [the] principles [of the assemblyline] is the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker
and the reduction of his movements to a minimum. He does as nearly
as possible only one thing with only one movement.’
Henry Ford, My Life and Work, page 80.
‘… to the majority of minds, repetitive operations hold no terrors. In
fact, to some types of mind … the ideal job is one where the creative
The Classes of the New
063
instinct need not be expressed. … The average worker … wants a
job in which he does not have to put forth much physical exertion –
above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think.’
Henry Ford, My Life and Work, page 103.
‘[Our policy of raising wages] … was a sort of prosperity-sharing
plan. But on conditions. The man and his home had to come up to
certain standards of cleanliness and citizenship. … the idea was that
there should be a very definite incentive to [morally] better living
and that the very best incentive as a money premium on proper living.
A man who is living alright will do his work alright.’
Henry Ford, My Life and Work, page 128.
The Open Conspiracy – H.G. Wells (1928)
‘… when we come to the general functioning classes, landowners,
industrial organisers, bankers and so forth, who control the present
system … it is very largely from the ranks of these classes and
from their stores of experience and traditions of method, that the
directive forces of the new order must emerge. … There are no
doubt many … [who act] for personal or group advantage to the
general detriment. … But there remains a residuum of original and
intelligent people … who are curious about their own intricate
function and disposed towards a scientific investigation of its
origins, conditions and future possibilities. Such types move naturally towards the Open Conspiracy. … 
Now the theme of the preceding paragraph might be repeated
with … appropriate modifications … [for] the industrial organiser, the merchant and organiser of transport, the advertiser, the retail
distributor, the agriculturalist, the engineer, the builder, the
economic chemist, and a number of other types functional to the
contemporary community. In all we should distinguish … an active,
progressive section to whom we should turn naturally for developments leading towards the progressive world commonweal of
our desires.’
H.G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, pages 57-58.
064
The Class of the New
The Intellectuals – Antonio Gramsci (1934)
‘School is the instrument through which intellectuals of various levels
are elaborated. The complexity of the intellectual function in different
states can be measured objectively by the number and gradation of specialised schools: the more extensive the “area” covered by education
and the more numerous the “vertical” “levels” of schooling, the more
complex is the cultural world, the civilisation, of a particular state.’
Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, pages 10-11.
‘The intellectuals are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the
subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government.’
Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, page 12.
‘Intellectuals of the urban type have grown up along with industry and
are linked to its fortunes. … Their job is to articulate the relationship
between the entrepreneur and the [proletarian] instrumental mass and
to carry out the immediate execution of the production plan decided
by the industrial general staff, controlling the elementary stages of
work. On the whole, the average urban intellectuals are very standardised, while the top intellectuals are more and more identified with the
industrial general staff itself.’
Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, page 14.
The Managerial Class – James Burnham (1941)
‘We may often recognise them as ‘production managers’, operating
executives, superintendents, administrative engineers, supervisory
technicians; or, in government (for they are to be found in governmental enterprise just as in private enterprise) as administrators, commissioners, bureau heads, and so on. … [The] managers … [are] those
who already … are actually managing, on its technical side, the actual
process of production, no matter what the legal and financial form –
individual, corporate, governmental – of the process.’
James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, page 81.
The Classes of the New
065
‘The managers … naturally tend to identify … the salvation of mankind
with their assuming control of society. Society can be run, they think,
in more or less the same way that they know they … can run, efficiently and productively, a mass-production factory.’
James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, page 177.
The Entrepreneurs – Joseph Schumpeter (1942)
‘[The] … function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionise the
pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally,
an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity
or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source
of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganising an industry
and so on. … To undertake such new things is difficult and constitutes a distinct economic function, first, because they lie outside of
the routine tasks which everybody understands and, secondly, because
the environment resists in many ways that vary, according to the social
conditions, from simple refusal to finance or to buy a new thing, to
physical attack on the man who tries to produce it. To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome that
resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction
of the population and that define the entrepreneurial type as well as
the entrepreneurial function. This function does not essentially consist
in either inventing anything or otherwise creating the conditions which
the enterprise exploits. It consists in getting things done.’
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, page 132.
The Inner Party – George Orwell (1948)
‘The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity
experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class
and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and
brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and
centralised government. …
066
The Class of the New
Individually, no member of the Party owns anything, except
petty personal belongings. Collectively, the Party owns everything
… because it controls everything, and disposes of the products as it
thinks fit.’
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, page 166.
The New Middle Class – C. Wright Mills (1951)
‘… the white-collar workers … are expert at dealing with people transiently and impersonally; they are masters of the commercial, professional and technical relationship. The one thing they do not do is live
by making things; rather, they live off the social machineries that
organise and coordinate the people who do make things. … They are
the people who keep track; they man the paper routines involved in
distributing what is produced. They provide technical and personal
services, and they teach others the skills which they themselves practice,
as well as all other skills transmitted by teaching.’
C. Wright Mills, White Collar, pages 65-66
.
‘The historic bases of the white-collar employees’ prestige ... have
included the similarity of their place and type of work to those of the
old middle-classes … Furthermore, the time taken to learn … [their]
skills and the way in which they have been acquired by formal education and by close contact with the higher-ups in charge has been important. … White-collar employees are the assistants of authority; the
power they exercise is a derived power, but they do exercise it.’
C. Wright Mills, White Collar, pages 73-74.
The Power Elite – C. Wright Mills (1956)
‘There is no longer, on one hand, an economy, and, on the other
hand, a political order containing a military establishment unimportant to politics and money-making. There is [instead] a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions
and decisions. … As each of these domains has coincided with the
The Classes of the New
067
others, … the leading men in each of the three domains of power
– the warlords, the corporation chieftains, the political directorate
– tend to come together, to form the power elite of America.’
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, pages 7-9.
‘All those who succeed in America … are likely to become involved
in the world of celebrity. This world … has been created from above.
Based upon nation-wide hierarchies of power and wealth, it is
expressed by nation-wide means of communications. …
With the incorporation of the economy, the ascendancy of the
military establishment, and the centralisation of the enlarged state,
there have arisen the national elite, who, in occupying the command
posts of the big hierarchies, have taken the spotlight of publicity
and become the subjects of the intensive build-up. At the same time,
with the elaboration of the national means of mass communications, the professional celebrities of the entertainment world have
come fully and continuously into the national view.’
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, page 71.
The Organisation Man – William Whyte (1956)
‘These people only work for The Organisation. They are the … mind
and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions. …
The corporation man is the most conspicuous example … [of
how] the collectivisation so visible in the corporation has affected
almost every field of work. Blood brother to the business trainee off
to join Du Pont is the seminary student who will end up in the church
hierarchy, the doctor headed for the corporate clinic, the physics PhD
in a government laboratory, the intellectual on the foundation-sponsored team project, the engineering graduate in the huge drafting
room at Lockheed, the young apprentice in a Wall Street law factory.
… Listen to them talk to each other over the front lawns of
their suburbia and you cannot help but be struck by how well they
grasp the common denominators which bind them.’
William Whyte, The Organisation Man, page 8.
068
The Class of the New
‘Look at a cross section of [managers’] profiles and you will see
three denominators shining through: extroversion, disinterest in the
arts, and a cheerful acceptance of the status quo.’
William Whyte, The Organisation Man, page 183.
The New Class – Milovan Djilas (1957)
‘The ownership principles of the new class and membership in that
class are the privileges of administration. This privilege extends
from state administration and the administration of economic enterprises to that of sports and humanitarian organisations. Political,
party, or so-called “general leadership” is executed by the core [of
the new class].’
Milovan Djilas, The New Class, page 54.
‘Membership in the Communist [Vanguard] Party before the
Revolution meant sacrifice. Being a professional revolutionary was
one of its highest honours. Now that the party has consolidated its
power, party membership means that one belongs to a privileged
class. And at the core of the party are the all-powerful exploiters
and masters.’
Milovan Djilas, The New Class, page 55.
The Specialists – Ralf Dahrendorf (1957)
‘In the enterprises of post-capitalist society, … [a] complex system
of delegation of responsibility obliterates … the dividing line
between positions of domination and subjection. … there are …
groups that stubbornly resist allocation to one or the other quasigroup. One of these consists of the “staff” of the enterprise, the
engineers, the chemists, physicists, lawyers, psychologists, and
other specialists whose services have become an indispensable part
of production in modern firms. … the class situation of specialists
in the enterprise remains as uncertain as the class situation of intellectuals in society. They are neither superordinates nor subordiThe Classes of the New
069
nates; their positions seem to stand beyond the authority structure.
Only insofar as they can be identified as (often indirect) helpers of
management, can they be called a marginal part of the ruling class
of the enterprise.’
Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society,
page 255.
The New Class – J.K. Galbraith (1958)
‘The New Class is not exclusive. … Any individual whose adolescent
situation is such that sufficient time and money are invested in his
preparation, and who has at least the talents to carry him through the
formal academic routine, can be a member. … 
Some of the attractiveness of membership in the New Class …
derives from a vicarious feeling of superiority … However, membership in the class unquestionably has other and more important rewards.
Exemption from manual toil; escape from boredom and confining and
severe routine; the chance to spend one’s life in clean and physically
comfortable surroundings; and some opportunity for applying one’s
thoughts to the day’s work …
This being so, there is every reason to conclude that the further
and rapid expansion of this class should be … the major social goal of
the [affluent] society.’
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, pages 275-276.
The Industrial Managers – Clark Kerr (1960)
‘Industrial managers, private or public, and their technical and professional associates … are the “vanguard [party]” of the future. It is they
who largely create and apply the new technology, who determine the
transformations in skills and responsibilities, who influence the impact
of such changes upon the work force and who exercise leadership in
a technological society.’
Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Frederick Harbison and Charles Myers,
Industrialism and Industrial Man, page 30.
070
The Class of the New
‘Management … includes entrepreneurs, managers, administrators,
engineers and professional specialists who hold the top positions
in an enterprise. In this hierarchy, the organisation builder plays a
critical role. He may be the owner of the business, a professional
private manager or a government official. He is the keystone in the
arch of management …’
Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Frederick Harbison and Charles Myers,
Industrialism and Industrial Man, page 134.
‘There is … no precise dividing line between the managerial group
and the industrial labour force. … In some cases foremen are
members of the management; in others they are the highest ranking
members of the labouring class. … With this qualification, the
working force may said to include the following: manual labour of
all skill levels, [and] clerical workers … whereas administrators,
professional employees, engineers, and scientists are clearly in the
managerial category.’
Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Frederick Harbison and Charles Myers,
Industrialism and Industrial Man, page 165.
The Order-Givers – Cornelius Castoriadis (1961)
‘At the objective level, the transformation of capitalism is
expressed in increasing bureaucratisation. The roots of this
tendency are in production, but they extend and finally invade
all sectors of social life. Concentration of capital and statification are but different aspects of the same phenomenon. … 
The inherent objective … of bureaucratic capitalism is the
construction of a totally hierarchical society in constant expansion, a sort of monstrous pyramid where the increasing alienation
of men in labour will be “compensated” by a steady rise in the
standard of living, all initiative remaining in the hands of the
organisers. … The increasing bureaucratisation of all social activities only succeeds in extending into all social domains the conflict
inherent in the division of society into order-givers and ordertakers. … The inherent irrationality of capitalism remains but
The Classes of the New
071
now finds expression in new and different ways.’
Paul Cardan [Cornelius Castoriadis], Modern Capitalism and
Revolution, page 3.
The New Working Class – Serge Mallet (1963)
‘Workers employed in automated industries (or industries in the process
of automation) have been called the “new working class”. In fact, this
term covers two different types of wage earners, both born of new
technical developments and both involved in this process of “integration in the firms”.
The new factory uses two types of workers who are still classified as manual workers. These are the foremen, loaders, operators, and
preparers who are assigned to automated production units; and the
maintenance workers, who are in charge of repairing and keeping watch
over the machinery. ….
The other group, numerically greater, is not exclusively born of
automation, but is partly due to the trend in modern industry to devote
much time and effort to operations anterior to the classic production
process (studies and research) and beyond it (commercialisation, market
research, etc.). … The enormous development of research units has …
created real intellectual production units, in which working conditions
grow increasingly similar to those of a modern workshop, but devoid of
physical strain, dirt and stink – though with the same planned timing and
mechanisation of office work.’
Serge Mallet, The New Working Class, pages 66-68.
The Knowledge Workers – Peter Drucker (1966)
‘Modern society is a society of large organised institutions. In every
one of them, including the armed services, the centre of gravity has
shifted to the knowledge worker, the man who puts to work what he
has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles or the skill
of his hands.’
Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, page 3.
072
The Class of the New
‘The imposing system of measurements and tests which we have
developed for manual work – from industrial engineering to quality
control – is not applicable to knowledge work. … Working on the
right things is what makes knowledge work effective. This is not
capable of being measured by any of the yardsticks for manual work.
The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in
detail. He can only be helped. But he must direct himself, and he
must direct himself towards performance and contribution, that is
effectiveness.’
Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, pages 3-4.
‘Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge
work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results.
And for these, the size of the [administrative] group and the magnitude of the managerial job are not even symptoms.’
Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, page 7.
The Educational and Scientific Estate – J.K. Galbraith
(1967)
‘As the trade unions [of the industrial working class] retreat …
into the shadows, a rapidly growing body of educators and research
scientists emerges. This group connects at the edges with scientists and engineers within the [corporate] technostructure and with
civil servants, journalists, writers and artists outside. Most directly
nurtured by the industrial system are the educators and scientists
in the schools, colleges, universities and research institutions.
They stand in relation to the industrial system much as did the
banking and financial community to the earlier stages of industrial development. … Education … has now the greatest solemnity of social purpose.’
The educational and scientific estate, like the financial community before it, acquires prestige from the productive agent that
it supplies. Potentially, at least, this is also a source of power.’
John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, pages 286-287.
The Classes of the New
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The Technocrats – Alain Touraine (1969)
‘Technocrats are not technicians but managers, whether they belong
to the administration of the State or to big businesses which are
closely bound, by reason of their very importance, to the agencies
of political decision-making.’
Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, pages 49-50.
‘If property was the criterion of membership of the former dominant
classes, the new dominant class [of technocrats] is defined by
knowledge and a certain level of education.’
Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, page 51.
‘The principal opposition between … [the] two great classes …
does not result from the fact one possesses wealth and property
and the other does not. It comes about because the dominant classes
dispose of knowledge and control information.’
Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, page 61.
‘… today’s programmed society … [is] dominated by the new
conflict between technocrats and consumers …’
Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, page 192.
The Hippies – Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (1969)
‘It was a phenomenal burst of human energy and spirit that came and
went like a tidal wave up there in … Woodstock, Aquarian Exposition,
Music Festival, Happening, Monster, or whatever you called the fuckin
thing. I took a trip to our future. That’s how I saw it. Functional anarchy,
primitive tribalism, gathering of the tribes. Right on!’
Abbie Hoffman, Woodstock Nation, page 13.
‘Like almost everyone in the left, I have a genuine suspicion about the
mass media, especially television. [However] … some day real soon
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The Class of the New
most families in [the American] PIG NATION will be able through
their TV sets to have a computer at their disposal … the most revolutionary means of communications since language itself was invented.’
Abbie Hoffman, Woodstock Nation, page 105.
‘Our youth ghettos must have a communal economy so we can live
with one another, trading and bartering what we need. A free community without money. 
We will organise our own record companies, publishing houses
and tourist companies so profit will come back into the community
for free food, free rent, free medical care, free space, free dope, free
living, community bail funds.
Thousands of us have moved from the cities into the country
to create communes. Dig it! The communes will bring food into the
city in exchange for services which the urban communes will bring
to the country.’
Jerry Rubin, Do It!, page 236.
‘The world will become one big commune with free food and housing,
everything shared. All watches and clocks will be destroyed. … There
will be no such crime as “stealing” because everything will be free.
The [US military’s] Pentagon [headquarters] will be replaced by an
LSD experimental farm. There will be no more schools or churches
because the entire world will become one church and school. People
will farm in the morning, make music in the afternoon and fuck wherever
and whenever they want to.’
Jerry Rubin, Do It!, page 256.
The Produsumers – Décio Piganatari (1969)
‘The collage is the provisional syntax of creative synthesis, a mass
syntax. The collage is the assembly of simultaneity, a general totem.
… Technology is achieving such sophistication that it starts to require
the year zero of a NEW BARBARISM to unblock its pores. Society
is ever more rich, life is ever more poor. … Today’s models of conThe Classes of the New
075
sumption are the models of production of 40 years ago … This is the
time of PRODUSUMERISM. The student is for the university what
the worker is for the factory. The student is the information worker.
Students in the [political and ideological] superstructure are still copying
the old models of struggle of workers in the [economic] base. [This is
the time of] PRODUSUMERISM. The world of consumption is superseded by the world of information, where the decisive battle will take
place. NEW BARBARISM: an open field for the new models of the
information war. The elites, especially the academic ones, are rotten
with stupidity: every new [produsumer] barbarian knows more than
them. It is not necessary to wait until everyone owns a motor car for
the new culture to be born. Ownership is for the world of things, culture
is for the world of signs. The artist is a language designer, even if –
and especially if – they’re marginalised. This is the [time of the] artistic
guerilla. … Collective joy is the final vindication: intimacy in deep
harmony. Beyond the ciphers. And against the [tyranny of the] $$.’
Décio Pignatari, Contracomunicacao, page 27. 
The Scientific Intellectual Labourers – Ernest Mandel
(1972)
‘Economically, the … main characteristics of the third technological revolution [of nuclear energy, cybernetics and automation] can be discerned:
A qualitative acceleration in … the displacement of living by dead
labour. …
A shift of living labour power still engaged in the process of production from the actual treatment of raw materials to preparatory or
supervisory functions. … The scientists, laboratory workers, projectors
and draughtsmen who work in the forecourt of the actual production
process also perform … surplus value-creating labour. …’
Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, pages 194-195.
‘The age of the third technological revolution is necessarily an epoch of
[the] unprecedented fusion of science, technology and production. … In
increasingly automated production there is no further place for unskilled
factory or office workers. A massive and generalised transformation of
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The Class of the New
manual into intellectual work is not only made possible, but also economically and socially essential by automation.’
Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, page 215.
‘The social position of all those social groups that occupationally
participate in supervising the extraction of surplus-value from the
commodity labour-power or the preservation of constant capital by
labour-power, typically induces a general identification with the
class interests of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. It might even be
said that such identification is a precondition of the performance of
their specific function … [within the] factory or society. … By
contrast, intellectually qualified workers engaged in the immediate
process of production or reproduction, or those whose social function
does not necessarily come into collision with the class interest of
wage-earners – for example, health-insurance doctors or social
workers employed by a local authority – are … more likely to align
themselves with the … proletariat.’
Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, page 265.
The Knowledge Class – Daniel Bell (1973)
‘If the dominant figures of the past hundred years have been the entrepreneur, the businessman and the industrial executive, the “new men”
are the scientists, the mathematicians, the economists and the engineers of the new intellectual technology. …
In the post-industrial society, … the crucial decisions regarding
the growth of the economy and its balance will come from government, but they will be based on the government’s sponsorship of research
and development, of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis; the
making of decisions … will have an increasingly technical character.
The husbanding of talent and the spread of educational and intellectual institutions will become a prime concern of society; not only the
best talents but eventually the entire complex of prestige and status
will be rooted in the intellectual and scientific communities.’
Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, pages 344-345.
The Classes of the New
077
‘If one turns … to the societal structure of the post-industrial society
… two conclusions are evident. First, the major class of the new
society is primarily a professional class, based on knowledge rather
than property. But second, the control system of the society is lodged
not in a successor-occupational class but in the political order, and
the question who manages the political order is an open one. …
In terms of status (esteem and recognition, and possibly
income), the knowledge class may be the highest class in the new
society but in the nature of that structure there is no intrinsic reason
for this class, on the basis of some coherent or corporate identity,
to become a new economic interest class, or a new political class
which would bid for power.’
Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, page 374-375.
The Intermediate Layers – Harry Braverman (1974)
‘Among … [the] intermediate groupings are parcelled out the specialised bits of knowledge and delegated authority without which
the machinery of production, distribution and administration would
cease to operate. … Their conditions of employment are affected by
the need of top management to have within its orbit buffer layers,
responsive and “loyal” subordinates, transmission agents for the
exercise of control and the collection of information, so that management does not confront unaided a hostile or indifferent [working
class] mass. … All in all, … those in this area of capitalist employment enjoy, in greater or lesser degree depending upon their specific
place in the hierarchy, the privileges of exemption from the worst
features of the proletarian situation, including, as a rule, significantly higher scales of pay. …
This “new middle class” … occupies its intermediate position
not because it is outside the process of increasing capital [as with the
old middle class], but because, as part of this process, it takes its characteristics from both sides. Not only does it receive its petty share in
the prerogatives and rewards of capital, but it also bears the mark of
the proletarian condition.’
Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital, pages 406-407.
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The Class of the New
The New Petty-Bourgeoisie – Nicos Poulantzas (1974)
‘[The] … engineers and technicians … [of the new petty-bourgeoisie]
are often themselves responsible for the work of management and
supervision; they directly control the ‘efficiency’ of the workers and
the achievement of output norms. …
Their mental labour, separated from manual labour, represents
the exercise of political relations in the despotism of the factory, legitimised by, and articulated to, the monopolisation and secrecy of
knowledge, i.e. the reproduction of the ideological relations of domination and subordination.’
Nicos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, pages 239-240.
‘The various [new] petty-bourgeois agents each possess, in relation
to those subordinate to them, a fragment of the fantastic secret of
knowledge that legitimises the delegated authority that they exercise.
This is the very meaning of [bureaucratic] ‘hierarchy’.’
Nicos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, page 275.
‘[The] … petty-bourgeois ideological sub-ensemble is a terrain of struggle
and a particular battlefield between bourgeois ideology and workingclass ideology, though with the specific intervention of peculiarly pettybourgeois elements.’
Nicos Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, page 289.
The Professional-Managerial Class – Barbara & John
Ehrenreich (1975)
‘We define the Professional-Managerial Class [PMC] as consisting
of salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production
and whose major function in the social division of labour may be
described broadly as the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations.
Their role in the process of reproduction may be more or less explicit,
as with workers who are directly connected with social control or with
the production and propagation of ideology (e.g. teachers, social workers,
The Classes of the New
079
psychologists, entertainers, writers of advertising copy and TV scripts,
etc.). Or it may be hidden within the process of production, as is the case
with the middle-level administrators and managers, engineers, and other
technical workers whose functions … are essentially determined by the
need to preserve the capitalist relations of production. Thus we assert that
these occupational groups – cultural workers, managers, engineers and
scientists, etc. – share a common function in the broad social division of
labour and a common relation to the economic foundations of society.
The PMC … includes people with a wide range of occupations,
skills, income levels, power and prestige. The boundaries separating it
from the ruling class above and the working class below are fuzzy. …
occupation is not the sole determinant of class (nor even the sole determinant of the relation to the means of production).’
Barbara & John Ehrenreich, ‘The Professional-Managerial Class’,
pages 12-13.
The Proletarianised Professionals – Stanley Aronowitz
(1975)
‘As the logic of capital requires a more minute division of labour, more
sophisticated integrative mechanisms, enlarged state intervention into
the economy, and a larger army of administrative workers, the size of
the middle strata of professionals grows. At the same time, those lacking
power and authority within the administrative and state sectors also grow.
The army of clerical workers, operators of duplicating, accounting, bookkeeping, and other machines accompanies the employment of computer
professionals, accountants, designers, and other professionals.
Although clerical workers such as typists, secretaries and office
machine operators are certainly part of the working class, their position
is by no means unambiguous in the social structure. … Head offices of
large corporations and state bureaucracies are apparatuses of bourgeois
ideological hegemony as well as social domination. The institutions of
schools, health care, and administration … function to reproduce capitalist social relations and culture, as well as facilitate the accumulation
and reproduction of capital. …
What is more, often the clerical functions overlap with those of
technicians and professionals. The number of “managers” of clerical
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The Class of the New
workers is extremely high in proportion to those who are designated as
“clerical” employees. … This tendency is particularly pronounced in the
telephone and other branches of the communications industry where the
proportion of supervisors to workers is about one to three. In addition,
many of those designated in the job categories as technicians and professionals find that, as mechanisation replaces a large number of tasks
that were previously skilled aspects of their professions, these college
educated, professionally trained employees are reduced to clerical
workers.’
Stanley Aronowitz, ‘The Professional-Managerial Class or Middle
Strata’, page 236.
The Post-Modernists – Jean-François Lyotard (1979)
‘It is widely accepted that knowledge has become the principle force of
production over the last few decades; this has already had a noticeable
effect on the composition of the work force of the most highly developed countries ... In the post-industrial and post-modern age, science
will maintain and no doubt strengthen its pre-eminence in the arsenal of
productive capacities of the nation-states.’
Jean-François Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition, page 5.
‘[The post-modern] … orientation corresponds to the course that the
evolution of social interaction is currently taking; the temporary contract
is in practice supplanting permanent institutions in the professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family, and international domains, as well as in
political affairs. This evolution is of course ambiguous: the temporary
contract is favoured by the system due to its greater flexibility, lower
cost, and the creative turmoil of its accompanying motivations … We
should be happy that the tendency toward the temporary contract is
ambiguous …This bears witness to the existence of another goal with
the system: knowledge of [multiple] language games as such and the
decision to assume responsibility for their rules and effects. …
We are … in a position to understand how the computerisation of
society affects this problematic. It could become the “dream” instrument
for controlling and regulating the market system, extended to include
The Classes of the New
081
knowledge itself and governed exclusively by the performativity principle. … But it could also aid groups discussing metaprescriptives by
supplying them with the information which they usually lack for making
knowledgeable decisions. The line to follow for the second of these two
paths is, in principle, quite simple: give the public free access to the
[computer] memory and data banks.’
Jean-François Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition, pages 66-67.
The Socialised Workers – Antonio Negri (1980)
‘This [new] proletariat is fully social … and it has extended the contradiction/antagonism against capitalist accumulation of profit from the
factory area to the whole of society. It has been responsible for upsetting and destabilising the whole circuit from production to reproduction.
And it has developed the contradiction of the social conditions of the
reproduction of labour-power as an obstacle against capital accumulation. … It has above all represented a new quality of labour. This … represents a mobile sort of labour force, both horizontally and vertically, a
labour-power which is abstract, and which projects new needs. … For
this … proletariat, wage gains went hand in hand with advances in the
social wage and the conquest of free time.’
Antonio Negri, ‘The Crisis of the Crisis-State’, page 183.
‘… when the whole of life becomes production, capitalist time measures
only that which it directly commands. And socialised labour-power tends
to unloose itself from command, insofar as it proposes a life-alternative
– and thus projects a different time for its own existence, both in the
present and in the future. When all life-time becomes production-time,
who measures whom? The two conceptions of time and life come into
direct conflict in a separation which becomes increasingly deep and
rigidly structured.’
Antonio Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project’, page 220.
‘The … [historical] process, concomitant with those of individual marginalisation and collective socialisation, has brought about a conjunc082
The Class of the New
tion between (a) the refusal of labour-power to make itself available as
a commodity (… the effect of individual marginalisation and the collapse
of any relationship between “job” and “skill”) and (b) the socialisation
of this mode of class behaviour.’
Antonio Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project’, page 223.
The White-Collar Proletarians – Michael Kelly (1980)
‘Market Situation.
Income proletarianisation … the incomes of white-collar workers
have fallen relatively or absolutely [compared] to those of manual
workers …
Different sources of income … the incomes of non-manual workers
are derived increasingly from their own productive labour and less
from the productive labour of others …
Feminisation … the white-collar workforce is becoming increasingly feminine in character …
Social origin … the white-collar labour force is becoming increasingly “proletarian” in origin as children of manual workers move into
non-manual occupations …
Work Situation
Bureaucratisation … as large-scale organisations become increasingly big, they become increasingly bureaucratic and the employee
loses his identity as a specialist or professional … 
Mechanisation and automation … with changes in the division of
labour brought about by technological advances, the functions and
nature of clerical work have changed, producing routinisation and
repetitiveness … 
Michael Kelly, White-Collar Proletarians, page 23.
The Nomads – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980)
‘The more the worldwide [capitalist] axiomatic installs high industry
and highly industrialised agriculture at the periphery [of the world
economy], provisionally reserving for the centre so-called post-indusThe Classes of the New
083
trial activities (automation, electronics, information technologies, the
conquest of space, overarmament, etc.), the more it installs peripheral zones of underdevelopment inside the centre, internal Third Worlds,
internal Souths. “Masses” of the population are abandoned to erratic
work (subcontracting, temporary work, or work in the underground
economy), and their official subsistence is assured only by State allocations and wages subject to interruption. … In enslavement and the
central dominance of constant capital … labour seems to have splintered into two directions: intensive surplus labour that no longer even
takes the route of labour, and extensive labour that has become erratic
and floating. … The opposition between the [capitalist] axiomatic and
the [nomadic] flows it does not succeed in mastering becomes all the
more accentuated.’
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, page 469.
‘We can say of the nomads … they do not move. They are nomads by
dint of not moving, not migrating, of holding a smooth space that they
refuse to leave … To think is to voyage … It is not a question of returning to … the ancient nomads. The confrontation between the smooth
[nomad space] and the striated [space of the State apparatus is] … under
way today, running in the most varied directions.’
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, page 482.
The Prosumers – Alvin & Heidi Toffler (1980)
‘Above all, … Third Wave [post-industrial] civilisation begins to heal
the historic breach between producer and consumer, giving rise to the
“prosumer” economics of tomorrow. For this reason, among many, it
could – with some intelligent help from us – turn out to be the first truly
human civilisation in recorded history.’
Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, pages 24-25.
‘Many of the same electronic devices we will use in the home to do
work for pay will also make it possible to produce goods or services for
our own use. In this system, the prosumer, who dominated in First Wave
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The Class of the New
[agricultural] societies, is brought back into the centre of economic
action – but on a Third Wave [post-industrial], high-technology basis.’
Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, page 286.
‘Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban
or even apartment agriculture, given cheap home tools for working
plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given
free technical advice available over the telephone lines with instructions perhaps flickering on the TV or computer screen, it becomes
possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less
monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than
those that typified Second Wave [industrial] civilisation.’
Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, pages 289-290.
The Post-Industrial Proletarians – André Gorz (1980)
‘This … [social group] encompasses all those who have been expelled
from production by the abolition of work, or whose capacities are underemployed as a result of the industrialisation (in this case, the automation and computerisation) of intellectual work.’
André Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, page 68.
‘[The] … traditional working class is now no more than a privileged
minority. The majority of the population now belongs to the post-industrial neo-proletariat which, with no job security or definite class identity,
fills the area of probationary, contracted, casual, temporary and part-time
employment. In the not too distant future, jobs such as these will be largely
eliminated by automation. Even now, their … requirements bear little
relation to the knowledge and skills offered by schools and universities.
The neo-proletariat is generally over-qualified for the jobs it finds.’
André Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, page 69.
‘Whether they work in a bank, the civil service, a cleaning agency or
a factory, neo-proletarians are basically non-workers temporarily doing
The Classes of the New
085
something that means nothing to them. They do “any old thing”
which “anyone” can do, provisionally engaged in temporary and
meaningless work.’
André Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, pages 70-71.
The Entrepreneurs – George Gilder (1981)
‘Entrepreneurial learning is of a deeper kind than is taught in schools,
or acquired in the controlled experiments of social or physical
science, or gained in the experience of socialist economies. For
entrepreneurial experiments are also adventures, with the future
livelihood of the investor at stake. He participates with a heightened consciousness and passion and an alertness and diligence that
greatly enhance his experience of learning. The experiment may
reach its highest possibilities, and its crises and surprises may be
exploited to the utmost.’
George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty, page 35.
‘Material progress is ineluctably elitist: it makes the rich richer and
increases their number, exalting the few extraordinary men who
can produce wealth over the democratic masses who consume it.
Material progress depends upon the expansion of opportunity:
geniuses identify themselves chiefly through their works rather by
their inheritance or test scores. Material progress is difficult: it
requires from its protagonists long years of diligence and sacrifice,
devotion and risk that can be elicited only with high rewards, not
the “average return on capital.” … Material progress is inimical to
scientific economics: it cannot be explained or foreseen in mechanistic or mathematical terms.’
George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty, page 273.
‘Some are scientists, some are artists, some are craftsmen; most are
in business. … They are not always kind or temperate, rarely elegant
or tall, only occasionally glib or manifestly leaders of men. … As
immigrants, many deliberately seek an orphan’s fate, and toil to
launch a dynasty. … Mostly outcasts, exiles, mother’s boys, rejects,
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The Class of the New
warriors, they learn early the lessons of life, the knowledge of pain,
the ecstasy of struggle. … 
The so-called means of production are impotent to generate wealth
and progress without the creative men of production, the entrepreneurs.’
George Gilder, The Spirit of Enterprise, pages 17-19.
‘In business as in art, the individual vision prevails over the corporate leviathan; the small company … confounds the industrial policy;
the entrepreneur dominates the hierarch. The hubristic determinisms
of the academy and the state – the secular monoliths of science and
planning, the imperial sovereigns of force and finance – give way
to one man working in the corner of a lab or a library.’
George Gilder, The Spirit of Enterprise, page 243.
The Venture Capitalists – John Naisbitt (1982)
‘American entrepreneurship has gotten a big boost in recent years
with the abrupt increase in venture-capital money. … What was
behind the impressive upsurge in venture capital? For one thing,
small business can thank [US] government policy – in 1978, the
capital-gains tax was reduced from 49 to 28 percent. That certainly helped. …
But there are other reasons behind the new abundance in
venture capital: More and more people are learning that entrepreneurship pays off. Sophisticated venture capitalists are willing to
take a calculated risk in return for a possible 20 to 25 percent return.
When stock market returns average below 10 percent and even
money-market funds can barely keep pace with inflation, backing
new businesses starts to look more attractive. …
Furthermore, venture capitalists can now choose from a great
number of more sophisticated, more experienced entrepreneurs who
are better managers and whose ideas are well thought-out.
All totalled, entrepreneurial self-help is an idea whose time
has come again, and the 1970s were its debut decade.’
John Naisbitt, Megatrends, pages 147-148.
The Classes of the New
087
The Hackers – Steven Levy (1984)
‘[The] … hackers – those computer programmers and designers who
regard computing as the most important thing in the world – … were
adventurers, visionaries, risk-takers, artists … and the ones who most
clearly saw why the computer was truly a revolutionary tool. … As I
talked to these digital explorers … I found a common element … It was
a philosophy of sharing, openness, decentralisation, and getting your
hands on machines at all costs – to improve the machine, to improve the
world. This Hacker Ethic is their gift to us: something with value even
to those of us with no interest at all in computers.’
Steven Levy, Hackers, page 7.
‘The people in [the] Homebrew [Computer Club] were a mélange of
professionals too passionate to leave computing at their jobs, amateurs
transfixed by the possibilities of technology, and techno-cultural guerrillas devoted to overthrowing an oppressive society in which government, business, and especially IBM had relegated computers to a despised
Priesthood [of authorised users].’
Steven Levy, Hackers, page 205.
The Cyborgs – Donna Haraway (1985)
‘The “New Industrial Revolution” is producing a new world-wide working
class, as well as new sexualities and ethnicities. The extreme mobility
of capital and the emerging international division of labour are intertwined with the emergence of new collectivities, and the weakening of
familiar groupings. … In the prototypical Silicon Valley, many women’s
lives have been structured around employment in electronics-dependent jobs, and their intimate realities include serial heterosexual monogamy,
negotiating childcare, distance from extended kin or most other forms
of traditional community, a high likelihood of loneliness and extreme
economic vulnerability as they age. The ethnic and racial diversity of
women in Silicon Valley structures a microcosm of conflicting differences in culture, family, religion, education, and language.’
Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, page 166.
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The Class of the New
‘”Networking” is both a feminist practice and a multinational corporate strategy – weaving is for oppositional cyborgs.’
Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, page 170.
‘Cyborg imagery … is a dream not of a common language, but of a
powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist
speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the super-savers
of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines,
identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are
bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.’
Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, page 181.
The Symbolic Analysts – Robert Reich (1991)
‘Included in this category are the problem-solving, [problem]-identifying, and [strategic-]brokering of many people who call themselves research scientists, design engineers, software engineers, civil
engineers, biotechnology engineers, sound engineers, public relations executives, investment bankers, lawyers, real estate developers, and even a few creative accountants. Also included is much of
the work done by management consultants, financial consultants,
tax consultants, energy consultants, agricultural consultants, armaments consultants, architectural consultants, management information specialists, organisation development specialists, strategic
planners, corporate headhunters, and systems analysts. Also: advertising executives and marketing strategists, art directors, architects,
cinematographers, film editors, production designers, publishers,
writers and editors, journalists, musicians, television and film producers, and even university professors.
Symbolic analysts solve, identify, and broker problems by
manipulating symbols. They simplify reality into abstract images
that can be rearranged, juggled, experimented with, communicated to other specialists, and then, eventually, transformed back into
reality. The manipulations are done with analytical tools, sharpened
by experience. The tools may be mathematical algorithms, legal
arguments, financial gimmicks, scientific principles, psychologiThe Classes of the New
089
cal insights about how to persuade or to amuse, systems of induction or deduction, or any other set of techniques for doing conceptual puzzles.’
Robert Reich, The Work of Nations, pages 177-178.
The Virtual Class – Arthur Kroker and Michael
Weinstein (1994) 
‘The economic base of the virtual class is the entire communications
industry – everywhere it reaches. … The most complete representative of the virtual class is the visionary capitalist who is constituted by
all of its contradictions and who, therefore, secretes its ideological
hype. The rest of the class tends to split the contradictions: the visionless-cynical-business capitalists and the perhaps visionary, perhaps
skill-orientated, perhaps indifferent techno-intelligentsia of cognitive
scientists, engineers, computer scientists, videogame developers, and
all the other communication specialists, ranged in hierarchies, but all
dependent for their economic support on the drive to virtualisation.
Whatever contradictions there are within the virtual class – that is, the
contradictions stemming from the confrontation of bourgeois and proletarian – the class as a whole supports the drive into cyberspace through
the wired world.’
Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein, Data Trash, page 15.
‘The virtual class wants to appropriate emergent technologies for
purposes of authoritarian political control over cyberspace. It wants
to drag technotopia back to the age of the primitive politics of predatory capitalism.’
Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein, Data Trash, page 16.
The Netizens – Michael & Ronda Hauben (1995)
‘My research demonstrated that there were people active as members
of the network, which the words net citizen did not precisely represent. The word citizen suggests a geographic or national definition of
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The Class of the New
social membership. The word Netizen reflects the new non-geographically based social membership. …
This definition is used to describe people who care about Usenet
and the bigger Net and work towards building the [system’s] cooperative and collective nature which benefits the larger world. … As more
and more people join the online community and contribute towards
the nurturing of the Net and toward the development of a great shared
social wealth, the ideas and values of Netizenship spread.’
Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens, pages x-xi.
The Digerati – John Brockman (1996)
‘The “digerati” … are a cyber elite … they constitute a critical mass
of doers, thinkers, and writers, connected in ways they may not even
appreciate, who have a tremendous influence on the emerging communication revolution surrounding the growth of the Internet and the
World Wide Web. Although they all happen to be American, their activities have a worldwide impact.’
John Brockman, Digerati, page xxxi.
‘Many of the brightest people in recent years have gone into computing (hardware, networking, software, Internet, convergence media).
The cutting edge is exploring new communications, such as the World
Wide Web, through the use of computers … the digerati … (as well as
others) … are driving this revolution. … This … group of people …
are reinventing culture and civilisation.’
John Brockman, Digerati, page xxxii.
The Multipreneurs – Tom Gorman (1996)
‘To become a multipreneur you must realise that your economic value
depends upon your ability to make or save money for others and your
ability to add value to processes. Your economic value will not depend
upon your position, seniority or connections. You must therefore train
yourself to see opportunities where others see problems, dislocations,
The Classes of the New
091
and barriers. You must choose your assignments on the basis of the
skills you can learn as well as those you can apply. You must develop
your interpersonal and technological skills to a high level so that
you can make things happen rather than hope they will happen.’
Tom Gorman, Multipreneuring, pages 11-12.
‘In multipreneuring you develop a portfolio of jobs, projects, businesses, and income streams as well as a portfolio of knowledge,
skills, contacts, and credentials. Like an investor, you must actively
manage your portfolio. This entails balancing risks and returns,
desires and obligations, the future and the present. So your employment portfolio should include … movement toward your deepest
dreams as an artist, athlete or public servant or world traveller, as
well as the work that pays the bills (may the two someday be one
for you). It should include skill-[building], contact-[building], and
knowledge-building activities for your next career move and the
move after that, as well as activities that add high value to your
current situation.’
Tom Gorman, Multipreneuring, page 258.
The Immaterial Labourers – Maurizio Lazzarato
(1996)
‘All the characteristics of the post-industrial economy … are heightened within the form of “immaterial” production properly defined:
audiovisual production, advertising, fashion, the production of
software, photography, cultural activities, etc.
The activities … of immaterial labour … are the result of a
synthesis of various types of savoir-faire (those of intellectual activities, as regards the cultural-informational content; those of manual
activities for the ability to put together creativity, imagination and
technical and manual labour; and that of entrepreneurial activities
for that capacity of management of their social relations and of
structuration of the social cooperation of which they are a part).’
Maurizio Lazzarato, ‘General Intellect’, page 2. 
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The Class of the New
‘It is immaterial labour which continually innovates the form and the
conditions of communication (and thus of work and consumption). It
gives form and materialises needs, images, the tastes of consumers and
these products become in their turn powerful producers of needs, of
images and of tastes.’
Maurizio Lazzarato, ‘General Intellect’, page 3.
‘Waged labour and direct subjugation (to organisation) are no longer
the principle form of the contractual relationship between capitalist
and worker; polymorphous autonomous work emerges as the dominant
form, a kind of “intellectual worker” who is himself an entrepreneur,
inserted within a market that is mobile and within networks that are
changeable in time and space.’
Maurizio Lazzarato, ‘General Intellect’, page 4.
The Digital Artisans – Richard Barbrook and Pit
Schultz (1997)
‘For those of us who want to be truly creative in hypermedia and computing, the only practical solution is to become digital artisans. The
rapid spread of personal computing and now the Net are the technological expressions of this desire for autonomous work. Escaping from
the petty controls of the shopfloor and the office, we can rediscover
the individual independence enjoyed by craftspeople during protoindustrialism. … We create virtual artifacts for money and for fun. We
work both in the money-commodity economy and in the gift economy
of the Net. When we take a contract, we are happy to earn enough to
pay for our necessities and luxuries through our labours as digital
artisans. At the same time, we also enjoy exercising our abilities for
our own amusement and for the wider community. Whether working
for money or for fun, we always take pride in our craft skills. We take
pleasure in pushing the cultural and technical limits as far forward as
possible. We are the pioneers of the modern.’
Richard Barbrook and Pit Schultz, ‘The Digital Artisans Manifesto’,
page 53.
The Classes of the New
093
The Digital Citizen – Jon Katz (1997)
‘… there is indeed a distinct group of Digital Citizens. … they’re
knowledgeable, tolerant, civic-minded, and radically committed to
change. Profoundly optimistic about the future, they’re convinced
that technology is a force for good and that our free-market economy
functions as a powerful engine of progress. … they … view our
existing political system positively, even patriotically. … The
Internet … encompasses many of the most informed and participatory citizens we have ever had or are likely to have. … [The] profile
of this rising group … [is] based on … [the people who] use email
and … have access to a laptop, a cell phone, a beeper and a home
computer.’
Jon Katz, ‘The Digital Citizen’, page 71.
The Swarm Capitalists – Kevin Kelly (1998)
‘The internet model has many lessons for the new economy but
perhaps the most important is its embrace of dumb swarm power.
The aim of swarm power is superior performance in a turbulent
environment. When things happen fast and furious, they tend to
route around central control. By interlinking many simple parts into
a loose confederation, control devolves from the centre to the lowest
or outermost points which collectively keep things on course.’
Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, page 16.
‘Numerous small things connected together into a network generate
tremendous power. But this swarm power will need some kind of
minimal governance from the top to maximise its usefulness.
Appropriate oversight depends upon the network. In a firm, leadership is supervision; in social networks, government; in technical
networks; standards and codes.’
Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, page 18.
‘The future of technology is networks. Networks large, wide, deep,
and fast. Electrified networks of all types will cover our planet and
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The Class of the New
their complex nodes will shape our economy and colour our lives.
… Those who obey the logic of the net, and who understand that
we are entering into a realm with new rules, will have a keen advantage in the new economy.’
Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, page 160.
The New Independents – Charlie Leadbeater and
Kate Oakley (1999)
‘The [New] Independents … are a driving force of … [economic]
growth. A large and growing share of employment in … [the
creative] industries is accounted for by the self-employed, freelancers and micro-businesses. These new Independents are often
producers, designers, retailers and promoters all at the same time.
They do not fit into neat categories. The Independents thrive on
informal networks through which they organize work, often employing friends and former classmates. Although some are ambitious
entrepreneurs, many want their businesses to stay small because
they want to retain their independence and their focus on their creativity. Yet that does not mean they see themselves as artists who
deserve public subsidy. They want to make their own way in the
market. They have few tangible assets other than a couple of computers. They usually work from home or from nondescript and
often run-down workshops. Their main assets are their creativity,
skill, ingenuity and imagination.’
Charlie Leadbeater and Kate Oakley, The Independents, page 11.
‘They blur the demarcation line between work and non-work. As
consumption and leisure are inputs into the creation of cultural
products, the corollary is that periods not at work – leisure, relaxation, entertainment – can be as important as periods at work hunched
over a computer terminal. Both contribute to delivering a creative
product. Many of these independents say their best ideas come to
them when they are not at work.’
Charlie Leadbeater and Kate Oakley, The Independents, page 24.
The Classes of the New
095
The Elancers – Helen Wilkinson (1999)
‘More and more organisations are out-sourcing work, and are reliant
on a new breed of flexible, independent workers, otherwise known as
the elancer. Elancers lack the support structures of a typical head office
environment and are reliant on the Internet to organize their work and
communicate with colleagues. They tend to be self-employed, mobile
consultants, freelancers, contractors, even remote workers for large
organisations. … Elancers are change agents, challenging traditional
ways of working with their unique energy and spirit – something we
call elancentricity. … Join this exciting new community and help map
the new terrain that is the elancescape.’
Elancentric, ‘Project Description’.
The Multitude – Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
(2000)
‘With the computerisation of production today … the heterogeneity of
concrete labour has tended to be reduced, and the worker is increasingly further removed from the object of his or her labour. The labour
of computerised tailoring and the labour of computerised weaving may
involve exactly the same concrete practices – that is, manipulation of
symbols and information. … The computer proposes itself … as the
universal tool … through which all activities might pass. Through the
computerisation of production, then, labour tends towards the position
of abstract labour.’
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, page 292.
‘Immaterial labour immediately involves social interaction and cooperation. In other words, the cooperative aspect of immaterial labour is
not imposed or organised from the outside, as it was in previous forms
of labour, but rather, cooperation is completely immanent to the labouring activity itself. … Today productivity, wealth, and the creation of
social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational, and affective networks.’
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, page 294.
096
The Class of the New
‘The mode of production of the multitude reappropriates wealth from
capital and also constructs new wealth, articulated with the powers
of science and social knowledge through cooperation. …. Private
property of the means of production today, in the era of the hegemony
of cooperative and immaterial labour, is only a putrid and tyrannical
obsolescence. The tools of production tend to be recomposed in collective subjectivity and in the collective intelligence and affect of the
workers; entrepreneurship tends to be organised by the cooperation
of subjects in [the] general intellect. … The multitude is biopolitical
self-organisation.’
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, pages 410-411.
The New Barbarians – Ian Angell (2000)
‘Make way for the barbarians (old and new), the opportunists awaiting
their chance to hijack the future, and form a new order. … They are
the press and media barons, the market manipulators, international
businesspeople, international terrorists, ‘downsized’ states, criminal
conspiracies, drugs barons, neo-colonialist non-governmental organisations, economic mercenaries, financial plutocrats, religious and political fundamentalists, amoral individualists: the new you and the new
me? They are the power brokers, now cut free from the constraints of
national boundaries by the new communication technologies. … The
barbarians know that their time is coming, for natural selection is on
their side; history is on their side.’
Ian Angell, The New Barbarian Manifesto, page 26.
The Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians) – David Brooks
(2000)
‘In this era, ideas and knowledge are at least as vital to economic success
as natural resources and finance capital. … So the people who thrive
in this period are the ones who can turn ideas and emotions into products.
These are highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian
world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of ambition
and worldly success. The members of the new information age elite
The Classes of the New
097
are bourgeois bohemians. Or, to take the first two letters of each word,
they are Bobos.’
David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise, pages 10-11.
‘Work … becomes a vocation, a calling, a metier. And the weird thing
is that when employees start thinking like artists and activists, they
actually work harder for the company. … if work is a form of selfexpression or a social mission, then you never want to stop. You are
driven by a relentless urge to grow, to learn, to feel more alive.’
David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise, page 135.
‘Bobo businesspeople have created a corporate style attuned to the
information age, with its emphasis on creativity, flat hierarchies, flexibility and open expression. It’s simply impossible to argue with the
unparalleled success of America’s information age industries over the
past decade.’
David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise, page 269.
The Cognitariat – Franco Bifo Berardi (2001)
MF: In your new book, ‘The Factory of Unhappiness’ you describe
a class formation, the ‘cognitariat’– a conflation of cognitive worker
and proletarian ... You’ve also previously used the idea of the ‘Virtual
Class’. What are the qualities of the cognitariat and how might they
be distinguished from this slightly higher strata depicted by Kroker
and Weinstein in Data Trash?
Bifo: I like to refer to the concept of virtual class, which is a class
that does not actually exist. It is only the abstraction of the fractal
ocean of productive micro-actions of the cognitive workers. It is a
useful concept, but it does not comprehend the existence (social
and bodily) of those people who perform virtual tasks. But the social
existence of virtual workers is not virtual, the sensual body of the
virtual worker is not virtual. So I prefer to speak about cognitive
proletariat (cognitariat) in order to emphasise the material (I mean
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The Class of the New
physical, psychological, neurological) disease of the workers
involved in the net-economy.
Matthew Fuller, ‘Bifo/Berardi, interview on ‘The Factory of
Unhappiness’’. 
The Free Agents – Daniel Pink (2001)
‘Legions of Americans, and increasingly citizens of other countries as
well, are abandoning one of the Industrial Revolution’s most enduring
legacies – the “job” – and forging new ways to work. They’re becoming
self-employed knowledge workers, proprietors of home-based businesses, temps and permatemps, freelancers and e-lancers, independent contractors and independent professionals, micropreneurs and infopreneurs,
part-time consultants, interim executives, on-call troubleshooters, and
full-time soloists. And many others who hold what are still nominally
“jobs” are doing so under terms closer in spirit to free agency than traditional employment. They’re telecommuting. They’re hopping from
company to company. They’re forming ventures which are legally their
employers, but whose prospects depend largely on their own individual
efforts. And they’re swapping, or being forced to swap, steady salaries
for pay-for-performance agreements that compensate them in commissions, stock options and bonuses. … to truly understand where the
economy is heading, you need to get to know free agents – who they are,
what they do, how they work, and why they’ve made this choice.’
Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation, page 11.
‘Diversification – that is, an independent worker spreading her risk across
a portfolio of projects, clients, skills, and customers – is the best hedging
strategy. … Today anyone who holds a job and isn’t looking for a side
gig – or crafting a business plan, writing a screen play, or setting up shop
on eBay – is out of touch. Moonlighting is a way to diversify your human
capital investments – and hedge against the risk of your company collapsing or your job disappearing. … In some sense, we’re all moonlighters, because in every sense, we’re all risk managers.’
Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation, page 93.
The Classes of the New
099
The Cybertariat – Ursula Huws (2001)
‘… across the … workforce an extraordinary and unprecedented convergence has been taking place. From tele-sales staff to typesetters, from
indexers to insurance underwriters, from librarians to ledger clerks, from
planning inspectors to pattern-cutters, a large and increasing proportion
of daily work time is spent identically: sitting with one hand poised over
a keyboard and the other dancing back and forth from keys to mouse.
Facing these workers on the screen, framed in pseudo bas relief, are ugly
grey squares labelled, in whatever the local language, “File”, “Edit”,
“View”, “Tools”, “Format”, “Window”, or “Help”, the ghastly spoor of
some aesthetically challenged employee of Microsoft of the late 1980s.’
Ursula Huws, The Making of a Cybertariat, page 165.
‘The fact that skills are now generic has made it easier to skip laterally
from job to job, company to company, industry to industry. But by the
same token each worker has also become more easily dispensable, more
easily replaceable; thus the new opportunities also constitute new threats.
The combination of this new occupational mobility with the huge expansion of the potential labour pool has also made it much more difficult to
build stable group identities based on shared skills. … Any investment
of time and effort in learning a new software package may be wiped out
in a matter of months by the launch of a replacement. … At the head
office, e-mail brings senior and junior members of staff into direct communication with one another, cutting out middle layers of management,
and a strange new camaraderie develops between colleagues of different grades as one shows the other how to eliminate a virus, or unzip an
obstinate attachment. But simultaneously an unbridgeable gulf may have
opened up between these same head office staff and their fellow employees at a remote call centre, or data-processing site.’
Ursula Huws, The Making of a Cybertariat, pages 166-167.
The Netocracy – Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist
(2002)
‘In … [the informational society] a merciless power structure of networks
is constructed, in which the most exclusive network, to which only the
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The Class of the New
uppermost netocratic elite has access, is at the top. Family names
mean nothing here, unlike under feudalism. Wealth means nothing
here, unlike under capitalism. The decisive factor governing where
in the hierarchy an individual ends up is instead his or her attentionality: their access to and capacity to absorb, sort, overview, generate
the necessary attention for and share valuable information. …
It is, paradoxically, the netocrats’ ability to think beyond their
own ego, to build their identity on membership of a group instead
of individualism, on electronic tribalism instead of mass-mediated
self-assertion, that leads to their understanding and being in control
of the new world that is developing. … Networking itself, the
feedback loop and social intelligence are at the very heart of the
netocracy.’
Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist, Netocracy, pages 117-118.
The Precariat – Frassanito Network (2002)
‘Precarious work refers to all possible forms of insecure, non-guaranteed flexible exploitation: from illegalised, seasonal and temporary employment to homework, flex-[work] and temp-work, to subcontractors, freelancers, or so-called self-employed persons.
Frassanito Network, ‘Precarious, Precarisation, Precariat?’, page
60.
‘Precariat … is used as a combative self-description in order to
emphasise the subjective and utopian aspects of precarisation.
Through the mass refusal of gender roles, of factory work, and of
the command of labour over life … it is possible to speak indeed of
flexibilisation from below. Precarisation is not simply an invention
of the command centres of capitalism: it is also a reaction to the
insurgency and new mobility of living labour, and in this sense it
can be understood as the attempt to recapture manifold struggles
and refusals in order to establish new conditions of [the] exploitation of labour and valorisation of capital.’
Frassanito Network, ‘Precarious, Precarisation, Precariat?’, page 61.
The Classes of the New
101
The Creative Class – Richard Florida (2002)
‘This young man [with spiked multi-coloured hair, full-body tattoos,
and multiple piercings in his ears] and his lifestyle proclivities represent a profound new force in the economy and life of America. He is
a member of what I call the creative class: a fast-growing, highly
educated, and well-paid segment of the workforce on whose efforts
corporate profits and economic growth increasingly depend. Members
of the creative class do a wide variety of work in a wide variety of
industries – from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance,
high-end manufacturing to the arts. They do not consciously think of
themselves as a class. Yet they share a common ethos that values creativity, individuality, difference, and merit.
More and more businesses understand that ethos and are making
the adaptations necessary to attract and retain creative class employees – everything from relaxed dress codes, flexible schedules, and
new work rules in the office to hiring recruiters who throw Frisbees.
Most civic leaders, however, have failed to understand that what is
true for corporations is also true for cities and regions: Places that
succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those
that fail don’t.’
Richard Florida, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’, pages 3-4.
‘The distinguishing characteristic of the Creative Class is that its
members engage in work whose function is to “create meaningful new
forms.” I define the Creative Class as consisting of two components.
The Super-Creative Core of this new class includes scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers,
actors, designers, and architects, as well as the thought leadership of
modern society: nonfiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank
researchers, analysts, and other opinion-makers. ... I define the highest
order of creative work as producing new forms or designs that are
readily transferable and widely useful – such as designing a product
that can be widely made, sold and used; coming up with a theorem or
strategy that can be applied in many cases; or composing music that
can be performed again and again. …
Beyond this core group, the Creative Class also includes “creative
professionals” who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive indus102
The Class of the New
tries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and healthcare professions, and business management. These people engage in
creative problem-solving, drawing on complex bodies of knowledge
to solve specific problems. Doing so typically requires a high degree
of formal education and thus a high level of human capital. People who
do this kind of work … are required to … think on their own. They
apply or combine standard approaches in unique ways to fit the situation, exercise a great deal of judgment, perhaps try something radically new from time to time. …
Much the same is true of the growing number of technicians and
others who apply complex bodies of knowledge to working with
physical materials. … In fields such as medicine and scientific research,
technicians are taking on increased responsibility to interpret their work
and make decisions, blurring the old distinction between white-collar
work (done by decision-makers) and blue-collar work (done by those
who follow orders). …
Everywhere we look, creativity is increasingly valued. Firms and
organisations value it for the results that it can produce and individuals value it as a route to self-expression and job satisfaction. Bottom
line: As creativity becomes more valued, the Creative Class grows.’
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, pages 68-71.
The Pro-Ams – Charlie Leadbeater and Paul Miller
(2004)
‘… in the last two decades a new breed of amateur has emerged: the
Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards. … The ProAms are knowledgeable, educated, committed and networked, by new
technology. The twentieth century was shaped by large hierarchical
organisations with professionals at the top. Pro-Ams are creating new,
distributed organisational models that will be innovative, adaptive and
low-cost.’
Charlie Leadbeater and Paul Miller, The Pro-Am Revolution, page 12.
‘Pro-Ams are not professionals. They do not see themselves that way.
They do not earn more than 50 percent of their income from their ProThe Classes of the New
103
Am activities. … Yet to call Pro-Ams amateurs is also misleading. …
Many of the defining features of professionalism also apply to ProAms: they have a strong sense of vocation; they use recognised public
standards to assess performance and formally validate skills; they form
self-regulating communities, which provide people with a sense of
community and belonging; they produce non-commodity products and
services; they are well versed in a body of knowledge and skill, which
carries with it a sense of tradition and identity.’
Charlie Leadbeater and Paul Miller, The Pro-Am Revolution, page 22.
‘The relationship between amateurs and professional is becoming more
fluid and dynamic. It is not a zero-sum game. Professionals and ProAms can grow together.
Pro-Ams work at their leisure, regard consumption as a productive
activity and set professional standards to judge their amateur efforts.’
Charlie Leadbeater and Paul Miller, The Pro-Am Revolution, page 23.
104
The Class of the New
105
106
Michel Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US experience, Verso,
London 1979.
Ian Angell, The New Barbarian Manifesto: how to survive the information age, Kogan
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Aristotle, The Politics, Penguin, London 1962.
Stanley Aronowitz, ‘The Professional-Managerial Class or Middle Strata’ in Pat Walker
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Aufheben, ‘Keep on Smiling: questions on immaterial labour’, Aufheben, Number 14,
pages 23-44.
Richard Barbrook, ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’, First Monday, Number 12, Volume 3,
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