ABSTRACT
Today it seems remarkable that only 40 years ago the American social scientist C. Wright Mills could claim that “there is no probability of the new middle classes forming or inaugurating or leading any political movement” (Mills 1951). Rather, it is now widely believed that the middle classes are the basis of the only significant class conflicts remaining, a view that finds recent expression in Berger’s observation that, “Contemporary Western societies are characterised by a protracted conflict between two classes, the old middle class (occupied in the production and distribution of material goods and services) and a new middle class (occupied in the production and distribution of symbolic knowledge)” (Berger 1987).
