ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents introduction to his approach to the problematique of the new middle class in the post-socialist Baltic states. He describes his own theory using the data of the Nordic-Baltic project. Many theories about the new middle class take into consideration only one form of mental labour, which means this class may be conceptualized as bureaucrats, technocrats or the intelligentsia, for instance. Maurice Zeitlin and Noam Chomsky leading the way, many critical sociologists understand the new class only as subservient to the old moneyed class which is held to retain power much as it always did. Gouldner’s idea of the new middle class as a speech community is very fundamental and worthy of further analysis. Gouldner asserts that the shared ideology of the new class is an ideology about discourse. The weakness of classes and other organizations of civil society may make Eastern Europe highly susceptible to a fluctuation of fashions and imagined communities.
