On 2012-10-26, at 8:03 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> My
> favored theme is the exponential growth of the technostructure -
> college educated professionals forming the cadres of Corporate America
> - and aligning themselves ideologically with the owners of capital
> rather than sellers of labor power (see my piece
> http://wsokol.blogspot.com/2012/01/day-after-neoliberalism.html ). I
> find it very disconcerting talking to these folks. There are very
> liberal on the outside (civil rights, peace, community, environment,
> yada yada yada) but they are businessmen at heart - infatuated with
> entrepreneurship, result being financially successful, running their
> own businesses focused on the "results," efficiency, technology. ...if you look what big
> social change took place shortly before that political change - during
> the 1960s - you will the exponential growth of college graduates, who
> might have been hippies in their college years but became the
> technostructure when they got married and had mortgages to pay.
> Without an ideological shift in this rapidly growing social class -
> from social welfare liberalism to entrepreneurial libertarianism - the
> 1% real elite would not be able to gain ideological and political
> hegemony it now holds.
This newest stratum of the working class is everywhere more politically differentiated than you suggest. The burgeoning public sector, schools, and health care industry typically attracted social science and humanities graduates who retained their liberal values and still form the core of whatever progressive left exists within the Democratic party and European social democracy. Polls have consistently shown them to be in favour of medicare, social security, government regulation of the economy and environment, and other features associated with the modern welfare state.
Your description of "entrepreneurial libertarians" mostly fits those who came out of the commerce and engineering departments and found more lucrative work in the higher reaches of the financial and high tech industries, which also underwent rapid growth. These latter, as you note, are often social liberals but also economic conservatives who aren't reliant on government programs and are consequently for lower taxes and less government spending.
What you overlook, however, is there are far fewer hedge fund managers and Silicon Valley millionaires who want to see Simpson-Bowles implemented immediately than there are teachers, nurses, government employees, and others, many of them active trade unionists, who can be expected to join whatever opposition is expressed to the cuts in social spending coming down the pike. We need look no farther for evidence than the large numbers of college educated professionals - both employed and unemployed - who have participated in the Occupy movement in the US and anti-austerity protests in Europe, belying your analysis that they tend to "align themselves ideologically with the owners of capital rather than the sellers of labor power".