Heartless World Revisited: Christopher Lasch's Parting Polemic Against the New Class

Abstract:     
This obituary essay on the final book by the cultural critic Christopher Lasch appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in 1995. The essay examines Lasch's final work, The Revolt of the Elites, against the rest of his body of writing. In particular, it examines Lasch's populism and stance against the increasingly transnatonal elites loosely characterized as the New Class. It discusses Lasch's emphasis on the family as the locus of what remained a significantly Freudian cultural discourse, and examines the ways in which Lasch saw the family as being taken apart and then reassembled according to the mores of the administrative state. The review essay concludes by asking to what extent Lasch was a communitarian, and what role he assigned elites in society.

Keywords: Christopher Lasch, communitarianism, New Class, social theory, family, cultural criticism, transnational elites, administrative state

JEL Classifications: Z10

Accepted Paper Series