workers emerged who had to sell their labor for a salary, but who
also seemed qualitatively different from the manual working class.
Max Weber gave scholars a useful theoretical tool for understand-
ing these new strata of workers with the concepts of status group
and bureaucracy.

Drawing on the Weberian tradition, theorists like Daniel Bell
( 1973) wrote about the coming of postindustrial society. He and
others observed that the development of capitalism was leading
not to the immiseration of the masses but to an end to the class
struggle that Marx said was endemic to capitalism. Bell and other
postindustrial theorists ( Block and Hirschhorn, 1979; Drucker,
1978; Gouldner, 1982) argued that advanced capitalist societies
are no longer dependent on the manufactured products of industrial
labor. Instead we have become a society of knowledge producers:
The most important product we produce today is the specialized
knowledge that goes into management, administration, education,
and technological innovation. The people who are responsible for
producing this knowledge, or whose jobs require the expertise of
this knowledge, are often referred to as "knowledge producers" or
the "knowledge class." I call them "knowledge controllers."

Twentieth-century shifts in the global economy have altered the
class structure, changed the nature of political coalitions, and
added new dimensions to the political--ideological forces in con-
temporary society. A key question that has arisen with these
changes is, What is the role of the middle class--and particularly
the role of knowledge controllers--in social change? Although this
question had always been of concern to social scientists, it began
to take on new meaning as the twentieth century progressed. Would
the new knowledge controllers use their skills and knowledge to
advance their own particular interests? Do those interests suggest
an alliance with the working class or with the capitalist class, or
will knowledge controllers attempt to constitute themselves as a
new class rising to power?

Recent class analysis has brought new insight to our understand-
ing of stratification within capitalist countries; new debates about
the nature of the class structure and class differences in political

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