Mingling in conservative circles I’ve noticed that some conservatives have an aversion to any references to class, as if class is the ideological equivalent of Voldemort, the concept which should not be named.  Class is a taboo.

Of course the conservative movement in America was vehemently anti-Communist.  In fact, it was the glue that held the libertarians in coalition with conservatives under the stewardship of William F. Buckley, Jr.

All of Marxism is predicated on class and class conflict.  It is reasonable to assume that the class taboo among conservatives is that they don’t want to validate a single element of Marxism.

This is taboo is really irrational.  Class does not have to be ontologically real, as it is in Marxism, to be useful.  Typologies, for example, are descriptive generalizations that involve set membership.  Based on some criterion, an observation may be placed in or out of a set.  Then based on those sets, you can make causal claims backed up by associations between set membership and an outcome.  It is fundamental to making generalizable claims about social phenomena.  

The conservative movement wasn’t always averse to using class as a concept.  For example, James Burnham, who would become an editor for National Review magazine, the house organ of movement conservatism, made much of the concept of the managerial classes in industry and government.  Neoliberal economists work with models using class, such as income quintiles, all the time.

Conservatives rightly shun bankrupt Marxist concepts like the labor theory of value and Marx’s teleological class conflict, but it is silly to shun the use of class typologically.