I suspect his new book isn't a sharp zag into left-wing populism. Here is a review from pro-capitalist Bloomberg news with a critique of Murray's lament for the decline of white people:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9027846/The-rise-of-the-overclass.html
Murray’s second part details the declining hold of the “founders’ values” among lower-class white Americans. Murray identifies these values as industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity. He marshals an array of statistics to show that white Americans are having more babies out of wedlock; indeed, fewer are marrying at all. More are working part-time or have ceased working, independent of the economic climate. They have lost the industriousness that visitors to America since de Tocqueville identified as a national trait; they are perhaps even less honest. Murray all but avoids the fact that crime has been decreasing. Rather, he argues that personal bankruptcy, which has lost its stigma, has become a form of shoplifting—a socially acceptable way to steal.
While acknowledging that relative wages for manual labor are falling, he rejects the notion that this should discourage people from wanting such jobs. He is nostalgic for the era when nonworking men “were scorned as bums.” He thinks the rich have abdicated their responsibility to society by failing to preach that their lifestyle—married, gainful, law-abiding—is indeed superior. The politically correct will find his language obnoxious, or so Murray dearly hopes. Regardless, he builds a strong statistical case that among the lower socioeconomic rung, the bonds of community, work, family, and faith are fraying.
One question I wish he had taken up: Are the “new upper class” and the problems of the lower class related? Coming Apart treats them as separate. That gets to my frustration, which arises in the concluding section. Until then, Murray had merely diagnosed the cultural divide. Now he claims to know the causes. He blames the government and the “welfare state.” This section brims with political resentments; the carefully researched facts give way to bitter generalizations such as “only a government could spend so much money so inefficiently.” The author who tactfully, and wryly, demonstrated how little readers know about the lives of working-class whites, writes of “bureaucrats” with no appreciation, or even interest, in what they actually do. He does not explain why social cohesion should be less today when the Great Society experiment peaked in the 1960s. While blaming the debilitating effect on incentives of social programs, he fails to acknowledge the idea that most Americans probably feel less coddled, less protected today than in 1970.
Murray says we are becoming a European-style welfare state. That conclusion is debatable, but it is a debate that should follow a different book than the searing sociological study he has written. Coming Apart is, he says, his “valedictory on the topic of happiness and public policy.” But nowhere in this volume are public policies truly discussed; their effect is simply assumed. Maybe welfare kept the lower class low. Maybe assistance programs made the rich want nothing to do with anyone else. Hereby a modest proposition is offered: Vastly diverging wages had something to do with it.
Murray is cloaking his fascism in right-wing populism.
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