As James O'Connor argued, the individualist ideology is a key part of the accumulation crisis. In its modern form of consumerist individualism (the "revolution of rising expectations"), it increases pressure for higher wages and social spending. Consumerist individualism is at the heart of the legitimizing system of the Taylorist/Fordist social compact of the New Deal. "If they pay us well, we'll let the bosses manage." The worker sacrifices creative work as an expression of individuality, and instead finds his individuality by "pursuing happiness" in the realm of consumption.

More importantly, the older political individualism surviving from the traditional American political culture is an impediment to the authoritarian transformation necessary to transfer resources from consumption to accumulation, and to end excessive demands and democratic pressure on the state. The individualist values of the general population are at the heart of the crisis of legitimacy that limits state action on behalf of organized capital.

The authoritarian ideology of neo-conservatism ("big government conservatism," "national greatness conservatism") is a partial attempt to overcome the traditional American individualism. In place of the inalienable rights of the individual, and the absolute accountability of the state to the citizenry, it emphasizes service and sacrifice to the state. For example, consider Max Boot’s lamentation over the easy victory in Operation Enduring Freedom in November 2001, and the inadequate level of casualties for demonstrating the proper martial spirit. Although neoconservatives speak a great deal about "freedom" and "liberty," in the neocon lexicon freedom and liberty are redefined as whatever the individual is asked to sacrifice for. Whatever total war the state is currently fighting is, by definition, to "defend our freedom."

There are, however, built-in contradictions in the neoconservative solution. The concepts of liberty and justice have some residual cultural content that is beyond the ability of court intellectuals to extirpate. Transforming culture and rewriting history are not as easy as Orwell made them out to be. Indeed, neoconservatism appeals to the traditional values and legitimizing symbols of Norman Rockwell America, seeking to graft them onto the new ideology. Neoconservatism frequently appeals to populist values and resentment of elites and parasites, although the targets are carefully chosen (academics, welfare moms, "union bosses," "trial lawyers," etc.) so as not to pose any danger to the real system of power. It is doubtful that the public would swallow the new, authoritarian content of neoconservatism at all, were it not sugar-coated with older populist rhetoric.

There are inherent self-contradictions in neoconservatism, to the extent that its authoritarian strains cannot be adapted to even a heavily redacted version of older American values. Neoconservatism, like older strains of conservatism more genuinely in the American tradition, engages in frequent hat-tipping toward small government, strengthening "civil society," etc. In the 2000 election, Dick Cheney frequently stated that "government never made anyone wealthy" (stadium socialism and the camp followers at Halliburton KBR notwithstanding). The most sycophantic shills for the total warfare state and the domestic police state, like Ann Coulter, pepper their rhetoric with Tenth Amendment appeals for restoring the autonomy of states and localities, and denunciations of government elites' interference with families.

The task is made still harder to the extent that the ideas of justice and fairness have some real content. Neoconservative propaganda cannot invent new values; it can only misdirect existing values to selected targets by distorting or concealing factual evidence. But to the extent that all propaganda must appeal to true values, the audience can isolate those values from the propaganda message and direct the principles to new and more appropriate targets much closer to where the real elites live. To the extent that "elitism" and "parasitism" have real content, there is always a danger that the public will perceive the contradiction between practice and preaching, and decide that the terms can be more appropriately applied to the real power elite. Once the standards of "justice" and "fairness" are used as a propaganda weapon, those weapons may be turned against their previous holders. The populist and libertarian language used against selected academic and welfare-state "elites" possesses objective value content, and appeals to universal norms of fairness; when elite action in other areas of policy violate these objective standards of fairness, the danger is that the public will perceive the opportunistic choice of "elite" targets as inappropriate. The popular term "corporate welfare" is just one example of this.

And the situation is also complicated by the fact that the ruling elite will never be as internally cohesive as Orwell's Inner Party. The state may be the executive committee of the ruling class; but the ruling class has many factions (e.g., the disputes between labor-intensive and capital-intensive industry, domestic- and export-oriented industry, etc., that were at the heart of party alignments in the 20th century). No matter how much one faction of the business elite tries to redefine traditional American values and to suppress their old content, the other faction will have an interest in reinfusing its old value-content and using it as a weapon against their enemies in the elite.