> There is an economic class which I think is about the top 20% of the
> population in the U.S. which receives not only the full value of
> it's labor, but more, in return for doing key tasks which are
> essential in controlling the working class. This is a
> managerial/bureaucratic/administrative/technical class and has
> distinct objective class interests which differ both from those of
> the working class, and of the capitalist class. I think the left
> would have an easier time appealing to the working class if it spent
> less time trying to cater to the delicate sensibilities of this "New
> Class".
Some questions about this:
1. This "new class" may be in the top %20 with regard to income, but
what about assets? Are they net creditors or net debtors? My
suspicion is that a significant portion of them are highly leveraged.
2. What are these "key tasks" essential to controlling the working
class? I'm not implying that social control doesn't exist, but that
technical and bureaucratic functions aren't necessarily control
functions, while managerial and bureacratic functions are. Also,
creating content for mass media is clearly a control function, but it
doesn't fall into the types listed.
3. The interests of the "new class" may diverge from the working
class, but how do they diverge from the capitalist class?
Implementing control of the working class would make their interests
coincide with the capitalist class, wouldn't it?
I have to confess I don't like the terms "middle class" and "new
class". They imply a qualitative difference from workers and owners
that I don't think exists. Conditions of work have been mitigated
greatly, and some new, clean forms of work have come into being, but
the surplus value from labor still flows to owners, who are ever ready
to press gang workers into the reserve army of the unemployed at the
drop of a dividend. There's an enormous amount of discourse and
propaganda circulating to deny or at least paper over this state of
affairs, and the term "middle class" and its uses are among them.
Accepting this term seems to be contrary to the goal of ending
exploitation.
--
Curtiss Leung