Middle Class

curtiss_leung at ibi.com curtiss_leung at ibi.com
Tue Jan 5 14:56:11 PST 1999


> 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



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