Middle Class

Gar Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Wed Jan 6 13:04:16 PST 1999


curtiss_leung at ibi.com wrote:


> > 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.

Sure -- this is one reason they do not constitute small captital (though their interests are often very similar to those of small capital).


> 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.

Like most things in life, it depends. I would definitely include mass media in the control functions. And some technical stuff definitely is a control function. Someone who designs the means of production may or may not give anyone orders (though often such engineering including software engineering is done in a hiearchal fashion) but I think Michael Perlman has made some quite brilliant posts about how much techonology is designe quite specifically to increase control rather than efficiency. And not everyone with the title of manager manages. Many may be more like formen.


> 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?

Their divergence in interest is twofold. In the short run, it is in their interest to avoid having their tasks dispersed too widely to the point where their functions are carried out by skilled workers. To give one example: Attempts are sometimes made to give control to oridinary workers of certain aspects of their lives -- not decidng their own salaries or anythign key, but setting up teams or self-mangement where workers knowledge is tapped to improve efficiency. This is usally done in a very unfair manner where workers are contributing more without getting mroe. Nonetheless workers will sometimes agree to this to help preserve their jobs, or even for the satisfaction of that little extra measure of control. You will always find major resistance from management.

In the long run, this class would benefit from a collective ownership of the means of production where they stayed in control and maintained a monopoly or near monopoly over all the control functions but without benefitting a parasticical owner class.


> 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 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

The paering over of differences is why I prefer terms other than middle class "new class" "co-ordinator class" . But this is a real difference. There is a constant attempt on the part of capitalist to shrink this middle class. But in practice it seems to grow rather than shrink as capitalism grows. The U.S. -- the country in the world where capitalism is strongest also has the largest manager to worker ratio of any developed country. I think this is an inevitable result of captialism. Marx believed the middle class would ultimately vanish, be absorded mostly into the working class, with indivdual exceptions who became owners. In practice though as capitalism becomes more oppressive you need more controllers not fewer (though this never grows to more than a small minority). What you get by with are fewer prosperous workers.

BTW somone mentioned government workers. A postal workers or a filing clerk is definitely a worker. Whether you are a worker or part of the new class is not a matter of who you work for, It is a matter of the type of work you do.

-- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/



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