Middle Class

curtiss_leung at ibi.com curtiss_leung at ibi.com
Thu Jan 7 11:43:37 PST 1999


Gar W. Lipow writes:
> 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.

OK...it makes sense that technology is introduced into the workplace as much (if not more) for control than efficiency. But who sets these requirements? Not the programmers or engineers themselves -- I'd have to come from higher up on the corporate food chain, perhaps by upper management whose renumeration isn't just salary but also some form of equity in the firm...but maybe I don't quite understand who is or is not in this "new class"...


> 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
.<snip!>..
> 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.

So this would make the constitution of the new class dependent on the organizational specifics of a particular industrial sector, yes? Wouldn't rust belt industries, where production techniques are straightforward or very well known need less of these semi-autonomous managers than information service industries?

I suppose this gets into some very old-fashioned questions of whether someone generates surplus value and if they exhibit "false consciousness." -- Curtiss Leung



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