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