Is mangers a festive freudian slip...
I think what you're noting is more a factor of market conditions, than any lasting change. For a period of time (in fairly unreal economic conditions), skilled technical people were in ridiculously short supply. Being hard (or impossible) to replace, supply and demand tended to work in their favour. However now that the tech industry is in a pretty severe depression I think they'll find themselves in a similar position to electronic engineers in the late 70s.
> I'm not actually arguing that a class revolution is
occurring - much less
> that it is a good thing - but I've seen a fair
amount of non-socialist
> literature suggesting something like that. I'm
curious if someone with
> a more Marxist vision of class has ever looked at
the idea.
Presumably people have updated marxism to deal with the modern corporate world? The rise of a large, educated, workforce of highly skilled workers must be some kind of change.
>From my rather naive autonomist conception of the
world they would seem to be in a similar position to
workers of old; but in a stronger bargaining position
as they constitute a larger portion of a company's
capital (nearly all of it in some cases). As long as
they are valuable they are fine, the moment conditions
change...
The increase in patent portfolios, etc, is I think part of the corporate world's response to the threat of human capital. If they can own ideas (and therefore the development of ideas), it becomes easier for them to control their workforces. Of course in the long run this may choke corporate capitalism - as it will be impossible to develop anything without huge legal costs and huge layers of burocracy.
> Open source, if it is to be a big success, would
seem to me to suggest
> that a new non-bourgeois class is replacing the
bourgeoisie. The means of
> production - instead of being in the hands of the
owners of capital, in
> the hands of the possessors of specialised
knowledge.
Except that it is a hobby of people who have bourgeoise jobs (or students who plan to become bourgeoise). It's impossible (well very hard) to live on free software alone.
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