-----Original Message-----
From: Cian O'Connor <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Date: Sunday, December 30, 2001 11:31 PM
Subject: Re: A new ruling class?
>
>Is mangers a festive freudian slip...
More like bad typing and a simple-minded (damn, Microsoft) spell-checker.
:^)
>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 fear the same. That's one reason why I've bailed out and gone back to school, although I am optimistic about some sectors of the tech industry.
Nonetheless, there seems to be a trend. The ownership of capital doesn't seem to carry the capitalist as far as it used to. Small factory owners in Japan - according to anecdotes I've seen in print - are little better off than their workers. Managers are at least as likely to get pink slips as workers, and in tech their incomes aren't higher. A guy with computer skills has more freedom of movement than someone with a comparable income derived from property ownership, and probably not much less financial security considering the volatility of fixed assets these days. The winners these days seem better defined by their education and skills than their assets.
This is, of course, all anecdotal. I can't make a strong case that this is the kind of substantial change in class structure I'm suggesting, not without far more research anyway. However, some people, largely conservatives, are arguing something that sounds similar to me. Krugman, for exmaple, is arguing that there has been a shift in the use of skilled versus unskilled labour, creating rising wages for the skilled and diminishing for the unskiled.
>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...
But what do you make of a firm whose assets are almost entirely vested in the specialised knowledge of its workers? If the workers cease to be valuable, then neither is the firm.
>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.
In California it has proven very difficult to enforce restrictions on workers' use of their skills in competing firms. Thus the granting of "golden handcuff" stock options.
A surprising number of high tech firms don't rely on restrictive patents much. Intel's patents don't prevent the manufacture of compatible chips by competitors, but their large R&D assets make sure that their chips are always a bit cheaper or faster than the competition's. This is doubly true in software. Software patents are notoriously difficult to enforce and often ineffective in preventing comparable products from reaching market. No one seriously thinks that Microsoft's patents protect Windows from competition. The tech industry has turned into a Red Queen's Race, where corporate profits rest on the R&D spending that makes sure their new and improved product reaches market before their competitiors have cloned their last one.
IP laws may not really mean more in the long run than efforts to protect feudal privilege in the early industrial age.
>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.
True. I'm not terribly impressed with the claims of the free software movement, even though I'd rather be on their side than say, Microsoft's.
I just wondered. I see nothing in Marx that inherently forbids the notion that a change in ruling class doesn't necessarily mean the rule of the proletariat. Marx, after all, pointed out that the bourgeoisie replaced the feudal ruling class contemporaneously with a fundamental change in the means of production. How does this rule out the notion that the bourgeoisie can't be replaced by a new ruling class accompanied by a change in the means of production?
I see people all over claiming there has been a fundamental change in the means of production and I see a few talking about changes in the ruling class in the most advanced countries. It seems to me that this could be made to fit into a basically Marxist vision of class. I am simply curious if someone else has had such thoughts.
This is just sort of toy idea. I'm not advancing it very seriously, or at least I won't without having thought it through better. I had just hoped someone had done all the hard thinking for me.
Scott Martens