>People talk about professionalization and regulation of law and
>medicine like it's a bad thing.
I don't think it's a bad thing -- it's been a contradictory thing. Marxists, unlike anarcho-capitalists, don't argue that "competition good, monopoly bad, government regulations evil." :-)
For instance, I'd rather have professors select their fellow professionals, as opposed to administrators vetoing their choices, even though professors' choices can be sometimes bad ones (e.g., your being canned). Professional autonomy (= the ideal of self-governance) is better than total subjection to the management. Professionals should enjoy protection from the market, and such protection is often in the interest of their clients as well. One prefers doctors' informed opinions to HMOs' gimlet eyes focused upon the bottom line, even though the former can be mistaken, in addition to possessing a bias for over-medicalization & "heroic medicine" (the bias opposite to HMOs' preference for cheapest possible preventive care).
On the other hand, the professional ideology can & does often limit the extent of professionals' solidarity with the working class, even in cases in which professionals have actually become proletarianized to a large extent.
Yoshie