>You can start with one of Marx's brilliant (and I mean this
>non-sarcastically) observations - that capitalists buy labor time, not
>labor. (Yes there are exceptions.) The capitalist class is not large enough
>to personally extract as much labor as possible during work
I thought it was surplus value, not labour that's extracted.
>time, so they have to hire supervisors and managers. They need
> >coordinators. >A lot of people we would not think of in this context
> >fulfill a coordinator function. For example engineers and software
>designers >help create the workplace, and indirectly play a large role in
>this type of control. Artists and writers and educators are a means of
>controlling the flow of information to workers, and help shape how easy
>they are >to control.
If I read this correctly, you say that any person who is involved in "controlling" workers, to broad extent e.g. control of working environment by creating it or control of information flow to workers, is a coordinator?
>
>
>The very top of this group is so highly compensated for this that they end
>up as capitalists. But the key here is that coordinators have interests
>that differ from both capitalists and from workers as a >whole.
>Coordinators to capitalists are an expense, a labor cost. They want to
>minimize the cost of coordination. Whereas coordinators want to be
>indispensable.
All workers, coordinator or not, want to be seen in this light.
For example, when self-management schemes
What do you mean by a self-management scheme? Is this something imposed on workers or coordinators or both? You mention below that managers resist these schemes, but I suspect rank and file workers will resist such things as TQM, which does extend to affect them
are tried, >they
>usually arise from the either owners or from the very top managers who have
>become part of the capitalist class (via stock ownership and huge
>salaries). Those managers who are still management and not capitalists are
>usually the primary source of resistance. And in general coordinators hold
>a monoply on the most pleasant and empowering tasks.
>
>Yes coordinators remain subordinate to capital; they have much less power
>than capitalists.
What do you mean by this? A capitalist owns the means of production, but a manager runs it in the capitalist's absence, usually for a good salary. If the manager effectively takes the place of the capitalist, but not the recompense, he has the same power the capitalist has except he could only be dismissed by the capitalist himself. That seems like a very minor difference.
But they also have a great deal more power >than
>ordinary workers. So why look at them as class rather than say a caste or
>special example of workers? Because they are an economic group with
>distinct interests that differ from those of the working class as a whole
>and from the capitalist class at a whole.
How do they differ from the rest of the working class? They both contribute surplus value (pace Wojtek), both are paid a wage, and neither owns the means of production.
These interests remain
>consistent over time; so even though the coordinator class has the >same
>relation to the means of production as workers, it constitutes a seperate
>class due it's relation to work.
What is its relation to work? That it involves being in the middle of a hierarchy? Giving orders to other workers?
>I know the idea that a class may be defined on some basis other than
>relation to the means of production is extremely counter-intuitive to
>Marxists.
If you base your class analysis on "work", then where does it end? Every type of new job created requires a revamping of the analysis.
But if you look
>on Marxism as a theory rather than a theology you may want to consider >it.
I can certainly agree that upper management types, for all that they share the same relationship to capital as all other workers (assuming they haven't enough ownership of capital themselves to put them firmly into the capitalist class), would probably tend to adopt the capitalists' attitude to capital and its elimination since they would figure that they would stand to lose much (rank and file types can have this attitude as well), but to call them a completely separate class seems to beg the question quite a bit.
Todd
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