> It is generally referred to as "New Class" analysis;
> though I prefer the
> term "Coordinator Class". Yoshie, and most of the
> hard-core Marxist on
> this list hate this type of analysis
And some of us who are not Marxists at all! (Because, although I am a historical materialist,a s well become clear in the following, I see no point in proclaiming oneself to be a "Marxist" anymore.)
- because they
> see class as
> primarily a relation to means of production; Class
> defined as a relation
> to the means of work is seen as deformed populism at
> best, more likely
> capitalist liberalism , or actual reaction. Don't
> expect much other than
> filibustering and taunting on this subject from
> them.
OH. how about an analytical demolition job at this shoddy construct? You want a serious treatment of the middle class, you gotta read Erik Olin Wright, who has made the middle class a life study, or Poulantzas (for a very different sort of account).
>
> OK here is a simplified version of this. Capitalist
> in the U.S.
> constitute at most 2% of the population - perhaps a
> great deal rest.
> Capitalists for the most part do not buy worker's
> labor power. They buy
> workers time.
Wrong and incoherent. They buy workers' labor power, their ability to work, for a period of time. To say they buy worker's "time" makes literally no sense. They want the workers to work for a certain period. But (as Marx saw) they cannot buy a period of labor, because labor is variable. Therefore they buy the workers' capacity to work from 9 to 5, set about extracting the maximum labor they can from their acquisition.
That not many U.S. workers are paid by
> the piece
Piecework isn't purchase of labor power, it's a sort of purchase of the product of labor.
-
But 2%
> of the population is not really enough to control
> 98% or eve %80 of the
> population.
Your account cannot make sense of why there have to be managers. On Marx's account, you need managers to maximuze the extraction of lavor from labor power. But since on your "time" story, capitalists do not buy anything connected with labor at all, it' not obvious what the managersare supposed to do.
>
> So you need a class in between labor capital, a
> middle class, a
> bureaucratic/technical/managerial/academic class.
> This class performs a
> great many functions. There is directly policing
> workers to extract work
> from them. There is shaping the work environment,
> both to increase
> productivity per hour, but also to deskill labor and
> make it more
> measurable, easier to police. There is the shaping
> of the workers,
> suppressing some types of creativity while
> encouraging others - with the
> aim of making obedient little agents, but something
> more than drones,
> something that does not require micro management.
So what makes this group of people one "class," particularly since it encompasses a great number of people in wildly divergent situatiosn? Btw, I like the relentless negative picture of everyone in this "class": apparantly all teachers do is to produce obedient drones, all managers to is to police workers, all engineers do is to deskill labor. In the Brave New World, whena ll of thgese people have been re-educated and put to proper work as hewers of wood and drawerrs of water, the direct producers will educatie themselves, coordinate (oops! bad word, very bad, so sorry, I maen arrange) their labor by themselves as strict equals, and their work will be happy, challenging, skilled and fulfilling!
>
> One signifier of a coordinator job is that it tends
> to monopolize the
> more pleasant end empowering work.
Gotta stop that. No, really, I know that parecon types, despite the vocabulary of ressentiment involved here, hope to increase the level of disalienated labor. Of course this is classi Marxism, but it wouldn't do to say so.
>
> There are other classes - but they are tiny, and in
> a political sense
> tend to align with one of the three main classes,
> capitalist,
> coordinator, or working class.
How is the "coordinator class" a "main class" in meaningful sense? Since it does not control any means of production, it never exercises autonomous political power. In capitalist society, the calpiatlsit class is _always_ the ruling class. Can you think of a counterexample? For that matter, an instancew here the "coodinator class" -- that misellaneous group of elementary school tecahers, government lawyers, K-mrt assistant managers, and university professors -- won a serious victory over capital? I think not. Frankly, that group has never neen organized.
>.
> Similarly, you will
> never persuade a majority of coordinators within a
> capitalist society to
> support any form of socialism that does not give
> coordinators special
> privileges.
What rubbish. Most "ccordinators" have no special privileges. You're confusing people like me (vastly overpaid big firm lawyers) with typical "coordinators," an incoherent group that mainly consist of white collar proletariat whose only significant different from blue collar proles may be a junior college degree and a bit of supervisory authority. And if we can't persuade those peple to support socialism, we might as well hang it up. It's hard to be optimistic Frankly, I know more more red big firm lawyers than socialists of real proletarian bacvkground and occupation.
jks
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