This is a stratum of the working class which no more thinks of itself as working clas than do sociologists (or marxists who still are trapped in the 19th century satanic mills). So if you focus on their consciousness it is that of petty producers, who imagine that they own the product of their own labor and are convinced that there should be a market for it.
ONE of the routes that can take could lead to an actual movement that might well be legitimately compared to fascism.
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DRR wrote:
I suppose the Valley is going through its very own matrix-moment, its "unplugging" and awakening into the terrifying Desert of the Real.
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Which is, almost precisely, what I was getting at.
There are now millions of educated, success focused people who are close to being rendered redundant by the offshore outsourcing phenomena.
I wonder how these believers in the American dream will respond when, despite their best efforts, they find doors closed for them while remaining open to folks who'll probably never set foot on American soil.
It is true that this is part and parcel of capitalism - this constant movement of industries, the displacement of workers, "all that is solid melts into air..." But has it ever happened before to people who've been trained to believe that their intelligence and willingness to work ridiculous hours marked them as a superior type of person?
Has it ever happened to people who're accustomed to driving 5 series BMWs from their McMansions to their posh offices and who were bombarded - by politicians, popular culture images, magazines, the whole complex - with propaganda assuring them that they were part of a "new economy"?
What happens, I wonder, when a large cohort of folks who think they're a vanguard find themselves in the same sorry boat?
I'm convinced that in the six month to one-year time frame I'll be out on my ass. And while the financial hit will be a strain (to say the least), I have a certain psychological force field - my disbelief in the American dream and my expectation, even during the go-go 90's, that it was all impermanent. Also, my love for computer tech is not motivated by a desire to pile on the lucre. Good pay is nothing to disdain of course but the geek tendency is strong even without it.
But my colleagues are almost all true believers. Many of them have already gone from "successful" to itinerant. When they consider that projects are moving forward - just not with American engineers - it generates bitterness.
I'm seeing this in action.
How will this embitterment of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of college/university degree holders manifest itself?
And also, (sorry to repeat) won't it be just a bit of a worry if so many people can't afford big-ticket consumer items?
DRM
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