[lbo-talk] Lee's Garage

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Feb 18 08:45:31 PST 2006


Bill Bartlett wrote:


>In fact the unemployed are counted a part of the labour force.

Only if they're looking for work, which you're not, right?


>>Sure, you can keep addressing your remarks to the horny-handed sons
>>of toil. But they won't listen to anything you say.
>
>Not on this list, you're correct. I doubt there is anyone here who
>fits that description? I suppose what you are getting at is that I
>have to learn to speak the convoluted language of "contradictory
>class location"? When in Rome, speak as the Romans do, so to speak.
>Can't do that, wouldn't try. My theory is that even the people who
>use that sort of language have no idea what they are talking about.

Sure we do. Middle managers - not a small demographic in a rich country - have a divided consciousness and divided loyalties. Sometimes they think and feel like bosses, and sometimes like ill-treated underlings. And in both cases, they're right. Politically, they could go either way. It's not unlike the classic Marxist analysis of the petit bourgeoisie, which most dinosaurs have no problem understanding. Is it that middle management is an innovation of the last 75 years, which challenges those with a binary worker-boss model of the world to think freshly?

Doug



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