>>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.
See now, that's what *you* read "contradictory class location" as meaning. You're a smart bloke, smarter than me I freely admit, maybe you're right. But if so, why didn't that fellow just say it clearly like that?
Incidentally, class consciousness is an entirely different thing to "class location", or objective class. Even *I'm* smart enough to see that. (If "class location" is intended to refer to objective class, which isn't clear to me.)
That is to say that class loyalties can be "contradictory", which you translate as divided, without there necessarily being any shadow of doubt about what class you fall into. The middle manager's job is to manage the owner's business in the owner's interest. Middle managers depend for their livelihood on doing this according to the bosses' best interests. There is a conflict between their class interest and their job description, not a contradictory or conflicted class interest as such. Though obviously many middle managers get confused about this, especially since people in this occupation, if they are very good at their job, have a real chance of eventually escaping from the working class entirely, of becoming capitalists themselves.
Unless and until that happens, they are working class. But there is no contradiction involved in a person acting in the interests of the capitalist class if they fully expect to become a capitalist themselves in the very near future.
You see how I can argue my position much more clearly when you explicitly argue yours. As opposed to when someone rattles of some incomprehensible and inherently meaningless jargon about "contradictory class location"? That's my point, such drivel stifles debate, in fact I believe it is (consciously or unconsciously I don't know) designed to choke off those who might dissent from the premises of those who use it.
I have no idea why you continually defend this sort of twaddle. You don't seem to write like that yourself (from what I can tell).
> It's not unlike the classic Marxist analysis of the petit
>bourgeoisie, which most dinosaurs have no problem understanding.
Us dinosaurs don't speak much French, but "petit bourgeoisie" means "small capitalists" right? A small capitalist is by definition of course a member of the capitalist class. I am guessing here, but presumably the classic Marxist analysis of the small capitalist doesn't shy away from the fact that a small capitalist is objectively a capitalist? Whatever the analysis of their subjective class consciousness might entail, surely the classic Marxist analysis doesn't question that?
> 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?
No challenge to me, I can explain anything you are confused about. Without having to resort to incomprehensible jargon, or needing to propose middle managers constitute an entirely separate class as an explanation for some complications I don't understand.
You see, there is nothing wrong with simple models, if they explain everything. In fact a simple explanation, which fits all the facts, should always be preferred to a more complicated explanation.
Especially if the more complicated explanation is riddled with confusing jargon.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas