PSA: there is no such thing as the PMC. We have workers and we have owners. Google employees are workers too. With an obnoxious tech culture, but they're still workers.
Professional-Managerial class it's a way of dividing the working class into well-educated/white collar workers and other workers. It destroys working class solidarity.
Isn't the idea that if you're managing people, you already are constrained in your solidarity with them because when there's a conflict between their interests and the interests of the company owners, it will usually be in your interest to align with the company? Similar to how the police can't simultaneously be the armed protectors of capital and also have solidarity with the people they're policing
Yes. I'm also in that role, as of relatively recently, so I know what you mean. But the powerlessness is sort of my point- you don't become a decision maker so much as a buffer between the decisions of the owners and the employees. Hopefully you get to do some good, but the scope to do so is limited
Yes but you still do not own any means of production. Managers are not a capitalists themselves. Just a useful pion that works against the working class' interests, that's why the capitalists pay them so well.
I see those people as class traitors. Which sound harsh but I think most just do not understand their class interests and/or are basically coerced into oppressing their fellow workers. That's why class consciousness is so important. If you're a manager and you understand the class dichotomy, you will be much more likely to support your own class' interests. by the way, pmc is more than managers. It's basically anyone with a degree and a white collar job.
I agree that it's silly to put white collar, workers in a separate class category. To me it makes more sense if it's restricted specifically to people in an actual managerial role.
I mean it's hard to have solidarity with a group that constantly side with the ruling class and can survive much more comfortably than the service class
Pmc is not just managers by the way. It's basically any college educated, white collar profession. A lot of those (teachers for example) are also just workers. Managers are problematic but still working class. See my comment above. I wrote what I think about them.
Yeah the weirdest thing about "PMC" is that it lumps managers in with educated workers. People talk about it a lot but it honestly makes no fucking sense to me. Managers are often opposed to employees but employees with high qualifications are... paid more?? Why would they be closer to managers than someone else
When you reach a position where your bonuses, stock options, retirement benefits and so on are all tied to quarterly performance, you may find that your immediate interests align much more closely with the company than with your fellow workers. And since capitalism is built on that sort of short-term thinking, it's much harder to convince these guys that they'd be better off aligning with the whole of the working class. I don't think these types are necessarily beyond hope and they certainly aren't representative of all PMCs, but I get why people are quick to write them off.
I think there's something to it but it can't be the only tool to analyze the class interests of highly educated, highly paid workers either. A quick search says a software engineer at Google can make $263k total compensation, before you even get to a "senior engineer" level. Consider someone like this, they own a home in a relatively expensive area, they paid a lot for college but probably paid it off by now, they have say $500k in a 401(k) and other investments in the stock market. It's very good for them if line go up. But they're a worker, nobody reports to them. Are they in the same class position as the janitor who vacuums their office? I'd say one of them has a LOT more material interest in maintaining the status quo than the other, and so one of them is much more likely to work to maintain their position within capitalism, even if they're still technically exploited for their labor it sure feels a lot less like it than if you were less well off. It's certainly not impossible for the Google engineer to have class consciousness, but there's also a huge incentive for them not to.
even on monopolist salary it's still hard to buy a home in SF without hereditary wealth
Average down payment on a home (all of which are 7 figures+ unless you want a ridiculous commute) is ~50%. How long's it gonna take you to save up a few hundred grand when you're paying ~30k/yr in rent, even on that salary (now imagine not making google tech salary and living there)?
it's why there's stories about techbros getting the google job and living in their car in the parking lot in order to keep living expenses low
Sure, I'd say SF isn't a relatively expensive area, it's a ludicrously expensive area. Regardless I'm not really trying to have a debate about whether a quarter million a year counts as rich or not, just trying to argue that there is some utility in recognizing that there are people who benefit from capitalism more than others, within the working class, and some people call some of those "PMC". These people are invested, in various ways, in how All This Works in capitalism and are likely to see their position degraded if we ushered in a more egalitarian system, and so from a material standpoint they're less likely to have revolutionary potential and are more likely to defend capitalism than other workers - even if they're technically in the same position in terms of their relationship to the means of production as other workers. Even if you're not responsible for assigning tasks to other people who answer to you as their boss, that quarter million a year came from somewhere, and at that point it's not just the value of your labor - someone else's labor somewhere else in the system has been exploited to get to that point. And you know, no ethical consumption employment under capitalism, you could say the same about most jobs in the imperial core or whatever but there's SOME utility in analyzing people's motivations with this relatively nebulous "PMC" concept. I think. Probably. I could be wrong.
I suppose that makes sense- so they're more likely to basically be class traitors until they can be replaced by the minimum wage coding gulags that the Democrats keep trying to create
Teachers sure they're super exploited, I guess my response is purely emotive but its hard to understand as a working class person why I should side with tech bros, managers, bank clerks, basically anyone on over £30k who in my experience will always side with the ruling class to preserve their position
I don't think I've ever heard that term before but I already know that it's just a meaningless buzz word that was invented by someone with too much money.
It was coined by the Ehrenreich's to describe something they noticed in their own organizing efforts . I don't even know if it's still a valuable term to use.
It’s “professional managerial class”, but its popular usage seems to have started when podcasters began feeling anxious about being middle-class - I don’t believe there’s anything it describes not already encapsulated by the term petit-bourgeoisie.
The middle-class is classified by its relative security compared to the proletariat/working class; a fired journalist usually just goes to work for another middle-class job (or starts a Substack, I suppose), whereas a retail worker faces pauperdom. The reason why the two classes are distinguished is because they have different interests - the middle-class usually entreates the working class to push for policies that ensure its continued existence, as it is constantly under threat of expropriation by the big-boug, whereas the working-class is compelled to associate together and push for its own interests.
This manifests at first in the already-combative elements such as striking for higher wages/reduction of the working day/organization in to unions and such. This is also why communists do not impute this-or-that form of organization in to the proletariat at the outset (think of the various theories floating around about rejecting trade unions wholesale - sections of the proletariat do associate through them, the issue is to overcome these limitations) or think it’s a matter of “raising class consciousness”. Communist consciousness is mediated by & develops through practical struggle and the association that results from it. It requires development, thus time.
The Communist Manifesto:
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
This also relates back to the middle-class; Marx earlier in the section refers to "economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind." More directly, explaining the social position of the petty-boug:
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
That's not to say the middle-class can't join the fight for communism, and of course, during actual revolutionary situations, these demarcations are not so clearly delineated. It's rather that the lack of immediate need their class position produces means they do not feel the same passion for fighting that the proletariat possesses; there's a line in The German Ideology about the mood of the middle-class being worry/fear of losing their social standing. The PMC category, as much as I've seen of it, seems to be an academic term devised back in the 60s/70s and does not describe anything petty-boug doesn't already. As I mentioned earlier, it tends to be used by self-conscious middle-class people - I don't see any use for it, nor is this somehow the emergence of "a new class" so-called 'Marxists' (who always seem eager to prove some 'new development Marx never foresaw', like the cliffhanger of a Disney movie trailer) claim it to be.
strange formulation, they are a form of petty bourgeoisie
Does anyone here actually think that this Google union gesture was super powerful? they can't even bargain, right? for me it's chucked into the supermassive bin called "stuff that is better than otherwise but not nearly enough"
Literally getting paid in stock options and earning bonuses based on the company stock price has no impact on your class position.
There's only owners and employees. The Vice President of Nephews is just another working stiff, trying to get through 40 hours plus unpaid overtime after negotiating a salary that gives the illusion of a living wage. There is absolutely no difference between the sales team, driving to different strip clubs to convince their dad's friends to buy more of their shit, and the folks on the factory floor who are working on expired H1-B visas and dodging calls from DHS.
We're all just one big happy family. Class consciousness has been achieved. No difference between rich and poor things. Etc.
Google famously paid stock shares to the in-house kitchen staff, when it first opened its offices in California.
Regardless, pick up a copy of Piketty's "Capitalism in the 21st Century". He goes into great length about the rise of the PMC in the wake of the Reagan Revolution.
Then yeah, I imagine that did change their class interests, at least with regard to google. It'd be in their interest to support a policy which harmed workers but increased the stock price.
I think you're correct but simultaneously you're not describing anyone that's particularly relevant here. I don't think the Google VP of Nephews is among the unionized.
I don't think the guy doing network work in a cramped freezing server room for ten hours a day is part of the PMC.
The McKinsey consultant who suggests we squeeze the racks 6" tighter, then convince the network guys that they should skip lunch if they want to squeeze between the frames (or, fuck it, lets just bring on 12-year-olds as part time unpaid interns and let them wiggle between the cases and replace cables)... that's the PMC.
I have friends who made a few million off going to work at the right company at the right time. That's petit bougie. Retire in your 30s and do whatever. Invest in a couple rental properties.
But someone who is making enough to live comfortably, save for retirement, pay for a couple of kids including education, etc... that's just a worker who hasn't had their dignity completely stripped away by the system yet.
PSA: there is no such thing as the PMC. We have workers and we have owners. Google employees are workers too. With an obnoxious tech culture, but they're still workers.
I'm guessing from the context that PMC does not mean Private Military Company in this situation, but also I'm not sure what you do mean by that?
Professional-Managerial class it's a way of dividing the working class into well-educated/white collar workers and other workers. It destroys working class solidarity.
Isn't the idea that if you're managing people, you already are constrained in your solidarity with them because when there's a conflict between their interests and the interests of the company owners, it will usually be in your interest to align with the company? Similar to how the police can't simultaneously be the armed protectors of capital and also have solidarity with the people they're policing
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Yes. I'm also in that role, as of relatively recently, so I know what you mean. But the powerlessness is sort of my point- you don't become a decision maker so much as a buffer between the decisions of the owners and the employees. Hopefully you get to do some good, but the scope to do so is limited
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Yes but you still do not own any means of production. Managers are not a capitalists themselves. Just a useful pion that works against the working class' interests, that's why the capitalists pay them so well.
I see those people as class traitors. Which sound harsh but I think most just do not understand their class interests and/or are basically coerced into oppressing their fellow workers. That's why class consciousness is so important. If you're a manager and you understand the class dichotomy, you will be much more likely to support your own class' interests. by the way, pmc is more than managers. It's basically anyone with a degree and a white collar job.
You're gonna cry when I tell you about Engels then.
Is he ok? Did something happen?
I agree that it's silly to put white collar, workers in a separate class category. To me it makes more sense if it's restricted specifically to people in an actual managerial role.
Then why are you supportive of traitors?
Yeah, this one is so bad faith I am not going to bother answering. Read my other comments.
Read some hacker news and then reconsider.
It's harsh, but the only real flaw in the analysis is attributing malice vs just a typical american lack of class consciousness.
I mean it's hard to have solidarity with a group that constantly side with the ruling class and can survive much more comfortably than the service class
Pmc is not just managers by the way. It's basically any college educated, white collar profession. A lot of those (teachers for example) are also just workers. Managers are problematic but still working class. See my comment above. I wrote what I think about them.
Yeah the weirdest thing about "PMC" is that it lumps managers in with educated workers. People talk about it a lot but it honestly makes no fucking sense to me. Managers are often opposed to employees but employees with high qualifications are... paid more?? Why would they be closer to managers than someone else
When you reach a position where your bonuses, stock options, retirement benefits and so on are all tied to quarterly performance, you may find that your immediate interests align much more closely with the company than with your fellow workers. And since capitalism is built on that sort of short-term thinking, it's much harder to convince these guys that they'd be better off aligning with the whole of the working class. I don't think these types are necessarily beyond hope and they certainly aren't representative of all PMCs, but I get why people are quick to write them off.
So is it like, stock ownership or is it professional qualifications? It seems like such a vague and inaccurate concept
I think there's something to it but it can't be the only tool to analyze the class interests of highly educated, highly paid workers either. A quick search says a software engineer at Google can make $263k total compensation, before you even get to a "senior engineer" level. Consider someone like this, they own a home in a relatively expensive area, they paid a lot for college but probably paid it off by now, they have say $500k in a 401(k) and other investments in the stock market. It's very good for them if line go up. But they're a worker, nobody reports to them. Are they in the same class position as the janitor who vacuums their office? I'd say one of them has a LOT more material interest in maintaining the status quo than the other, and so one of them is much more likely to work to maintain their position within capitalism, even if they're still technically exploited for their labor it sure feels a lot less like it than if you were less well off. It's certainly not impossible for the Google engineer to have class consciousness, but there's also a huge incentive for them not to.
even on monopolist salary it's still hard to buy a home in SF without hereditary wealth
Average down payment on a home (all of which are 7 figures+ unless you want a ridiculous commute) is ~50%. How long's it gonna take you to save up a few hundred grand when you're paying ~30k/yr in rent, even on that salary (now imagine not making google tech salary and living there)?
it's why there's stories about techbros getting the google job and living in their car in the parking lot in order to keep living expenses low
housing commodification's a fuck
Sure, I'd say SF isn't a relatively expensive area, it's a ludicrously expensive area. Regardless I'm not really trying to have a debate about whether a quarter million a year counts as rich or not, just trying to argue that there is some utility in recognizing that there are people who benefit from capitalism more than others, within the working class, and some people call some of those "PMC". These people are invested, in various ways, in how All This Works in capitalism and are likely to see their position degraded if we ushered in a more egalitarian system, and so from a material standpoint they're less likely to have revolutionary potential and are more likely to defend capitalism than other workers - even if they're technically in the same position in terms of their relationship to the means of production as other workers. Even if you're not responsible for assigning tasks to other people who answer to you as their boss, that quarter million a year came from somewhere, and at that point it's not just the value of your labor - someone else's labor somewhere else in the system has been exploited to get to that point. And you know, no ethical
consumptionemployment under capitalism, you could say the same about most jobs in the imperial core or whatever but there's SOME utility in analyzing people's motivations with this relatively nebulous "PMC" concept. I think. Probably. I could be wrong.I suppose that makes sense- so they're more likely to basically be class traitors until they can be replaced by the minimum wage coding gulags that the Democrats keep trying to create
Teachers sure they're super exploited, I guess my response is purely emotive but its hard to understand as a working class person why I should side with tech bros, managers, bank clerks, basically anyone on over £30k who in my experience will always side with the ruling class to preserve their position
Many teachers also promote liberalism and Americanism in their schools to impressionable youths.
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Yeah, absolutely.
I don't think I've ever heard that term before but I already know that it's just a meaningless buzz word that was invented by someone with too much money.
Thanks for explaining, but also I hate it.
It was coined by the Ehrenreich's to describe something they noticed in their own organizing efforts . I don't even know if it's still a valuable term to use.
It’s “professional managerial class”, but its popular usage seems to have started when podcasters began feeling anxious about being middle-class - I don’t believe there’s anything it describes not already encapsulated by the term petit-bourgeoisie.
The middle-class is classified by its relative security compared to the proletariat/working class; a fired journalist usually just goes to work for another middle-class job (or starts a Substack, I suppose), whereas a retail worker faces pauperdom. The reason why the two classes are distinguished is because they have different interests - the middle-class usually entreates the working class to push for policies that ensure its continued existence, as it is constantly under threat of expropriation by the big-boug, whereas the working-class is compelled to associate together and push for its own interests.
This manifests at first in the already-combative elements such as striking for higher wages/reduction of the working day/organization in to unions and such. This is also why communists do not impute this-or-that form of organization in to the proletariat at the outset (think of the various theories floating around about rejecting trade unions wholesale - sections of the proletariat do associate through them, the issue is to overcome these limitations) or think it’s a matter of “raising class consciousness”. Communist consciousness is mediated by & develops through practical struggle and the association that results from it. It requires development, thus time.
The Communist Manifesto:
This also relates back to the middle-class; Marx earlier in the section refers to "economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind." More directly, explaining the social position of the petty-boug:
That's not to say the middle-class can't join the fight for communism, and of course, during actual revolutionary situations, these demarcations are not so clearly delineated. It's rather that the lack of immediate need their class position produces means they do not feel the same passion for fighting that the proletariat possesses; there's a line in The German Ideology about the mood of the middle-class being worry/fear of losing their social standing. The PMC category, as much as I've seen of it, seems to be an academic term devised back in the 60s/70s and does not describe anything petty-boug doesn't already. As I mentioned earlier, it tends to be used by self-conscious middle-class people - I don't see any use for it, nor is this somehow the emergence of "a new class" so-called 'Marxists' (who always seem eager to prove some 'new development Marx never foresaw', like the cliffhanger of a Disney movie trailer) claim it to be.
Id say a majority of people called PMC are labour aristocrats, only the actual managers are PMC, not a doctor or a code monkey.
deleted by creator
strange formulation, they are a form of petty bourgeoisie
Does anyone here actually think that this Google union gesture was super powerful? they can't even bargain, right? for me it's chucked into the supermassive bin called "stuff that is better than otherwise but not nearly enough"
They are labor aristocrats. Petty bougiouse implies an owner-producer arrangement.
Literally getting paid in stock options and earning bonuses based on the company stock price has no impact on your class position.
There's only owners and employees. The Vice President of Nephews is just another working stiff, trying to get through 40 hours plus unpaid overtime after negotiating a salary that gives the illusion of a living wage. There is absolutely no difference between the sales team, driving to different strip clubs to convince their dad's friends to buy more of their shit, and the folks on the factory floor who are working on expired H1-B visas and dodging calls from DHS.
We're all just one big happy family. Class consciousness has been achieved. No difference between rich and poor things. Etc.
Those are owners
Google famously paid stock shares to the in-house kitchen staff, when it first opened its offices in California.
Regardless, pick up a copy of Piketty's "Capitalism in the 21st Century". He goes into great length about the rise of the PMC in the wake of the Reagan Revolution.
Was it a lot, compared to their salaries?
Once the stock took off in the '00s, substantially so.
Then yeah, I imagine that did change their class interests, at least with regard to google. It'd be in their interest to support a policy which harmed workers but increased the stock price.
I think you're correct but simultaneously you're not describing anyone that's particularly relevant here. I don't think the Google VP of Nephews is among the unionized.
I don't think the guy doing network work in a cramped freezing server room for ten hours a day is part of the PMC.
The McKinsey consultant who suggests we squeeze the racks 6" tighter, then convince the network guys that they should skip lunch if they want to squeeze between the frames (or, fuck it, lets just bring on 12-year-olds as part time unpaid interns and let them wiggle between the cases and replace cables)... that's the PMC.
10s of thousands in stock vs 10s of billions.
That's the petite in petite-bourgeois
I have friends who made a few million off going to work at the right company at the right time. That's petit bougie. Retire in your 30s and do whatever. Invest in a couple rental properties.
But someone who is making enough to live comfortably, save for retirement, pay for a couple of kids including education, etc... that's just a worker who hasn't had their dignity completely stripped away by the system yet.