/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>1896728
>everyone is proletarian or bourgeoisie and they're the exact same otherwise smiley face

this is why no one takes you people seriously

>>1896733
This is a good answer.

>>1899372
strong words from someone who thinks 'middle class' actually means anything beyond cultural signifiers

>>1899216
<1, Andre Gorz, STRATEGY FOR LABOR (Beacon Press, 1967), p. 164.
Can you tell me why you shouldn't be raped to death for quoting out of context like the sad little 996 PMC you are?

>muh unity
Kys DNC bot

>>1899389
keep on attempting to divide the working class with stupid "PMC" concepts while I continue to do mutual aid and organize unions you little shit

>>1897044
This shit is so fucking revisionist it's saying explicitly that class is not the base element, i.e. the relationship to the means of production, but the superstructural elements, i.e. lifestyle, culture, etc. This is a bunch of horse shit that turns Marx's analysis entirely upside down. These 70s academics writing at the dawn of the neoliberal era did not have the foresight to see the collapse of the imperial core, the rise of the periphery, etc. They're looking at the imperialist engine running on the fumes of social democracy and concluding that the "PMC" are some kind of vague venn diagram intersection of proletariat and bourgeoisie, rather than looking at these people individually and seeing that they always either own means of production, or they don't. The ones who don't are workers, and the ones who do are at the very least petit bourgeoisie. Pretending they're neither is a failure of the category "PMC" which draws a circle around a bunch of people due to their superstructural characteristics (culture, lifestyle, workplace, etc.) rather than their relation to the means of production. To pretend an office worker making 30k/yr doing data entry and his boss who sits on the board of directors are both "PMC" is to obfuscate the Marxist definition of class, which this paper explicitly does in pic related.

>>1899592
>keep on attempting to divide the working class with stupid "PMC" concepts while I continue to do mutual aid and organize unions you little shit
Any proletarian should slit your throat for talking down to them like that. I defy you to tell me why they shouldn't.

>>1899623
>This shit is so fucking revisionist
You haven't even read the paper; no investigation, no right to speak.

>it's saying explicitly that class is not the base element
I don't see that they are saying anything incompatible with superstructure shapes base, men make history under circumstances given and transmitted by history. Class is the base element but it is not the only element. And besides, they haven't even offered a definition for the PMC at that point in the paper.

You are arguing dishonestly.

>This is a bunch of horse shit that turns Marx's analysis entirely upside down
No, "Marxist" analysis already did that, which if you actually understood the critical history of your own movement you would know.

>These 70s academics writing at the dawn of the neoliberal era did not have the foresight to see the collapse of the imperial core
Stop deflecting, MLM-NCM. pic2

>rather than looking at these people individually
>mom I'm special! rEEEEEEEEEEEE
Yes, you are! You're on femboy subbotnik this weekend. Grease up well!

>They're looking at the imperialist engine running on the fumes of social democracy
No, they're looking at the period in which the Second International was active and the construction of the PMC out of particular segments of the "middle classes" who saw their own decline and took Marx's prediction as a warning. Why do you believe that your retarded inability to study history is something we should accept?

>rather than looking at these people individually and seeing that they always either own means of production, or they don't.
And what kind of childish mythological cosmology do you have that requires an infantile duality? Baby needs a hero myth? Lol. Lmao, even.

What Ehrenreich is positing is that those who create skills, knowledge, and culture have separated themselves as an intellectual capitalist class, with the usual trimmings of a class that go right down to their anti-worker ideals, and she brings historicalreceipts which none of you . And, if you hold that relations are practiced before they are formalized, as historical materialism holds, then the split between the PMC and labor has been recognized explicitly by the Taft-Hartley Act and other American labor institutions.

>The ones who don't are workers, and the ones who do are at the very least petit bourgeoisie
Idpol is the opposite of class analysis.

Remember, the capitalist is only so insofar as he is the personification of capital. What's funny is how deeply you have identified your own self with the PMC class ideology that you're driven with such vigor to a bad-faith hostile reading of the theory, the assertion of your own self-righteousness, and to a flat refusal of the very possibility that labor might critique its own organic composition. It's hilarious and telling just waht you lying traitor fucks stand for, and why you ALL need to be reconditioned as femboys to the working class before you are allowed to participate in any organization.

>>1899657
>y-you can't talk down to me just because i'm dividing the working class… i-i'm a r-real proletarian!!! you're a fake one because I decided as much!!! i'm going to k-kill you!!!
lol I work in a warehouse and organize unions. what do you do, kid? stew in your mom's basement and complain about office workers?

>>1899657
larp harder kid
>>1899682
I read the paper up until it said the paragraph I posted because as soon as you say relation to the means is not sufficient to make class real, you are revising fundamental theses of class struggle, and how class is defined.

>>1899682
I mean seriously read this shit again.
>relation to the economic foundations of society is not sufficient to specify a class as a real social entity
This immediately begs the question… "Then what is?"
>a class is characterized by a coherent social and cultural existence.
This is leading up to where they're trying to dethrone base and enthrone superstructure. They're not merely saying superstructure "shapes" the base, because then they say:
>Members of a class share a common life style, educational background, kinship networks, consumption patterns, work habits, beliefs.
This is nonsense. A proletarian is a proletarian because of their relationship to the means of production and the exploitation of their labor power, which they sell to a capitalist. Let's go through each of the items and think through the implications:
<educational background
so a prole with a high school diploma and a prole with two years of college are members of a different class just because of their educational background?
<kinship networks
So a prole born into a society where an extended family lives in the same multigenerational household and a prole born into a society where people typically live in more granular housing units are members of a different class?
<consumption patterns
so a prole who is vegetarian is a different class than a prole who eats a lot of meat? A prole who plays lots of video games is a different class than a prole who watches a lot of movies?
<work habits
so a prole who takes a lot of cigarette breaks is a different class than a prole who stays clocked in the whole shift?
<beliefs
so a muslim prole is a different class than a christian prole? than an atheist prole?

Revisionist nonsense.

Anyone saying office drones aren't part of the proletariat is just a wrecker, 100%, and should fuck off, they're not even worth the time to engage with.

>>1899727
Yeah as a factory worker I fail to see how accountants are dominating and domineering over me. Hell my manager doesn't even do that unless there's an error.

>>1899725
>This is leading up to where they're trying to dethrone base and enthrone superstructure
I mean, can you stop using such melodramatic language first of all? It makes you sound like a whiner. They're not "enthroning" anything, they're studying the HOW of how capitalism reproduces even when nobody wants to play that game anymore, why people don't just walk away from capitalism like they walked away from Gorby.

>>relation to the economic foundations of society is not sufficient to specify a class as a real social entity
>This immediately begs the question… "Then what is?"
No, the obvious question is "What else do we need?" Why do you need a social reality to be determined by just one thing? Is this some retarded PMC autist alt-reality game like renfaires or trekkies?

>Members of a class share a common life style, educational background, kinship networks, consumption patterns, work habits, beliefs.
>This is nonsense. A proletarian is a proletarian
You're right. That essentialism you just posted is nonsense and you should delete it. These things you've listed are obviously effects of material conditions, including the objective antagonisms with "other strata" of labor (if you insist) — which you seem personally threatened to acknowledge — but always shaped by culture. Your error is that you see them as diagnostic, rather than dynamic.

<educational background
Conditioning into social roles and epistemology
<kinship networks
Access to capital and surplus, both tangible and intangible
<consumption patterns
Defined specifications which the working class is commanded to reproduce
<work habits
Workers such as PMC who have more autonomy establish different work habits than those who do not have the autonomy to do so. Seems pretty material to me.
<beliefs
Workers hate the Protestant ethic. PMC are sluts for it.

Anyway.

Are you going to stop defending your retarded partisan perversion of Marx or do I need to post Engels again?

>>1899727
>>1899734
Samefag

>>1899725
>Revisionist nonsense.
Serves you right for being dumb enough to believe in cosmic myth in the first place

>>1899739
Believe what you will

>>1899741
Not that it matters; NAFO learned how to talk to one another early to simulate consensus

What would you actually do with the supposed PMC class in a DOTP? Doctors and accountants can't become party members? Are you gonna send them to the countryside to learn what REAL working class life is like a la Mao?

>>1899742
What's NAFO got to do with any of this?

>>1899734
>Hell my manager doesn't even do that unless there's an error
They design the commodities that suck.
They design the media that sucks.
They design the cultural fads that suck.
They design the laws that (strategically) suck.
They are the ones who implement, and shamelessly at that, the imperatives of capital.

Do you just go home and take heroin until it's time to go to work the next day? Why do "communists" talk like work is life? That seems like a particularly PMC habit of thought imo

>>1899745
>lifestylism
The New Communist Movement already tried that and went away in the 1980s. Too bad there's a revival of their already untimely critique.

I suggest starting by barring them from constituting any intersubjectivity and allowing any member of the proletariat to apply physical punishment when PMC attempt to speak for any intersubjectivity.

>>1899750
I mean ok I'm sympathetic to the argument that CEOs aren't proletarian, sure, but 90% of people who work in offices are just paper pushers with no real control over anything

>>1899738
proletarians are sell their labor power to a capitalist.
bourgeoisie buy labor power and reinvest surplus into expanding production.
Their educational background, kinship networks, consumption patterns, work habits, and beliefs don't change that. It only divides them superficially when the time comes to organize against capital, which is why the bourgeoisie love to focus on it so much, and amplify its importance.
>>1899740
>cosmic myth
and what "cosmic myth" would that be?

>>1899745
make them into party bureaukkkrats obviously

>>1899742
yes, so true. and the fact that i agree with you means we're both fake shills simulating consensus.

>>1899757
They state that "occupation is not the sole determinant of class (nor even the sole determinant of the relation to the means of production)":

<Consider the case of the registered nurse: She may have been recruited from a working class, PMC or petty-bourgeois family. Her education may be two years in a working-class community college or four years in a private, upper-middle-class college, On the job, she may be a worker, doing the most menial varieties of bedside nursing, supervising no one, using only a small fraction of the skilis and knowledge she learned at school. Or she may be part of management, supervising dozens, even hundreds of other RN’s, practical nurses and nurses’ aides. Moreover, over 98 per cent of RN’s are women; their class standing is, in significant measure, linked to that of their husband, Some nurses do, in fact, marry doctors; far more marry lower-level professionals, while many others marry blue-collar and lower-level white-collar workers. So there is simply no way to classify registered nurses as a group. What seems to be a single occupational category is in fact socially and functionally heterogeneous.

Of course, it's that 10% of paper pushers — actually more like 25% when e.g. head offices of transnational corporations are included — whose class outlook is a threat to the abolition of the working class as a whole.

No class theory is very useful to predict the behavior of particular individuals. PMC theory only sets out to identify a particular faction oexpose the many opportunities for excess despotism, surplus-enjoyment, and counter-revolutionary action to the exclusive objective benefit of that very same reproductive faction of labor, against the objective interests of the rest of labor — manual workers, waged mental workers, and salaried mental workers not engaged particularly in reproducing capitalist culture and relations. Considering the virulent cope and seethe that appears whenever the theory is brought up, some seem to anticipate these opportunities eagerly.

>>1899885
Why should I care about what some new left clowns wrote in the 70s? If your spouse is not proletarian and you live off their money then you're also not proletarian, that has nothing to do with being an RN.

>people get mad at my dumb theory, that must mean it's correct

Ok man, I guess flat earth is correct too because it makes people mad.

'PMC theory' is useful for absolutely nothing other than further dividing the working class, the only times you see is brought up is by maladjusted leninhat types that clearly don't view socialism as any kind of project for achieving change but as a religious justification to hate others

>>1899885
>No class theory is very useful to predict the behavior of particular individuals.
it's not meant to predict the behavior of individuals, it's meant to demonstrate the material interests of large groups of people
>PMC theory only sets out to identify a particular faction [and] expose the many opportunities for excess despotism, surplus-enjoyment, and counter-revolutionary action to the exclusive objective benefit of that very same reproductive faction of labor
It's a faction of labor? OK, at least you admit it's a faction of labor, and not a faction of capital, as some like to do. As for the phrase "faction of labor," again here we see a division of the working class being imposed ideologically and superstructurally through this New Left "theory", ironically written by people who maybe could be described as PMC themselves). Every "faction of labor" has unique "opportunities" for counter revolutionary action. That's the whole reason capitalists push the idea of "working hard" and "getting a promotion" and "coming to the boss by yourself to ask for a favor" rather than educating/agitating/organizing. They want to make the working class to think of themselves as individuals in competition with each other. Hence the presentation of "opportunities" to all working class individuals. If some "faction" of the working class has more of these "opportunties" than another, it is by bourgeois design, and not by the design of said "faction."

>>1899877
>superficially

Not using "objectively" in the chan sense:

<It is simultaneously with these developments in working-class life (more precisely, in the relation between the working class and the capitalist class) that the professional and managerial workers emerge as a new class in society. The three key developments listed above — the reorganization of the productive process, the emergence of mass institutions of social control, the commodity penetration of working-class life — do not simply “develop”; they require the effort of more or less consctous agents. The expropriation of productive skills requires the intervention of scientific management experts; there must be engineers to inherit the productive lore, managers to supervise the increasingly degraded work process, etc. Similarly, the destruction of autonomous working-class culture requires (and calis forth) the emergence of new culture-producers — from physicians to journalists, teachers, ad-men and so on. These new operatives, the vanguard of the emerging PMC, are not simply an old intelligentsia expanding to meet the needs of a “complex” society. Their emergence in force near the turn of the century is parallel and complementary to the transformation of the working class which marks the emergence of monopoly capital.

<Thus the relationship between the PMC and the working class is objectively antagonistic. The functions and interests of the two classes are not merely different; they are mutually contradictory. True, both groups are forced to sell their labor power to the capitalist class; both are necessary to the productive process under capitalism; and they share an antagonistic relation to the capitalist class. (We will return to this point in more detail later.) But these commonalities should not distract us from the fact that the professional-managerial workers exist, as a mass grouping in monopoly capitalist society, only by virtue of the expropriation of the skills and culture once indigenous to the working class.

<Historically, the process of overt and sometimes violent expropriation was concentrated in the early twentieth century, with the forced Taylorization of major industries, the “Americanization” drive in working-class communities, etc. The fact that this process does not have to be repeated in every generation — any more than the capitalist class must continually re-enact the process of primitive accumulation — creates the impression that PMC - working-class relations represent a purely “natural” division of labor imposed by the social complexity and technological sophistication of modern society. But the objective antagonism persists and represents a contradiction which is continually nourished by the historical alternative of a society in which mental and manual work are re-united to create whole people. It is because of this objective antagonism that we are let to define the professional and managerial workers as a class distinct from the working class.

<We should add, at this point, that the antagonism between the PMC and the working class does not exist only in the abstract realm of "objective" relations, of course. Real-life contacts between the two classes express directly, if sometimes benignly, the relation of control which is at the heart of the PMC - working-class relation: teacher and student (or parent), manager and worker, social worker and client, etc. The subjective dimension of these contacts is a complex mixture of hostility and deference on the part of working-class people, contempt and paternalism on the part of the PMC.

>>1899890
>'PMC theory' is useful for absolutely nothing other than further dividing the working class
Stop crying crocodile tears about the "unity" of the worker's movement. It only makes you sound like a bad Democratic pundit in a bad election year. Just admit that you are using socialist rhetoric to increase your standing in capitalist society and then kys.

>>1899923
>it's not meant to predict the behavior of individuals, it's meant to demonstrate the material interests of large groups of people
I'm glad we agree on that.

>>1899923
>It's a faction of labor? OK, at least you admit it's a faction of labor
I'm only adopting your terminology to humor you. Apparently that's a mistake considering your poor-faith engagement on account of some mystical "unity" to which every potential contradiction must submit. Are you also abusive to your household members?

>again here we see a division of the working class being imposed ideologically and superstructurally
No, the counter-revolutionarism is objective, and I see it from every single one of you PMC apologists. Anything that gets in the way of your personal imposition of your personal ethic and your control over superstructure is "divisive".

>They want to make the working class to think of themselves as individuals in competition with each other
There are objective antagonism as well: who gets to determine the forms the means will take, which impinges on their use-value and their fit to various applications, which are not those of the working class, only of pious self-appointed representatives who love capitalism so much they can't quit the 2I and their red PMC ideology.

>>1899948
>I'm glad we agree on that.

>I'm only adopting your terminology to humor you.
I never used that terminology so perhaps you have me confused with a different anon. Actually, ctrl+Fing through this thread, the first instance of that term phrase seems to be your post. You shouldn't be so smug about your confusion.
>Are you also abusive to your household members?
No. You accuse me of "poor-faith engagement" and then ask me this purely rhetorical "Are you still beating your wife?" type of question.
>No, the counter-revolutionarism is objective, and I see it from every single one of you PMC apologists.
The proletariat should get organized and have a revolution carried out by their class conscious elements rather than purging their ranks of the "PMC" or whatever. The only thing the proletariat should purge their ranks of is counter revolutionaries and reactionaries, which come both in "white collar" and "blue collar" flavors. Was Lenin a "PMC" for being a lawyer? Was Marx a "PMC" for being a journalist who wrote articles for the New York Tribune? Were they engaged in "objective" "counter-revolutionarism" when they spent their whole lives agitating for revolution?
>Anything that gets in the way of your personal imposition of your personal ethic and your control over superstructure is "divisive".
Every accusation a confession.
>There are objective antagonism as well:
I'm sure you'll say what they are soon enough
>who gets to determine the forms the means will take
that's the bourgeoisie, not teachers, doctors, and office workers
>pious self-appointed representatives who love capitalism so much they can't quit the 2I and their red PMC ideology.
You are pious and self appointed. The only "PMC ideology" is the ideology of people who constantly push the PMC ideology which results in the division of the working class, whether or not that is their intention.

>>1900024
I'm not here to debate. I'm here to correct your reading of the paper. Unfortunately I have no way to correct your childish need to reenact history and play a Main Character in it (another PMC class characteristic). Give me a good reason you shouldn't be shot simply for refusing critique.

>>1900035
>Give me a good reason you shouldn't be shot simply for refusing critique.
You have yet to give one, larping child

>>1900044
It's not my job. Read the literature and be a PMC ideological bot somewhere that valorizes such activities.

>>1900061
I already read it. It's nonsense. Either you sell your labour power to a capitalist in exchange for a wage/salary, or you buy labour power and own means of production.

>>1900068
Only neoliberals deny the superstructure.

>>1900096
Super structural contradictions are what Mao referred to as "non antagonistic contradictions" (he also used this to refer to ethnic minority and gender issues)

>>1900068
Alright then. Will you agree to wear a shock collar that any proletarian can trigger at any time for any or no reason whatsoever? Including when you are in your "private life"? If not, why not?

>>1900100
Economic relations are just social relations. They aren't actually material unless you're too invested in capitalism to pull the plug on it.

>>1900096
I don't deny the superstructure. I refuse to treat it as the base. The revolution will need software engineers, translators, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and other "PMC" workers. It's impossible to deny the superstructure because the superstructure is in a feedback loop with the base. They shape and maintain one another. But the base is primary. Also it's patently absurd to say neoliberals deny the superstructure. In reality they deny the base and uphold the superstructure. They have subjectivist theories of value. They ignore labor inputs. They use idpol to divide and conquer the working class. Their entire political project is to obfuscate the base and wage culture war. Which is interestingly enough what this whole "PMC" discourse reeks of.

>>1900113
>will you [insert fantasy]
yeah sure whatever

>>1900114
>I don't deny the superstructure. I refuse to treat it as the base
Where, exactly, does Ehrenreich take anything but the base as the point of departure? The base merely constrains what can be done with the superstructure; linen can make a coat or a tablecloth or a bedsheet.
>The revolution will need software engineers, translators, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and other "PMC" workers.
You're just blathering occupational identity politics now. Pass. I'm here to talk social science, not rhetoric.

The point is that those professions are the very instruments by which capitalist relations are reproduced. We can't seize the means because the PMC have already turned them into capital and stored them away from us. Workers can't seize the means because workers can't run a shop without your veto. I think you will find very poor uptake in the West at the idea of simply replacing one capitalist extremist group with a more conscious, more arrogant one. It might be better off for workers to find ways to make you fail, so that you can't dominate them. Actual workers, not the introjected bourgeoisie you expect to become after the revolution. All managers are liars and there is no reason to trust you, at all, no matter how much yoy arrogantly yell at us to treat you as one of us and at the same time submit to you.

No. Either you bend to OUR heel or we ruin your dreams and force you to grow up and stop larping a program that is no longer adaptive to the present material and social conditions.

>>1900115
Mypoint is mass line and checks and balances will go a lot further than reenacting the Progressive Era for sure this time.

>>1900123
>t.PMC with Visio

>>1900153
>y-you're using visio therefore PMC
no, I'm using draw.io which is free. it's becoming increasingly apparent you're just a troll grasping at random straws. if making a flowchart is enough to make someone "PMC" then you're "PMC" for using a computer.

>>1900153
>Mypoint is mass line and checks and balances
not something you ever mentioned in this conversation prior to now
>will go a lot further than reenacting the Progressive Era for sure this time.
also not something anyone was talking about before now. Every schizo thing you bring up out of left field I can just ctrl+f and find nowhere else in the thread. You can't hold a coherent conversation.

>>1900153
>Where, exactly, does Ehrenreich take anything but the base as the point of departure?
see >>1899725

>>1896725
I make a six digit salary, hold stocks and invest in a managed fund. I am a proletarian.

>>1900221
i make 30k/yr, do not hold financial assets, but I work in an office. i am a PMC and am not a proletarian

>>1899943
What does that even mean? I support everything that will improve the lot of the working class

This whole stupid thread is why it's so irksome when leftists smugly deny the importance of income differentials to class status. No, income is not the sole determinant of class, but it's safe to say that if you have a chunk of money lying around in reserve, you are not some hapless proletarian, and even both Marx and Engels said as much.