I’m honestly curious to know what exactly makes the PMC (university professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, those types of people) adhere to the belief system they do. Namely, the psychology behind what’s often termed as “petit-bourgeois radicalism.”
I recently read through two of Caleb Maupin’s books (The American Years of Lead and the one on Trotsky and the Neocons). Maupin asserts that intellectual elites (PMC) are heavily into salon culture and edgy things that have aristocratic connotations. For instance, intellectual elites (PMC) are the ones who hold an overly-romantic view of revolution and romanticize terrorism and political violence. They’re the ones that conjure up images of a big apocalyptic revolution similar to the Christian rapture whereby every little aspect of the existing society is destroyed. He also heavily emphasized that the PMC hates the genuine working/class, because they see them as a threat to their power, so they deliberately manipulate working-class movements in order to offset and eventually dissolve them. Plus, they love sexual promiscuity and use “leftism” in order to promote it.
Last night, I watched a video on Sublation Media between Doug Alain and Chris Cutrone. Cutrone made the point that the PMC romanticize terrorism, mass destruction involving killing and raping, and the “noble death” because the PMC are “gangsters.” Not gangsters the way the ultra-rich capitalists are, but gangsters nonetheless.
My understanding is, intellectual elites love these things like violence and terror for the exact same reason they love modern “art” like Jackson Pollock and jazz and rap “music”: it’s all deeply irrational. They reject historical progress, favour the lumpen and those on the margins of society over the genuine proletariat, and promote destruction because they hate rationality. All of the things they promote as “leftism” are actually deeply aristocratic values: it’s the aristocracy that loves violence, sexual indulgence and a rejection of logic and linear time. I see it like this: intellectual elites, being Nietzscheans at heart, hate rationality and linear progress because they see those things as boxes that limit their ability to indulge, but also the fact that they already have their privileged positions and don’t need a proletarian revolution to have their basic needs met. In fact, a proletarian revolution would mean they lose their privileges and end up working in the fields. That’s also why they favour the lumpen: a “leftist” revolution lead by the lumpen would pose zero threat to them. After all, the marginalized find allies in college professors promoting queer studies and doctors handing out narcan, do they not?
Am I right or is there more to it?
58 posts and 3 image replies omitted.>>2585552>The (white) working-class, on the other hand, wants more cops in their hoods because they crave stability.It wasn't just white people that opposed police abolition, and for a variety of reasons.
>>2585350don't forget that "identity based false consciousness" has trended in a more-and-more class conscious direction over time. there's a reason pretty much all of them are (or at least claim to be) socialists and communists!
>>2585552there is a catch here: we do not live in democracies. there is very little correlation between what you believe, what you vote for, and what outcomes you get. indeed, voting itself is generally considered profoundly irrational. (perhaps the one point on which mainstream economists and /leftypol/ are agreed)
so far as such a division exists, it has little real material element. it's a fashion game played in inconsistent ways. "abolish the police" is an old round of a game of "cool" vs "uncool" rather than working class vs PMC. (e.g. many low-income dinergoths will say "abolish the police" because they're extremely online young cool people, while most high-income silicon valley types and traditional besuited straight-white-men with CEO positions who appease the Trump admin are pro-cop because they're extremely uncool. the uncool people focus much more on police abolition as a central left-wing demand, while cool people have mostly moved on to Palestine.)
That's not what a PMC is, please actually read theory instead of learning about it through memes and debates.
>>2583942>He also heavily emphasized that the PMC hates the genuine working/class, because they see them as a threat to their power, so they deliberately manipulate working-class movements in order to offset and eventually dissolve them. Plus, they love sexual promiscuity and use “leftism” in order to promote it.
>Last night, I watched a video on Sublation Media between Doug Alain and Chris Cutrone. Cutrone made the point that the PMC romanticize terrorism, mass destruction involving killing and raping, and the “noble death” because the PMC are “gangsters.” Not gangsters the way the ultra-rich capitalists are, but gangsters nonetheless.Reminds me of what Leo Strauss said about the “noble lie” in Plato: philosophers (intellectuals) have to lie and deceive the masses so philosophers can maintain their class position in society. I’m sure Maupin has written about this very thing.
>>2586194>don't forget that "identity based false consciousness" has trended in a more-and-more class conscious direction over time. there's a reason pretty much all of them are (or at least claim to be) socialists and communists!They only claim to be “communists” because they think “communist” is a catch-all for “people who care about idpol”. Most of them have very little to no class politics.
>>2585474>This person in vidrel is a doula, so they're in competition with doctors.Doulas not beating the “chiropractors of the left” accusations anytime soon. GTFO with this anti-science bullshit.
>>2586223they hate CEOs and landlords and they call themselves socialists and communists and they tell you to join unions and do mutual aid and they're generally skeptical of voting for bourgeois parties and loathe american imperialism and they've got a much better understanding of how the bourgeoisie interact with idpol than the average user here (they were predicting the end of corporate pride long before you were!) but still, they "have no class politics" because if they did then i wouldn't be a special little boy on leftypol.org
your best move is to reply is: "ah, but they don't
do anything, how can you say they have class politics without
doing anything?", so i'll make it for you. my response is: "and what do
you do that's so politically meaningful as to constitute having real class politics, eh?"
>>2586242What group of idpolers are you talking about? Because I’m seeing none of this in the queer and neurodivergent communities.
>>2586342I'm seeing it with queers and with neurodivergent people and especially in groups like furries, which are disproportionately both.
Plus random fandoms and obvious ex tumblrites and indeed current tumblrites If you want a vision of the future imagine the Starbucks union drive furry doing praxis, forever.
>>2583942There is no "PMC".
>>2583942>Plus, they love sexual promiscuity and use “leftism” in order to promote it.Wait until you hear what ordinary proles talk about in break rooms.
Nothing he describes is unique to PMCs anyway (religious eschatological view of The Revolution, obscene enjoyment, fucking around)
>favour the lumpen and those on the margins of society over the genuine proletariat>sexual indulgenceSigh
>My understanding is, intellectual elites love these things like violence and terror for the exact same reason they love modern “art” like Jackson Pollock and jazz and rap “music”: it’s all deeply irrational.
Missed this gem.
One of the issues with touching grass is coming back to this place and realizing it's a shithole filled with freaks.
>>2586807Most working-class people want a peaceful revolution.
>>2583978Art doesn't have to be socialist realism and music doesn't have to be military anthems. Leftists are as bad as STEMfags when it comes to art criticism. Pollock was a GENIUS and sometimes paint-splat art really ties the room together.
>>2589628You're retarded my dude
>>2589628Cry harder.
No one has ever unionized to a Kendrick Lamar song.
>>2583942A more accurate term for "pmc" is the intellectual petit-bourgeoisie.
The class is defined by owning capital in the form of relatively scarce (in the market in a given period & place) knowledge and skills, such that the labour time they put into production is exceeded by the labour time equivalent of their renumeration (in a given period & place).
Further consideration (turn on auto-translate):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6okxuiNKj0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYDzGh4Dj7o >>2583942"Last night, I watched a video on Sublation Media between Doug Alain and Chris Cutrone. Cutrone made the point that the PMC romanticize terrorism, mass destruction involving killing and raping, and the “noble death” because the PMC are “gangsters.” Not gangsters the way the ultra-rich capitalists are, but gangsters nonetheless."
I don't what intellectual petit-bourgeoisie these people usually encounter, but my experience is that the i.p.b. are extremely averse to violence, even going so far as to create entirely new conceptions of it like "micro-aggressions".
Perhaps they in a very rioty anarchist milieu? Because universities & offices have been by and large dominated by liberals of various colours that are extremely squeamish. Think Steven Pinker types.
They aren't very sexually promiscuous themselves either. Sure they think and talk about sex a lot, and it tends to be about sex in relatively degenerate forms, but data suggests they have less of it, adjusting for things like marital status.
>>2589953It's not capital if you can't sell it you twit. A non-exchangeable privilege such as an academic credential is more akin to a kind of fief. It's a non-capitalist form of rent.
>>2590000Wait… Under capitalism relatively skills and knowledge are produced and acquired through payment and labour (either in schools or apprenticeship s of some form), earn a rate of return and are definitely sold on the market.
Sure they are bundled with together with labour time, but so is caloric & nutrient expenditure by the body.
>>2590027Addendum: It is an interesting idea though: Imagining something that exists in capitalism that earns a return but cannot itself be bought or sold (and not just isn't, but cannot be). Is it still a form of capital under capitalism?
Can't think of a practical example at the moment… Still I am going to add this idea to my notes and ask a proper marxist economist about it.
Only incels dislike promiscuity
>>2589905Socialist Realist art is hella gaudy. Why is it all muted colours?
>>2589240>>2589905Tankies proving they have the same views of art and music as fascists.
People who are overly critical of the PMC are just trying to ignore the inherent class-cuckery of the “working class”. They are annoying but they aren’t the cause of the Left’s constant defeat.
>>2590231Bordiga praised the fascists and also hated jazz
>>2590231Do you know why the ruling class pushes abstract art and rap music so hard? Show me a single time anyone has unionized to a Kendrick Lamar song.
Damn an actual good post from city builders gang. But on that point about PMC radicalism i think it is because of their obsession to romanticism and the idea of dying for a cause. Same shit with ISIS, the neo nazis today, etc. Many of the people involved here are either from the academia or FIRE groups (finance insurance real estate), i e bloc bourgeois
>>2590477when has anyone ever unionized to "let's support our supreme commander with arms"?
and abstract art? who the fuck
(save security, i guess?) unionizes at the tate modern?
>>2590517Why would someone with a cushy FIRE job want to die in some hole in the desert? From what I've seen it's predominantly "lumpen" and petite bourgeois failsons. Not academics, small business owners or landlords.
>their obsession to romanticism and the idea of dying for a cause. As if it's any different here. (God forbid you're accused of doing a "lifestyleism")
>>2590442whats this webm from?
There is no concrete definition of “PMC”.
>>2595678>>2583956>The Professional-Managerial Class (“PMC”), as we will define it, cannot be considered a stratum of a broader “class” of “workers” because it exists in an objectively antagonistic relationship to another class of wage earners (whom we shall simply call the “working class”). Nor can it be considered to be a “residual” class like the petty bourgeoisie; it is a formation specific to the monopoly stage of capitalism. It is only in the light of this analysis, we believe, that it is possible to understand the role of technical, professional and managerial workers in advanced capitalist society and in the radical movements.* * *
>We define the Professional-Managerial Class as consisting of salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor may be described broadly as the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations.
>Their role in the process of reproduction may be more or less explicit, as with workers who are directly concerned with social control or with the production and propagation of ideology (e.g., teachers, social workers, psychologists, entertainers, writers of advertising copy and TV scripts, etc.). Or it may be hidden within the process of production, as is the case with the middle-level administrators and managers, engineers, and other technical workers whose functions, as [Andre] Gorz, Steve Marglin, Harry Braverman and others have argued, are essentially determined by the need to preserve capitalist relations of production. Thus we assert that these occupational groups – cultural workers, managers, engineers and scientists, etc. – share a common function in the broad social division of labor and a common relation to the economic foundations of society. It’s interesting how so many “leftist” PMC tend to be anarchists (or Trotskyists) over Marxist-Leninists, because if anarchists had any consistency they would see the PMC as being a more authoritarian force in society than bosses, landlords or police. Doctors and intellectuals control society far worse than bosses, landlords or cops do.
>>2602425>Doctors and intellectuals control society far worse than bosses, landlords or cops do.Explain.
>>2602425Anyone complaining about the PMC is immediately outed to me as a Red Scare Podcast, Aimee Thereseoid, neo-strasserite ""left coded"" groyper avi twitter account.
The advent of PMC as an analytical device is so useless it's only ever used to decry HR departments for responding the #metoo and taking sexual harassment allegations seriously.
What's your opinion on farmers?
>>2602597If you don't see how managers and the intellectual organs of capitalist ideological reproduction can be a problem for a socialist movement I don't know what to tell you. Even Marx and prominent figures from the 2nd Internationale complained about the ways their placement in society wasn't fully compatible with a proletarian socialist movement and bothered to make a distinction between them and the working class even if they work for a contract. Critiquing the PMC doesn't mean they can't be part of a socialist party/movement but it does present some unique challenges in terms of their immediate interests, ideology, and collective behavior. It's easy to point at retards like Red Scare but you're not debunking OP's point.
>>2583942>the PMC (university professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, those types of people)In terms of Marxist class dynamics, intellectual labor is still labor. An engineer can very much be a proletariat, even if his work doesn't fit the traditional aesthetic trappings of what we think of as "working class". The actual "PMC" consists of the people hired by the bourgeois to act as middlemen between themselves and the workers they're exploiting. For example, the manager of a Subway is part of the PMC. He does similar work to a petite bourgeois small business owner, but he doesn't actually own the business he's acting as the pseudo owner of.
>I recently read through two of Caleb Maupin’s booksGross.
>Maupin asserts that intellectual elites (PMC) are heavily into salon culture and edgy things that have aristocratic connotations. For instance, intellectual elites (PMC) are the ones who hold an overly-romantic view of revolution and romanticize terrorism and political violence.My experience has been the exact opposite. The actual PMs I've dealt with, as well as the PMs I've heard about indirectly from others, are remarkably conservative. They're the kind of people who think that politics have become too radical and want Bernie Sanders-type reformism that extends capitalism rather than destroying it. This tracks with their class position; they ultimately benefit from capitalism, with their only complaint being that they're not getting enough out of it.
>Plus, they love sexual promiscuity and use “leftism” in order to promote it.Where are you getting this from?
>they love modern “art” like Jackson Pollock and jazz and rap “music”: it’s all deeply irrational.Music is irrational by default. It's a bunch of sound frequencies with no actual content that make the listener feel strong emotions about nothing in particular. To insist that classical music is "more rational" is to fall for 19th century idealism. If anything, rap is arguably the most "rational" style of music, because the actual musical part is secondary to the lyrics.
Beyond that, it's not as if only a singular style of art or music is valid. Different people have different tastes. To insist that there is a singular universally correct set of aesthetics is, again, to be an idealist.
>In fact, a proletarian revolution would mean they lose their privileges and end up working in the fieldsI find it extraordinary interesting that you chose "the fields" as your descriptor for proletarian labor, rather than, say, "the factories".
>Am I right or is there more to it?I get the impression that you may very well be a member of the PMC without knowing it.
>>2607763> Music is irrational by default. It's a bunch of sound frequencies with no actual content that make the listener feel strong emotions about nothing in particular. The USSR under Stalin tried applying Socialist Realism to kusic.
>>2607813He sure did, even though that makes zero sense. Stalin was not a god. He was a man in a position of power, and while often used that power for good, there were definitely cases where he used that power for good, he absolutely abused it in certain cases, and this was absolutely a case of that. Stalin had certain aesthetic tastes, and he used his political power to enforce them. The stated reason, that Classical music is somehow more "socialist", was a post-hoc justification that people still believe for some reason, even though China, the socialist success story that has actually managed to survive, has largely abandoned it.
Music doesn’t have ideology, titles and lyrics do, you could literally rename Flight of the Valkyries to Flight of the Batushkas and now it’s epic proletarian music
Like tell me the ideology of a wah pedal, a distortion pedal, or a G chord
>I recently read through two of Caleb Maupin’s books
stopped reading here
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